THIS PRIMER IS SO OUT OF DATE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF IT'S USEFUL ANYMORE.
Overview
The deck is a Grixis midrange delver deck that plays a slower but much more stable game than the traditional delver decks. We get stupid amounts of card advantage as the game tends toward midrange and we seemingly never run out of steam. That means our opponent can't stabilize and can't ever gain full control of the board. Between Tasigur, Creeping Tar Pit, and flashbacked Faithless Looting, we always have a play to make and an answer to dig for. The driving force of this deck is the virtual card advantage we can gain through Bloodghast + Faithless Looting
.
Faithless Looting
is the real powerhouse because it does everything. It digs for an answer to our opponent's board state, fuels our graveyard for Tasigur, and most importantly discards our
Bloodghast
to be revived again. The rest of the deck is playing with and around
Bloodghast
. We have
Delver of Secrets
as a really strong attacker in game 1 to help
Bloodghast
beat face and keep the opponent down.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
gives us even more card advantage as he plays great into a flashback of faithless looting by giving us something to discard and he also can send our bloodghasts to the graveyard so we can revive them with ease. Finally we have
Vampire Nighthawk
to be a bro and block for us when
Bloodghast
is unable to do so. He also kills the biggest creatures around and gains us life. Overall the deck is resilient, adaptable, ready for the long game, but able to excel in the short.
General Strategy
The basic idea is that we have 2 distinct lines of play available to us depending on the matchup. We can either play tempo aggro or midrange. When we play tempo aggro we try to win as quickly as possible and keep the opponent off of the board. We do this through dropping some early
Delver of Secrets
and
Bloodghast
, along with using our burn spells to either clear blockers or burn them to death. When we play midrange we try to defend with
Vampire Nighthawk
, then run the opponent down with our card advantage engines such as Tasigur and
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
.
Bloodghast
is also a beautiful attrition card because every time the opponent tries to kill it, they just lose card advantage.
The most critical part to playing this deck is knowing how to pick your line of play based on the situation and the matchup as well as knowing how to utilize your cards in a manner that best suits that line of play. Against the fastest decks like Burn, Affinity, and Infect we always play the role of defender where we try to stall until we can drop
Vampire Nighthawk
,
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
, and
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
to stop any hopes they had of winning. Against the slower aggro decks such as Merfolk, Zoo, and Delver we try to race and out-tempo them as well as beat them in card advantage through
Bloodghast
,
Delver of Secrets
, and
Kolaghan's Command
. Against the midrange decks like Abzan and Jund, we try to out-attrition and out-aggro them by building as much card advantage as we can in midrange and riding it to victory along with our nearly impossible to kill
Bloodghast
. Finally against most combo decks and Tron we try to win through aggro tempo by dropping early attackers and disrupting them until we win. Overall we have several lines of play collectively able to overwhelm and outmaneuver any deck, but it is always easy to draw into the wrong half of our deck and lose, so post-board is always better than game 1. Unless they have
Leyline of the Void
. Then our games 2 and 3 are terrible, but other than that our post-board is better than our game 1.
Turn 1
On the first turn you want to open with one of our 3 good turn 1 plays. Our best proactive play is
Delver of Secrets
. Who doesn't love a 3/2 flier for 1 mana? It is an explosive start that is preferred if we need to race them down as fast as possible. Our best reactive turn 1 play is
Inquisition of Kozilek
. It's straight hand removal at its finest.
Faithless Looting
is our other best turn 1 play as we can set up a creature as well as help plan out our next few turns and modify the composition of our hand to best match our opponent's deck, but be smart when you play this card. Do not cast looting turn 1 if you have Delver or Inquisition of Kozilek, as Looting is a better turn 2 play, and only cast it if you have either
Bloodghast
or
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
in your hand, or if you have dead cards in the matchup or an imbalance of lands. Casting looting without at least 1 card you wan to discard is a death sentence. Additionally, if you wait until turn 2 to cast Looting before your land drop, you’re more likely to have a Bloodghast (because you’ve drawn 1 more card in the meantime) , and also Bloodghast can’t attack until turn 3 whether it hits the yard on turn 1 or 2, so you don’t lose any speed. Those are the preferred 3 opening plays, but our other reactive options are passing and holding
Lightning Bolt
or casting
Serum Visions
and digging for our next land or whatever. A tapped shockland to save life is also nice, but be wary of who your opponent is - that is a perfectly fine play against Jund, but it's too much of a setback against infect.
Even more importantly than making a play turn 1 is the information you gather. Before your turn 2 you need to identify your opponent's deck and pick the best line of play based on what they have on board and what you have available to you. Then you have to adjust your strategy to play around theirs so you can win. Blindly casting spells will get you nowhere with this deck so make every spell count.
Playing within your line of play
The play style against every deck is different, but remember that you can dump any bad card with
Faithless Looting
and scry away any future bad card with
Serum Visions
, so what you are dealt is not always what you have to play with. With every card you see you need to ask yourself whether it will help or not and ditch the bad cards. Not every card we have is good in every matchup, and that's just fine because it can usually still be used to help somehow, and we always appreciate discard fodder. For example,
Bloodghast
may not be able to block against a fast deck like Zoo, but it can apply a constant pressure to them that will help us race them and turn the game around when they run out of cards to cast. Being able to acknowledge when a card is not useful is key to winning with this deck. For example, whenever you're playing tempo,
Vampire Nighthawk
is awful unless you have the mana for a
Dispel
to back it up or if they are topdecking so they won't have an answer. You will almost always get punished for blindly trying to cast it on turn 3 when racing because it dies to
Lightning Bolt
and is an easy
Remand
target. Both of those situations decrease our tempo greatly leading to a loss. BUT against the fastest decks that we try to defend and not race, it is the best card possible to drop on turn 3 because it has to be answered.
Mid Game
Okay, so maybe turn 2 isn't quite mid game, but it is nowhere near as important as turn 1. Turns 2-5 should be spent continuing our game plan by trying to disrupt their board and improve ours. It can be summarized as 'dump and run' as we try to play our hand as our opponent plays theirs and come out on top because of our card value. We can do this by making tempo plays where we remove their creatures and hand to keep them off the board as we try to let our creatures beat them down. This works because Tasigur and Delver are 1 mana creatures and
Bloodghast
is a 0 mana creature, leaving our lands wide open to cast removal and counters. In the tempo plan,
Vampire Nighthawk
is not as good as 3 mana is clunky, but still a fantastic play on turns 5+ when you have mana to spare. You can also cast it leaving open for
Dispel
and plan to catch up on the next turn, which is the best way to play him. The disadvantage we lose by tapping out for a Nighthawk is regained when he is able to attack and apply pressure as he can't be safely blocked and he gains us life, helping us race. Near the end of the mid game is when cards like
Kolaghan's Command
really start to shine because it is an inherent 2-for-1 allowing us to pull ahead in topdeck mode. At the end of turn 5-6 neither player should have more than 2 cards in hand and we should start to pull ahead in advantage because
Bloodghast
and our card value wears down on every deck including Abzan itself, the king deck of card value. If we are playing to race or if we are the beatdown, this stage of the game is when we should be winning.
Late Game
This is where our card value carries us to victory. Both decks should be in topdeck mode and we are able to gain advantage through
Bloodghast
,
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
,
Faithless Looting
,
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
, and
Kolaghan's Command
. We win on the back of cheap creatures and a constant stream of removal spells. Generally, we don’t get past 5 lands because one of our best plays is to flashback a
Faithless Looting
and discard a topdecked land to gain more gas. Eventually we win from lots of persistent creatures and a constant stream of removal.
Card Choices
Lands
To start, let’s look at the basic lands. You can’t tell me with a straight face that
Island
from unlimited edition isn’t beautiful. It is, in my opinion, the best island art available. I decided on Unlimited Edition over Revised because although I love the T tap symbol, the Revised version with that art is very washed out and looks terrible.
Mountain
is easily my favorite mountain. Between the Revised T for a tap symbol and the snow-covered bowl-shaped peak, I get excited every time I see it. It took me a long time to find a swamp I like, but I finally found
Snow-Covered Swamp
and I like the looks of it a lot. It counts as a basic land so it isn’t turned off by
Blood Moon
and is fetchable, and the art is great, so that’s what I run now. Additionally, it adds an element of troll to the game. When my opponent sees me playing something unlike any deck they've ever seen before with snow-covered lands and all, they get suspicious, which is great to watch as a brewer. I feel very strongly about the arts on my basics, and these are my favorites that I’ve found.
This deck’s mana is super intensive. Depending on my hand and play style, I need access to most any 2 color pair by turn 2, including but not limited to UU (for 2 delver, delver + visions, or delver + counter held), BB (for ghast), RB (for loot + tasigur or terminate), UR (for bolt + counter or delver + bolt), and UB (for IoK + delver). All of those are fairly common plays to open with to maximize the effectiveness of our hand. Post-board, our mana gets even harder. Against affinity, for example, R cards are extremely important, but U cards are almost nonexistent. But against Burn, our R cards take a hit, while our U cards are how we win and our B mana gives us Nighthawks. Against BGx, B mana is extremely important to have lots of with UU being necessary for tasigur by turn 4. Because all these different decks have a different favorite mana ratio, we need to be able to support that so we run 22 lands and a fetch / shock mana base so we draw enough and so we don’t get color screwed often. It's painful, but worth it.
The only notable other cards are
Creeping Tar Pit
as a 1-of and
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
. My reasoning for tar pit as a 1-of and not a 2-of is that I love it when I draw it, but it is by no means necessary for winning as the game goes on, and I never want to see a second, but having one is nice, so a 1-of is just right. With the recent meta shifts, I will likely try to pick up a second copy, but for now 1 is all I have.
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
has some really sweet interaction that's easy to miss. Obviously it presents infinite landfall triggers for
Bloodghast
and can be cleverly used as a filter to turn into for tasigur, but there's a lot more here than that. It also synergizes with
Faithless Looting
in midrange. If you desperately need a card, have land to spare, and have access to
Faithless Looting
, you can return this card from your field to your hand before activating looting and then you have an extra card to discard. It is emergency use only and it only works once, but you feel like a god after it works out and you find that
Lightning Bolt
you needed to burn them to death while they had lethal on board.
Creatures
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
: Everyone's favorite 4/5 for 1 mana that gains us card advantage with unwanted mana in the late game. He is fueled by
Faithless Looting
to cheat him out excessively early and then returns the favor in the late game by synergizing even more with
Faithless Looting
. This works by using Tasigur to mill 2 and receive a card from your graveyard. It is usually not something you want, but fear not! Now you can flashback
Faithless Looting
and you have 2 more chances to hit a card of value and you already have a card to discard without caring. If they return
Faithless Looting
itself to your hand, then you are secretly living the dream. Think of it as a double
Desolate Lighthouse
on the next turn for only 1 mana, plus you get another opportunity for a flashback. A 4/5 body is also pretty impressive as it bounces off of BGx creatures all day long.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
: He gains me more life than Nighthawk, is not Boltable, is out of range for
Abrupt Decay
, and has all sorts of fantastic synergy with
Bloodghast
and my removal spells. He is great at grinding down BGx as he makes an army and grows boundlessly if left unchecked, gaining me life the whole time. He is worse then Nighthawk against flyers, but there aren't very many in modern and even fewer that I care about. He is amazing against Eldrazi, because if I get him up to 5/6 he pretty much just wins the game.
Vampire Nighthawk
: So the
Bloodghast
can't block, eh? Well that's okay because Nighthawk has our back as a 2/3 flying deathtouch lifelink. I'm going to say that again, because it is so elegant. 2/3 flying deathtouch lifelink. It can fly over defenders, gain us life every time it blocks or attacks, and it never goes down alone, meaning I have no problem with chump blocking opposing Rhinos, Tasigurs,
Reality Smasher
s. and Goyfs, which are the biggest dudes around. I know he dies to
Lightning Bolt
, but it's better that he eats it than me. With twin gone, there are a lot fewer bolts as well. He also lives through
Pyroclasm
post-board so I can wipe away and keep a fantastic blocker around. Very notable is his use against Eldrazi. He trades perfectly with a
Reality Smasher
and can fly over all of their grounded eldrazi.
Snapcaster Mage
: Aaah, snappy. You have caused me so many hours of agonizing indecision on whether a piece of cardboard is really worth the $60. In the end I got 2 of them. Between recycling counterspells and removal,
Lightning Bolt
ing them to the face, and the value cannon of snapping into
Kolaghan's Command
, this card is one of the best ever printed. I'd play more, but my wallet is already licking its wounds.
Bloodghast
: The most important creature in the deck. It creates tons of card advantage through discarding and can eat as many non-
Path to Exile
removal spells as your opponent can throw at it. In the late game we can attack with it into a Siege Rhino or Tarmogoyf and hold a
Lightning Bolt
to seal the deal. It only gets better as the decks go into topdeck mode and our topdecked lands are actually enormously useful to make an army of 2/1 haste creatures that will eventually bring the opponent down. They can be sacrificed or discarded to opposing Lilis and because of their persistence we can force opponents into chump blocking themselves to death.
Delver of Secrets
: A 3/2 flier for 1 mana that's shy and likes being a
Fugitive Wizard
for a few frustrating turns. This is the best aggressive tempo-centric creature in the game. It comes down turn 1 so we don't waste later turns trying to make a threat and is still a serious contender in the later turns as a 3/2 flier is no small creature. It sets an early clock that can close the game if left unanswered - and with out hand attack removing any removal spells they might have, it usually does go unanswered. It also trades with most creatures in the format after flipping, making it good against most any opponent.
Removal
Kolaghan's Command
: Awesome. An inherent 2-for-1 almost every time. It can burn out the smaller creatures, force a discard, recur creatures, and kill artifacts. It gives us mainboard artifact hate, which is very notable.
Shock
isn't fantastic, but it kills more than it should. And bringing back a creature? Priceless. The discard is also good as the hands get smaller. A perfect topper to our removal spells.
Terminate
: A fantastic card. Pure unhindered removal. It kills anything no questions asked. I like having 4 hard removal spells supplemented with burn because today's meta has a ton of creature-based decks. You can never draw too much.
Go for the Throat
: Basically a less color-intensive non-red
Terminate
. It gives us more freedom with our lands against aggro decks at the cost of being bad against Affinity, but Affinity is a pretty good matchup even with it. The real reason to play this card is that it's non-red, so it can kill
Master of Waves
, which is basically a blowout against us.
Lightning Bolt
: The most efficient burn in the game. Does this need a description? It can finish off an opponent, kill almost all creatures, and damage those that it can't kill. It has notable synergy with
Bloodghast
as we can attack into an x/5 creature and if they block we can seal the deal with this bad boy.
Inquisition of Kozilek
: Sweet perfect hand removal. Nothing like stopping a card before it can be cast. It hits most relevant things, with the only real misses being
Master of Waves
,
Thought-Knot Seer
, and
Reality Smasher
. It gives us a way around
Abrupt Decay
and the like and allows us to pick away burn spells before they can hurt us. It is relevant against almost every deck because of modern's low mana curve.
Rise/Fall: Probably the biggest card advantage and tempo swing I have ever seen. This card is so stupidly good in so many matchups that even I don't know why I only run 1. It is good in almost every scenario. Early game we make them lose their hand or re-delve for their Tasigur, and late game we gain more gas, get to re-use our Snapcaster Mage, and it can act as a removal spell. Fall almost ends the game against Burn or Affinity because they need cards in hand, which is very nice. Not having fuse means that I can’t cast both halves at once, and requiring 2 targets for Rise is sometimes a pain, but it is usually one of the best cards in the deck.
Counter
Remand
: A new experiment. Historically I haven't been a fan of Remand in a midrange deck, but it is fantastic against Tron, one of our worst matchups, and it does build a lot of tempo and buy us some time, both of which are good basically across the board. It's also much better when you have
Snapcaster Mage
, so I'm giving it a chance.
Draw
Serum Visions
: One of the best cantrips in modern. It doesn't cost you any card advantage and it lets you decide how you order the top of your library, which is fantastic. It can set up a flip for
Delver of Secrets
, find you your next land drop or scry them away, and most importantly help you find more gas within your line of play. It does everything. It really smooths out the draws as we usually want to hit the lands pretty much perfectly, and this helps us do that.
Faithless Looting
: Without this card, the deck wouldn't function. It does several things for us. First, it allows us to discard. The discard is usually an advantage because we can throw away
Bloodghast
, creatures to recur later with
Kolaghan's Command
, or even more
Faithless Looting
s! Discarding also fuels delving for Tasigur. Second, it allows us to see more cards off the top of our deck. Because we have multiple lines of play, each requiring different cards to function, looting can be used to modify our hand composition to help us find and then execute our line of play. Third, it does great work for smoothing out land drops. This deck is fairly color and land intensive, so having a way to smooth things out and help us hit the lands perfectly is much needed in this deck. Fourth, it enables extremely explosive plays. A turn 2 looting when we're trying to play as fast as possible is the best thing we can do. We are drawing more cards which increases our chances of having enough burn spells to close the game, discarding cards we don't need and that Ghast we wanted in the grave, both of which set us up to win. Without looting, we would never beat combo decks because we just aren't fast enough. Looting speeds the deck up and gives us the hand we need to finish them before they can combo. Even though it is card disadvantage, it is worth it because of the virtual advantage we gain. It allows us to carry powerful cards like
Vampire Nighthawk
that have bad matchups because we can always find a use for them, which includes discarding them. Finally, the flashback has amazing uses in midrange. When we topdeck
Inquisition of Kozilek
or our 8th land, we can flashback looting to get 2 more chances for a card of value and we already have a card we can discard. It also has some fantastic synergy with Tasigur, which you've probably heard about by now. It is a fantastic card overall. The deck honestly would never work without it.
Sideboard
1x
Painful Truths
: Oh my god this card is awesome. I love it. Paying 3 life is too much in the mainboard, but it is a fantastic sideboard card. Draw 3 for 3 mana and 3 life is amazing against midrange and control decks, leaving them hopelessly behind in card advantage. Usually it just ends the game when I side it in, but the danger of it vs decks like Burn are too great to have it in the mainboard.
1x
Echoing Truth
: This card is a really odd include, but I love it in here. It offers so much utility around some of our weakest areas, primarily tokens and enchantments. There have been games where I have dug through half of my deck and then won purely because of this card, and without it I would have lost. Bouncing a
Lingering Souls
team can catch a tokens or Abzan player off guard when they were planning to chump my attack. It bounces
Master of Waves
tokens making him no longer a threat. Forcing my opponent to re-delve their
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
is also a great use. Possibly the most important part of this card is that it can deal with enchantments. Bounce their Leyline end of turn then go on a boltin' spree? Yes please! There are certainly times when it isn't fantastic, but when it completely save my butt it's well worth it.
1x
Mana Leak
: Much less conditional than
Dispel
or
Spell Pierce
. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of Leak, but it gets the job done. In the first few turns it is a
Counterspell
and after that it still hits high costed cards such as Rhinos and Lilis.
1x
Countersquall
: Most people would rather run a
Negate
because of the mana cost, but this deck is base Black so casting it is no problem. It helps me race really well because shocking them and countering their spell is a huge shift in tempo and puts me solidly on the beatdown.
2x
Dispel
: Additional counter. My 1 mainboard sometimes isn't enough and when I'm racing or controlling I need this to keep them off-balance for a very low mana investment. It hits so many relevant cards in the current meta that I almost want to run more.
1x
Languish
: This card needs some explaining. It is here as my budget
Damnation
. With Eldrazi on the rise, I desperately need to upgrade, so let’s hope for a Damnation reprint. It is used mainly as a hard board wipe to stop the decks out of
Pyroclasm
range. These decks are mainly Merfolk and Elves, but it also has its uses against other decks such as Bogles. It misses the main advantage of
Pyroclasm
which is that my Nighthawks don't live to block, but that's fine because in the situations where I cast Languish, Nighthawk is pathetically outclassed and his survival is irrelevant. It ends the game in some matchups making it worth the spot. This card is probably the best tech against Eldrazi as well because it doesn’t target
Reality Smasher
and can cantrip off TKS.
2x
Pyroclasm
: I wouldn't mind running more because it is so useful. It hits most small things including every burn creature, most elves, Colected Company creatures, infect creatures, tokens, affinity's creatures, and
Young Pyromancer
tokens. The best part is that it doesn't kill my
Vampire Nighthawk
s so they can live on to defend me and gain me life afterwards. It is my main sweeper of choice but it sometimes isn't enough, hence I also have Languish.
1x
Engineered Explosives
: An extra sweeper that also happens to hit enchantments. Yay! It is great when planning ahead for a
Blood Moon
or taking care of that
Choke
. Super useful and versatile, albeit quirky and awkward at times too. Absolutely wrecks tokens. It is probably the best card in the sideboard, even if only a 1-of.
2x
Rakdos Charm
: Super versatile and super useful. Extra artifact hate is very good against Affinity, which is popular right now because of eldrazi. Although it only exiles a graveyard once, rather than forever like with
Leyline of the Void
or cantrip like
Nihil Spellbomb
, it is my favorite grave hate because Leyline is just overkill and grave hate isn’t necessary for use to beat other Grixis or BGx decks, so the only grave hate we need is against Grishoalbrand or Living End, where Rakdos Charm is just fine. The damage effect may be not as good now that Twin is gone, but I have killed token players with it before and it has potential to hit for a lot against Kiki-Chord, especially with their
Voice of Resurgence
.
2x
Crumble to Dust
: It kills tron and is good against Eldrazi. That's about it. Tron is its best use, and I’d upgrade to Fulminators if I could, but that's okay because Tron is making a comeback and this is my only way to beat them. I guess this is just a flex spot that could be anything dependent on the meta, and my meta has some tron in it. Tron is borderline unwinnable without this card, and not super great even with it.
Matchups and Sideboarding
Aggro Decks
Affinity: Favorable. Side out 4
Bloodghast
and 3
Delver of Secrets
. Side in 2
Pyroclasm
, 1
Engineered Explosives
, 2
Rakdos Charm
, 1
Darkblast
, and 1
Languish
. This one is hit or miss – do you hit your removal spells or not.
Kolaghan's Command
is fantastic because it can usually kill 2 artifacts.
Vampire Nighthawk
is amazing as it gives us life and never dies alone. In this matchup make every turn count because they are blisteringly fast and need constant pressure to keep in control. Sometimes they just get good hands and we get bad hands and they win, and that’s just how the game goes. We side in every bit of removal we have available because it gives us the edge over them. In games 2 and 3 watch out for
Blood Moon
- it pretty much kills us outright, so fetch basics (which saves life anyway) and use hand disruption to play around it.
Burn: Unfavorable. Side out 4
Bloodghast
and 3
Serum Visions
. Side in 1
Mana Leak
, 1
Countersquall
, 2
Dispel
, 2
Pyroclasm
, 1
Engineered Explosives
. Our best cards against them are
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
,
Vampire Nighthawk
,
Inquisition of Kozilek
,
Fall
, and
Dispel
. Kalitas is one of our best cards here because he gains us life and can block all of their creatures. Nighthawk is quite good as well, and may die to bolt, but then he’s saved me 3 damage, which is a good use of a creature.
Fall
is almost an auto-win. It is soooooo good against this deck. This matchup is so terrible though.
Merfolk: Unfavorable. Side out 2
Vampire Nighthawk
, 1
Remand
, and 3
Serum Visions
. Side in 1
Languish
, 1
Darkblast
, 1
Engineered Explosives
, 1
Echoing Truth
, and 2
Pyroclasm
. If they get a good hand, we lose. If we can get
Languish
turn 4 and get good removal, we can win. We lose more than we win, but it is not impossible.
Languish
and removing their lords are the most important things.
Master of Waves
is our worst nightmare - save your
Go for the Throat
and
Darkblast
for it. We can also use
Rise
to bounce Master to buy a turn.
Languish
is really the only good way to kill this deck. Keeping
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
in the deck post-board might be a mistake so if I should be siding him out, then keep in
Serum Visions
.
Delver: Neutral to Favorable. Side out 2
Vampire Nighthawk
, 1
Drowned Catacomb
, 1
Thoughtseize
, and 1
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
. Side in 1
Engineered Explosives
, 1
Painful Truths
, 1
Darkblast
, and 2
Dispel
. This is definitely the most fun matchup because of how interactive and fair it is. We pretty much stick to our proactive game plan and disrupt them the whole way until someone wins.
Elves: Neutral to Favorable. Side out 1
Remand
, 3
Delver of Secrets
, and 1 Rise/Fall. Side in 1
Engineered Explosives
, 1
Languish
, 1
Darkblast
, and 2
Pyroclasm
. The green Merfolk deck. Uggh these tribal aggro decks are annoying, but
Languish
is their least favorite friend. We try to play defensively until we can cast
Languish
, then we chip away with our creatures until we win. I’m not sure if I want
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
in the main or if I should be siding in
Dispel
and
Countersquall
to hit their Companies and Chords, but I’ll test that. They do run
Cavern of Souls
, so counters will only be able to hit their Companies and Chords, but hitting those are pretty good.
Midrange Decks
Jund: Favorable. Side out 3
Delver of Secrets
. Side in 1
Countersquall
, 1
Engineered Explosives
, and 1
Painful Truths
. For this we try to win on the back of a ton of removal spells and some persistent threats. Avoid giving up removal spells as much as possible as you can never draw too many. Plan for the turn 2
Dark Confidant
and kill it on sight. Also kill Scooze on sight because he can exile our
Bloodghast
s and then we usually lose. Keep an uncracked fetch if you see one in their hand. Keep your
Bloodghast
s around because they prevent
Liliana of the Veil
from using her -2 because we can sac Ghast and not care.
Bloodghast
’s recursion,
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
, and
Faithless Looting
’s virtual card advantage is how we win this matchup. Removal is also very important.
Abzan: Favorable. Side out 3
Delver of Secrets
and 2
Inquisition of Kozilek
. Side in 1
Countersquall
, 1
Mana Leak
, 1
Painful Truths
, 1
Echoing Truth
, and 1
Engineered Explosives
. This one is a little tricky, but not too bad. In game 1 you have to make yourself the beatdown with an early
Delver of Secrets
. You have to establish a clock so they have to play defensively and then things go smoothly. We side in
Echoing Truth
to deal with
Lingering Souls
primarily. This matchup is where we try to maximize our card advantage potential.
Tron: Unfavorable. Side out 1
Terminate
, 1
Go for the Throat
, 2
Vampire Nighthawk
, and 3
Inquisition of Kozilek
. Side in 1
Countersquall
, 2
Rakdos Charm
, 1
Painful Truths
, 1
Echoing Truth
, and 2
Crumble to Dust
. Counter their important plays because we can’t let them happen and try to disrupt them as much as possible. Yes, we have counters, but not enough to counter their
Pyroclasm
s and their land tutors. Dig for
Crumble to Dust
but acknowledge that it isn’t game over if resolved. They can still get 6 land drops to cast
Wurmcoil Engine
effectively ending the game. Have a counter or win before they resolve it. Always throw burn spells at their face because we need to race them down while locking them down. Kalitas can prevent the dying trigger of
Wurmcoil Engine
, which is amazing. Bloodghast honestly isn’t even that great in this matchup, but
Delver of Secrets
is quite good. Mono-U tron is a significantly better matchup than GR tron in game 1. Game 1 vs GR is pretty rough unless they totally flop, which isn't uncommon. Post-board is much better, but still not favored.
Grixis Midrange: Favorable. Side out 3
Delver of Secrets
. Side in 1
Painful Truths
, 1
Mana Leak
, and 1
Countersquall
. Game 1 is okay, but
Bloodghast
makes it doable. Games 2 and 3 are much better. Play an aggressive game where they can't stabilize because we keep their defenders scarce and our
Bloodghast
don't like to go away.
Eldrazi: Neutral. Side out 3
Delver of Secrets
and 1
Remand
. Side in 1
Darkblast
, 1
Painful Truths
, and 2
Crumble to Dust
. Colorless eldrazi is a better matchup than UR Eldrazi, but both are winnable, but Processor Eldrazi is really bad.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
is great against Eldrazi and pretty much wins the game if we can make it a 5/6.
Vampire Nighthawk
is great against them.
Terminate
ing
Reality Smasher
and then discarding
Bloodghast
feels amazing against them.
Darkblast
is brought in to kill the turn 1
Eldrazi Mimic
, but also hits a lot of the UR Eldrazi.
Combo Decks
Kiki-Chord:Neutral. Side out 2
Vampire Nighthawk
, 1 Rise/Fall, and 1
Remand
. Side in 1
Echoing Truth
, 1
Engineered Explosives
, 1
Painful Truths
, and 1
Languish
. They have
Voice of Resurgence
, which kinda kills us really well. Thankfully, Kalitas helps by preventing Voice’s death trigger, which makes the matchup better, but if they can get an unanswered Voice, we more or less just lose.
Infect: Favorable. Side out 4
Bloodghast
, 1
Delver of Secrets
, and 3
Serum Visions
. Side in 1
Far / Away
, 1
Dispel
, 1
Countersquall
, 2
Pyroclasm
, 1
Engineered Explosives
, 1
Echoing Truth
, and 1
Mana Leak
. We have a lot of removal. If we can draw the right removal at the right time, we can win. If we don’t get the right removal, we lose. Unlike against Abzan, our opening hand is everything so if we don’t draw the right pieces, we lose. But we have a lot of cards that can screw them over because we have a lot more removal than they have creatures. Overall one of the best matchups for this deck because of all of the removal we pack.
