I think it was well positioned, but I also think the deck has some quite obvious power. Just wait for the conversion rate on the deck after ktk takes a look.
why do I get the feeling that this Death's Shadow deck is actually terrible, but was just well positioned in this meta?
Playing Kolaghan's Command gives the deck resiliency. Otherwise, it just plays 8 ridiculously overpowered creatures for their cost and another 4 ways to find them, backed up by discard spells and kill spells. It's a fantastic deck.
why do I get the feeling that this Death's Shadow deck is actually terrible, but was just well positioned in this meta?
The deck is just pure efficiency. In no way is it a bad deck. Sure there creatures die to removal but these creatures are so brutally efficient for their cost that they end the game in one to 3 swings. The disruption is also very mana efficient. Combine these two things with possibly the best consistency tools in the format and you have a well oiled good stuff efficient killing machine.
why do I get the feeling that this Death's Shadow deck is actually terrible, but was just well positioned in this meta?
Playing Kolaghan's Command gives the deck resiliency. Otherwise, it just plays 8 ridiculously overpowered creatures for their cost and another 4 ways to find them, backed up by discard spells and kill spells. It's a fantastic deck.
It's a little more than that. Liliana, the Last Hope seems like a good inclusion, so that's another 2-3 ways of recurring those creatures. And it's a 52-card deck because of Bauble and Wraith, so about 15% slimmer than your average pile.
Along with K-Command, I think the discard suite is part of the deck's resilience. Even removal-heavy decks have a hard time dealing with a bunch of vanilla beaters with huge butts when all their removal spells get binned turns 1-2.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Does anyone know why this build of Death Shadow Jund doesn't play Bob? Seems like he would be a good fit for the deck giving card advantage and reducing your life total. Looked like the top of the curve was 3 also, which is ridiculously low...
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Playing Kolaghan's Command gives the deck resiliency. Otherwise, it just plays 8 ridiculously overpowered creatures for their cost and another 4 ways to find them, backed up by discard spells and kill spells. It's a fantastic deck.
i guess I just can't see how this thing does well against true midrange decks like Jund where it'll get 1-for-1'd out of existence. Like, what was it's main competition in this tournament? Eldrazi Tron? Any aggressive deck can crush an even durdlier Tron if they don't have their best draw. I doubt it can play the midrange game too well, even with K Command, and it's not particularly fast based on the Merfolk games I just saw (excluding the very last game), plus it just kills itself in the aggro mirror.
I dunno, I'm not a pro. I just have doubts about how good this deck actually is. Then again, I've always had doubts about Death Shadow decks
You saw it win on turn three right? That's pretty fast...
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
You saw it win on turn three right? That's pretty fast...
The ability to have free wins is important in general in powerful eternal formats. Jeff Hoogland said it best in his article about esper control. Something along the lines that in a game that has some variance you need to have the ability to get free wins or just roll over your opponent to balance out the games where you lose to variance such as drawing do nothing hands or many screw. In his article he says esper has really strong cards but the fact that it has to grind out all its wins plus the games everyone loses to variance will keep it from ever being tier 1.
Like Jeff I doubt better answers and contrips will do much to help the situation unless they are along the lines of mental misstep, force of will plus brainstorm. That would be unhealthy and like Jeff I rather have control decks to be of the combo nature and not have insanely oppressive answers. The answers in blue are almost fine we just need a wincon that suites blue well which has traditionally been compact combos such as twin, mindslaver lock, and vaultkey. Discard is a good source of disruption because the best way to take advantage of it is through efficient beats which modern has a critical mass of.
Playing Kolaghan's Command gives the deck resiliency. Otherwise, it just plays 8 ridiculously overpowered creatures for their cost and another 4 ways to find them, backed up by discard spells and kill spells. It's a fantastic deck.
i guess I just can't see how this thing does well against true midrange decks like Jund where it'll get 1-for-1'd out of existence. Like, what was it's main competition in this tournament? Eldrazi Tron? Any aggressive deck can crush an even durdlier Tron if they don't have their best draw. I doubt it can play the midrange game too well, even with K Command, and it's not particularly fast based on the Merfolk games I just saw (excluding the very last game), plus it just kills itself in the aggro mirror.
I dunno, I'm not a pro. I just have doubts about how good this deck actually is. Then again, I've always had doubts about Death Shadow decks
Disclaimer: Affinity-only player here (and haven't played in around 6 months), so don't take my opinion too seriously.
The way I see it, Death's Shadow aggro is playing an "Affinity-aggro" game, except its means are different.
Affinity runs off with explosive starts (especially if Mox Opal is involved), DSA relies on having a 52-card deck instead, but it's safe to say the objective is to get that damage through as fast as possible.
Affinity relies on many small creatures that have great synergy that just don't seem of any value to individually to get rid of with "1-for-1" removal, whereas DSA just outright removes said removal using targeted discard instead, so that their singular large creature will get through. Using targeted discard does make the deck feel like midrange (especially if its in Jund Colors), but when the real target is removal spells rather than potential threats simply because you know your threats outsize theirs, it's the same confidence Affinity has when they are pretty sure they can outdamage you with Cranial Plating and focus on getting rid of your hate rather than your threats.
The reason they do this, however, is the same, by default, both decks are weak to interaction, which is why they either attempt to outspeed or dispose of said interaction as soon as they can. Both decks probably have the same advantage against the uninteractive decks immune to interaction, but DSA might actually be stronger than Affinity because they can actually turn their targeted discard into one of the few "interactions" those decks are vulnerable to, whereas Affinity still sticks to the "Go faster" plan.
"Wow, that Death's Shadow deck looks really good. How do I beat it? Bolt can't kill their guys."
"Well, you could play Fatal Push."
"I see. What's the best Fatal Push deck in the format?"
The format doesn't just magically fix itself when you print better answers. Fair decks can play those answers against not-fair decks, but not-fair decks can also play those answers themselves to plow through opposition.
I imagine Jund's Terminate/Decay suite and Abzan's Path/Decay suite are pretty potent in the matchup. BWx could do well too with Path and Push, and RIP is pretty beefy against it. The thing is that lots of decks have good answers or ways of punishing DSA, but all the discard makes you unlikely to be able to interact in time.
Also Chalice on 1 seems damn strong, as does Bridge. Problem is K-Command answers them at advantage. White's sideboard cards – RIP, Leyline, Halo, etc. – may be stronger hosers for that reason.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Chalice could do work, but who knows, its a great deck for sure. When is the next event? :]
Honestly, I really enjoyed the coverage, I enjoyed the games I watched, and we had Turns on a 'win and in' to Top 8 but he ran into Sam Black!
If we get to Eldrazi Winter levels, I'll panic, till then I think this was a good weekend, and it proved that Reactive Blue may as well be buried. If you are not doing something unfair, GTFO.
"Wow, that Death's Shadow deck looks really good. How do I beat it? Bolt can't kill their guys."
"Well, you could play Fatal Push."
"I see. What's the best Fatal Push deck in the format?"
The format doesn't just magically fix itself when you print better answers. Fair decks can play those answers against not-fair decks, but not-fair decks can also play those answers themselves to plow through opposition.
Death Shadow Aggro is the definition of fair. The only crime it has done is playing guys with big stats for cheap and if that is even a reason for a ban then Goyf should have been banned long ago. DSA is a fair deck that just happens to be more efficient than the other decks that try to one for one you. You are right though that the format will need more than just better answers but DSA is definitely a fair deck.
Edit: Although one deck smashed the entire weekend the games have been very good ones where players exchanged resources and went through interesting lines unlike when the noninteractive nonesense,was still legal in modern.
Yeah, as much as the control player in me shudders at the though of getting my face smashed in repeatedly by DSA, the real takeaway IMO is that the meta has a powerful new deck that punishes you for not interacting. That's a good foil for the ramp decks I was expecting to dominate (and which put up a ton of strong results on day 1).
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
You saw it win on turn three right? That's pretty fast...
The ability to have free wins is important in general in powerful eternal formats. Jeff Hoogland said it best in his article about esper control. Something along the lines that in a game that has some variance you need to have the ability to get free wins or just roll over your opponent to balance out the games where you lose to variance such as drawing do nothing hands or many screw. In his article he says esper has really strong cards but the fact that it has to grind out all its wins plus the games everyone loses to variance will keep it from ever being tier 1.
Like Jeff I doubt better answers and contrips will do much to help the situation unless they are along the lines of mental misstep, force of will plus brainstorm. That would be unhealthy and like Jeff I rather have control decks to be of the combo nature and not have insanely oppressive answers. The answers in blue are almost fine we just need a wincon that suites blue well which has traditionally been compact combos such as twin, mindslaver lock, and vaultkey. Discard is a good source of disruption because the best way to take advantage of it is through efficient beats which modern has a critical mass of.
Personally, I'd argue that those wincons already exist. A turn 4 Gifts Ungiven into a turn 5 Unburial Rites instantly beats Death's Shadow, Burn, Merfolk, Dredge and Affinity (Burn has no answers to Iona, Shield of Emeria maindeck and Merfolk, Death's Shadow, Dredge, and Affinity have no maindeck answers to Blazing Archon) control decks should be able to survive until turn 5. Similarly, a turn 4 Madcap Experiment into Platinum Emperion leaves almost every deck other than Jund, Junk, and Tron deck with only a few answers. The biggest problem is finding these cards and consistently casting them by turn 5, which is why Preordain would be such an important addition to Control decks.
"Wow, that Death's Shadow deck looks really good. How do I beat it? Bolt can't kill their guys."
"Well, you could play Fatal Push."
"I see. What's the best Fatal Push deck in the format?"
The format doesn't just magically fix itself when you print better answers. Fair decks can play those answers against not-fair decks, but not-fair decks can also play those answers themselves to plow through opposition.
Death's Shadow isn't exactly an unfair deck. Other than running 12 extremely efficient beaters (counting Traverse), what makes it unfair? It has 11 discard spells, 11 removal spells, and 2 planeswalkers, and none of its creatures do anything broken except for swinging for a lot of damage. All of its creatures die to non-Lighting Bolt removal and none of them have evasion. It is not uninteractive and compared to almost every other interaction that we see in Modern, its remarkably fair.
Personally, I think they must unban Preordain and/or Jace if we dont have any Blue Reactive in the Top 16.
I dont believe we get Twin back so soon, so they will go another path.
Do you honestly believe either Preordain or Jace would do anything at all to help them in the current field of top decks? If they can bring back Wild Nacatl for being banned for a stupid, unnecessary, and ineffective reason, they can do the exact same thing for Twin.
Honestly, I do. If Preordain was unbanned and control decks had 8 decent cantrips, they could more easily play combos that essentially win the game by turns 4-6 (Gifts Ungiven, Madcap Experiment, Nahiri the Harbinger) while still running a full control suite.
- There were a lot of big mana decks. 2 Gx Tron, 6 Eldrazi Tron, 5 RG Valakut, 2 Amulet, and if you want to count them, 2 Temur/BTL Scapeshift (I prefer to think of Scapeshift as blue control decks with a combo wincon).
- There were a lot of Eldrazi decks as well, but at least they play differently. 6 Eldrazi Tron, 6 Bant Eldrazi, 2 Eldrazi & Taxes.
- BG midrange is fine. 5 Death's Shadow Jund, 4 Abzan, 2 Jund. I whenever I see "unban BBE".
- Dredge is still a deck. I'm under the impression that Wizards hates Dredge in the format, and hates Dredge putting 2 players into a T8 more, so I'm not sure how long this will last.
- Infect is still a deck, too. Not a tier 1 deck, but there are 3 Infect players in the combined T32s. One of the players has 3 Peek in his deck, no prizes for guessing why he did that.
- Combo is in a perfectly acceptable place. 1 Living End, 1 Ad Nauseam, 1 Grishoalbrand out of 64 decks. Storm and Cheerios are nowhere to be seen - they have the fastest goldfishes (rivaled by Grishoalbrand), but they also rely on the easiest card type to interact with: creatures (Baral, Electromancer, Paladin, Sram). 3/4 of those guys can be killed by 2-toughness removal like Collective Brutality. To me that represents an important proof of concept: you don't need free counterspells to rein in the combo decks. You just need to make the combo decks reliant on creatures; that way, 4 out of the 5 colors can interact with them. You can even let those combo decks have their turn 2 or turn 3 kills, as long as it can be stopped by a Bolt. Even a deck like Amulet now lets you interact with it (Sakura-Tribe Scout).
- Is blue in a bad spot? I believe not. While all of the Snapcaster Mage decks finished in 16th-32nd place, there were seven of those in both T32s combined. And Jeskai Kiki won the SCG Classic.
Here's how I chose to classify the decks. Word of warning: I will not respond to any comments asking why I chose to put deck X in Y archetype.
The elephant in the room is the big mana decks. Probe's ban weakened the creature combo decks (Infect, DS Zoo, Kiln Fiend) that generally had good matchups against them, although it should be noted that Eldrazi Tron plays maindeck Chalice of the Void. If there's anything about the format that should be fixed, it's that, not blue or combo.
My statement was in direct response to Jenoz saying DSJ wasn't "particularly fast." I don't believe the deck is broken or anything like that, rather, that the ability to win on turn three is plenty fast.
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
"Wow, that Death's Shadow deck looks really good. How do I beat it? Bolt can't kill their guys."
"Well, you could play Fatal Push."
"I see. What's the best Fatal Push deck in the format?"
The format doesn't just magically fix itself when you print better answers. Fair decks can play those answers against not-fair decks, but not-fair decks can also play those answers themselves to plow through opposition.
this is why ive been saying the meta is the problem.
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-Modern-
decks playing:
none
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UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=28&start_date=02/17/2017&end_date=02/19/2017&start=1&finish=16&event_ID=36&city=Baltimore
Baltimore Open, note it was a team event. T24 = Day 2
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&start_date=02/18/2017&end_date=02/18/2017&event_ID=49&start_num=0
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/4004_day_2_metagame_breakdown_.html
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Spirits
Spirits
Playing Kolaghan's Command gives the deck resiliency. Otherwise, it just plays 8 ridiculously overpowered creatures for their cost and another 4 ways to find them, backed up by discard spells and kill spells. It's a fantastic deck.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
The deck is just pure efficiency. In no way is it a bad deck. Sure there creatures die to removal but these creatures are so brutally efficient for their cost that they end the game in one to 3 swings. The disruption is also very mana efficient. Combine these two things with possibly the best consistency tools in the format and you have a well oiled good stuff efficient killing machine.
It's a little more than that. Liliana, the Last Hope seems like a good inclusion, so that's another 2-3 ways of recurring those creatures. And it's a 52-card deck because of Bauble and Wraith, so about 15% slimmer than your average pile.
Along with K-Command, I think the discard suite is part of the deck's resilience. Even removal-heavy decks have a hard time dealing with a bunch of vanilla beaters with huge butts when all their removal spells get binned turns 1-2.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
i guess I just can't see how this thing does well against true midrange decks like Jund where it'll get 1-for-1'd out of existence. Like, what was it's main competition in this tournament? Eldrazi Tron? Any aggressive deck can crush an even durdlier Tron if they don't have their best draw. I doubt it can play the midrange game too well, even with K Command, and it's not particularly fast based on the Merfolk games I just saw (excluding the very last game), plus it just kills itself in the aggro mirror.
I dunno, I'm not a pro. I just have doubts about how good this deck actually is. Then again, I've always had doubts about Death Shadow decks
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
The ability to have free wins is important in general in powerful eternal formats. Jeff Hoogland said it best in his article about esper control. Something along the lines that in a game that has some variance you need to have the ability to get free wins or just roll over your opponent to balance out the games where you lose to variance such as drawing do nothing hands or many screw. In his article he says esper has really strong cards but the fact that it has to grind out all its wins plus the games everyone loses to variance will keep it from ever being tier 1.
Like Jeff I doubt better answers and contrips will do much to help the situation unless they are along the lines of mental misstep, force of will plus brainstorm. That would be unhealthy and like Jeff I rather have control decks to be of the combo nature and not have insanely oppressive answers. The answers in blue are almost fine we just need a wincon that suites blue well which has traditionally been compact combos such as twin, mindslaver lock, and vaultkey. Discard is a good source of disruption because the best way to take advantage of it is through efficient beats which modern has a critical mass of.
Disclaimer: Affinity-only player here (and haven't played in around 6 months), so don't take my opinion too seriously.
The way I see it, Death's Shadow aggro is playing an "Affinity-aggro" game, except its means are different.
Affinity runs off with explosive starts (especially if Mox Opal is involved), DSA relies on having a 52-card deck instead, but it's safe to say the objective is to get that damage through as fast as possible.
Affinity relies on many small creatures that have great synergy that just don't seem of any value to individually to get rid of with "1-for-1" removal, whereas DSA just outright removes said removal using targeted discard instead, so that their singular large creature will get through. Using targeted discard does make the deck feel like midrange (especially if its in Jund Colors), but when the real target is removal spells rather than potential threats simply because you know your threats outsize theirs, it's the same confidence Affinity has when they are pretty sure they can outdamage you with Cranial Plating and focus on getting rid of your hate rather than your threats.
The reason they do this, however, is the same, by default, both decks are weak to interaction, which is why they either attempt to outspeed or dispose of said interaction as soon as they can. Both decks probably have the same advantage against the uninteractive decks immune to interaction, but DSA might actually be stronger than Affinity because they can actually turn their targeted discard into one of the few "interactions" those decks are vulnerable to, whereas Affinity still sticks to the "Go faster" plan.
"Wow, that Death's Shadow deck looks really good. How do I beat it? Bolt can't kill their guys."
"Well, you could play Fatal Push."
"I see. What's the best Fatal Push deck in the format?"
The format doesn't just magically fix itself when you print better answers. Fair decks can play those answers against not-fair decks, but not-fair decks can also play those answers themselves to plow through opposition.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Also Chalice on 1 seems damn strong, as does Bridge. Problem is K-Command answers them at advantage. White's sideboard cards – RIP, Leyline, Halo, etc. – may be stronger hosers for that reason.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Honestly, I really enjoyed the coverage, I enjoyed the games I watched, and we had Turns on a 'win and in' to Top 8 but he ran into Sam Black!
If we get to Eldrazi Winter levels, I'll panic, till then I think this was a good weekend, and it proved that Reactive Blue may as well be buried. If you are not doing something unfair, GTFO.
Spirits
Death Shadow Aggro is the definition of fair. The only crime it has done is playing guys with big stats for cheap and if that is even a reason for a ban then Goyf should have been banned long ago. DSA is a fair deck that just happens to be more efficient than the other decks that try to one for one you. You are right though that the format will need more than just better answers but DSA is definitely a fair deck.
Edit: Although one deck smashed the entire weekend the games have been very good ones where players exchanged resources and went through interesting lines unlike when the noninteractive nonesense,was still legal in modern.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Personally, I'd argue that those wincons already exist. A turn 4 Gifts Ungiven into a turn 5 Unburial Rites instantly beats Death's Shadow, Burn, Merfolk, Dredge and Affinity (Burn has no answers to Iona, Shield of Emeria maindeck and Merfolk, Death's Shadow, Dredge, and Affinity have no maindeck answers to Blazing Archon) control decks should be able to survive until turn 5. Similarly, a turn 4 Madcap Experiment into Platinum Emperion leaves almost every deck other than Jund, Junk, and Tron deck with only a few answers. The biggest problem is finding these cards and consistently casting them by turn 5, which is why Preordain would be such an important addition to Control decks.
Death's Shadow isn't exactly an unfair deck. Other than running 12 extremely efficient beaters (counting Traverse), what makes it unfair? It has 11 discard spells, 11 removal spells, and 2 planeswalkers, and none of its creatures do anything broken except for swinging for a lot of damage. All of its creatures die to non-Lighting Bolt removal and none of them have evasion. It is not uninteractive and compared to almost every other interaction that we see in Modern, its remarkably fair.
Honestly, I do. If Preordain was unbanned and control decks had 8 decent cantrips, they could more easily play combos that essentially win the game by turns 4-6 (Gifts Ungiven, Madcap Experiment, Nahiri the Harbinger) while still running a full control suite.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
It was RUG omenshift
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gpvan17/9-32-decklists-2017-02-19
Eldrazi Tron 111
Bant Eldrazi 11
Bant Eldrazi w/ Evolution 1
Amulet 11
Infect 11
Grixis Control 11
Titanshift 11
Abzan 1
8Rack 1
Naya Burn 1
Death's Shadow Jund 1
Dredge 1
Jund 1
Naya Company splash U 1
RG Breach splash W 1
Ad Nauseam 1
Elves 1
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
- There were a lot of big mana decks. 2 Gx Tron, 6 Eldrazi Tron, 5 RG Valakut, 2 Amulet, and if you want to count them, 2 Temur/BTL Scapeshift (I prefer to think of Scapeshift as blue control decks with a combo wincon).
- There were a lot of Eldrazi decks as well, but at least they play differently. 6 Eldrazi Tron, 6 Bant Eldrazi, 2 Eldrazi & Taxes.
- BG midrange is fine. 5 Death's Shadow Jund, 4 Abzan, 2 Jund. I whenever I see "unban BBE".
- Dredge is still a deck. I'm under the impression that Wizards hates Dredge in the format, and hates Dredge putting 2 players into a T8 more, so I'm not sure how long this will last.
- Infect is still a deck, too. Not a tier 1 deck, but there are 3 Infect players in the combined T32s. One of the players has 3 Peek in his deck, no prizes for guessing why he did that.
- Combo is in a perfectly acceptable place. 1 Living End, 1 Ad Nauseam, 1 Grishoalbrand out of 64 decks. Storm and Cheerios are nowhere to be seen - they have the fastest goldfishes (rivaled by Grishoalbrand), but they also rely on the easiest card type to interact with: creatures (Baral, Electromancer, Paladin, Sram). 3/4 of those guys can be killed by 2-toughness removal like Collective Brutality. To me that represents an important proof of concept: you don't need free counterspells to rein in the combo decks. You just need to make the combo decks reliant on creatures; that way, 4 out of the 5 colors can interact with them. You can even let those combo decks have their turn 2 or turn 3 kills, as long as it can be stopped by a Bolt. Even a deck like Amulet now lets you interact with it (Sakura-Tribe Scout).
- Is blue in a bad spot? I believe not. While all of the Snapcaster Mage decks finished in 16th-32nd place, there were seven of those in both T32s combined. And Jeskai Kiki won the SCG Classic.
Here's how I chose to classify the decks. Word of warning: I will not respond to any comments asking why I chose to put deck X in Y archetype.
11 BG midrange: 5 DS Jund, 4 Abzan, 2 Jund
9 Noble Hierarch midrange: 6 Bant Eldrazi, 2 Naya Company, 1 Knightfall
6 Go-wide aggro: 3 Dredge, 2 Affinity, 1 Merfolk
4 Prison: 2 Lantern, 1 RW, 1 8Rack
4 Blue midrange/control: 2 Grixis, 1 Esper PWs, 1 Esper Delve
3 Creature combo: 3 Infect
3 Traditional combo: 1 Living End, 1 Ad Nauseam, 1 Grishoalbrand
3 Blue combo-control: 2 Scapeshift, 1 Copy Cat
2 Creature toolbox: 1 Abzan Company, 1 Elves
2 Burn: 2 Burn
2 Eldrazi & Taxes: 2 Eldrazi & Taxes
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Actually my bad I was wrong. There was an omenshift list doing well over the weekend, but it wasn't the one that ended up near the top of the SCG.
The SCG deck was bring to light, splash black. The list is actually on their website.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
this is why ive been saying the meta is the problem.
decks playing:
none