Topic: DRS BUG - Creature Mix

[msg67183]

His Delver opponent wasn't on Misstep/Bolt

My Delver opponent had all the nuts and bolts so to speak. Maybe I just got lucky, only more testing will tell. My list has gone through changes since I last posted it:

Sultai Tempo 


Mana (22):

2 Tropical Island 

2 Underground Sea

3 Misty Rainforest 

3 Polluted Delta 

2 Verdant Catacombs 

2 Wasteland 

1 Island 

1 Forest 

1 Swamp 

Strip Mine 

Black Lotus 

Mox Sapphire 

Mox Jet 

Mox Emerald 


Creatures/ Threats (18):

4 Deathrite Shaman 

4 Baleful Strix 

4 Snapcaster Mage 

3 Trygon Predator  

2 Edric, Spymaster of Trest 

Time Walk 


Counterspells/ Disruption (15):

4 Force of Will 

4 Mental Misstep 

2 Spell Pierce 

1 Steel Sabotage 

4 Abrupt Decay 


Tutor/ Draw (5):

Ancestral Recall 

Brainstorm 

Treasure Cruise 

Demonic Tutor 

Vampiric Tutor 


Sideboard:

2 Steel Sabotage 

2 Yixlid Jailer 

2 Extirpate 

2 Pernicious Deed 

2 Scavenging Ooze 

2 Null Rod 

2 Swan Song 

1 Notion Thief 

Baleful Strix has been an all star in the list, it acts as a flying Bob with Edric, and it has immediate effect on the board by replacing itself, it also keeps Griselbrand at bay.
The basics combined with main deck Trygons, Strixes, Sabotages, Decays and Deed, the Workshop matchup is laughable.
So far my list has only lost one match and that was against the great Brian Kelly on a weird Tasigur Cobra Gush deck after a close three games and me making a misplay.
All in all I really enjoy playing this deck and I feel it's pretty strong for the meta.

[Samoht]

Sample sizes are not even close to getting near a representative amount of indicating the deck's quality. We also can't even know who the opponents are or what their builds are, so we are looking at a lot of raw data that is not really applicable to evaluate. I look at the list and see a BUG Fish deck that hasn't done much to avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors. The deck as presented will either match up with what the opponent is doing and crush inconsolably or have the wrong cards and be crushed. If you can keep this up for another 40-50 matches against tournament caliber decks then I think you might have something. I just don't see that as being realistic. It's ok to lose a game/match, you can not win them all.

[xouman]

@Samoht: with the restriction of TC and the creation of Monastery Mentor UR delver should be less played, and BUG can improve again. It's not that important to create a totally new BUG deck, but to take the dust of the old deck now that delver is less played.

Baleful seems a good idea and it's really nice against MUD or mentor. However against griselbrand is only good as long as it stays in play, and I'm afraid that oath has lots of cards to deal with it (but nevertheless they have to get rid of strix in order to win).

[youhavenogame]

The mana base seems akward. I'm not even sure if basics help against Shops, or rather are a liability. So much more easy for them to keep you off a certain color, or double blue for Snap + flashback Power. In every other matchup it is just a plain disadvantage, as no one attacks your land anyway. Moxes are the basics of this deck and with effectively 6 basiclands I'm sure you are going to screw yourself more often than necessary.

Then, you call the deck tempo but only run 2 Wastelands. Why? Wasteland is such an integral and important part of this deck. The deck is already quite random without a sufficient amount of cantrips (even though you solve that with Strix) and by only running 3/5 you are ruining your chances to have your important out to Bazaar, Shop or just screwing all these greedy variance 3+ color piles.

Talking about Strix, I'm not fully convinced. It's a cute addition and at least pitches to Force, but it is not the same kind of gas as Confidant. This decks only draw engines are Edric and Snapcaster flashbacking Recall? That's really low numbers compared to any other deck in the format. A way to mitigate a lower number of draw engines would be winning fast, but this deck is def the least capable of winning fast and once games go long you are behind against opposing draw engines. While I'm not opposed to cutting Confidant out of this, just going with Strix and Edric doesn't look like it solves any problem the deck had previously.

Your SB needs a lot of work. Not sure what you are trying to beat with this, but I foresee failure. What is the point of all these Steel Sabotages? You are not going to cast them on the draw against Shops anyway, and if you do it's rarely to counter something but rather to return something. I also don't see how they can come in against random artifact mana + Tinker + Vaultkey, even though they can be nice against Belcher and other random decks.
Just 4 pieces of hate against Dredge? Although it's possible to beat Dredge just with DRS and Wasteland, you would need a lot of dice rolling in your favor to get to that point. And while we are at it, do you really think Extirpate is better than Surgical? Dodging Misstep is worse than paying mana. Otherwise I have found this type of card to be cute, but rarely to be effective. Against Dredge they are fine, against anything else like Oath too many things have to go right and if things go wrong, you sit there with useless cards in your hand, drawing into more useless cards. I don't even count the Ooze here, such a slow and meaningless card. I guess it wins the mirror...
Swan Song looks super akward. I've beaten a couple of people with swan tokens they gave to me, without them having countert a game changing spell. The swan also negates your plan of attacking with small crits. I think I'd rather have something like Negate or Drain in that slot...
I can't really comment on Deed. It's quite expensive to begin with, and problably not more flexible than EE (mana cost, your own board etc being restricting factors).


SO yeah, I'm 100% with Samoht here. Your list is nothing special, rather a step backwards. I guess you are spot on on your anylsis of your metagame which allows you to have a relatively high win%. In a metagame full of random blue decks and a couple of Shops BUG is a solid choice. People experimenting with Mentor and Gifts should help to accumulate some free wins as well.   

[xouman]

@youhavenogame: It seems we different opinions.

While I agree that 4 wastes hose mana better than 2, I'm not sure about the real effect of wastes in this list.

3 basics are too much sometimes, but he plays 8 fetchlands and 4 drs, so he should have no problems with color mana. Normally they would be in the SB, but if he expects lots of opponent's on wastes, moons or b2b, it could make sense.

Without playing W or R, strix seems a nice alternative to swords/bolts for control decks. Of course it does not provide the same CA as confidant, but if opponent kills it you already have the card in hand. They are really nice with edric in play and avoid early loses.

About sabotage, I'd probably swap 1 or 2 for claims, but they are ok. between decays and sabotages you mud seems less painful. Against spheres sabotage is better if you are untapped.

Extirpate does not simply dodges misstep, it's awesome against bomberman and helps a lot in counterwars.

Swan song looks awkward, I have to concede. I only like it against oath, and I think there are better cards there.

Deed is better than EE given certain conditions, but I have to agree that here it looks maybe worse. But it's a great card :p

[msg67183]

The mana base seems akward. I'm not even sure if basics help against Shops, or rather are a liability. So much more easy for them to keep you off a certain color, or double blue for Snap + flashback Power. In every other matchup it is just a plain disadvantage, as no one attacks your land anyway. Moxes are the basics of this deck and with effectively 6 basiclands I'm sure you are going to screw yourself more often than necessary.

Then, you call the deck tempo but only run 2 Wastelands. Why? Wasteland is such an integral and important part of this deck. The deck is already quite random without a sufficient amount of cantrips (even though you solve that with Strix) and by only running 3/5 you are ruining your chances to have your important out to Bazaar, Shop or just screwing all these greedy variance 3+ color piles.


Talking about Strix, I'm not fully convinced. It's a cute addition and at least pitches to Force, but it is not the same kind of gas as Confidant. This decks only draw engines are Edric and Snapcaster flashbacking Recall? That's really low numbers compared to any other deck in the format. A way to mitigate a lower number of draw engines would be winning fast, but this deck is def the least capable of winning fast and once games go long you are behind against opposing draw engines. While I'm not opposed to cutting Confidant out of this, just going with Strix and Edric doesn't look like it solves any problem the deck had previously.

Your SB needs a lot of work. Not sure what you are trying to beat with this, but I foresee failure. What is the point of all these Steel Sabotages? You are not going to cast them on the draw against Shops anyway, and if you do it's rarely to counter something but rather to return something. I also don't see how they can come in against random artifact mana + Tinker + Vaultkey, even though they can be nice against Belcher and other random decks.
Just 4 pieces of hate against Dredge? Although it's possible to beat Dredge just with DRS and Wasteland, you would need a lot of dice rolling in your favor to get to that point. And while we are at it, do you really think Extirpate is better than Surgical? Dodging Misstep is worse than paying mana. Otherwise I have found this type of card to be cute, but rarely to be effective. Against Dredge they are fine, against anything else like Oath too many things have to go right and if things go wrong, you sit there with useless cards in your hand, drawing into more useless cards. I don't even count the Ooze here, such a slow and meaningless card. I guess it wins the mirror...
Swan Song looks super akward. I've beaten a couple of people with swan tokens they gave to me, without them having countert a game changing spell. The swan also negates your plan of attacking with small crits. I think I'd rather have something like Negate or Drain in that slot...
I can't really comment on Deed. It's quite expensive to begin with, and problably not more flexible than EE (mana cost, your own board etc being restricting factors).


SO yeah, I'm 100% with Samoht here. Your list is nothing special, rather a step backwards. I guess you are spot on on your anylsis of your metagame which allows you to have a relatively high win%. In a metagame full of random blue decks and a couple of Shops BUG is a solid choice. People experimenting with Mentor and Gifts should help to accumulate some free wins as well.   

I'm not claiming my deck is anything special, I was just stating the results from my testing thus far.
Against Dredge I have 4 Deathrite Shaman, 2 Wasteland, 2 Yixlid Jailer, 2 Scavenging Ooze, 2 Extripate, 2 Pernicious Deed, and a Notion Thief to prevent Bazaar of Baghdad to dig for answers. I feel that is deffinietly sufficient.
About running 2 Wasteland: I'm not playing "BUG Fish", I don't wanna play "a BUG Version of Merfolk." My list is more oriented towards playing a threat and using that threat combined with counterspells and rod effects to keep them from executing their plan.
About Steel Sabotage: I just like the card. It's a counter for Workshops that can also be used to bounce a non Inkwell Leviathan Tinker Bot. I just like having utility with Snapcaster Mages.
About Swan Song: I was actually considering Negate over this, I have not been able to test the Swan making counterspell. Negate might just be better, the person who suggested Swan Song said he doesn't usually care about them getting a token.

[Chubby Rain]

I'm not claiming my deck is anything special, I was just stating the results from my testing thus far.
Against Dredge I have 4 Deathrite Shaman, 2 Wasteland, 2 Yixlid Jailer, 2 Scavenging Ooze, 2 Extripate, 2 Pernicious Deed, and a Notion Thief to prevent Bazaar of Baghdad to dig for answers. I feel that is deffinietly sufficient.

Notion Thief is unreliable against Dredge, especially when you do not have a way to consistently empty their graveyard. Deathright Shaman and Ooze are slow, mana intensive pieces of hate. Pernicious Deed is also slow, narrow, and likely to be stripped with Therapy if relevant. Extirpate is also narrow and difficult to use with your other pieces (do you hold open Extirpate on turn 1 or cast Deathrite Shaman? Waste or Fetchland for the turn?). I think your anti-dredge strategy is very dependent on drawing the correct sequence of cards or getting lucky and hitting a Jailer.

This is besides the point...I think you remain a serious dog to Young Pyromancer and Mentor and I think your plan against these decks is suboptimal (Deed is not a sufficient answer)...

[Holden1669]

What do people think of this list: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=16402&iddeck=122666. I've been playing it online and it feels good in not many matches. Daze seems to really take people by surprise and if you can get a Null Rod down it's not always dead late.

[xouman]

I'd prefer some list like this

Top 4 - Marcel Milià - BUG
Maindeck:
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tarmogoyf
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Trygon Predator
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Black Lotus
1 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Null Rod
2 Spell Pierce
1 Steel Sabotage
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor
Sideboard:
1 Notion Thief
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Deglamer
1 Dismember
2 Nature's Claim
3 Ravenous Trap
1 Snuff Out
1 Thoughtseize
1 Toxic Deluge


This list is way softer to graveyard hate (our meta has typically 0-1 dredge), but has several silver bullets and can deal with lots of different menaces. An unanswered tarmo kills quite quickly.

[youhavenogame]

Some interesting lists have popped up lately, and I will hopefully be able to cover all of them in an article very soon.

I'm not really sold on Confi as the deck's main draw engine as of late. While the Delver domination has ended and the BUG archetype is in better shape than it was a few months ago, the meta is still full of decks that run either Bolt or Swords which doesn't help to make Confi a reliable draw engine. It still makes sense in the super aggressive Delver/ Daze/ Null Rod version, but otherwise I'd try to reshape my deck to fit in Dig and Cruise.

[msg67183]

Some interesting lists have popped up lately, and I will hopefully be able to cover all of them in an article very soon.

I'm not really sold on Confi as the deck's main draw engine as of late. While the Delver domination has ended and the BUG archetype is in better shape than it was a few months ago, the meta is still full of decks that run either Bolt or Swords which doesn't help to make Confi a reliable draw engine. It still makes sense in the super aggressive Delver/ Daze/ Null Rod version, but otherwise I'd try to reshape my deck to fit in Dig and Cruise.

I was testing BUG Tempo without Confidants and instead playaing Baleful Strix. The deck was outstanding. Especially with the two Edric in the list. Just an idea for you.

[Holden1669]

I'm not really sold on Confi as the deck's main draw engine as of late. While the Delver domination has ended and the BUG archetype is in better shape than it was a few months ago, the meta is still full of decks that run either Bolt or Swords which doesn't help to make Confi a reliable draw engine. It still makes sense in the super aggressive Delver/ Daze/ Null Rod version, but otherwise I'd try to reshape my deck to fit in Dig and Cruise.

I'll admit that at least two reasons come to mind about why I like that BUG Delver list with Bob/Daze/Null Rod:

1. I'm just getting into Vintage and it plays like a Legacy deck so it feels pretty comfortable.

2. The only power it plays are Time Walk and Ancestral. I own Sapphire and Ruby as of yesterday (which is unbelievably exciting) and will hopefully have the two blue spells soon. So lists that don't play Lotus, especially, appeal to me.

These aren't great reasons for supporting that list as being actually good. But so far I'm liking it.

I am wondering why the four Snuff Outs in the board. Seems decent-ish but is it really better than Dismember, for example?

[serracollector]

Snuff out lets you kill lodestone a turn faster. Significant.

[DaveKap]

Here's a BUG Delver update that focuses on mana denial rather then card draw/advantage. Illness in the Ranks clears Pyromancer and Monk tokens, slows down Dredge and may be an asset against Oath's spirit tokens. Karakas forces a Pithing Needle from Oath and is a colorless source against Shops.

Threat (13)
4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Delver of Secrets
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Draw (6)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Time Walk
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Vampiric tutor

Counter (13)
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Spell Pierce

Utility (11)
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Annul
1 Null Rod
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Colored Mana (17)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea

Sideboard (15)
1 Annul
1 Dismember
1 Flusterstorm
4 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Illness in the Ranks
2 Karakas
1 Nature's Claim
1 Trygon Predator

[msg67183]

Made some more changes to my list:

-4 Snapcaster Mage
-1 Steel Sabotage
- Cruise

+2 Nightveil Specter
+2 Vendillion Clique
+1 Notion Thief
+1 Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Sideboard:
-2 Steel Sabotage
-2 Swan Song

+2 Nature's Claim
+2 Negate

Tested against Workshops last night and didn't drop a single game to my opponent. The deck is absolutely nuts in the fact it draws a ton of cards, as well as has a ton of sources of Card Advantage. Very strong deck, test it out.