Welcome reader! This page covers Grixis Delver, the Modern deck that I've run for the longest time and played the most games with, given intermittent switches to other decks based on local meta or for testing. I personally believe that Grixis Delver (of all the other various Delver color combinations) is at any given time the most average-positioned due to its extremely grindy lategame power and extremely customization-friendly maindeck, and is even sometimes very well positioned in a metagame. It is a very difficult deck to play, specifically in sequencing and knowing when to mulligan vs. keep, but it is extremely rewarding to execute and navigate play lines with.
Now, I am far from the first person to ever build this deck, so at the end of this description I'll have some links to Primers and other discussion about the deck from experts on the archetype such as Kevin Jones and Ryan Overturf. What I hope to do here is give a fairly generic open-meta example list, describe some of the small unique choices I've made in it, and go over the most essential strategies and interactions in the deck for anyone who is looking to pick up this deck or a similar blue midrange strategy. Also, I won't be following a Creatures/Spells/Lands structure or anything like that, but rather what I think is a logical breakdown of the deck in steps. Cheers!
--Cantrips--
Here's half the reason to play a blue deck in Modern. One of the weaknesses inherent to midrange as an archetype is that you're a deck with few threats and many answers. What frequently can happen are hands with no threat, and hands where your answers don't line up with the opponent's threats. Jund/Abzan get around this by playing extremely generic answers such as targeted discard and "destroy target permanent" effects. When adding blue, we're afforded
Serum Visions
to sculpt our hand as well as countermagic, which allows us to both lower the land count of the deck to make room for more answers, and also better smooth out our card selection in games. Never play less than the full set.
Thought Scour is a little bit more brute force and less subtle, but has interactions worth noting. It enables you to turbo out a Tasigur, the Golden Fang as early as turn two with two fetchlands and a Thought Scour, or a non-fetch, a
Serum Visions
/Lightning Bolt/Fatal Push/Spell Snare, a fetchland, and a Thought Scour. It fills the graveyard for your Snapcaster Mages, meaning your get a lot more effective "looks" at one-of spells. And lastly, it being an instant speed cantrip/mill spell has applications in certain matchups. Against Lantern Control, you can use it to contest their milling and draw a card you want at instant speed by targeting them with the spell. Similarly, against a deck that Scrys to the top through Serum Visions or otherwise, you can get cheeky and mill their cards. Get creative with it if you can afford to, it's an extremely flexible card.
--Threats--
Your must-have creature suite consists of 8 cards, being the four Delvers and four Delve creatures. The namesake of the deck, Delver of Secrets
is a highly efficient threat that can steal games if left unanswered. My current list has 28 spells that flip Delver, and I would not recommend going below 26. There are plenty of hands that are keep-able without a Delver, which will play out like grindy control, but if your hand gives you the chance to "Delver them out" Legacy-style by getting a turn two Insectile Abberation and protecting it with countermagic to victory, by all means pursue it.
The four Delve creatures are pretty self-explanatory, they're big mana-efficient beaters than leverage your Thought Scours,
Serum Visions
, and fetches to fuel their costs. The most important thing to note is Tasigur, the Golden Fang has a late-game ultimate form you should aim to unlock in grindy matchups which "costs" 5 mana. You can cast a fully delved Tasigur for , and leave open mana for , allowing you to activate his ability and get value should he be killed immediately. Never underestimate the power of his activated ability in long games, even if it seems like giving your opponent the choice of the card is weak. Use your Delve spells to sculpt your graveyard to have only lands and non-land cards you either want to Snapcaster Mage back or recur with Tasigur, the Golden Fang.
You can choose to leave the threat suite at this, or you can add in 1 Vendilion Clique, or 2
Young Pyromancer
. Clique will be a good choice in metas that have more Combo and Big Mana decks, whereas Pyromancer is better for metas full of Control and Midrange. In these cases,
Young Pyromancer
should never be played on turn 2. Rather, he should be played when you've sculpted a grip of cantrips, removal, and countermagic, and can play him with 3 to 4 mana available. This way, once you play him, you can immediately get value either by cantripping, killing an opponent's creature, or fighting a counter war over their removal spell targeting him.
--Countermagic--
This is a pretty straightforward section, you just play the best counterspells available in Modern for your mana curve. I would recommend a bare minimum baseline of 2
Mana Leak
and 2 Spell Snare, and keeping a minimum of 6 counterspells maindeck, with a maximum of 10. The remaining 2-6 slots can be filled with more of the same,
Spell Pierce
,
Countersquall
,
Dispel
, Remand, and even one or two
Cryptic Command
if you're around 21 lands. I recommend sticking with hard counters and lower mana investments with the maindeck, especially against an unknown meta, but this is an area that can be highly tuned to your local shop or expected tournament turnout.
--Removal--
Another pretty straightforward section, where I'd say the minimal core is 4 Lightning Bolt, 2
Terminate
, and 2 Fatal Push, keeping near a total of the 4 Bolts and 6 other kill spells. Good choices to fill this out are more
Terminate
and Fatal Push,
Go for the Throat
, Murderous Cut as a one-mana kill spell, and spells like
Electrolyze
and
Forked Bolt
to take care of pesky X/1s and Lingering Souls tokens. I highly recommend a single Collective Brutality in the maindeck, as the card is a brutal beating against powerful decks such as Burn and Infect, and its fail mode is rarely awful.
--The Grinder--
The reason I've saved these cards for their own section at the end is threefold. Snapcaster Mage is the other half of why you should play blue in Modern. Snapcaster Mage+
Kolaghan's Command
is the whole reason you should play Grixis in Modern. Snapcaster Mage+
Kolaghan's Command
is an engine that when leveraged correctly will win you every midrange mirror. I know this may sound exaggerated, but Snap-Kommand is extremely powerful for grinding, and learning to effectively employ both halves is essential to playing Grixis well in Modern. I'll try and give the CliffNotes here, as the primers and articles linked below can probably go into more detail.
Snapcaster Mage lets your spells do double duty and powers up your Thought Scours, making your graveyard act as an extension of your hand. Accordingly, Snapcaster Mage is NOT a 2 mana spell, but rather a 3 to 5 mana spell most of the time. Use this when judging mulligans. Snapping back a
Serum Visions
or Thought Scour on turn 3, or just flashing in a blue
Ambush Viper
with no spells to snap back is a perfectly reasonable play against combo or durdly decks where you need to establish a clock. You will frequently cast Snapcaster Mage in combat to flashback a counterspell or removal, and immediately trade it off or chump. Hold onto your Snapcasters in counterspell war matchups for as late as possible.
The most powerful use of
Kolaghan's Command
is when you've gotten your opponent into topdeck mode late in the game, where you cast Kommand during their draw step making them discard their only card and rebuying a creature. This is part of the "Snap Kommand Loop" which is your main engine for grinding opponents into a fine paste. Example: You have two Snapcaster Mages in the graveyard from Thought Scour mills and snapback trades/chumps. During the opponent's draw step, you cast Kommand to make them discard and rebuy Snappy. Having no cards, they pass. You untap and pass with 5 mana up. During their draw step, you repeat this and rebuy the second snappy. Back to your turn, and you have a clock in play, a spell rebuy in hand, and you've just bajillion-for-two'd them. In the same vein, a common line is to flash in Snapcaster Mage during combat, give
Kolaghan's Command
flashback, chump/trade with Snapcaster, and then wait until after combat to cast Kommand, finishing off an X/4 that Snapcaster chumped, or making the opponent discard while rebuying the still-warm Snapcaster. Don't forget that
Kolaghan's Command
has a
Smelt
mode! This gives a lot of power in game 1 against artifact decks.
--Mana for Manly Men--
Again, this is a pretty straightforward section. I won't go over a budget way to build the manabase, but you can mess with which fetches you use and how many fastlands you use however you like. I will just recommend a minimum of 8 fetches for Delve considerations, but otherwise go crazy. Goal #1 is to get available from your lands, as double-blue is needed for a lot of snap lines, and one of each color is needed to cast every spell in the deck. After that, is the highest priority to get a second source of, for turns that involve a Delve creature plus a removal spell, and a second is the lowest priority, below third . Fetch basics whenever possible to save on life.
The "Extra Lands" can be an extra fetchland like
Bloodstained Mire
if you're heavier on Delve, an extra Spirebluff Canal, or an extra Watery Grave. If you're already at 20 lands and want 21 for a build with some Cryptic Command, then I recommend 1x Creeping Tar Pit as the 21st land.
Well I hope that covers enough general information for prospective Delver players to feel like they can take the deck for a swing and try it out! I'll see about writing an update that covers Sideboard options and general composition guidelines. Here are some links to other articles and primers that will be helpful to Grixis intiates:
