Has anyone read the article of GerryT on SCG about our deck? Did he suggest something cool?
It's basically a rehashing of everything we've discussed here. Some of his sideboarding choices don't agree with what people here have said, though, which is interesting. I might try his ideas and see how it works.
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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
most of the top pros playing grixis shadows at SCGCHAR. even tom ross. expect to see a lot of them at the top tables in Vegas and probably good to think about mirror breakers..
For this matchup you don't have much to bring it. My personal plan is to upgrade my Fatal Pushes into Terminates. I play 3Push1Terminate with 2 Terminate on the sideboard. I bring out 2 Push for the Terminate. Ceremonious Rejection is good even if they have Cavern. You have to do what you can. You can also bring it the Surgical Extraction if you have cards to take out. If you TS and then Extract one of the big guys it will be really hard for them to win. If you happen to kill a Smasher or counter it and then Extract it you will set yourself really far. IoK is really bad. Stubborn Denial is half-decent. Bolts are horrible.
I've seen people recommend siding in Surgical Extractions against Eldrazi Tron before and I'm not sold on this yet. Eldrazi Tron has numerous roads to winning the game without Smasher and we go down by one card by playing Surgical Extraction to make it easier for them. I would side in EE and Rakdos Charm to diversify our ways of getting rid of Chalice, Baslisk's Collar and (with Rakdos Charm) Batterskull. Maybe 3 Stubborn Denials is enough then, we don't want to be too reactive. Fatal Push is still relevant enough against their Thoughtknot Seers and Walking Ballistas, so keeping 2 of them in after boarding is justifiable. I would cut a cantrip to make room for the last card: -2 Bolt, -2 IOK, -1 Push, -1 Scour, +3 Rejection, +1 Charm, +1 EE, +1 Denial.
Storm
This is the type of deck that we're naturally good against. Extractions are really good here. The remaining gy hate as well. All the discard is good. All the removal is important so don't cut it. Terminates cost a bit too much, specially since Remand is a thing. Staticaster is cute to deal with the Goblin Tokens but I don't really think it's how you win it. You don't win by dealing with them comboing off. You just don't let them do it at all. I wouldn't also cut the SW. I'd cut a TScour because we're in no rush of doing T2 Delve. I'd probably cut a Snapcaster as well. The Terminates would go out with the Kommands. I'm not 100% sure on this matchup thought.
OUT:
* 2 Terminate
* 2 Kommand
* 1 Snapcaster
* 2/3 Thought Scour
* 0/1 Street Wraith
I used to bring in Surgical Extractions against Storm, but I'm not 100% convinced of it anymore. Unlike some other combo decks, they don't rely so much on a single card. We would need to hit Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot with Surgical Extraction(s), while we keep them from going off at the same time. To put our Surgical Extraction plan into action, we would have to focus on getting their kill cards in their graveyard with our discard spells, which is not what we usually want to do. Even if we get their first kill card, they can still combo off with the cards we let them keep and draw into the other one. While I also think that we are favored in this matchup, it will not be super easy if they know what they are doing. So I feel we need a good mix of answers here instead of a singular "You lose" button.
Instead of the Extractions, I would side in EE and (EDIT:) Anger of the Gods, because these get rid of their goblin tokens after they have invested most of their hand into storming them into play. This will usually be their primary game plan against us, because they are aware that we pack enough graveyard hate to disrupt their PiF combo. EE and Anger are also decent emergency options for killing their mana accelerators should we not draw enough dedicated removal spells (this is why I like them over Staticaster). I would keep one Terminate, it's still very good. They run 7-8 mana accelerators and about as many cantrips as we do, so I'd like to stay close to 7-8 spot removal spells. Now that I'm thinking about it, this might actually be an argument for running Surgical Extraction again. Extracting one creature from their deck is much easier than hitting both of their kill spells and we would need less creature removal. But we need to get the creature in their graveyard first and it does not interrupt their combo. Hm, I'm undecided on that one. As a sidenote, getting double red for Anger can be tough while playing around Blood Moon. This is one of the reasons I prefer Kozilek's Return over Anger unless I expect to run into Dredge.
Shaving one Snapcaster Mage is reasonable, because we will sometimes not find a window for casting it until they try to finally go off. I would shave 2 Street Wraiths, 1 Thought Scour, 1 Serum Visions. Street Wraith gets worse as the game proceeds, because we don't want to lower our life total much below 9 against Grapeshot. Fetching for more lands and Thoughtseizing is generally a better investment of life points in the long run. Thought Scour is great because we can cast it in their end step, but we don't need more than one delve threat. At the same time, we REALLY want one delve threat (or a DS, but a delve threat is even better because we can keep our life total up) early to fully enable Stubborn Denial. So cutting multiple Thought Scours seems rough. I rarely cut a Serum Visions, but in this matchup we sometimes cannot afford to tap for U during our turn. Getting a hand full of Serum Visions can then be awkward.
What's everyone else's opinion of the Burn matchup? I keep hearing commentators and pros say it's a good matchup for us, but I've found the matchup to be really difficult. If the Burn player plays right, they don't give you the chance to swing with a big Shadow. Maybe I've just had some bad variance in my matches against them, I've haven't played Burn a lot recently.
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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
I already stated the mu in my review. If the Burn player isn't good, then it's our best match-up. If it's good, it's between our three worst.
I absolutely agree with this assessement.
I don't agree with the two of you. I have played matches against at least 10 different burn players on MTGO and usually went 2-1 or 1-2. Maybe I dodged all the good burn players, but I doubt that I got so lucky. Winning game 1 can be tough but is often doable. Game 2 and game 3 I think we are favored.
If we were willing to dedicate as many sideboard slots to beating burn than some of us are willing to dedicate to beating Dredge, burn would be one of our easier matchups, whereas Dredge is a tough matchup even with six hate cards. UWx is a nightmare and there is little we can do about it in terms of sideboarding, so it's clearly worse than Burn. Abzan with maindeck Lingering Souls feels like an uphill battle as well. LtLH often doesn't work as advertised for me in this matchup due to her nasty habit of abruptly decaying or being celestially purged at the worst possible times. Many of the more fringe decks are inherently good against us, including 8-Rack, Mono Black devotion, Wr Prison and even Elves.
If the hype around the DS decks continues, new archetypes intended to rip us apart will be spawned. My local metagame has already turned unfriendly with multiple control decks coming out of nowhere only because of us. I would prefer a meta full of burn decks instead of those any day.
If we were willing to dedicate as many sideboard slots to beating burn than some of us are willing to dedicate to beating Dredge, burn would be one of our easier matchups
Except, we don't. we don't have that many slots. And it matters, a lot, having hate cards in this match-up.
I agree with you in this case. But apparently, we fear burn not enough, even though burn and variants of it (Goblins, Naya Zoo etc.) make up a considerable share of the metagame.
I have played matches against at least 10 different burn players on MTGO and usually went 2-1 or 1-2. Maybe I dodged all the good burn players, but I doubt that I got so lucky. Winning game 1 can be tough but is often doable. Game 2 and game 3 I think we are favored
90% of Burn players are bad at Magic. I don't say so because of anything, but people who knows (and have time to learn how to) play this game usually opt for more interactive decks. They just throw burn spell at you as soon as they see a window, without noticing that they're doing our game. Seriously, if you test against an experienced Burn player you'll see immediately the difference.
I don't think this is 100% true for MTGO. The optimal burn deck with Eidolons and fetches costs more than 300 tix on MTGO. I don't think many inexperienced players will invest so much in a deck if they can have a 30 tix Elves deck instead, which is even more non-interactive and will thus win them more games if they are bad players. Eldrazi Tron and Gx Tron decks probably also appeal to this kind of player, if they got all the tix. I've seen some hilariously bad plays from Tron and Eldrazi Tron players recently that I can't explain otherwise.
I'm not even sure that holding back burn spells against us is a good way to win for burn. Against Jund DS it may be, but once the Snapcaster engine gets online, they are in a pretty rough spot against Stubborn Denial. Eidolon can sometimes ruin our day, but it can fire back at them, because it allows us to customize our life total.
I find the version with two bolts great for learning to play the deck. I feels smoother to play against the general field than anything else I have tried. I'm back on two bolts currently, so I guess I'm still learning.
yup was coming in to say this. Top 8 is pretty much representative of what I expect Vegas to be. Plus Living End which I think is a pretty underrated deck right now
ancestral visions in a SCG Classic list. I understand that Grixis Delver used to have this to side that in for a faux grixis control imitation in certain matchups. I don't like having a dead card in the first 3 turns when your turn 1-3 can be very impactful even in grindy matchups. Think I'd rather have the immediate payoff from painful truths, if that's the direction. Thoughts?
ancestral visions in a SCG Classic list. I understand that Grixis Delver used to have this to side that in for a faux grixis control imitation in certain matchups. I don't like having a dead card in the first 3 turns when your turn 1-3 can be very impactful even in grindy matchups. Think I'd rather have the immediate payoff from painful truths, if that's the direction. Thoughts?
I don't think Painful Truths or Ancestral are what this deck wants. Ancestral for the reasons you mentioned. Truths because we have to precisely control our life total, and cards that are terrible if your life total is too low will often be dead, even in grindy matchups. I don't know how many times me and my opponent end up topdecking each other at 3-4 life, but it feels like a lot.
no, I agree with what you are saying spooly. Just thinking out loud here for mirror breaking techs. That's why death's shadow isn't interested in playing Confidants etc either. For those "Grindy" matchups I think I'd prefer other multi-purpose cards like Last Hope and Kcommand, but those are good but not great in the matchup.
Still secretly testing Leyline of the Voids to break the Shadows and the Dredge matchups (as well as Living End and random nonsense). Realize the lack of synergy with Snapcaster but Extractions and Spellbombs are basically speedbumps vs. Dredge and Shadows whereas Leyline is as close to a knockout punch as they come. Was thinking of putting a singleton on the board as to have a 10% chance of drawing a knockout punch while minimizing the chance of having a dead draw late game.
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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
Instead of the Extractions, I would side in EE and (EDIT:) Anger of the Gods, because these get rid of their goblin tokens after they have invested most of their hand into storming them into play. This will usually be their primary game plan against us, because they are aware that we pack enough graveyard hate to disrupt their PiF combo. EE and Anger are also decent emergency options for killing their mana accelerators should we not draw enough dedicated removal spells (this is why I like them over Staticaster). I would keep one Terminate, it's still very good. They run 7-8 mana accelerators and about as many cantrips as we do, so I'd like to stay close to 7-8 spot removal spells. Now that I'm thinking about it, this might actually be an argument for running Surgical Extraction again. Extracting one creature from their deck is much easier than hitting both of their kill spells and we would need less creature removal. But we need to get the creature in their graveyard first and it does not interrupt their combo. Hm, I'm undecided on that one. As a sidenote, getting double red for Anger can be tough while playing around Blood Moon. This is one of the reasons I prefer Kozilek's Return over Anger unless I expect to run into Dredge.
Shaving one Snapcaster Mage is reasonable, because we will sometimes not find a window for casting it until they try to finally go off. I would shave 2 Street Wraiths, 1 Thought Scour, 1 Serum Visions. Street Wraith gets worse as the game proceeds, because we don't want to lower our life total much below 9 against Grapeshot. Fetching for more lands and Thoughtseizing is generally a better investment of life points in the long run. Thought Scour is great because we can cast it in their end step, but we don't need more than one delve threat. At the same time, we REALLY want one delve threat (or a DS, but a delve threat is even better because we can keep our life total up) early to fully enable Stubborn Denial. So cutting multiple Thought Scours seems rough. I rarely cut a Serum Visions, but in this matchup we sometimes cannot afford to tap for U during our turn. Getting a hand full of Serum Visions can then be awkward.
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
Thanks WraithPK!
Here's my list. Having troubles loading it.
LAND
4 x Polluted Delta
4 x Bloodstained Mire
1 x Steam Vents
2 x Watery Grave
2 x Blood Crypt
1 x Island
1 x Swamp
CREATURES
4 x Snapcaster Mage
4 x Death’s Shadows
3 x Tasiger, the Golden Fang
1 x Gurmag Angler
REMOVAL
3 x Fatal Push
2 x Kolaghan’s Command
2 x Terminate
2 x Lightning Bolt
PROTECTION
4 x Thoughtseize
2 x Stubborn Denial
2 x Inquisition of Kozilek
DRAW
4 x Thought Scour
4 x Serum Visions
If we were willing to dedicate as many sideboard slots to beating burn than some of us are willing to dedicate to beating Dredge, burn would be one of our easier matchups, whereas Dredge is a tough matchup even with six hate cards. UWx is a nightmare and there is little we can do about it in terms of sideboarding, so it's clearly worse than Burn. Abzan with maindeck Lingering Souls feels like an uphill battle as well. LtLH often doesn't work as advertised for me in this matchup due to her nasty habit of abruptly decaying or being celestially purged at the worst possible times. Many of the more fringe decks are inherently good against us, including 8-Rack, Mono Black devotion, Wr Prison and even Elves.
If the hype around the DS decks continues, new archetypes intended to rip us apart will be spawned. My local metagame has already turned unfriendly with multiple control decks coming out of nowhere only because of us. I would prefer a meta full of burn decks instead of those any day.
I'm not even sure that holding back burn spells against us is a good way to win for burn. Against Jund DS it may be, but once the Snapcaster engine gets online, they are in a pretty rough spot against Stubborn Denial. Eidolon can sometimes ruin our day, but it can fire back at them, because it allows us to customize our life total.
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
Turn zero Leyline of Sanctity followed by Shadow not having the counter spell in hand when Ad Nauseum goes off?
Postboard, they can cast Dromoka. But yeah, it's hard for them.
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
The rest of the t8 is dredge, living end, 2 eldrazi tron.
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
Yeah, Bolt is just not good right now. I've been advocating for 0 bolt for some time, with a short relapse where I played 1.
I don't think Painful Truths or Ancestral are what this deck wants. Ancestral for the reasons you mentioned. Truths because we have to precisely control our life total, and cards that are terrible if your life total is too low will often be dead, even in grindy matchups. I don't know how many times me and my opponent end up topdecking each other at 3-4 life, but it feels like a lot.
Still secretly testing Leyline of the Voids to break the Shadows and the Dredge matchups (as well as Living End and random nonsense). Realize the lack of synergy with Snapcaster but Extractions and Spellbombs are basically speedbumps vs. Dredge and Shadows whereas Leyline is as close to a knockout punch as they come. Was thinking of putting a singleton on the board as to have a 10% chance of drawing a knockout punch while minimizing the chance of having a dead draw late game.