Legacy Grixis Delver (Patreon)

Continuing my series on my (outdated) decks, here's probably my favorite one: Legacy Grixis Delver. No matter what format I play, I gravitate toward tempo decks. Even back in the day, I remember playing 4 color decks (powered by Gemstone Mine, Undiscovered Paradise, and City of Brass) during Mirage era with Man-o-War, Nekrataal, and Uktabi Orrangutan. So not surprisingly, two of my favorite creatures are Delver of Secrets and Young Pyromancer. They're perfect for dropping early, and then getting lots of damage and value as you Force and Daze your opponent's spells.

I've tried to make these creatures work in Modern so many times, but without much success. It's just too hard to flip Delver consistently without Brainstorm, and Pyromancer just feels too slow in Modern. But in Legacy, they have a home.

Here's the full deck:

As you can see, there a few cards that need to be replaced. I'm going to miss having Deathrite Shaman to provide mana, even as I'm bouncing back my lands with Daze. I'm especially going to miss getting to play 4 Gitaxian Probe. I think I have 4 Gitaxian Probe in five or six different decks between Modern and Legacy. When you play this card a bunch, it almost becomes a crutch. You just get so used to knowing what's in your opponent's hand and playing around it. Plus, you get so much value and consistency from cards like Pyromancer or upping your Storm count, and also effectively having 4 less cards in your deck. I have a lot of Gitaxian Probes I'm going to have to replace!

Concerning the foreign black border dual lands, it's hard to believe it now, but I got these a long time ago for about $20 to $30 each. Back around Odyssey era, my local game shop sold white border dual lands for about $10 to $15 each, and I bought as many as I could afford every time they got some in. It's really unfortunate that they cost so much today because dual lands are fun to play with. It's nice to get to play spells from all different colors and not have to worry about your mana base killing you. Who knows. As WotC continues to search for new ways to increase profits, maybe eventually Hasbro will put so much pressure on them that they'll have to start printing dual lands. Perhaps a future Secret Lair!