I so recently began piloting this list on MTGO and have had a bit if success in casual rooms. I am using Bonesplinter in place of Serrated Arrows because of their cost. Post is a bit of a difficult match-up, and I recently got slaughtered by a MBC control deck in a Daily. The mirror can also be a bit of nail biter. Any suggestions with this list given the current meta? Sideboard help would be particularly well received.
Control decks often feel like difficult matches because the games delver loses to them drag on for ages. Once a control deck has cleared delvers board and has redundant removal spells in hand, the game has been decided. The key to most control matchups is to play aggressive and connect with ninja of the deep hours as many times as you can. If you can untap with a ninja in play, you're usually pretty far ahead.
Your maindeck seems pretty solid for the most part, aside from lacking preordain. Preordain is the best cantrip in the deck by far and the best way to filter away extra lands late game. I particularly like the brainstorm and preordain combo, where you brainstorm and put two unwanted lands on top of your library and preordain them away.
In the sideboard, I can't really think of a matchup where you particularly want bonesplitter. I would consider replacing it with extra copies of another card like steel sabotage or weatherseed faeries.
Curse of the bloody tome is sometimes used as a sideboard card in attrition matchups. Pretty much all of the removal in pauper only hits creatures, so curse of the bloody tome is unkillable.
I haven't played it myself, but it seems like it would be at its best against cloudpost. If it manages to stabilize, cloudpost can deal with all of delvers other threats with burn spells, card draw and life gain off of glimmerpost. Even without mill pressure, cloudpost decks are threat light and come close to milling themselves before they close out a game.
I am considering a 2nd Gush, it is crazy good. Mana Leaks are replacements for Daze, because I am not willing to shell out twenty bucks on commons.
What do we think? It's a little wonky at times, but if it gets its tempo going there's just no hope for the opponent.
Your list looks fairly stock overall. Daze is entirely needed and some builds even eschew daze in favor of force spike. Preordain really needs to be a 4-of as it's one of your few defenses against flood and one of the best cards in the deck. I'd also like to see a few more creatures, as those are needed to make your tempo draws really good. Phantasmal bear is great at enabling turn 2 ninjas and spire golem/stitched drake are good for winning longer games. I'd look at possibly cutting 1-2 force spikes, 2 mana leaks, 1 brainstorm and 1 echoing truth/snap.
I'm sorry if this has been discussed, but whats the game plan against izzet post with this deck? The shop I go to has started 1$ pauper tournaments, and I build mono blue because I was playing fairyninjastill in legacy for awhile (also, because is awesome). I have crushed every pauper deck I've played against with it, except izzet post. I'm currently not running spire golems, and am considering those now, but it feels like their spells are better, their creatures are better, and everything I have dies to their burn. Even worse, my mistblades are terrible against mulldrifter and steamcore wierd.
Izzet post is a pretty skill intensive matchup. You have the edge during the first few turns, as they stumble with comes into play tapped and colorless land and draw spells. Swarming them with guys backed by disruption can lead to a quick kill. During the later game, they have complete inevitability with draw spells and removal spells. If they manage to clear the board after around turn 5, you have very little chance of winning.
Ninja of the deep hours is the real wildcard in the matchup, as the card draw can really put you ahead.
I'm confused by the almost ubiquitous playing of 4 Brainstorm in every decklist. Is it really a good fit for this deck? It's well known that Brainstorm without a shuffle effect is pretty bad, and we have so few shuffle effects. Without one, Brainstorm isn't card selection at all. We get to pick our next card, sure, but those other two cards - we're stuck with them. There's few feelings worse than Brainstorm trapping yourself out of a game -- where you know what your next 2 cards are, they don't help, and you can't do anything about it.
The obvious upsides are that it's an instant, and you can use it to flip a Delver of Secrets on turn 2. I'm not sure you really should be using Brainstorm to flip Delver turn 2, since it prevents you from having two mana open. So really, the only upside I can see is that it's an instant (and sometimes you can hide a card from discard). Does that really justify the downside that most of the time you're just putting back 2 cards to draw over the next 2 turns?
As far as flipping Delver of Secrets, here are the numbers: Assuming you are running about 20 instants and sorceries (about average), you are on the play and draw 1 or more land, 1 Delver of Secrets and 3 instants or sorceries (slightly above average). You have a 32% chance of blind flipping him turn 2. By turn 3, you are 54% likely to have a blind-flipped Delver. By turn 4, these odds are 70%. The odds stay the same no matter when you drop the Delver, because your average remaining deck is going to contain 33% instants and sorceries no matter how late in the game it is. My experience is that Delver blind-flips after an average of about 2 turns, and the numbers support that.
The way I see it, Delver doesn't need a lot of help. Obviously any spell that improves your odds with Delver are a good thing, but the odds tell me that such a card doesn't need to be exclusively good with Delver. It should be the best card for the deck, not the best card for Delver at the exclusion of the other cards in the deck.
The average deck has 4 "shuffle" effects for Brainstorm. In most decklists, those are exclusively Preordain. Hoping for Brainstorm into Preordain to happen with any regularity is living in Magical Christmas Land. Not only that, it actually marginalizes the value of the subsequently cast Preordrain. If your forcing yourself to bottom the top two cards of your library immediately, then Preordrain is just a cantrip that just happens to let Brainstorm be pretty good. If you're playing a Brainstorm as an instant though, there's no way to keep yourself from drawing the first card you put back. Otherwise you're playing at a sorcery speed, which negates its major upside. Preordrain, then, is still a sorcery.
I'm just having a real hard time imagining Brainstorm actually being any good. Am I missing something?
There are two conflicting conventional trains of thought here: one says that Brainstorm is almost never good without a shuffle effect. The other is that basically every decklist for this deck runs 4 Brainstorm as what seems to be an auto-include. I'm not willing to accept either without questioning, but based on my evaluation, it really seems like Brainstorm is just not where this deck wants to be.
I haven't been running the deck for long, and currently I'm testing it with Preordain and Ponder. Ponder isn't great, but it feels like it's better card selection than Brainstorm. Preordain is just plain one of the best card selection spells available to us, and I love it. I've played against Delver blue plenty, and I've seen them play Brainstorm, and I've always commented that it seems bad.
I welcome any discussion or thoughts you have. If I've missed some important interaction, please enlighten me. What are everyone's thoughts on Brainstorm versus the other one-mana card selection spell available?
You make some very good points overall. While brainstorm is widely regarded as the best card in legacy, that evaluation is no longer sacred in formats without fetchlands, like pauper. Brainstorm is a role-filler in the deck, rarely being particularly good or particularly bad.
The roles that brainstorm fills have been pointed out several times already. In the late game, the brainstorm/preordain combination is a really nice way to get value out of extra lands. Despite this, I still view brainstorm as an overall aggressive card in the deck. As it flips your delvers and lets you draw the card you need in exchange for a bad topdeck later.
Many of the very aggressive lists play 3-4 brainstorms, while many of the controlling, creature-light versions don't play any at all. Personally, I play 2-3 brainstorms in my aggressive deck. I like drawing 1, as it gives me the option to either press my advantage or avoiding flood in the late game. The second brainstorm is pretty redundant and is often just a cantrip.
The number of brainstorms you play really comes down to personal preference, especially since the card has a lot of play to it. I'd recommend trying at least 2 in any aggressive version of the deck, though, as drawing 1 brainstorm has little downside.
I would have also taken Trusted Forcemage P1P3 in the first draft. Green is a great color to be in and picking up a late forcemage is a sign of good green cards to come.
He's one of the better 6 drops, though 6-drops are in pretty easy to come by. In a tempo oriented matchup, he's little better than pathbreaker wurm, but he does have the potential to take over the attrition based matchups. When I draft this guy, I'm definitely looking to pick up a few geist trappers to lock down their offense so that his ability can really shine.
P1P1, I would pick this guy below trusted forcemage and above wandering wolf.
Not very playable. It's best use is in mill decks where you can mill your opponent for 7 and draw into more dreadwaters. That being said, mill isn't the most viable deck in this format.
axel: ya the decklist is from my memory, and it should have included the familiars and smuggler. I must have been confusing it with another U/G deck I went 3-0 in a swiss right before. The lack of early game is definately what killed it for me. Black was able to gel before I got anything of significance down, so by the time I started dropping better cards they had drawn removal and could maneuver around me.
It makes a lot more sense now that I read it from the replies. With the 3 white cards being req WW, and both being relatively high drops in an already high drop deck, that's a good reason to pass them. I also admit I was not paying attention to signals at all. I like to think I can read open colors OK, but when it comes to passing cards I usually just pick the best in my color, or if something is good enough, something I don't want to play against (homical seclusion).
I played in a pair of 8-4s, lost in round 1 in those as well, against primarily black decks. It seems people in the higher reward drafts are able to draft black much better, or people avoid them much more often. With the right cards it seems to have a nice balance of early/late game.
Mist Raven and Druid's Familiar are some of the best cards in the set, rares included, so I would definitely be looking to play them if I opened 2 Mist Raven and 2 Druid's Familiar pack 1. To some extent, it pays to be pretty stubborn with your colors pack 2 and taking playable on color cards over better off color cards. Especially because splashing isn't very good in Avacyn Restored, it's generally better to stick with your colors than to jettison a bunch of good cards in a later pack for a card that you were passed.
As you've found, your opponents in 8-4 drafts tend to play pretty well, and swiss opponents, particularly in the lower brackets, tend to play pretty poorly. When I started drafting on MTGO, I played swiss drafts until I had a rating of around 1800 before I moved up to 8-4s.
I generally don't think that it's worth it to go mono-black over a two color black deck. Black has a ton of tiny, non-threatening creatures, and I think it's important to have another color for better creatures and better card quality overall.
I mainly end up in black when I see a homicidal seclusion. That card just takes over games and is often the best card in my deck. If I see a homicidal seclusion at any point in pack 1, I'm slamming it, playing it and moving into black. The later you see the seclusion, the more open black is, and the better the deck turns out. Because people have an aversion to black, I often see seclusion go later than I think it should, sometimes fourth, fifth or even sixth pick. Even if black is weaker than the other colors, I've found that starting with an insanely powerful card in a color that you know is open to your right more than makes up for it. I'm generally happy with my black decks that start with homicidal seclusion, though I don't usually move into black any of the commons.
There are really two different black decks. The first is an aggressive deck that wants to attack with Soulcage Fiends. The second is a more controlling deck that seeks to buy time by blocking and trading with Butcher Ghouls. It's important to recognize if you're aggressive or not and draft accordingly. Barter in Blood, for example, is better in the controlling deck.
I'd take the Tandem Lookout. The harvester is rare and flashy, but the Tandem Lookout is very cheap and powerful and can take over games when you pair it with a cheap guy or have a bounce spell. I think that I would still take Tandem Lookout in blue-black, as I'd rather have a good cheap spell than a good expensive one.
Personally it's the colour balance that's been leaving me disinclined to post draftcaps. A lot of my drafts just consist of me pushing fairly hard for U/W or U/G and then settling for whatever happens to be open if I can't get either of those. It really doesn't help that the splash support isn't there.
The deck went 2-1, losing a match 1-2 where the decider came down to 2 points of damage either way and my not drawing drawing any spell capable of popping a Spectral Prison. That is to say: despite the questionable drafting style this deck almost went 3-0.
Forcing those colors is probably a pretty good idea. The creature heavy green decks that curve 2 drops into trusted forcemages, druid's familiars and other permanent pump are pretty hard to beat. I'm pretty inclined to force green, and have started quite a few drafts with P1P1 timberland guide. That being said, green has 2 common five-drops and 1 common six-drop, so expensive creatures are my lowest priority. I've found that I end up with plenty of expensive creatures even if I take other playables over them. I can't recall a deck where I wished I had another green 5 or 6-drop.
Zealous conscripts has been pretty great for me also, frequently ending the game on the spot. It's also worth over 2 tickets right now, so I can't see ever passing it :).
Oh good grief - are we really going to go there again?
MtGO is very expensive. There are very few players (like, almost none) who draft well enough to "go infinite" on MtGO via drafting alone. This applies particularly when drafting the most recent expert set.
Now OK, MtGO is the best place to get good at drafting, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who can't afford to pay $5-$10 per draft after taking card sales into account. If you're better than that then great, give yourself a gold star, but don't give new players misleading advice.
Agreed. Only after you play through a few drafts do you have an idea of your expected cost per draft. It's pretty hard to know how much each draft will cost you otherwise, so new players should expect to pay unless they happen to find otherwise.
Control decks often feel like difficult matches because the games delver loses to them drag on for ages. Once a control deck has cleared delvers board and has redundant removal spells in hand, the game has been decided. The key to most control matchups is to play aggressive and connect with ninja of the deep hours as many times as you can. If you can untap with a ninja in play, you're usually pretty far ahead.
Your maindeck seems pretty solid for the most part, aside from lacking preordain. Preordain is the best cantrip in the deck by far and the best way to filter away extra lands late game. I particularly like the brainstorm and preordain combo, where you brainstorm and put two unwanted lands on top of your library and preordain them away.
In the sideboard, I can't really think of a matchup where you particularly want bonesplitter. I would consider replacing it with extra copies of another card like steel sabotage or weatherseed faeries.
I haven't played it myself, but it seems like it would be at its best against cloudpost. If it manages to stabilize, cloudpost can deal with all of delvers other threats with burn spells, card draw and life gain off of glimmerpost. Even without mill pressure, cloudpost decks are threat light and come close to milling themselves before they close out a game.
Your list looks fairly stock overall. Daze is entirely needed and some builds even eschew daze in favor of force spike. Preordain really needs to be a 4-of as it's one of your few defenses against flood and one of the best cards in the deck. I'd also like to see a few more creatures, as those are needed to make your tempo draws really good. Phantasmal bear is great at enabling turn 2 ninjas and spire golem/stitched drake are good for winning longer games. I'd look at possibly cutting 1-2 force spikes, 2 mana leaks, 1 brainstorm and 1 echoing truth/snap.
Izzet post is a pretty skill intensive matchup. You have the edge during the first few turns, as they stumble with comes into play tapped and colorless land and draw spells. Swarming them with guys backed by disruption can lead to a quick kill. During the later game, they have complete inevitability with draw spells and removal spells. If they manage to clear the board after around turn 5, you have very little chance of winning.
Ninja of the deep hours is the real wildcard in the matchup, as the card draw can really put you ahead.
You make some very good points overall. While brainstorm is widely regarded as the best card in legacy, that evaluation is no longer sacred in formats without fetchlands, like pauper. Brainstorm is a role-filler in the deck, rarely being particularly good or particularly bad.
The roles that brainstorm fills have been pointed out several times already. In the late game, the brainstorm/preordain combination is a really nice way to get value out of extra lands. Despite this, I still view brainstorm as an overall aggressive card in the deck. As it flips your delvers and lets you draw the card you need in exchange for a bad topdeck later.
Many of the very aggressive lists play 3-4 brainstorms, while many of the controlling, creature-light versions don't play any at all. Personally, I play 2-3 brainstorms in my aggressive deck. I like drawing 1, as it gives me the option to either press my advantage or avoiding flood in the late game. The second brainstorm is pretty redundant and is often just a cantrip.
The number of brainstorms you play really comes down to personal preference, especially since the card has a lot of play to it. I'd recommend trying at least 2 in any aggressive version of the deck, though, as drawing 1 brainstorm has little downside.
P1P1, I would pick this guy below trusted forcemage and above wandering wolf.
Mist Raven and Druid's Familiar are some of the best cards in the set, rares included, so I would definitely be looking to play them if I opened 2 Mist Raven and 2 Druid's Familiar pack 1. To some extent, it pays to be pretty stubborn with your colors pack 2 and taking playable on color cards over better off color cards. Especially because splashing isn't very good in Avacyn Restored, it's generally better to stick with your colors than to jettison a bunch of good cards in a later pack for a card that you were passed.
As you've found, your opponents in 8-4 drafts tend to play pretty well, and swiss opponents, particularly in the lower brackets, tend to play pretty poorly. When I started drafting on MTGO, I played swiss drafts until I had a rating of around 1800 before I moved up to 8-4s.
If it were me, I probably wouldn't be splitting with that deck :).
I mainly end up in black when I see a homicidal seclusion. That card just takes over games and is often the best card in my deck. If I see a homicidal seclusion at any point in pack 1, I'm slamming it, playing it and moving into black. The later you see the seclusion, the more open black is, and the better the deck turns out. Because people have an aversion to black, I often see seclusion go later than I think it should, sometimes fourth, fifth or even sixth pick. Even if black is weaker than the other colors, I've found that starting with an insanely powerful card in a color that you know is open to your right more than makes up for it. I'm generally happy with my black decks that start with homicidal seclusion, though I don't usually move into black any of the commons.
There are really two different black decks. The first is an aggressive deck that wants to attack with Soulcage Fiends. The second is a more controlling deck that seeks to buy time by blocking and trading with Butcher Ghouls. It's important to recognize if you're aggressive or not and draft accordingly. Barter in Blood, for example, is better in the controlling deck.
Forcing those colors is probably a pretty good idea. The creature heavy green decks that curve 2 drops into trusted forcemages, druid's familiars and other permanent pump are pretty hard to beat. I'm pretty inclined to force green, and have started quite a few drafts with P1P1 timberland guide. That being said, green has 2 common five-drops and 1 common six-drop, so expensive creatures are my lowest priority. I've found that I end up with plenty of expensive creatures even if I take other playables over them. I can't recall a deck where I wished I had another green 5 or 6-drop.
Zealous conscripts has been pretty great for me also, frequently ending the game on the spot. It's also worth over 2 tickets right now, so I can't see ever passing it :).
Agreed. Only after you play through a few drafts do you have an idea of your expected cost per draft. It's pretty hard to know how much each draft will cost you otherwise, so new players should expect to pay unless they happen to find otherwise.