Standard

Building a Better Delver

Standard is in a pretty weird spot right now.  Up until now, UW Delver has been the clear best deck in the format, and has been far and away the most represented deck in both MTGO events and bigger paper events.  Recently, that trend has been shifting away from Delver and towards GRx aggressive decks.

You can say what you want about good decks attracting good players, but since nothing changed on the 20th, you have to build your deck with [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] and [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] in mind; the key to success in this format is to be prepared for the Delver match up, either by preboarding, having sick sideboard tech, or just more experience than the people you’re playing against.

There were a few big events going on this weekend, and to be honest, I’m a little surprised at the results.  Not that Delver did well, but rather that the metagame hasn’t shifted terribly much.  People still seem to be on LSV’s Delver list from the WMCQ, while other decks haven’t changed terribly much.  I am excited to see that RUG Pod lists are starting to do better.  I think that, generally speaking, this metagame is a little stagnant, and that can be exploited.

So the question of the day is: how exactly do you set yourself up to have a good Delver match up?  Recently, everyone at our LGS has been picking up Delver decks, and so I’ve had a lot more opportunities to play that match up than I had in the past.  This has given me chances to test out some ideas that I’ve had, and develop a list to a point where I’m happy with how it’s positioned against the field.  Just like last time, I think the answer is to be smaller and less interactive, or a little bigger with favorable interactions.  To me, that means Titans or [card]Invisible Stalker[/card] in your delver decks, or green decks with [card]Stingerfling Spider[/card] if you’re going to go with a non-Delver choice.

Now, my issue with Stalker/Pike builds is that you’re trying to be non-interactive – that’s both your strength and your weakness.  As long as what you’re doing is more powerful than everyone else, being non-interactive is in your favor.  However, as soon as you get behind – whether you stumble, or  someone curves [card]Blade Splicer[/card] into [card]Restoration Angel[/card], or whatever else happens – you can’t pull yourself back into the game because your deck is built to be non-interactive.  You don’t have to tools to grind out close games – you either have it and crush them or you don’t and get crushed, and that’s not the kind of magic I like to play.  I’d rather go big!

With all of that in mind, this is the UW list I’ve been running, and would run if I had a big event this weekend:

[deck]
[Creatures]
2 Sun Titan
4 Restoration Angel
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Blade Splicer
3 Phantasmal Image
[/Creatures]
[Instants]
3 Mana Leak
4 Vapor Snag
2 Thought Scour
1 Divine Offering
2 Gut Shot
1 Dismember
[/Instants]
[Sorceries]
2 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
[/Sorceries]
[Planeswalkers]
1 Gideon Jura
[/Planeswalkers]
[Lands]
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Glacial Fortress
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Moorland Haunt
8 Island
3 Plains
1 Cavern of Souls
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Unsummon
1 Divine Offering
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Day of Judgment
2 Celestial Purge
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Dismember
1 Gut Shot
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Frost Titan
1 Cavern of Souls
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The reason that I like this list right now is that it matches up very well against most of the key cards in a “stock” Delver list from the past few weeks while also being able to go over the top of the GRx decks.  There’s a pretty short list of cards that define this format, and I’m comfortable with how this deck matches up against each of them.

For the sake of this article, we’re going to focus mostly on the Delver mirror, but it’s important to note that this deck also isn’t really afraid of the Naya decks that are built around [card]Blade Splicer[/card]/[card]Restoration Angel[/card] shenanigans.  Unlike traditional Delver decks, you don’t have to [card]Vapor Snag[/card] them and hope to race.  You can clog up the ground and then either sweep their board away or go over the top with [card]Sun Titan[/card].

So what are the cards that you have to be thinking about when you build a deck?  For the most part it’s just the four-ofs in the “stock” delver lists, but you also have to be ready for the cards that they’re using to swing match ups in their favor.  Let’s start with the easy ones:

[card]Delver of Secrets[/card]

Admittedly the card this is softest to, but it’s still not one that I’m particularly concerned about.  You have enough spot removal and bounce, and the full set of angels to get in the way.  Every deck in the format loses some games to Delvers that flip early, and I think that this is about as well-prepared as you can be for those kinds of draws.

Something else I’d like to take a chance to talk about is how exactly this deck is positioned when you’re comparing it straight up to “stock” Delver.  You have fewer cards that steal games, but you have more ways to interact.  You’re not going to stick a [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] when your opponent can’t deal with it and just win off of the back of that.  You have fewer free wins, but you’re also almost never out of it.

Traditionally, the issue that Delver decks have is that they can’t get back into the game once they’re behind on the board.  At that point, all of your spells are way worse than they are when you’re ahead, and your deck doesn’t really do anything.  With this deck, you’re expecting to be behind for a good amount of the game.  You want to play some guys early, trade off, and then take over the game with [cad]Sun Titan[/card] and [card]Restoration Angel[/card].  You’re switching from a deck that’s high variance to one that’s more consistent.  It means you have to work harder for your victories, but that there are fewer games that you just can’t win.

[card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]

This is the card that has caused me the most headaches since Innistrad was released, and it’s a card I just don’t like.  It can get you a ton of free wins just because of how difficult it is to interact with, but I don’t like the awkward hands with multiple Geists, and I don’t like high variance cards.  Beyond that, people are prepared for [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card] now.  Most Delver lists have between 3 and 4 [card]Phantasmal Image[/card]s; more and more decks are playing [card]Blade Splicer[/card] and [card]Restoration Angel[/card], and it’s just getting harder to stick a Geist on three and Snag them until they’re dead.

I would much prefer to just grind things out with [card]Blade Splicer[/card], especially since that gives you a better match up against the other creature decks in the format, especially those decks are on the rise, and have a favorable match win percentage against stock Delver lists.

This deck in particular is very well set up against [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card], which is part of why I’m excited about it.  You have [card]Phantasmal Image[/card]s as straight up removal, [card]Vapor Snag[/card]s as backup, and a full eleven creatures that are good enough to jump in the way

Geist is a card that’s always been high variance, and right now people are tired of losing to it, so I don’t see a reason to play into that by continuing to play Geists of my own.

[card]Mana Leak[/card]

This card has been getting weaker and weaker in Delver mirrors.  Generally, I like to board out at least two, but usually all of my leaks once I know I’m playing the mirror.  The card is too good against unknown opponents to cut altogether, but people have been starting to cut copies as more and more people move onto the [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] plan.

This deck has one to two more lands than most Delver builds, which makes it easier to play around Leaks in game one.  In addition to that you have the full eight flash creatures, and better ways to punish your opponent for tapping out.  If you tap out for something, they might [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card] you, but if they tap out for that, you get to stick a [card]Gideon Jura[/card] or [card]Sun Titan[/card]; that’s generally a trade I’m willing to make.

One thing that I could see doing is trying to fit another [card]Cavern of Souls[/card] into the maindeck to help just jam Titans into [card]Mana Leak[/card], but in my experiences the deck has been very color-hungry, so if that’s something you’re interested in you’d need to cut a [card]Moorland Haunt[/card].

[card]Vapor Snag[/card]

This is the big one; the card that defines the Delver mirrors.  This is the reason I think the meta is overdue for a shift back to [card]Invisible Stalker[/card] and [card]Runechanter’s Pike[/card].  This is also the card that this list can lose to the most easily, which is sort of unfortunate.  That said, once you know that it makes it easier to know what hands are keepable and which ones aren’t.  You can’t keep hands where [card]Restoration Angel[/card] is your only creature unless you have a ton of other action because a turn four Angel just loses to [card]Vapor Snag[/card]
All of your creatures are value creatures.  Snagging them repeatedly is a losing proposition as long as you aren’t under significant pressure, and that’s what your own Snags are for.  It’s not too difficult to leverage your own removal so that the game goes longer and you get to take advantage of the extra cards you can generate.

Additionally, Delver decks are actually very soft to creatures like [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card] and [card]Blade Splicer[/card] right now, particularly in conjunction with your own [card]Restoration Angel[/card]s.  Delver decks are very bad against decks that can put enough pressure on the board and cut off their favorable attacks, and this deck is very, very good at that.

[card]Restoration Angel[/card]

Our [card]Restoration Angel[/card]s are generally better than our opponent’s throughout the game.  As long as you don’t let them flicker a [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] and get you with [card]Mana Leak[/card], they shouldn’t be able to get you too badly with their Angels.  To be honest, this just isn’t a card that I’m afraid of, generally speaking.  If you’ve been playing against Delver at all in the last six months, you already know what tricks to play around.

Swords

This is the kind of card you ought to be afraid of.  You can be prepared to play against Geists and Delvers and whatnot, but if they stick a Sword, it doesn’t really matter.  If each threat is something you have to deal with, and then turns into Spirit tokens you have to deal with later, there really aren’t many ways for you to get ahead again.  These are the cards that are difficult to get into play, but dominate the game once you manage to stick them.  I did a quick check to see what kind of equipment people are/were playing with between June 8th and June 15th in Dailies.  Here’s how it broke down:

Now, the unfortunate thing about this is that there’s actually a pretty reasonable distribution among these options.  It’s generally going to be pretty safe to assume that they’re on [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card], and playing around that generally does a pretty good job of playing around the other Swords as well.

The important thing is that you know how to play around these.  [card]Vapor Snag[/card] becomes even more important than usual, and they put a tremendous amount of pressure on you to win before the Sword just puts the game out of your reach.  Fortunately, [card]Sun Titan[/card] and [card]Gideon Jura[/card] are certainly up to the task.

You can definitely run another [card]Steel Sabotage[/card] or [card]Divine Offering[/card] somewhere in the sideboard if you’re afraid of Swords, but that seems bad when people are playing between 0 and 2 copies and are boarding them out more often than not.

The Sideboard Subgame

The flexibility of Delver decks in postboard games is part of why mirrors are so difficult.  You generally don’t know if your opponent likes staying aggressive, and streamlining their deck more, or trying to go big and board out their aggressive cards.  The issue is that you’re always going to be aiming to be a little bigger than the other decks, and trying to hit a moving target is tough.

Generally speaking, I’m pretty comfortable with the approach I’ve taken up.  Unless I see something strange, this is generally how I board after game one:

+1 [card]Dismember[/card]
+1 [card]Unsummon[/card]
+1 [card]Cavern of Souls[/card]
+1 [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card]
+2 [card]Day of Judgment[/card]

-3 [card]Blade Splicer[/card]
-1 [card]Gut Shot[/card]
-4 [card]Mana Leak[/card]

This gives you the most flexible answers possible, and covers as many of the cards you’re afraid of as possible.  Most importantly, this stays pretty midrangey.  You don’t want to go too big and get run over by Delvers and Geists, and you don’t want to board out all of your late game for [card]Divine Offering[/card]s just to see them board out Swords.

This sub game is part of why it’s so important to stay on top of articles and “conventional wisdom” about how Delver decks are supposed to sideboard.  If you know ahead of time how most people are sideboarding, or what cards might be indicative of a different approach, you can put yourself in a much better position for Game 2 than your opponent.

Conversely, you don’t want to be overly predictable.  You have to have some tricks or you start to fall behind the metagame.

At this point, I generally assume that people are boarding out Delvers and going big, which is why I board out a lot of my early game, and try to be more of a control deck than a midrange deck.  Once you confirm whether or not they go big, you can keep reconfiguring to try to stay advantaged, and you can board out the more specialized answers for more appropriate threats or some such.

So, all of this said, I do have two other decks that I’ve been working on that I wouldn’t be uncomfortable playing in a bigger event.  Recently, we’ve seen a rise of RUG Pod decks, but I think that Naya is actually much better positioned right now, mostly because you get the core of [card]Blade Splicer[/card], [card]Restoration Angel[/card], and [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card], which gives you a stronger mid game, and lets you take the appropriate role in most match ups, which is important in a format as polarized as this one.  I think that deck has all of the tools to be successful against all of the best decks in the format – you just have to pick the right ones for any given week.

Regardless of whether you’re trying to beat them or you’ve already joined the ranks of the Delverites, it’s important to have a focused, proactive plan if you’re planning on beating Delver, and to stay on top of what kind of lists are popular so that you know what to prepare for.  As long as you do that, there’s no reason to be afraid of [card]Insectile Aberration[/card]s.

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