“Pala and Architect make infinite mana, not damage, meaning they don’t win the game on their own. A third card—Whispers of the Muse—is needed to secure an instant win. And that’s assuming we haven’t made a land drop yet, allowing us to play and activate Kessig Wolf Run with our infinite mana if the four Bolts don’t get us there.”

Kessig still taxes us a land drop, potentially slowing down the combo by a turn.

pili pala will have summoning sickness. it can’t use it’s untap effect. see rule 302.6

Emeria Control is another deck I could think of that might be able to make use of Plumeveil; Warmonger’s Chariot may not add much to that deck though.

Yep, the WR Control deck is the one I had in mind. I think Nahiri and Ajani are better proactive cards than Guardian Seraph and Baneslayer Angel, and the WR Control deck improves its interaction by dipping into red a little more for Helix (at virtually no cost to its own consistency) and running Guide/Chalice.

It might be interesting to go into the differences between Temur and Grixis Delver with Ryan, but off the top of my head, here they are, as I understand them:

Temur:
– Has trouble transitioning to a midrange plan in Game 1
– Makes up for this weakness by playing a superb tempo game
– Favorable matchups vs. every linear deck, struggles vs. midrange
– Better SB cards, i.e. Huntmaster

Grixis:
– Slower and clunkier, better geared for the mid-game than the early-game
– Essentially a Grixis Control deck that “splashes” Delvers so it doesn’t auto-lose to linear strategies
– Can struggle vs. stuff like Tron and Burn, but has a great time vs. midrange
– Better mainboard spells, i.e. Terminate

In the end, the deck you play comes down to personal preference, since they both handle so differently. But I do think each is better suited to a different metgame. Since Modern is so linear, I’m inclined to say Temur is better positioned in a diverse field. But if you expect a ton of Jund, and not a lot of Burn/Tron/Bogles/etc., you’re way better off playing Grixis.

PS: Jordan, can you and Ryan Overturf maybe do a two part miniseries comparing and contrasting his grixis delver with your Temur grow / counter cat? I think it would be cool to learn the intricacies, nuances, and relative strengths of two similar decks from 2 pilots that know them well. Like does one have a good match up where the other has a bad one, and why are they different? What does black give vs green and how do they synergize with the UR shell differently? Stuff like that.

Not sure if requests like this are naggy or if it is helpful to you.

All the life gain and damage prevention also rings of soul sisters, which also has flying lifelink beaters.

There’s a strong prison element in the deck as well along side the hard hitting angels so there’s some similarity to the new death and taxes builds w/ eldrazi.

The life gain, damage prevention, and board wipes is just survival. Its seeking to make land drops until it can throw down haymakers. That’s basically Tron. Tron runs board wipes purely to buy time. The biggest differences are that Tron ramps into it’s haymakers while this deck stalls for longer and that Tron’s threats are vastly superior.

Different aspects of the last deck are all a worse and/or slower version of something. Without playing the deck, it’s tough to know which other archetype it is most similar to. My best guess is the SCG Indy list, which is itself a brew that’s worse than something else.