Practice

This is a fun situation. Delver style decks are always tricky, especially if they are playing . Given how this matchup usually plays out it is probably best that we go for it now. We've only one guaranteed initial mana source and we want to avoid letting the Channeler get too big as it could present a real threat. Casting Doomsday off of Ritual from Underground Sea is a decent option as it allows us to leverage the Daze we have in hand but we also might want to think about whether we need the land drop to stay in play for whatever pile we want to build. We cannot grab a basic Swamp if run, because the fetchland doesn't allow it but if it did, that could be another thought to maybe have access to a non-Wastelandable source to cast the Duress from hand with.

Assuming we do decide to go for it there are a number of factors that we need to think about if and when Doomsday resolves. Did they have any interaction? If yes did we fight it with Daze, returning our land to hand or Force of Will pitching the Daze? This decision weighs up the opportunity cost of having potentially +1 or mana source for our follow up turn/(s) against having a Force of Will available which could pair with a blue card from our pile.

Our land has to be an Underground Sea so this could get Wastelanded anyways but there is also potential they do not find one (and if they do, it means they aren't able to cast double Lightning Bolt or similar on us next turn. Does our decision change depending on what interaction they use? If they Daze us themselves then suddenly they have a very real cost to Wasteland being their land drop for next turn. If they Force, this cost is much lower.

If they do attempt to counter the Doomsday, what they may or may not reveal off of Channeler can also matter. They have 2 card types in the graveyard currently. If they cast a counter spell that will go up to 3 and they may hit a creature or sorcery from the Surveil. If they do then this guarantees the Channeler being a 3/3 giving you only up to 3 turns available (risking Bolt) as Doomsday will be taking you to 9 life. Even if they don't hit a creature or sorcery on their turn there is a good chance they will be able to cast a Ponder or similar thus getting the increased pressure going.

If they don't have any interaction this means we need to think about the potential for us having a land in play, a Force and Daze in hand and a slower time pressure against us. Some of these factors may change but others may remain the same.

With all this to think about, what do we build if Doomsday resolves?

Assuming the opponent didn't have anything we can maybe take a bit more time with the pile. We have interaction and less pressure against us. It might be you interpret this as a sign that they don't have anything in which case you might be tempted to go all in for a single PTT kill. Alternatively you could choose to respect the fact that either they are being very patient hoping to catch you off guard or they might find something from cantripping or the top of their deck.

In the case of the former school of thought you may look to build something like this:

PTT +

In the case of the latter thought process, maybe something like this:

PTT + PTT + PTT

The first example expects the opponent to not Wasteland you and for you to be able to resolve a Brainstorm. The initial cycler needs to be SW instead of Edge because you likely will need the Underground Sea to be able to cast Daze off of. This will provide you with +1 additional card to return to the deck with Brainstorm if you need to use it. The pile itself will result in an imperfect pile assuming you want to try and win the turn immediately following Doomsday's resolution but hopefully the Daze is sufficient to protect the Oracle.

Let's run through the first pile assuming we PTT once:

1. Draw SW for turn
2. Cycle SW, draw BS
3. Cast BS, draw , LP, TO, CoS, put back Duress, Force
4. Cast LP, crack for
5. Play Cavern naming Wizard or Merfolk
6. Cast Oracle and win the game with 2 cards left in deck

If they do Wasteland you then suddenly you have to pass the turn a total of 4 times to be able to access and Oracle making this quite risky.

For the second pile this gives more options to us. You draw and play the Strand for your next turn and, if they didn't remove the Sea, you can cast the Duress against them, maybe taking a Bolt or other threatening spell. Passing again will get you the Edge which you could use to cycle into the Oracle (sacrificing the Sea and floating to then be able to fetch for the Island and cast Oracle with 2 cards left in deck and Force of Will backup. If you are able to wait the full three turns though it will be able to beat any amount of countermagic for Oracle, be a perfect pile and only cost 1 life in the process (2 if you need to use Force of Will) with some backup protection. The only downside is you will be getting hit by Channeler each turn.

Obviously these piles might change if you did face interaction and the situation around how you dealt with it but they provide a solid foundation for options. You can't play around and beat everything but you should always decide what cards you are happy to lose to and which you want to play around.

Some cards from this scenario you might want to have thought about:

Stompy decks are often a very play/draw dependant situation and heavily based around the strength of each player's respective opening hands. Ours is not bad as it allows us to cast Doomsday before being disrupted by any sort of lock piece. We don't have any inherent protection however with the Force being devoid of any pitch card.

We are certainly casting Doomsday here but we are faced with an initial decision on what initial mana source we do it from. We could play our land, fetch Sea and then resolve DR into DD, casting LP afterwards to insulate us from Blood Moon effects and/or Chalice of the Void on 0. We could also cast DR off of Petal and hold up the Misty to then access a basic Island from the pile both insulating our mana and digging deeper into the pile.

Once you have decided which mana source to utilise you will need to resolve Doomsday and decide what cards to play around.

Some potential interaction you could face:

There's a lot to think about here. Ideally you'll want to have a basic Island in the pile somewhere to pair with a Lotus Petal to enable under a Moon Effect but you also want to be insulated against Chalice on 2 or a Pyroblast so a Cavern is a decent choice to include. Beyond this simply, having 3 mana sources enables you to beat Trinisphere. You could also look to utilise cyclers and LED to ignore all of it and just try to jam Oracle that way. No matter what you choose you might also want to execute it faster rather than slower as Rabblemaster presents a fast clock if they have it (getting you dead in 3 turns from 9 life or at the very least preventing the use of SW if you pass twice).

Here are a few examples to think about:

PTT + fetchland

PTT + PTT +

PTT + PTT

PTT + PTT + fetchland

Some of these play around some of the potential cards discussed, others ignore some of them. It might be you can beat them but only if they are played in a certain order. The last example uses the Brainstorm as a way to either use as a pitch card for Force, or better yet to access the second Oracle to pitch instead (and reducing the pile size as a result). You can even build piles that allow you to use Daze + Island alongside a Petal to get from the same Island twice by Daze-ing your own LP if they have a Chalice on 0 and a Blood Moon.

As before you cannot play around everything so try to pick your fight and commit accordingly. Sometimes you get it wrong, this is fine. There is variance in the game and just because you might have picked wrong, doesn't mean it was the incorrect choice.

Here we have a game that is already in full swing. Perhaps you had issues finding the fast mana needed to resolve Doomsday (maybe needing to mulligan more?). No matter how you got to this scenario, you have now found the mana to cast Doomsday in the face of a non-counterspell deck and drawn a little extra in the form of the Lotus Petal for the turn. We are now faced with some interesting choices.

First of all let's look at the list of cards we want to be thinking about in the matchup. (There may be other cards involved in spicier variants but these are the more likely ones).

The first card to note here is Allosaurus Shepherd. Shepherd has basically cut off the potential to use countermagic effectively which means that protecting yourself if you decide to perform a pass-the-turn pile is difficult, especially with the potential for a Natural Order or similar haymaker to come down. Conversely though, if you want to try and attempt a same turn win here you are not going to be able to stop an Endurance if they have one which could prevent your win.

The first major decision is whether we are going to try and go for the win now or attempt to wait one turn (or setup to try and do both). Once we have commited to this decision it allows us to know what mana we are using to cast Doomsday; that is whether we are cracking the fetchland for a third Underground Sea and saving Petal, cracking the fetchland and Petal for in total prior to Doomsday or whether we are using the Petal for and saving the Strand to then retrieve a land from the pile.

Let's look at a few options we could try and see how they compare against our potential "interaction list".

SW + X +

This pile you should recognise easily. It's a simple Cycler + mana pile using Brainstorm and Consider to be able to dig through the entire pile and surveil away the dead Force of Will. It gets around most of the interaction the opponent could be holding other than Endurance and Surgical Extraction. This pile just straight up loses to Endurance but, as the opponent may not have one and could only be running up to 4 in the deck anyway, there is only a 56.6% chance they have one. Just over half.

Surgical is possible to beat and has a worst-case scenario of causing you to need to pass the turn once if it manages to "get you" with only a 33.3% chance of it failing if they respond to the Street Wraith cycle after cracking LED.

These odds are certainly not the worst and with it being your turn 3 in Game 2 (having won Game 1) the potential punishment for them having the answer is not too significant and may be less risky than trying to pass and them finding a more significant set of interaction.

We could also look at this:

SW + X +

As the opponent cannot cast any removal currently, and Endurance is still their biggest threat to this same turn win, we could look to try doing an impefect BS pile with two Oracles included. Let's talk through how this pile plays out and assume our opponent waits until the very last minute (Oracle Trigger on the stack) to commit Endurance. We start with having cracked Petal and Strand pre- Doomsday to ensure less cards in our graveyard:

1. Cycle SW into pile, draw BS
2. Cast BS, draw LED, SW, TO, put back FoW and TO on top
3. Cast LED
4. Cycle SW, hold priority crack LED for , draw TO
5. Cast TO to try and win with 2 cards in deck
6. Opponent casts Endurance, trigger resolves
7. Oracle trigger resolves, see Force and Oracle

This is the part where we have an interesting decision. Our deck is currently 7 cards (FoW, TO and then some order of DD, SW, SW, LED, BS). If we were to resolve the trigger and just keep Oracle on top that would only give us a potential devotion to of 4 for the following turn with still 6 cards left in the deck. As a result we would need to pass again and hope to draw a cantrip at that (but we would probably die by then). As a result we should probably just let TO then FoW go to the bottom and try to get through the pile hoping to draw exactly SW into SW into BS. Not likely at all.

Conceptually it's a decent plan but it realistically loses just as hard to Endurance as the first example we presented.

As the same turn win attempts seem to be fairly straightforwards, let's have a look at some of the PTT options.

PTT +

This is a nice clean pile that allows you to beat double Endurance if need be. It helps that you have an extra cycler already in hand just in case. The 4 life from the SW shouldn't matter as either than can hit you for just 3 with their board or for lethal from Natural Order or Cradle into Activate Shepherd. The pile also ignores collector Ouphe which is handy but can be scuppered by a Boseiju on their turn/in your upkeep/draw step hitting your lands. This pile favours having cracked your Strand to cast Doomsday and actually keeping your Petal in hand entirely.

Let's run through the pile assuming they have 2 Endurance:

1. Resolve Doomsday, pass the turn
2. Draw IU for turn
3. Cast IU, draw SW, TO, Island
4. Play Island
5. Cast Oracle to try and win with 1 card in deck
6. Opponent casts Endurance, trigger resolves
7. Cycle SW, draw EoA
8. Oracle trigger is still on the stack with 2 cards in deck
9. Opponent casts Endurance, trigger resolves
10. Cycle Edge, draw IU or DD
11. Oracle trigger resolves, win the game with 2 cards in deck

This gets messier if they have removal like Abrupt Decay or if they hit you with a Thoughtseize or similar but otherwise it is a very neat way to try and win.

What about without IU?:

PTT + Flooded Strand +

This pile you need to ensure you cast Doomsday from the mana of Lotus Petal and have not cracked Flooded Strand beforehand. It can beat one Endurance neatly. Let's see how it plays out:

1. Resolve Doomsday, pass the turn
2. Draw SW for turn
3. Cycle SW, draw TO
4. Crack Flooded Strand, fetch Island
5. Cast Oracle to try and win with 2 cards in deck
6. Opponent casts Endurance, trigger resolves
7. Cycle SW, draw Edge
8. Cycle Edge, draw Edge
9. Oracle trigger resolves, win the game with 2 cards in deck

Let's look at one more potential PTT pile.

PTT + Flooded Strand +

Again this pile requires you to have cast Doomsday off of Lotus Petal. This is a pile that looks to cast 2 Oracle in a single turn.

1. Resolve Doomsday, pass the turn
2. Draw BS for turn
3. Cast BS, draw TO, TO, LP, put back FoW, SW
4. Crack Flooded Strand, fetch Island
5. Cast Oracle to try and win with 2 cards in deck
6. If required, cast LP, crack for
7. Cast Oracle to try and win with 2 cards in deck

Again the theory is sound but if they did have an Endurance to interrupt you in response to the first Oracle's trigger, you would go to 5 cards in your deck which would then force you to pass the turn again as you would only have a total potential devotion of 4.