Magic: The Gathering Thread XIV: Instant Annoying, Just Add Hexproof

[Lord Seth]

The replacement is far from easy: Index is just terrible. While I have no illusions that if Delver is the best thing you can do people won't play it, it's a very bad card in most situations. It is, however, better than Ponder if all you want to do is stack your deck. But stacking the top 5 cards of your deck isn't an effect that's usually worth a card.

I don't think Index is that bad. But I do think it's probable that people will replace Ponder with Index.

Delver also loses access to the variety of spell effects they get out of Phyrexian Mana spells. Specifically losing Dismember and Gut Shot is no small loss. Gut Shot was important for Delver to fight decks reliant on mana creatures and gave Delver something useful to do against Thalia. Dismember gave Delver a way to actually kill larger creatures like Restoration Angel that are now much more of a problem. And these effects went extremely far with access to Snapcaster Mage.

Whoops, I was so busy thinking about Gitaxian Probe that I forgot about the other Phyrexian mana spells. That does make me wonder if it might shift to UB Delver or UR Delver for better creature removal.