This is my homemade, self-tested and played deck. It's a sultai delver archetype that aims for swift ealy-game play and enhanced late-game play through draws and board control. It's taken me a LONG time to learn this deck and to refine it to a point where it is consistent. All cards in there (including quantity) are purposeful to the decks mechanics so please feel free to ask if you see anything you don't understand. I have been playing this deck in my local meta and online persistently and it is at a point where it is extremely powerful with a good hand and a solid knowledge how to to play it. Let me know what you think/
T1: land
T2: land, jace
T3: land, gather the pack, activate/flip jace, delve for tasigur
T4+ set up board to go wide or control opponents board to maintain advantage
This deck uses grave-filling cards to strengthen delve mechanics and enhance early-game play. With the right opening hand you can have incredible plays right off the mark. For example:
T1: land
T2: land, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
T3: land, Gather the Pack, activate jace's ability to flip to planeswalker. delve out grave for Tasigur, the Golden Fang
I used this deck on gameday at my local shop, finished 1st going into the top 8 and then lost in the semi's on a hasty play to bant tokens (thought I could win on that turn).
Here's purposes for some of the most important, more prevalent cards in the deck. I assume some people will not understand the choices, as they are not common meta-choices. Feel free to ask questions below as well.
1.Gather the Pack, incredibly easy and effective card thats great for scanning the deck early game and provides even more value late game when you need to refill your hand. I run 4-of because of its contribution to my turn 3 combo. Also, I heavily tested both Anticipate and Taigam's Scheming out and found they were both significantly worse than Gather the Pack. Anticipate doesn't give the delve engine effect, and Taigam's Scheming is hard to make work consistently because it leave you with too many choices.
2.Sidisi, Brood Tyrant helps the deck go wide with blockers and provides a secondary delve engine for mid-game when you're looking toward using things like Dig Through Time, Murderous Cut and the always fun Dead Drop. I run 3-of sidisi because this gives her enough consistency that you usually have an option to use her every game.
3.Drana, Liberator of Malakir is my favourite creature in the meta right now, although I understand she brings with her some downfalls. For one, she's a removal magnet so she tends not to stick around long, and two she's smaller than some of the other heavily-used creatures in the tier decks, namely Mantis Rider. Regardless, she is a powerhouse when you can keep her on your board and makes for a good blockers when you're playing defence on account of her first strike ability. Also, with the number of removal spells in this deck it's often quite easy to keep her safe from opponents creatures. I run 4-of because she's a great 3-drop and has a habit of taking over 1/3 of games single-handedly.
4.Whisperwood Elemental is a late addition to the deck, having come in the morning of gameday to replace Dragonlord Silumgar. I did this to keep the curve down and also because of his sac ability, effectively helping to stabilize your board late-game against wipes. Whisperwood Elemental was killer for me in the event in multiple games so I've been set on him ever since. The end-of-turn manifest you get with his ability is a great addition to sidisi's zombies in helping the deck go wide, as well.
5.Tasigur, the Golden Fang is just about as good as delve creatures get. He's a 1-drop on turn 3 with the help of Gather the Pack, which is hughly advantageous against almost any deck.
6.Silumgar's Command is the heavy hitter for the deck. I've grown from being turned off the 5-cmc to loving the card's effects. This card often changes the game completely for me when I use it, however I'm only going to carry it as a 1-of because it's not necessary in some games and therefore I don't want to cloud the deck.
The rest of the deck should be mainly straight-forward. I think a lot of the rest of the deck is quite generic/stable basis for a deck in the meta. The core is solid and the deck is explosive with the right hand early-game.
Let me know what you think! Also, if anyone has tips with the mana base that'd help. I am still having a little trouble getting things 100% although I think that's mostly the problem with the BUG colours and lack of fetches.
