the problem is that you must counter thought-knot, and you must counter reality smasher. Neither of those can be reliably killed with spot removal

I played a tiny local modern event yesterday, and my first match was against colorless eldrazi, complete with Chalices and SSGs. I was playing a homebrewed, Naya-colored value creature deck featuring Flickerwisp with synergistic permanents (Oath of Nissa, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Kitchen Finks, etc) and some choice removal (Path, Magma Spray). I swept him (2-0) without him suffering any serious anomalies (like mana screw/flood).

Just one match, but still: the deck is beatable, even without attacking their lands. In fact, I’d say the lands are a distraction that you need to avoid focusing on and just deal with what they’re actually *doing* with all that mana.

The third argument is less a reason to wait and more a reason that the risks of waiting are low. The first two arguments are the reasons to wait. The third argument is the reason it’s okay to wait; the risks are very low. If it was just any one of those three arguments, a banning would maybe be warranted. But all three combined suggest waiting is absolutely the proper course of action.

I feel like a lot of people who never played the real eternal formats see these lands and see a superficial analogy to tomb, shop, city etc and assume that they are busted. But there is a big difference. Shop and city let you use the mana to do anything. You can cast show and tell, or donate or cards that just win.

Shop gives 3 mana which you can use to cast backbreaking spells like 3 sphere, or defense grid, or sphere of resistance which will completely shut down the other deck as soon as they are cast. A game with turn 1 3sphere will often end wihtout the other deck playing a spell.

The drazi lands give you two mana, but they have the drawback that you can only cast a very narrow set of cards. Things that die to doomblade can only be so scary. Creatures that need to tap to attack can only be so scary. The eternal lands are good because they accelerate non interactive brokenness. Accelerating creatures is night and day.

Yeah, outside of the pro tour they don’t know what deck you are playing in advance and they don’t mull for chalice, they mull for drazi lands. Even if they do mull for challice it’s a two card combo. If you have any experience playing combo decks (which unless you’re old school and played old extended or current vintage / legacy you probably don’t) getting two cards together is hard, you need tons of cantrips and tutoring to make it happen reliably by turn three. Turn one natural draw both pieces is rare. Backbreaking when it happens, but rare.

I’ve played delver v drazi online quite a few times and the match was way more even than I expected. I felt like I was beating UR, beating colorless on the play and losing on the draw, and getting crushed by GR or any build with maindeck return.

Turn one delver, turn two leak, turn 3 bloodmoon gets it done. And they can’t really cast anything scary before turn 2. Remand is less good. If you follow it with moon it can be ok but leak is just always good early. Their deck doesn’t have any card draw till late, so if you don’t get turn one chaliced and counter their first 2 big threats you typically win.

I feel like the above comment is theorycrafting and hasn’t actually played the matchup very much.

Mana Tithe existz

Delver still has tools like Gemstone cavern on the draw, along side hurkyl’s recall. The chances of having SSG & Chalice are low enough that delver isn’t completely dead just of those two cards.

Most of the decks I own and can play are outclassed by Eldrazi (Zoo, Merfolk, Burn) and I borrowed cards to make Blue Moon but am wondering if it’s good enough come GP Bologna where the Eldrazi metagame will also evolve to adapt to hate.

The join then solution requires dropping a couple of hundred bucks on top of GP costs in order to be competitive on a ‘fair’ level. And even then that ‘investment’ could go town the drain if Wizards bans the Eldrazi key pieces…what to do?

Them’s the breaks I guess!

This comment is an imagined world with an overpowered deck. No opinions on eldrazi yet. Not enough data.

The problem arises when you have x decks that are truly overpowered and anti x decks. At this point you are basically forced to play one of these decks. This alone is bad for a meta like modern because it’s supposed to be the “open format where you can do a lot of things!” Diversity is already gone. Nobody likes HAVING to play a certain strategy… Heck I love prison decks, but if I HAVE to play them, then I (and others based off of the reddit sample size alone) feel like I’m not really choosing a deck which is one the founding ideas of this game. At this hypothetical point the format is already stifled in a way that nobody can objectively agree is healthy.

(This following is a more specific example to show a possible meta with an op deck though and doesn’t necessarily apply to all of them)To add while there are decks that can beat deck x, it doesn’t allow for any flexibility in the format. If those people stop playing the “anti-x” decks, then x continues its charge. To add, the “anti-x” decks have the opportunity to cannibalize each other how tron does to Jund for example. They may have common enemies in burn for example, but they’ll still destroy each other when given the chance. (Though tron is more hoping to kill Jund in this example.) So you don’t necessarily have this unified front against the eldrazi. People will try to beat the fair decks too reducing the “forces against x” chances. To add, because these anti-x decks can tend to be very linear, they have large weakness to other linear strategies so that they can deal with x, for example the prison deck vs burn matchup is not so cool. So basically you just spend the entirety of the format trying to survive and deal with one deck and dodge all the non-x matchups. Which isn’t how this game was designed. Also, while the x decks are ingesting each other as well… They would have greater numbers, and a greater baseline power. They are focusing on beating the “anti-x” decks too. Everything is in favor of the x decks.

Just to add, people don’t like boring formats like this. This is shown through the rtr theros standard when modern got its first huge immigration and is show widely in magic’s past. Monoblack was everywhere and it bored people to death. The good part about this game is that you can play different strategies and do well.

Basically when you have an unbalanced meta… Nothing good comes from it.

^^

I won most of the times with Delver vs a Chalice on 1, you just have to be prepared for it AND know how to play against it. If you have neither a plan nor the required knowledge on how to play against it than you will lose for use. However, the “aggro” UR Delver version is more affected by a Chalice on 1 than nearly any other Delver deck, so yes, Chalice on 1 is great vs UR Delver (especially the aggro versions).

Greetings,
Kathal

I think you are forgetting about the four maindeck chalice. Meaning Delver has zero shots of winning on the draw.

I will be able to play between 2 and 3 tournaments next week, I will write some small reports afterwards.

Greetings,
Kathal

Yes, I made some changes (Send to Sleep main deck e.g.), especially the SB got changed a lot (no more Huntmaster (imo garbage in that deck), but instead Snapcasters, Threads, Deflecting Palm and co).

Main focus was against colourless Eldrazi atm, and I’m positive (only a little bit) due to the clock the deck represents AND the amount of Tempo it can generate (Send to Sleep is bonkers in that deck). I have to test the UR Eldrazi match-up more (which is imo the better Eldrazi deck), but Drowner of Hope is such a pain in the ass (I have to run Needle in the SB for him 🙁 ).

Greetings,
Kathal

Sadly… Mark Rosewater doesn’t like land destruction. And he hates Wasteland with a passion.