Standard Spike: Esper Stoneblade vs. RUG Delver in Legacy

Posted on July 30, 2012 by _ShipItHolla

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Twitter: @theshipitholla

 

  1. Great to see some legacy content. I have to disagree, however, with both your general assessement of the match up. I’ll take round 3 as an example of this.

    You thoughtseize him and see: brainstorm, daze, force of will, ponder, fetchland and thoughtseize. He only has a tropical island in play. Your reaction was: “Jeez, what a perfect hand. Wow, everything he could have asked for.” You also assume he has a tarmogoyf or similar on top since he choice not to daze.

    I think, however, that the hand, is in fact anything but great, since it does not do anything. Sure, he has as much cantrips as he wants, but in the UWb control versus RUG delver match up, tempo is what matters. Even if he has a goyf on top, you can just take the force and plow it while playing around daze.

    You have cards like snapcaster, stoneforge mystic + skull, while he plays spells like daze and wasteland, you have both cardadvantage and a more inherently powerfull gameplan. In a longer game where you are allowed to develop your mana without any pressure, you are heavily favored. A great RUG hand against UWb should probably include a turn 1 creature. Yet he apperantly kept a hand without any threat and did not find any anytime soon. As a result, you were in prime position to win the game and as you both noted, should have won the game.

    In the same game, your opponent notes that daze is bad if they play around it. While it obviously gets worse, decks that play daze are typically decks that try to make sure you cannot play around daze. Without pressure, daze does indeed becomes a dead card.

    Regardless of that, great videos.

  3. Why don’t you play submerge in the sideboard?

    In mu’s where it works it is a complete blowout. Submerge makes RUG and especially maverick into much easier mu’s. UW being immune to submerge is a major benefit of the deck; I think you should punish the people silly enough to run green.

  4. match one game 2 was extremely difficult for me to watch. You keep “playing around” spell pierce/daze when he has like 2-3 cards in hand to your 6… and all your cards are 2 for 1s. Just jam every single spell you have in your hand onto the board and he can never beat you. The only thing you should play around is the wasteland he has in play.

    “playing around” in quotes because all you did was give him outs to beat you. outs being you not drawing lands to effectively play around the soft counters (which is what happened, which caused you to go into a downward spiral of playing around spells you shouldnt have been) and you’re not protecting your life total which is key in this matchup since like i said… all your cards for 2 for 1s while his are 0 for 1 or 1 for 1.

    I can’t imagine a scenario where rug delver beats stoneblade if you just throw everything you have on the board and only play around things you know he has. Resolving multiple 2 for 1′s is GG if you can stay around 7 life.

  5. I agree with the general sentiment that you were playing a bit too cautiously. While these videos were entertaining and informative, I think the strategy should be to play a bit more aggressively in this matchup.

  6. Your overly cautious play R1G2 really cost you that game. I find your videos overall pretty good, but every time you make plays I disagree with, you are playing much more cautiously than I think is called for.

  7. @Comments: After he passed turn1 without playing a creature and keeping his Pondered cards, his hand looked pretty good to me. It turned out that he didn’t have a threat on top but he still had the cards to find one.

    @Anthony Deluca: As a free card, Submerge is not bad but this deck is not a tempo deck. The only real benefit we could get from Submerge is in response to a fetch (where it’s on par with Path) or to get an additional land into play early on. That’s not impactful enough for the Sideboard imo.

    @mark kelso and Anonymous: I’ve made a habit of playing around everything in the matchup. It’s proven very good so far which is why I might have not been considering the possibility that it was wrong to do at a specific time.

    @Gainsay: So far I really like the way I play in the matchup. If they have no pressure you’re under no obligation to do anything. That situation always favors you (unless you’re in Bolt range). I’m sure I made a few mistakes but I stand by the game plan.