So recently, i played 20 Magic Online Pauper Leagues with UB Delver. That amounts to 100 Matches played. I think 100 matches is a good point to put the deck down for at least a few weeks. To be honest, i was already growing tired of the deck during my last few leagues, which is reflected in the results. And while i won’t be playing the deck anymore, the data i have collected and ideas i have might still be useful to others, so here we are.

In the first part of this article, i’m going to talk about my approach to the deck and my general ideas. In the second part, we’re going to look at game win percentages depending on all sorts of factors. The third part is going to focus on the matchups i have played the most.

Part I – What about UB Delver?

(UB Delver 11/03/19)

There are many people who consider UB Delver the best deck in Pauper. Some say it’s not necessarily the best deck, but absolutely a contender. I belong in a third camp of people who believe it is not the best deck. It is a very good deck, no doubt, but outside of the W/x Midrange matchups, i think it gets outclassed by both Mono Blue Delver and UR Faeries, which are better against every other top deck in the format and notably also favoured in the mirror.

“Worse than UR Faeries” doesn’t say much of course. I’d say the main thing UB Delver has going for it is that it’s the quintessential Delver deck and plays incredibly intuitively, much more so than UR and Mono Blue. With UB Delver, the plan is always to smash face. You have efficient creatures and interaction and you try to squeeze the most damage you can out of each of them.

This leads us to two issues with the deck. The first is that UB Delver has practically no late game at all. Daze is of little use when your opponent has seven lands and Delver of Secrets does not fare well against Mulldrifters. You have Gush to generate card advantage, but this mainly serves to offset the downside of casting Foil for its alternate cost. UB Delver is very bad at trading; if your opponent’s cards are redundant, they can just attempt the same thing four times and by the third you’ll have run out of interaction. This is especially true for creatures; UB Delver is laughably bad at dealing with swarm strategies, which in this context even includes creature-heavy Boros Monarch draws. If you’re behind with UB Delver, it is very likely you are just going to lose.

The second issue is that for a deck that always wants to have at least one creature on the battlefield, UB Delver does not have enough creatures. Delver and Angler are amazing, but everything else you could play either doesn’t quite offer the same mana to damage rate as those two or only is situationally useful.

The stock list has Augur of Bolas as the tertiary creature. My issue is that i want a third threat and Augur just isn’t that. Augur is but a mediocre cantrip whenever the body isn’t needed for blocking or Edict protection. The card is phenomenal when the body is relevant though.

Of these two issues, only the second is an actual flaw with the deck. That’s right, i believe UB Delver, in its current form, is inherently flawed. However, the rest of the deck (the cards that aren’t in the tertiary creature slot) is so powerful that this is not too big of an issue. Still, it is a problem i would like to see fixed – preferably by someone else. Of course it’s also possible that my assessment of Augur is wrong and the card is useful against a big enough portion of the metagame (or i just play in a metagame where Augur is worse and it’s different for other players).

For the record, the list above is not what i would consider my definitive take on the deck. I don’t have that, sorry. I’m happy with almost everything about that list, but some aspects are still off. Let’s talk about the things that i do differently than others:

4 Gush

I think this is the second most important card in the deck, right behind Gurmag Angler. There are only very few instances where i don’t want to see Gush, but i’m constantly in situations where Gush would be my best draw by a wide margin. The deck is not particularly great at trading because it only ever trades one for one (at best!), so drawing a few additional cards is exactly what it needs to stay ahead most of the time.

0 Augur of Bolas main // 2 Stormbound Geist main

I think in the context of the decks i encountered while playing UB Delver, 0 Augur main is correct. I am not convinced Stormbound Geist is the solution though. It is entirely possible the solution is to just play 8 creatures and add some Ponders. Of the many things i have yet to try with the deck, this is probably topping the list.

1 Swamp

I really don’t think you need the second. We’re going to take a more comprehensive look at my data later, but my game win rate with Swamp in my opening hand is actually lower than both my overall game win rate and my game win rate with any black source in my opening hand, which is likely because having a fetch “turns on” Brainstorm. Sometimes, in longer games, not being able to fetch the second one can hurt, but i can’t remember more than one game i lost because of that.

0 Ash Barrens

This is actually something i was experimenting with in my last week of playing the deck. My most recent list (which was overall worse than the one posted above) had one copy of Ash Barrens. I don’t think it ever caused any issues. If i were to play the deck for another week, i would see if two copies cause issues.

1 Spell Pierce main

I liked this, but i don’t really think it’s worth elaborating on. It’s an extra counter. I tend to run a little more countermagic than most people in Delver decks. This could also be a Dispel, but i like the ability to hit Curse of the Pierced Heart, Journey to Nowhere and Chainer’s Edict. There are other things, but those are the main arguments for Pierce over Dispel main.

A random assortment of removal spells

I like Ghastly Demise for costing one mana, Agony Warp for hitting Guardian of the Guildpact and both for hitting Thermo-Alchemist. Echoing Decay clears tokens and Disfigure was Moment of Craving in my latest list. Snuff Out costs no mana which is sick, but a ton of life which can be… suboptimal. Black decks have historically had a wide range of useable removal spells and this deck is no exception. One option that i haven’t tried is Soul Reap, which i’ve had cast against me a few times.

Ill-Gotten Inheritance

This card is good against decks that are good at killing your creatures but not very good at killing you. In other words: UB Control decks. It is entirely possible that this card is not good enough, but i did like using it against black decks that were prepared to take down all of my Anglers on sight. If you’re not convinced, go back to 3 Geist / 3 Augur, they fill the same role. It is notably not a good card against Burn because you’re often forced to Gush early and hold up countermagic. You only get to cast it late and don’t get enough lifegain out of it.

Part II – Numbers

If you’re interested in the raw data of all 275 opening hands i drew, i have a google spreadsheet for you. I hope you don’t mind that it’s only the one page with everything; i also have a version that has more than fifty individual sheets that filter out all kinds of things, but we’re going to look at all the numbers i extracted from that anyway.

Matches Played: 100

Record: 67-33 (67%)

Games Played: 246

Record: 153-92-1 (62%)

Preboard: 57-42-1 (57%)

Postboard: 96-50 (66%)

That’s not too bad. The preboard game win rate (GWR from now) being so much lower than the postboard GWR is interesting. As mentioned above, my list always has a creature main that i only want in about 40% of my matches. There’s also the fact that i have pretty bad cards vs. Burn (Snuff Out, Probe) and control decks (removal). Considering that in many matchups, i get to swap out cards that are pretty much dead, it’s not surprising that sideboarding works out better for me than for my opponents.

Mulligans: 29 (11%)

Record on 6 Cards: 15-12 (56%)

Record on 5 Cards: 1-0 (100%)

That is one consistent deck. Knowing how likely to win a six card hand is certainly helps in evaluating close seven card hands. The lone five card hand is only included for comedic effect.

On the Play: 71-43 (62%)

On the Draw: 82-50 (62%)

This is actually surprising in an aggressive deck that seeks to utilise Daze. As we will see later, this seems to be matchup-dependent.

Record with 0 Lands: 1-1 (50%)

Record with 1 Land: 35-22-1 (60%)

Record with 2 Lands: 63-26 (71%)

Record with 3 Lands: 39-25 (61%)

Record with 4 Lands: 15-17 (47%)

Record with 5 Lands: 1-1 (50%)

Now if you remember my GWR on six cards being 56%, you should notice that i’ve been too loose with my seven card hands – a four land hand is considerably less likely to win than a six card hand, so i should have been more willing to mulligan them. Interestingly, Brainstorm does not seem to be much of a factor here (7-7 with four lands plus Brainstorm in hand; all of those hands had fetches to shuffle after Brainstorm).

It’s also worth pointing out that three land hands did slightly better for me than one landers, so maybe someone who’s better at math than i am can figure out how many lands this deck should run to maximise the number of opening hands with two lands while minimising the number of hands with zero or more than three lands. Of course, if that experiment came to the conclusion that the deck should run extra lands, those extra lands might cause the deck to draw too many lands in the mid and late game, changing up these numbers again.

A case could also be made that the deck runs too many lands, seeing as it draws more than two lands at a higher rate than it draws fewer than two. My guess is that either 17 or 18 is correct.

Record with Island: 115-62-1 (65%)

Record with Black Source: 100-61 (62%)

Record with Swamp: 21-16 (57%)

Record with Fetch, no Island:37-27 (57%)

Turns out Island is the best land in the deck. Who would have thought? The more useful piece of information here is that drawing Swamp seems to be worse than drawing a fetch, likely because fetching makes Brainstorm better and having strong Brainstorms is worth more than having untapped lands. This is just a guess though.

Record with Island + Black Source: 82-43 (57%)

Record with Island + Black Source (2 Lands): 35-12 (74%)

Record with Island + Black Source (3 Lands): 31-14 (69%)

Why is the GWR for Island + Black Source overall so low? Because a quarter of those hands had four lands. We’re going to look at individual spells soon, but it’s worth pointing out that Dispel is the only spell that a igher GWR than the combination of Island + Black Source, and that includes sideboard cards. Mana is important! (For the record, i only had Dispel in two opening hands and happened to win both games. Totally reliable data.)

This really makes me want to perfect this deck’s manabase.

Let’s talk spells:

Record with Creature: 114-63-1 (64%)

Record with Threat: 87-52-1 (62%)

Record with No Creature: 39-29 (57%)

Record with Delver: 48-28 (63%)

Record with Angler: 50-30-1 (62%)

Record with Augur: 24-9 (73%)

Record with Spellfist: 5-6 (45%)

Record with Geist: 22-10 (68%)

So one issue here is that the GWR for hands with creatures is inflated by Augur of Bolas and Stormbound Geist, each of which i only keep for half my postboard games. As i said in the beginning of the article, when you want Augur, it really is phenomenal. I’m fairly certain Augur’s record would be worse if i had kept them in the main deck – it surely wouldn’t be better.

Spellfist indicates that i’d probably rather have something in the deck that’s a 9/10 40% of the time than something that’s a 4/10 90% of the time – one will win some games, the other will always fall just short.

Moving on to draw spells:

Gush: 45-26 (63%)

Probe: 60-32 (65%)

Preordain: 64-38 (63%)

Brainstorm: 82-42 (66%)

Nothing stands out here except that Brainstorm is good. UB Delver is very similar to Tribe in that it actually gets to make good use of Brainstorm plus fetchlands. In UR Faeries, you want to fetch early and cast your cantrips late. In Tribe and UB Delver, however, you want to cast your cantrips early anyway and having one mana each on turn one and two is not significantly worse than having two mana on turn two.

Countermagic:

Daze: 53-32 (62%)

Counterspell: 37-20 (65%)

Foil: 42-32 (57%)

Dispel: 2-0 (100%)

Pierce: 11-4 (73%)

Counterspell having a better record than Daze might be the one piece of data that surprised me the most out of everything i put together. The numbers are so close and the sample size so small that maybe this is just variance, but still, i would have expected Daze to be much more important. It’s also good to know just how bad Foil is; if i were to keep playing the deck, i would go down to two copies and add another Counterspell instead.

Spell Pierce both has low sample size and the “sideboard card factor”; it’s an inconsistent card, but it doesn’t get to “miss” because it’s only in the deck when it’s good.

Removal: 75-50 (60%)

Opening hands with removal are below average. Not as bad as hands with Foil, but still below average. How is this a thing?

I would try moving some removal spells to the sideboard and see how that works out.

Part III – Matchups

Burn

Matches: 10-4 (71%)

Preboard: 8-6 (57%)

Postboard: 14-5 (74%)

Play: 10-6 (63%)

Draw: 12-5 (71%)

I started out 8-0 in this matchup. Three of my losses were against the same player. I was not happy about that. But then i went through my replays and i must admit that i was extremely lucky to be 8-0 in the first place and i honestly don’t think UB Delver is favoured against Burn. If the Burn player doesn’t let Daze trade for cards and makes sure to not get killed by Delver or Angler, the UB Delver player will inevitably run out of countermagic and lose.

Sideboarding:

Bring Augurs and all countermagic, cut non-Delver/Angler creatures, Probes and Snuff Out. Ill-Gotten Inheritance is a trap, it’s worse than Delver.

Flicker Tron

Matches: 7-1 (88%)

Preboard: 6-2 (75%)

Postboard: 9-3 (75%)

Play: 9-1 (90%)

Draw: 6-4 (60%)

UB Delver is very good at punishing stumbling opponents and Tron decks tend to stumble. Apparently being on the play is good here. When playing against Flicker Tron, try to think of all your cards as burn spells and figure out how to deal the most damage with them.

Sideboarding:

I bring Dispel, Pierce and Relic. I board out removal. Whether i have Geist or Augur in my deck depends on whether or not they have removal. If they do, Geist is better; if they don’t, a three mana 2/2 doesn’t cut it.

Marauder Tron

Matches: 1-2 (33%)

Preboard: 0-3 (0%)

Postboard: 2-2 (50%)

Play: 1-4 (20%)

Draw: 1-1 (50%)

I did not actually realise i had such a bad record in this matchup. It makes sense though. The blue cards in Flicker Tron are the cards that are bad against UB Delver; Marauder Tron’s end game might not be as powerful as Flicker Tron’s, but it gets there so much more easily. Between Wretched Gryff, Fangren Marauder, Ulamog’s Crusher and Haunted Fengraf, Marauder Tron is pretty good at overloading UB Delver’s interaction.

Sideboarding:

Both Geist and Augur are bad here. All removal that isn’t Snuff Out is bad. Relic of Progenitus and Spell Pierce are not awful.

UB Delver

Matches: 7-2 (78%)

Preboard: 6-3 (67%)

Postboard: 8-3 (73%)

Play: 5-3 (63%)

Draw: 9-3 (75%)

The mirror is decided by board presence. Between the removal spells and Stormbound Geist, Delver is very easy to deal with, so Angler often ends up being the deciding factor. Your goal should be to prevent your opponent from having more Anglers than you. Resolving more copies of Gush helps, but i generally don’t like fighting over draw spells here, i’m usually keeping my countermagic to play to the board.

Sideboarding:

Geist is good, Augur is bad. Snuff Out is also bad. Dispel isn’t and Ill-Gotten Inheritance is a consideration depending on how hard you expect your opponent to grind. Boarding out Delvers if you bring Inheritance is not unreasonable.

Boros Monarch

Matches: 3-4 (43%)

Preboard: 3-4 (43%)

Postboard: 7-6 (54%)

Play: 6-1 (86%)

Draw: 4-9 (31%)

So apparently being on the play is important here. Not that that’s very helpful information. I only won one die roll, otherwise the matchup might look a little better for me. Gurmag Angler is by far the most important card in this matchup and pretty much the only reason you ever win games. But even if you do have Angler, they can still swarm you. Thraben Inspector and Alchemist’s Vial are incredibly annoying.

Sideboarding:

Geist is good. Augur is bad. That’s pretty much it. I think i shave two copies of Daze to make room for Nausea effects. I’ve heard that Annul is good here, but i don’t have Annul since i don’t like it against anything else (that sees significant play). Playing zero copies might be wrong.

Boros Bully

Matches: 2-0 (100%)

Preboard: 1-1 (50%)

Postboard: 3-0 (100%)

Play: 2-1 (67%)

Draw: 2-0 (100%)

If i’m being honest, i don’t quite know why i’m 2-0 against this. Probably because they’re slightly worse at dealing with Delver and don’t generate as much cardadvantage?

Sideboarding:

Same as Monarch

UB Alchemy

Matches: 2-0 (100%)

Preboard: 1-0-1 (50%)

Postboard: 3-1 (75%)

Play: 3-0-1 (75%)

Draw: 1-1 (50%)

UB Flicker

Matches: 2-2 (50%)

Preboard: 2-2 (50%)

Postboard: 4-3 (57%)

Play: 4-2 (67%)

Draw: 2-3 (40%)

UB Talisman

Matches: 1-0 (100%)

Preboard: 1-0 (100%)

Postboard: 1-0 (100%)

Play: 1-0 (100%)

Draw: 1-0 100%)

You just do Delver things in all these matchups. You lose if they have too much removal or resolve Mulldrifters.

Sideboarding:

Geist and Augur are both good, so is Inheritance. Removal is bad and countermagic is good. If i had to pick one, i’d go with Spell Pierce over Dispel because of Chainer’s Edict.

Mono Blue Delver

Matches: 4-2 (67%)

Preboard: 3-3 (50%)

Postboard: 7-4 (64%)

Play: 7-4 (64%)

Draw: 3-3 (50%)

4-2 against Mono Blue is unreasonable. You should not be winning this matchup. Gurmag Angler does not offset your significantly worse mana, especially not when you’re up against four copies of Snap. It is much easier for them to deal with all your creatures than it is for you to deal with all their creatures. Angler is great as long as it’s on the board (and not enchanted with Narcolepsy), but both getting and keeping it there can be hard. The same goes for Delver, only that they get to counter it with Spellstutter Sprite. Stormbound Geist is very good here.

Sideboarding:

Nothing is particularly good here, nothing is particularly bad. I tend to go down to three Anglers (they’re bad against bounce spells) to make room for one or two Augurs because they’re good at blocking Ninja of the Deep Hours. I wouldn’t count on Nausea not getting eaten with Spellstutter Sprite.

Bogles

Matches: 3-2 (60%)

Preboard: 3-2 (60%)

Postboard: 4-3 (57%)

Play: 3-2 (60%)

Draw: 4-3 (57%)

I think Bogles is favoured against UB. The deck is susceptible to variance though. I think the new lists that go down on creatures are worse in this matchup. Each game, you have to decide whether to fight over their creatures or the auras. If you choose wrong, you tend to lose. Sometimes you can race certain enchantments if they don’t have trample. If they don’t have first strike, you might be able to trade in combat.

Sideboarding:

Cut all the removal. Bring Augur, countermagic and Nausea. Nausea will likely not do anything, but the gesture counts.

Tribe

Matches: 5-0 (100%)

Preboard: 3-2 (60%)

Postboard: 7-0 (100%)

Play: 3-2 (60%)

Draw: 7-0 (100%)

My sideboarding in this matchup is practically non-existant, but i do much better postboard anyway. This is probably because UB Delver already has all the tools to combat Tribe, you just need to know what you’re looking for. The matchup is fairly simple: Don’t let them kill you. If they have Tribe on the table, keep up as much mana as possible. If they have Seeker of the Way or Tethmos High Priest, preferably don’t let them resolve. If they have Augur, ignore it.

Sideboarding:

Bring Augur over Geist.

Mono Black Control

Matches: 1-1 (50%)

Preboard: 1-1 (50%)

Postboard: 2-2 (50%)

Play: 1-2 (33%)

Draw: 2-1 (67%)

Corrupt Control

Matches: 2-1 (67%)

Preboard: 1-2 (33%)

Postboard: 3-1 (75%)

Play: 1-1 (50%)

Draw: 3-2 (60%)

These matchups are pretty much strictly worse than UB Control. They have the same relevant cards (Edicts), but they have much better mana and even more removal. In the case of Corrupt Control, they also have massive amounts of lifegain. Pretty rough. If you can win, it’s by playing the tempo game.

Sideboarding:

Augur, Geist and Inheritance are all good. Extra countermagic is good and, depending on their configuration, Relic can be decent. Removal is mostly useless. If you browse my spreadsheet, you might notice that i had double Snuff Out in my opening hand on a mulligan to six against Corrupt Control. Don’t let that happen to you.

Orzhov Midrange

Matches: 2-2 (50%)

Preboard: 3-1 (75%)

Postboard: 3-3 (50%)

Play: 2-1 (67%)

Draw: 4-3 (57%)

As with Boros Monarch, i only won one die roll here. Overall, i think this matchup is even worse than Boros, but Delver is slightly better against most of these lists because they have fewer flyers. Playing “protect the queen” with Gurmag Angler is harder here than against Boros because they tend to have more than just Journey to Nowhere to deal with Angler, but as with Mono Black Control variants, you have to play the tempo game here.

Sideboarding:

Geist is pretty good here. Most lists have Edicts, which makes Augur good. Although i did have a game where i cast four Augurs and only picked up one card. If that happens, Augur is bad. Inheritance might be good, i haven’t gotten to try that. Spell Pierce is good and Dispel can do work. Depending on their configuration, Relic can be good. I usually only board out some removal to make room for extra creatures.

Elves

Matches: 1-3 (25%)

Preboard: 1-3 (25%)

Postboard: 2-3 (40%)

Play: 2-4 (33%)

Draw: 1-2 (33%)

This matchup is awful. Elves does not care about Daze. Elves has enough relevant creatures to overload your removal. To make matters worse, i have not quite figured out the matchup; i can’t tell you how to aggressively to use your removal, i.e. whether you should take down their mana creatures or to wait for their pay-off cards (Huntmaster, Timberwatch Elf, Wellwisher, Essence Warden, Elvish Vanguard…). I feel like your best bet is to hope they stumble if you aim your removal at their mana creatures, but i’m not making any guarantees. You get Neausea after sideboarding, but that’s not nearly as impactful as you would like it to be.

Sideboarding:

Daze is pretty bad, extra removal is where it’s at. Augur and Geist are both bad, although Augur is probably less bad because it might find removal.

Part IV – Going Forward

What would my next list look like? I would try this:

(deckstats.net link)

This is what i would play if i were to play a League right now. I haven’t put too much thought into reconfiguring the removal suite, so i didn’t really come to any conclusions. The maindeck Spell Pierce could also be Prohibit or another Counterspell and the removal in the sideboard might not be worth it; i would probably try two copies of Annul in those slots at some point. And maybe an Augur, Geist or Inheritance in the remaining Spell Pierce slot in the sideboard. But only if i went back to Annul.

Thanks for reading!

j