If Popeye Stompy could give Legacy a shakeup, maybe Grixis Delvaargh is the next new thing in Modern? In all seriousness though, I love the idea of playing 8-Snap (with Dire Fleet Daredevil) and have begun working on a list. It's a very rough first draft, but I'll throw it out there none the less.
You realize that Pirate Stompy is a fake deck? It was completely made up by Bob Huang from Channel Fireball and everyone bought it hook-line-and-sinker.
Merchant Ship even spiked to like a $20 card. This is the problem with our society, no one thoroughly reads anything. They read the headline and then hit repost. Here's the original link. READ THE WHOLE THING. It's hilarious and a lot of opportunists made some serious money on it. https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/popeye-stompy/
Hasn't Merchant Ship spiked due to the reserved list and buyouts of useless but not printable cards? I don't recall it being used on pirate stompy. I guess people really don't read anything, the pirate stompy was the dumbest thing I've seen in quite a while.
About the daredevil... sounds good in a meta with a specific kind of deck. But quite worse than snapcaster, not having flash is HUGE. I think it was a joke, but even though daredevil is strictly worse than snapcaster, snap is so good that "additional copies" could be good.
But it sounds too lose.
But could be good.
I mean, not reeeeally good, but good...ish?
Maybe it's just not that bad.
But not quite good-ish.
I guess that joke kinda got me thinking.
I'd say it's good against 50% of the meta, kinda good against 25% of the meta and a bad black knight against 25% of the meta. But in any case I think it's too mana expensive as a sorcery-speed spell for grixis delver.
Oh, and one more thing. When you play a lot of cantrips, your deck gets "smaller". With this list I was able to get only cards that are really relevant after sideboarding in every matchup I played. And you can always cut some cantrips after sideboarding, since your deck will be more directed, and need less card selection (as there will be more relevant cards for the matchup).
I tryed Ryan's "Delverless grixis delver" list, and it felt really weird to me. I guess it may be the meta, I was playing in the friendly league, the 4 snares sounded good only in a few matchups (affinity), and snares/vendilion got sided out a lot. I missed the delvers, and sometimes the overloading on removal didn't save me, while an early threat would have. I felt like it tried to get to a grindy stage, but with only snaps/kcommand as card advantage. Could be good in some metas, probably is very good against DS (didn't play against it), infect (heh), etc.
Nah, Delver is MVP in GDS so I'm skeptical about whether the delverless 20 land list is better against it. A 3/2 flier beating down while you keep shadows off the board with 4 pushes 4 snaps and 3 terminates is a steady route to victory. I enjoy playing the control game as much as the delver mode, but the current meta demands that we clock a little more consistently. I usually want to use my turn 1 playing a threat.
Just for you guys not to feel lost, I brought this discussion from grixis control since it was leaning towards grixis delver and I think it wouldn't be cool with people there to post it there, so:
Yeah Marc, I agree. I haven't played for 2 weeks when I started back last weekend, and grixis delver felt amazing. I won 2 leagues 5-0 in a row with it, and personally I think Delver kinda gets your game controlled, since with a more controlish deck you have to try getting the board 100% clear, and with some threat you can afford to leave some, if your clock is faster.
I see nearly 0 Opt in your lists, but Thought Scour. The Mill 2 is really better than Scry 1 ?
Thanks <3
In regards to serpent or reveler, I agree 100% on burningeffigy. About the other questions, I've been testing with opt for some time, and it's AMAZING. It's not just about what it does, but mainly about when. Thought scour is a good magic card for this deck, no doubt about it. But what makes it also great is that it's instant-speed. It lets you leave up mana for counters. If this deck ran discard over counters, I think it wouldn't be too great. In the beginning of the game, it's not unusual passing T1 with mana up for spell snare/bolt, and in case you don't have to use them, opt or thought scour. That mana in the first turn is something we don't want to waste, and also we don't want to be left unprotected. It could be worse in a UR delver with swiftspear/guide, which are good T1 plays. But here we got only delver, which will be there only abour 40% of the time (44 if I'm not mistaken).
One thing you have to keep in mind, is that you can cast it to scry to the bottom the bad card you revealed with delver. It came up A LOT. I really don't recall how my list was before opt (with only 8 cantrips), but I assure you it's better now. Still, I think the GY feeding from thought scour is more relevant for the beginning of the game (besides, it can do a lot of things opt can do: cast instant speed, draw a card you saw from the serum visions and you need now, and scry the bad card from delver TO THE GRAVEYARD, which is even better).
I've played 4 leagues this week. The first and second leagues I made 3-2 and 5-0 without chart a course and pyromancer. The other one I tried like that when I saw PyroDelver's comment. I'm not sure why I decided to put YP AND change that on the same league, I guess I was changing vendilion clique for something that would be at least good (YP and cut some other 2 things I don't recall right now).
Pyromancer has been the same as before. The fragile threat that left unresolved can run with games. I've been enjoying it, but I don't think I enjoy 14 creatures, maybe cut one of them. But definitely better than Vendilion Clique. I'd recommend running 2.
Chart a Course has been... weird. Usually you don't want to spend your first turns of the game casting a do-nothing spell, since we are grixis... Delver! BUT the raw card advantage is very cool. The downside hasn't been much of a downside, since I usually cast it longer in the game, when I don't need too many lands and end up discarding them. I guess I'd run 1 of it MB, and maybe replace painful truths with it.
Truths is almost impossible to cast back with snap (due to the 5 mana requirement and 6 damage total for both castings), it's often a bad card to play on the draw even against midrange/aggro decks (I dare you playing painful truths on the draw turn 3 or 4 against affinity and winning the game), and the extra mana AND 3 life for 1 extra card really don't compensate.
The deck is really good against combo the way it is now (flooded with disruption + early threats post-sideboard), against aggro the maindeck is cool and against control and midrange it's kinda ok, and it gets better after sideboarding. The problem is that against midrange decks, delver often isn't fast enough.
Anyway, all things considered I think I'd play something like this:
19 lands
4 Delver
4 Snapcaster
2 Young Pyromancer
-1 Young Pyromancer
2 Tasigur
1 Gurmag Angler
I tryed Ryan's "Delverless grixis delver" list, and it felt really weird to me. I guess it may be the meta, I was playing in the friendly league, the 4 snares sounded good only in a few matchups (affinity), and snares/vendilion got sided out a lot. I missed the delvers, and sometimes the overloading on removal didn't save me, while an early threat would have. I felt like it tried to get to a grindy stage, but with only snaps/kcommand as card advantage. Could be good in some metas, probably is very good against DS (didn't play against it), infect (heh), etc.
Going back to the topic: I'm playing grixis delver on modern every now and then, and I've played against some grixis control lists that sounded really nice. They were playing ancestral vision, search for azcanta, etc. Most lists I see around here don't play vision or search. Is it not good in the meta? Is modern too aggro to play such cards?
If remand said "Counter target spell, and put it back into the controller's hand" you would be pretty much absolutely right.
But because it ALSO says "Draw a card", that's where things get interesting. Tempo to me, is trading cards for time. You don't trade any cards for time when you remand a turn 2 play. You just get that turn off, one more draw step, lay one more land. On turn 2, having their Tarmogoyf remanded is basically getting timewalked. The next combat step is useless. Basically all they were good for this turn was a draw step. And you didn't have to spend a card on it.
I know right off the bat that we're not going to agree on what a tempo play is, because 2 magic players agreeing on a definition of tempo happens about as often as people agree on gun control or birth control - they either agree or they don't. So let's skip this part and just talk pros and cons.
RE: This deck needs a real counter/answer
And it does have them. However, this deck isn't delver, it wants to do things like snap-cryptic, snap-kommand, play a tasigur and have cryptic mana up. Counter 2 spells between 2 untap phases. These things require mana, and in our deck, mana needs time to set up at the rate of 1 land per turn. Remand is the tool that gets us there. So do we need answers that are permanent? Sure. Do you have counterspell in modern? No. So at 2 cmc, you have mana leaks which basically turn to crud over time, in a deck that goes long. A remand on the other hand offers to be a timewalk early, or at the very least a cantrip.
RE: Why not spell snare the card originally
Well there are a couple reasons this may happen or you may not be able to:
1. Spell snare was 2 cards down, and your next remand and draw step got you there. Because you're not playing 4 spell snares.
2. As mentioned, you want to throw the opponent off their curve and either cast everything 1 turn late, or skip their turn 2 play for later.
RE: This deck like to 1-for-1 until it can 2-for-1
Yes, you are absolutely correct and I agree. I just don't think there is anything wrong with a 0-for-0 as well. Which is what remand is. See my first 2 sentences again. You know the magical part about remand which you didn't mention? In the lategame against U control, Remand can be a up to a 0-for-2: You cast a threat, the opponent tries to cryptic command counter and draw - you remand your threat. The same can apply to any spell you want to resolve. You cast - they counter - you leave them hanging.
In the end, a lot of the things you're saying is not wrong, we just disagree on how Remand can (or cannot) play a role in Grixis control. Remand may not seem like it can "take things out", but it can take out counterspells, and it provides velocity in a U control deck, in a format with narrow answers. If counterspell were here I probably wouldn't play remand. But if the alternative is mana leak, I'll consider both options.
I'm not sure if my definition is correct, but I thought of tempo as being responding things with lower resources. Like, spell snare (1 mana for 2), bolt and fatal push on higher cost creatures, daze (the best example IMO). I see delver (at least the legacy versions) being tempo for playing 4 spells until turn 2, like a T1 delver, T2 Delver+bolt and on the opp turn daze on something. Like, you answered their spells and played 2 threats to pressure your opponent. I think spell snare, bolt, spell pierce, are all good cards. And they're not trading cards for time, but cards for cards with lower resources.
Despite what I just said, I think remand is kind of a tempo play, because even though you're usually not spending less resources, you are usually exchanging 2 mana for some time (except for remand flashback, or remand your own spell in response to counter, where you really get card advantage).
Opt felt very good on delver, but I'm really not sold into V.Clique. It's just too heavy for what it does, I usually would rather have a bomb at 3 mana like K.Command.
But then again, I also think Young Pyromancer is underperforming, I've started with 4 copies, and I'm wondering if I should still run the 1 I am running. Was it a meta change or something I didn't get? A year ago (when I used to play it as a 4 of) pyromancer sounded very sweet when I played it.
I'm having 4 delver, 4 snapcaster, 2 anglers and 2 tasigurs as my creature base, but I don't really know what else to get, and only 12 creatures sound way too low. Maybe 1 lavamancer? It sound good, except for the excess of grave using, with already 4 snap, 4 delve creatures and 2 K.command.
Have you guys ever had a bug with Hunger of the Howlpack? It sometimes didn't give the additional counters with morbid. It happened some months ago, but I just got pissed off and never played the deck again (since I tried to play without it, but hunger is just awesome).
Has it ever happened to you? Does it happens sometimes nowadays?
Hello people, I'm playing a lot of kaladesh drafts lately, and Self-assembler has been an all-star when I get to use 2-4 of it.
It seems very slow, but good to get back to the game or applying lots of pressure for low cards count.
I've been playing UB Control lately, and I'm thinking of running 3 of it in the SB (if you play 4, it seems too likely to get more than 1 in hand and it doesn't do anything before T5).
What do you think about it? What would you side it in against? Seems like a good card to hold back affinity creatures or to get a lot of value against control decks, being able to finish off the game when playing some of it in a row. I've been playing the popular version of Dimir Control with some minor changes.
It ain't impossible. You may open it and get good prizes (I got already 2 city of traitors, snapcaster, wasteland, and a lot more cards). Bots are buying for about 2.9 tix, and some are selling for about 3 tix. If you open enough chests, it will probably get you something like 2.9 tix per chest. If you don't like taking chances, you can sell it for 2.9 tix each.
I disagree, the posts above are mostly underrated corner-case cenarios, but they are really relevant to the discussion. The card was amazing, for elemental tokens, information, etc. BTW, I think probe and rise/fall make a huge difference about some more midrange decks, as it was told jund is a bad matchup and for me it's one of the best (easily a 60/40 match). Still, we gotta move on.
Fatal push seems very good, the fact that it is a 1 mana spell is very relevant, as this deck should be fast and also snap+fatal is 3 mana instead of 4 mana from snap+terminate. We hardly don't get 3 mana in the early game, but we can be deprived of our 4th mana until the midgame. It won't completely replace terminate but it can be a complement.
Still, I'm not really sure about replacing probe for it. There are cases where a removal spell isn't good or good enough. The deck usually runs something around 10 removal spells(bolt,kolaghan,terminate,electrolyze,forked)/14 creatures/4-6counters/12cantrips/etc.
Changing it to 13 removal spells/14 creatures/4-6counters/8cantrips/1xtraland may have a big influence in the way our deck plays. Not saying it's bad or good, but it surely won't be the same (for those who played 3-4probes).
Sadly the whole deck isn't completely misprinted. I'd say a little over a 3rd of it is misprinted. I snapped pictures of most of the stuff that was miscut. Unfortunately the main commander and most of the mythics weren't miscut at all.
You're probably looking at something closer to the $50-$100 range then. Your best bet for selling is still the Facebook Group.
Hey guys, I've got these blotches from a collection I bought. I didn't find enough info to estimate the price (only enough to know it's called blotch), how much are they worth considering they are connected?
$20-$40 but probably closer to the $20 side of that scale (depends if you can muster up competition in an auction). Basics are always in demand, and collectors would be most interested in the Island. Definitely sell them as a set if you're looking to sell.
Hey guys, I've got these blotches from a collection I bought. I didn't find enough info to estimate the price (only enough to know it's called blotch), how much are they worth considering they are connected?
Hey guys, I've got these blotches from a collection I bought. I didn't find enough info to estimate the price (only enough to know it's called blotch), how much are they worth considering they are connected?
One of the strenghts of burn is that it almost completely shuts off every piece of removal your opponent has. Marauders is good because it assures you will deal 2 damage even if removed, and can be used as 3 extra damage or a roadblock for 2 turns, if not removed.
Fireslinger takes 1 turn to do something and might just be removed by some removal that otherwise would have been dead.
I don't play burn, but that's what seem to me to be the role of the deck.
Hasn't Merchant Ship spiked due to the reserved list and buyouts of useless but not printable cards? I don't recall it being used on pirate stompy. I guess people really don't read anything, the pirate stompy was the dumbest thing I've seen in quite a while.
About the daredevil... sounds good in a meta with a specific kind of deck. But quite worse than snapcaster, not having flash is HUGE. I think it was a joke, but even though daredevil is strictly worse than snapcaster, snap is so good that "additional copies" could be good.
But it sounds too lose.
But could be good.
I mean, not reeeeally good, but good...ish?
Maybe it's just not that bad.
But not quite good-ish.
I guess that joke kinda got me thinking.
I'd say it's good against 50% of the meta, kinda good against 25% of the meta and a bad black knight against 25% of the meta. But in any case I think it's too mana expensive as a sorcery-speed spell for grixis delver.
Just for you guys not to feel lost, I brought this discussion from grixis control since it was leaning towards grixis delver and I think it wouldn't be cool with people there to post it there, so:
Yeah Marc, I agree. I haven't played for 2 weeks when I started back last weekend, and grixis delver felt amazing. I won 2 leagues 5-0 in a row with it, and personally I think Delver kinda gets your game controlled, since with a more controlish deck you have to try getting the board 100% clear, and with some threat you can afford to leave some, if your clock is faster.
In regards to serpent or reveler, I agree 100% on burningeffigy. About the other questions, I've been testing with opt for some time, and it's AMAZING. It's not just about what it does, but mainly about when. Thought scour is a good magic card for this deck, no doubt about it. But what makes it also great is that it's instant-speed. It lets you leave up mana for counters. If this deck ran discard over counters, I think it wouldn't be too great. In the beginning of the game, it's not unusual passing T1 with mana up for spell snare/bolt, and in case you don't have to use them, opt or thought scour. That mana in the first turn is something we don't want to waste, and also we don't want to be left unprotected. It could be worse in a UR delver with swiftspear/guide, which are good T1 plays. But here we got only delver, which will be there only abour 40% of the time (44 if I'm not mistaken).
One thing you have to keep in mind, is that you can cast it to scry to the bottom the bad card you revealed with delver. It came up A LOT. I really don't recall how my list was before opt (with only 8 cantrips), but I assure you it's better now. Still, I think the GY feeding from thought scour is more relevant for the beginning of the game (besides, it can do a lot of things opt can do: cast instant speed, draw a card you saw from the serum visions and you need now, and scry the bad card from delver TO THE GRAVEYARD, which is even better).
The list I'm running is:
19 lands
4 Delver
4 Snapcaster
3 Young Pyromancer
2 Tasigur
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Terminate
2 Spell Snare
1 Spell Pierce
1 Countersquall
4 Thought Scour
3 Opt
3 Serum Visions
2 Chart a course
SB
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Countersquall
2 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical
1 Painful Truths
2 Izzet Staticaster
2 Blood Moon
1 By Force
1 Rise//Fall
I've played 4 leagues this week. The first and second leagues I made 3-2 and 5-0 without chart a course and pyromancer. The other one I tried like that when I saw PyroDelver's comment. I'm not sure why I decided to put YP AND change that on the same league, I guess I was changing vendilion clique for something that would be at least good (YP and cut some other 2 things I don't recall right now).
Pyromancer has been the same as before. The fragile threat that left unresolved can run with games. I've been enjoying it, but I don't think I enjoy 14 creatures, maybe cut one of them. But definitely better than Vendilion Clique. I'd recommend running 2.
Chart a Course has been... weird. Usually you don't want to spend your first turns of the game casting a do-nothing spell, since we are grixis... Delver! BUT the raw card advantage is very cool. The downside hasn't been much of a downside, since I usually cast it longer in the game, when I don't need too many lands and end up discarding them. I guess I'd run 1 of it MB, and maybe replace painful truths with it.
Truths is almost impossible to cast back with snap (due to the 5 mana requirement and 6 damage total for both castings), it's often a bad card to play on the draw even against midrange/aggro decks (I dare you playing painful truths on the draw turn 3 or 4 against affinity and winning the game), and the extra mana AND 3 life for 1 extra card really don't compensate.
The deck is really good against combo the way it is now (flooded with disruption + early threats post-sideboard), against aggro the maindeck is cool and against control and midrange it's kinda ok, and it gets better after sideboarding. The problem is that against midrange decks, delver often isn't fast enough.
Anyway, all things considered I think I'd play something like this:
19 lands
4 Delver
4 Snapcaster
2 Young Pyromancer
-1 Young Pyromancer
2 Tasigur
1 Gurmag Angler
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Terminate
2 Spell Snare
+1 spell pierce
1 Spell Pierce
1 Countersquall
4 Thought Scour
3 Opt
+1 Opt
3 Serum Visions
1 Chart a course
-1 Chart a course
SB
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Countersquall
2 Thoughtseize
2 Surgical
-1 Painful Truths
+1 Desolate Lighthouse
2 Izzet Staticaster
2 Blood Moon
1 By Force
1 Rise//Fall
PS.: Spell pierce overperformed. I think I'll try the second copy. It also works pretty well with opt and thought scour.
I'm not sure if my definition is correct, but I thought of tempo as being responding things with lower resources. Like, spell snare (1 mana for 2), bolt and fatal push on higher cost creatures, daze (the best example IMO). I see delver (at least the legacy versions) being tempo for playing 4 spells until turn 2, like a T1 delver, T2 Delver+bolt and on the opp turn daze on something. Like, you answered their spells and played 2 threats to pressure your opponent. I think spell snare, bolt, spell pierce, are all good cards. And they're not trading cards for time, but cards for cards with lower resources.
Despite what I just said, I think remand is kind of a tempo play, because even though you're usually not spending less resources, you are usually exchanging 2 mana for some time (except for remand flashback, or remand your own spell in response to counter, where you really get card advantage).
But then again, I also think Young Pyromancer is underperforming, I've started with 4 copies, and I'm wondering if I should still run the 1 I am running. Was it a meta change or something I didn't get? A year ago (when I used to play it as a 4 of) pyromancer sounded very sweet when I played it.
I'm having 4 delver, 4 snapcaster, 2 anglers and 2 tasigurs as my creature base, but I don't really know what else to get, and only 12 creatures sound way too low. Maybe 1 lavamancer? It sound good, except for the excess of grave using, with already 4 snap, 4 delve creatures and 2 K.command.
Has it ever happened to you? Does it happens sometimes nowadays?
It seems very slow, but good to get back to the game or applying lots of pressure for low cards count.
I've been playing UB Control lately, and I'm thinking of running 3 of it in the SB (if you play 4, it seems too likely to get more than 1 in hand and it doesn't do anything before T5).
What do you think about it? What would you side it in against? Seems like a good card to hold back affinity creatures or to get a lot of value against control decks, being able to finish off the game when playing some of it in a row. I've been playing the popular version of Dimir Control with some minor changes.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pauper-dimir-control-32679#online
Fatal push seems very good, the fact that it is a 1 mana spell is very relevant, as this deck should be fast and also snap+fatal is 3 mana instead of 4 mana from snap+terminate. We hardly don't get 3 mana in the early game, but we can be deprived of our 4th mana until the midgame. It won't completely replace terminate but it can be a complement.
Still, I'm not really sure about replacing probe for it. There are cases where a removal spell isn't good or good enough. The deck usually runs something around 10 removal spells(bolt,kolaghan,terminate,electrolyze,forked)/14 creatures/4-6counters/12cantrips/etc.
Changing it to 13 removal spells/14 creatures/4-6counters/8cantrips/1xtraland may have a big influence in the way our deck plays. Not saying it's bad or good, but it surely won't be the same (for those who played 3-4probes).
Thank you, you helped me a lot!
Fireslinger takes 1 turn to do something and might just be removed by some removal that otherwise would have been dead.
I don't play burn, but that's what seem to me to be the role of the deck.