Jordan, If that were be the case, then Flame Jab would never see Assault/Loam play.

Yes, Molten vortex it’s a better Flame Jab instead of a bad Assault.

Playing your favorite cards is one of the best reasons to gravitate to a deck. Adam Fronsee, who piloted the BUG deck to 12th place at SCG Ohio, even said in his deck tech that he dropped red for black not because it was “better,” but because “I’m in love with Tasigur.” RUG has a much better game against aggro decks thanks to Bolt and Huntmaster, but BUG gets the edge against midrange since it’s less soft to Abrupt Decay, runs some of its own to kill Scooze and Goyf, and plays Angler and Tasigur, which are trumps in those matchups. So while I think RUG is better overall, I can think of some metas better suited to BUG.

So far BUG Delver is winning about 95% (aggregate) versus combo/control/midrange but is only 34% or so versus aggro with most wins coming versus sum of its parts linear style decks or burn. Certainly having a delve creature bounced on you is painful, and thus is part of my own sideboard tech…but I can see where all delve strategies could suffer from that card becoming heavily played.

No offense to Temur Delver which your previous article definitely sold me on, but I just love playing BUG and while I will definitely test Temur at some point as well for now I’m happy to play a really sweet deck with some of my favorites in Lily, Tasigur, Abrupt Decay etc.

Looking forward to the next article.

On Looting: I mean if you draw Looting in that sort of “opener,” it becomes much better.

I have always thought BUG Delver misses Lightning Bolt too much to be in RUG’s league, though the deck is very powerful (mostly thanks to the core). As the format gets faster, Bolt becomes even better than Decay. Tasigur and Angler look pretty stupid in the face of a million Vapor Snags, which I can assure you people will pack in spades. In my testing I’ve found that Goyf is fine in an Undoing shell; when you resolve it yourself, Goyf generally survives until the next turn, when you can grow him again (Shoal, fetchlands, Instants, etc.). You mostly have to watch out for opposing Forked Bolt into Day’s Undoing to remove your Goyf. More on all that this Friday 😉

Also, I’ve been playing BUG Delver, basically Fronsee’s list was the base (aware his was based of your Monkey Grow), but roughly I’ve replaced a Gitaxian Probe and a Gurmag Angler with two Liliana of the Veil. She has been very good. The decks weakness is beatdown Aggro. Side is heavily geared to fight aggro.

1) Do you think that a BUG Delver deck should be on board with Day’s Undoing or fight it with countermagic while trying to play it’s own game? Sadly this might mean pulling Lily.

2) Are goyfs and delving going to be a liability you think against Days Undoing?

Assuming your Monkey Grow shares a lot of similarities.

I understand what you’re saying, I just don’t buy it. My testing hasn’t had this deck matching up well against either Twin (Grixis) or Jund which is why I misunderstood you. Against both the issue was largely the same: they have enough removal to slow you down early and a even strong start into Day’s Undoing helped them find the cards they need much more often than it helped me close out games. Delver did well in game ones, but after both decks sideboarded into sweepers like Anger of the Gods things got much harder. Casting Day’s Undoing is a gamble at best, and often just a move made out of desperation. Disrupting Shoal is NOT good here: the only card you can pitch to counter an Anger is Day’s Undoing itself, nevermind Jund’s Abrupt Decays. This is an issue the card has in a number of matchups. It gives you answers to potentially game winning plays, sure, but only if those plays cost one or two mana.

Shoal also puts you way behind. When you’re casting it right before a Day’s Undoing it’s not a big deal, but when you’re using it after resolution the cost is very relevant. You’re often stuck using two cards to deal with a single Lightning Bolt against an opponent with six more cards in hand and at least three mana up. Considering the sheer quantity of removal in both Jund and Twin the odds of your threats sticking around against their fresh hand are pretty poor. Also consider you’re giving Twin more counter magic of their own, and refilling Jund’s hand with discard as well. You often end up putting them in a situation where they can stabilize with more cards in hand than you, not to mention the massive gap in card quality between either of those decks and Delver.

Anyway, I understand I’m not going to change your opinion of the card so all we can do is wait and see how the meta unfolds in coming weeks. I think Day’s Undoing may have a place in Modern but I doubt it will be in UR Delver.

If we have Undoing in hand, we want to tear through our other cards as quickly as possible, with an emphasis on keeping the board state in our favor. Then we cast Undoing and generate enough card advantage to beat opponents. The deck plays similarly to the UR Treasure Cruise Delver lists from last January.

Quicken seems very bad to me because you have to spend the card it cantrips into to take full advantage of it, so it requires 5+ mana to be effective (not to mention if you draw into a creature or a land, the card is always wasted). The deck also doesn’t need to cast Undoing at Instant speed to squeeze a ton of gas out of it, so I see no reason to dilute the deck with a bad cantrip.

It seems like you misunderstood my language. “I also tried Jund and Twin against [UR Undoing Delver] and fell short” means that I couldn’t beat Delver with Jund and Twin. This sentence came right after one in which I described playing against UR Delver with my Monkey Grow deck (no Undoings there), so I thought it was clear that I meant I was testing Jund and Twin against the Undoing deck as well.

I explained in the article why Delver is so well-equipped to take on the other Undoing decks (more linear ones). Our counterspells efficiently (read: for 0 mana) answer the Sorcery when our opponents cast it, and we can cast it ourselves when it benefits us most. Shoal also gives us free answers to potentially game-winning plays our opponents might be able to make after we resolve Undoing. The threat suite, combined with tempo generators like Remand and Vapor Snag, help us make sure we’re so far ahead in cards that opponents have a hard time stabilizing the board. More on this in my article, above.

One of the many issues with Day’s Undoing in Modern is one you mention: it’s not good against decks that are faster than your own. Against any of the truly linear decks casting it is going to benefit your opponent much more than yourself in that it will give them the tools to simply end the game. That’s acceptable if those decks aren’t a large part of the meta but they are; Burn and Affinity are the #2 and #3 most played decks respectively according to this very site. Disregarding that, you further go on to say your UR Day’s Undoing brew doesn’t even have great game against the other top decks Twin (#4) and Jund (#1). If the card is poor against the linear decks and poor against the two most popular interactive decks then what exactly is it good against?

Aside from briefly mentioning the peril of playing the card against faster decks than your own, this article doesn’t even touch on the shortcomings of Day’s Undoing. You begin by drawing parallels to Treasure Cruise but completely fail to acknowledge the massive discrepancy in mana cost between a one mana sorcery and a three mana sorcery. As if the cost alone wasn’t bad enough though, the end your turn clause makes the card match up even more poorly with the rest of the deck than it already did. Part of what made Delver with Treasure Cruise so powerful was the ability to chain cantrips and Cruises to draw through your library, powering out tokens and pumping up Swiftspears in the process. Even if Day’s Undoing did cost one mana it’d likely still be a worse card simply because it breaks the chain; as soon as you cast it the turn is over. At best that means lost damage from Swiftspears because you’re forced to cast it after combat and giving your opponent a fresh seven cards to deal with what you have on the board, and at worst it means not only hoping to draw a Disrupting Shoal, but also hoping it’s enough to survive your opponent’s turn. That is a huge gamble in a format defined by decks with the ability to say oops, I win. It’s also a bit hard to take your comparison between Disrupting Shoal and Force of Will seriously when there isn’t a single card in your 75 you could pitch to counter a Splinter Twin.

You mention the deck tested poorly against Twin and Jund (one of the attrition-based strategies which you earlier stated were “a losing plan”) so I suspect you already know all of this. It is no mystery why you wouldn’t mention it in your article, but I don’t understand how you can claim a card will effect the format as much as Treasure Cruise did and in the same article acknowledge the card either doesn’t help enough or worse, helps your opponent more, in over 70% of the ten most common matchups. Actually I can understand it, but I had hoped this site was above that sort of sensationalism.

as a player who started with U/R Delver in Modern, I’m very excited about every new list including our beloved transforming bug. I’ve recently started going towards Grixis Delver, but felt a little bit uncomfortable with a triple-color mana base…

What does the gameplay with Day’s Undoing look like? Do we try to get one or two creatures on the board and disrupt our opponent with Shoal and Remand until we can play Day’s Undoing? I think we can easily handle threads of our opponent with Vapor Snag and/or Bolt the first turns, then play Day’s Undoing with a better board state; refilling our hand and try to tempo him out.

I’m not as experienced as you are, but could Quicken be a possible card, so we can use our fresh new 7 cards first?

Looking forward to your thoughts and reply.

Thanks for your replies!

MTGStocks and eBay.

If you have triple red to activate Vortex three times, wouldn’t you rather just invest it once into Seismic Assault and then spend your mana casting Loam/Crime/Insight/anything? I don’t like it, but we’ll see.

The comparison with barrage of expandables is not fair because with barrage you need mana to cast creatures. With vortex all you need is 2 mana each turn for loam and you get your 3 lands.

Getting to 5 lands is easy with loam so once you get to triple red + green + another lands there is no big difference with assault, since at that point loaming and triple shocking is the most powerful thing you can do anyways.

Dodging targeted discard on the play can make a difference too. The other benefit is you can cast it turn one two and kill something right away before turn 3, which is sometimes a bit late.

I’m still unsure wheter to go all 4 vortex or to go with a split but i think this and magmatic insight might increase loam strategie’s viability in modern, not over the top but more than right now for sure.

The issues to consider IMO are lifeloss and Blood Moon not hurting us, but depending how the meta turns out, Moon might not prove so important.

I guess I mostly just meant cut 2 misty for the full playset of steam vents type of thing

Probably not. Depends how dependable we can make the manabase.