BTW: I just became the victim of an attempt of Tron to lock me out of a color with Karn and Newlamog. So I guess we can add Tron to the list of evil land destruction decks. It was obviously the 19th land that saved me!
Snapcaster is one of the beat cards in all of modern. No way.
Snapcaster is yet another way the Grixis shell relies on its graveyard, a weak point that the metagame is attacking vigorously. It's also not really a legitimate threat. We also don't use Snapcaster to the best of its abilities in this deck. We get snap + k command going sometimes, but the mana doesn't always cooperate in our 17-19 land deck. Plus we run 0-2 bolts. Snapcaster may be a 10 in the right deck, but it's more like an 8 here. It's the worst creature we run, and there's a reason the 4 Sleight build Ari shaved one.
That said, I agree that cutting Snapcaster to build around Young Pyromancer or something else probably isn't worth it. Snapcaster is still certainly very good in the deck. But if you were going to go that route, Snapcaster is the cut. You need cheap spells to pair with Young Pyro, and Snapcaster is neither cheap nor a spell.
As of right now we are limited in the kinds of threats that we can run that diversify our threat suite while helping us mitigate damage from grave hate. The only other card I could see people running is Vendilion Clique but that's more of a sideboard card than anything. YP feels like a great value card that can also take over a game if left unanswered. These lists already run 25-26 noncreature spells which is more than enough to keep something like YP going. The difference between it and Delver is that you can just let YP sit on the battlefield and it will be a threat in itself. An unflipped Delver isn't a threat at all. The deck can play both a proactive and reactive game which gives YP a lot of flexibility in the deck. Think of it more as a value card than anything.
Because of that the deck will want to minimize the number of dead/clunky draws as possible and both Snap and Kommand fit that bill. They are 3 mana cards that are relevant enough if the game goes late, but feel downright awful if you draw several of them. For that reason I could see cutting some number of these (though I myself would want at least 3 Snaps and 1 Kommand main) to mitigate this issue and help yourself become less reliant on the graveyard. If your meta is literally all Shadow and Bgx decks with literally 0 grave hate then you obviously don't need to worry about this, but nowadays most unknown metas are packing serious grave hate that affects this deck and others like dredge.
Some folks are content with their 19 land builds and won't ever change. That's fine, as long as you're winning with it you do you friend. I'm just on the quest to find the best possible build of this deck because it has so much untapped potential. Will that result in me playing a lot of suboptimal builds? Yeah, probably. Chapin looked like a fool when he first tried to do it but he believed that there was something more. There might be something more to this deck with what we have, but it might also be with a card that hasn't come out yet.
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Modern URBSome variant of Death's Shadow URB Grixis Control (Chapin Version) JFM Storm / Treasure Cruise Delver / Splinter Twin / Infect
I 'm testing list for a GP. These are the options I 'm working with:
19 lands, no wraiths, 4 Delver, 2 sleight of hand, no terminates, dismember instead. Deals with the "no flying creatures" and can deal with flying tokens, works well with grave hate. Since we don't have wraiths for losing life (2 more sleight of hand for flipping delver), dismember is in as an enabler for a second turn shadow. The problem it isn't a reliable creature.
19 lands, wraiths, 2 bauble, 1 or 2 tomb stalker -1 taisgur, -1 angler. Bauble to increase the chance to delve tombstalker turn 2. If the plan is go for the midrange, bolt instead of bauble.
I was big on 17 land + 4 sleight when that list came out, but given that DnT is around attacking our mana and that the midrange decks are trying to go slightly over the top of us, now I think the 19 land builds are probably better, and I want MD Liliana of the Veils to fight the midrange wars without giving up too much against the metagame.
seeing some cool interactions online with claim/fame and Jace, Vyrn's Prodigy. I'm curious to try and fit a few Jaces into grixis shadows, perhaps cutting some snapcasters?
I am curious as to what everything thinks about dismember in the main. Do you all think that there is some value in playing something like 2 terminate 3 fatal push and 1 dismember?
Also, just to get on the 18 or 19 land discussion....I cut a bloodstained mire for a lightning bolt and the deck has been running much more smoothly for me. It gets a little harder to snap back a kolaghan's command, but it is a trade off I am willing to make.
The easy way to think about the two Lilianas is this: LotV is the better MD card because it's very good in plenty matchups and decent basically everywhere. LtlH is the better SB card because it's incredible in a few matchups, good in a many others, and not worth the cardboard it's printed on in a few more. This shortcut isn't 100% right though because they're at their strongest in different matchups, so it can be perfectly reasonable to MD or SB one or the other depending on the metagame you expect. But in general, LotV is more likely to be a MD card and LtlH is more likely to be a SB card.
It's worth noting that LtlH's stock has gone down a bit since everyone is packing gy hate now. She used to be good to very good in the grindy matchups, depending on if there is anything for her to pick off with her +1, but all of those decks are packing plenty of incidental gy hate now between Ooze, Spellbomb, and possibly haymakers like RiP and Leyline. She's still good there, but less of the all star she once was.
played a 4 color (sorta sultai with red splash) play claim/fame, card was gas.
If chalice wasn't an issue, the K Commands would be gone, I think.
Anyway, question for you guys
On a normal hand, if you have 2 lands, a serum, a wraith, 1 removal, 1 discard, and we'll say a random non creature card, do you keep it? I mean, if our opener has no delver or shadow, is this a bad hand to keep, or do we keep it due to the serum and wraith? Just a question. Had a game last night where the opening hand was solid, but just never saw a threat outside of snapcaster.
LotV is not that great in Grixis. She's significantly better in Jund, where she fuels the Delirium Engine, grows Tarmogoyf and gets rid of unwanted discard spells (of which Jund runs 8 MD). I'd say she is a 10 in traditional Jund, a 8 in DSJ and a 6 in Grixis Shadow.
LotV is playable in Grixis Shadow mostly due to her raw power level, but IMHO needs some support or a very specific metagame to justify her inclusion. Extra Discard spells, Rise // Fall and maybe Claim // Fame increase LotV's synergy with the rest of the deck. Lowering the land count, however, makes LotV worse.
It's also noteworthy that while LotV is less often a bad card than LtLH, she is not particularly helpful in most of the more difficult matchups. She's not that good against D'n'T because of Thalia, Blade Splicer and the sheer number of creatures they run. Affinity can take her out quickly and cares little about sorcery speed discard effects. Eldrazi Tron wins most topdecking battles and gladly sacrifices Matter Reshaper, Hangerback Walker and Walking Ballista with one last counter. Dredge can even benefit from her. Swarm decks often just overrun her.
LotV is good in the mirror, but so are many other cards. The current metagame is so hostile towards our deck that few other archetypes can afford to rely on just a few big creatures. So LotV is less relevant than she used to be when Jund with 12 creatures was tier 1 and Infect was still a deck.
played a 4 color (sorta sultai with red splash) play claim/fame, card was gas.
If chalice wasn't an issue, the K Commands would be gone, I think.
Anyway, question for you guys
On a normal hand, if you have 2 lands, a serum, a wraith, 1 removal, 1 discard, and we'll say a random non creature card, do you keep it? I mean, if our opener has no delver or shadow, is this a bad hand to keep, or do we keep it due to the serum and wraith? Just a question. Had a game last night where the opening hand was solid, but just never saw a threat outside of snapcaster.
You have proactive (discard) and reactive (removal) things to do, you have a setup cantrip (Serum), you can draw your top scry (Wraith), and enough lands to cast basically anything in your deck. I'd say game one in the dark, that is definitely a keep. Games 2 or 3... depends on what the opponent is up to. If you need to kill quickly, I'd maybe ship it and look for a threat. Chalk it up to bad luck and variance for not drawing a creature, because normally that's a fine hand. Not amazing, but you can do a LOT worse.
The meta is massively hateful right now, the MTGO practice rooms literally feel like anti shadow decks.
That's true and I find it somewhat entertaining. The metagame share of all Death's Shadow based decks combined has stabilized around 15%. My feeling is that many players try to turn Grixis Shadow into a favorable matchup because they have given up on beating the land based decks (Eldrazi Tron, traditional Tron, Valakut) already. If they lose 70% of the matches against those decks and manage to beat us 70% of the time, they may arrive at a win rate of 50% and can enjoy the warm and fluffy feeling of having beaten the "best deck".
LotV is not that great in Grixis. She's significantly better in Jund, where she fuels the Delirium Engine, grows Tarmogoyf and gets rid of unwanted discard spells (of which Jund runs 8 MD). I'd say she is a 10 in traditional Jund, a 8 in DSJ and a 6 in Grixis Shadow.
I disagree about the degree of the difference between Grixis and Jund shadow. Grixis plays only 2 less discard spells than Jund, and Stubs can be just as dead as discard spells in the right matchup, so the difference in terms of doing something with excess discard spells is essentially zero. Improving the GY pieces of Jund is real, but minor. Mostly, the card is just raw power and any synergies of this sort have a very small impact.
LotV is playable in Grixis Shadow mostly due to her raw power level, but IMHO needs some support or a very specific metagame to justify her inclusion. Extra Discard spells, Rise // Fall and maybe Claim // Fame increase LotV's synergy with the rest of the deck. Lowering the land count, however, makes LotV worse.
I don't think it needs to be all that specific. As long as you're playing against a fair number of mirrors and midrange decks (which seems accurate right now) she's good, because the downside is small in most matchups. Attacking their hand works well across the board outside of a few matchups.
It's also noteworthy that while LotV is less often a bad card than LtLH, she is not particularly helpful in most of the more difficult matchups. She's not that good against D'n'T because of Thalia, Blade Splicer and the sheer number of creatures they run. Affinity can take her out quickly and cares little about sorcery speed discard effects. Eldrazi Tron wins most topdecking battles and gladly sacrifices Matter Reshaper, Hangerback Walker and Walking Ballista with one last counter. Dredge can even benefit from her. Swarm decks often just overrun her.
I don't disagree with any of this, except for calling Affinity a bad matchup.
LotV is good in the mirror, but so are many other cards. The current metagame is so hostile towards our deck that few other archetypes can afford to rely on just a few big creatures. So LotV is less relevant than she used to be when Jund with 12 creatures was tier 1 and Infect was still a deck.
I've been playing against a ton of decks with a few big creatures in modern leagues. Jund and Junk midrange seem like they're are all over.
Affinity is a bad matchup for grixis. You wouldn't think so, looking at the average 75, it looks like a nightmare, pushes, terminates, K-Command, snaps--and then postboard LTLH, sweepers...
Jund has ligering souls, ancient grudge, and temur battle rage (which seriously just steals games).
Also, what do you mean about jund and junk? Are you saying there's a ton of players on the decks, that jund and junk look bad?
Spooly I didn't call Affinity a bad matchup. It's one of the more difficult matchups IMHO, because games can play out different depending on what they are working with. Sometimes it's all about the Plating, sometimes Edged Champion rears its shiny head, sometimes a swarm is coming from the air. It's a matchup I personally like.
Of the midrange decks, I'm mostly worried about Junk. And in this matchup, I prefer LtLH over LotV because of Lingering Souls.
I don't like attrition battles, at least not with this deck. So maybe I don't appreciate the ability of making them discard their worst card enough. I have played against LotV many times and her +1 ability has been rarely backbreaking. Sometimes it can even be exploited to get certain cards in the yard.
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Snapcaster is yet another way the Grixis shell relies on its graveyard, a weak point that the metagame is attacking vigorously. It's also not really a legitimate threat. We also don't use Snapcaster to the best of its abilities in this deck. We get snap + k command going sometimes, but the mana doesn't always cooperate in our 17-19 land deck. Plus we run 0-2 bolts. Snapcaster may be a 10 in the right deck, but it's more like an 8 here. It's the worst creature we run, and there's a reason the 4 Sleight build Ari shaved one.
That said, I agree that cutting Snapcaster to build around Young Pyromancer or something else probably isn't worth it. Snapcaster is still certainly very good in the deck. But if you were going to go that route, Snapcaster is the cut. You need cheap spells to pair with Young Pyro, and Snapcaster is neither cheap nor a spell.
Because of that the deck will want to minimize the number of dead/clunky draws as possible and both Snap and Kommand fit that bill. They are 3 mana cards that are relevant enough if the game goes late, but feel downright awful if you draw several of them. For that reason I could see cutting some number of these (though I myself would want at least 3 Snaps and 1 Kommand main) to mitigate this issue and help yourself become less reliant on the graveyard. If your meta is literally all Shadow and Bgx decks with literally 0 grave hate then you obviously don't need to worry about this, but nowadays most unknown metas are packing serious grave hate that affects this deck and others like dredge.
Some folks are content with their 19 land builds and won't ever change. That's fine, as long as you're winning with it you do you friend. I'm just on the quest to find the best possible build of this deck because it has so much untapped potential. Will that result in me playing a lot of suboptimal builds? Yeah, probably. Chapin looked like a fool when he first tried to do it but he believed that there was something more. There might be something more to this deck with what we have, but it might also be with a card that hasn't come out yet.
URB Some variant of Death's Shadow
URB Grixis Control (Chapin Version)
JFM Storm / Treasure Cruise Delver / Splinter Twin / InfectCommander/EDH
This pile of cards when I feel like it
Death's Shadow discord link
19 lands, no wraiths, 4 Delver, 2 sleight of hand, no terminates, dismember instead. Deals with the "no flying creatures" and can deal with flying tokens, works well with grave hate. Since we don't have wraiths for losing life (2 more sleight of hand for flipping delver), dismember is in as an enabler for a second turn shadow. The problem it isn't a reliable creature.
19 lands, wraiths, 2 bauble, 1 or 2 tomb stalker -1 taisgur, -1 angler. Bauble to increase the chance to delve tombstalker turn 2. If the plan is go for the midrange, bolt instead of bauble.
A lot of people run her in the board in their 75
Also, just to get on the 18 or 19 land discussion....I cut a bloodstained mire for a lightning bolt and the deck has been running much more smoothly for me. It gets a little harder to snap back a kolaghan's command, but it is a trade off I am willing to make.
Cutting lands for 3 drops doesn't seem like the best of ideas. This deck runs as smoothly as it does because "everything" costs 1 mana.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
It's worth noting that LtlH's stock has gone down a bit since everyone is packing gy hate now. She used to be good to very good in the grindy matchups, depending on if there is anything for her to pick off with her +1, but all of those decks are packing plenty of incidental gy hate now between Ooze, Spellbomb, and possibly haymakers like RiP and Leyline. She's still good there, but less of the all star she once was.
If chalice wasn't an issue, the K Commands would be gone, I think.
Anyway, question for you guys
On a normal hand, if you have 2 lands, a serum, a wraith, 1 removal, 1 discard, and we'll say a random non creature card, do you keep it? I mean, if our opener has no delver or shadow, is this a bad hand to keep, or do we keep it due to the serum and wraith? Just a question. Had a game last night where the opening hand was solid, but just never saw a threat outside of snapcaster.
LotV is playable in Grixis Shadow mostly due to her raw power level, but IMHO needs some support or a very specific metagame to justify her inclusion. Extra Discard spells, Rise // Fall and maybe Claim // Fame increase LotV's synergy with the rest of the deck. Lowering the land count, however, makes LotV worse.
It's also noteworthy that while LotV is less often a bad card than LtLH, she is not particularly helpful in most of the more difficult matchups. She's not that good against D'n'T because of Thalia, Blade Splicer and the sheer number of creatures they run. Affinity can take her out quickly and cares little about sorcery speed discard effects. Eldrazi Tron wins most topdecking battles and gladly sacrifices Matter Reshaper, Hangerback Walker and Walking Ballista with one last counter. Dredge can even benefit from her. Swarm decks often just overrun her.
LotV is good in the mirror, but so are many other cards. The current metagame is so hostile towards our deck that few other archetypes can afford to rely on just a few big creatures. So LotV is less relevant than she used to be when Jund with 12 creatures was tier 1 and Infect was still a deck.
The meta is massively hateful right now, the MTGO practice rooms literally feel like anti shadow decks.
You have proactive (discard) and reactive (removal) things to do, you have a setup cantrip (Serum), you can draw your top scry (Wraith), and enough lands to cast basically anything in your deck. I'd say game one in the dark, that is definitely a keep. Games 2 or 3... depends on what the opponent is up to. If you need to kill quickly, I'd maybe ship it and look for a threat. Chalk it up to bad luck and variance for not drawing a creature, because normally that's a fine hand. Not amazing, but you can do a LOT worse.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
I disagree about the degree of the difference between Grixis and Jund shadow. Grixis plays only 2 less discard spells than Jund, and Stubs can be just as dead as discard spells in the right matchup, so the difference in terms of doing something with excess discard spells is essentially zero. Improving the GY pieces of Jund is real, but minor. Mostly, the card is just raw power and any synergies of this sort have a very small impact.
I don't think it needs to be all that specific. As long as you're playing against a fair number of mirrors and midrange decks (which seems accurate right now) she's good, because the downside is small in most matchups. Attacking their hand works well across the board outside of a few matchups.
I don't disagree with any of this, except for calling Affinity a bad matchup.
I've been playing against a ton of decks with a few big creatures in modern leagues. Jund and Junk midrange seem like they're are all over.
Jund has ligering souls, ancient grudge, and temur battle rage (which seriously just steals games).
Also, what do you mean about jund and junk? Are you saying there's a ton of players on the decks, that jund and junk look bad?
Of the midrange decks, I'm mostly worried about Junk. And in this matchup, I prefer LtLH over LotV because of Lingering Souls.
I don't like attrition battles, at least not with this deck. So maybe I don't appreciate the ability of making them discard their worst card enough. I have played against LotV many times and her +1 ability has been rarely backbreaking. Sometimes it can even be exploited to get certain cards in the yard.