A bunch of people on our mailing list were interested in attending the upcoming Legacy Grand Prix in DC, but we didn’t feel very comfortable with the format. Thankfully we have a Legacy expert on our list in the form of one Chris Pikula, who not only has a lot of experience and success playing Legacy, but also has a very good understanding of one of the more popular and successful archetypes, RUG Delver. So Chris was kind enough to send us a series of emails that laid out all his thoughts on the various incarnations of the deck and where he thought it ranked in the format.

Enjoy . . .

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PPP was asking me some questions about Delver in Legacy, so I thought I’d write something up for you guys. This is all I could do tonight before I got too tired. Mostly I’m just introducing some stuff, not really getting into explanations of why the deck works or whatever.

The most common Delver strategy in Legacy is RUG Delver. This is the version I played to make a SCG top 8 this summer (I’ve played 3 SCG Opens and top 8ed all 3 times):

4 Delver of Secrets

3 Gitaxian Probe

1 Forked Bolt

3 Spell Pierce

3 Scalding Tarn

4 Ponder

4 Tarmogoyf

3 Stifle

2 Polluted Delta

3 Flooded Strand

4 Nimble Mongoose

4 Daze

4 Brainstorm

4 Wasteland

4 Force of Will

3 Volcanic Island

3 Tropical Island

4 Lightning Bolt

My deck is modeled after Jacob Wilson’s version of the deck from GP Strasbourg where he lost in the finals. He was really the first person to play Gitaxian Probe in RUG. He just happens to have won the SCG Legacy Open in Seattle this weekend with this version:

4 Delver of Secrets

3 Gitaxian Probe

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Spell Pierce

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Ponder

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Stifle

4 Nimble Mongoose

1 Fire/Ice

4 Daze

4 Brainstorm

4 Wasteland

4 Force of Will

4 Lightning Bolt

3 Volcanic Island

3 Tropical Island

As you can see there aren’t a lot of differences here (I’ve left out sideboards for now). This deck is a proven powerhouse and the core of the deck is untouchable- consequently you don’t have many cards to work with. Every RUG deck plays these cards:

18 lands (6 duals, 8 fetch, 4 wasteland)

12 creatures (4 delver, 4 goose, 4 goyf)

8 “free” counters (FOW, Daze)

8 cantrips (Ponder, Brainstorm)

4 Bolts

This is 50 cards. Basically every list plays at least 2 Spell Pierce as well, which takes you to 52. I’m going to assume at this point that we are playing a Stifle version of the deck (we can talk about this more later, but I have not seen anyone play no-Stifle RUG recently) and although almost everyone plays 4 Stifle, I have been playing 3. I also think Gitaxian Probe is really unbelievable in combination with Stifle, so I’m going to assume 3 of each. This puts us at 58 cards. So, in my opinion, if you want to play RUG Delver at the Legacy Champs or GPDC, your main deck has two cards to work with. This is a good thing. People have already built this deck for you.

This deck is fantastic, but it has one problem that other versions of Delver can minimize: it is extremely susceptible to “hate” cards. Blood Moon, Rest in Peace, and Chalice of the Void are all capable of making games impossible to win. In the absence of these cards, I’d say RUG was without a question the best Delver deck to play in Legacy. But, sadly some assholes play this stuff.

The next most common version of Delver is UWR. There are two version of this- one with Stoneforge Mystic, one without. Here is the deck Gerard used to win an enormous Legacy Open in NJ:

2 Geist of Saint Traft

4 Delver of Secrets

1 Batterskull

3 Stoneforge Mystic

2 Spell Pierce

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Scalding Tarn

1 Vendilion Clique

3 Ponder

1 Umezawa’s Jitte

4 Stifle

2 Grim Lavamancer

4 Daze

4 Brainstorm

4 Wasteland

3 Force of Will

3 Volcanic Island

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Tundra

3 Swords to Plowshares

This deck still has major Blood Moon problems, but is much better againt Chalice, and doesn’t care about graveyard hate at all. It is much less consistent than RUG though, having fewer cards that flip delver, fewer cantrips, higher curve, etc…

Need to sleep now, more tomorrow! I’ll get to the existing Grixis Young Pyromancer version people have played, and a basic UR version I’ve been working on that can actually sideboard Blood Moon itself. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So at this point a bunch of us had questions, most of which were centered around the decks vulnerability to Blood Moon and Rest in Peace, because as Chris put it to us at dinner one night, “It sucks losing to the guy in the Iron Maiden shirt who goes Ancient Tomb, Discard Simian Spirit Guide, Blood Moon”.

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A lot to respond to here! I’m excited to talk about Delver.

So I’ve actually been working on a version that is essentially UR. I even played it at a local legacy tourney. Only 8 people showed up, but I did go 3-0 beating a guy who just made a SCG top 8 recently and another guy who has actually won a SCG open before, so it wasn’t terrible competition. It essentially is the same build as RUG except your 12 creatures are 4 Delver, 4 Pyromancer, 2 Lavamancer, 2 Vendilion Clique. You should definitely play 4 Probe in this version, and you should lean toward playing proactive spells rather than reactive because you don’t want to cast Pyromancer and then sit there with cards in your hand doing nothing. Dismember, for example, makes no sense to me in a build with Pyromancer. You probably only want 3 Stifle and 2 Pierce, and Fire/Ice is a lot better in this version I think. If you go straight UR, your lands can look like this:

2 Island

4 Volcanic

8 Fetch

4 Wastelands

Having basic Island not only beats Blood Moon, but it makes a lot of opening hands easier to play. Often when you draw a 1 lander with RUG Delver, you can’t play your Delver on Turn 1 because you have to Ponder or just leave up a fetch to avoid getting Wastelanded out (this also is another thing that makes Gitaxian Probe so freaking good) This doesn’t happen when you can fetch a basic Island. This also means you can play Blood Moon in your board, which is a pretty cool option. The other thing you can do with this deck is play an Underground Sea and play Cabal Therapy in the sideboard. Most decks you want Therapy against do not have Wastelands, so you can happily play Therapy off 1 Sea and 8 fetches. Therapy is pretty filthy with 4 Probes and Young Pyromancer.

This straight UR (or URb version) has three main weaknesses. First, it doesn’t have Nimble Mongoose or Geist of St Traft, and in fact every creature dies to Lighting Bolt. Your creatures do some fancy things, but dodge removal is not one of them. There are certain matchups (Jund, Deathblade) where the Goose just goes all the way while your opponent is holding useless removal spells. I’ve even won games with Goose against Umezawa’s Jitte because while they were able to deal me some damage and gain some life, they could not kill my creatures and I drew into Ancient Grudge. Second, because we don’t have Tarmogoyf and we aren’t playing StP, our deck is soft to opposing Tarmogoyfs. Third, we lose access to Ancient Grudge and Rough/Tumble with this version. Rough/Tumble in the board is an extremely powerful weapon from RUG- I have really destroyed people with this card (I once achieved the trifecta by casting Rough and killing a Deathrite Shaman, Stoneforge Mystic, and Dark Confidant). You can’t really play it in this deck, although Grim Lavamancer is obviously going to achieve some of the things you were trying to achieve with Rough. The flipside of this is that RUG Delver can bring in Rough/Tumble against you (where in the normal RUG mirror they would bring in Submerge) and their Roughs will still be quite effective at neutering your Pyromancers. Ancient Grudge it is possible that I just have not found the right replacement yet. Shattering Spree (bonus:you can replicate Spree to kill a Chalice on 1) is pretty reasonable, but not being an instant is an enormous liability against Stoneforge Mystic.

This version does have some real plusses though. It basically ignores graveyard hate and blood moon, and Lavamancer and Clique definitely have some matchups they shine in. And there are plenty of matchups where Pyromancer is going to kill just as fast as a Goyf. And you still have all the disruption of RUG.

While on the subject of how fast we can kill someone, I wanted to address a couple things Dan said. First, I confess that I am no expert on the UR Burn version of Delver, but I have absolutely no faith that the deck is very good and would not play it. Burn is basically a losing strategy against the combo decks, and Blood Moon doesn’t really work as a strategy in this deck either. Most of the Blood Moon decks in Legacy are able to cast Blood Moon on turn 1 or turn 2. Blood Moon as a strategy is just not nearly as effective when the earliest you can cast it is turn 3. I’m not saying Blood Moon isn’t good in these decks- it is a nice option to have. But, I don’t think the possibility of a turn 3 Blood Moon is really a reason to play a deck. As far as Blood Moon and Price of Progress being expected, I think you are right that nobody is prepared for Price of Progress (although Jacob Wilson sideboarded Zuran Orb last week), but that is because honestly Burn is just a terrible strategy in legacy. There is a huge swath of decks that you have almost no chance to beat with Burn. Blood Moon I think is something that people expect, and I think people are actually more prepared for it now than they were 3 months ago because of the Imperial Painter deck putting up a couple big finishes.

The other issue I wanted to talk about concerning a fast clock is that RUG Delver’s clock against combo is actually not all that fast. You almost always have to board out creatures in order to sideboard effectively against most combo decks. Also, your green creatures just don’t get big fast in combo matchups. Your Goyfs are often stuck at 3 power, and it is hard to get threshold for Mongoose because the games play out very Draw-Go at times. Also, past turn 3 or so, you end up very unwilling to tap out, so it can even be tricky to find a spot to commit a 2nd creature to the board. None of this is a huge deal, but these are things to consider when weighing the decks against each other.

That is all I have time for now. I will leave you with a couple more Delver deck options, neither of which I am an expert on:

Grixis Delver (won SCG Cincy recently)

4 Young Pyromancer

4 Delver of Secrets

2 Dismember

4 Gitaxian Probe

1 Misty Rainforest

3 Scalding Tarn

4 Ponder

4 Dark Confidant

4 Stifle

4 Flooded Strand

1 Grim Lavamancer

4 Daze

4 Brainstorm

4 Wasteland

3 Force of Will

3 Volcanic Island

3 Underground Sea

4 Lightning Bolt

BUG Delver (this one is somewhat of a fringe strategy)

4 Deathrite Shaman

4 Delver of Secrets

3 Misty Rainforest

4 Verdant Catacombs

2 Ponder

4 Tarmogoyf

2 Tombstalker

4 Stifle

2 Polluted Delta

4 Daze

4 Brainstorm

4 Wasteland

4 Force of Will

4 Hymn to Tourach

1 Tropical Island

2 Bayou

4 Underground Sea

4 Abrupt Decay

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At this point, most of our questions turned to the sideboard, both what cards to play and what strategies you need to employ post board against the primary decks in Legacy

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I guess I’ll talk about RUG first? The UR version may be a lot different. These are all the cards I’ve sideboarded in RUG in the 3 SCG Opens:

Pithing Needle

Ancient Grudge

Flusterstorm

Pyroblast

Submerge

Surgical Extraction

Vendillion Clique

Rough/Tumble

Tormod’s Crypt

Scavenging Ooze

Life from the Loam

Grafdiggers Cage

Zuran Orb

Sulfur Elemental

Young Pyromancer

The sideboard usually looks like this:

2-3 Rough/Tumble

1-2 Ancient Grudge

2 Pyroblast

2-4 Submerge

2 anti-graveyard cards

2 additional anti-combo counterspells

That leaves you a few flex spots which nobody really agrees on.

I’ll go over some of the stranger choices:

Pithing Needle: This is sort of a catch-all that fights against weirdness. The most obvious uses are against Sneak Attack, Goblin Charbelcher, and Sensei’s Divining Top. I’ve also boarded it in against Maverick as a way to fight Mother of Runes.

Life from the Loam: People use this in any match where it is a grindy Wasteland deathmatch. RUG mirror, Jund, 43 land, etc…I’m not totally certain it is worth it in the mirror or not. This is something that I could use more testing on.

Young Pyromancer, Sulfur Elemental: these are cards that happen to have uses in other matches, but also are castable under a Blood Moon. The Sulfur Elemental comes in against Mother of Runes decks, and also against UW Miracles because they have Blood Moon and Counterbalance, The Pyromancer comes in vs Blood Moon, vs removal heavy/grindy matchups.

Zuran Orb: this is basically only against Burn. You play the Orb, stop cracking your fetches, and your Geese and Goyfs go all the way.

anti-graveyard stuff- I think Tormod’s Crypt is probably best. Cage stops Natural Order in addition to some graveyard shenanigans, but doesn’t do anything against Life from the Loam decks. Also costing mana can be bad. I don’t think I like Surgical Extraction or Ooze.

Vendillion Clique- this is somewhat of a hedge. It is a card that is good vs Combo but also good in some creature matchups. It can be pretty sweet against Stoneforge Mystic and in some matchups you just want to be able to fly over for 3.

Counterspells- usually in addition to the Pyroblasts, I’ve been boarding 2 Flusterstorm. I’m not actually sure Flusterstorm is better than just having access to the full 4 Spell Pierce. It is pretty tricky because Flusterstorm obviously doesn’t counter things like Blood Moon and Sneak Attack.

One thing people may not realize is that you sideboard out all of your Force of Wills in many matchups, including the mirror. I think my sideboard plan for the mirror at the last Open was -4 Force of Will, -2 Spell Pierce,+3 Submerge, + 2 Pyroblast, +1 Young Pyromancer.

Gotta dinner now!

I definitely leave in all my Bolts in the RUG Mirror. Because the matchup is so grindy, Spell Pierce is the spell that really loses value. The games can just go too long. Bolt is just to efficient and versatile- being able to kill a goyf when you are on defense can be important, it is another 1 mana way to kill Delver, you can go into burn mode when appropriate, etc…Also if they board in something weird like Pyromancer or Clique it works there.

Here is how I would board with your decklist:

vs UWR Delver

+1 Ancient Grudge

+2 Rough/Tumble (this kills stoneforge and geist, seems pretty solid)

+2 Pyroblast

+1 Loam

-4 FOW

-2 Spell Pierce

vs Esper Deathblade

I would board the same way I board vs UWR delver but probably also bring in the Clique for something, possibly a Tarmogoyf to hedge vs RIP

vs Sneak and Show

This is actually pretty tricky. I don’t think you need all the creatures because they never really kill them, and I actually like having access to Lightning Bolts because I think you end up goldfishing a turn faster than you would just by drawing an extra creature most of the time.I think something like this:

+2 Flusterstorm

+2 Pyro

+1 Clique

+1 Sulfur Elemental

-1 Forked Bolt

-1 Lightning Bolt

-2 Mongoose

-2 Tarmogoyf

I’m not sure the Elemental is worth it, but you can stay untapped and flash it in, and you can cast it under a Blood Moon

Shardless Bug

This one is tough too. Ancient Grudge kills both Shardless Agent and Baleful Strix, which is really nice. Rough kills Deathrites and Shardless Agents, but I don’t think this is worth it. I don’t think I ever side out Daze.

Miracles

I think you have to board in Sulfur Elemental, and I actually sideboarded out all my Tarmogoyfs the last time I played against it because he had 4 RIP. You can finish games off with Burn as long as you don’t let Counterbalance happen. So I think this one is +1 Clique, +Elemental, +2 Pyro, +2 Flusterstorm, -1 Forked Bolt, -4 Tarmogoyf, -1 Lightning Bolt

Vs OmniTell

This one is interesting because I sideboarded out a Wasteland for a Submerge last time I played against it. He had very few non-basics, and I just wanted as many blue spells in my deck as possible for my

FOWs. I ended up beating him with Wasteland, and he said “wtf you still have Wastelands in against me after sideboarding?” So I’m not really sure who looks good in that story.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Despite having success with the UR build at the Legacy championships, I felt like the deck had some major weaknesses and wasn’t even fully exploiting TNN like some other builds were, i.e. UWR or BUG. Basically, if you don’t have access to Deathrite Shaman to cast him faster or Stoneforge Mystic to equip him with Jitte, TNN isn’t that amazing. Knowing that, the UR deck just seemed like a weaker version of RUG. I loved Young Pyromancer, but it wasn’t that much better than having access to Nimble Mongoose and Tarmagoyf, especially once you factor in the fact that the Blood Moon plan isn’t really effective after board against the decks you need it to be effective against. Chris hit this point home for me. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So I believe I am playing RUG rather than UR Delver. I think RUG is clearly the better deck in game 1 against the field, and hopefully some small changes in the deck will make the hate cards matter less and maintain the advantage or RUG over UR after boarding. I also think that people over-preparing for TNN is going to do splash damage to Young Pyromancer.

Here is what I have

6 dual lands

8 fetch lands

4 Wastelands

Totally normal land situation

4 Delver

4 Mongoose

4 Tarmogoyf

I think I should make either a Goyf or a Goose into a Pyromancer just to have added versatility and resilience against hate. I’m thinking that the cut should be a Goose.

4 Ponder

4 Brainstorm

3 Gitaxian Probe

I’d like to do the 4th Probe.

4 Force of Will

4 Daze

3 Spell Pierce

3 Stifle

My usual configuration on these:

4 Lightning Bolt

1 Fire/Ice

So I’m basically playing Fire/Ice over a 4th Pierce or Probe. I’ve never been happy with the 5th removal spell main deck, but I like the versatility.

So that is the main deck, pretty straightforward. This is the sideboard I put together:

2 Ancient Grudge

2 Sulfur Elemental

2 Phyrexian Revoker

2 Pyroblast

1 Flusterstorm

1 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Grafdigger’s Cage

2 Rough/Tumble

2 Submerge

The weaknesses of the board are a lack of cards good in the mirror (basically only 2 Submerge, 2 Pyro) and normally I have another Flusterstorm type card. I don’t have any of the fancy stuff like Life from the Loam or Zuran Orb. I also was hoping to have a Pyromancer in the board. Maybe I don’t need 2 Ancient Grudge?

Sideboarding plan:

vs RUG Delver: -4 FOW, +2 Pyroblast, + 2 Submerge. I’m basically forced to leave in all the Stifles and Spell Pierces with this build. Is this really bad?

vs UWR Delver: -4 FOW, +2 Pyroblast, +2 Ancient Grudge. Rest in Peace is pretty bad for me here. Maybe I should leave in some FOWs? Rough/Tumble is good vs Geist but everyone will have TNN now.

vs Sneak and Show: -3 Nimble Mongoose, -2 Lightning Bolt, +2 Phyrexian Revoker, +2 Pyroblast, +1 Flusterstorm. I don’t think I’m so worried about Blood Moon that I bring in Elementals. Maybe I should take out a mix of Goyfs and Goose?

vs Death and Taxes: -3 Spell Pierce, -3 Stifle, +2 Phyrexian Revoker, +2 Sulfur Elemental, +2 Ancient Grudge.

vs Shardless BUG: this is the hardest one. Really not sure here.

Opinions? Seems like maybe I need another card in the mirror.

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Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my hands on a play set of Tarmagoyfs and Tropical Islands and was forced to stick with UR for the GP. I ended up finishing 6-3, losing in the last round to, of all things, RUG Delver. My other two losses were to a land deck that played Chalice of the Void on turn 1 on the play in Game 3, and a UWr Miracles deck. I think I would’ve been able to put up a much better fight had I played RUG since I would’ve had access to both Ancient Grudge and Phyrexian Revoker against those decks. Regardless, I ended up with a pretty sweet haul from the Legacy Championship finals after splitting with Ari and a much deeper understanding of Legacy.

If there were a Hall of Fame of email chains, Chris Pikula would be a first ballot inductee

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