Hey, just thought I'd drop my 4 color list here for some critique since there isn't really a thread for this exact deck. It's basically trying to mix the advantages of Grixis Shadow with the advantages of Jund shadow. Snapcaster Mage and Traverse the Ulvenwald in the same deck with thought scour helping to enable them both offers the deck even more toolbox versatility coupled with the same brutal efficiency Death's Shadow is known for.
Keeping Green in the Grixis shell lets me go down to 1 delve threat, replacing the rest with a set of tarmogoyfs that keep our graveyard stocked for turned on Traverses and more flashback options with Snapcaster Mage. The single Tasigur is still a useful inclusion to avoid losing to Surgical Extraction, Snapcaster Surgical Extraction grabbing all our threats, as well as being a threat that can't be fatal pushed.
The downsides to this list are obvious, a less stable mana base (though not as unstable as you'd think) forces us up to 19 lands to fit in all the relevant shocklands with two basics. We also have a slightly worse burn/8 whack matchup as we have less fine control over our life total due to needing to fetch aggressively simply to cast all of our spells. Sure, we do that most of the time anyway, but with burn you want to very carefully manipulate your life total to allow yourself to battle rage them out before they can kill you, mitigating their kill potential with discard spells and in this list stubborn denial. Depending on their hand and my own sometimes I simply don't have the fine control necessary as often as the lists that are much more three color than four. We also miss out on any lilianas mostly due to a lack of room and due to double black not always being a given here.
Let me know what you think of my greedy list, which has top 8'd my last two fnms, as well as a GPT and a Modern Monday at my LGS.
I've been kind of flitting between Grixis and Jund Shadow as well. I've also been looking into a 4 color list similar to yours, although I still haven't tried it at FNM. Just a few comments:
I think the problem with your list is inconsistency. I don't like having 2 Bauble and 3 Street Wraith. Those cards are what give DS decks such powerful consistency and I feel like those should be the last to be shaved. I also don't think that Tasigur is necessary, given that Goyf is almost always bigger in DSJ. The MD Terminate is kind of sketchy too but that could be a meta call. I'm also not sure about committing 4 slots to Thought Scour. It has some great synergy with Snapcaster but I'd rather see a 4th Traverse, 2nd K-Command, Lili, over them.
In my mind, an ideal list would be something like a DSJ splashing Blue purely for Snapcaster. Snapcaster really amps up the grind level by letting you recast all the extremely cheap powerful removal/discard/Traverse spells. The real question is whether we'd rather just have Lili and white SB cards. Blue doesn't really add anything in the sideboard- I'd rather have Lili over Staticaster most of the time and I honestly can't think of anything else useful. On the other hand, White enables you to tutor for Ranger of Eos and silver bullet cards like Canonist/Kataki as well as providing Lingering Souls for grind power.
Thanks for the reply, You raise an interesting point about thought scour's inclusion and now I'm interested to jam some games of a version going for the full playsets of bauble and wraith to see how it effects the deck.
Also I'll say that the maindeck terminate is very much my own meta call as my LGS is Bant Eldrazi City at the moment, and my one ofs in the deck greatly benefit from thought scour snapcaster as they become more reliable to find and use. If I take out the thoughtscours I would have to make some concessions and go up to 2 K command, 2 battle rage, etc, as it will then become more difficult to find them.
Something I must say is that the other best card you get from blue is Stubborn Denial!! Seriously do not leave them out of any list running blue. Having some instant speed responses to powerful cards top decked late in the game when your discard spells are largely useless is invaluable.
But yeah overall I may try to juggle some of the numbers and report back to see if the list is feeling more reliable with the full playsets of baubles/wraiths over thought scour. Perhaps I'll try a lili mainboard simply to test it's viability with the manabase.
Quick FNM report with my DSJ white splash version. Went 2-2 overall, was actually kinda disappointed.
Match 1 was against Burn, which I beat 2-0. Pretty straight forward, the key is to not dmg yourself and establish control over the board. As for sideboarding:
-4 Street Wraith
-2 TS
+2 CB
+1 Push
+3 Fulminator
Match 2 against Grixis Shadow (lost 1-2): These games were pretty stupid. I fetched aggressively because I was heavily flooded which is just plain up stupid. I then cycled 4 (!) street wraiths to draw extra lands... And my opponent just bolt, snap, bolted my to death.
For sideboarding:
-2 TBR
-2 Tarfire
-3 IOK
+3 Lingering Souls
+1 Ranger
+1 Spellbomb
+1 Push
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
I think cutting a land in attrition matchups is a really good idea. Never gave it too much credit but I will investigate it further in the future.
Match 3 against Slivers --> 2-0. Not much to say, this deck was just not really competitive.
Match 4 against GW Tron. This time the Tron matchup felt really hard just like with regular Jund. I actually thought we were now close to 50/50 in that matchup, but I actually think its more 40/60 or even less favoured for us. If you just don't have the nut draw of discard into threat into TBR, then its basically over. And discard is soo mediocre, as you can't really disrupt them due to them playing path, which you have to take in order to protect your threats, which subsequently lets them easy assemble tron on the fly. Its really weird.
For sideboarding:
-3 Push
-2 Tarfire
-1 LtLH
+3 Fulminator
+2 Surgical
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
I am back with my report for the modern open held at my LGS last saturday. It was monthly event held everywhere in the country in all major cities and this time in my area around. For this tournament 30 people attended, which ment 5 rounds with a Top 8 cutoff. My endresult was getting into Top 8 but lost in the first Top 8 match and finished in 8th place. Overall was pretty happy how it went, can't complain, since this deck is not something old for modern, as its pretty new, and thus, as I put much effort into it lately, I am happy with my result.
Match 1: Against Sultai Delirium (won 2-0). This deck played similar like any midrange deck at the moment, but played without death's Shadow and more the delirium aspect with Traverse and a toolbox of creatures. It was less focused and my threats were just more resilient than those of my opponent. At some point, my opponent was unable to remove my threats and lost heavily.
Match 2: Against Mono U Tron (lost 1-2): This deck is actually incredibly hard to beat in my opinion. Overall, its less resilient in assembling Tron, but, they have ***** amount of card filtering and counters to protect themselves in order to find tron. Its really hard getting our Land destruction online in the form of Fulminator Mage when they have Remand and Condescend. As we have a fairly tigh mana, this all was quite devastating. And when they have Tron, even a single Wurmcoil Engine just wrecks us hard.
I think it was a mistake leaving Collective Brutality in the SB and leaving Abrupt Decay in the mainboard. Decay hits way less than in regular Tron and CB helps with snapping those spells they got. Although I would never use CB with additional modes on it, because they have Remand.
Match 3: Against Burn (won 2-1): This matchup ultimately comes down to who topdecks better in my opinion. From the death's shadow player's perspective its fairly easy: Dmg yourself as little as possible. Then, if the Burn player burns you down enough, our threats become overwhelming and win the game. So it pretty much relies on the Burn player to play it correctly. They need to find a good balance in order to get us to a low enough life total that they can kill us within one turn (like EOT: Bolt, untap, Boros CHarm + Bolt for the win or whatever). This isn't that easy to do because of our discard but it pretty much comes down to this, and from our perspective, we need to establish board control asap and assemble our goyfs and start swinging. Increasing the clock is what we want. We want to give the burn player as little time as possible to find the spells they need to kill us in one shot.
Match 4: Against Elves (won 2-0): I really don't get why people think this matchup is one of our worst matchups. I really can't confirm that at all. I wouldn't say its easy, far from it, but its probably about 50/50 and the player which gets to play first is pretty favoured here. The key is to be able to remove the manadork on turn 1 instantly. This prevents them from getting explosive starts. Its sometimes scary as they can kill us potentially within one shot through their Ezuri overruns, but if you have enough removal you can keep them in check. So the key is to maximize all removal we have in order to be able to kill every mana acceleration they have.
Match 5: Against Burn (ID in order to ensure top 8 for us both).
Top 8, first match, against Abzan Death's Shadow: (lost 1-2): Theoretically, in this matchup we are slightly unfavoured due to path and lingering souls in game 1. After sideboarding, however, I think its fairly even for both. It just plays out like any other mirror match, its an attrition based matchups, and topdecking is the key. In game 3 I lost to a topdecked street wraith, which are just brutal in the mirror. Its pretty much impossible to remove and unblockable, its just an game ender.
Overall I was pretty happy for how it went. Ethersworn Canonist was ofc useless in my matchups, but I knew there were some Ad Nauseam players around at the tournament and therefor it felt ok. Ancient Grudge was a card I never missed actually. Maybe it would helped against Mono U Tron, but I am not sure.
Weird, I live around Philly and didn't see any opens, especially in one of the more popular places for Magic there
Good report. Your list looks good
I'm running a similar 75 to yours, the only thing different is that I cut the forest (Which I haven't really missed), and I have two LTLH and one LOTV. My sideboard is similar but I run 2x ancient grudge and no Ethersworn or spellbomb.
I think for sure cutting the 3rd copy of tarfire and Ghor feels good, I've loved my 2nd copy of Abrupt Decay way, way more.
I would really recommend you trying to squeeze a terminate in your sideboard, it has been absolutely fantastic for me in paper and on mtgo. I'm getting comfortable enough with this deck that I'm beating death's shadow decks designed to beat it. I played two heavy removal Shadow decks, one being Grixis, and I outplayed them. Lingering Souls and Ranger are devastating, I can't believe I suggested running regular Jund--that version only worked because the meta wasn't prepared.
I honestly don't know if this Shadow deck has any weaknesses, which I think is cause for concern
Weird, I live around Philly and didn't see any opens, especially in one of the more popular places for Magic there
Good report. Your list looks good
I'm running a similar 75 to yours, the only thing different is that I cut the forest (Which I haven't really missed), and I have two LTLH and one LOTV. My sideboard is similar but I run 2x ancient grudge and no Ethersworn or spellbomb.
I think for sure cutting the 3rd copy of tarfire and Ghor feels good, I've loved my 2nd copy of Abrupt Decay way, way more.
I would really recommend you trying to squeeze a terminate in your sideboard, it has been absolutely fantastic for me in paper and on mtgo. I'm getting comfortable enough with this deck that I'm beating death's shadow decks designed to beat it. I played two heavy removal Shadow decks, one being Grixis, and I outplayed them. Lingering Souls and Ranger are devastating, I can't believe I suggested running regular Jund--that version only worked because the meta wasn't prepared.
I honestly don't know if this Shadow deck has any weaknesses, which I think is cause for concern
Well I live in central Europe, thats probably why^^
I had cut the Forest previously before, but I actually decided to go back for it. Especially against Burn and Path to Exile decks I really missed the second basic land. Overal the manafixing is surely better, but the life loss mattered to me actually more than I would have expected. Might give the second Overgrown Tomb another try, but I want to be on the 2 basic plan as long as I don't see any major issue concerning mana fixing.
Yeah, I also feel that way about Tarfire #3 and Ghor. Both cards getting replaced feel so much more powerful without loosing too much consistancy reaching delirium.
Terminate is a card I probably would have loved in the tournament. I agree with you on it being very good in those grindy midrangy matchups. Its hard to squeeze it in though, I could cut the Ethersworn for it maybe.
Well, from my experiece, regular Tron is still a very unfavoured matchup for us. If you just don't have the godhand of a fast clock backed up by discard they will simply wreck us like ever before (playing regular Jund). I think it has become better, but not that much. And well tuned Abzan lists from nowadays are probably also very hard for us to beat. And of course also dredge, which saw an uptick in popularity again.
Tron isn't great, but I don't feel hopeless like before. When I was on Jund I pretty much felt I should just sign the slip and go out for dinner. I definitely feel like I have a chance now
A well tuned Abzan list is going to happen, and dredge is coming back, too. It's kind of a good thing, the deck needs these bad matchups or it's going to eat a ban of some sort.
I'm really surprised you aren't running the 2x Overgrown, I love it
1: Thoughts on Night's Whisper? Painful Truths is nice but sometimes 3 mana is too expensive(on Grixis Shadow so no Traverse)
2. Best way to deal with Elves and Merfolk (decks that go wide). EE isn't good enough a lot of the time and Damnation is 4cmc and sometimes too slow.
1) I still like Painful Truths better I think. Its more costly, but you will playing the card in attrition matchups basically, where you will be able to pay for it and getting the stronger effect.
2) As for Elves as I stated in my report, the key is really to kill their manadork on turn 1, have a TS for their CoCo and just maximize removal. If you have Kozilek's Return in your SB then for the better. As for Merfolk, I think ultimately the matchup is kinda hard. The problem is their card draw and mana denial, which you have to target with the discard. Use your fetchlands to play around Spreaind Seas/Seas Claim. And also don't bring in artifact hate against them.
Was in a 116 person SCG tournament today (7 rounds) and decided to run jund shadow with the white splash. My list is almost identical to others here, as it seems the only real differences are single cards. I was on 3 tarfire, but dropped my rampager for 1x liliana, the last hope. Very stock.
Round 1; ad nauseam.
Mulliganed to 5 game 1 due to no-land hands. Think I made a wrong call with a turn 1 thoughtseize, but it didn't really matter as I never drew a threat in about 10 turns of filtering. Drew three traverses but didn't get delirium (no instant, no artifact, no tribal). Eventually opponent drew ad naus and went off. Game 2 mulliganed due to no land hand. died on turn 4 nothing I could do. Managed to get a 2/3 goyf on the field but it was pitiful.
Record 0-1
Round 2; abzan
These games weren't close. Game 1 mulliganed due to hot mess of lands and baubles. Ended up on 5 and thoughtseize my opponent seeing push, push, push, path, liliana, land, land. Nothing I do gets me anywhere, as he draws land-souls-souls haha.
Game 2 he just goyfs me into oblivion while I draw traverses and fail to get delirium.
Record 0-2 and feeling a bit dodgy about not managing to get delirium in either match.
Round 3; burn
Mulligan to 5 (not liking my luck so far). Not knowing my opponent's deck I merrily fetch-shock-thoughtseize my opponent and see a hand stacked full of burn, much to my horror. Lose on turn 3 before I've even got a threat on the board.
Game 2, Mulligan to five (no lands) I play more conservatively but draw three fetches in a row followed by traverse, and haven't been able to get delirium. Lose in short order.
Record 0-3, still no delirium and not won a single game. Feels like I'm playing a bad draft deck.
Round 4; affinity
Game 1, Mulligan to six, see hand of thoughtseize, Goyf, shadow, couple of lands and a street wraith. He leads with a fairly quick start and I can't get there (don't draw ant removal)
Game 2, actually manage to keep a borderline-decent 7, but it founders. Remove a couple of his threats, then get into a simple race. He double-galvanic blasts me for the win.
Record 0-4; still haven't had delirium all day or won a game. Have been drawing awful hands & failing to draw threats. Haven't see battle rage or tarfire all day, and only drawn one bauble in 8 games. Deck is fully crapping out on me.
Round 5; grixis control
Game 1, Mulligan to 5 (1 land then no lands), I take my life fairly low to get a shadow on the field and opponent triple-bolts me from 9 on turn four. Salt is real.
Game 2, Mulligan to 6, thoughtseize and inquisition some stuff but struggle to play through engineered explosives followed by 2x fatal push and a damnation to top it off. Opponent wins with creeping tar pit while I draw useless traverses and don't have delirium (again).
Record 0-5; still no delirium all day, and I'm beginning to see a bunch of shadow jund decks populate the bottom tables at the event.
Round 6; mirror match
Opponent is playing completely foiled out version, taking it very seriously, has a printed sideboarding sheet & is a competent player. We are both on the absolute bottom table. I glance over and on the second-from-bottom table is another death's shadow mirror match. Further along the bottom row are scattered death's shadow decks. The deck has crapped out for everyone it seems. No death's shadow at the top tables as far as we could make out.
Game 1 I Mulligan to five (combination of no lands, one-lands with no draw or threat). Keep the best hand I could hope to keep in the scenario and lose very quickly.
Game 2, keep a 7 with three decent enough spells but four lands, which feels awkward but better than I've been doing so far today. Thankfully draw into liliana and lingering souls, but TS takes my liliana and opponent maelstrom pulses my souls tokens to crunch in for the win on turn 5 or so.
Record 0-6; managed to get delirium at one point in the sixth round but it was too late.
Deck felt terrible, like five-minute home-brew terrible. Opening hands were gross clumps of do-nothing without threats or discard, or with zero lands. The deck mulligans terribly and despite running what is effectively a 'stock' list at this point, I didn't get to cast traverse with delirium at all. Battle-rage was a joke, opponents were loaded up with fatal pushes all day, and every matchup felt like I'd been forced onto the back foot and was struggling to either find a threat or put on some pressure.
I lost every topdeck war due to opponents in similar situations having manlands (huge stalemate breaker) and when I needed some kind of gas I just drew lands or baubles, which were too slow.
During round 5 I went and looked around the top tables. There was one death's shadow deck hovering around table 14, doing fairly well, and to watch it, it looked like a completely different deck, even though we were running all the same cards. I saw his openers and they were gas! He drew threats when he needed them, he luckily ripped the Battle-rage off the top at the precise moment when he needed it; it was obscene.
My conclusion, the six death's shadow players at the bottom tables were solid players and knew the deck, played well and so forth. I'm a decent player myself and generally do well at tournaments (which is why I go to them). The one guy who seemed to be doing well with the deck was having the luck of his life, and may as well have been playing cat tribal for all the skill he needed.
The deck is diluted by wonky synergy cards and requires a lot of luck and drawing the 'right half' of your deck in order to succeed. It's so incredibly easy to pick apart, you play constantly on a knife-edge where drawing a couple of lands in a row simply means death.
I don't know about you, but I can't play that kind of magic. I've been testing the deck solidly now for weeks and weeks, and while it started OK, my winning record (rather counter-intuitively) seems to have plummeted further and further down the more I practiced with the deck, until today with the single worst tournament record of my magic career (starting in '93 so believe me when I tell you this is a bad one).
I honestly don't think the deck is as good as people are saying. In a format of grindy midrange stuff, eldrazi and variations on control (grixis, esper, jeskai are all cropping up), tron and burn, it feels like you just lose to half the metagame almost on the spot. I'm probably at about 120 matches deep at this point, spread across multiple events, and my winrate with the deck is abysmal.
I'm hanging up the towel guys. No matter how good people may say the deck is at this point, my experience of approx 300 games worth with the deck has convinced me that it's inconsistent and very often loses any sort of grindy game. Failing to get delirium for basically 6 whole rounds was the nail in the coffin.
The deck's still new. If the crowd-sourced tweaking of the deck improves its consistency or a new card (or numbers of cards) helps it improve, I'll come back and give it a try. I won't sell the deck. But for now I'm putting it aside and dropping it from my considerations to play at my nearby modern GP this summer.
Peace out guys. See you in other deck threads.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
@purklefluff Its really tough getting so unlucky draws, I can see that. I feel sorry for you that you did that badly. But this seems to be a little bit too exceptional, don't you think? I can hardly imagine that over the course of testing the deck you had the same bad experience like this before.
For myself, I can't really confirm these devastating problems as of now. I did miss delirium sometimes, as it happens sometimes, but it was definitely not that bad.
I think, for bad experience like this, you can't really fully give the deck or bad luck fault for it. It seems that you had bad luck combined with having a bad day in general. This can add up pretty fast, making you angry and thus making the wrong decisions due to being not focused. But I can't blame you, I fully understand this. Its really hard to stay focused in these situations.
If you had those problems in the past though, its also hard to just say it was a bad day and thats it. Maybe there is more to it. Do you remember any of the 7 card hands you mulliganed so aggressively?
Nevertheless, I hope you rethink the decision of giving up on the deck. The more experienced players we are here, the better it can get and I really appreciated your contributions to the threat/deck.
That's unfortunate, Purkle. We all have bad days, tilt, and then tilt more because we were on tilt.
That being said, it's hard to know what happened without seeing what these hands look like in your openers. I was straight up bombing with the Shadow deck for a while despite a lot of time playing Jund/Junk, but it's really started to click. A lot of my games are close due to the nature of the deck, but I've started to get to the point where I can outgrind heavy removal.
I noticed you mentioned having traverse with no delirium, and that took me some time to pick up on the deck. You have to be very careful about the hands you keep, something like 1 land, 2 shadows, a traverse, and no way to fill up your graveyard or damage yourself may look deceptively fantastic, but you have to think
Can I pump out my shadow quickly?
Can I fetch a Shadow/Tarmogoyf quickly?
Am I racing, or do I have discard and removal to grind against this opposing interactive deck?
The hands are deceptive, but that being said, the deck mulls fine. I actually think the Flayer/Noble Junk decks mull a lot worse.
Death's shadow won a GP, the open the week after, and more top 8's, constantly on mtgo, along with 9% of the meta---that didn't just accidentally happen off the back of hype alone. The deck IS that powerful with relatively few bad matchups.
Outside of facing Abzan, your matchups were all 50/50 or better, AD Nauseum only wins by keeping a solid hand with leyline and you keeping a hand that involves mostly discard.
The deck doesn't lose to grindy matchups, I've beaten Jund, grixis, sultai, etc. Can you give us an idea on how you were sideboarding?
You're mainly a Tron player, right? Do you mainly play combos, midrange, or just an all around player? I've learned about myself that no matter how hard I try, I cannot play creature aggro decks no matter how much I try (hence, why I sold affinity).
Went to a GPT to try to get some byes today and did alright.
Round 1 was against tron.
We both durdled some on game 1 and he had natural tron and locked the game with a Karn.
Game 2 I should have lost, but he misplayed and killed himself. He was at 1 and I was at 2 facing an Ugin looking to bolt me. He forgot he was at 1 and used Karpulsan forest for G killing himself.
Game 3 I hit a turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Shadow, Turn 3 and 4 fulminator and hit for lethal the turn after.
Round 2 I get rocked back to back by another tron deck. I almost get him game 1 with a scavenged up Varolz, but he has sundering titan to take my red sources and follows that up with a Karn.
Round 3, I played elves and stomped him.
Round 4, I played Junk Tokens and he gets too many dudes going too fast for me to keep up with as well as path to get rid of my dudes.
Round 5, I played the mirror... kind of, He was more traditional Jund, with the Death shadow package. We went to 3 games, but I clutched it and won in the end. Tie breakers put me just out of Top 8, so no byes for me. I love the white splash being back in and I'm also on the mana base with no basic forest.
Was in a 116 person SCG tournament today (7 rounds) and decided to run jund shadow with the white splash. My list is almost identical to others here, as it seems the only real differences are single cards. I was on 3 tarfire, but dropped my rampager for 1x liliana, the last hope. Very stock.
I hear you purklefluff I had a fever and wasn't feeling great but had committed to going with the family so at least played a couple rounds before bailing to try to get better for work tomorrow.
I played the same foiled out deck you were discussing in the first round our turn ones were almost identical I cast thoughtseize and snagged his LoV, He thoughtseized took and snagged my LoV. Turn 2 I cycled wraith twice traversed and got a death's shadow online on turn two that got him to around 8. I'd inquisitioned him the turn before so figured I'd go for leathal figuring he probably only had 6 outs at the time. Unfortunately he'd topped a decay and then top decked souls before I could find another threat. Game 2 I had a Wraith, Wraith, Thoughtseize, Death Shadow, Bauble, fetch fetch start. This one just came down to bad luck and getting lands flooded. Cracked bauble and saw bloodcrypt and wanted something other than a land so fetched and thoughtseized taking TS but he also had inquisition which took my death's shadow. My bauble draw ended up being a land, and then my normal draw was a land. I cycled the first wraith and got a land then cycled the second and got a goyf to cast on turn two. He also played a turn two goyf but my hand was pretty much lands at that point.
The second game though i think kinda gave me the feeling you had. We were talking while playing, nice enough guy, and he was on U/W control where his entire main deck slant was to have good matches for DS. He could side out the main decked DS hate for something else if needed. He'd won the roll and cast a serum visions on turn one. I went ahead and fetched and thoughtseized and saw blessed alliance, spreading seas, spreading seas, path, Condemn, Hallowed Fountain. I took a spreading seas. My overgrown tomb became an island so I fetched a stomping grounds to cast a turn two Goyf I figured if it got pathed I could go get a swamp and cast the other goyf in hand next turn. Turn three another spreading seas on my stomping ground along with a Ancestral Vision etc. I got a shot in with the goyf before it got pathed but then I needed green to traverse for black etc. In general what had been a nice hand was trumped with better answers. The next game was pretty much the same series I managed to have a 7/8 goyf and summoning sick 10/10 DS in play to have the Goyf get condemmed and have blessed alliance cast to give me enough life to kill the DS. In general there's enough discard to battle through the initial creature hate but the mana denial mixed with the ancestral visions ends up being rough since he'd get a new hand of removal to replace the cards you've stripped away while recovering from the mana denial etc...
In general it felt like being a turn behind most the fight it was a match up that left me wondering if I'd had more threats and or faster threats if I'd have been in better shape getting some initial damage in while he was working on the manabase. As it was my temp was around 100 at the time so I felt like I should call it a day there.
Follow the link for nice cheap clothing.
Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
Thanks for the reply, You raise an interesting point about thought scour's inclusion and now I'm interested to jam some games of a version going for the full playsets of bauble and wraith to see how it effects the deck.
Also I'll say that the maindeck terminate is very much my own meta call as my LGS is Bant Eldrazi City at the moment, and my one ofs in the deck greatly benefit from thought scour snapcaster as they become more reliable to find and use. If I take out the thoughtscours I would have to make some concessions and go up to 2 K command, 2 battle rage, etc, as it will then become more difficult to find them.
Something I must say is that the other best card you get from blue is Stubborn Denial!! Seriously do not leave them out of any list running blue. Having some instant speed responses to powerful cards top decked late in the game when your discard spells are largely useless is invaluable.
But yeah overall I may try to juggle some of the numbers and report back to see if the list is feeling more reliable with the full playsets of baubles/wraiths over thought scour. Perhaps I'll try a lili mainboard simply to test it's viability with the manabase.
~Modern~
BGURWhiteless Death's ShadowRUGB
GWRUSaheeli BlinkURWG
RGBUGood Ole' DredgeUBGR
~Commander~
URWNarset, Enlightened Time-TravelerWRU
UBRWBreya, Etherium ArchitectWRBU
A Prolific Loser To Blood Moon
Follow the link for nice cheap clothing.
Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
M3G2 was priceless.
Match 1 was against Burn, which I beat 2-0. Pretty straight forward, the key is to not dmg yourself and establish control over the board. As for sideboarding:
-4 Street Wraith
-2 TS
+2 CB
+1 Push
+3 Fulminator
Match 2 against Grixis Shadow (lost 1-2): These games were pretty stupid. I fetched aggressively because I was heavily flooded which is just plain up stupid. I then cycled 4 (!) street wraiths to draw extra lands... And my opponent just bolt, snap, bolted my to death.
For sideboarding:
-2 TBR
-2 Tarfire
-3 IOK
+3 Lingering Souls
+1 Ranger
+1 Spellbomb
+1 Push
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
I think cutting a land in attrition matchups is a really good idea. Never gave it too much credit but I will investigate it further in the future.
Match 3 against Slivers --> 2-0. Not much to say, this deck was just not really competitive.
Match 4 against GW Tron. This time the Tron matchup felt really hard just like with regular Jund. I actually thought we were now close to 50/50 in that matchup, but I actually think its more 40/60 or even less favoured for us. If you just don't have the nut draw of discard into threat into TBR, then its basically over. And discard is soo mediocre, as you can't really disrupt them due to them playing path, which you have to take in order to protect your threats, which subsequently lets them easy assemble tron on the fly. Its really weird.
For sideboarding:
-3 Push
-2 Tarfire
-1 LtLH
+3 Fulminator
+2 Surgical
+1 Maelstrom Pulse
For reference, here is my list:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Godless Shrine
1 Swamp
Creatures [12]
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Street Wraith
4 Death's Shadow
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Tarfire
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Temur Battle Rage
3 Fulminator Mage
3 Lingering Souls
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Collective Brutality
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Fatal Push
I want to attend a modern open event tomorrow at my LGS, do you think I should change the Spellbomb into a grudge in an open meta?
People are still working on other death shadow primers. I'm not sure exactly when they will be up. Its a very new deck.
The Ban thread is the correct place to talk about bans and unbans, please keep it there.
Here is what I played with:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Polluted Delta
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Godless Shrine
1 Swamp
1 Forest
Creatures [12]
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Street Wraith
4 Death's Shadow
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Temur Battle Rage
2 Tarfire
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Fulminator Mage
3 Lingering Souls
2 Collective Brutality
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Fatal Push
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Ethersworn Canonist
Match 1: Against Sultai Delirium (won 2-0). This deck played similar like any midrange deck at the moment, but played without death's Shadow and more the delirium aspect with Traverse and a toolbox of creatures. It was less focused and my threats were just more resilient than those of my opponent. At some point, my opponent was unable to remove my threats and lost heavily.
Sideboarding: -3 IOK, -2 TBR, -2 Tarfire, +3 Lingering Souls, +1 Ranger, +1 Fatal Push, +1 Maesltrom Pulse, +1 Nihil Spellbomb
Match 2: Against Mono U Tron (lost 1-2): This deck is actually incredibly hard to beat in my opinion. Overall, its less resilient in assembling Tron, but, they have ***** amount of card filtering and counters to protect themselves in order to find tron. Its really hard getting our Land destruction online in the form of Fulminator Mage when they have Remand and Condescend. As we have a fairly tigh mana, this all was quite devastating. And when they have Tron, even a single Wurmcoil Engine just wrecks us hard.
Sideboarding: -1 LtLH, -3 Fatal Push, -2 Tarfire, +3 Fulminator Mage, +2 Surgical Extraction, +1 Maelstrom Pulse.
I think it was a mistake leaving Collective Brutality in the SB and leaving Abrupt Decay in the mainboard. Decay hits way less than in regular Tron and CB helps with snapping those spells they got. Although I would never use CB with additional modes on it, because they have Remand.
Match 3: Against Burn (won 2-1): This matchup ultimately comes down to who topdecks better in my opinion. From the death's shadow player's perspective its fairly easy: Dmg yourself as little as possible. Then, if the Burn player burns you down enough, our threats become overwhelming and win the game. So it pretty much relies on the Burn player to play it correctly. They need to find a good balance in order to get us to a low enough life total that they can kill us within one turn (like EOT: Bolt, untap, Boros CHarm + Bolt for the win or whatever). This isn't that easy to do because of our discard but it pretty much comes down to this, and from our perspective, we need to establish board control asap and assemble our goyfs and start swinging. Increasing the clock is what we want. We want to give the burn player as little time as possible to find the spells they need to kill us in one shot.
Sideboarding: -4 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, +3 Fulminator Mage, +2 Collective Brutality, +1 Fatal Push.
Match 4: Against Elves (won 2-0): I really don't get why people think this matchup is one of our worst matchups. I really can't confirm that at all. I wouldn't say its easy, far from it, but its probably about 50/50 and the player which gets to play first is pretty favoured here. The key is to be able to remove the manadork on turn 1 instantly. This prevents them from getting explosive starts. Its sometimes scary as they can kill us potentially within one shot through their Ezuri overruns, but if you have enough removal you can keep them in check. So the key is to maximize all removal we have in order to be able to kill every mana acceleration they have.
Sideboarding: -2 LoTV, -2 Street Wraith, +2 CB, +1 Push, +1 Maelstrom Pulse
Match 5: Against Burn (ID in order to ensure top 8 for us both).
Top 8, first match, against Abzan Death's Shadow: (lost 1-2): Theoretically, in this matchup we are slightly unfavoured due to path and lingering souls in game 1. After sideboarding, however, I think its fairly even for both. It just plays out like any other mirror match, its an attrition based matchups, and topdecking is the key. In game 3 I lost to a topdecked street wraith, which are just brutal in the mirror. Its pretty much impossible to remove and unblockable, its just an game ender.
Sideboarding: -2 Tarfire, -2 TBR, -3 IOK, +3 Lingering Souls, +1 Ranger, +1 Fatal Push, +1 Maelstrom Pulse, +1 Nihil Spellbomb
Overall I was pretty happy for how it went. Ethersworn Canonist was ofc useless in my matchups, but I knew there were some Ad Nauseam players around at the tournament and therefor it felt ok. Ancient Grudge was a card I never missed actually. Maybe it would helped against Mono U Tron, but I am not sure.
Good report. Your list looks good
I'm running a similar 75 to yours, the only thing different is that I cut the forest (Which I haven't really missed), and I have two LTLH and one LOTV. My sideboard is similar but I run 2x ancient grudge and no Ethersworn or spellbomb.
I think for sure cutting the 3rd copy of tarfire and Ghor feels good, I've loved my 2nd copy of Abrupt Decay way, way more.
I would really recommend you trying to squeeze a terminate in your sideboard, it has been absolutely fantastic for me in paper and on mtgo. I'm getting comfortable enough with this deck that I'm beating death's shadow decks designed to beat it. I played two heavy removal Shadow decks, one being Grixis, and I outplayed them. Lingering Souls and Ranger are devastating, I can't believe I suggested running regular Jund--that version only worked because the meta wasn't prepared.
I honestly don't know if this Shadow deck has any weaknesses, which I think is cause for concern
1: Thoughts on Night's Whisper? Painful Truths is nice but sometimes 3 mana is too expensive(on Grixis Shadow so no Traverse)
2. Best way to deal with Elves and Merfolk (decks that go wide). EE isn't good enough a lot of the time and Damnation is 4cmc and sometimes too slow.
Well I live in central Europe, thats probably why^^
I had cut the Forest previously before, but I actually decided to go back for it. Especially against Burn and Path to Exile decks I really missed the second basic land. Overal the manafixing is surely better, but the life loss mattered to me actually more than I would have expected. Might give the second Overgrown Tomb another try, but I want to be on the 2 basic plan as long as I don't see any major issue concerning mana fixing.
Yeah, I also feel that way about Tarfire #3 and Ghor. Both cards getting replaced feel so much more powerful without loosing too much consistancy reaching delirium.
Terminate is a card I probably would have loved in the tournament. I agree with you on it being very good in those grindy midrangy matchups. Its hard to squeeze it in though, I could cut the Ethersworn for it maybe.
Well, from my experiece, regular Tron is still a very unfavoured matchup for us. If you just don't have the godhand of a fast clock backed up by discard they will simply wreck us like ever before (playing regular Jund). I think it has become better, but not that much. And well tuned Abzan lists from nowadays are probably also very hard for us to beat. And of course also dredge, which saw an uptick in popularity again.
A well tuned Abzan list is going to happen, and dredge is coming back, too. It's kind of a good thing, the deck needs these bad matchups or it's going to eat a ban of some sort.
I'm really surprised you aren't running the 2x Overgrown, I love it
I'm running 4x Verdant Catacombs, 4x Marsh Flats, 4x Bloodstained Mires. It's working well.
1) I still like Painful Truths better I think. Its more costly, but you will playing the card in attrition matchups basically, where you will be able to pay for it and getting the stronger effect.
2) As for Elves as I stated in my report, the key is really to kill their manadork on turn 1, have a TS for their CoCo and just maximize removal. If you have Kozilek's Return in your SB then for the better. As for Merfolk, I think ultimately the matchup is kinda hard. The problem is their card draw and mana denial, which you have to target with the discard. Use your fetchlands to play around Spreaind Seas/Seas Claim. And also don't bring in artifact hate against them.
Was in a 116 person SCG tournament today (7 rounds) and decided to run jund shadow with the white splash. My list is almost identical to others here, as it seems the only real differences are single cards. I was on 3 tarfire, but dropped my rampager for 1x liliana, the last hope. Very stock.
Round 1; ad nauseam.
Mulliganed to 5 game 1 due to no-land hands. Think I made a wrong call with a turn 1 thoughtseize, but it didn't really matter as I never drew a threat in about 10 turns of filtering. Drew three traverses but didn't get delirium (no instant, no artifact, no tribal). Eventually opponent drew ad naus and went off. Game 2 mulliganed due to no land hand. died on turn 4 nothing I could do. Managed to get a 2/3 goyf on the field but it was pitiful.
Record 0-1
Round 2; abzan
These games weren't close. Game 1 mulliganed due to hot mess of lands and baubles. Ended up on 5 and thoughtseize my opponent seeing push, push, push, path, liliana, land, land. Nothing I do gets me anywhere, as he draws land-souls-souls haha.
Game 2 he just goyfs me into oblivion while I draw traverses and fail to get delirium.
Record 0-2 and feeling a bit dodgy about not managing to get delirium in either match.
Round 3; burn
Mulligan to 5 (not liking my luck so far). Not knowing my opponent's deck I merrily fetch-shock-thoughtseize my opponent and see a hand stacked full of burn, much to my horror. Lose on turn 3 before I've even got a threat on the board.
Game 2, Mulligan to five (no lands) I play more conservatively but draw three fetches in a row followed by traverse, and haven't been able to get delirium. Lose in short order.
Record 0-3, still no delirium and not won a single game. Feels like I'm playing a bad draft deck.
Round 4; affinity
Game 1, Mulligan to six, see hand of thoughtseize, Goyf, shadow, couple of lands and a street wraith. He leads with a fairly quick start and I can't get there (don't draw ant removal)
Game 2, actually manage to keep a borderline-decent 7, but it founders. Remove a couple of his threats, then get into a simple race. He double-galvanic blasts me for the win.
Record 0-4; still haven't had delirium all day or won a game. Have been drawing awful hands & failing to draw threats. Haven't see battle rage or tarfire all day, and only drawn one bauble in 8 games. Deck is fully crapping out on me.
Round 5; grixis control
Game 1, Mulligan to 5 (1 land then no lands), I take my life fairly low to get a shadow on the field and opponent triple-bolts me from 9 on turn four. Salt is real.
Game 2, Mulligan to 6, thoughtseize and inquisition some stuff but struggle to play through engineered explosives followed by 2x fatal push and a damnation to top it off. Opponent wins with creeping tar pit while I draw useless traverses and don't have delirium (again).
Record 0-5; still no delirium all day, and I'm beginning to see a bunch of shadow jund decks populate the bottom tables at the event.
Round 6; mirror match
Opponent is playing completely foiled out version, taking it very seriously, has a printed sideboarding sheet & is a competent player. We are both on the absolute bottom table. I glance over and on the second-from-bottom table is another death's shadow mirror match. Further along the bottom row are scattered death's shadow decks. The deck has crapped out for everyone it seems. No death's shadow at the top tables as far as we could make out.
Game 1 I Mulligan to five (combination of no lands, one-lands with no draw or threat). Keep the best hand I could hope to keep in the scenario and lose very quickly.
Game 2, keep a 7 with three decent enough spells but four lands, which feels awkward but better than I've been doing so far today. Thankfully draw into liliana and lingering souls, but TS takes my liliana and opponent maelstrom pulses my souls tokens to crunch in for the win on turn 5 or so.
Record 0-6; managed to get delirium at one point in the sixth round but it was too late.
Deck felt terrible, like five-minute home-brew terrible. Opening hands were gross clumps of do-nothing without threats or discard, or with zero lands. The deck mulligans terribly and despite running what is effectively a 'stock' list at this point, I didn't get to cast traverse with delirium at all. Battle-rage was a joke, opponents were loaded up with fatal pushes all day, and every matchup felt like I'd been forced onto the back foot and was struggling to either find a threat or put on some pressure.
I lost every topdeck war due to opponents in similar situations having manlands (huge stalemate breaker) and when I needed some kind of gas I just drew lands or baubles, which were too slow.
During round 5 I went and looked around the top tables. There was one death's shadow deck hovering around table 14, doing fairly well, and to watch it, it looked like a completely different deck, even though we were running all the same cards. I saw his openers and they were gas! He drew threats when he needed them, he luckily ripped the Battle-rage off the top at the precise moment when he needed it; it was obscene.
My conclusion, the six death's shadow players at the bottom tables were solid players and knew the deck, played well and so forth. I'm a decent player myself and generally do well at tournaments (which is why I go to them). The one guy who seemed to be doing well with the deck was having the luck of his life, and may as well have been playing cat tribal for all the skill he needed.
The deck is diluted by wonky synergy cards and requires a lot of luck and drawing the 'right half' of your deck in order to succeed. It's so incredibly easy to pick apart, you play constantly on a knife-edge where drawing a couple of lands in a row simply means death.
I don't know about you, but I can't play that kind of magic. I've been testing the deck solidly now for weeks and weeks, and while it started OK, my winning record (rather counter-intuitively) seems to have plummeted further and further down the more I practiced with the deck, until today with the single worst tournament record of my magic career (starting in '93 so believe me when I tell you this is a bad one).
I honestly don't think the deck is as good as people are saying. In a format of grindy midrange stuff, eldrazi and variations on control (grixis, esper, jeskai are all cropping up), tron and burn, it feels like you just lose to half the metagame almost on the spot. I'm probably at about 120 matches deep at this point, spread across multiple events, and my winrate with the deck is abysmal.
I'm hanging up the towel guys. No matter how good people may say the deck is at this point, my experience of approx 300 games worth with the deck has convinced me that it's inconsistent and very often loses any sort of grindy game. Failing to get delirium for basically 6 whole rounds was the nail in the coffin.
The deck's still new. If the crowd-sourced tweaking of the deck improves its consistency or a new card (or numbers of cards) helps it improve, I'll come back and give it a try. I won't sell the deck. But for now I'm putting it aside and dropping it from my considerations to play at my nearby modern GP this summer.
Peace out guys. See you in other deck threads.
For myself, I can't really confirm these devastating problems as of now. I did miss delirium sometimes, as it happens sometimes, but it was definitely not that bad.
I think, for bad experience like this, you can't really fully give the deck or bad luck fault for it. It seems that you had bad luck combined with having a bad day in general. This can add up pretty fast, making you angry and thus making the wrong decisions due to being not focused. But I can't blame you, I fully understand this. Its really hard to stay focused in these situations.
If you had those problems in the past though, its also hard to just say it was a bad day and thats it. Maybe there is more to it. Do you remember any of the 7 card hands you mulliganed so aggressively?
Nevertheless, I hope you rethink the decision of giving up on the deck. The more experienced players we are here, the better it can get and I really appreciated your contributions to the threat/deck.
That being said, it's hard to know what happened without seeing what these hands look like in your openers. I was straight up bombing with the Shadow deck for a while despite a lot of time playing Jund/Junk, but it's really started to click. A lot of my games are close due to the nature of the deck, but I've started to get to the point where I can outgrind heavy removal.
I noticed you mentioned having traverse with no delirium, and that took me some time to pick up on the deck. You have to be very careful about the hands you keep, something like 1 land, 2 shadows, a traverse, and no way to fill up your graveyard or damage yourself may look deceptively fantastic, but you have to think
Can I pump out my shadow quickly?
Can I fetch a Shadow/Tarmogoyf quickly?
Am I racing, or do I have discard and removal to grind against this opposing interactive deck?
The hands are deceptive, but that being said, the deck mulls fine. I actually think the Flayer/Noble Junk decks mull a lot worse.
Death's shadow won a GP, the open the week after, and more top 8's, constantly on mtgo, along with 9% of the meta---that didn't just accidentally happen off the back of hype alone. The deck IS that powerful with relatively few bad matchups.
Outside of facing Abzan, your matchups were all 50/50 or better, AD Nauseum only wins by keeping a solid hand with leyline and you keeping a hand that involves mostly discard.
The deck doesn't lose to grindy matchups, I've beaten Jund, grixis, sultai, etc. Can you give us an idea on how you were sideboarding?
You're mainly a Tron player, right? Do you mainly play combos, midrange, or just an all around player? I've learned about myself that no matter how hard I try, I cannot play creature aggro decks no matter how much I try (hence, why I sold affinity).
Round 1 was against tron.
We both durdled some on game 1 and he had natural tron and locked the game with a Karn.
Game 2 I should have lost, but he misplayed and killed himself. He was at 1 and I was at 2 facing an Ugin looking to bolt me. He forgot he was at 1 and used Karpulsan forest for G killing himself.
Game 3 I hit a turn 1 Thoughtseize, turn 2 Shadow, Turn 3 and 4 fulminator and hit for lethal the turn after.
Round 2 I get rocked back to back by another tron deck. I almost get him game 1 with a scavenged up Varolz, but he has sundering titan to take my red sources and follows that up with a Karn.
Round 3, I played elves and stomped him.
Round 4, I played Junk Tokens and he gets too many dudes going too fast for me to keep up with as well as path to get rid of my dudes.
Round 5, I played the mirror... kind of, He was more traditional Jund, with the Death shadow package. We went to 3 games, but I clutched it and won in the end. Tie breakers put me just out of Top 8, so no byes for me. I love the white splash being back in and I'm also on the mana base with no basic forest.
Follow the link for nice cheap clothing.
Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
I hear you purklefluff I had a fever and wasn't feeling great but had committed to going with the family so at least played a couple rounds before bailing to try to get better for work tomorrow.
I played the same foiled out deck you were discussing in the first round our turn ones were almost identical I cast thoughtseize and snagged his LoV, He thoughtseized took and snagged my LoV. Turn 2 I cycled wraith twice traversed and got a death's shadow online on turn two that got him to around 8. I'd inquisitioned him the turn before so figured I'd go for leathal figuring he probably only had 6 outs at the time. Unfortunately he'd topped a decay and then top decked souls before I could find another threat. Game 2 I had a Wraith, Wraith, Thoughtseize, Death Shadow, Bauble, fetch fetch start. This one just came down to bad luck and getting lands flooded. Cracked bauble and saw bloodcrypt and wanted something other than a land so fetched and thoughtseized taking TS but he also had inquisition which took my death's shadow. My bauble draw ended up being a land, and then my normal draw was a land. I cycled the first wraith and got a land then cycled the second and got a goyf to cast on turn two. He also played a turn two goyf but my hand was pretty much lands at that point.
The second game though i think kinda gave me the feeling you had. We were talking while playing, nice enough guy, and he was on U/W control where his entire main deck slant was to have good matches for DS. He could side out the main decked DS hate for something else if needed. He'd won the roll and cast a serum visions on turn one. I went ahead and fetched and thoughtseized and saw blessed alliance, spreading seas, spreading seas, path, Condemn, Hallowed Fountain. I took a spreading seas. My overgrown tomb became an island so I fetched a stomping grounds to cast a turn two Goyf I figured if it got pathed I could go get a swamp and cast the other goyf in hand next turn. Turn three another spreading seas on my stomping ground along with a Ancestral Vision etc. I got a shot in with the goyf before it got pathed but then I needed green to traverse for black etc. In general what had been a nice hand was trumped with better answers. The next game was pretty much the same series I managed to have a 7/8 goyf and summoning sick 10/10 DS in play to have the Goyf get condemmed and have blessed alliance cast to give me enough life to kill the DS. In general there's enough discard to battle through the initial creature hate but the mana denial mixed with the ancestral visions ends up being rough since he'd get a new hand of removal to replace the cards you've stripped away while recovering from the mana denial etc...
In general it felt like being a turn behind most the fight it was a match up that left me wondering if I'd had more threats and or faster threats if I'd have been in better shape getting some initial damage in while he was working on the manabase. As it was my temp was around 100 at the time so I felt like I should call it a day there.