I have considered it and am now playing an 18th land. But I really dislike utility lands in this kind of deck, and in most Blood Moon decks. It doesn’t cast our spells and the ability will almost never be relevant. The 18th land is a Foothills.

I’m running a pair of Baubles in the main now and they help a lot with hitting delirium against linear decks. This deck is too mana-hungry to profit much from Architects IMO.

It does hurt. Our dream counterspell in this deck is actually Memory Lapse, but alas, Modern doesn’t give us that many good ones.

Thanks for the reply, I played with the deck a bit and it feels insanely powerful, but it also feels like you could probably build it in a more aggressive shell similar to old UR cruise delver, similar to your first build, and it might be better, as there were a lot of game where I was close to being able to burn out my opponent, but wasn’t able to. However I did win most of my games (not against top tier decks though). Do you feel the lack of a counterspell that sends things to the graveyard hurts the deck? There were a lot of times I felt it would have been really nice to have one, but I’m not sure if it’s more important than the anti-synergy with reveller.

I have found that. Denial is one of my favorite cards but it just didn’t work me for in this deck. The benefits are obvious though, and it went right into my first draft of the deck. The idea of drawing it off a Reveler with a mana up was very enticing to me. I have thought about trying one copy again but I’m just not sure we want a card that’s dead half the time.

My (relatively tuned) list is as follows:

Creatures:
4x Delver
4x Bedlam
4x YP
2x V clique

Delver was selected for his evasion+quick clock, pyromancer because he goes wide and is the best defensive and offensive creature if you can enable him. (Thing in the ice could also be played in this same slot).

Cantrips:
4x SV
4x Sleight
3x Gitaxian
2x Quicken

One of the reasons quicken is amazing is because we are stuck playing so many efficient sorceries. Quicken has a hidden mana-gain mode: you get to represent a counterspell with the option of still progressing your game plan if the counter wasn’t needed. I *hate* playing the full four gitaxian probes in non-combo decks, It might be even more correct to skew the split more in favor Quicken given the above

Proactive:
4x Bolt
2x Rift Bolt
3x Lava spike

The numbers on lava spike vs Rift bolt vary, on the one hand waiting a turn for RB really sucks, on the other hand we still want to be able to point burn at creatures. RB gets much better with quicken

Reactive:
2x Remand
2x Spell Pierce
2x Vapor snag

Four snags was way too many, but some number are definitely needed. One of the strengths of this list is that chump blocking a goyf forever is a real plan, so we don’t necessarily need to go to hard on removal

18 lands

What surprised me most about this list was just how fantastic spell pierce was. I quickly found myself adding the third and fourth to the sideboard. I also like how the deck isn’t so “all in” on one drop threats like delver, because even if they bolt him and the next one, you still get to re-load and burn them out with bedlam later.

True, and I apologize for framing my question incorrectly. On rereading my post I was hasty and inconclusive in my explanation of my thoughts. Here’s round two :).

When looking at stubborn denial, have you found that it’s Force Spike mode isn’t relevant? If you’re wiling to force spike earlier in the game, then you move in a direction that supports keeping the spell in the deck, and seems to support the willingness not to hold onto spells in your hand, which is necessary to enable an effective Reveler.

With a resolved reveler, you have a ferocious active Denial if you draw one off the trigger or subsequently. In addition, an early Goyf will likely net you a ferocious active Denial as well for earlier full usage. I guess I’m unsure if the downside is really large enough to discredit the upsides of the spell.

That list was my starting point with Bedlam Reveler and is totally unfinished. I would not recommend anyone play it card-for-card; it needs a lot of work. Personally, I also wouldn’t play UR at all, so i doubt I’ll return to it anytime soon. But good luck to anyone working on it!

Unsubstantiate is even less versatile than Simic Charm, which I’ve recently cut to go back to triple Vapor Snag. We’d rather draw a card (possibly a land drop, or a spell we can cast) than not draw one, which is the trade-off here with Remand.

I actually explained why in the article.

First, as thoughtscour is not near as good with bedlam as it is with delve, I suggest you take a second look at modern’s 1 CMC cantrips. My current favorite (after SV, Sleight of hand, and Gitaxian) is Quicken. Quicken is especially great because it lets you leave mana up for …

COUNTERSPELLS! The UR list is just so much better if you merely play 2x Remand and 2x Spell pierce main! Delver decks have *never* been as fast as all-out-agro so why try to make a worse version of an already existing deck? You don’t need so many counters as to protect *all* of your threats, you just need enough to protect the *last* one (aka the one that kills them)

Going along with the counterspell suggestion, I also think that you should consider playing Young Pyromancer over one of the red one drops (I think I favor swiftspear over guide). YP is great with cantrips and great with counterspells.

The U/R list has a lot of potential, as playing superundercosted threats and answers has traditionally been a winning strategy in older formats

I tried splashing a Traverse package into my Monkey Grow sideboard for help with Jund, and Bedlam Reveler was really bad with delve creatures. Granted, I was also trying to keep delirium on, but it’s something to think about.

Shoal’s purpose is to interact with hyper-fast linear decks of all flavors without tapping mana in the crucial early turns, and to defend threats from removal as we deploy them, so I don’t see how Brutality plays a similar role.

I also don’t think the Horror synergy is worthwhile since casting Bedlams should win you the game anyway. You gain little from not having to bounce Bedlam because of his card type.

The real reason to play Grixis Bedlam decks is Kolaghan’s Command, which performs a similar function to Traverse by grabbing the Devil when you need him. But yeah, we have Traverse in Temur colors. I don’t think you gain anything by ditching Goyf and running Thought Scour to enable inferior threats, especially if you’re not even running Command.

I have been trying out Reveler in a Grixis Midrange shell, and I’m not saying that the build is perfect, however I have found it to be quite powerful so far. Obviously the normal amount of delve creatures don’t work very well with Reveler, so at first I just subbed some Thing in the Ice. Then I realized that Reveler is a horror (who knows why?). After this, I bumped up the number Things since Reveler also helps make sure that your hand stays stocked with spells so you can flip even lategame Things.
I’ve also found Collective Brutality to be very solid in this shell. It kind of functions in a similar role to your Disrupting Shoals to give the deck tempo positive plays at the cost of cards so you can make sure you get to live to your Reveler and have him refill your hand. (its also insane against burn, which is a big plus for Grixis)
This is what I have been working with so far, I would love to hear your thoughts on the Thing in the Ice and Reveler combination, and the idea that a proactive Grixis deck (giving you hard removal) could also take advantage of the draw 3 strapped to a 3/4 body:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/450227#paper

While you may be right that this just ends up being a worse Reveler deck than Delver, I do think it could warrant a look!

Reveler seems like it performs best in Delver shells, which means there’s little reason to play it in a midrange deck. Check out my response to Luca above for more on this. Traverse already gives us such a great grind game and we usually just want to search Reveler anyway so a toolbox is less important.

Against the decks I’d want a Staticaster, a Thrun, a Rec Sage, a Scooze, a Sulfur Elemental, or pretty much anything else, finding Bedlam Reveler and trying to draw relevant interaction is almost always better. And it doesn’t cost us any sideboard slots!

I’m a big fan of your articles, thanks for the content.
You didn’t tell us clearly how the midrange version (the one you talk about in the second article about delirium, with a toolbox of magus, clique etc..) went: was it competitive enough? Was it dismissed because it was bad or just because you wanted to focus on sultai and delvers?
Thanks a lot!