I guess red is more important to us than white atm. I cant't miss out kolaghan's command with snap. Thats only grixis stuff and only grixis can access this looping. Secondly, anger > path for me for handling go wide decks.
Against merfolk, I would add 2 terminate, 2 liliana, 2 anger, 2 brutality. Taking out 2 stubborn denial, 4 wraith, and possible with TBR also. I am the control role here.
Against dredge, I would add 2 anger, 2 spellbomb, 2 surgical, 1 TBR. Siding out 4 push, 2 bolt
I am surprised you want Liliana against Merfolk, I feel like they are too fast and if you can keep their board in check you can usually kill them pretty fast, because they are either chump-blocking or taking huge amount of damage.
As for Stubborn Denial against Dredge, it's not great, but countering an early Reunion is pretty big and making sure they can't just Conflegrate you for the win is also important. I think you either win with very fast beat-downs, preventing them from dredging or them getting unlucky. Or you TBR for the win, but both instances more often than not you want your life total to be pretty low so that you actually have more threats in the for of Shadow.
Hi, thanks for reply Liliana is there for mid/late game after the board has stabilized against merfolk. We has lot of kill spells for their creature (4 push, 2 terminate, 2 anger, 4 snap for direct kill. 2 bolt, 2 kolaghan, 2 brutality if they have 0 or 1 lord. Liliana with kill spell/creature protection as backups would kill them slowly. Liliana could able take down a cursecatcher or silvergill single hand without any lord in board but that is a least scenario.
For dredge I think you have your meaning, stubborn denial is great vs conflagrate since it could kill us in an instance when we are already lower our own life. I would add denial and out wraith probably. But, I might be mistake.
To elaborate: even the author doesn't seem entirely convinced of his own sideboarding choices. He doesn't even mention why he uses it until the end, and doesn't even specify the matchups it'd be good in. The clique does add evasion, but so does a Temur Battle Rage out the sideboard, and I guarantee that is going to end matches a lot faster than a 3 mana 3/1 flier.
Then again I've never really been a fan of the Clique.
Not sure what to make of clique because I haven't tried it in this shell*, but in general I don't think the author understands the deck well. He calls Dredge a good matchup, which is completely inaccurate in my experience. Surgical on a thing helps, but they have lots of ways to kill you, and lots of ways to slow you down.
He says that even with dedicated SB hate, we have trouble with Bogles. But Liliana of the Veil + counters + sweepers goes a long way here. You can configure your deck to have a good matchup vs. Bogles. (Whether that's a good idea or not is another question entirely, but that's not the argument he was making.)
Vs. Eldrazi Tron he likes bolt. But it's awful there. It speeds up your clock sometimes, but most of the time it will rot in your hand or trade unfavorably with a Matter Reshaper or a Ballista. You really need disruption. He highlights Fulminator, which is disruptionTerminate, on the other hand, deals with most of their annoying threats so your big guys can keep beating. (Btw this is one of the matchups that really motivates my decision to cut IOK for Leaks, and to cut Bolts for Terminates. I pretty much crush Eldrazi Tron with my build.)
He also calls Storm a tough matchup, but my experience and the experience of anyone I know who plays storm says Grixis is pretty strongly favored.
*I've played Clique a lot in _other_ grixis shells though, so based on that I have some speculative thoughts. Basically the only spot where it looks attractive is vs. combo decks and big mana decks. Storm, Tron, Amulet, Valakut, Ad Nauseum, etc. Usually, Clique is best when you want to be able to hold up mana for countermagic or other instant speed interaction, and if they don't do anything relevant you can Clique them to get a threat into play and still disrupt them. I see a couple of problems with Clique in Grixis shells.
1) getting to 3 mana is a bit of a chore sometimes, so we can't have that many 3 mana spells. And Snapcaster Mage counts as a 3 mana spell. I already occasionally side out 1 Snapcaster in these matchups (and more often in aggro matchups) because I want to make sure that I have enough _cheap_ interaction, so Clique looks a little suspect here. Maybe Clique can come in for the 4th Snapcaster since many opponents will be bringing in stuff like Chalice and graveyard hate that reduce the effectiveness of Snapcaster. Or maybe it comes in for a K Command vs. decks without artifacts you want to target. But otherwise, I'm a little skeptical of adding 3 drops to the deck in matchups where cheap interaction is important.
2) Most grixis shells aren't holding up much in terms of countermagic vs these combo/big mana decks. They prefer to load up on sorcery speed discard instead, though Snap + Stubborn Denial does come up, and some will have stuff like Disdainful Stroke postboard. As a result, oftentimes Clique having flash won't give grixis shadow players much of an advantage. Sure, it helps you see one more card before you look at their hand, but we're missing out on something that traditionally grixis (and U/R) shells leveraged pretty well. I don't mean to make the sunk cost fallacy here - rather, my point is that it's easy to have an intuition that Clique will be good in these shells based on how strong it was in other grixis shells or in UR Twin before the ban, but it was good partially for reasons in those decks which don't apply here. That said, the grixis shells running Mana Leak or perhaps Deprive do have a tendency to hold up countermagic more often, so if you go that route (and I know I'm in the minority, but I think you should) you get to leverage this aspect of Clique significantly better. That might be enough to make it good.
3) Clique suffers from a similar problem that Delver suffers from in these shells: we don't chip-shot all that well. We win the game in a couple of turns with big fatties, rather than nickle and diming and then finishing in a flurry of burn like traditional delver shells or old school UR twin when on plan B. So as a threat, it's not as complementary to our other threats as it could be. Though if you want to load up on bolts, you can change this. Sometimes flying is super important though and in those spots it'll be great - e.g. vs. Amulet it looks pretty attractive to me, but in a lot of the matchups where you would otherwise want Clique, flying is relatively unimportant. Ad Nauseum and Storm don't care. Tron doesn't care, and Eldrazi Tron welcomes an easy target for their Walking Ballista.
TLDR: I haven't tried it in this shell so I'm speculating, but I don't think Clique looks all that good. Maybe in grixis shadow shells playing more countermagic than usual (like mine) but even then I'm skeptical. But by all means, try it and find out. I may at some point.
Vs. Eldrazi Tron he likes bolt. But it's awful there. It speeds up your clock sometimes, but most of the time it will rot in your hand or trade unfavorably with a Matter Reshaper or a Ballista. You really need disruption. He highlights Fulminator, which is disruptionTerminate, on the other hand, deals with most of their annoying threats so your big guys can keep beating. (Btw this is one of the matchups that really motivates my decision to cut IOK for Leaks, and to cut Bolts for Terminates. I pretty much crush Eldrazi Tron with my build.)
What is your most current build? I'm playing Modern in Louisville this weekend and doing some last minute testing and my biggest concerns are EldraziTron and Burn. IOK does a lot, I feel, against the burn matchup. What is your plan for this?
Collective Brutality is your absolute all-star against Burn. Eldrazi Tron is just hard, but you could sideboard Ceremonious Rejection, otherwise you just need to disrupt them with Thoughtseize and outrace them, Terminate is good too.
My feeling right now is that I want to play 3 Collective Brutality in the side, specifically for Burn, but also splash damage for U/R Gifts. I'm trying to squeeze a 2nd Terminate in the main with +1 in the sideboard as well. Still not sure about dedicating any sideboard slots to Ceremonious Rejection yet.....
Vs. Eldrazi Tron he likes bolt. But it's awful there. It speeds up your clock sometimes, but most of the time it will rot in your hand or trade unfavorably with a Matter Reshaper or a Ballista. You really need disruption. He highlights Fulminator, which is disruptionTerminate, on the other hand, deals with most of their annoying threats so your big guys can keep beating. (Btw this is one of the matchups that really motivates my decision to cut IOK for Leaks, and to cut Bolts for Terminates. I pretty much crush Eldrazi Tron with my build.)
What is your most current build? I'm playing Modern in Louisville this weekend and doing some last minute testing and my biggest concerns are EldraziTron and Burn. IOK does a lot, I feel, against the burn matchup. What is your plan for this?
My plan vs burn is countermagic instead of IoK, and boarding in 2 Brutality and more countermagic. Though to be honest, I haven't played much against burn lately. 0 times in my last 5-10 leagues online, and a few times in paper recently. Here's the list I would play tomorrow if I had a modern event (not that I'm super confident in every card in the 75):
Honestly, I wish I could find more room in the main for the second Surgical Extraction. It just completely wrecks so many decks, especially when combined with 7 discard spells (plus K Command). Ashiok has been pretty good as well, either exiling key pieces of their deck or putting opponent creatures under my control. Plus it usually draws damage and attacks away from me, if my life total is threatened.
can't imagine md surgical possibly working. it doesn't affect the board position at all and the chances that you are facing a deck that gets crippled by extraction ANd have the target be in the gy AND have extraction in the hand all seem awful
Let us know how it went. I don't like the MB Surgical Extraction though that much, but I know it's kind of a pet card of yours Let us know how the card did as well.
Surgical Extraction functions best as a crappy Cabal Therapy in this deck, especially since you already get a decent amount of discard. It's also very good vs the U/W control deck. I've created a couple blowouts with it vs certain matchups, especially graveyard decks that aren't really expecting something G1. It's a very meta dependent card, I know I wouldn't play it in mine but I could see it in others.
Speaking of which, has anyone ever sideboarded Imp's Mischief ? I remember it was talked about a lot when Ancestral Visions was spoiled. I think it might be good now too.
Speaking of which, has anyone ever sideboarded Imp's Mischief ? I remember it was talked about a lot when Ancestral Visions was spoiled. I think it might be good now too.
Good as in, it shores up bad matchups? Which ones exactly? It's ***** against Burn, Abzan and Tron. Yeah it hits AV but so does Denial.
The Esper discussion is over, but if it begins to gain traction again and anyone wants to continue discussions on Esper Death's Shadow more in depth, I would recommend creating a new thread in Deck Creation and discus there.
Against merfolk, I would add 2 terminate, 2 liliana, 2 anger, 2 brutality. Taking out 2 stubborn denial, 4 wraith, and possible with TBR also. I am the control role here.
Against dredge, I would add 2 anger, 2 spellbomb, 2 surgical, 1 TBR. Siding out 4 push, 2 bolt
Hi, thanks for reply Liliana is there for mid/late game after the board has stabilized against merfolk. We has lot of kill spells for their creature (4 push, 2 terminate, 2 anger, 4 snap for direct kill. 2 bolt, 2 kolaghan, 2 brutality if they have 0 or 1 lord. Liliana with kill spell/creature protection as backups would kill them slowly. Liliana could able take down a cursecatcher or silvergill single hand without any lord in board but that is a least scenario.
For dredge I think you have your meaning, stubborn denial is great vs conflagrate since it could kill us in an instance when we are already lower our own life. I would add denial and out wraith probably. But, I might be mistake.
http://modernnexus.com/digging-grixis-deaths-shadow/
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
In a word, no.
To elaborate: even the author doesn't seem entirely convinced of his own sideboarding choices. He doesn't even mention why he uses it until the end, and doesn't even specify the matchups it'd be good in. The clique does add evasion, but so does a Temur Battle Rage out the sideboard, and I guarantee that is going to end matches a lot faster than a 3 mana 3/1 flier.
Then again I've never really been a fan of the Clique.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Not sure what to make of clique because I haven't tried it in this shell*, but in general I don't think the author understands the deck well. He calls Dredge a good matchup, which is completely inaccurate in my experience. Surgical on a thing helps, but they have lots of ways to kill you, and lots of ways to slow you down.
He says that even with dedicated SB hate, we have trouble with Bogles. But Liliana of the Veil + counters + sweepers goes a long way here. You can configure your deck to have a good matchup vs. Bogles. (Whether that's a good idea or not is another question entirely, but that's not the argument he was making.)
Vs. Eldrazi Tron he likes bolt. But it's awful there. It speeds up your clock sometimes, but most of the time it will rot in your hand or trade unfavorably with a Matter Reshaper or a Ballista. You really need disruption. He highlights Fulminator, which is disruptionTerminate, on the other hand, deals with most of their annoying threats so your big guys can keep beating. (Btw this is one of the matchups that really motivates my decision to cut IOK for Leaks, and to cut Bolts for Terminates. I pretty much crush Eldrazi Tron with my build.)
He also calls Storm a tough matchup, but my experience and the experience of anyone I know who plays storm says Grixis is pretty strongly favored.
*I've played Clique a lot in _other_ grixis shells though, so based on that I have some speculative thoughts. Basically the only spot where it looks attractive is vs. combo decks and big mana decks. Storm, Tron, Amulet, Valakut, Ad Nauseum, etc. Usually, Clique is best when you want to be able to hold up mana for countermagic or other instant speed interaction, and if they don't do anything relevant you can Clique them to get a threat into play and still disrupt them. I see a couple of problems with Clique in Grixis shells.
1) getting to 3 mana is a bit of a chore sometimes, so we can't have that many 3 mana spells. And Snapcaster Mage counts as a 3 mana spell. I already occasionally side out 1 Snapcaster in these matchups (and more often in aggro matchups) because I want to make sure that I have enough _cheap_ interaction, so Clique looks a little suspect here. Maybe Clique can come in for the 4th Snapcaster since many opponents will be bringing in stuff like Chalice and graveyard hate that reduce the effectiveness of Snapcaster. Or maybe it comes in for a K Command vs. decks without artifacts you want to target. But otherwise, I'm a little skeptical of adding 3 drops to the deck in matchups where cheap interaction is important.
2) Most grixis shells aren't holding up much in terms of countermagic vs these combo/big mana decks. They prefer to load up on sorcery speed discard instead, though Snap + Stubborn Denial does come up, and some will have stuff like Disdainful Stroke postboard. As a result, oftentimes Clique having flash won't give grixis shadow players much of an advantage. Sure, it helps you see one more card before you look at their hand, but we're missing out on something that traditionally grixis (and U/R) shells leveraged pretty well. I don't mean to make the sunk cost fallacy here - rather, my point is that it's easy to have an intuition that Clique will be good in these shells based on how strong it was in other grixis shells or in UR Twin before the ban, but it was good partially for reasons in those decks which don't apply here. That said, the grixis shells running Mana Leak or perhaps Deprive do have a tendency to hold up countermagic more often, so if you go that route (and I know I'm in the minority, but I think you should) you get to leverage this aspect of Clique significantly better. That might be enough to make it good.
3) Clique suffers from a similar problem that Delver suffers from in these shells: we don't chip-shot all that well. We win the game in a couple of turns with big fatties, rather than nickle and diming and then finishing in a flurry of burn like traditional delver shells or old school UR twin when on plan B. So as a threat, it's not as complementary to our other threats as it could be. Though if you want to load up on bolts, you can change this. Sometimes flying is super important though and in those spots it'll be great - e.g. vs. Amulet it looks pretty attractive to me, but in a lot of the matchups where you would otherwise want Clique, flying is relatively unimportant. Ad Nauseum and Storm don't care. Tron doesn't care, and Eldrazi Tron welcomes an easy target for their Walking Ballista.
TLDR: I haven't tried it in this shell so I'm speculating, but I don't think Clique looks all that good. Maybe in grixis shadow shells playing more countermagic than usual (like mine) but even then I'm skeptical. But by all means, try it and find out. I may at some point.
What is your most current build? I'm playing Modern in Louisville this weekend and doing some last minute testing and my biggest concerns are EldraziTron and Burn. IOK does a lot, I feel, against the burn matchup. What is your plan for this?
My feeling right now is that I want to play 3 Collective Brutality in the side, specifically for Burn, but also splash damage for U/R Gifts. I'm trying to squeeze a 2nd Terminate in the main with +1 in the sideboard as well. Still not sure about dedicating any sideboard slots to Ceremonious Rejection yet.....
My plan vs burn is countermagic instead of IoK, and boarding in 2 Brutality and more countermagic. Though to be honest, I haven't played much against burn lately. 0 times in my last 5-10 leagues online, and a few times in paper recently. Here's the list I would play tomorrow if I had a modern event (not that I'm super confident in every card in the 75):
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Watery Grave
2 Blood Crypt
1 Steam Vents
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Thought Scour
4 Street Wraith
3 Serum Visions
2 Gurmag Angler
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Terminate
3 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Thoughtseize
3 Stubborn Denial
3 Mana Leak
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Kolaghan's Command
2 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Stubborn Denial
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Terminate
2 Collective Brutality
2 Dispel
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Oops, I typed that quickly! Edited to fix.
1x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Island
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
2x Steam Vents
1x Swamp
2x Watery Grave
Sorcery (11)
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Serum Visions
4x Thoughtseize
3x Fatal Push
2x Kolaghan's Command
2x Lightning Bolt
2x Stubborn Denial
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Terminate
4x Thought Scour
Creature (15)
4x Death's Shadow
2x Gurmag Angler
2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3x Snapcaster Mage
4x Street Wraith
1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2x Collective Brutality
2x Countersquall
1x Dispel
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Stubborn Denial
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Terminate
Honestly, I wish I could find more room in the main for the second Surgical Extraction. It just completely wrecks so many decks, especially when combined with 7 discard spells (plus K Command). Ashiok has been pretty good as well, either exiling key pieces of their deck or putting opponent creatures under my control. Plus it usually draws damage and attacks away from me, if my life total is threatened.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Surgical Extraction functions best as a crappy Cabal Therapy in this deck, especially since you already get a decent amount of discard. It's also very good vs the U/W control deck. I've created a couple blowouts with it vs certain matchups, especially graveyard decks that aren't really expecting something G1. It's a very meta dependent card, I know I wouldn't play it in mine but I could see it in others.
Speaking of which, has anyone ever sideboarded Imp's Mischief ? I remember it was talked about a lot when Ancestral Visions was spoiled. I think it might be good now too.
Good as in, it shores up bad matchups? Which ones exactly? It's ***** against Burn, Abzan and Tron. Yeah it hits AV but so does Denial.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Doesn't this take the same slot as TBR? All are trying to be evasive and make sure damage is dealt.
-Xaricore