General Line Check

[Grillo_Parlante]

Its your turn, you're on the draw with a seven card keep, opponent has a suspended rift bolt. Oppo deck is burn, and you just drew daze.

Format specifics shouldn't matter.

Whats your plan for sequencing this hand?

 

[anotak]

play delver

 

[safra]

There's two delvers in-hand and Burn is a quick racing matchup so I might be inclined to jam the t1 Delver, Daze the Rift Bolt during Villain's upkeep, and force them to have the second Mountain and bolt. If they have the Bolt I'm hooped though, and also down zero lands to two. Knowing my opponent is on Burn, where they'll almost certainly have the bolt for the early Delver, is another reason to be smart about this. IRL I would probably play out the Delver, hold onto Daze, and lose to, like, Death Spark.

A turn one ponder, leaving an instant or sorcery as the third card and choosing not to shuffle, will enable the t2 Delver (possibly two delvers if I get a land off Ponder) with Daze backup. Flipping them both turn 3 (losing one but keeping the other might be okay as well) and then holding up Spellstutter Sprite / Counterspell is a 4 turn clock where I just need a third counterspell to win. Given that I'll see another 6 cards by that time I think trying to race with a guaranteed double flip is the best line. I'm almost certainly wrong!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

The hand can do two things:

1. Ponder looking for second island, to setup spellstutter, than try to spellstutter them out of the game.
2. Jam delver, ponder turn 2, and race.

Normally, in this spot, you want some combination of pressure and disruption, and here there is also a desire to find the second land asap. Thats what makes the ponder line so tempting, as it positions you better to find the land, and spellstutter seems like a reasonable compromise between disruption and pressure. Plus, daze will protect you while setting up to fix the problems of the hand.

The dangers are that its going to take time, and without other faeries or snap, spellstutter is kind of medium, plus its unlikely you will have the mana to sequence spellstutter and counterspell for a while, so they can pretty easily overload your counter wall, and will be doing it at a point where they may have more mana than you.

I went with the delver play too, kind of entirely on the basis that if you have turn 1 delver->daze backup thats just what you do. I think its definitely the play here, because you're already behind being on the draw, and this seems like a racing situation. Turn 2 ponder means you can setup delver, and if you find the land, you can setup turn two delver. So I think we're all on the same page there.

Now, here is the second part of the analysis: is daze on their turn 2 play a trap? You can't actually daze the rift bolt because they will have the untapped mountain on their upkeep, so you know you are going to be getting hit for 3 here. Than they have two mana and you'll most likely have the chance to daze something. I think the only clear time you daze is something like land->searing blaze on the delver.

Leaving out the searing blaze line, can we even afford to daze here?

 

[safra]

Leaving out the searing blaze line, can we even afford to daze here?

I don't think so. They have a deck with 20+ cheap answers to Delver so at some point that dude's getting bolted, our soft countermagic just lets us say when. I think that if he doesn't play a land t2 second main it's a possibility but I'd still want to use Daze to protect the Delver if at all possible so he kinda has to walk into our trap and, like, mainphase bolt our guy, which we'll daze, then Delver flips, swings, and we've made up the tempo loss from Barreling Down Sokenzan. At any other time I'd want to hold it for a relevant spell, since I don't think burn is going to draw past maybe 2-4 mountains to begin with. If it's a sideboarded game I might also hold onto the dazes for REBs.

How did the actual match end up going? I assume your t1 Delver got wrecked (delver and daze is usually good enough, sure, but the Suspended Rift Bolt is enough to make me ponder for a land instead) and I have no idea which turn you'll end up playing Counterspell.

 

[Meltyman]

I haven't seen this situation in constructed because i haven't played burn or delver, but since you aren't even thinking about wether he will rift bolt the delver or not, it must be that burn players don't care about the delver.

If that is the case, then delver seems right.
Turn 2 ponder to find a land if you don't get to daze on his turn and delver if you get to daze and thus not having the option of playing two spells.

If you draw a land on your draw step and didn't play the daze on his/her turn...
I guess keeping sprite/counterspell open seems the best.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

oh sorry, forgot to mention this was g1. I ended up winning the game at 1 life. Burn generally losses when it starts directing spells at creatures (unless its searing blaze) which I think is pretty normal for how those decks operate in general, which is why I'm not really considering anything nuking the delver at this point. As long as they think they can win the race, they generally leave your creatures alone, unless its specifically searing blaze. My second delver did end up dying, however. I think thats part of what makes the delver line so attractive, having the two.


My lines were:

Spoiler

turn 1 delver, hoping to hit an island on my draw. I bricked hard, neither flipping nor finding the island. Than pondered into an island, and played the second delver. I suppose there is an argument for just jamming the second delver, but going all in on the race seems really bad.

I agree running out the daze seems bad. It really sets you back, and there is only one spell that seems really critical to counter. I ended up not dazing his turn 2 play.

The daze actually did end up being great, nagging a hardcast rift bolt. No one respects daze in this format, and it always breaks them.

 

[CML]

i'd ponder

one of those hilarious situations where rift bolt > lightning bolt