Pioneer: Sultai Delirium - Work in progress
Introduction to Pioneer + Failed Brews
As someone that has always preferred standard to other formats, I got very excited when they announced that they were going to release a format called SUPER STANDARD (Pioneer).
I started playing MTG around M12 and got more seriously into it right around RTR, so literally this format spans my entire competitive magic foray.
Decided to put a week or two into pioneer before focusing back on standard to be ready for my MC VII appearance and this is what I came up with. As always, wanted to focus on ideas that few people were focusing on.
The brews I put work into were BW vampires, Jeskai flash and Sultai Delirium.
I got them all to a positive record, but Jeskai Flash was a dud... Structurally, it is not a strategy that lines up well with what the better decks are trying to do. I was very impressed with Brineborn cutthroat in standard and wanted to see if I could port it + Spell Queller + Brazen Borrower into pioneer. Brineborn and Spell Queller were great, but the removal and counter magic was bad. Agressive decks can get under you, and big decks can ramp over your conditional counter magic... 3-mana Teferi is also a staple of the format that nullifies your strategy. A lot of the bigger decks can operate at instant speed as well.
The aggressive Brineborn draws were very powerful, but without that card, the deck mostly flopped.
My attempt at BW vampires felt like a viable competitive deck, but was clearly tier 2 prior to the bans. It was a mono black vampire deck splashing white for Adanto Vanguard and sideboard cards. Wanted to see if the power of vampire tribal Sorin translated to a higher power format, especially when it got access to better vampires.... It definitely did! Card is absurd, especially in conjunction with Mutavault. That interaction will be apart of pioneer going forward.
There are a lot of "good stuff" vampires in pioneer that skewed the deck closer to a midrange deck than it's standard counterpart. Mutavault allows your vampire count to be high, even if you shave some vampires for interactive spells.
Mutavault + Sorin + Castle Locthwain + Thoughtseize = MVPs
My favourite deck I brewed with, and am still working on is Sultai Delirium. Sultai's power level felt like it blew the other two decks I worked on out of the water. While my winrate was slightly less than with vampires, it was clear that there was more potential here. It is both incredibly tough to build and even harder to pilot. I believe if I worked out the kinks it could be a center piece of the format.
Sultai Delirium - Overview
https://www.streamdecker.com/deck/NfVyeS1e
This is where I've ended up on after playing it for 4-5 leagues and by no means is it close to perfect.
There are so many deck-building tensions that are tough to navigate.
-You want as much diversity among card types as possible to enable delirium and "super" delirium for Emrakul. The deck is MUCH more powerful with delirium enabled. The difference between Emrakul costing 8 or 6 WILL decide games.
-You want a diversity of creatures to leverage Traverse the Ulvenwald and late game graveyard creature recursion. Ideally you want those creatures to be good in different situations.
There are also deck-building demands that the format itself places on you
-Deck is on the slower side, so you need plenty of disruption. Both removal for the fast creature decks and hand disruption for the decks looking to go over the top of you.
-There are many decks in this format that can go infinite if given enough time , or will do things too powerful for your deck faster than you can find and cast Emrakul, ergo, you need a proactive game plan.
Sultai colors have an abundance of powerful options at their disposal. Weighing the inherent power of an individual card to it's value within the strategy is extremely hard.
Sultai Delirium - Card by Card breakdown cards in the deck
Hits
Fatal push -
Essential for slowing down elf based ramp decks and surviving against aggressive decks. With fabled passage, is a great efficient removal spell. 3-4 main.
Thoughtseize-
Super powerful card. Essential for clearing path for Grim Flayer and disrupting opponents looking to assemble a combo. Proactive sorcery for enabling traverse. 3-4 main.
Abrupt decay/Assassin's Trophy-
Powerful cards, additional disruption for handling threats that fatal push can't. Format dependent #'s.
Dead Weight-
Speculative. Worse than fatal push, but serves mostly the same roll. Enchantment type for delirium is the reason I'm testing it. 0-1 in 75.
Grisly Salvage/Grapple with the Past/ Satyr Wayfinder-
I found it was important to increase consistency with enabling delirium that some number of these were wanted. They all have their pros and cons, but grisly salvage performed the best from testing. Putting up to 6 card in the graveyard as well as acting as a mini creature tutor in a deck that had a creature tool box element, was more valuable than what the other cards could do. It was also a proactive instant, that allowed me to enable delirium when my opponent was a spell based deck. I'm not positive it's required in all iterations of the strategy. It is on the slower side for what you want to do in the format.
0-4 main.
Traverse The Ulvenwald -
The reason the deck exists. Don't go overboard with tutor diversity targets main, but don't go underboard either ;). I've had iterations I felt had too little targets and too many. 4 main.
Liliana, The last hope -
Powerful walker that helps with delirium. Incredible in some matchups, bad in some. Currently the only way to rebuy emrakul if milled. 1-3 main, 2 in 75.
Oko, Thief of crowns-
No synergy in the deck, but a very powerful walker. As busted as the card is, I've been a bit underwhelmed by it in the strategy. However, you do need a minimum # of planeswalkers for delirium and think this is the second best. It aids both with the proactive game plan and with the reactive one. 1-3 main.
Grim Flayer-
Being a pay off for delirium , an enabler of delirium and giving you access to aggressive proactive draws, I decided to go all-in on Grim Flayers. It is tough to say for sure, because of how powerful the competition is, but I'm leaning towards 4 being correct. 3-4 main.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy-
Jace has performed so good to the point that every fiber in my being is telling me the deck should have more than 1 copy. Plenty of powerful cheap disruptive cards to flash back, loots to enable delirium and the deck easily gets 5 cards in the graveyard for it to flip. My only concern is that he doesn't do much toward the proactive game plan I'd like the deck to take in the current format. Also, fetching an island to play him on turn 2 has consequences to the 3 mana plays of the deck. A lot of cards in the deck are GB, such that double spelling with GGBB on turn 4 matters.
1-3 main.
Scavenging Ooze-
Ooze is one of the best tutor targets to disrupt graveyards and gain life. If it wasn't for all that deck-building tension stuff I talked about earlier, I'd definitely have more than 1 copy. Fits perfectly into the shell and very powerful. 1-2 main.
Courser of Kruphix-
A card I wasn't sure about at first, but it seemed logical to include given it's enchantment creature type and it's general midrange power.. The more I played with it the more I wanted it. Starting at 1 copy and incrementally finishing at 3 copies. The synergy between flayer and courser is very nice (flayer can stack a land to the top of the deck). I realized there wasn't much raw card advantage in the deck to consistently hit your land drops up to emrakul #'s and courser fills that roll nicely.
Multiple courser is one of the best ways to stabilize against aggressive decks game 1.
If it weren't for the enchantment subtype I don't I would include it, but enabling two card types for delirium is a huge kicker.
2-4 main.
Walking Ballista -
Walking Ballista has underperformed for me as a 3 of, but I'm not sure what the other best options to enable artifact delirium. Being able to cast it for 0 mana to turn on delirium in a pinch is a nice bonus.
It's nice as a tutor target to fetch for lethal or killing key creatures when needed. The big issue is the lack of mana ramp in the deck that utilizing it's upside is difficult. The deck sometimes takes a turn off to set up it's mana base or enable delirium, so it wants it's plays after that to be very efficient/powerful... which Ballista isn't.
1-3 main.
Murderous Rider-
Here as a tutor target for a versatile kill spell. A bit inefficient for the format but a great card to fetch for. 0-1 main.
Questing Beast-
A late addition, but one that has performed very well. Questing beast is a nod to the current format and the rise in popularity of field of the dead decks as well as Reclamation/Nexus. It is the key tutor piece for those matchups and in matchups where you want to get your opponent dead asap.
0-1 main.
Verdurous Gearhulk-
Gearhulk overpeformed for me. Wasn't sure if it's power level was up for the format, but it serves an important roll in the deck. One, it's great as a tutor target. Pushing your grim flayers through blockers to trigger their damage effect, super charging your walking ballistas for lethal damage, or machine gun the opponents board. Being 5 CMC in a fatal push format means it's been tougher to kill than I expected. It also is an artifact creature for delirium. 1 main.
Emrakul, The Promised end-
I wasn't Emrakuling people out the frequency I had remembered from it's standard format. Format is a bit too fast for that. But that doesn't mean the card isn't great or doesn't deserve a slot. The opportunity cost of including it is low, and there are matchups where it IS the ultimate trump. It will win plenty of games where no other card could. 1 main.
Witch's Vengeance -
Don't sleep on this sideboard card. It smokes elves or caryatids in ramp decks. Vampires is a deck. Mono white is almost all humans and it hits hexproof creatures (GW hexproof is a deck). You need access to sweepers, and right now this is the best one. 2 SB
Misses
Ishkanah, Grafwidow -
While this card was central to the delirium strategy of yor, I think the format is such that the card is not a great main deck choice. The clock on it is too slow against the decks that "go big" and while good, you will often die before you can cast it against the smaller decks.
Red decks can burn you out over it, and white decks can brave the elements through it.
I still include it in the sideboard as it's good in grindy mirrors and against agro decks, but I'm not even sure it deserves a slot. Postboard, people will bring in graveyard hate against you, so sideboarding in more cards that are bad against gy hate may be a mistake. 0 main, 0-1 SB.
Deathrite Shaman -
Card was good, but because it eats our graveyard which we are trying to preserve and is competiting for slots with good cards decided to cut it. Cards that aren't great tutor targets and don't enable delirium are so hotly contested that the bar is sooo high. If I want to lean harder on a proactive delirium strategy involving smugglers copter, it is a card I'd be looking to revisit. 0-1 main.
Once upon a time-
OUAT is a busted magic card, but it competes directly with the other enablers in the deck. Traverse and Grisly Salvage...Within the context of the synergy, I think those cards are better. You also want a higher land count for Courser of Kruphix. You can't spin the wheels too much with the deck.
There isn't a creature that is critical to find in your opener and traverse makes early turn mana fixing excellent. OUAT is not needed. 0-1 main.
Gilded Goose-
I initially started the deck with 4 goose, 1 wicked wolf and 3 Oko, but realize I had too much air in my deck for what it was trying to do. Thought the synergy with Oko was good and getting down a fast Emrakul may be worth it. Maybe I just started with far too many lands, but I flooded with air a lot and the card unimpressed in it's small sample. It cut too much into precious tutor slots and card type diversity. 0 main.
Tireless Tracker-
Haven't tried it main, but figured the format is not grindy enough for the card. It's another one in the long list of powerful cards that are competing for space without contributing to delirium.
0 main, 1 SB
Hostage Taker-
Started out with 1 main for a while as a tutor target. Found it lacking. Bad against creatureless decks and against aggressive decks, they often had ways to kill it before I could cast the spell it hostaged. I thought stealing artifacts/copter might make it worth it, but in the small sample I played, it wasn't. It really shines when you get to 6-7 mana where you can steal and replay the card in the same turn. and this format hasn't been about that. 0 main, 0-1 SB.
Treasure Cruise-
Cruise is only good when your graveyard is enormous, otherwise it will shut off delirium too frequently. Too many self mill cards and the deck becomes slow and uninteractive in the early turns. 0 main, 0 SB.
Sultai Delirium - Potential Changes
I haven't seen many grindy decks in the current format. Lot of decks are very aggressive or try to go way over the top and win with a combo or field of the dead. Delirium grinds extremely well and naturally has many tools to deal with agro, therefore I have been thinking of ways to improve the deck against big decks. To win those matchups it has to be bit more aggressive.
I'm not sure about how to best make it more agressive without compromising the fundamentals of the deck, but I assume it involves leaning on smugglers copter. It's possible not including the card is a huge oversight on my part, but I worried about the lack of creatures to crew it.
It's also possible I am playing too many lands in my current build.
However, I'm excited about the deck and think there's a good chance it will be a best deck contender if tuned and piloted properly.
If you have ideas about that deck, or how it could be retooled, please comment here or send me a message.
As someone that has always preferred standard to other formats, I got very excited when they announced that they were going to release a format called SUPER STANDARD (Pioneer).
I started playing MTG around M12 and got more seriously into it right around RTR, so literally this format spans my entire competitive magic foray.
Decided to put a week or two into pioneer before focusing back on standard to be ready for my MC VII appearance and this is what I came up with. As always, wanted to focus on ideas that few people were focusing on.
The brews I put work into were BW vampires, Jeskai flash and Sultai Delirium.
I got them all to a positive record, but Jeskai Flash was a dud... Structurally, it is not a strategy that lines up well with what the better decks are trying to do. I was very impressed with Brineborn cutthroat in standard and wanted to see if I could port it + Spell Queller + Brazen Borrower into pioneer. Brineborn and Spell Queller were great, but the removal and counter magic was bad. Agressive decks can get under you, and big decks can ramp over your conditional counter magic... 3-mana Teferi is also a staple of the format that nullifies your strategy. A lot of the bigger decks can operate at instant speed as well.
The aggressive Brineborn draws were very powerful, but without that card, the deck mostly flopped.
My attempt at BW vampires felt like a viable competitive deck, but was clearly tier 2 prior to the bans. It was a mono black vampire deck splashing white for Adanto Vanguard and sideboard cards. Wanted to see if the power of vampire tribal Sorin translated to a higher power format, especially when it got access to better vampires.... It definitely did! Card is absurd, especially in conjunction with Mutavault. That interaction will be apart of pioneer going forward.
There are a lot of "good stuff" vampires in pioneer that skewed the deck closer to a midrange deck than it's standard counterpart. Mutavault allows your vampire count to be high, even if you shave some vampires for interactive spells.
Mutavault + Sorin + Castle Locthwain + Thoughtseize = MVPs
My favourite deck I brewed with, and am still working on is Sultai Delirium. Sultai's power level felt like it blew the other two decks I worked on out of the water. While my winrate was slightly less than with vampires, it was clear that there was more potential here. It is both incredibly tough to build and even harder to pilot. I believe if I worked out the kinks it could be a center piece of the format.
Sultai Delirium - Overview
https://www.streamdecker.com/deck/NfVyeS1e
This is where I've ended up on after playing it for 4-5 leagues and by no means is it close to perfect.
There are so many deck-building tensions that are tough to navigate.
-You want as much diversity among card types as possible to enable delirium and "super" delirium for Emrakul. The deck is MUCH more powerful with delirium enabled. The difference between Emrakul costing 8 or 6 WILL decide games.
-You want a diversity of creatures to leverage Traverse the Ulvenwald and late game graveyard creature recursion. Ideally you want those creatures to be good in different situations.
There are also deck-building demands that the format itself places on you
-Deck is on the slower side, so you need plenty of disruption. Both removal for the fast creature decks and hand disruption for the decks looking to go over the top of you.
-There are many decks in this format that can go infinite if given enough time , or will do things too powerful for your deck faster than you can find and cast Emrakul, ergo, you need a proactive game plan.
Sultai colors have an abundance of powerful options at their disposal. Weighing the inherent power of an individual card to it's value within the strategy is extremely hard.
Sultai Delirium - Card by Card breakdown cards in the deck
Hits
Fatal push -
Essential for slowing down elf based ramp decks and surviving against aggressive decks. With fabled passage, is a great efficient removal spell. 3-4 main.
Thoughtseize-
Super powerful card. Essential for clearing path for Grim Flayer and disrupting opponents looking to assemble a combo. Proactive sorcery for enabling traverse. 3-4 main.
Abrupt decay/Assassin's Trophy-
Powerful cards, additional disruption for handling threats that fatal push can't. Format dependent #'s.
Dead Weight-
Speculative. Worse than fatal push, but serves mostly the same roll. Enchantment type for delirium is the reason I'm testing it. 0-1 in 75.
Grisly Salvage/Grapple with the Past/ Satyr Wayfinder-
I found it was important to increase consistency with enabling delirium that some number of these were wanted. They all have their pros and cons, but grisly salvage performed the best from testing. Putting up to 6 card in the graveyard as well as acting as a mini creature tutor in a deck that had a creature tool box element, was more valuable than what the other cards could do. It was also a proactive instant, that allowed me to enable delirium when my opponent was a spell based deck. I'm not positive it's required in all iterations of the strategy. It is on the slower side for what you want to do in the format.
0-4 main.
Traverse The Ulvenwald -
The reason the deck exists. Don't go overboard with tutor diversity targets main, but don't go underboard either ;). I've had iterations I felt had too little targets and too many. 4 main.
Liliana, The last hope -
Powerful walker that helps with delirium. Incredible in some matchups, bad in some. Currently the only way to rebuy emrakul if milled. 1-3 main, 2 in 75.
Oko, Thief of crowns-
No synergy in the deck, but a very powerful walker. As busted as the card is, I've been a bit underwhelmed by it in the strategy. However, you do need a minimum # of planeswalkers for delirium and think this is the second best. It aids both with the proactive game plan and with the reactive one. 1-3 main.
Grim Flayer-
Being a pay off for delirium , an enabler of delirium and giving you access to aggressive proactive draws, I decided to go all-in on Grim Flayers. It is tough to say for sure, because of how powerful the competition is, but I'm leaning towards 4 being correct. 3-4 main.
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy-
Jace has performed so good to the point that every fiber in my being is telling me the deck should have more than 1 copy. Plenty of powerful cheap disruptive cards to flash back, loots to enable delirium and the deck easily gets 5 cards in the graveyard for it to flip. My only concern is that he doesn't do much toward the proactive game plan I'd like the deck to take in the current format. Also, fetching an island to play him on turn 2 has consequences to the 3 mana plays of the deck. A lot of cards in the deck are GB, such that double spelling with GGBB on turn 4 matters.
1-3 main.
Scavenging Ooze-
Ooze is one of the best tutor targets to disrupt graveyards and gain life. If it wasn't for all that deck-building tension stuff I talked about earlier, I'd definitely have more than 1 copy. Fits perfectly into the shell and very powerful. 1-2 main.
Courser of Kruphix-
A card I wasn't sure about at first, but it seemed logical to include given it's enchantment creature type and it's general midrange power.. The more I played with it the more I wanted it. Starting at 1 copy and incrementally finishing at 3 copies. The synergy between flayer and courser is very nice (flayer can stack a land to the top of the deck). I realized there wasn't much raw card advantage in the deck to consistently hit your land drops up to emrakul #'s and courser fills that roll nicely.
Multiple courser is one of the best ways to stabilize against aggressive decks game 1.
If it weren't for the enchantment subtype I don't I would include it, but enabling two card types for delirium is a huge kicker.
2-4 main.
Walking Ballista -
Walking Ballista has underperformed for me as a 3 of, but I'm not sure what the other best options to enable artifact delirium. Being able to cast it for 0 mana to turn on delirium in a pinch is a nice bonus.
It's nice as a tutor target to fetch for lethal or killing key creatures when needed. The big issue is the lack of mana ramp in the deck that utilizing it's upside is difficult. The deck sometimes takes a turn off to set up it's mana base or enable delirium, so it wants it's plays after that to be very efficient/powerful... which Ballista isn't.
1-3 main.
Murderous Rider-
Here as a tutor target for a versatile kill spell. A bit inefficient for the format but a great card to fetch for. 0-1 main.
Questing Beast-
A late addition, but one that has performed very well. Questing beast is a nod to the current format and the rise in popularity of field of the dead decks as well as Reclamation/Nexus. It is the key tutor piece for those matchups and in matchups where you want to get your opponent dead asap.
0-1 main.
Verdurous Gearhulk-
Gearhulk overpeformed for me. Wasn't sure if it's power level was up for the format, but it serves an important roll in the deck. One, it's great as a tutor target. Pushing your grim flayers through blockers to trigger their damage effect, super charging your walking ballistas for lethal damage, or machine gun the opponents board. Being 5 CMC in a fatal push format means it's been tougher to kill than I expected. It also is an artifact creature for delirium. 1 main.
Emrakul, The Promised end-
I wasn't Emrakuling people out the frequency I had remembered from it's standard format. Format is a bit too fast for that. But that doesn't mean the card isn't great or doesn't deserve a slot. The opportunity cost of including it is low, and there are matchups where it IS the ultimate trump. It will win plenty of games where no other card could. 1 main.
Witch's Vengeance -
Don't sleep on this sideboard card. It smokes elves or caryatids in ramp decks. Vampires is a deck. Mono white is almost all humans and it hits hexproof creatures (GW hexproof is a deck). You need access to sweepers, and right now this is the best one. 2 SB
Misses
Ishkanah, Grafwidow -
While this card was central to the delirium strategy of yor, I think the format is such that the card is not a great main deck choice. The clock on it is too slow against the decks that "go big" and while good, you will often die before you can cast it against the smaller decks.
Red decks can burn you out over it, and white decks can brave the elements through it.
I still include it in the sideboard as it's good in grindy mirrors and against agro decks, but I'm not even sure it deserves a slot. Postboard, people will bring in graveyard hate against you, so sideboarding in more cards that are bad against gy hate may be a mistake. 0 main, 0-1 SB.
Deathrite Shaman -
Card was good, but because it eats our graveyard which we are trying to preserve and is competiting for slots with good cards decided to cut it. Cards that aren't great tutor targets and don't enable delirium are so hotly contested that the bar is sooo high. If I want to lean harder on a proactive delirium strategy involving smugglers copter, it is a card I'd be looking to revisit. 0-1 main.
Once upon a time-
OUAT is a busted magic card, but it competes directly with the other enablers in the deck. Traverse and Grisly Salvage...Within the context of the synergy, I think those cards are better. You also want a higher land count for Courser of Kruphix. You can't spin the wheels too much with the deck.
There isn't a creature that is critical to find in your opener and traverse makes early turn mana fixing excellent. OUAT is not needed. 0-1 main.
Gilded Goose-
I initially started the deck with 4 goose, 1 wicked wolf and 3 Oko, but realize I had too much air in my deck for what it was trying to do. Thought the synergy with Oko was good and getting down a fast Emrakul may be worth it. Maybe I just started with far too many lands, but I flooded with air a lot and the card unimpressed in it's small sample. It cut too much into precious tutor slots and card type diversity. 0 main.
Tireless Tracker-
Haven't tried it main, but figured the format is not grindy enough for the card. It's another one in the long list of powerful cards that are competing for space without contributing to delirium.
0 main, 1 SB
Hostage Taker-
Started out with 1 main for a while as a tutor target. Found it lacking. Bad against creatureless decks and against aggressive decks, they often had ways to kill it before I could cast the spell it hostaged. I thought stealing artifacts/copter might make it worth it, but in the small sample I played, it wasn't. It really shines when you get to 6-7 mana where you can steal and replay the card in the same turn. and this format hasn't been about that. 0 main, 0-1 SB.
Treasure Cruise-
Cruise is only good when your graveyard is enormous, otherwise it will shut off delirium too frequently. Too many self mill cards and the deck becomes slow and uninteractive in the early turns. 0 main, 0 SB.
Sultai Delirium - Potential Changes
I haven't seen many grindy decks in the current format. Lot of decks are very aggressive or try to go way over the top and win with a combo or field of the dead. Delirium grinds extremely well and naturally has many tools to deal with agro, therefore I have been thinking of ways to improve the deck against big decks. To win those matchups it has to be bit more aggressive.
I'm not sure about how to best make it more agressive without compromising the fundamentals of the deck, but I assume it involves leaning on smugglers copter. It's possible not including the card is a huge oversight on my part, but I worried about the lack of creatures to crew it.
It's also possible I am playing too many lands in my current build.
However, I'm excited about the deck and think there's a good chance it will be a best deck contender if tuned and piloted properly.
If you have ideas about that deck, or how it could be retooled, please comment here or send me a message.
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