Card/Deck Making Delver Work

[Chris Taylor]

What I've found is Delver works well if you arent forced to play a threat light deck:
If there are instants/sorceries which double as threats



I was thinking of doing this in Blue Green, since they don't have a coherrent identity at the moment in my cube, and I'm always down for more reasons to play Edric.

Fair Warning: This is likely only possible with custom cards. A few Suggustions:


Sorcery (Jungle Lion)
Put a 2/2 wolf token into play

Sorcery (Call of the conclave)
Put a 3/3 elephant into play

Call of the Herd

Sorcery
Put 2 2/2 wolves into play
Possibly 4 1/1 snakes, I dunno.

Plenty of Modal creatures like slaughterhorn could be back-converted into creatures (Let's just assume he's literally 3/3 and giant growth, I don't think it'd be too strong)

Some sort of Mini-Skittering Invasion


The main problem I see with this is in trying to support this delver deck, the Pod options get watered down

Alternatively we could tie it to white, where there exist more actual cards for this strategy:


This would pair quite well (or create demand between) this deck and the Honor of the Pure style anthem aggro, which I've recently taken out

Ties also exist to populate cards:


Maybe this for some pump overlap?


And some support in blue?


Thoughts?

 

[Jason Waddell]

I'm not saying these are perfect decks, but here are two Delver decks that have 3 - 0'd my cube.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Oh, and to Cross Post from CML's Cube thread:

• We've found out that mostly no amount of cantrips (Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm etc) make this deck work, since everyone playing blue at the table wants them so you never get them
• Threat Light is not the way to go with this strategy, since unlike legacy we don't have consistent access to 4 copies of Daze, Force of Will, Stifle and Wasteland
• This deck loves Bounce spells like Withdraw, Undo, Repulse and Vapor Snag, but the traditional blue decks REALLY dont.
• Tempo is hard to play in cube becasue 1 drops are aggros bread and butter. This has me thinking: What if we rolled the whole cube back a turn? All the aggro creatures cost 2, All the wraths cost 5, all the removal spells cost 3 and so on and so forth. Could it work? You might get a halfway playable ammount of blue aggro creatures if everyone's curve started at 2

 

[Jason Waddell]

What if we rolled the whole cube back a turn? All the aggro creatures cost 2, All the wraths cost 5, all the removal spells cost 3 and so on and so forth. Could it work? You might get a halfway playable ammount of blue aggro creatures if everyone's curve started at 2

This is one of the worst ideas I have heard. Part of what makes good cubes good is that a low CMC means competing resources in your hand and an increase in decision density. I have a whole article on the topic in the can, so I don't want to waste too much time on it, but part of the reason that say, EDH ramp decks are so boring to play is that they stretch out their CMC curve over a greater distribution. Part of the reason I feel like I'm sitting on my hands when playing retail limited is because I am playing lower power cards on a higher curve, and waiting for haymakers. If you want to make Delver work this is the least appealing way to attack it, in my opinion.

 

[Jason Waddell]

A while ago somebody (probably Eric) was complaining about Delver flip probabilities. Let's say your deck is one third spells.

Those are the distributions of when you expect delver to flip by turn after playing him (black curve), and the cumulative distribution (red curve). 13 spells is perfectly manageable in cube, and you're the odds on favorite to have an attacking 3/2 for 1 mana after two or three turns, not factoring in Brainstorms and deck thinning. I'm not really sure where the "no amount of cantrips" stuff is coming from either. As long as you're not averse to breaking singleton, replacing your other cantrips with Brainstorms does a lot to boost the deck without taking away existing design space.

 

[James Stevenson]

The thing about brainstorm is everyone was complaining about it sucking at one point. So what's the deal? Is it only good enough if you've doubled up on fetches?

 

[Jason Waddell]

The thing about brainstorm is everyone was complaining about it sucking at one point. So what's the deal? Is it only good enough if you've doubled up on fetches?

I don't remember these statements, but, I'll just say that even with 0 fetches and the possibility of Brainstorm locks, I love having 4x Brainstorm in my Pauper Delver deck.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The No ammount of cantrips bit was from CML's thread:

So like 4 Delvers? Since 2 Delvers + 10 cantrips didn't do the trick. The section will look something like:

4 Delver
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Vapor Snag

Yet another problem is that almost all of the Blue decks want Brainstorm and Ponder (the cantrips go pretty evenly in every deck), but only one of them wants the Delvers.

That's what, 15 cantrips at 400 cards? That's an insane density, and if that wasn't enough I don't know what is.

 

[Chris Taylor]

The thing about brainstorm is everyone was complaining about it sucking at one point. So what's the deal? Is it only good enough if you've doubled up on fetches?

Sucking I'm not so sure about, but it is arguably worse than ponder/preordain if you play it and don't have any way to shuffle your library. The basic mode where you don't shuffle is fine, but the (much more broken mode) where you have a fetchland essentially turns it into draw 3 discard 2, which is an insane 1 mana spell.

People played it in their cube decks with 0 ways to shuffle, and expected it to live up to the 1 mana thirst for knowledge standard, and (surprise) it didn't.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The No ammount of cantrips bit was from CML's thread:

That's what, 15 cantrips at 400 cards? That's an insane density, and if that wasn't enough I don't know what is.

I think there's a lot of other factors here. I don't mean to discount CML's contributions, but... I dunno, I've seen some pretty shitty blue decks come out of his cube. Maybe I'm full of shit too. Those decks above only have 10-11 instants / sorceries. Delver still felt like a good 1 mana / card investment in those decks.

I think a bigger issue is getting a threat-dense blue deck, and less focusing on maximizing Delver / spell count. Those decks above had plenty of other ways to win the game, but sometimes they get there with Delver too. The Grixis deck won with a 6-card, 1 lander + Mox Diamond opener that had Delver and Brainstorm, and it was one of the more exciting cube games I've ever played. Unsupported anecdote? Probably. But I don't think Delver didn't belong in that deck either.

 

[Dom Harvey]

So if I drastically alter my Cube, go deep in the paint during the draft, and focus on this to the exclusion of other options, I can... recreate something that was miserable in Standard and is not always unfun in Legacy?

 

[Chris Taylor]

This is why I'm going the token cards route: I feel the threat light blue deck is a fools errand. It might be possible, but I think even if it were it wouldn't really contribute to good gameplay. Have you seen how legacy rug delver games play out? When the delver player is drawing according to their gameplan, nobody EVER has more than 2 lands in play, and their threat lives the whole time. Those make for some mighty shitty cube games, in my opinion.

 

[Jason Waddell]

So if I drastically alter my Cube, go deep in the paint during the draft, and focus on this to the exclusion of other options, I can... recreate something that was miserable in Standard and is not always unfun in Legacy?

I mean, I agree that we should question whether something (anything) is worth doing. I really like playing these attacking blue decks, and don't necessarily agree that the way Delver games play out in cube are reflective of Delver games in Standard / Legacy / Pauper / Modern / whatever.

Further, I kind of pose that it doesn't require too drastic of alteration. I had 2x Delver at one time, and currently run 1x as kind of a support for an archetype that is not always there. Could it become more prominent like Gravecrawler and Steppe Lynx are in my cube? Sure. But you would need to cross the threshold of there sometimes being a Delver deck draftable, to it almost always being there. You can't really include a lot of 3x and 4x of cards that are super narrow and not getting drafted.

The other question is whether there is a sufficient diversity of draftable Delver decks to warrant its more plentiful inclusion. We have tons of Gravecrawler / Steppe Lynx decks, but Delver here has always slotted into an UR shell. I really can't see it in UW or UG or UB all that often.

 

[Chris Taylor]

So if I drastically alter my Cube, go deep in the paint during the draft, and focus on this to the exclusion of other options, I can... recreate something that was miserable in Standard and is not always unfun in Legacy?

Do you think the un-fun-ness of the deck is inherrent to the card delver of secrets, or the cards around it?
I think delver is just a reasonable clock for a deck loaded with instants and sorceries. Ensuring your opponent never has a threat from turn 1 onwards not only doesn't seem possible in cube, but it's also not what I'm trying to do here

 

[Chris Taylor]

I mean, I agree that we should question whether something (anything) is worth doing. I really like playing these attacking blue decks, and don't necessarily agree that the way Delver games play out in cube are reflective of Delver games in Standard / Legacy / Pauper / Modern / whatever.

Further, I kind of pose that it doesn't require too drastic of alteration. I had 2x Delver at one time, and currently run 1x as kind of a support for an archetype that is not always there. Could it become more prominent like Gravecrawler and Steppe Lynx are in my cube? Sure. But you would need to cross the threshold of there sometimes being a Delver deck draftable, to it almost always being there. You can't really include a lot of 3x and 4x of cards that are super narrow and not getting drafted.

The other question is whether there is a sufficient diversity of draftable Delver decks to warrant its more plentiful inclusion. We have tons of Gravecrawler / Steppe Lynx decks, but Delver here has always slotted into an UR shell. I really can't see it in UW or UG or UB all that often.

I'd argue UW or (with some tweaking of green) UG decks are possible, as I've suggested in the original post. Less of an "All in on Delver" deck, and more delver being a support to an anthemny tokeny deck.

It'll take a few less Cloudgoat Rangers and a few more raise the alarms, but From what I hear you don't particularly like army in a can guys anyways

 

[FlowerSunRain]

This topic is pertinent to my interests. I was teching up white/blue with a heroic/low threat theme and utilizing auras along with protection spells, hexproof and tempo counters. Delver works well with the idea, BUT auras don't flip delver, so Delver is sitting in an uncomfortable position where he doesn't fit into the deck he best fits in.

Utilizing token makers with delver seems counter-intuitive as, again, the cards that best support tokens are generally anthems which generally don't flip delver. Do we really want Rally the Peasants or [/c]Spear of Heliod[/c] in these decks?

 

[CML]

hi doodz

my Cube's blue decks have been known to suck donkey dick, their inability to beat Naya Midrange types only became a defect when everyone got bored of making giant monsters and beating "Jace" over the head with them, which took at least six months (and we still play standard!). however, pissing away slots on Delver stuff was likely a reason why, as the theme never worked as i intended, and if it had worked then "delver decks" still suck against "Naya." in simple terms Wild Nacatl makes Delver look really stupid. Terminus and Damnation and Cyclonic Rift are pretty good, though, so i tossed in more "stuff like that" and now Blue sucks less

i really like Chris's OP (and i love army-in-a-can cards in a high-power environment especially, nice tensions with sweepers and great fun with color lords and gob bombardment and blood artist and whatever) but the presence of cards like Midnight Haunting, Talrand's Invocation, and Battle Screech, suggests that Delver works better in Cubes of lower power level. even then the archetype may need custom cards. on the other hand Wadds's model Delver decks are not what i would call "low power." i guess what i'd find most interesting is "why does Delver work in the Wadds cube with minimal support but sucks in the CML cube?"

other stuff: if you don't have shuffles, Ponder is almost as good as Brainstorm for Delver, see UW standard delver, and all Delver variants in Legacy run 4x Ponder too. Ponder is just a broken-ass magic card

i would not try heroic

UR UB UW all seem possible, UR UW are constructed tried and true and UB gravecrawler delver removal actually seems like it might beat "Naya." UG won't work but who cares, compared to the Blue devotion theme hitting three "playable guilds" is great, and in Legacy remember Green is often run as a third color so why not? tarmogoyf and delver work fantastic together

agree with the threat-light blue deck being a fool's errand, counter-burn just doesn't work here most of the time. Geist of Saint Traft and Snapcaster Mage (the "good blue creature class of 2011") are the R&D solution to this, and i like both in Cube a lot (yes, I like Geist, deal with it) but yeahhhhhh that's an essential difficulty.

 

[CML]

EUREKA

 

[Changling Bob]

On cantrips:

It seems to me that if these are in your (delver) deck in cube, they're there for flipping delver and just barely smoothing out your draws. So with your 15 cantrips, of which 13 are in a draft, of which you can get, like, 8? If you play them all, then you can spend turns and mana digging to get gas and/or get your flip on.

Without having tested it, it seems like increasing cantrip density probably doesn't have an effect after a certain point, especially once you start cutting tempo/canned army/value spells that would actually help you when you don't have a) a delver that b) isn't flipped already.

 

[Changling Bob]

Also, delver presumably slots well into the guttersnipe/young pyromancer/spells thing.

 

[Jason Waddell]

other stuff: if you don't have shuffles, Ponder is almost as good as Brainstorm for Delver, see UW standard delver, and all Delver variants in Legacy run 4x Ponder too. Ponder is just a broken-ass magic card

Brainstorm's ability to flip on upkeep (and being an Instant) makes it significantly better than Ponder. I don't really consider them in the same ballpark for Delver. Maybe it's the lack of shuffles, but I like Preordain better than Ponder in Pauper Delver.

My guess as to why Delver does well in mine but not yours is simply that the blue decks in my cube are better than the blue decks in yours. You have a big ol pro-Naya (particularly pro-green) bias in your Magic mentality, and you probably don't mind blue sucking as much as you should.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

So far red/blue is the only deck delver hasn't sucked hard for me. In order to get it to be consistent in blue/green I would need to heavily reorganize greens priorities in a way that would damage too many other decks. What are some suggestions for black/blue delver? Is there any gold card I should be looking at to support it? Recoil? Agony Warp?

In only a single days testing, white/blue low "heroic" was very strong, but Delver had absolutely place in that deck. When Welkin Tern makes you look bad, there is a problem.

 

[FlowerSunRain]

Also, what's everyone else's opinion of Geist of St. Traft? CML gives it the thumbs up and I'm running it, but am of mixed opinion.

The card is a little over the top and has a mechanic no one likes.

The card is a massive signal into an interesting decktype.

Other decks can try to poach it, but will have to contort their manabase or won't get full potential.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Love Geist and think it's a well balanced card and a great reward for building a blue attacking deck. Hexproof on a 2/2 that needs to attack is pretty interesting.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Utilizing token makers with delver seems counter-intuitive as, again, the cards that best support tokens are generally anthems which generally don't flip delver. Do we really want Rally the Peasants or Spear of Heliod in these decks?

Not every card in a delver deck needs to flip delver. The aim is to make delver fine in those decks because most of your threats are also instants/sorceries, so you could have a defensible threat density without making delver never flip.
If we have a deck of 2 delvers, 10 midnight hauntingish cards, and some other junk, I think both delver and spear would be fine. Maybe not rally the peasants since only young pyromancer ties this deck to red at the moment, but maybe other cards like it. Maybe righteous charge?

The question now becomes, does anyone else want spear?

CML: Ponder can't be played in response to delver's trigger, and can't flip delver with cards already in your hand.
Also UG won't work with the cards magic has given us now, that doesn't stop everyone There might be about 3 playable green spells which make tokens (Call of the herd, Symbol Status and Sprout Swarm, by my count. Just think of Symbol Status as a multicolor friendly Beacon of Creation, since it counts lands as well) but that in no way means there might not be in 5 years. Or fi I make a pile and add them to my cube (more likely)

I think Gravitational Shift might be too expensive for what you want it to do, and possibly too infest as well. Maybe Favorable Winds?

Changeling Bob: the draw smoothing of cantrips should not be underestimated, and that's part of what makes them frustrating for the delver deck, since everyone else wants them slightly less than you!
The Guttersnipe/Pyromancer deck is already at least kinda a thing, but the problem is it's very threat light and a little parasitic, since only pyromancer and runechanter's pike ever make their way into other decks.

Jason: Remember everyone, this means pro as in pro as in pro/con, not protection It's something worth pursuing, but I haven't taken a good enough look at either CML's or your cube to judge. I'll take a look sometime.

FSR: I'm not so concerned with "damaging green's other decks" because they're usually really flexible. I don't have a green aggro thing, and ramp cares little for the precise difference between sakura-tribe elder and farseek. Pod might take a hit, but It would be very hard to take green down below a threshold of creatures for that to happen realistically. There might be a vengevine kind of deck brewing, but I think there need to be a few more creatures like vengevine for me to support that kind of thing (The commune with natures in my cube preformed badly )