Playing Delver Fiend
Recently for anyone who cares to watch over my affairs, I have been playing Magic the Gathering Online and with the format being Pauper, a review will come later on for that format but for right now I would like to talk about a deck I have been playing called Delver Fiend. A very generic list that I have assembled based on the other fiend decks I have read up on at MTG Goldfish. The deck wins by using beatdowns with either Kiln Fiend or Nivix Cyclops as well as spells to pump them up to lethal. Many times in game one of matches try to go for the turn three or four combo kill of Fiend plus Temur Battlerage, as well as another two spells (preferably Apostle's Blessing is one of them) which allows me to attack for 10 damage without interference from creatures and the ability to double strike due to Battlerage which kills the opponent. Once the match moves on to game two, the game becomes drawn out and I have to resort to beating down with multiple of my creatures generally, which is where Delver of Secrets greatly helps the deck out with a 3/2 flier, generally on turn two. Most of the time we lose game two since the opponent has adjusted their deck to stop ours in the early game and seeing as how we do not know anything about the opponent's deck other then the colors of land which only help so much. In game three I do fairly well, now knowing what I needed to sideboard in to combat their decks hate against my own and I win a fair percentage of the time in the late game. One problem with the deck is that you want one Fiend and a healthy number of spells, but if that Fiend gets destroyed then you are just left with spells which do not help as much. Keeping this in mind when we go to the sideboard you have the ability in some decks to put in Stormbound Geist which gives you another creature to be able to beat down with. Some decks now are moving toward Eldrazi Skyspawner as it creates a scion which can help block if you are getting into the late game. Against regular Delver it brings in a counter suite of Dispels and Pyroblasts in order to keep them from just getting the raw card advantage that it creates and Electrickery much of the time to help clean out the mass of faeries that they can string together. The challenge in sideboarding with this deck is to make sure you try not to dilute away from the killing as much, many decks in the recent month or two have gone down from four Temur Battlerage to just three. I still have not completely figured out the sideboarding of the deck yet as I try to do as little as possible for the reason that I do not want to take away from the combo. If playing against GU Mill, you side out some of the Apostle's blessings as well as the mainboard copy of Flame slash since they have no creatures, and bring in Flaring Pain as well as some counter spells so that you can try to push through their antidamage spells. The bad matchups for this deck are Burn and Soul Sisters. Burn is just too quick and interactive for us to handle and soul sisters, if the combo is not found early, gains too much life for us to easily win. This deck preys upon decks that do not do much interaction early on in the game and are trying to set up for the mid to late as we can usually take them out in the early turns. Overall, I enjoy playing the deck with some moderate successes along the way and I hope that everyone has enjoyed the article.
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