MTG Salvation

I was initially very positive about Unmoored Ego, but I'm not sure it really shores up our bad matchups. It's a card designed to hate out combo decks that need specific cards to win, but we already have a great matchup against these type of decks with discard + threat + stub.

Two quick questions:
1. What decks are we bringing Young Pyromancer in against? (If it's in our sideboard)
2. Do we bring in Nihil Spellbomb against Jund?

I actually think Young Pyro is a great grindy option right now because it doesn't depend on the graveyard at all.

What do you guys think about this deck? What would you change? I will participate in a top8 where I play against: Jund, Tron, Spirits, Burn, BW smallpox, UW control, Storm.

Guess I'll post this in both shadow forums.

I found shadow decks frustrating to play when it had such a massive target on its head. But, now that its just a good deck and an established archetype in modern it seems like a good place to go with where the meta is heading.

I'm a long time gbx player but modern has gotten to the point where it feels like everything easily slips underneath midrange and a lot can go overhead. Drawing multiple lands feels like a death sentence in this format, too, which happens to jund too much, manlands or not.

I have to say the idea of looting being used in shadow sounds sexy, filling up the graveyard and looting away the dead cards or land flooding.

So, in truth, beyond preference, I'm really split on whether to go jund, 4c blue splash or grixis. I dont think the white splash has ever been that fantastic.

Is there a true reason to just go jund? Why go grixis right now? I know grixis grinds better against fair matchups, what is jund and 4c better with? Is 4c the best deck for spell based combo and aggro? Is grixis meant more for spell based combo and midrange?

Has ben friedmans bauble and loot significantly changed a lot?

So...is more than 2 loot just too much for the shadow decks? Ignoring our specific personal meta, what should the sideboards be utilizing?

I know I'm asking a lot about 3 versions of the deck, but it sorta feels like knowing when to transform the deck thats appropriate for the meta.

The archetype is massively customizable.

It feels like jund just...is missing something. Something huge I can't describe. It needs more than just great removal and needs some new releases the way uw did to go from poor to great.

I feel you. For years I have been playing BGx, but more often than not I decide to play one version of Shadow instead of traditional BG midrange. The 2 biggest differences for me are the following: Grixis Shadow plays 17 lands, a typical Jund deck 24/25, which means your topdecks are simply way better. 2nd reason for me is that Shadow can have it's nutdraw where your opponent isn't able to do anything because you have 1 mana discard, 1 mana threat, 1 mana removal and 1 mana counter. Shadow decks can kill from nowhere because of Battlerage, which gives the deck an "unfair" aspect where your opponent often doesn't even know whether he can make an attack. For me Shadow decks are the evolution of Blak Green Midrange decks in modern.
Now to answer some of your questions:

Just Jund? I don't like it, Stubborn Denial is a messed up magic card.

Why Grixis? 3 Reasons for me: Way better manabase than 4c Shadow, better grindy options thanks to Snapcaster Mage and K-Command and the ability to go the control route postboard against decks like Humans or Spirits. Traverse Shadow is best in an unfair meta full of combodecks though because the deck finds it's threats easier than Grixis does and plays the full 8 discard spells.

Not everybody plays Looting (max 2). I personally don't like it a lot because it means card disadvantage. If you decide playing Leyline in your board I would definitely go for Looting though. You need to get a feeling for the card, some love it in GDS others dont't like it. Bauble is excellent though and really helps in casting turn 2 Angler (has many other synergies as well, eg with Fetches, Thought Scour or Discard spells).

Sideboard(GDS)nowaday usually contains 1-2 Lavamancer, 2 K-Commands, 2 Liliana the Last Hope, 3 Counterspells, 2 Anger of the Gods, Leylines or Surgical and some more spot removal or Explosives. Some people are trying out Jace in the board against fair decks.

Good response. Definitely gives me something to think about. I'm receptive to anyone else who wants to chime in.

Stubborn can be quite the messed up card. I'm trying to think if the meta is going more aggro or spell based.

I took a 6 month break from modern but jund feels extremely poorly positioned despite jadines performance a few weeks ago. Trophy is great but it doesn't just fix everything.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I found shadow decks frustrating to play when it had such a massive target on its head. But, now that its just a good deck and an established archetype in modern it seems like a good place to go with where the meta is heading.

This is incredibly true, and up until people were running a ton of graveyard hate because of Dredge I've actually had a really good time with the deck for the entire year. It feels like playing Jund did in 2015, where you could answer a lot of what people were doing and your creatures were generally better than everyone else's. It's too easy to hate the deck out for it to always be the deck to beat, but since the initial popularity died down a lot less people are playing the deck, so it's been able to skate under the radar pretty nicely.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

I'm a long time gbx player but modern has gotten to the point where it feels like everything easily slips underneath midrange and a lot can go overhead. Drawing multiple lands feels like a death sentence in this format, too, which happens to jund too much, manlands or not.

This has been the dealbreaker for me with B/G/x. You can't win top-deck wars with 24 lands and no filtering when every other deck is running ~20, and a bunch of those are playing cards like Faithless Looting and Horizon Canopy to further mitigate flooding. The 17 land shadow builds almost never flood, although hitting your third land can sometimes be an issue.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Is there a true reason to just go jund? Why go grixis right now? I know grixis grinds better against fair matchups, what is jund and 4c better with? Is 4c the best deck for spell based combo and aggro? Is grixis meant more for spell based combo and midrange?

I've played every Shadow variant over the last year, and did a bunch of testing with Traverse when Trophy came out. Ultimately, I think that Grixis is better because it can support Stubborn Denial and Temur Battle Rage in a 3 color manabase, and I think that any argument between the decks is secondary to that.

Traverse Shadow can get into some real problems if you're drawing your basics and shocklands instead of fetches, and ultimately I don't think Tarmogoyf is enough to warrant the green splash. The 17 land Grixis lists running Baubles are better at finding their threats than the older 18 land lists, and sometimes you have to mulligan "lands and spells" hands to try to find one with a threat, but I haven't found this to be a significant issue. I also think people in general are too stingy with their Snapcasters when they're not drawing Shadow/Angler and just need to start attacking.

Quote from Spsiegel1987 »

Has ben friedmans bauble and loot significantly changed a lot?

So...is more than 2 loot just too much for the shadow decks? Ignoring our specific personal meta, what should the sideboards be utilizing?

I did a lot of testing with Looting and also didn't like it in the long run. The 17 land lists tend not to flood and your post-board configurations are already so tight that you really don't want to discard anything. I've really come around to Serum Visions in this deck over Opt because of how it can interact with Street Wraith to dig deeper.

I don't know if I'd play this list in paper, but I just got 2nd place in the MTGO Modern Challenge with this:


I was expecting a ton of Dredge and Hollow One, and I played against a ton of Dredge and Hollow One. The Surgicals in the main were super sweet, and easy to board out when I didn't want them. Also, I think Deprive is strictly better than Disdainful Stroke because of how the games play out where you're boarding it in.

Edit- I'll also echo what Hype_rion said about being able to play an unfair game and this feeling like an evolution of the B/G/x archetype. While Jund has that weird "everything goes over or under me without much issue" problem, Shadow knows exactly where it sits on the totem pole.

I've been playing this list in paper for about a month and having good results (have been playing shadow variants for a long time now). I can not get behind serum visions, the card is just awful, it doesn't do anything I want. With the amount of fetches pushing cards to the bottom doesn't matter and any interaction with street wraith isn't much of an advantage. if you're holding wraiths to combo with visions you're not quickly filling up your yard or taking quick damage for a shadow. And ultimately that is the decks strategy stick a turn 2 angler/shadow and protect it. I understand the sentiment of not wanting to discard cards but that just falls in line with if you have your best card in hand do you loot with merfolk looter... of course you do! I'd rather have my answers now than a turn from now, plus it gets rid of the "expensive cards" when your stuck on mana or a second/third angler when you've already delved away your yard.
I like surgical right now in the main I cut a third bolt for the first extraction it has been good and can't be too band when you have looting in your deck.
Deprive being strictly better than stroke is a stretch, the UU in the cost is sometimes restrictive and returning a land to shock an additional time is cute but not ideal IMO.

This is what my current build looks like.

Having seen the evolution of this deck since the last time I played it (and watching Hoogland with the Mausoleum Secrets spice) I am back on this deck again. The velocity this is capable of when you strip out all the 2-3 mana main deck clutter is incredible.

In your list, specifically, I could see Deprive being an issue because you're heavier on red. In a list with more blue cantrips, though, you're already fetching blue sources pretty actively in the matchups where you'd bring in Deprive. In particular, I'm talking about decks like U/W Control, Tron, KCI, Burn, Titanshift, Amulet Titan, and Storm. Against those decks, you usually want to stick a threat early, then just react to everything your opponent is doing. You're generally using discard spells to sculpt their hand so that it lines up favorably against your available answers, and just trying to stop them from resolving key spells for 3-4 turns. Deprive plays very nicely into that plan, and I have actually found the requirement to bounce a land to have some amount of upside. I played a match against U/W last week where I played a Shadow, which my opponent tried to Cryptic with 1 additional mana up (playing around Stubborn denial). I was able to Deprive the Cryptic, resolved my Shadow, then replayed the land and was able to hold up Stubborn Denial. Your ability to play a longer game against U/W improves drastically when you're not as dependent on turning on Stubborn Denial to prevent them from resolving big spells once they hit 5/6 mana.

I would really recommend to anyone that they try Deprive before writing it off, it's been doing real work for me in the matchups I've brought it in for.

This is what I ran to 3-1 on FNM. Only loss was first round to 8-rack after keeping a blind hand on game 1 that would wreck any creature deck (and do nothing to 8-rack). It definitely needs some tweaking, but I very much like the YP's in the side for GY hate (swap for Delve threats) and Mausoleum Secrets was clutch several times, getting threats, discard, or fatal push....

Thoughts on Alright Phoenix in shadow?
From regionals:

I've been practicing on MTGO with Grixis and 4C Shadow.

Traverse the Ulvenwald itself can be such a clunky card in a meta this fast, and the lands are so sloppily constructed, it feels like you better hope to know what 4th color is least important that game.

It is a nice surprise how smooth this deck is without the K-Commands and Lillies clunking it up. I don't feel like I'm improving with the deck, which is frustrating. The sideboard plan for this deck seems a lot more complex than the other fair decks.

Quote from gkourou »

Quote from cfusionpm »

This is what I ran to 3-1 on FNM. Only loss was first round to 8-rack after keeping a blind hand on game 1 that would wreck any creature deck (and do nothing to 8-rack). It definitely needs some tweaking, but I very much like the YP's in the side for GY hate (swap for Delve threats) and Mausoleum Secrets was clutch several times, getting threats, discard, or fatal push....

cfusionpm's DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Land 2 Blood Crypt 4 Bloodstained Mire 1 Island 4 Polluted Delta 3 Scalding Tarn 1 Steam Vents 1 Swamp 2 Watery Grave Creatures 4 Death's Shadow 3 Gurmag Angler 1 Tasigur, The Golden Fang 2 Snapcaster Mage 4 Street Wraith	Sorcery 3 Serum Visions 2 Inquisition of Kozilek 2 Faithless Looting 4 Thoughtseize Instant 2 Dismember 2 Fatal Push 2 Lightning Bolt 2 Mausoleum Secrets 3 Stubborn Denial 2 Surgical Extraction 2 Temur Battle Rage 4 Thought Scour	Sideboard (15) 3 Young Pyromancer 1 Engineered Explosives 2 Kolaghan's Command 1 Anger of the Gods 1 Liliana, The Last Hope 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Disdainful Stroke 1 Stubborn Denial 1 Fatal Push 1 Claim // Fame 1 Stubborn Denial

Bravo! So, Mausoleum Secrets and maindeck Surgical Extraction. Opinions? How were those cards?

It was great the first night, very inconsistent following night. Surgical basically runs as a main-decked SB card, which can range in effectiveness from back-breaking to nearly-useless. Will probably relegate full 4 to side. Secrets was AMAZING when I could cast it, but was inconsistent in enabling it. Need more discard effects to make sure a creature is in the yard. I feel I need to make my game 1s as explosive as possible and then try to the cute grindy cards and answers strictly out of the board. Too many times I was spinning my wheels, not doing anything, damaging myself, and then dying to a single threat or something. Meh. Nothing in Modern feels good these days and this is no different. Extremely hit and miss.

Hi all!. Regarding metagame where a lot of agro and graveyard decks are trying to hit us, I think that serum visions are not quite good in Shadow. I saw that drawing a card with scry 2 is quite slow and it could have very low impact in so many pairings because we have a great drawing mechanism (mishra, scour, looting, street) with a huge variety of active and reactive cards.

Has anyone tried nihil spellbomb replacing serum visions?. It is another card that compact our deck (in the worse scenario) and solving dredge and hollow one decks. Another aspect is that we could have 2/3 side gaps for another cards.

I'm an early adopter of Turbo Fish when Friedman wrote about it months ago. I hated how durdly and slow Serum Visions is and how the deck just spins its wheel often with other cantrips with the more grindy 18-land version. When I tried the Bauble version which focuses more on powering out Anglers on turn 2 and playing the tempo game more, I got hooked. I eventually added two copies of Looting too. However, all the cantrips we play with the exception of Looting and its inherent card disadvantage, most of it does not have filtering (Bauble has to some extent in conjuction with Fetchlands, Wraith or Scour). Sometimes we get punished with our opening hands and succeeding mulligans, especially when we want to keep a one-lander. So I tried some of the recent 5-0 GDS from MTGO (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1464794#paper) which plays at least 3 copies of SV, cutting a Bauble, Scour and a Bolt/Push and surprisingly, I was impressed. SV added some needed consistency and improves our opening hand a lot. Scour and Bauble were untouchable in my list before, even Magnus Lantto recommended to never board those out as they are essentially Dark Rituals and Lotus Petals for our Anglers. Serum Visions though and knowing when to use it is a revelation. It's good early to late game. It helps us draw closer to threats or answers or even hate cards from the SB. Although I must admit, experience in sequencing your spells play a huge role. Learning when you need to dig or firing off that discard or saving a mana up for Stub is very important in maximizing Serum Visions.

As for maindeck spellbombs even if it cantrips, it still cost us one more mana so unless your meta is full of graveyard shenanigans, I rather play SV still.

The 3/3/3/2 split on Scour, Bauble, Vision and Loot has felt really fantastic. Getting Angler out has been way smoother that in the older builds.

I'm not understanding why more people aren't playing 2x Deprives, its been fantastic. I just don't see enough reasoning to play it over Stroke.

How depressing it is that this community is so dead, especially when the deck isnt performing that poorly.

Wanted to ask about sideboard strats against a few decks. Based off the typical 75, what is the sideboard plan against

Hardened scales affinity
Arclight decks
UR tempo/wizards?

I was demolished by affinity, the matchup feels like a nightmare.

Thanks.

Yo! First time posting here been reading this site for awhile. Been playing modern jund since modern started, getting ready for gp portland. Been play testing this deck and liking it a lot, jund just feels so bad right now to me.

Anyways, ya hardened affinity is such a hard match up for me as well, i found best thing against them is engineered explosives and try to stall them with spot removal long enough to overrun with a temur :/ doesnt work so well haha. Arclight is pretty easy, been using 4 ravenous traps against all gy decks and seems to be working better than voids.

What are yalls thoughts on this deck in current meta? Also people say gds has advantage over spirits but that deck is so hard for me. Any tips?