The ban mania around Shadow is heating up... It's really ridiculous. The Modern weekend two weeks ago showed a really diverse format with no one deck dominating, but people still want to whip out their pitchforks for the perceived best deck. I almost hope Grixis Shadow gets shut out at Charlotte so people will calm the F down :/
So Todd Stevens on stream just said that Grixis Shadow has no bad matchups... He actually said that Bant Eldrazi isn't favored against us. The delusionality among these ban-maniacs is intense...
The ban mania around Shadow is heating up... It's really ridiculous. The Modern weekend two weeks ago showed a really diverse format with no one deck dominating, but people still want to whip out their pitchforks for the perceived best deck. I almost hope Grixis Shadow gets shut out at Charlotte so people will calm the F down :/
I noticed that, too. There is a lot of undeserved hype, especially around the Grixis version. Sure, it can win big sometimes, but it lacks consistency and is vulnerable to various common strategies, most obviously tokens and spot removal. There has been surge of recorded matches on youtube lately, and I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who struggles hard with what the decks sometimes gives us.
Several of the established archetypes in Modern ignore their opponent and concentrate on either ramping into big mana or flooding the board with free creatures. IMHO these decks would much more deserve a banning, because they refuse to play Magic for the most part. I almost quit playing Magic again after returning to it a few months ago, because Modern seemed to have turned into a pile of Eldrazi Randomness and non-interactivity in the meantime. I missed playing against decks like Infect, Splinter Twin and Jund that seemed to have disappeared (nearly) completely. I fondly remember many games swinging back and forth, often decided by how well the pilots of the decks were able to adjust their deck's game plan to countering the game plan of their opponent. I loved playing against Grixis Delver, back then when they tried to Remand my stuff and we fought over so many spells in the other players' end step.
And while Grixis Delver was even more interesting to play against, I really enjoy playing against Grixis Shadow. Unlike Jund Death Shadow, it does not have the redundancy to stick to a singular game plan. My Grixis Shadow opponent mostly has to work with what their deck gives them, which usually translates into diverse and interesting games. I didn't even find any of the Death's Shadow based decks hard to beat. I won most of my games against them, because I was playing stuff that is considered "not good anymore", like a full set of Lightning Bolts and small hasty creatures. When I finally decided to switch to Grixis Shadow, it was only because I already owned most of the cards and felt forced to switch decks, because the big mana decks in my meta just crushed my old Grixis deck. And these are not even our best matchups, so I can't really see the problem.
I'm not sure if Grixis Shadow is the best deck in the format, but it's one of the shadow decks, and it's not close. The only tier 1 decks in modern are shadow decks. There are quite a few very good tier 2 decks - at least eldrazi tron, storm, affinity, dredge, and vizier knightfall in my mind. But the reason that only shadow is tier 1 is because it's too good against too much of the format. Yes, it has weaknesses in the format, but all of its weaknesses have bigger weaknesses that keep them from rising up too much to prey on shadow, and shadow can be configured to beat almost anything if you want it to. I think they're wrong about bant eldrazi - that one I think is just structurally a bad matchup, but it's nonexistent now because stuff like storm and ad naus are running around. Really grindy abzan company, with voices and such, is probably tough, as is way over the top midrange like abzan with rhinos and souls, but both of those decks are funadmentally flawed when stuff like eldrazi tron, normal tron, and storm are running around. But vs most of the format shadow is favored, or at least 50/50. Presenting such a fast clock along with top tier generic disruption is just incredible in a format as wide open and diverse as modern. And the normal deckbuilding constraints of the format just don't exist for shadow because losing life is no longer a cost. Thoughtseize now hardly has a downside. Nor does street wraith. And the 4th color is nearly free so that the best version of jund splashes for stubborn denial. It's not even clear we have found the best, or even second best version of shadow yet. The TBR + BI aggro build looked the best until they banned probe. Then we found out jund was better all along, and it looked the best until top players picked up grixis for real events. What happens when they pick up sultai? Or esper? Or various 4 color builds? I expect we'll learn some things in vegas.
Shadow decks are something like 12% of the metagame according to mtggoldfish, and this will continue to rise. Nothing else is so good against so many of the random decks in the format while still be good against many of the more played decks, and the best players will slowly keep picking up the deck. Just like what happened with Ppd, and later twin and amulet. (Though I still think twin did nothing wrong.) It's not at an alarming percentage of metagame yet because it's still relatively new (edit:) and modern moves very slowly due to the cost of switching decks. But unless something major changes about the format, a ban will eventually happen. They may try to ban street wraith first, thinking the deck's power level will be more reasonable without this enabler. This is wrong. We'll just play more land, and maybe a Dismember or two. Or bolts, and start bolting ourselves when we need to go fast. We might even play delver in the shell. It will be marginally worse, but shadow will still most likely the best deck in the format. Death's Shadow is on a collision course with the banlist if nothing important changes. It's too good vs. random stuff and too easy to play any card you want in the basic shell. Enjoy playing with a broken deck while you can. I certainly am.
Edit 2: Not that I think a ban is happening *soon*, but I'd guess within a year or so, again, unless there is some major shakeup(s).
My thinking is that yeah shadow decks are popular, but there are 5-7 different archtypes with jund and grixis being the most popular. Death Shadow should never be banned for any reason. If they do, then the reason would be somewhere along the lines of too much tournament presence or dominating the format. When Goyf and ravager have been consistently tier 1 since the format began and there hasn't even been a thought of banning either from what I've heard. So. no, I honestly do not think DS will be banned anytime soon, if at all. I DO see either baral or electromancer being banned, or gifts. The last storm banning was seething song and the reason was that it enabled the deck to win on turn 3. Now the deck wins on t3 fairly easily, so that will be banned. and if the counters shows consistent t3 results, i could see that as well. but shadow is to midgame to be banned.
You should just hand disrupt em, kill everything as fast as u can and not damaging urself at all, let him dmg u and then just play shadow and keep stubborn denials in hand.
First game if u keep many fetches or thoughtseize and street wraiths in hand u might lose, easy as that. Otherwise play careful and thats all. 1ºgame is the most difficult one.
Second game and thir one, u should take at least half thouthgseizes out and all the street wraiths and bring in collective brutalities, TBR and stubborn denials. TBR and brutality are just insane in this matchup u should take into account he will side in apth to exile and deflecting palm so u should use wisely ur stubborn denials. Thats it.
U should check this post. He details all matchups with GShadow. https://www.showandtellmtg.com/articulos/modern/481-grixis-shadow-matchup-guide-experiencia-gp-copenhague
Sadly I dont speak spanish, and google translate made it slightly uncomprehendible. Lot of mentions of bacon and food lol
Spooly, you have some good points. The problem might be that DS based decks cannot be easily hated out. But do they need to be hated out? Various established archetypes of the past can just beat the DS deck with their regular game plan. If the popularity of these decks increases as a result, IMHO it will be for the better of the format. But yes, it might not happen due to the presence of some other decks whose degenerate concepts I find much more troubling than what the DS decks attempt to do.
One such deck is Eldrazi Tron. Their primer in this forum has a matchup section, according to which they are favored or slightly favored against 5 of 7 aggro decks, 4 of 4 midrange decks, 6 of 8 combo decks, 4 of 4 control decks. In fact, the only deck they feel really unfavored against is Affinity. If this matchup guide is not complete nonsense (although it looks outdated), they are in a better spot against the general field than Grixis DS. I haven't played the other DS variants, so I don't know how they match up against the field.
In fact, the Eldrazi-based decks made me give up my old deck, because I could not pack enough creature removal against them without giving up game 1 against various other popular choices in the format. I didn't have this problem with any of the DS based decks, because my full set of Lightning Bolts and small creatures were relevant against them. Playing against Grixis DS felt as if I were playing against the retarded younger brother of Grixis Delver. There was nothing alien about it and their habit of shocking themselves didn't feel like an unfair trade-off, because it dramatically increased my chances of winning with burst damage. In fact, it felt a lot like Dark Confidant in Jund or Abzan, but without Scavenging Ooze, Siege Rhino and other ways to gain back the investment in life.
So my problem were not the DS based decks. My deck was hated out of the format by the popularity of colorless non-artifact creatures cheated into play one or several turns too early with Sol Ring lands and backed up by various cards that exile things instead of putting them in a graveyard. If DS is hit by the banhammer, these decks will probably be all over MTGO again. And this game would suck.
EDIT: This btw looks like a diverse and interesting metagame to me. If the DS decks are the only tier 1 decks currently, I can't see it evidenced here. Switching decks is really easy on MTGO, so the argument that the format takes time to adapt does not really work for online Magic. Currently, the prices of several key pieces of the DS decks seem to go down again after recent peaks.
I'm decided to cut the bolts altogether and I see 4 options:
1) Add more Terminates/Pushes
2) Add Mana Leaks/Denials
3) Add more IoK
4) Add Rise//Fall
1) This might be the more reasonable option but I think what sets our deck apart is the versatility in cards/roles/options/playstyles. Given that we play Snapcaster and we can dig half our deck easily we're not short on removal so I don't think we gain that much from overloading with removal.
Having 6+ dead cards against creatureless and creaturelight deck is a good way of giving up game 1 against those decks.
2) I've tried the Leaks and were medium good. They worked on some matchups, felt awkward on others. It's great that we don't play Path so we can more safely play Leak. More Denials on the MB sounds risky because there are some games where it takes some time to get the threat going
Denials are better in game 2 when our opponent has boarded in more hate against us. When I tested Mana Leak, it often felt too expensive for what it does for this deck. This deck can often effectively use all of its mana during the first few turns. Leaving up two mana for Mana Leak tends to interfere with that. It might still be worth it in an enviroment full of big mana decks. But in this case, Deprive seems to be the better overall choice because it cannot be played around.
3) IoK seems to be so mediocre in our deck. It's one of the first cards I think about cutting in many matchups. I don't really know if we should pack the 8 hand-disruption spells given that this one has a lot of restrictions and there are so matchups where it's just bad.
IOK is really good in this deck. It is key in not pitifully losing to LotV and winning discard battles. But 8 discard spells in addition to the Stubborn Denials is too much of a good thing, especially on the draw and in grindy games. Leyline of Sanctity is also a looming danger that seems to see more play recently.
4) I think I adopted this one as a pet card. I want to make it good. I think I'm clouding my judgement because I see it being useful in pretty much every matchup. I know it can be really bad at times but only the scenarios where it is good come to mind. I see myself returning a DS to my hand and bouncing a blocker... I see myself recurring a snapcaster and putting the only dredger my opponnent has on his hand. I see myself Hymn to Tourach people everyday all day.
It's a fun little card to have, but it often does not enough to advance our game plan. It's really bad against Dredge (much worse than Lightning Bolt which can kill Stinkweed Imp) and often sucks against Control (too many lands), two of our worst matchups.
Things that might work better IMHO:
1) Keeping one Lightning Bolt and switching out the other for a Fatal Push. This improves our matchup against GBx decks and is slightly stronger in the mirror. It weakens the deck slightly against decks that play many CMC3 creatures. Blade Splicer and Flickerwisp can become nightmares as a result.
2) Replacing the Lightning Bolts with two copies of TBR in a meta that is full of Lingering Souls and swarm-based strategies.
3) Replacing the Lightning Bolts with one TBR and one Fatal Push. This is kind of the solution in between 1) and 2).
I'm testing out dropping the Bolts for the 4th Push and a Rise//Fall right now. I might test out a couple Deprive as well. I think Deprive is better in this deck than Mana Leak.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Match 1 - Jund 2-1, 1-0
On the play, Thoughtseize and snatch his own copy. From there, kept playing the fetch-shock hand disruption till I got Tasigur the Golden Fang on three who stuck the whole game thanks to Stubbon Denial, from there stuck Death's Shadow and grinded it out.
Going into the second game, I was anticipating Lightning Bolt to be a problem since my meta has a lot of Burn players. Sure enough, he top decks a Bolt while I'm at 3 to win. Last game, we only draws two lands all game both but I can work with that and win via Death's Shadow thumps.
Match 2 - Boros Burn 0-2, 1-1
This one I was worried about. Playing a deck that zaps your life total against burn is very counterintuitive from our initial game plan which is already counterintuitive itself. He's on the play game one, Goblin Guide thumps me as I cantrip through my deck to find a blocker with three Street Wraths in hand. I'm being mindful of my life total because now the game plans changed. At the end, I get a can't stabilize without attacking my life total and lose. Game two is very similar. I Thoughtseize and strip his Eidolon of the Great Revel and stick a Spellskite turn two which helps, but alas, over the course of the game, the dome hits kill me off. This match up is one I can't seem to figure out since it's basically burning the candle at both ends.
Match 3 - Boros Burn/Token 2-1, 2-1
This was some home brew of Boros burn and Mentor/Young Peezy token. On the play, I'm looking to strip any removal I can find - I make him toss his Path to Exile since the rest is a combination of Grim Lavamancer and Monastery Mentor which I already have two Fatal Push in hand to deal with. As they get played, I main phase my removal to keep Peezy from making tokens. I'm able to withstand the Bolts and eek out game one with Tasigur the Golden Fang as I never drew into my Death's Shadow. As with the last match, I board out all Street Wraths and bring in an extra Stubborn Denial , two Spellskites and a Izzet Staticaster for those tokens. He rips a Relic of Progenitus which slows me down greatly with a Gurmag Angler and Tasigur, the Golden Fang in hand. I take bolts and rifts to the face and lose. Game three was more interesting. We progress through a combination of my hand hate and his burn. I have two Death's Shadow in hand and am waiting till I'm at 9 life to keep both of them out of bolt range. I drop both and bang in for the win.
@finalnub, @Wraithpk, @oPs.bertu
I appreciate the feedback. Good to see various answers. And I really like the "don't get 2 for 1'd" mentality. Ill keep that in mind at all time
Spooly, you have some good points. The problem might be that DS based decks cannot be easily hated out. But do they need to be hated out? Various established archetypes of the past can just beat the DS deck with their regular game plan. If the popularity of these decks increases as a result, IMHO it will be for the better of the format. But yes, it might not happen due to the presence of some other decks whose degenerate concepts I find much more troubling than what the DS decks attempt to do.
One such deck is Eldrazi Tron. Their primer in this forum has a matchup section, according to which they are favored or slightly favored against 5 of 7 aggro decks, 4 of 4 midrange decks, 6 of 8 combo decks, 4 of 4 control decks. In fact, the only deck they feel really unfavored against is Affinity. If this matchup guide is not complete nonsense (although it looks outdated), they are in a better spot against the general field than Grixis DS. I haven't played the other DS variants, so I don't know how they match up against the field.
In fact, the Eldrazi-based decks made me give up my old deck, because I could not pack enough creature removal against them without giving up game 1 against various other popular choices in the format. I didn't have this problem with any of the DS based decks, because my full set of Lightning Bolts and small creatures were relevant against them. Playing against Grixis DS felt as if I were playing against the retarded younger brother of Grixis Delver. There was nothing alien about it and their habit of shocking themselves didn't feel like an unfair trade-off, because it dramatically increased my chances of winning with burst damage. In fact, it felt a lot like Dark Confidant in Jund or Abzan, but without Scavenging Ooze, Siege Rhino and other ways to gain back the investment in life.
So my problem were not the DS based decks. My deck was hated out of the format by the popularity of colorless non-artifact creatures cheated into play one or several turns too early with Sol Ring lands and backed up by various cards that exile things instead of putting them in a graveyard. If DS is hit by the banhammer, these decks will probably be all over MTGO again. And this game would suck.
EDIT: This btw looks like a diverse and interesting metagame to me. If the DS decks are the only tier 1 decks currently, I can't see it evidenced here. Switching decks is really easy on MTGO, so the argument that the format takes time to adapt does not really work for online Magic. Currently, the prices of several key pieces of the DS decks seem to go down again after recent peaks.
I don't want to dwell on this convo since the thread has moved on, so only two quick points:
1) I don't think the metagame is bad *right now*, I'm predicting the future.
2) When I say Shadow builds are the only tier one decks, I'm talking about how good the deck is, not how much it is played.
I'm testing out dropping the Bolts for the 4th Push and a Rise//Fall right now. I might test out a couple Deprive as well. I think Deprive is better in this deck than Mana Leak.
Make sure you play against burn, affinity, elves, etc when you're testing Deprive. Stuff like that is a big reason why I'm on Mana Leak. Also, Deprive doesn't curve into Snap + Deprive as easily as Leak does because of the mana setback.
I see a few pros advocate By Force lately, but I don't like it. It's very mana intensive and has little synergy with Snapcaster. Against Affinity, I'd rather have Kcommand and that has other applications. Against Eldrazi Tron it's helpful, but arguably Kcommand does the job. Tezzerator/Lantern aren't commmon enough to be worth it. Rakdos Charm I think is far more superior in this metagame as a sideboard card and basically I think we don't need dedicated artifact hate in this meta (and an inefficient one at that).
@finalnub, I agree. We don't have problems with artifacts. 2 maindeck Kommands, Ceremonious Rejection, and if you really want more you can have a third Kommand in your sb or a Rakdos Charm. Enchantments are the problematic permanents for us.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
how do you guys deal with esper or jund shadow? they grind much better than us! traverse, lingering, ranger etc. What's your approach? it's difficult to start the chain of snap/kolaghan because they also bring in graveyard hate.
I think Lingering Souls is overrated against us. It's good, but not the mirror breaker people seem to think it is. It tyically doesn't matter much as long as our life total isn't too low and we have a fatty to put them in the abyss. Liliana, the Last Hope and Izzet Staticaster post board help a lot. And countering/discarding 1/2 of it helps too. Yes, they get some card advantage, but we have plenty of ways to make up for that between Snapcaster, K Command, Liliana, and Tasigur.
Just play for a long game and don't get too aggressive with your life total unless you know you can win in 1-2 turns (based on their hand and yours). Side out 3-4 of your Street Wraiths, and shave on Stubs (GerryT advocates siding them all out). Snapcaster + K Command is grindier than anything either deck is doing as long as you don't lose to Lingering Souls.
I'm testing out dropping the Bolts for the 4th Push and a Rise//Fall right now. I might test out a couple Deprive as well. I think Deprive is better in this deck than Mana Leak.
There's no way for me to like Deprive. It feels soooooooo wrong. It costs both Mana and Tempo. We can convert the tempo loss into bigger DS but it still costs UU. It's a really strange card. It plays nowhere like Daze, which I could think as a possibility, if only...
How are you enjoying the Rise//Fall?!
Deprive isn't always tempo loss for us, though. We're a land light deck, so we're not always hitting our drops on curve anyway. And later in the game, you can pick up dead fetchlands if you've already got all your mana producing lands. Plus, it turns on Revolt for your Pushes. On paper it seems like it could be good, but I haven't even gotten to cast one yet, so I'm not sure. Rise//Fall has seemed pretty sweet so far. It's really good in grindy matchups. Bouncing your own Snapcaster and returning a Shadow from your graveyard is just backbreaking value. The Hymn mode can be good if your opponent's hand isn't filled with lands, especially when backed up with your targeted discard. I dunno, I'll keep testing them both.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Thank you..i would shave some seize as well because the match will be long and probably you dont want to be so aggressive...
I would keep all of the discard in. Maybe not the IOKs, but even then probably. This isn't the Jund/Abzan pseudo-mirror. If you stick a threat for just 1-2 turns where they don't have an answer, you win. And discard is your best way to fight their Snapcasters and K Commands and such. If you don't have discard and they do, they can rip your hand apart early, then play an early threat and ride it to victory before you topdeck out of it.
If you're already cutting Street Wraiths and fetching shocks less aggressively, you can manage your life total pretty easily while still using Thoughtseize.
Has anyone tried Painful Truths in the SB? How's it been. I've switched from a white splash to straight up grixis, but I need an extra grindy card in the sideboard to replace what used to be the Ranger of Eos. Seems great in the early to mid game, but can be a dead draw once we're at 3 life.
People tried it, but it's just not as good as Liliana. She can be card advantage by re-buying a threat from our graveyard, but she also helps shore up one of our bad matchups, which are decks that are able to spit out a lot of x/1 chump blockers. She's even a legit threat on her own, I've won many games by getting to her emblem.
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Modern UBR Grixis Shadow UBR UR Izzet Phoenix UR UW UW Control UW GB GB Rock GB
Commander BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
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I'm not sure if Grixis Shadow is the best deck in the format, but it's one of the shadow decks, and it's not close. The only tier 1 decks in modern are shadow decks. There are quite a few very good tier 2 decks - at least eldrazi tron, storm, affinity, dredge, and vizier knightfall in my mind. But the reason that only shadow is tier 1 is because it's too good against too much of the format. Yes, it has weaknesses in the format, but all of its weaknesses have bigger weaknesses that keep them from rising up too much to prey on shadow, and shadow can be configured to beat almost anything if you want it to. I think they're wrong about bant eldrazi - that one I think is just structurally a bad matchup, but it's nonexistent now because stuff like storm and ad naus are running around. Really grindy abzan company, with voices and such, is probably tough, as is way over the top midrange like abzan with rhinos and souls, but both of those decks are funadmentally flawed when stuff like eldrazi tron, normal tron, and storm are running around. But vs most of the format shadow is favored, or at least 50/50. Presenting such a fast clock along with top tier generic disruption is just incredible in a format as wide open and diverse as modern. And the normal deckbuilding constraints of the format just don't exist for shadow because losing life is no longer a cost. Thoughtseize now hardly has a downside. Nor does street wraith. And the 4th color is nearly free so that the best version of jund splashes for stubborn denial. It's not even clear we have found the best, or even second best version of shadow yet. The TBR + BI aggro build looked the best until they banned probe. Then we found out jund was better all along, and it looked the best until top players picked up grixis for real events. What happens when they pick up sultai? Or esper? Or various 4 color builds? I expect we'll learn some things in vegas.
Shadow decks are something like 12% of the metagame according to mtggoldfish, and this will continue to rise. Nothing else is so good against so many of the random decks in the format while still be good against many of the more played decks, and the best players will slowly keep picking up the deck. Just like what happened with Ppd, and later twin and amulet. (Though I still think twin did nothing wrong.) It's not at an alarming percentage of metagame yet because it's still relatively new (edit:) and modern moves very slowly due to the cost of switching decks. But unless something major changes about the format, a ban will eventually happen. They may try to ban street wraith first, thinking the deck's power level will be more reasonable without this enabler. This is wrong. We'll just play more land, and maybe a Dismember or two. Or bolts, and start bolting ourselves when we need to go fast. We might even play delver in the shell. It will be marginally worse, but shadow will still most likely the best deck in the format. Death's Shadow is on a collision course with the banlist if nothing important changes. It's too good vs. random stuff and too easy to play any card you want in the basic shell. Enjoy playing with a broken deck while you can. I certainly am.
Edit 2: Not that I think a ban is happening *soon*, but I'd guess within a year or so, again, unless there is some major shakeup(s).
Sadly I dont speak spanish, and google translate made it slightly uncomprehendible. Lot of mentions of bacon and food lol
One such deck is Eldrazi Tron. Their primer in this forum has a matchup section, according to which they are favored or slightly favored against 5 of 7 aggro decks, 4 of 4 midrange decks, 6 of 8 combo decks, 4 of 4 control decks. In fact, the only deck they feel really unfavored against is Affinity. If this matchup guide is not complete nonsense (although it looks outdated), they are in a better spot against the general field than Grixis DS. I haven't played the other DS variants, so I don't know how they match up against the field.
In fact, the Eldrazi-based decks made me give up my old deck, because I could not pack enough creature removal against them without giving up game 1 against various other popular choices in the format. I didn't have this problem with any of the DS based decks, because my full set of Lightning Bolts and small creatures were relevant against them. Playing against Grixis DS felt as if I were playing against the retarded younger brother of Grixis Delver. There was nothing alien about it and their habit of shocking themselves didn't feel like an unfair trade-off, because it dramatically increased my chances of winning with burst damage. In fact, it felt a lot like Dark Confidant in Jund or Abzan, but without Scavenging Ooze, Siege Rhino and other ways to gain back the investment in life.
So my problem were not the DS based decks. My deck was hated out of the format by the popularity of colorless non-artifact creatures cheated into play one or several turns too early with Sol Ring lands and backed up by various cards that exile things instead of putting them in a graveyard. If DS is hit by the banhammer, these decks will probably be all over MTGO again. And this game would suck.
EDIT: This btw looks like a diverse and interesting metagame to me. If the DS decks are the only tier 1 decks currently, I can't see it evidenced here. Switching decks is really easy on MTGO, so the argument that the format takes time to adapt does not really work for online Magic. Currently, the prices of several key pieces of the DS decks seem to go down again after recent peaks.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
Can someone talk me out of this?
Things that might work better IMHO:
1) Keeping one Lightning Bolt and switching out the other for a Fatal Push. This improves our matchup against GBx decks and is slightly stronger in the mirror. It weakens the deck slightly against decks that play many CMC3 creatures. Blade Splicer and Flickerwisp can become nightmares as a result.
2) Replacing the Lightning Bolts with two copies of TBR in a meta that is full of Lingering Souls and swarm-based strategies.
3) Replacing the Lightning Bolts with one TBR and one Fatal Push. This is kind of the solution in between 1) and 2).
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
4 Death's Shadow
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Street Wraith
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Gurmag Angler
Spells (25)
4 Fatal Push
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Serum Visions
2 Stubborn Denial
4 Thought Scour
4 Thoughtseize
1 Temur Battle Rage
2 Terminate
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Collective Brutality
1 Izzet Statiscaster
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
Match 1 - Jund 2-1, 1-0
On the play, Thoughtseize and snatch his own copy. From there, kept playing the fetch-shock hand disruption till I got Tasigur the Golden Fang on three who stuck the whole game thanks to Stubbon Denial, from there stuck Death's Shadow and grinded it out.
Going into the second game, I was anticipating Lightning Bolt to be a problem since my meta has a lot of Burn players. Sure enough, he top decks a Bolt while I'm at 3 to win. Last game, we only draws two lands all game both but I can work with that and win via Death's Shadow thumps.
Match 2 - Boros Burn 0-2, 1-1
This one I was worried about. Playing a deck that zaps your life total against burn is very counterintuitive from our initial game plan which is already counterintuitive itself. He's on the play game one, Goblin Guide thumps me as I cantrip through my deck to find a blocker with three Street Wraths in hand. I'm being mindful of my life total because now the game plans changed. At the end, I get a can't stabilize without attacking my life total and lose. Game two is very similar. I Thoughtseize and strip his Eidolon of the Great Revel and stick a Spellskite turn two which helps, but alas, over the course of the game, the dome hits kill me off. This match up is one I can't seem to figure out since it's basically burning the candle at both ends.
Match 3 - Boros Burn/Token 2-1, 2-1
This was some home brew of Boros burn and Mentor/Young Peezy token. On the play, I'm looking to strip any removal I can find - I make him toss his Path to Exile since the rest is a combination of Grim Lavamancer and Monastery Mentor which I already have two Fatal Push in hand to deal with. As they get played, I main phase my removal to keep Peezy from making tokens. I'm able to withstand the Bolts and eek out game one with Tasigur the Golden Fang as I never drew into my Death's Shadow. As with the last match, I board out all Street Wraths and bring in an extra Stubborn Denial , two Spellskites and a Izzet Staticaster for those tokens. He rips a Relic of Progenitus which slows me down greatly with a Gurmag Angler and
Tasigur, the Golden Fang in hand. I take bolts and rifts to the face and lose. Game three was more interesting. We progress through a combination of my hand hate and his burn. I have two Death's Shadow in hand and am waiting till I'm at 9 life to keep both of them out of bolt range. I drop both and bang in for the win.
Second place for the night.
RUBDa ShadowBUR
I appreciate the feedback. Good to see various answers. And I really like the "don't get 2 for 1'd" mentality. Ill keep that in mind at all time
I don't want to dwell on this convo since the thread has moved on, so only two quick points:
1) I don't think the metagame is bad *right now*, I'm predicting the future.
2) When I say Shadow builds are the only tier one decks, I'm talking about how good the deck is, not how much it is played.
Make sure you play against burn, affinity, elves, etc when you're testing Deprive. Stuff like that is a big reason why I'm on Mana Leak. Also, Deprive doesn't curve into Snap + Deprive as easily as Leak does because of the mana setback.
Thoughts?
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I think Lingering Souls is overrated against us. It's good, but not the mirror breaker people seem to think it is. It tyically doesn't matter much as long as our life total isn't too low and we have a fatty to put them in the abyss. Liliana, the Last Hope and Izzet Staticaster post board help a lot. And countering/discarding 1/2 of it helps too. Yes, they get some card advantage, but we have plenty of ways to make up for that between Snapcaster, K Command, Liliana, and Tasigur.
Just play for a long game and don't get too aggressive with your life total unless you know you can win in 1-2 turns (based on their hand and yours). Side out 3-4 of your Street Wraiths, and shave on Stubs (GerryT advocates siding them all out). Snapcaster + K Command is grindier than anything either deck is doing as long as you don't lose to Lingering Souls.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I would keep all of the discard in. Maybe not the IOKs, but even then probably. This isn't the Jund/Abzan pseudo-mirror. If you stick a threat for just 1-2 turns where they don't have an answer, you win. And discard is your best way to fight their Snapcasters and K Commands and such. If you don't have discard and they do, they can rip your hand apart early, then play an early threat and ride it to victory before you topdeck out of it.
If you're already cutting Street Wraiths and fetching shocks less aggressively, you can manage your life total pretty easily while still using Thoughtseize.
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW