glad that you touched on among the most important points of probe: it is sorcery speed and takes the place of countermagic. If you draw one of a main phase Gush, you have to use it immediately to gain it's filtering value, otherwise, it's a dead card until your next turn. If you are digging for countermagic at instant speed, Probe is completely dead. If you Preordain and see Probe, you are actually losing card selection. The inclusion of Probe over oft-omitted Mystical Tutor is difficult for me to understand.

It goes without saying that EE is a much more versatile card than meltdown. It has utility against Dredge, Merfolk, Belcher, and, if you have space for it, the Mirror and the Mentor match-up.

definitely Pat Chapin

Would we play Delver if Insectile Aberration didn't have flying and the card didn't pitch?

not rhetorical. How you answer that is probably how good you think the card is.

This trimester was exceptional. Can't wait to see the deck choices for the final third.

there are few dredge top-8s precisely because of the hate. The point could be made that Bomberman has few appearances without everyone dedicating 4 sideboard slots to it. That's a significantly worse performance than finishing outside top-8 while being metagamed for.

the power of this deck are it's consistently powerful openings. Few games will you be without Cavern or Thalia or Abolisher or Chalice or Stony Silence or a Wasteland effect. Only a quarter of your games vs blue will you be without Cavern and will your opponent have a Force of Will. Because of Confidant, you have the draw engine Shops lacks. Because of the flat mana curve, all spells are playable by turn 2 or 3, meaning you can play your pieces in pretty much whatever order happens to be situationally ideal. Terra Nova has a significantly more linear line of development. The parts here are fairly interchangeable because your Lodestone Golem costs 2 and can be played through countermagic with Cavern or Abolisher.

I do think this deck benefits significantly from its small place in the metagame. Dredge would have an extremely high win rate if it was played as infrequently as this. Vintage certainly has fine answers for decks like these, but their low share of the metagame means answers to them do not show up much in sideboards. If the deck is temporarily or anecdotally successful, I would expect its performance to shrink back a bit if that success leads to a larger metagame share. Meanwhile, everyone has sideboard plans for Shops and Delver, yet they still perform consistently well.

costs as much as gifts

non-creature spell != instant or sorcery spell. Negate is far more useful as a counter than this, and it sees little play.

Surgical Extraction requires another card to function, but that card can anything from a long list of obscurities such as Lightning Bolt, Abrupt Decay, Force of Will, Thoughtseize, Mana Drain, Dismember. It is a free instant without any color requirements (not, say, a 5WW creature). But by all means, let's continue lampooning it. God forbid you ever throw it away stripping out Force of Wills or Mental Missteps.

Those cards have general use and work independently of each other, unlike Elesh Norn or Sulfur Elemental

Abrupt Decay + Surgical Extraction is great against Mentor decks without any other threat. EE or Echoing Truth can clean up any remaining tokens.

Answers that aren't already Vintage playable are not good answers.

I believe Delver is still very important to the build for the reasons Will stated and the threat it poses in Shops match ups.

Besides Delver's omission, I find Ryan, Dave and Steve's list well designed, certainly far more so than "big mana" or more combo-y builds. Mentor is a tank, it is an incredibly slot-efficient threat and as such can soak up the opponent's cards and card slots. Building too much around it negates this advantage, the same way that Skullclamp and Fastbond were never ideal in RUG Delver lists. Gush is the ideal Mentor card the same way it was the ideal Pyromancer card: it's a free draw spell. Drawing into mana, including artifact mana, goes against the ideals of a Gush deck. And ultimately, UR Delver, RUG Delver, UWr Delver or UW Mentor, are all Gush decks, not Mentor/Pyromancer/Delver decks. The archetype is Gush aggro-control (both aggro and control roles at once) as well as Gush aggro/control (either aggro or control, changing gears in match when appropriate). The specific threats and colors are secondary if the deck is well-constructed. The fascinating thing is that Mentor kills so fast, and combos with any non-creature spell, essentially splicing Lightning Bolt onto everything you play, that it gives Gush aggro-control the ability to even choose the combo role. With a Mentor out, a pilot can legitimately combo out in a single turn, in a way that same pilot never would be able to do with Pyromancer.

Mentor has the ability to add the combo role to the archetype, but only, I believe, if Delver is kept around. Without Delver, the ability to play the aggro role is very much diminished. Mentor can be thrown out early, but against traditional combo-control, especially against Gifts,  tapping out to play Mentor turn 3 (after Gushing, perhaps), puts one in a very vulnerable position during blue combo's critical turns. Pyromancer did not have this problem for the simple reason that he cost 2, instead of 3. One could play Pyromancer, Gush, create a token, and have an untapped land, holding up Pyroblast, Spell Pierce or Flusterstorm. That can't be done with Mentor.

If one is more or less resolved not to tap out to play Mentor, an early Gush sets back Mentor's arrival by two or three turns, most likely. That's absolutely fine if the pilot can maintain the control role until that time. Mentor can do Pyromancer's damage in a fraction of the time, and so the overall clock is not diminished. However, early game threats like Delver and Pyromancer helped UR and RUG Gush decks establish and maintain the control role. Having the threat consumed the opponent's resources, or forced them to play into counters. Without on-board threats, opponents can wait out control, sort of like LSV did in the VSL match. A mere Delver knocking away for three damage a turn makes it much harder to sit around and wait, and actually strengthens the control role of the deck.

It seems likely that without Mentor, Gush decks were moving towards dropping Delver anyway. The card had become a bit maligned as it became clear Pyromancer was the more important threat in the deck. Dropping Delver now remains a mistake. The simple interaction of an unflipped Delver and a fetchland is a legitimately valuable early game play. The increased casting cost of Mentor relative to Pyromancer makes having Delver's inexpensive threat even more important, not less. I hope Dave and Steve's decks will prove me dumb and wrong on this, but I'm not yet convinced.

Hypothetical changes relative to Steve's deck would be

-1 Mystical Tutor
-1 Dig Through Time
-1 Monastery Mentor

+3 Delver of Secrets

Dr Shay,
Two scenarios arose yesterday where you Gush into a fetchland or with a fetchland in hand. In both cases, you played the fetchland rather than replay a Volcanic Island. Clearly you value the deck thinning the fetchland provides, and the protection against a random Strip Mine from the opponent. The alternative line also has its advantages; you limit the information your opponent has about your hand by replaying one of the lands you picked up. Your line is clearly superior against decks that run Wasteland, but I wonder if you consider it just to be better overall or by default, or whether the better line is situational.

In addition to the deck choices, I am quite interested to see sideboards, as they arguably more greatly reflect what the players themselves anticipate from their opponents.

In particular, it will be interesting to see to what extent people sideboard for Monastery Mentor instead of Young Pyromancer. I anticipate Electrickery will disappear, for example.

Monastery Mentor has numerous advantages over Pyromancer in the Shops match-up.

These include:

• Being able to pump and trade with Lodestone Golem
• Being able to pump and destroy Assembly-Workers
• Having tokens able to pump and trade with Assembly workers
• Generating tokens off 0 cmc Moxen means that Workshop's threshold for stopping sorcery speed token production and pumping is an additional sphere-effect.
  
• Generating tokens off 0 cmc Moxen means that Tangle Wire and Smokestacks are also less effective
• Taking such advantage of artifact mana and Sensei's Divining Top that it behooves Shops to play Null Rod, reducing the viability of Steel Hellkite and Powder Keg as good answers.
  

Also, Mentor Decks will have more total Noncreature spells than Pyromancer decks had Sorcery and Instant spells, meaning they simply have more spells with which to generate tokens.

to be fair, Pikula has consistently made some very good metagame deck choices.

3x Dack deserves at least one Notion Thief, if not two.

it's hard to take this league too seriously when only 2 of the 34 decks so far have been a Shops variant.

I think the Black Lotus into Trygon play g1 was what decided the match considering you split the post-sideboard games. You ended up tapping out for Young Pyromancer and Trygon. Trygon traded with his Delver and he bolted your Pyromancer. If you had used Lotus to just play pyromancer and pass the turn with mana up, yes you would have taken damage from Delver, but if he had tried to bolt Pyromancer, you could not only defend it, but generate tokens in the process.

the Jace idea is ridiculous. If it's on top of your library, just use his brainstorm ability.

Oath is at <10% of the metagame, and I don't see any manifest somethingsomething card being half as good.

This last sentence implies that he made that play on his opponent's turn, meaning DT wouldn't work. If it was his turn and the scenario you describe, he could just DT into Will and win.

Interestingly, Mental Misstep probably becomes both more necessary and less effective the more run it gets in various decks.

Smmenen, I see that in your VSL list you have cut a Misdirection for a third Dig Through Time, relative to your Season 1 playoffs list. This assuming direct conversion to Dig Through Time from the now restricted Treasure Cruise.

I was wondering if this change had to do with your views on Dig Through Time vs. Treasure Cruise, as you have maintained the same total drawing power from your now four delve spells. Currently your list has 3+2+2+2 = 9 draw from the delve mechanic, equivalent to the three Treasure Cruises you ran before restriction. Obviously this is a superficial comparison, as your draw/card ratio is down from 3:1 to 2.25:1, while your total mana cost more than triples.

Or does this change have more to with the decline in value of the second Misdirection? Perhaps something to do with a decline in Abrupt Decay? Perhaps the SB Tabernacle of Pendrell Vale strengthen you (albeit very slightly) in the Oath matchup to an extent you feel misdirecting their Abrupt Decays is no longer such an important tact. Perhaps the increased ability of Dig Through Time to find Cages is compensation for less ability to protect the Cages? Perhaps a combination of small factors in the Oath matchup make you more confident weakening the specific Cage/Abrupt Decay/Misdirection/Trygon battle for stronger overall positioning?

I see that earlier you had Snapcaster Mages rather than the 3 Dig Through Times. Was the second Misdirection still the cut that enabled this?

I was wondering what your thought process regarding this change was, if you are willing to share.

4/5 for


pay 4, draw a non-land card. sounds pretty good

vampiric, demonic, mystical, merchant scroll, time walk = 5 spells, 3 instant speed time walk tutors
chance of drawing at least one naturally in first 9 cards = 57%
average cc of total time walk package = 2 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 = 3.20

burning wish x4 + mystical  = 5 spells, 0 instant speed time walk tutors.
chance of drawing at least one naturally in first 9 cards = 57%
average cc of total package = 4x4 + 5 = 4.20


Not sure the consistency and avoidance of black is worth the significantly more expensive casting cost, which slows down the combo by a turn. That turn also represents another card drawn, which means the black tutor method is probably more consistent. I would also argue that Vamp and Demonic have more utility than Burning Wish, outside of the combo.

Gifts Ungiven has structural versatility in a way that many combo decks have to work hard to design. It is a tutor that also generates card advantage, and is fairly unique in that regard. The ability to find multiple cards to solve whatever problem your opponent has presented you is extremely powerful, and something that combo-control lacked before Gifts unrestriction. Gifts is a pretty fundamental broken blue spell. Grave hate is not a a stone wall that needs to be smashed through, just a closed window which needs to be opened for a single turn so the Gifts pilot can combo off. A Gifts pile with a solution to hate and other broken spells threatens to win the game now by opening the window, or win the game at any point in the future by doing whatever broken things your opponent gifted you instead of hate-window-lifters.

I think this discussion is valuable because understanding the Delver archetype's Treasure Cruise-era dominance (~30% of the top 32 at the Vintage Championship) in combination with its success through 2014 overall is crucial for guidance as to how the archetype will approach 2015, specifically Monastery Mentor.

Stormanimagus's assertion that there are a lot of sub-optimal Shops pilots, and his comment that Delver in the Treasure Cruise-era became the Shops of blue decks does seem like an insightful analogue. Many of the newest Delver pilots came to the archetype because of its Khans boost in power level. This naturally lowers the average level of understanding Delver pilots had both of their deck (which reflects in sub-optimal pilots) and of the role of their deck in the metagame and in match-ups (which reflects in sub-optimal pilots and in potentially sub-optimal deck construction and positioning going forward).

Steve's primer, which I've read, in some ways is far more valuable after Treasure Cruise's restriction than it was beforehand. The card-drawing power of Treasure Cruise flooded the deck with card advantage to such an extent that it could afford sub-optimal pilots, sub-optimal construction, and sub-optimal positioning.

Assessing the extent of and reasons for the archetype's success is going to be crucial as Delver pilots decide how to adjust for Monastery Mentor. There will be decks that will abuse Mentor, just like there are decks that abuse Gush. Delver in many ways became the Gush deck, despite not using the card to do anything broken. Storm's argument seems to be that Mentor will be optimized in a list that breaks it, presumably with Diving Tops, artifact mana, maybe Hurkyll's to combo-out. Kevin Cron's Mentor list, which he posted several weeks ago, is one effective example. It is not, however, immediately clear that the broken approach to Mentor is the best approach. Mentor is such a compact threat, both in terms of cards and mana. It costs the same amount as Tinker or Vault + Key, but is half the number of cards and thus never has a dead half. Because of Mentor's fast clock and the way in which its tokens give that clock resiliency even if the Mentor itself is removed, Mentor is a strategic threat of a sort quite unlike Young Pyromancer.

The strategic value and versatility of Mentor means it may be ideal for Delver, ideal in a "wrong shell" and coupled with the "wrong cards," as Stormanimagus put it. Treating Mentor sub-optimally is a trade-off for flexibility, and Delver is an archetype which is ultimately successful, I believe, precisely because it trades raw power for role versatility.

to a much lesser extent, I think the presumed shift from Cruise to Dig Through Time has subtle effects on Delver's deck construction. Dig supports silver bullet answers in a way Cruise did not, which means Delver might be able to fight threats post-resolution in ways it did not previously. I think there may now be a real choice between fighting over a monster before or after resolution, whereas the pre-restriction world of 3x-4x Cruise made the latter option definitively better. With Dig and Mentor, Delver players may also find themselves shifting to white removal. The sum of these three things I think significantly repositions those Delver decks that choose to incorporate them in a way that may increase raw power at the cost of tempo and role flexibility.

if you want infinite turns with a two card combo, half of which is restricted, just use vault key?

tasigur is much better by himself than SGM