If you look at the list you’ll see that it plays 25 instants and sorceries. That’s the important part, not how many creatures the deck plays. Nacatl is the main reason to splash white into RUG Delver shells for the reason that, over Swiftspear, it allows us to play more reactively with a threat on the table. Swiftspear would regularly attack for 1 in this deck, which is unacceptable.

Counter-Cat is a vastly different deck from Monkey Grow, even though they play many of the same cards. You can read more about it here:

http://quietspeculation.com/delver-teeth-introducing-counter-cat/
http://quietspeculation.com/delver-bulk-counter-cat-practice/

Since you cut out the Shoals (so no need for a fixed blue count), why not Monastery Swiftspear?

Oh wow, that’s this weekend then! Good luck to you; see you around GP Montreal in May perhaps!

Blessed Alliance plugs a ton of holes in a lot of strategies. I think GW Tron looks great right now, much better than GR in fact. Pyroclasm/Firespout are a lot less effective against the pump decks showing up than Path is. There’s always Fog to combat Infect, too.

Unfortunately, I’ll be playing at an RPTQ near Boston since I just moved. But I’ll probably be in Montreal for the bigger events coming up next year!

Dismember helps a lot by killing early Goyfs. Later ones can still be problematic but by that point in the game we should have a Moon down and be pressuring pretty hard with Huntmasters and Goyfs of our own. It’s really the early Goyfs from opponents that we have to worry about, since those are the ones that get aggressive.

Since later Goyfs from opponents are frequently on the defensive, we’re happy to sit back and flip Huntmaster for awhile or to just swing with an exalted Goyf to blow through defenses.

“Double-Bolting” Goyfs also works for us, even if one Bolt is a Tarfire and one is a Dismember, or one is a Chandra hit and one is a Bolt, or whatever. We have a ton of removal spells and it’s really only Goyf that’s going to give us trouble out of the decks that run him so it’s usually fine for us to spend two cards getting rid of one.

Speaking of G/R Moon, I love the deck and have been playing the heck out of it for probably about the last 6 months or so, but I’ve been struggling to find a good solution to goyfs in that particular color combination, especially once they grow to the magic 6 toughness to live through dismembers. Any thoughts?

I look forward to meeting you at the RPTQ in Montreal. I appreciate the content and analysis and I have no illusions that I’ll have the opportunity to meet you again as I’m new to Magic and lucked my way through my first PPTQ. Anyways, keep an eye open for me. I’lol be the only one over 40 there I imagine!

I agree about Dredge and Burn, but I love it against the other two decks. Color combinations that have no way to get an 0/4 off the table will love it against UR Prowess, since it kills Thing right away, not to mention Kiln Fiend or Swiftspear in a pinch. It also kills the weaker threats in DSZ past a Mutagenic Growth, as well as a 1/1 Death’s Shadow + Mutagenic Growth, and takes care of their Mandrills post-board and most of their Goyfs.

Decks without blue can’t run Vapor Snag, and Snag is only better than Dismember some percentage of the time. When you’re employing a midrange plan and trying to win on card advantage, as many aggro-control decks often do, you can’t afford to just be bouncing threats. I know Merfolk is frequently on the aggro side of things, so it’s not too relevant for that deck, but I’m really liking a copy in the Monkey Grow sideboard right now.

It’s also been awesome in GR Moon as a 4-of. Helps get us past the early game so we can start playing Moons, Goyfs, and Huntmasters. Can even cycle away extras to Faithless Looting. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see it start to get more play in archetypes that struggle to make it to turn three-four but handily take over the game from there.