Top 8 with UR Delver at 4 Seasons Summer 2022 Legacy Main Event


Road Trip to Bologna - The anecdotes, the choices and Delver Bolognese

I’m Danish but I live in Grenoble, France. I’ve been in Grenoble since mid-2019 but for semi-obvious reasons this was the first chance to roadtrip to a Legacy tournament together with my new French, magical friends. I did go to GP Bologna 2019 but with my Danish buddies (lost in the Legacy PTQ finals btw then, Bologna is treating me well…).

We set out for Bologna on Thursday - two cars of legacy lovers and one car of modern masters. In my car was Doomsday pilot Jean-Mathieu, luckily driving his car more like the Old Man from his sideboard, and not akin to the namesake card. Next to him Rasmus, my local expat Dane, piloting UB Shadow Murktide. Before crossing the border we had a coffee and Rasmus decided to let his huge cup rest on the roof of the car and forgot all about it. We set off to Italy and the 1998 Renault Megane was baptized in beautiful, brown coffee - was this a good or bad sign of things to come?

The list
I decided a while ago to play UR Delver. Before that, I was working on a BUG Yorion Leovold Undoing deck with my friend Andreas (Ecobaronen on mtgo) but when I played it in paper it was so long and tedious to play physically with. Too much shuffling and awkward handling led me to believe that I would risk going to time too much. I like control, but I’m mostly used to playing tempo, so my pace of playing control is not up to speed, so to say.

I wasn’t sure exactly how the paper meta would differ from mtgo, but I assumed there would be differences. It was a bit easier to get a feel for once we were in Bologna, and paired with the fact that I’d been 100% busy moving in the month before the tournament, I was ready to change a few slots around close to the tournament, when my mind could be focused on just that.
Delver Bolognese:

2 Mishra's Bauble
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Dragon's Rage Channeler
1 Brazen Borrower // Petty Theft
4 Murktide Regent
4 Brainstorm
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Unholy Heat
1 Spell Pierce
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Mystic Sanctuary
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Ponder
4 Expressive Iteration
Sideboard:
1 Torpor Orb
1 Brazen Borrower // Petty Theft
1 Maddening Hex
4 Pyroblast
1 Price of Progress
2 Force of Negation
1 Spell Pierce
2 End the Festivities
2 Meltdown

My list is pretty close to stock, so I’ll just touch on the few choices that aren’t:
1 main Spell Pierce over Pyroblast:
I wanted to be set up for an open meta, that might be less blue than the Mtgo meta. I also really like Pierce against Jeskai Control, and the simple fact that no one expects it. Therefore it is rarely played around.
1 main + 1 sb Brazen Borrower (ok, not too far from stock but still):
Brazen is a good answer for a lot of the angles that people use to get Delver; Leyline of the Void, Chalice, Ensnaring Bridge, Endurance and so on. It is not perfect at doing anything (but bouncing Marit Lage) but it just closes holes, and the tempo given is usually good enough. That was enough for me to warrant two copies.
No Island, just Steam Vents:
I had my doubts on this because I didn’t have too much time to test/play UR Delver and all the current lists online run Island. I just really don’t like having a land that might restrict me from playing turn 1 DRC or not having play patterns of DRC + Bolt or Pyroblast etc. available. Playing Island means either cutting Mystic Sanctuary or having only 13 red sources, neither of which are appealing.
No Surgical Extraction just Force of Negations and Torpor Orb:
This one is the most interesting I think. On the morning of the tournament I came to the realization that I don’t really need Surgical Extraction in this list, because I consider it unlikely to face off against Dredge or Oops. Reanimator can be beat on the stack with my two Pierces and Force of Negations and so can Lands to some degree. Uro as well with Pyroblast. I also assumed that these three decks would not be high percentages of the field (I’m not sure if I was right or not about this, though).
Of course I would like to have Surgical in these matchups, but we can’t have it all, and I preferred to have the space for Torpor Orb, so as to help in the DnT (and Doomsday as an added bonus) matchup and the second Force of Negation to solidify all of the matchups where it is useful (a lot of matchups).
Maddening Hex
This is mostly to target Jeskai Control but it is also useful in a plethora of other cantrip-based matchups not including the mirror. I haven’t had many chances to actually see it in action but I believe in the power of the die with this card.

4 Seasons feelgood

This weekend was a really warm experience and you could feel that the organizers love Magic and Legacy. Friday night they organized a community dinner which was a great way to connect with other players, have lovely food and wine and talk politics with new Italian friends who were more than willing to share from their pouches of dried, laugh-inducing herb. The weekend felt like a GP in many ways but because of the dinner and the magnificent site with its cheap food and drink, it was a clear upgrade to any of the GP’s that I’ve attended. Great work, organizers!

My matchups

R1: 2-0 vs Reanimator
R2: 2-0 vs 8 Mulch
R3: 2-0 vs ANT
R4: 2-1 vs 8 Cast (Featured here at 3:35:30: https://www.twitch.tv/4seasonstournaments/video/1495175156
and continued here:
https://www.twitch.tv/4seasonstournaments/video/1495280554
R5: 2-0 vs GWr depths
R6: 2-1 vs Doomsday
R7: 2-0 vs Green Cloudpost
R8: ID with Mengucci on 8 Cast
R9: ID with Cadei on Jeskai Control

I won’t go into extreme detail here, but I found it quite funny that I started off with facing the two matchups that I had assigned less significance in removing my Surgicals. They didn’t have amazing draws so I could get there in the old-fashioned Delver way of Forcing and Dazing stuff whilst attacking in the air.
Getting to a nice record of 7-0 (14-2) is always going to involve some nice top decks etc, and I obviously had my fair share. I also played well though and I don’t feel that I made any real mistakes. Many choices were debatable, of course, but overall I felt pretty relaxed and confident playing the deck.
Highlight:
R3 G2 against ANT. I mull to five and keep a hand of Delver, Force, Daze, Bauble and Ponder. I keep and I find the land on the Bauble draw, so land drop turn 2. He keeps 7 but is not super quick out the gates. During the game I find a second Force. The first one I use on his first Brainstorm because I feel that he will easily win if I let him set up too easily. He will just find a discard spell and my Force will be useless. My second Force I use on a Dark Ritual off his only black producing land. Again, I fear that he has the discard spell anyway in which case my Force will be useless, but if it stops his black mana development I might have a chance. It turns out that he has an Empty the Warrens draw so it buys me a few crucial turns, as he uses his next turn to Infernal Tutor for more mana (Lotus Petal). Fliers get there in the last possible turn and I was really happy about how I played that game (with the help of a decent portion of luck of course).
I was also pleased with my featured match against 8 Cast, which I won’t talk about, since it is on video.

In the end we made a split of the top 8, so I didn’t play any games there. It was very late and most people really wanted to get home and get some sleep before getting up to work the next morning. Javier Dominguez played his quarterfinal against Ronny Blaser on GWr Depths and won, and to me, he was the unofficial champion of the tournament.

Road Tripping to Bologna was overall a great experience because of all the nice food and drink and friendly people. I definitely expect to go to another 4 Seasons weekend in the future.

Props: I’ve already mentioned plenty but I want to stress how impressed I am with the TO’s. Organizing tournaments is a lot of work and they have been doing this, albeit on a smaller scale, for years and years. Impressed!
Slops: The Companion app and Italian truck drivers. The app was completely non-functional for a lot of us after the first couple of rounds. I don’t know why, but it sure didn’t work.
On our way back we had to do quick maneuvers around the Italian truck drivers, who seemed to be pretty relaxed in their way of driving, maybe just another facet of that lovely Italian light-hearted culture. We certainly had our shot of adrenaline racing back towards the Alps, the French border and everyday life that awaited us.

Let me know if you have any questions or remarks and thanks a bunch for reading this little tournament report of mine!

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