My pet deck on MTGA. I came back to delirium after getting bored with Golgari Midrange. It's been really fun to pilot and has felt really competitive against most other decks at platinum / low diamond.
It turns out you don't have to run Say Its Name or sub-optimal sorcery speed removal to get delirium reliably. 9 enablers + the surveil lands do the trick often enough.
One of the things that brought me back to this deck was the prevalence of Go for the Throat and the fact that a lot of our key creatures are immune to it. I'm still on that being a legitimate edge, at least against swamps. Tranquil Frillback can absolutely wreck us, but no one is running a playset mainboard.
There's much less mainboard removal than a stock Golgari list, which feels a little vulnerable, but we're often the aggressor in game 1. Treating Patchwork Beastie like a Wild Nacatl has been a common play pattern. A lucky hit off of a T2 Blanchwood Prowler followed by T3 Omnivorous Flytrap can mean swinging for 3 on T2 and then 6 on T3 which is pretty good for a Standard deck that doesn't play Mountains.
Making your opponent deal with that and then dropping Osseous Sticktwisters can put a lot of pressure on really quickly. Beating down game 1 and then transitioning to a much more removal heavy gameplan has often been effective, so most of the sideboard is dedicated to making sure we have full playsets of Go for the Throat, Anoint with Affliction, and Tear Asunder in the 75.
Overlord of the Balemurk lets you use your graveyard like a toolbox which is why there are so many 1-of creatures. This is another of my favorite things about the deck. It's more flexible and more interesting to me than what often felt like just trying to draw more Sheoldreds than my opponent can remove.
It's also possible to ignore delirium altogether if you draw a good ol' Golgari hand of land, disruption, and removal. Things go to the graveyard during a game of Magic. Your stuff will turn on.
I won't go into every card, but here's the rationale behind the ones I rarely see elsewhere:
Blanchwood Prowler - This guy is lowkey a workhorse in this deck. It not only enables delirium, but also smooths out your mana, turning otherwise unkeepable hands into snap keeps. It's also a body for Flytrap counters, and usually the best thing to sac to Skyfisher Spider. The wording "from among the cards milled this way" rather than "from your graveyard" means even Rest in Peace doesn't turn it off.
Overwhelming Remorse - Usually one of the first cards to get cut after game 1 lest it be dead to graveyard hate, this is nonetheless a house of a removal spell. No one puts you on being able to exile for , and that's what this is.
Cankerbloom and Skyfisher Spider - Part of the toolbox. Just doing their best to be Qasali Pridemage and Nekrataal
Fade from History - Literally our only out to Domain / Zur. I've resolved Deadly Cover-Up. I've resolved Gix's Command. I've had a 14/14 Sticktwister completely shut down by Fountainport. Nothing else works against the value these decks generate. Milling it sucks, so I'm adding a second copy.
LMK what you think.
