I don't disagree that Treasure Cruise was too good for Modern. It was clearly a mistake to print the card at all, and its banning was inevitable.

I sure do miss it, though.

I played Delver of Secrets in Modern when it was bad, and seeing it become arguably the best deck in the format brought me a lot of joy. Interestingly, while the card advantage provided by Treasure Cruise was clearly obscenely powerful, the real boon for the Delver decks was a way to go over the top of Abrupt Decay while maintaining their efficiency. As things stand, there's another delve spell that could also give Delver the shot in the arm that it needs to keep up with midrange decks.

Interestingly, it's a card that has found a home in the midrange decks themselves:

Tasigur currently has a reputation of being more of a midrange creature. I wonder if we'd feel the same way if Treasure Cruise were never printed--a universe in which we would likely see Hooting Mandrils show up in both Legacy and Modern.

Tasigur's ability is clearly a boon, but I have reason to believe that even as a 4/5 with delve, he would still see a lot of play. Odds are that he wouldn't be legendary if that were the case, but still. I mean, Gurmag Angler showed up in at least two constructed decks at the Pro Tour. The mechanic is busted, and being hyper-efficient is what caused Tarmogoyf to push eternal formats towards playing creatures in the first place.

The popularity of Lingering Souls is somewhat problematic for Delver decks, but Tasigur and Young Pyromancer are both threats that can overpower the token-generating menace in some scenarios. Tempo plays like Mana Leakinging one side of Souls and attacking into two tokens with Delver and killing a token before damage can be reasonable as well. A copy of Electrolyze or two will also go a long way.

With a spell suite that leaves Delver favored against combo decks and creature decks alike, if Tasigur can enable the deck to beat the various flavors of Abzan, then it would be a great choice in Modern. I'm completely sold on Tasigur, and the question now is: what else, if anything, we want to do with out black splash?

I don't like discard in Delver. When you play a tempo deck, your opponent will often die with a lot of cards in their hand. Discard is great if you only care about a small set of cards and you can win very quickly. Tempo decks tend to benefit more from counterspells, not only because your low mana curve causes you to care about a lot more spells, but also because you don't just trade one for one--you also eat some of your opponent's mana.

Further, if Burn is going to continue to be anywhere near as popular as it was on the Pro Tour, then I don't like the idea of playing a third color and needing to aggressively fetch for dual lands of that color. Inquisition of Kozilek is awesome against Burn, but if you crack a fetch for a Watery Grave, then you've probably damaged yourself as much as the spell you forced them to discard would.

Young Pyromancer and Tasigur both incentivize the inclusion of Gitaxian Probe, and, if I'm going to play Probe, I really don't want to have to fetch for a ton of untapped duals. As such, I want my black and red splashes to both be as light as possible. It's hard to get around needing double red just by playing Snapcaster Mage and Lightning Bolt in the same deck, but by minimizing our black splash, we can make the manabase a lot less painful.

As of now, the only non-Tasigur spell I want to maindeck is Terminate. Terminate kills opposing Tasigurs, is another awesome slot against Splinter Twin and Loxodon Smiter decks alike, and gains a lot of stock with fewer Voice of Resurgence and Kitchen Finks in the format.

Dismember is also an option, but I see the upside on Terminate being higher--particularly if we're making our splash light in order to save life. Slaughter Pact is another card to keep in mind, though I'm more likely to relegate that one to the sideboard.

This is the maindeck I have drawn up:

It doesn't look like much, but it has me pretty excited.

While Tasigur has been adopted by a lot of decks, I think this could be his strongest home. Decks like Tasigur Twin shoehorned Tasigur as an alternate wincon, the Abzan decks play Tasigur as just another midrange fatty, and decks like the one that Patrick Chapin brought to the Pro Tour try very hard to make fast Tasigurs.

Grixis Delver does something that none of these decks do, and that is seamlessly integrate him as an efficient threat in an efficient, aggressive strategy.

Most of my time is currently being dedicated to testing Standard, so I haven't gotten in any games as of yet. After the Minnesota PTQ next weekend, I will definitely be putting this together on MTGO and doing some battling.

Theoretically, the deck is sound. My biggest concern is that the mana might be too painful, but I'm optimistic.

Sleeve it up and report back on your thoughts in the comments!

Financial Relevance

I've said it time and again, but Steam Vents is a card you should already have your playset of. They are slowing increasing in price as we speak, and supply won't be increasing any time soon. If you don't have a set to play with and want to play Modern, get them now. They're getting a little steep to speculate on, but they're certainly trending upward.

The other card of financial interest in this deck is Snapcaster Mage. Snapcaster is already in the process of spiking, and is up around $40 at the time of this writing. Cheaper copies should be snapped up and you should be on the lookout for them in binders. At $40, there is probably still some room to grow. And with no reprint coming in Modern Masters 2015, that price shouldn't go down for some time.

~

Next weekend I'll be PTQing and PTQQing with Choromanticore Delve, so hopefully I'll have good results to report. After that I'll be able to focus more on playing with this deck. If there is a version of Delver that is able to hack it in the current metagame, I think this is it.

Have any other ideas on how to keep Delver relevant in a Modern infested with Lingering Souls? Let me hear your ideas in the comments!

Thanks for reading.

-Ryan Overturf
@RyanOverdrive on Twitter