Ever since the pauper banning of Daze, gitaxian probe, and gush, the hole in my heart that was Blue Black Delver needed to be filled. I scoured the internet for a new blue black deck for post bannings, and none of them tickled my pickle the way I like my pickle tickled.
However, I saw a deck posted by Alicondendrochit called UB Delver Deck in the pauper section of mtgdecks.net. They were using Gurmag Angler (classic), First-Sphere Gargantua (new hot tech) and Thought Scour! That looked super fun to me, so I put it together immediately. After some brainstorming and testing, I finally came to a less control, more beat down version. With essentially 12 copies of basically the same card for 1 blue mana (Thought Scour, Mental Note, Careful Study) and other pseudo self mill cards like street wraiths for 'free' draw, evolving wilds, and ash barrens, I can easily get all the cards I need in the graveyard to run 8 creatures with delve.
Right now I'm playing around with Exhume since I can sometimes get lucky and get a big dude in the graveyard on turn 1 or just cycle a street wraith and get a 3/5 with swampwalk. Recently I've been thinking about artful dodge a lot too. The problem with gurmag angler is people just block it. It seems to me that making it unblockable once from hand and once from graveyard is pretty good, AND sometimes it just gets milled and I can flash it back from the graveyard.
I haven't been able to play against a bunch of competitive lists yet, so my sideboard is kinda theoretical for my local meta. I wouldn't suggest using this sideboard list for a pro tour for example.
For my local meta I have chosen: Hydroblasts cause red is a thing, artful dodge for decks with a bunch of blockers, soul reap and doom blade for other black decks, and annul to stop potential graveyard hate. It'll be a work in progress that I will update when necessary.
Let me know if there's some super secret ninja hot tech that I haven't found. I was hard pressed to find more cards that cared about being in the graveyard that were actually good in pauper. Happy deck building!
