I was looking at 3 color not 4 color decks though, hence calling it Jund. Maybe I wasn't clear on that part. That said, Traverse into Kataki is probably much too slow to have an impact. I'm also concerned with a Delirium reliant plan getting wrecked by splash hate for Dredge.
It doesn't depend if its 3 colour or 4 colour. At the beginning, on MTGO, these Death Shadow decks were all just 3 colour. Just recently they included white as the fourth colour to have Lingering Souls an the other white SB cards. That being said, Traverse is absolutely excellent in this deck. Tutoring up extra threats makes the deck incredibly resilient and consistant. And in order to have Traverse work you need those Baubles and Tarfires. All work together quite nicely, and goyf being more often a 6/7 or 7/8 rather than a 4/5 or 5/6 matters quite a bit, namely simply for the clock. If a given deck fetches + shocks only one time during a game, thats 17 life left, having a 5/6 goyf is still a 4 turn clock, but having a 6/7 goyf is a 3 turn clock. I think those differences matter very much. You should really watch those games of the GP Vancouver coverage. Traverse can do some crazy stuff, and delirium is often enabled turn 2 in this deck.
I went ahead and took the plunge with finishing Jund and Abzan. I picked two lists that were relatively normal that I can also make tweaks to once I get used to it. As for playing them it's definitely not something I'm used to. The closest to interaction that I've come to is playing U/B Teachings in Pauper or dropping a Thought-Knot Seer on someone in Modern. Actually using discard, card advantage and slowing my play down to figure out what the right lines of play are feels strange instead of figuring out the quickest way to go off with Ad Nauseam or count to 20 with Burn. Here's the lists that I am running. I'm still trying to get a hang of the formatting on the forum so hopefully I didn't butcher the lists.
Why did you choose to run MB Kitchen Finks? This is a card which usually needs a bit of a justification in order to run her MB, thats why I am asking. Also, 2 Fatal Push seems a bit too much. I personally would suggest to cut one in favour of the second decay. If you feel you need more pushes then its totally fine, its certainly no mistake. But maybe keep an eye on those pushes and see how well they actually perform for you. It could certainly be that your meta demands those pushes and I of course don't know that. But I want to bring it up anyway.
I was mostly looking at what how it would work in mainboard since it seems like it would be fine regardless. Now that I think about it I may drop it to the sideboard and bring in something else since he feels kind of clumsy game 1. Should I run Grim Flayer instead of Finks mainboard? The only issue I see is that Delirium may not be that effective and do I want his manipulation of the top while also running Bobs? I'm hesitant about running another Huntmaster or adding Grim Lavamancer mainboard. The amounts of Fatal Push also was up in the air but I settled on two mostly because I like the card. I will report back after a while and see if I need to drop some of them in favor of another Decay.
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Modern URGifts StormUR URBlue MoonUR URKiln FiendUR
I was mostly looking at what how it would work in mainboard since it seems like it would be fine regardless. Now that I think about it I may drop it to the sideboard and bring in something else since he feels kind of clumsy game 1. Should I run Grim Flayer instead of Finks mainboard? The only issue I see is that Delirium may not be that effective and do I want his manipulation of the top while also running Bobs? I'm hesitant about running another Huntmaster or adding Grim Lavamancer mainboard. The amounts of Fatal Push also was up in the air but I settled on two mostly because I like the card. I will report back after a while and see if I need to drop some of them in favor of another Decay.
I would recommend 13 creature suite, looking like the following:
4-drop of choice is Huntmaster right now. You can also do a 1/1 split of Kalitas and Huntmaster. Pia and Kiraan Nalaar is a fine choice if you feel you need something against Lingering Souls, aggro in general or in matchups where single target removal is prevalant.
As for Ooze, alternatively, you can do a 2/1 split of Ooze/Grim Lavamancer for example, if you want to run him.
Now that I realize it, absolutely play 24 lands. Always. As general land configuration you should run:
Now the Twilight Mire can certainly be another basic land if you need a bit more protection from Blood Moon or if you want to run BM yourself. If you add another forest, then change the fetchland configuration to: 4 Verdant, 3 Bloodstained, 2 Wooded. If you add a third swamp the initial one is good.
You can also add a Ghost Quarter instead of Twilight Mire, however, I would generally advice against it, as you want to run Kitchen Finks from the SB, and double green can sometimes be an issue. Ghost Quarter in general can be quite an issue as it doesn't produce coloured mana. But its possible to run it as a singleton at least.
This would leave you with 23 slots for your non creature spell configuration. If you really want to test the 2 Pushes, then you can try the one you thought of, its totally fine.
Just browse the whopping 4 pages of this new primer thread we have going here and have a look for yourself... your list does seem outdated.
Nobody runs Finks mainboard or Courser, period, anymore. Treetop Village is gone. Thrun is weak right now, Baloth is somewhat unimpressive and Sword won't cut it anymore. Ha ha, sword, cut.
Newest updates of the Primer include: Division of the decklist into maindeck template and sideboard template (each accessable via own link in the table of contents), polishing and structural fixes, adding of extra tips and tricks in the respective section.
I found that it was difficult to find a template decklist (which was "hidden" in the sideboard guide before) and thus made this quick change. I also indicated there, that its important and helpful for us (for specific decklist questions) to add the purpose/meta to the question.
Up next on my to do list: Adding of Infect matchup to the SB guide and more detailed matchup analysis in general for each matchups.
Are there any ideas on what to add besides all this? (And of course besides keeping it up to date generally)
Kitchen finks is definitely not a mainboard card but I side in it probably more than any card in the 15. I used to run 3x, but I cut 1 for a collective brutality.
No regular Jund or Junk in the SCG as of now, I wonder if people are all converting to Death Shadow.
I have to say, Shadow can straight up win free games that normal GBx would have to grind out, you get the right hands and you blow out those non-interactive spell based combo/ramp decks, too.
No regular Jund or Junk in the SCG as of now, I wonder if people are all converting to Death Shadow.
I guess so. Maybe regular Jund/Junk is actually not good enough to keep it up in that meta, I still don't know how I should think about the Jund vs. Death Shadow Jund matchup.
True as that may be, I've been crushing it every where I've played against it with Jund and Jeskai control. The deck requires the pilot's attention more than most decks. Even then, with enough removal and cheap threats, it's been pretty easy to handle so far. All of that is to say that I don't think the Death's Shadow deck is for most people. You live on a knife's edge with every decision that is made.
It definitely requires a lot of attention. I've cracked lands wrong or messed up with delirium big time. You're definitely always on the edge of losing in every game, even against the less interactive decks.
I feel like Shadow is the way to go right now since Bant Eldrazi, Eldrazi Tron, Tron decks and Scapeshift decks are so big. This is definitely where I'm going right now. Whether this deck is here to stay, I don't know. Never sleep on regular Jund.
In my experience, Shadow vs Jund feels very 50/50 to me, killing my threats is not as easy as you think, they're playing more discard spells and creatures out of burn range, so that leaves you with 4x LOTV, 2x Abrupt Decay and 3x terminates to usually handle the issue. Games 2 and 3 Lingering Souls comes in so LOTV gets worse
True as that may be, I've been crushing it every where I've played against it with Jund and Jeskai control. The deck requires the pilot's attention more than most decks. Even then, with enough removal and cheap threats, it's been pretty easy to handle so far. All of that is to say that I don't think the Death's Shadow deck is for most people. You live on a knife's edge with every decision that is made.
Do you play a couple of Fatal Pushes in your list for death shadow? Or just the regular 3 Terminates, 2 decays and 1 Pulse as answers for their threats?
@Sspeigel1987, I agree to an extent. The extent is what sort of hate you have for big mana decks. I'm actually running three Fulminator Mage and Surgical Extraction as my hate. Blood Moon doesn't work against EldraTron because they play Mind Stone and I wanted something consistent for all of those types of decks. So far it's been alright but I haven't had a huge amount of trouble with them in game 1's outside of Chalice of the Void.
Overall you're right though. They have a faster clock. The Death's Shadow deck i played against at my LGS had basically the same sideboard hate for big mana decks though (2 SE and 4 Fulminator Mage) and he beat up Tron pretty bad (saw the combo in both games).
True as that may be, I've been crushing it every where I've played against it with Jund and Jeskai control. The deck requires the pilot's attention more than most decks. Even then, with enough removal and cheap threats, it's been pretty easy to handle so far. All of that is to say that I don't think the Death's Shadow deck is for most people. You live on a knife's edge with every decision that is made.
Do you play a couple of Fatal Pushes in your list for death shadow? Or just the regular 3 Terminates, 2 decays and 1 Pulse as answers for their threats?
I have regular removal main deck and 1 Fatal Push, 1 Abrupt Decay and another Maelstrom Pulse in the sideboard on top of Damnation, Engineered Explosives and Anger of the Gods.
Had a game last night where I turn 1 thoughtseized a Goryos Vengeance, turn 2 played a thoughtseize to snag the second Goryos Vengeance and play Death Shadow, turn 3 played another Shadow, turn 4 killed him
The deck is gas. Surgical Extraction is fantastic for and against this deck. Surgical on Shadow/Goyf feels really bad.
Abzan Company seems like a good deck against death shadow from what I saw. They also get to play fatal push/surgical and have alot of great blockers for the matchup and can build up pretty fast.
But death shadow really has the speed advantage for those big mana decks, yeah.
Kitchen finks is definitely not a mainboard card but I side in it probably more than any card in the 15. I used to run 3x, but I cut 1 for a collective brutality.
No regular Jund or Junk in the SCG as of now, I wonder if people are all converting to Death Shadow.
I have to say, Shadow can straight up win free games that normal GBx would have to grind out, you get the right hands and you blow out those non-interactive spell based combo/ramp decks, too.
theres a junk deck in the finals actully
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It doesn't depend if its 3 colour or 4 colour. At the beginning, on MTGO, these Death Shadow decks were all just 3 colour. Just recently they included white as the fourth colour to have Lingering Souls an the other white SB cards. That being said, Traverse is absolutely excellent in this deck. Tutoring up extra threats makes the deck incredibly resilient and consistant. And in order to have Traverse work you need those Baubles and Tarfires. All work together quite nicely, and goyf being more often a 6/7 or 7/8 rather than a 4/5 or 5/6 matters quite a bit, namely simply for the clock. If a given deck fetches + shocks only one time during a game, thats 17 life left, having a 5/6 goyf is still a 4 turn clock, but having a 6/7 goyf is a 3 turn clock. I think those differences matter very much. You should really watch those games of the GP Vancouver coverage. Traverse can do some crazy stuff, and delirium is often enabled turn 2 in this deck.
Why did you choose to run MB Kitchen Finks? This is a card which usually needs a bit of a justification in order to run her MB, thats why I am asking. Also, 2 Fatal Push seems a bit too much. I personally would suggest to cut one in favour of the second decay. If you feel you need more pushes then its totally fine, its certainly no mistake. But maybe keep an eye on those pushes and see how well they actually perform for you. It could certainly be that your meta demands those pushes and I of course don't know that. But I want to bring it up anyway.
URGifts StormUR
URBlue MoonUR
URKiln FiendUR
BURStormBUR
I would recommend 13 creature suite, looking like the following:
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 4-drops
4-drop of choice is Huntmaster right now. You can also do a 1/1 split of Kalitas and Huntmaster. Pia and Kiraan Nalaar is a fine choice if you feel you need something against Lingering Souls, aggro in general or in matchups where single target removal is prevalant.
As for Ooze, alternatively, you can do a 2/1 split of Ooze/Grim Lavamancer for example, if you want to run him.
Now that I realize it, absolutely play 24 lands. Always. As general land configuration you should run:
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Twilight Mire
Now the Twilight Mire can certainly be another basic land if you need a bit more protection from Blood Moon or if you want to run BM yourself. If you add another forest, then change the fetchland configuration to: 4 Verdant, 3 Bloodstained, 2 Wooded. If you add a third swamp the initial one is good.
You can also add a Ghost Quarter instead of Twilight Mire, however, I would generally advice against it, as you want to run Kitchen Finks from the SB, and double green can sometimes be an issue. Ghost Quarter in general can be quite an issue as it doesn't produce coloured mana. But its possible to run it as a singleton at least.
This would leave you with 23 slots for your non creature spell configuration. If you really want to test the 2 Pushes, then you can try the one you thought of, its totally fine.
URGifts StormUR
URBlue MoonUR
URKiln FiendUR
BURStormBUR
Also, haven't updated since last July; anything new I should be looking at?
Here's what I'm currently running.
4x Dark Confidant
2x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
1x Courser of Kruphix
2x Kitchen Finks
1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
Spells: 17
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Terminate
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Kolaghan's Command
1x Maelstrom Pulse
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Chandra, Pyromaster
Lands: 24
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Blood Crypt
1x Stomping Grounds
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Bloodstained Mire
2x Wooded Foothills
1x Twilight Mire
3x Raging Ravine
2x Treetop Village
1x Swamp
1x Forest
1x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Fulminator Mage
2x Anger of the Gods
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
2x Crumble to Dust
2x Obstinate Baloth
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Slaughter Games
I have these lying around.
1x Courser of Kruphix
1x Kitchen Finks
2x Fulminator Mage
1x Olivia Voldaren
1x Huntmaster of the Fells
1x Stormbreath Dragon
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Back to Nature
2x Rakdos Charm
1x Jund Charm
Nobody runs Finks mainboard or Courser, period, anymore. Treetop Village is gone. Thrun is weak right now, Baloth is somewhat unimpressive and Sword won't cut it anymore. Ha ha, sword, cut.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I found that it was difficult to find a template decklist (which was "hidden" in the sideboard guide before) and thus made this quick change. I also indicated there, that its important and helpful for us (for specific decklist questions) to add the purpose/meta to the question.
Up next on my to do list: Adding of Infect matchup to the SB guide and more detailed matchup analysis in general for each matchups.
Are there any ideas on what to add besides all this? (And of course besides keeping it up to date generally)
But seriously, I think you've already done a ton. I'd just see what comes up organically.
Sure, here you go:
Maybe "Welcome to the Jund side, we have cookies" would be something? Nah, but probably not, this joke is too old at this point ^^
Its been a pleasure so far, really enjoyed it actually. Am happy that the content is plenty at this point
No regular Jund or Junk in the SCG as of now, I wonder if people are all converting to Death Shadow.
I have to say, Shadow can straight up win free games that normal GBx would have to grind out, you get the right hands and you blow out those non-interactive spell based combo/ramp decks, too.
I guess so. Maybe regular Jund/Junk is actually not good enough to keep it up in that meta, I still don't know how I should think about the Jund vs. Death Shadow Jund matchup.
I feel like Shadow is the way to go right now since Bant Eldrazi, Eldrazi Tron, Tron decks and Scapeshift decks are so big. This is definitely where I'm going right now. Whether this deck is here to stay, I don't know. Never sleep on regular Jund.
In my experience, Shadow vs Jund feels very 50/50 to me, killing my threats is not as easy as you think, they're playing more discard spells and creatures out of burn range, so that leaves you with 4x LOTV, 2x Abrupt Decay and 3x terminates to usually handle the issue. Games 2 and 3 Lingering Souls comes in so LOTV gets worse
Do you play a couple of Fatal Pushes in your list for death shadow? Or just the regular 3 Terminates, 2 decays and 1 Pulse as answers for their threats?
Overall you're right though. They have a faster clock. The Death's Shadow deck i played against at my LGS had basically the same sideboard hate for big mana decks though (2 SE and 4 Fulminator Mage) and he beat up Tron pretty bad (saw the combo in both games).
I have regular removal main deck and 1 Fatal Push, 1 Abrupt Decay and another Maelstrom Pulse in the sideboard on top of Damnation, Engineered Explosives and Anger of the Gods.
The deck is gas. Surgical Extraction is fantastic for and against this deck. Surgical on Shadow/Goyf feels really bad.
But death shadow really has the speed advantage for those big mana decks, yeah.
Decks that go wide feel rough
theres a junk deck in the finals actully