Welcome to Blue Black Delver. This deck utilizes the broken delve mechanic to cheat out creatures for a ridiculously reduced cost. At its heart, this is a tempo deck. The goal of the deck is to play a cheap threat for 1 or 2 mana, and then use counter magic to protect our win condition. Most of the rest of the deck just helps us fill our graveyard quickly. You will find that even when opponents bring in graveyard hate, we fill our graveyard and then use it so quickly that it barely slows us down at all. With that being said, let's break down the deck.
The Threats:
4x Delver of Secrets - Delver of Secrets is probably my favorite pauper legal card. Typically, a big downside to playing blue is that the creatures are pretty terrible on curve. Delver of secrets is probably the best blue creature ever printed (haha just kidding besides Snapcaster Mage) because it is the exception to the rule. A 1 mana 1/1 is not very impressive. But at the beginning of each upkeep, you look at the top card of your library, if it is an instant or a sorcery, you can reveal it to flip Delver of Secrets into Insectile Aberration, a 3/2 flyer. Let us forget about the condition of revealing an instant or sorcery for 1 second and evaluate this card simply on the merit of its flipped form. We are spending 1 mana to play a 3/2 flyer. It doesn't get much better than that folks. Our deck is filled with ways to manipulate the top of our library and shuffling away unwanted cards. We can almost guarantee a flipped Delver by the time we can attack with it. Brainstorm is particularly powerful with Delver of Secrets. At the beginning of your upkeep, Delver of Secrets' trigger goes on the stack. In response, you can hold priority and cast Brainstorm, drawing three cards and then putting any card and an instant or sorcery on top. The Delver of Secrets trigger resolves and you reveal that "miraculous" instant or sorcery off of the top of your library. Ponder and Serum Visions also allow us to manipulate the top of our library but we have to do it at instant speed so there will be a 1 turn delay. Even if we do not have library manipulation, 30 out of 60 cards in our deck are instants and sorceries. So we have a 50/50 shot of blind flipping the Delver of Secrets. We can also use this ability to our advantage. Let us say that we reveal an undesirable card that we do not want to draw, we can cast Thought Scour or Mental Note (essentially same card) to mill the top two cards of our library, thus preventing us from drawing that card. Overall Delver of Secrets is probably the best card in the deck and gives us a reason to be heavy on instants and sorceries and library manipulation.
4x Gurmag Angler - I know that I just went on a rant about a 1 mana 3/2 flyer. But guess what is better than that. A 1 mana 5/5! That is right for the low cost of 1 mana we get a vanilla 5/5 beater. How are we going to fill our library up so quickly? We have several cantrips that naturally fill our graveyard. Ponder, Serum Visions and Brainstorm all replace themselves, mold our hand, and add one card to the graveyard. Thought Scour and Mental Note are particularly good cantrips because they provide 3 cards by themselves for the graveyard. If you are having to pay more than 2 mana to cast a Gurmag Angler (or the Gurm Father as some call him), you are playing the deck wrong or kept a bad hand. Our nut draw lets us play a Gurmag Angler turn 2. Do not play a Gurmag Angler unless you can protect it or you have no other options. We only have about 9 cards in our entire deck that can actually attack effectively so use them sparingly. We are running 1 copy of Mortuary Mire (and have ways to bounce it back to hand) so preferentially delve all non-creature cards before delving creatures.
1x Sultai Scavenger - So the way the math worked out, we needed 1 more copy of Gurmag Angler. While Sultai Scavenger is not nearly as good as Gurmag Angler, it is good enough and has its merits. First, it costs 1 less so ideally we can cast it slightly earlier than Gurmag Angler. Second, it is a 3/3 flyer, which means that it will be at least as big as other flyers that you will realistically see in pauper. Of note, some of the most played flyers in pauper are Mulldrifter, Spellstutter Sprite, Kor Skyfisher, Squadron Hawk, Glint Hawk, and of course a flipped Delver of Secrets. Besides the flipped Delver, Sultai Scavenger beats all of these cards. As a result, we will want to sideboard out Sultai Scavenger if we are playing against another Delver of Secrets deck. Don't get me wrong, we would still much rather have a 5th copy of Gurmag Angler. But alas the rules forbid it.
Fill Up the Graveyard:
4x Brainstorm - We are taking full advantage of Brainstorm in this deck. First we have the synergies with Delver of Secrets which we have already discussed (see Delver of Secrets section). Next, we are running 5 fetch lands, 1 Ash Barrens and 4 Evolving Wilds. The best line of play is to play an Evolving Wilds and then, at the end of your opponents turn, cast Brainstorm, draw 3 cards, put your 2 least favorite cards on top of your library, and then crack the fetch land (or cycle Ash Barrens) to shuffle your library. You can also cast Brainstorm and then cast either Thought Scour, Mental Note, Ponder, or Augur of Bolas to get rid of those cards. This gives us an enormous amount of virtual card advantage. I recommend against just casting Brainstorm with no follow up unless you desperately need to make a land drop. It is essentially game over if you get "Brainstorm Locked" meaning that you have no way to shuffle the top cards and you missed a land drop.
4x Thought Scour - This card is secretly an all-star in this deck. It helps out with Brainstorm and Delver of Secrets, and it fills the graveyard for our delve creatures. I would consider this the glue that holds this whole deck together. That is why we are running 6 copies in our deck (See Mental Note).
2x Mental Note - Here are the other 2 copies of Thought Scour. This card is essentially a clone of Thought Scour. The only difference is that Mental Note requires you to mill the top two cards of your library whereas Thought Scour can target an opponents library. In this deck, they are essentially the same card. I will say, there are some very very fringe cases where milling your opponent's library could be good. If you opponents casts a ponder or serum visions and decides to keep their cards on top, maybe surprise them with a Though Scour. I would say that well over 99% of the time you will be milling yourself, making this an exact copy.
2x Ponder - This cantrip is good because it gives us the option to shuffle, which is something we are looking to do in this deck. We can also set up future turns like flipping Delver of Secrets. We can also choose 1 or 2 cards we like out of the 3, draw them, and then shuffle away the ones we do not want. There is versatility to this card but it is sorcery speed and somewhat clunky so we are running 2 copies.
2x Serum Visions - I used to run Preordain in this place. However recently I have been experimenting with Serum Visions. Overall, it is very similar to Preordain. I am choosing to run Serum Visions because often times you are going to want to set up your future turns. You do not care as much about your current turn. For this reason, I have determined a blind draw is fine and the scrying afterwards gives us a great jumpstart to our following turn. Honestly these 2 options have similar efficacy, run whichever ones you like between Preordain, Ponder, and Serum Visions but run a total of 4 copies between the 3 of them.
Protect the Win Condition:
4x Counterspell - The most classic of counter spells (hence the name). 2 blue mana to counter any spell. The 2 blue mana is not an issue because all but 2 lands in the deck produce blue mana. We are going to be very careful about which spells to counter. In general, the only spells you should be countering are: spells that will win the game for our opponent (ex. lightning bolt to face for lethal), creatures that can out-compete our threats and we do not have removal in hand (ex. Gearseeker Serpent or Greater Sandwurm), Spells that remove our threats (ex. counter spells that prevent them from resolving, Journey to Nowhere, Dinrova Horror). If you are considering countering a spell, ask yourself: is it really necessary to counter this in order to win. If the answer is still yes then go for it.
3x Deprive - This is essentially an extra 3 copies of Counterspell in this deck. Yes there is a drawback of returning a land to hand, however we are playing a tempo deck. We curve out at 3 or 4 lands and are quite happy with drawing anything but lands at that point. There is also utility in returning some lands to our hand. Returning and replaying a Dismal Backwater will gain us an extra life. That could be an extra turn against burn. We can return Mortuary Mire to return a creature from our graveyard. Most of the time, we will not be returning anything special thus making it strictly worse than Counterspell so will only run 3 copies. But keep your eyes out for some synergy with those lands.
1x Spell Pierce - This slot used to be reserved for 1 copy of Daze. However Daze was banned in pauper. Daze was a much better spell for this slot because if an opponent saw Daze in game 1, he or she will make suboptimal plays just by respecting its existence. Spell Pierce is not nearly as respected as daze is. It can be telegraphed by holding open 1 blue mana. I am considering putting in Foil in place of Spell Pierce, but I have not decided yet. Either way, Spell Pierce can really get your opponent if they are not expecting it. This silver bullet will keep your opponents on their toes.
The Removal:
We are running a mish mosh of removal spells because we have so much card selection and filtering. We have a wide variety of removal so we can get the right removal spell at the right time.
3x Disfigure - This removal cannot clear any big creatures, but it cost effectively kills small creatures. It can also mess with combat and result in blowouts when an opponent double or triple blocks a Gurmag Angler. Remember, we are dependent on our creatures surviving combat and swinging in for huge hits. If we can change a trade into a combat trick win, we can close out the game faster before the card disadvantage settles in.
2x Agony Warp - This functions pretty similarly to Disfigure. For the extra blue mana, we get the pleasure of dividing the negative stats between two creatures. This makes a big difference. You will always use the -0/-3 effect to kill an opponents creature. You can use the -3/-0 defensively by reducing an attacker's attack stats or you can use it offensively by making it a combat trick. Many times, this will result in a 2 for 1.
1x Diabolic Edict - This is our hedge against bogles. It can also mess with large creatures we cannot deal with normally like Atog, Greater Sandwurm, or Ulamog's Crusher. There are matchups where this is a dead draw so Brainstorm that sucker away.
1x Doom Blade - Now obviously this is a problem if we are playing against mono black control. As with Diabolic Edict, shuffle this away in certain matchups.
1x Ghastly Demise - In this deck, this is a similar effect to Doom Blade. However, we wont have enough cards in the graveyard all the time so we will only run 1 copy.
Our 1 Card Advantage Spell:
3x Augur of Bolas - We are running 30 instants and sorceries in our deck. This means that there is an 87.5% chance that you will hit a spell with the Augur of Bolas trigger. Of course this is assuming that the top of your library is unknown. We can purposefully set up Augur of Bolas triggers to either get rid of unwanted cards or guarantee a hit. Augur will also serve as a blocker to mitigate life total damage during our tempo attacks. We do not want to draw too many any one game so we will only run 3 copies.
Sideboard:
As always, adjust your sideboard to your local meta. Presented here is a universal sideboard.
1x Agony Warp - This is for when a Doom Blade or Diabolic Edict are worthless in the deck and just need a card to replace it. Also this is particularly good against U/R faeries, killing a faerie and preventing Ninja of the Deep Hours from letting our opponent draw a card.
2x Annul - This is for Bogles or Affinity matchups.
2x Dispel - For the decks that run a lot of instant speed removal or combat tricks. Decks like Burn, U/R control, Tron, U/B control, and the Mirror.
1x Doom Blade - Sometimes Doom Blade is great removal. Side this in against Temur Tron, Reanimater, and Stompy.
1x Evincar's Justice - This card is good against decks that go wide like Elves, Stompy, Goblins. It has negative synergy with Delver of Secrets so only board this in if absolutely necessary.
2x Nihil Spellbomb - This is our graveyard hate card, because only we have the power to be a graveyard deck. What is nice about Nihil Spellbomb is we can nuke our opponents graveyard while maintaining our own. And we can draw a card off of it.
2x Shrivel - This is against token strategies like Elves, Soul Sisters, Kuldotha Storm, and even Goblins and Stompy. It also does not effect our threats (as long as Delver of Secrets has flipped)
1x Exclude - Board this in against very creature heavy decks. You can substitute this for Spell Pierce if they are running mostly creatures. I think that a 4th copy of Deprive might just be better. I will have to experiment.
3x Stormbound Geist - Board this in against very removal heavy or controlling decks. Stormbound Geist is hard to block and it gets bigger if you kill it. This will almost always result in a 2 for 1 and it presents 3 copies of another threat to kill your opponents with.
Final Thoughts:
This was my first ever pauper deck. This deck is what made me fall in love with the format. As such, it brings back great memories whenever I play it. The skill level to play this deck is very high but the end results will be very rewarding. Plus look at that mana curve. Pretty sweet, right?
