I’ve been on a tear, with Delver decks, recently, going 17-3 over the course of my last five Dailies, going 4-0 with BURG and UWR, and putting up 3-1s with BUG, RUG, and an encore from BURG (which will be in the spotlight, for this article). I had a minor setback at my local store, going 2-2, but that was after playing eight straight rounds of Dailies; I think my brain used up it’s capacity for Magic for that particular day, by the time I started handling actual cardboard. To go off on a tangent, that last anecdote might make a good argument for why it’s so nice to have a bye or two; nine rounds is a LOT of Magic!
BURG Delver
Remember last week, when I gave this archetype a shot, and failed miserably? Not only did I fail, but I didn’t even get to capture the entire first round and most of the second round, my only two wins! I was in a very Delvery mood over the last few days, and played a whole bunch of Delver decks, as mentioned above. I got to run this one through two Dailies, to a 7-1 record, and feel like I’m getting the hang of things that I hadn’t done much of, in the past, like playing with Cabal Therapy and Young Pyromancer (just as individual cards, though they do look daaaaamn fine together). I feel like it always takes me a test run to getting used to playing with a new card, especially when the cards have the game-breaking power that they do in Legacy. One thing that I’m not 100% used to is effectively managing the manabase, as you may notice a few instances where I fetch sub-optimally. I would probably have similar fetching conundrums if I tried to pick up Esper Deathblade, as I haven’t played that archetype a whole lot, either, but I think this skill will improve through more repetitions with a greedy manabase, powered by Deathrite.
Apologies in advance if the pacing is a bit slow for the first round or two. I was having (and still am having) Xsplit issues, throughout the night, and I was trying to get them fixed. I think I sort of just give up after two rounds and stream with a slightly sub-optimal setup. I may try learning how to work Open Broadcaster Software to see if I have better results with that, but it does have a non-zero learning curve and I’ll need to set aside some time to figure it out. Alright, let’s get into it with my favorite Pyromancer deck!
Round One – “Young Frankenstein” (Grixis Pyromancer-Reanimator Hybrid)
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This is a pretty interesting list. I initially misidentified it as a Delver deck, though after looking back at the replay, I saw no Delvers in game one. If he’s on something close to Glenn’s list, that I linked, the Delvers are actually all in the board. I didn’t start the recording in time to catch tennisStar99’s first turn, but it was a Volcanic Island into Faithless Looting, discarding Grave Titan and Entomb. After using a Probe on my own first turn, I am able to identify what my opponent’s game plan is and lead off with a turn one Deathrite to shut off his Reanimate. I botch it a little bit, by not fetching Trop so I can actually use Deathrite to stop Reanimate, but I am not punished for it, since my mana-denial plan proves too strong (and by that, I really mean that he hit one land all game, and I had a Wasteland).
The second game is a bit more of a back-and-forth affair. There is a point in the match where I have a flipped Delver and a Pyromancer to his nothing, and I see his hand of Brainstorm and more nothing, and think I’m in good shape. Then he topdecks his own Pyromancer, Brainstorms into Delver, which is set to flip, and suddenly, he’s ahead! A strong Ponder reveals a pair of Deathrites which are able to brick-wall the remaining Elemental tokens, and start winning the game. I do something a little bit embarrassing with the Shamans as I’m about to win, but I luckily don’t pay for it.
Round Two – Burn
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I feel like this was a pretty winnable match that was thrown away. After taking the first game, there was a situation in game two where I Forced an Eidolon, pitching Daze, when my opponent had one mana available. The Force got hit with a Pyroblast, and created a situation where Daze would have been a blowout. A.) I should’ve anticipated Blasts after board, and B.) Probe was probably a better choice to pitch, because life payment aside, he didn’t have all that much of a hand left to look at. To give you an idea of how insane Eidolon is, and how heavily I should have prioritized countering it, it would go on to deal EIGHT points of damage to me and trade for a card, to boot! I thought I had a reasonable plan in game three, but just got a bit flooded.
Round Three – Elves
Advance Warning: Opponent goes AFK at fetchland crack (around 1:36) and doesn’t come back for over three minutes. Just in case you felt like skipping through that.
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Game one goes something like this: we kill all his dudes and run out of gas, he fires off a value Glimpse and develops a minor board presence, Natural Order, get ‘hoofed! In game two, we stop all the important spells via countermagic, discard, or a decoy (Delver to save Deathrite), then make a perfect Cabal Therapy soul read to get in for exactsies in the end. One interaction I really enjoyed is how flashing back Cabal Therapy with multiple Pyromancers in play will actually net you Elementals. Game three was awesome! Just watch it.
Round Four – Mono-Green 12-post
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There is nothing we can really do about a resolved Prime Time, in this matchup. He basically comes down, gains a crap ton of life off Glimmerpost, and unless we are lucky enough to have two bolts and two red sources before their next turn, they have eleventy billion mana and/or Eye of Ugin from the next Prime Time trigger, and we die. I didn’t feel like watching the process, so I saved us some time and scooped as soon as Prime Time resolved in game one. In game two, we get to see just how badly this deck gets ravaged by Wasteland (it’s badly enough that they need 3-4 Pithing Needles in their maindeck). We have him so terrified of Wasteland, that he names Waste for Pithing Needle after we’ve already Wasted him three times. He was THAT scared of my last remaining Wasteland. And then, I guess the fear must have carried over to the next game, because he ends up mulliganing (possibly in an attempt to find a Needle) and keeping an otherwise bad hand, just because it had Needle. We make him pay for it (despite a mini-fumble on my turn one fetch), and we get to see Edric do work. In the end, it really just comes down to a race against the clock.
One last bit, before I leave. Remember when we did that poll, two weeks ago, and some of you asked for Vintage? It’s on it’s way. Right now, I have a Ruby and an Emerald, and I could be acquiring a ‘Twister via trade, very soon! That’s the good news.. the bad news is the recent market panic from the announcement, this week, that Vintage Masters queues would be ending when the online M15 Prereleases start. The cost of acquiring the other six pieces of Power that I would need went up by about $200 in barely 24 hours. Throw in the upcoming V4 release, and you’ve got an incredibly volatile market, right now. I’m hoping that maybe the price will dip a bit more, when the dust settles, but getting Vintage on this blog might be a longer term project.
If you liked what you saw, here, catch Tim on his stream! His most common broadcasts are the 7:30pm and 11pm (EST) Dailies on Tue and Thu. twitch.tv/efil4zaknupome