Adapting Delver to the Legacy Landscape before GP Niagra Falls
Like many lovers of Legacy, I am planning on going to GP Niagara Falls in late April. The format is quite diverse at the moment, and it’s an exciting time for me because there’s no better time to be playing Legacy than testing for a GP.
Today I want to go through some of what I’ve found both in testing and through observation and discuss where I find myself in this metagame.
Izzet Delver
Once SCG Syracuse had past, I strongly suspected that Izzet Delver would become one of the most popular Delver decks. Not only was the deck relatively cheap compared to other Delver decks because the need for dual lands was lessened, it’s also a fan-favorite archetype.
While I like the deck and thought it was well-positioned in Syracuse, I was never married to the archetype. This particular Legacy format doesn’t really have a single best version of Delver and Izzet fell into the camp of pretty good Delver decks that have some weaknesses. In my testing recently, I found that people are really starting to exploit its weaknesses both in deck choice (Storm, Death and Taxes, Turbo Depths) and deck building (Pyro and Hydroblast surging in popularity).
Considering this, I think I’d rather see what the other Delver decks have to offer right now and build those decks with some slight nods towards beating Izzet.
Tarmogoyf
Tarmogoyf seems great right now. Izzet Delver can’t kill it, it applies a lot of early pressure against Red Prison. Goyf struggles against Grixis Control (more accurately Baleful Strix) but the deck seems to be on a downswing. True-Name Nemesis is a slight issue, but in an aggressive enough shell Goyf generally can come down early enough to apply pressure through the True-Name.
The problem is that I don’t know if there’s a good shell for it. I think Temur Delver is totally fine at the moment and I have spent a fair amount of time on the archetype. The rest of the threat-base in that deck feels lackluster. Sticking to Nimble Mongoose does give you an edge against Miracles and other decks that rely on spot removal, but it really opens the door to lose to True-Name Nemesis. On the other hand, going over to True-Name + Hooting Mandrils makes the deck lose some of its efficient nature and feels too clunky.
Sultai is also interesting, but Sultai midrange never feels cohesive enough for my tastes and I always feel like I’m leaving some wins on the table by playing Sultai Delver and not getting to cast Lightning Bolt.
I definitely want to keep trying to find a place for Tarmogoyf but right now i’m not overly hopeful.
Stoneforge Mystic
Stoneforge Mystic has had a rocky life these past few years. When Top was legal it was difficult to justify building a UW deck that relied on Batterskull, as opposed to Counter/Top. When that deck left, Grixis Delver and Czech Pile became so popular that Stoneforge couldn’t gain any traction in the metagame.
We have finally come to a place where Stoneforge Mystic can start to reclaim its throne once again. Not only does Death and Taxes seem well-positioned at the moment with the downswing of Grixis Control, UW Stoneblade has been putting up some serious results recently. In the world of True-Name Nemesis mirrors, UW Stoneblade stands above the rest with the wide range of equipment to go way over the top. On top of this, the deck has so much versatility in how it’s built and it can really be tuned to answer a wide range of metagame shifts. I think UW is a great choice at the moment, which is certainly exciting to me.
With this in mind, if you’re looking to get an edge against the deck I think there are subtle changes that can be made to decklists to get an edge against Stoneblade. The first is Spell Snare. Stoneblade decks can be really reliant on resolving Stoneforge Mystic. Being able to easily trade with it 1 for 1 at a mana advantage can really break the matchup wide open.
Null Rod gets a lot better out of the board when the games come down to True-Name mirrors. While it doesn’t interact with Batterskull too favorably, if the games go long it can really start to pay dividends on a game.
Grim Lavamancer is another card which can really change the dimension of the game. Stoneblade decks don’t tend to have that much removal. They have the 4 Plows and the Snapcaster Mages to buy them back, but outside of that, it’s usually just a few Council’s Judgments and maybe a Supreme Verdict. This means that playing more cheap creatures can really exploit this aspect of the deck, and Grim Lavamancer specifically does a lot in the match up.
While I do think UW Stoneblade is well-positioned, and I have a tendency to enjoy the archetype, I don’t think i’m going to choose to play it. The allure of playing Delver of Secrets and Lightning Bolt appeal to me a bit too much at the moment and Stoneforge decks tend to spend too much time answering the question, as opposed to asking it.
Stifle
Stifle and I have a long history together. I think people tend to play it with the sole purpose of trying to get free wins, and to that end people play it far more often than they should. It can be pretty easy to play around Stifle disrupting your mana base once you know they have it and at that point the card can be relatively ineffective.
However, I think Legacy is at a point where Stifle has quite a bit more value than just keeping your opponents from playing the game. Specifically, decks that tend to give Delver decks some trouble (Miracles, Turbo Depths) can be meaningfully disrupted with a well placed Stifle. These decks can play around it, of course, but adding an extra dimension of disruption can really help Delver decks hold their own in these matchups.
This is the decklist that has been performing the best for me:
This list has a couple of qualities which are concessions to my perception of the metagame. The first is a copy of Spell Snare, which has a fair amount of targets in the metagame as a whole, but is specifically there to do some work against UW Stoneblade. The next is Fatal Push over Dismember. I don’t like the extra reliance on Black mana that much, but this is a concession to the popularity of Izzet Delver. Fatal Push kills all of the non-True-Name threats in the matchup without the extra cost of 5 life. This comes back to bite me against Eldrazi or Gurmag Angler, but I think it’s more important to deal with Pteramander in all forms at the moment.
On top of me thinking that Stifle is well-positioned, it adds the extra feature of making the mana base feel better. In my previous testing with Grixis, I could never really get the mana to work for me. Playing discard spells in addition to the Red removal always pulled me in 2 different directions in a mana base that couldn’t really support a Badlands. This direction places the emphasis on Blue mana quite firmly, which makes the basic Island more justifiable, as well.
There are some serious costs that come with playing Stifle (Eldrazi and Red Prison ignoring it quite well) but for the most part, I have been impressed. This is my current front-runner, and I am going to spend a fair amount of time tuning this before I switch to something else.
This Metagame is Excellent
I haven’t had so much fun playing exclusively Legacy in a long time. I continue to find this metagame to be really deep and extremely diverse, and I’m just having a blast every time I sit down to play it. It feels like every deckbuilding choice has costs associated to it which makes the decision making fascinating.
I’m not locked into any of my choices or options just yet and I think there’s room to explore Delver at the moment. I’m going to continue to work on this and next time, I’ll discuss where I ended up and why.
