Gruul Delirium has been a somewhat viable Standard deck for quite some time. Any combination that can deal 20 damage out of nowhere will be attractive for players. Doing that with a Hasty Double-Striking multi-combat Fear of Missing Out is unsurprisingly incredibly satisfying. As a result, this deck has always had its fans, but Gruul Delirium hasn’t been performing well for months. Until now, at least.
One player has figured out a winning combination for Gruul Delirium, getting multiple top placements in recent Standard Challenges. Better yet, these innovations make the deck rotation-proof, debatably making it one of the best places to start for Edge of Eternities Standard.
Gruul Delirium Innovations
MTGO player Sultai4lyfe now has two Standard Challenge top eights under their belt with Gruul Delirium. This new variant of the archetype has a lot of cards that we’re used to seeing, but a few new, and somewhat familiar faces help streamline the deck significantly.
Sultai4Lyfe’s Gruul Delirium variant streamlines the deck by caring a little less about Delirium itself. The traditional variant of this deck loads up on card selection spells like Seed of Hope to get Delirium as quickly and consistently as possible. That said, aggressive decks don’t like to play spells like this, so cutting Seed of Hope and similar spells makes a lot of sense.
In exchange for cutting a significant amount of instants and sorceries from the list, Sultai4Lyfe’s variant runs a lot more threats. The familiar face mentioned earlier is three copies of Screaming Nemesis, a very powerful Standard threat, but not a common inclusion in Delirium decks. The creature doesn’t support Delirium at all, but as far as aggressive threats go, this is undeniably the best one in the entire format.
The new arrivals that are a bit more unique to Sultai4Lyfe’s list are Balustrade Wurm and Cenote Scout. Balustrade Wurm’s inclusion is largely self-explanatory, and makes a lot of sense in the current Standard environment. The format has slowed down considerably since the bans, allowing five-drops to have a place in the format. Balustrade Wurm doubles as both an aggressive threat and a recursive one that cares about Delirium; a perfect fit!
Cenote Scout offers a one-drop threat that can help enable Delirium, albeit not as well as the spells that were cut. The Map Token can put a card into the graveyard if you so choose, and can buff a creature in play. If you have a Fear of Missing Out ready to attack, this single counter can scale to a lot of damage.
The rest of this deck are the cards that Gruul Delirium has been running for a long time. Fear of Missing Out and Break Out create the core of the deck, combined with a bunch of other threats that either care about or enable Delirium, like Patchwork Beastie, Wildfire Wickerfolk, Keen-Eyed Curator, and Tersa Lightshatter. Combine that with some modal cards, like Bushwhack, and Standard’s current most powerful combat trick, Violent Urge, and you get a deck that can win games very quickly. Keen-Eyed Curator, in particular, may be a rather underrated card. Graveyard hate is rather important thanks to the presence of Vivi combo in current Standard.
Completely Rotation Proof
Not only is Sultai4Lyfe’s Gruul Delirium variant performing better than the traditional lists, it also happens to be completely rotation-proof. Since Delirium was supported in Duskmourn, a majority of the cards this deck cares about are from that set, which is not rotating out anytime soon. Otherwise, all of the new threats that Sultai4Lyfe added replace cards that actually would’ve rotated out of Standard.
Even the sideboard cards, which are also highly unusual for this archetype, will not rotate out. Four Fire Magic help keep smaller boards of creatures under control, while Obliterating Bolt, reprinted in MTG Foundations, can kill larger threats. Scrapshooter deals with artifacts and enchantments, and Chandra, Spark Hunter is a good threat for slower matchups.
While the spells will remain unchanged, the same cannot be said for the manabase. Gruul Delirium will be losing Copperline Gorge from Phyrexia: All Will Be One and Karplusan Forest from Dominaria United. Fortunately, these can be directly replaced by Starting Town from Final Fantasy and Stomping Ground from Edge of Eternities. The manabase will be a bit more painful, but it should basically function the same as it always has. The deck will arguably be a bit more consistent since the addition of Stomping Ground will make turning on Thornspire Verge easier than it currently is.
A Great Place to Start
The Edge of Eternities rotation is going to have a significant impact on current Standard. Multiple top decks, like Vivi Combo, Dimir Midrange, and Insidious Roots, are losing some key cards that make their decks tick. There’s going to be a major adjustment period as players try to rebuild old archetypes, and create new ones with new cards.
All of this means that Gruul Delirium hasn’t just been improved, but it seems like a great place to start for Edge of Eternities Standard. Aggressive decks tend to come out ahead at the start, preying on an unsure metagame, and we already have a pre-built one ready to go.
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