Discussion Forum

I take it this is for casual play against semi serious legacy decks because against tier 1 decks this deck has no chance what so ever in the current meta.

The good news is however that Tarmogoyf is't a hot card anymore, in fact it sucks and the only decks that play it are decks that don't play white and as such don't have acess to the really good creatures. The really good creatures these days are

Noble Hierarch
Knight of the Reliquary
Qasali Pridemage
Delver of Secrets
Snapcaster Mage
Staoneforge Mystic
Scavenging ooze
Geist of Saint Traft
Vendilion Clique
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

basically if white is in your colors you have far better options then goyf and goyf just doesn't make the cut.

Delver of Secrets is a huge problem for your counterbalance plan, with only 3 swords of ploweshares you will likely die to a turn 1 delver.

You basically have 3 types of decks

combo: show and tell based combo is hot and very hard to interact with as they usually run more counterspells then even the control decks do.

creature based: Maveric and goblins and elves pack so many creatures that just countering and removing a few doesn't stop them. You need the likes of Pernicious deed or Firespout to recover from their opening plays.

Tempo: delver of secrets decks with tons of disruption. 4 wasteland, 4 stifle, 4 daze, 4 force of will, 3 spell snare. It's a difficult matchup for any deck out there.

what do you think, about dreadstill decks?, switching out isochant with stifle and phyrexian dreadnought could round thing out a lil better. and yo. tarmogoyf is sick, i dont even care. haha. ^_^
i do dig giest of saint taft though.. and stoneforge mystic.
some sort of landstill/blade could be cool.

i do agree though that isochant is pretty weak. and that delver is a beast.
im pretty much just running isochant because i have nothing else to put there right now. i guess trying to figure out what id wanna do before i put forth some money to fixxer up.

i appreciate the honest criticism though.

I recently won a local legacy tournament with a Stifle/Dreadnought build. It was a tempo deck though and not a dreadstill control build. I went with this list but my own sideboard adjusted to the meta I expected to face

http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/view/26908

It's a good deck but in my opinion Dreadnought is to much of a gamble, it requires 2 cards to work and dreadnoughts alone are dead cards, if they counter stifle you loose 2 cards for their 1, dreadnought is both an artifact and a creature so pretty much all removal your opponent packs will remove it. Qasali Pridemage for instance combined with green sun's zenith is a problem.
Basically you need a fair deal of luck. I faced 2 storm decks (tendrils of Agony) which were a good matchup. A dredge deck and in the finals a Maverick deck. I was able to mana screw the Maverick deck 2 games in a row and that's getting lucky. (I gambled on very aggresivly removing his mana dorks with Snuff out together with some wasteland backup that did the trick)

Anyway, I used to play landstill myself and more recently Stoneblade control but with all the new agressive cards wizards keeps printing it becomes really hard to play dedicated control decks.
Control is good but you need to combine it with a fast clock. That is what these delver decks do and it works really well.

wowzo, that b/u delver tempo/stiflenaught deck looks preeeettty nasty.

changed it up a bit.
i like the idea of turn one delver, turn 2 landstill
trying to make it more tempo / control i guess?
i also like the idea of being able to sweep the board with wrath or explosives
without losing tempo, by being able to keep on the offensive with manlands.
i cant see anything wong with a 2/2 with for 1 mana? or even better a 4/4 first strike for 2.

what are you thoughts on spell snare and spell pierce?
also wasteland? is the loss of a land worth the tempo it could potentially create?

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=333193

strange build. In my experience it's very difficult to create an efficient deck that is both tempo and control in a competitive environment.

in your deck I see

typical tempo cards: Stifle, Daze, Delver
typical control cards: Wrath of God, Engineered Explosives

It's not that the control cards are bad cards, the problem is that you don't have a late game win condition. Such a win condition is typically Jace the Mind Sculptor.

My friend Johan Steurs piloted Next level tresh (NLT) to 4th place in GP Amsterdam last year. NLT is a control deck that plays some tempo cards like stifle. It's difficult to play but it's a pretty strong deck and he has won a lot of tournaments in the years he played it

look for Canadian Threshold - Johan Steurs here:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/gpams11/day2

(It's not actually Canadian Tresh but the guys at wizards must have screwed up the deck type)

Just to give you an idea of an optimal build that is both tempo and control heavy.

as for your questions:

what are you thoughts on spell snare and spell pierce?

I sideboard 3x spell pierce these days. Spell pierce is the card you want against all combo decks. I side it in against Reanimator, Dredge, TES/ANT (Tendrils Storm combo), Show and Tell variants, painter grindstone variants etc...

As for spell snare I go with 2 main board. They are good most of the time but there are matchups when they are dead. Most folks I know play 3 main board but I don't.

also wasteland? is the loss of a land worth the tempo it could potentially create?


Wasteland is extremly important for both a tempo build like RUG Delver as for a more landstill type of control deck. In landstill wasteland is used to lock your opponent out of the game by reccuring wasteland with life from the loam or crucible as of midgame.
In tempo decks both stifle and wasteland make daze the best counter in the deck. About 50% of the games you play with a RUG Delver deck are easy wins where you steal the game by mana or color screwing your opponent. The combination Stifle/Wasteland/Daze is the key here. Preventing your opponent from building up is the easiest way to win with Delver Tempo, it only works on decks that play fetchland and duals but that covers most decks in legacy.

I won a tournament last week playing RUG Delver and what is very typical for the deck is that as of turn 1 the deck is pure power and every turn after that it becomnes weaker and weaker with every land your opponent plays. Against Maverick for instance they have Scryb Ranger which is a pain in the ass, the guy also played the new Restoration Angel which was pretty good against my deck. Knight of the Reliquary fetching maze of ith gave me trouble as well.
When the game dragged on my goyfs where smaller then his knights, and delver faced Restoration Angel or Scryb Ranger or maze of Ith. I won that matchup at 2-1, thanks to wasteland and burn. I play 4 lightning bolt and 3 chain lightning and they were crucial to winning throughout the tournament. Delver usually beat them down below 10 before they stopped it and then burn became my only out.


I like the idea of a turn 1 creature followed up by standstill as well but currently with your build as it is the chance of that happening with only 4 1 drops is very small. I used to play Aether Vial when playing standstill in merfolk, that worked well. Turn 1 Vial, turn 2 standstill was the best opening I could hope for.