Introduction

Welcome back to the second part of my article about Tempo and BURG Delver. You can read the first part here!



Today it’s time to move away from abstract concepts and decks of the past and focus on the present.





How the Delver deck of Grand Lille was built?

Which position does it possess

What would the future look like for this very deck?

But how do we bridge the gap between GP Strasbourg and GP Lille?

Well, we have to leave Germany for that matter and take a look at the Czech Republic, the country that the new BURG Delver originated from.

But how did the deck that we saw twice in the Top 8 of GP Lille arise?

To answer this very question I talked to Már Tomáš, a Legacy advocate from Prague who designed this version of the deck over the course of many months.

Már Tomáš, designer of the BURG Delver deck.



The Fundamental Difference





Just as before, it was Canadian Threshold that served as a point of construction which does set the tone of how the deck plays out. There is a fundamental difference in adding Abrupt Decay to a Lightning Bolt deck or adding Lightning Bolt to an Abrupt Decay deck.





But the construction process didn’t go very streamlined at first as there was a lot to experiment with. Tomáš started by adding Abrupt Decay, Snapcaster Mage and Deathrite Shaman to replace Nimble Mongoose and situational counters like Spell Pierce, Spell Snare and Stifle. Though the configurations fluctuated a lot leading to several versions built at the very same time.

When asked why it has to be four colors Tomáš gave the following response:

"The main reason for 4 colors is that you have access to Abrupt Decay and Lightning Bolt, the two best removal spells in the format, while also having access to the blue shell of cantrips and counter spells.”

This does sound very similar to the earlier incarnation of BURG as it does abuse the same cards that make the core of the deck work. Having access to Lightning Bolt and only substituting it by Abrupt Decay also allows the deck to keep up the high percentage of tempo positive cards by allowing the clunky cards like Abrupt Decay to exist as a late game option but not as a primary card for the means of early and tempo positive interaction.

Buffing Up The Late Game



What’s interesting about this version of BURG is that it plays Sylvan Library, a much underrated card in Legacy. Not only does it grant the deck a way to achieve card advantage, which is very hard to come by in Legacy, but it also provides the deck with a consistent way to control the top cards of the library, which is key at winning matches that do go long.

Sylvan Library is most commonly referred to as one of the best non-blue library manipulation cards, next to Sensei's Divining Top, but as with many things in Legacy: Whatever you are doing, it’ll be better if you are also playing blue. Not restricting the use of Sylvan Library to decks like Maverick but abusing not only one, but two in a four color Delver deck has granted BURG with an above-average staying power in the later stages of the game when it’s battling decks that are set up for said scenario like Miracles or Stoneblade. Coupling this with an above average count of Dig Through Time, namely three, leaves no doubt that BURG can go toe to toe with decks that do plan to enter the late stages of the game.

And that’s the scary thing.

Or the empowering feeling, depending on which side of the table you are sitting. With the exception of Treasure Cruise-powered UR Delver it is a thing that is rather unheard of. Just as if there was a law in Legacy that forbid Delver decks to be a power to be reckoned with in the late game. And in the past this was kind of true. Taxing counter spells lost their power and situational spells also lost most of their appeal as the creature centric tempo oriented proactive game plan ceased to exist as most of the creatures were dealt with.





This was even truer when you played a match-up I’ve personally played countless matches of: Delver vs Ponder Miracles. Once the match hit the late stages of the game it was mostly decided already as Delver just wasn’t able to keep up with the cards that Miracles brought to the table.

If your top threat is supposed to be Tarmogoyf then it might not match up very nicely against Snapcaster Mage re-casting Swords to Plowshares, does it? Of course there were exceptions to this rule but there’s no doubt that Miracles was vastly favored once the game hit a certain point without the presence of powerful cards like Null Rod.

But things are different now.

And interestingly enough, the Delver decks didn’t really lose most of their early game interaction that was mostly present in the form of Stifle for RUG colored and Hymn to Tourach for the BUG colored variants of Delver. As we have all realized by now, Dig Through Time is insane. It sparked a whole archetype to move towards the apex of the format in OmniTell and elevates many other decks to different heights.





BURG Delver is certainly one of them. And while it may rank second to OmniTell when looking at the impact that Dig Through Time has on the deck it is, in my humble opinion, the deck that profited the most from Dig Through Time in the spectrum of fair decks.

And still it hasn’t caught on in the grand scheme.

And that’s understandable when looking at the range of options that you are having right now. The competitive variants of Delver include Canadian Threshold, Team America and Grixis while the ones that you should stay away from are generally Patriot and UR Delver which never were particularly good with the exception of the Treasure Cruise period which elevated them to heights that were unheard of before.

Choices, Choices, Choices

Generally speaking: Choice is good.

Choice is what makes a game good to me.

But it can be rather distracting when it comes to a purely competitive stance if the options you have do not possess a similar level of power.

That’s why I’d like to take up the cudgels for BURG Delver as the optimal choice of Tempo oriented Delver in the current metagame. Let me give you a couple of examples cementing my claim.

First and foremost, it’s the principle of choice. It’s not hard to understand that having the ability to choose between Lightning Bolt and Abrupt Decay rather than having two copies of any one card is an upside in most cases over the course of a long tournament, and yes, I’m aware of the exception that a linear deck that dodges a certain card makes to this very claim.

Secondly it’s important to understand that most increases of choice come hand in hand with the loss of one angle of attack. Let me give you an example. If Storm combo would like to incorporate Dig Through Time to ensure a better position in the games that go long then this will go hand in hand with a recognizable decrease of turn 1 or 2 kills.

It is important to understand how much you can modify your deck to take on more roles than the previously settled one. Some decks simply do not have the ability to add more to their deck as this would dilute the main game plan. BURG Delver seems to have hit the sweet spot in its newest incarnation. If you’re looking at it from a RUG perspective then it’s apparent that it does lose certain cards that were mostly used tempo positively, resulting in a game plan that is slower to execute and relies more on heavier hitting individual cards. But this version of Delver still does a good job of impersonating a purely tempo orientated deck by still featuring a high number of mana efficient creatures coupled with tempo positive taxing counters.





Additionally, it’s very hard to individually hate out the deck as it stands in the frame of sideboard cards in reasonably played decks. You can pack Null Rod to make Miracles stumble, you can include Flusterstorm to make sure your Counterspell on the opposing Show and Tell have a higher chance to resolve or you can decide to play Dread of Night if you are afraid of hatebears in a white base deck. You cannot really do that with Delver. Sure, you can up the number of removal spells as a basic way to interact with the creatures but that’s mostly treating the symptom, not the disease itself. There is, however a good way to exploit BURG Delvers weakness, which we will come to talk about in a bit when focusing on the weaknesses of this archetype.

The Sweet Spot & The Biggest Problem

BURG Delver is in a very sweet spot in the current metagame to be perfectly honest.

It’s aggressive enough to not fall victim to the Miracles-syndrome when facing combo that is having enough counters but no clock. It has enough tempo positive cards to facilitate the choice heavy game play that very quickly lets you fuck up pretty harshly but also rewards consistently good play and format knowledge, something that I’ve always envied about the Canadian Threshold style decks. It is proactive in regards to playing versus unknown decks and has enough tools in different cards across a four color spectrum to deal with cards that it didn’t expect. To be honest, I have a very hard time finding arguments to play any other Delver variant over this.

But this deck doesn’t do everything right, otherwise it would be running rampant in tournaments all around the world. There’s one inherent weakness that does come with building this deck this way. That’s what the decks creator, Tomáš, had to say about this:

"The biggest problem is the mana base.”

This shouldn’t come as a big surprise as four colored decks are a rarity in Legacy due to this very reason. There’s two different tiers of decks that attack the mana base though.

The first one are the full blown resource denial decks like Mono Black Pox or Dragon Stompy. If you’ve ever played a match with any Delver deck against this kind of deck you know what will expect you. Let me tell you one thing, the enjoyment is largely one sided.

Designated hate decks are not what you want to play against.

You might still edge out a win here or there but it’s a terrible proposition. But playing against Innocent Blood or Blood Moon just isn’t fun if you’re playing any color heavy deck in Legacy. Even more so if you have no basic lands and have no way to victory besides creatures.

The second tier is one that all of us are way more acquainted with. Decks that do still abuse the mana denial axis to a certain degree are Canadian Threshold and Loam based Control decks (which you can read about here in my article about The Rise of Punishing Blue).

These decks try to punish BURG Delver for playing just two Duals of each blue based combination and are able to succeed on this axis. It’s however a rather 50:50 match-up which is largely due the Llanowar Elves on steroids, known as Deathrite Shaman while also having the wide variety of different cards to choose from, which we talked about before.

These matches do offer a large variety of choice as they are way less one-sided as both decks have strengths and weaknesses that match up in an evenly distributed matter, which cannot really be said when you’re playing against a fully blown resource denial deck, which reminds me of a series of matches I played with Canadian Threshold against RW Painter during the Pro Tour Brussels weekend in the local shop. It wasn’t fun, trust me.

So by now I’ve hopefully given you enough reasons to consider trying out this deck and all that’s left is the decklist, right?

Moving Forward

So this is the list that Petr Sochůrek piloted to the Top 8 of Grand Prix Lille, where two very similar variants of BURG Delver had their first success.

4C Delver (Grand Prix Lille 2015 - Top 8) Legacy by Petr Sochurek Buy This Deck

Mainboard (60)



Flooded Strand

2 Misty Rainforest

2 Polluted Delta

2 Scalding Tarn

2 Tropical Island

2 Underground Sea

2 Volcanic Island

3 Wasteland

19 land



4 Deathrite Shaman

4 Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration

1 Snapcaster Mage

3 Tarmogoyf

12 creature



19 land12 creature Abrupt Decay

4 Brainstorm

4 Daze

3 Dig Through Time

4 Force of Will

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Ponder

3 Spell Pierce

1 Sylvan Library

29 other spells



29 other spells Sideboard (15)



1 Ancient Grudge

2 Dismember

2 Flusterstorm

1 Forked Bolt

1 Golgari Charm

2 Nihil Spellbomb

3 Red Elemental Blast

1 Sylvan Library

1 Vendilion Clique

1 Wasteland

15 cards



15 cards

For the current metagame I would consider this very list an outstandingly well-tuned starting point for your future adventures with BURG Delver. The things that I personally found in testing was that the fourth Tarmogoyf appeared superior to Snapcaster Mage due to the pressure applied in the earlier stages of the game.





It’s undeniable that Snapcaster Mage is the better card for the late game as you can do things as insane as flashbacking Dig Through Time but simply because a card is more powerful per se doesn’t mean it’s better for the slot.

I do understand what Snapcaster Mage is for but I’d rather have another beefy beater to deal with Grixis which is actually rising in popularity for quite some time now, despite having somewhat glaring design holes. Grixis is most likely the better meta deck than BURG but lacks the overall adaptability that comes with this deck, as mentioned earlier already.

I personally wouldn’t shy away from including a Life from the Loam in the sideboard in a more general sense but if you look at the list as it stands you will realize that there aren’t many good cuts you can make for this card. Lastly I wouldn’t want to play three Red Elemental Blast without splitting them up due to Cabal Therapy, the corner cases with Dig Through Time and the priceless expressions on your opponents faces when you confidently cast Pyroblast on their Tendrils of Agony, politely asking if it does resolve.

Additionally, it may be a good idea to re-work the distribution of Dismember, Golgari Charm and Forked Bolt as additional removal spells in the sideboard, but I haven’t really reached a good conclusion yet. Depending on the metagame it may also be a valid move to put one Red Elemental Blast to the maindeck, as Thomas Van Der Paelt did in his Grand Prix Lille Top 8 list.

Other than that I believe this list to be a very good point of constructing which you could and should base your future adventures with BURG Delver around as it’s one of the best positioned proactive and Dig Through Time abusing decks in the metagame right now.

What Does The Future Hold?

In the future, I do think that this deck will have an improved position in the metagame, mostly at the cost of the other Delver decks as people will start to realize that BURG isn’t just a greedy version of Delver that has to get lucky not to be screwed but take it for what it’s worth.

A high choice Delver variant with good match-ups all around it that shares the same weaknesses as other Delver decks, as neither of those really wants to be matched up against a resource denial deck. It’s an intriguing deck with a lot of choice to both construction and play, opening up countless opportunities to leverage your play and format skill over your opponent.

This deck isn’t easy, but if you’re willing to put time into it you may very well see the fruits of your labor sooner than later! That’s it for today. Thanks for reading, please let me know what you think!

As mentioned before, by the time this article will come out I will still be in China so it’ll take a while until I can answer all the comments but I will do so once I’m back. You can also leave suggestions to what you’d want me to write about in the future in the comment section of the article below.

See you soon!

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