[SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE ARTICLE!]

Become a StarCityGames.com Premium Member and receive exclusive access to top-level strategies, new decklists and entertaining reports from many of the best players and writers that the game has to offer! This includes "The Innovator" & Worlds finalist Patrick Chapin, 2010 Player of the Year Brad Nelson, Classic Theorist Mike Flores, Hall of Famer Brian Kibler, GP and SCG Invitational Champion Gerry Thompson, StarCityGames.com Director of Sales Ben Bleiweiss ...and many, many more!

PLUS! StarCityGames.com Premium members now have an EXCLUSIVE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER sent just to them with the latest tech, exclusive content and exclusive deals along with unprecedented access into America's largest Magic: the Gathering sales database, and can view lists of StarCityGames.com's top-selling items - broken down by category, format legality, and rarity - in real time! When it comes to trading, increased knowledge equals increased profits - and increased knowledge is just one click away for our Premium members!

A StarCityGames.com Premium Membership gives you exclusive access to the best Magic: the Gathering content available and is an amazing bargain for just pennies a day! When you're ready to start getting more out of this game, click here to join StarCityGames.com Premium today!

If you are a valid StarCityGames.com Premium member and still cannot view the article, please consult this FAQ.

Prior to phoning in the Standard Open in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, I made a good-faith effort to work on a counter-burn deck. I ended up scrapping it for a variety of reasons which I'll get to in a second, but Lu Cai was able to succeed with something close to what I was working on. His list, for reference:

U/R Delver A Standard deck, by Lu Cai 2nd place at a StarCityGames.com Standard Open tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States on 2011-11-06 Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 3 Chandra's Phoenix 4 Delver of Secrets 2 Grim Lavamancer 4 Snapcaster Mage 2 Stromkirk Noble Instants 4 Brimstone Volley 4 Galvanic Blast 4 Incinerate 4 Mana Leak 1 Negate 2 Vapor Snag	Sorceries 4 Ponder Basic Lands 9 Island 9 Mountain Lands 4 Sulfur Falls	Sideboard: 2 Spellskite 2 Manic Vandal 2 Stromkirk Noble 2 Dismember 3 Flashfreeze 1 Steel Sabotage 3 Arc Trail
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

The concept here is pretty straightforward—apply a cheap beater, use your counters and bounce to keep your opponent on the back foot, and finish out the game with your burn. Snapcaster Mage is the most powerful card in Standard in the abstract, and its most powerful application is in an attacking deck (again, in the abstract). While control decks often struggle to cash in the body for much value, an attacking deck can easily take advantage of a 2/1 flash creature. Chandra's Phoenix was also in my list, mostly because it seemed “in theme.” It's aggressive and has some back-door ways of generating card advantage, two central principles of this sort of deck.

I was tagged in the booth for a round to allow Jacob Van Lunen a lunch break, and I was fortunate enough to get to watch Lu during one of the Swiss rounds. During this round, and some of the other opportunities I got to bird him later during the tournament, I remembered why I scrapped the deck in the first place.

1. The mana is pretty wretched, with a land base more akin to an Ice Age-only-Constructed tournament than a modern Standard deck. Stromkirk Noble and Chandra's Phoenix represent a significant tax on consistency when paired with Snapcaster Mage and the expectation of flashing back blue cards.
2. Because the reactive elements of the deck are so situational (creature removal, soft counters, etc.), you often did nothing with your mana, and this inefficiency led to wasted turns.
3. Grim Lavamancer didn't have enough gas to cook with, especially since you want to have a variety of spells available to ensure maximum flexibility with Snapcaster Mage.

I'm not saying all of this to dog on the deck; it clearly does some powerful stuff, and it did come in second, after all. What I'm saying is that these were the issues that I tried to go back to the table and address, after Lu's finish confirmed the power level of the concept.

The first order of business would be to tighten up the mana base. The easiest way to do this would be to bias the mana towards blue, which is what you naturally want to do anyway. Casting blue cantrips early on could help you find your red mana, and you want to be able to consistently play Snapcaster-into-Ponder on the third turn. This meant ditching Stromkirk Noble and Chandra's Phoenix.

To help alleviate the other two issues, the deck needed some actual card draw. This would provide you with something to do when your opponent didn't cooperate playing into your reactive cards. Think Twice was initially in this slot, but I switched it with Desperate Ravings, which took things to another level. Drawing two and discarding one at random is significantly more powerful than drawing one, for two major reasons. First, it plays much better with Snapcaster Mage, since you still have access to any instants or sorceries you happen to discard. Second, it is obviously far superior with Grim Lavamancer. Beyond these two interactions, it is easy enough to sculpt your hand with extra lands, dead spells, and such to increase the likelihood that your Ravings are closer to a straight-up “Draw Two.”

With all the big-picture concepts fleshed out, it took me to the following list, which I wanted to rock at the various Standard events at GP San Diego after I got clobbered in the main event:

U/R Tempo Featured by Patrick Sullivan on 2011-11-20 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/23132.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Delver of Secrets 3 Grim Lavamancer 1 Inferno Titan 4 Snapcaster Mage Instants 3 Brimstone Volley 4 Desperate Ravings 2 Dismember 2 Gut Shot 2 Incinerate 4 Mana Leak 2 Shock	Sorceries 4 Gitaxian Probe 4 Ponder Basic Lands 12 Island 4 Mountain Lands 1 Shimmering Grotto 4 Sulfur Falls	Sideboard: 4 Shrine of Burning Rage 2 Dissipate 3 Flashfreeze 2 Negate 4 Arc Trail
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

A couple of things about the weird numbers:

1x Shimmering Grotto—This was at the suggestion of Michael Jacob, who's much more experienced with funky mana bases (read: more than one color) than I am. The logic here is that you want another blue source of mana, and many of your red spells are worth one extra mana anyway. It was bad nearly every time I drew it, but it's possible it belongs in some number.

1x Inferno Titan—Another MJ jam, except this one was totally sweet. While birding some of my 8-mans, he noticed that I would draw a ton of cards but not have anything especially powerful to draw to as the game dragged out. Inferno Titan gives you that big draw. I prefer him to Consecrated Sphinx for the same reason—you aren't drawing to especially powerful things in the later turns. Inferno Titan can seal the deal quickly, which is what you want in this slot. I know it looks dodgy with 21 lands, but there's so much card drawing that it was never an issue. If anything, I was having difficulties with flooding out.

The wacky numbers on the removal/burn slots—Between the card drawing and Snapcaster Mage, flexibility counts for more than redundancy. There are a bunch of powerful creatures that require different answers (Birds of Paradise vs. Mirran Crusader vs. Hero of Bladehold, etc.), so you want to have the maximum amount of versatility. It is worth noting that Dismember was pretty awful outside of killing Hero of Bladehold, so if that card recedes from the format, I would like more Gut Shots and Shocks here.

Sideboard?—Arc Trail for the appropriate decks, the counters as appropriate, Shrine for U/B Control. The Shrines weren't that great because your worst cards against U/B are your red ones, meaning Shrine played much closer to Curse of the Pierced Heart than the Shrine we know and love. The rest of the sideboard was awesome; Dissipate was the superstar by a considerable margin.

Anyhow, the deck played quite well, splitting two times out of two in the Win-A-Box tournaments and coming within a game 3 punt of me winning the “Foil out your Deck” Standard tournament (though, in fairness, I did receive a concession against U/B Control in a match where I was completely crushed). If we take away some shameful pilot error, my record in the Sunday tournaments was a healthy 7-1-1 against a reasonable quality of competition and a normal sampling of the Standard metagame. More significantly, I discovered some places where the deck could be improved:

1. Cut Delver of Secrets—I know this guy is the Flavor of the Month, but he was underwhelming in actual game play. Even with a hit rate of nearly 50% and Ponder to help set him up, it wasn't flipping quickly enough, and even when it did flip early, it wasn't always good. The bigger issue is that this deck is sort of in a sweet spot—a beatdown deck that actually has good draws in the middle turns. Grim Lavamancer and Snapcaster Mage are both perfectly fine draws on Turn 4 and 5; Delver is not. As attractive as this card occasionally is, I don't think it is worth all the times it does close to nothing.
2. Cut Brimstone Volley—I know Snapcaster/Brimstone is supposed to be the reason to play this deck, but it doesn't shake out that way often enough. You don't have enough creatures to make morbid reliable from your end, and it's not all that easy to chain this with another removal to kill two creatures, one of which is four or greater toughness. I would rather have more Incinerates and the like given how much mana matters when you have Snapcaster Mage, and ultimately I think Volley is more “cute” than “good” here.
3. Add Neurok Commando—MJ again. He noticed how easily it would be for me to connect with this guy, and once the juice starts flowing, your opponent is not getting back into the game. This would also give you a little more game against some of the control decks, where your creatures struggle to gain traction against their targeted removal.
4. Add another Inferno Titan—I really wanted to draw this thing on the regular once it was in the deck. A second one is an easy add.

These changes take us to the following list, which I would suggest as a starting point for anyone who wants to work on this:

U/R Tempo Featured by Patrick Sullivan on 2011-11-20 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/23132.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 3 Grim Lavamancer 2 Inferno Titan 3 Neurok Commando 4 Snapcaster Mage Instants 4 Desperate Ravings 2 Dismember 2 Gut Shot 2 Incinerate 4 Mana Leak 2 Negate 2 Shock	Sorceries 4 Gitaxian Probe 4 Ponder Basic Lands 13 Island 5 Mountain Lands 4 Sulfur Falls	Stats: Average mana: 1.23 Average creature mana cost: 2.67 Average creature power: 2.42 Average creature toughness: 1.83 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 30.00% Creatures: 20.00% Instants: 30.00% Lands: 6.67% Sorceries: 13.33%
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

The removal suite is predicated on the metagame, which will become more clear after Worlds. Vapor Snag was not included in my first list because there aren't that many creatures, but Neurok Commando makes Snag a lot more attractive. If the post-Worlds metagame still looks flooded with Blade Splicers, Heroes, Wurmcoils, and the like, Snag could be a great choice, possibly over Negate or Dismember.

Right now I'm off the Grotto Train, but that could be wrong. It's possible you could get a little fancier and add some black mana and Forbidden Alchemy, but that takes the deck in an entirely different direction.

Again, this is a very rough sketch. Especially in a deck that wants so many 1's and 2's, finding the right mix and match of things can take some time. Still, I'm very confident in the following—Snapcaster Mage, Mana Leak, Grim Lavamancer, and Desperate Ravings are all extremely powerful on their own and work together beautifully. The exact manifestation may take some time to flesh itself out, but those four cards provide the skeleton for something exceptional. After all, it would take something pretty compelling to get me to put away my Nobles for Snapcasters, right?

-Patrick