After seeing Overturf perform so well I decided to buy the black duals and Tasigurs I needed to make a UR Delver deck into a Grixis one. In UR Delver I ran 1-3 of like 6 different counterspells and was very skeptical of 4 spell snares. That being said, in all the games I played I never boarded out more than one of the snares except for once. I am impressed at how happy I was to see it most of the time.
Speaking of Overturf praise, I started following him on twitter this week and here is some of his Delver wisdom he's been spreading around (the first of which inspired quite a 'discussion' among some pros):
Mathematically, it not only hurts the ability to see sideboard cards but in the third match there are a couple times where he needs to topdeck a cascader and a guy in the youtube comments points out that by going to 90 cards it makes it about 1-2% less likely that he'll topdeck a cascade card than with a 60 card deck, so that's a thing too. I guess it comes down to what percent decrease in drawing relevant cards you're willing to stomach to decrease the percent you draw living end, and with all the cyclers in the deck you can likely suffer a little decrease for that.
Swiftspear might work, but the reason Young Pyromaster is good is that you can hold up all your mana for counter/burn on their turn and use it on their end step if nothing else happens to make tokens.
Twoo's 90-card Living End playlist is up. I'm only on game two, and it's pretty par for the course Twoo-style sloppy play against 2-man queue opponents, but the 90 card thing kinda looks ok...
How is Deprive good in the first few turns when you need as many lands on the board as possible?
Mana Leak is way better on turns 2-4, but that's the only time it's really better than Deprive in my opinion. That being said, we operate on less lands better than most every other deck, and I have deprived spells on their turn 3 when I'm on the draw. Losing a land drop sucks, but it's better than letting something bad like Liliana resolve when you don't have a bolt. Deprive just forces you to think more about is it worth it to counter this or let it go.
Devon Herron came in second at the SCG KC Modern tournament with this deck. It looks like a pretty standard list, but it's exciting to see the deck performing well.
How necessary is Snapcaster Mage to making this deck tick? I am already pretty heavy into another modern deck but just love tempo decks (and young pyromancer is my favorite uncommon of all time) so I just don't want to splash the cash for a playset of snappys. If the deck is still semi-valuable without him, what would you put in his place? Thanks!
I'm very new to modern and this was my first deck when I started a couple months ago playing it on MTGO. I bought the shocks and non-fetch mana base, then everything that was less than a buck or two apiece at first, which meant no remand or snapcaster (which I've since gotten) and no fancy SB cards like blood moon or threads of disloyalty or anything. I was blown away at how much better the deck got when I got the snapcasters. I can't imagine how I played without them. I think I'd rather play the deck with an all basic manabase than play it without snapcasters.
Yah those are all good points, I'm probably just remembering the bad times more than when it's good, it just seems like many times they're just gonna recast it the next turn and I wish I could actually stop it. Not that we have a lot of other options for counterspells though.
My favorite counterspell in here is Deprive. The manabase can handle it and we run a small amount of lands so we usually don't draw another land that we need to play on the next turn anyways. And being a hard counter no matter what is huge
Totally agree, I've been playing with Deprive for a while and that's partially what inspired the original complaint against Remand, many times I cast it I just wish it was a Deprive. How many Deprives do you run MB/SB? I've been doing 2/1 but have been hesitant to put the full 4 in, it seems like that might cause diminishing returns...
Yah those are all good points, I'm probably just remembering the bad times more than when it's good, it just seems like many times they're just gonna recast it the next turn and I wish I could actually stop it. Not that we have a lot of other options for counterspells though.
I'm probably doing something wrong, but like 75% of the time I cast a remand I just wish it was a more "hard" counter, like a mana leak or something. Is it better in true control decks where you expect to hit all your land drops so it's just a stop gap on the way to better cards?
Ah I didn't realized you could pay for the colored mana cost with creatures of that color, that makes it a lot nicer. I run two Burst Lightning so maybe I'll try it instead of that, though I like the flexibility of Burst Lightning a lot.
Speaking of Overturf praise, I started following him on twitter this week and here is some of his Delver wisdom he's been spreading around (the first of which inspired quite a 'discussion' among some pros):
Times to use counterspells to protect Delver-
A) When attacking for lethal.
B) When the removal spell is a 2-for-1.
Snare is exceptional and the worst thing people will do to this deck is trim them.
Tron is the reason Spell Pierce couldn't be cut from the SB. SB Ghost Quarter is a serious consideration going forward.
Mana Leak is way better on turns 2-4, but that's the only time it's really better than Deprive in my opinion. That being said, we operate on less lands better than most every other deck, and I have deprived spells on their turn 3 when I'm on the draw. Losing a land drop sucks, but it's better than letting something bad like Liliana resolve when you don't have a bolt. Deprive just forces you to think more about is it worth it to counter this or let it go.
I'm very new to modern and this was my first deck when I started a couple months ago playing it on MTGO. I bought the shocks and non-fetch mana base, then everything that was less than a buck or two apiece at first, which meant no remand or snapcaster (which I've since gotten) and no fancy SB cards like blood moon or threads of disloyalty or anything. I was blown away at how much better the deck got when I got the snapcasters. I can't imagine how I played without them. I think I'd rather play the deck with an all basic manabase than play it without snapcasters.
Totally agree, I've been playing with Deprive for a while and that's partially what inspired the original complaint against Remand, many times I cast it I just wish it was a Deprive. How many Deprives do you run MB/SB? I've been doing 2/1 but have been hesitant to put the full 4 in, it seems like that might cause diminishing returns...