Delving under the RUG

Modern Competitive Delver GU (Simic) RUG (Temur)

IzzetGod

Land (18)

• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x Forest
• 2x Island
• 4x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Mountain
• 4x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Spirebluff Canal
• 2x Steam Vents
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Instant (22)

• 1x Dismember
• 3x Disrupting Shoal
• 4x Lightning Bolt
• 3x Mana Leak
• 1x Simic Charm
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 3x Stubborn Denial
• 1x Tarfire
• 4x Thought Scour
• 1x Vapor Snag

Creature (14)

• 4x Delver of Secrets  ^Flip
• 3x Hooting Mandrills
• 3x Snapcaster Mage
• 4x Tarmogoyf

Sorcery (6)

• 4x Serum Visions
• 2x Traverse the Ulvenwald

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Sideboard

Instant (7)

• 1x Ancient Grudge
• 2x Destructive Revelry
• 1x Dismember
• 1x Dispel
• 1x Spell Snare
• 1x Surgical Extraction

Artifact (2)

• 1x Engineered Explosives
• 1x Relic of Progenitus

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Blood Moon

Creature (2)

• 2x Huntmaster of the Fells  ^Flip

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Pyroclasm

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With the banning of Gitaxian Probe in Modern, RUG Delver basically ceased to exist in the format disappearing almost completely. I believe the deck still has potential to be good as the color combination has good cards that you can combine to completely hate on the top tiered decks and still have a good match against other decks as well!

Gameplan

Drop down some haymakers such as Delver of Secrets  , Tarmogoyf & an early Hooting Mandrills and disrupt our opponents board with our removal to push through some damage or even burn them out.

Creatures

Delver of Secrets  : An early threat and can be a 3/2 easily on turn 2. Just a really good beater as he has flying and very few early game dudes in Modern can fly! Easy damage.

Tarmogoyf: Easily one of, if not the BEST creature of all time! Amazing card in our deck as we are playing a Delve strategy. Our Goyf's can easily be a 4/5 early on.

Hooting Mandrills: Big early creature. We can easily cast this guy for 1-2 mana on turn 3-4. He's got Trample which makes attacking and using removal on this he blocking creature extremely useful as and combat trick. Main reason this deck is a thing.

Snapcaster Mage: Up there with Tarmogoyf for one of the best creatures ever! He adds late game value to our deck and gets fueled by all the stuff we put into our graveyard.

Draw Spells

Serum Visions: Best draw spell in the format. Also is the best card to help get Delver of Secrets   to flip.

Thought Scour: Amazing at filling our yard for Hooting Mandrills and Tarmogoyf. Also draws us a card which is awesome and makes it as good ands it is!

Traverse the Ulvenwald: I know that this isn't a draw spell, bit kind of fits here as in it gets a card I want out of my deck I my hand as though I was digging for it. The deck can kind of have as little trouble with getting Delirium turned on, but if you hit the right cards off of Thought Scour, you should have no problem. It normally just gets us a Basic from the deck early on. However, it'a basically like drawing a Basic Land that flips delve of secrets :D

Disruption/Removal

Mana Leak: Amazing counterspell. Works well for our deck.

Stubborn Denial: 1 CMC counterspell.We easily can get Ferocious to be active so it's basically a 1 CMC Negate. Even without Ferocious, we can Force Spike something which is relevant in some cases.

Spell Pierce: Great counterspell and in my opinion; is the best 1 CMC counterspell in the format. Only thing is that for this deck in particular; Spell Snare may be better...

Disrupting Shoal: This card helps us pick off important key cards such as Aether Vial or say a Death's Shadow. Could be bad in multiples, but has a lot of sweet spots!

Vapor Snag : This card is REALLY good right now! With all the creature decks hanging around, it's just a great tempo play.

Lightning Bolt: It's Lightning Bolt...what more do I have to say?

Tarfire : Shock but with upside of being a Tribal spell to boost up our Tarmogoyf.

Simic Charm: All of the modes on this are actually super relevant in this deck! The bounce effect gives us a little bit more removal for creatures. The Giant Growth effect can just kill someone out of nowhere. Especially since Hooting Mandrills has Trample and if we have an Insectile Aberation, we got a flyer who will most likely not be blocked. We can also give our stuff hexproof which is good for heavy removal decks and things like Karn Liberated and Fulminator Mage/Ghost Quarter.

Dismember: With Gitaxian Probe gone, we regularly have the llife to spend to cast this which helps deal with Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler

Sideboard Cards

Engineered Explosives: A great card when you need to board wipe some creatures away. Can be cast for 1/2/3 and can be just be held up until needed.

Ancient Grudge: For the affinity matchup. If we mill it with Thought Scour, we can Flashback the spell. Also bring it in against Eggs/KCI Combo. Hard matchup with this one but it is better than most of the cards in our mainboard for it.

Destructive Revelry: Same as Ancient Grudge. However I have more of this because Enchantments are more of a nuisance to deal with. A lot of people in White will bring Rest in Peace against us. The 2 damage is also a nice bonus.

Blood Moon: Can literally lock some decks out of the game like Jund or Death's Shadow decks. Works well against Tron, but going late game, the can get around it if they keep hitting land drops.

Huntmaster of the Fells  :AMAZING CREATURE! Gets around Abrupt Decay and is very hard to deal with a lot of the time. Great for the midrange matchup.

Dispel: For counter wars or to push a spell through. Also allows you to leave up a single mana and counter something relevant possibly.

Surgical Extraction: Provides Graveyard hate at Instant speed for decks like Dredge and even just cards that can punish us such as Lingering Souls.

Relic of Progenitus: Bring in where our opponent is heavy graveyard like Dredge or a mirror. Also cantrips for us.

Pyroclasm: Quick board wipe for Burn, Tokens or Collected Company decks.

Strategies + Tips

Use your Fetch lands cautiously at times. If you don't need to crack one, keep it up in case you cast Serum Visions or look at the top card of your Delver of Secrets   upkeep trigger and you know what is on top you don't want to draw; you can fetch it away.

When you are Delving away cards to cast Hooting Mandrills, always check your opponents graveyard for card types so that you can keep track of what you can get rid of to keep your Tarmogoyf a decent size. You can do the opposite if you want to keep your opponents' Tarmogoyf small.

Thought Scour also has the same trick with getting cards off the top of your deck that you know you don't want. It's also a combat trick for Tarmogoyf by possibly making him bigger if you cast during combat (don't always bet on this working though).

Other potential cards for the deck

There are a bunch of flex slots or slots where multiple cards fit the spot in the deck. An example would be Simic Charm and Dismember. These flex slots are for your cards that help against problematic matchups/cards that benefit your side of the board. You can put almost any card in these slots!

Tarfire can be replaced with Forked Bolt if you have a lot of people playing things like Lingering Souls. Or you could play Pillar of Flame for Dredge and Voice of Resurgence.

And there you have it! This is my attempt at bringing this deck back into the format. Any critiq/suggestions will be taken into consideration and any and all comments are welcome! I would like to try and have this deck as competitive as possible as I plan to take it to a FacetoFace Open later this year!

Date added	7 years
Last updated	7 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 2 Mythic Rares 22 - 4 Rares 5 - 6 Uncommons 25 - 3 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	1.74
Tokens	Human 2/2 G, Wolf 2/2 G