When I decided to start exploring Delver decks back when Top was banned it was overwhelming. As mentioned before in this article series, I knew I was going to start with Grixis because it is the defacto best Delver deck. Although I ended up sticking with it, sometimes I feel like the deck is a bit clunky and cantrip heavy for a Delver deck. Young Pyromancer generally takes some work in order to be a powerhouse (the ceiling is high, however). Cabal Therapy pretty much always requires Gitaxian Probe to do something meaningful. Although i’ve written about the power of Gitaxian Probe in the past, at its core it is still just a redraw. In addition to all of this, the mana base is pretty poor in the deck and generally only allows for players to play 2 Underground Seas, unless another land is added.

This is in stark contrast to when I started playing Legacy and RUG Delver was the Delver deck of choice. In essence, there is nothing clunky about RUG Delver. Just about every card costs 1 or 0 mana and has a meaningful effect. Tarmogoyf requires little to no effort in order to have a huge impact on the game. On top of that, its manabase is incredibly efficient, simply running 3 of each of the blue dual lands that support its spells. A lot of this is incredibly appealing, but unfortunately, RUG Delver just isn’t an optimal choice in this metagame.

When I was initially testing Delver decks, I tested a BUG variant that had many of the same appeals that RUG did, and was able to solve some of the problems of RUG:

BUG Delver Rich Cali 1st Delver of Secrets True-Name Nemesis Gurmag Angler Deathrite Shaman Tarmogoyf Misty Rainforest Underground Sea Verdant Catacombs Wasteland Tropical Island Polluted Delta Abrupt Decay Brainstorm Daze Fatal Push Force of Will Ponder Spell Pierce Stifle Dismember Flusterstorm Grafdigger's Cage Surgical Extraction Thoughtseize Marsh Casualties Leovold, Emissary of Trest Pithing Needle Dread of Night Submerge

This decklist is just chock full of interaction. Sporting 15 disruptive blue spells and 6 removal spells almost always allows this deck to mess with the opponent’s game plan. Being BUG allows this deck to play Deathrite Shaman without messing up the mana base. Despite the power level of an unchecked Young Pyromancer, this deck functions like RUG in that all of it’s creatures are just individually powerful with very little setup required. I really liked the notion of what this deck presented, but in the end, it was difficult to resist the allure of Grixis. One problem is that green doesn’t add a lot to the archetype anymore. Abrupt Decay, Tarmogoyf, and Leovold are good, but they’re still not better than having Lightning Bolt and Pyroblast. Grixis has access to just about everything that BUG gets, like Fatal Push (and it can stretch its mana base even further and play the green cards like Leovold), but it also gets the power and reach of Lightning Bolt. This is a huge boon to an aggressively-slanted deck like Delver. In the end, I was resigned to playing Grixis, even though I occasionally didn’t love the aforementioned aspects of it. I am not discounting the clear power of Grixis, but I simply wanted a more efficient, disruptive deck. Luckily for me, a Magic online player, SorboOne, has been piloting a version of Grixis that is akin to what i’m looking for:

Grixis Delver Rich Cali 1st True-Name Nemesis Gurmag Angler Delver of Secrets Deathrite Shaman Underground Sea Wasteland Scalding Tarn Polluted Delta Volcanic Island Tropical Island Lightning Bolt Daze Stifle Dismember Ponder Brainstorm Force of Will Spell Snare Spell Pierce Fatal Push Pyroblast Diabolic Edict Ancient Grudge Marsh Casualties Flusterstorm Kolaghan's Command Surgical Extraction Grafdigger's Cage 1 Forked Bolt Dread of Night Thoughtseize