Delirious

If you read my set review for Shadows Over Innistrad, you know that I was not impressed with Delirium as a mechanic, simply because the payoff never seemed to materialize. Nonetheless, after reading some about the Limited environment, I decided to assemble a Delirium centered deck anyway just to see what it would look like. While I believe the archetype could probably support three colors, I didn't see much incentive to go beyond Green and Black, so that's what I stuck with. After some testing, this is the build I ended up playing in MPDC 33.01:

Delirious

MPDC 33.01 Top 8

Creatures 4 Crow of Dark Tidings 4 Moldgraf Scavenger 4 Undead Servant 3 Kessig Dire Swine 3 Stoic Builder   18 cards Other Spells 4 Pulse of Murasa 4 Vessel of Nascency 3 Dead Weight 3 Merciless Resolve 3 Vial of Dragonfire 2 Macabre Waltz 19 cards

Lands 9 Forest 8 Swamp 4 Evolving Wilds 2 Warped Landscape   23 cards Sideboard 3 Oblivion Strike 3 Naturalize 3 Aerial Volley 2 Watcher in the Web 2 Aerie Bowmasters 1 Macabre Waltz 1 Dead Weight 15 cards

My strategy was to enable Delirium as quickly as possible, primarily through Vessel of Nascency and Crow of Dark Tidings. Dead Weight, Evolving Wilds, and Vial of Dragonfire are also cheap drops that get these card types into the Graveyard while also playing into the deck's long-term strategy: survive the early game with cheap removal and consistently play Lands so you can get your more expensive creatures out as early as possible. Moldgraf Scavenger is the obvious reward for getting Delirium activated early, and as an 0/4 for 1G, it also does a great job keeping you alive in the early game. Pulse of Murasa and Macabre Waltz allow you to draw from your Graveyard, with the former also going a long way to prolonging the game. While getting Kessig Dire Swine intop play is obviously quite strong, the real power of the deck is recurring Undead Servant again and again, daring your opponent to trade with it and then generating multiple Zombie tokens when it comes back into play. Finally, both Merciless Resolve and Stoic Builder help generate card advantage, the latter by consistently pulling Evolving Wilds and Warped Landscape from your Graveyard to thin out the Lands remaining in your Library and giving you consistent Land drops every turn.

Despite my game plan, I wasn't very confident that the deck was very good. But I ended up going 3-0 in Swiss before the inevitable loss in Top 8. Still, the deck performed much better than I expected, and I suspect that there may actually be something to this build. This particular color combination also ended up being very popular. It was represented by five different players, and we all ended up making Top 8. And with some significant variety among those five decks, there is definitely room for some innovation and improvement.

If you've got thoughts on the GB archetype in general or on my build as a whole, I'd appreciate you leaving them in the comments below. Also, don't forget that tomorrow is the deadline to signup for the Pauper Ravnica Unified League. Don't miss out!