Grixis Delver at GP Toronto

GP Toronto has come and gone and it was an excellent weekend, as team events always are. Toronto is an awesome city, and getting to play Magic with good friends makes every round a blast. This was my first GP in quite some time so I haven’t had the chance to play with the new 8 round Day 1 until now. I liked the idea in theory, and after actually playing with it, I now love it. Even with every round going 15-20 minutes over time, and with us playing every round, we were still able to end the day before 6 o’clock. This gives players more time to enjoy the city, get dinner, and enjoy a good weekend with friends. This simple change made the experience even more enjoyable than usual, and incentivizes me to play more GPs.

Regarding our performance in the event, we ended up losing the last round of Day 1 to go 5-3 and miss Day 2. We had a good run, and the losses don’t feel nearly as bad when you lose with a team. That being said, a Day 2 appearance has eluded me in team tournaments, which I would like to change someday soon. While I think my teams have had relatively high play-skill, a lot of teams are bringing their A-game to these events, so it can be tough to get play-skill edges across all 3 seats. In addition, it is possible that we have been making incorrect deck choices for the team format, even though I haven’t ever been unhappy with any of our decisions going into it. It’s hard to pin down exactly what has been going wrong, as there are a lot of factors. I’m going to pay close attention to our choices going into the event next time and see if we can do anything to give ourselves a better chance going into it.

As for myself, I played Grixis Delver in the Legacy seat, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has read my articles before. This is the list I played:

While it was relatively stock, there were some card choices that I definitely wasn’t happy with. In the main deck, not having a 3rd Volcanic Island seemed like an acceptable sacrifice, but it too often left my Red sources vulnerable. Noah Walker identified this as an issue in his top 4 list and trimmed a fetchland for a 3rd Volcanic, which is a direction I want to test going forward.

As far as my sideboard was concerned, the inclusion of slower cards like Liliana and Jitte left my post-board configuration feeling too clunky all day. While Liliana was very good, even if it was a bit slower, Jitte seemed incredibly difficult to fit into my game plan. Because Jitte was my most potent card to interact with go-wide strategies, I often felt like it took far too long to set up. In addition, not having any other pieces of interaction to break up a flooded board left me feeling very far behind against Elves. On top of this, Pithing Needle felt unnecessary all weekend. In the future, i’ll probably cut the Jitte and Needle for a Forked Bolt and a Marsh Casualties, in order to manage decks that go wider than Grixis.  

My personal record in the event was 6-2, which I was happy enough with. My matches were as follows:

Round 1: Czech Pile (Win 2-0)

Round 2: Sultai Leovold (Win 2-0)

Round 3: Grixis Delver (Loss 0-2)

Round 4: Sneak and Show (Win 2-0)

Round 5: Sultai Leovold (Win 2-1)

Round 6: BG Dark Depths (Win 2-0)

Round 7: WB Dead Guy Ale (Win 2-0)

Round 8: Elves (Loss 0-2)

I only played the mirror match once, which was a pleasant surprise for me. I expected to play against it at least 2 or 3 times, and I don’t like playing the mirror match. I don’t think i’m particularly good at it and I don’t know exactly what I am doing wrong. I think I manage my resources too poorly, and don’t correctly use the information i’m getting from Gitaxian Probe to set myself up to pull ahead. I know that I simply need to play this matchup more, but I don’t really look forward to doing that. Realistically, though, I need to suck it up and get it done.

The rest of the field I played against seemed to be deck choices that are generally good against Grixis Delver, which weirdly, i’d prefer to play against than the mirror. My approach against the Deathrite Midrange decks of the format is to be as aggressive as possible so that even when things go poorly, Lightning Bolt can save the day. Furthermore, Gitaxian Probe can allow the Grixis player to set up their threats to play around the answers that the opponent’s have, and this can be a serious edge. On top of this, with the way my sideboard was configured, Grixis isn’t as unfavored in the post-board games, and Liliana goes a long way towards presenting too many threats to deal with. This plan worked out on both ends throughout the day.

Losing to Elves to end the day was a bummer, but based on how I built my deck I was a huge underdog in the matchup. In addition, I don’t think I played particularly well, so I feel like I let the team down in this round. I’m not certain that Elves is well-positioned, in general, but it does have an excellent matchup against Grixis, so I think I should be respecting it more in the future.

As a final note on the event, 7 or the 8 decks I played against had Deathrite Shaman, which is interesting at the very least. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising, but it is impressive how ubiquitous the card is at this point. I think my enjoyment would increase a bit if there were less Deathrite mirrors in the format at the moment, but I do understand how Deathrite functions as an integral piece to balancing Legacy.

Overall, it was a good event. I think I had the potential to do better than I did, and thus give us a better chance to make day 2, but I put too much pressure on myself sometimes. I will never stop singing the praises of these Team Constructed events, and I will always look to play in all of them that I can.