The main deck is fairly stock, dropping an Overgrown Tomb for a Breeding Pool, giving me at least 2 sources for each color of mana and making random Ghost Quarters a lot less of a problem. The sideboard is also fairly stock, replacing the Godless Shrine and 3 Lingering Souls with 2 Bitterblossom, Kolaghan's Command, and Collective Brutality. I've been happy with the Bitterblossoms and K-Command, but Brutality is still a toss up for me. The burn matchup tends to be very close, but it's also possible that slot should just be an Engineered Explosives or a Grafdigger's Cage. I was originally on a 1/1 split of Disdainful Stroke and Ceremonious Rejection, but after a couple leagues I felt that Stroke was just generally more useful.
Naturally, I haven't actually been matched against too many grindy matchups, because you just never play against the matchups you want to test against in Modern. I have definitely noticed the difference in the consistency of the mana base. I like having a K-Command in the 75 with Lantern picking up steam (and it felt necessary after losing Lingering Souls in the Affinity matchup).
Anyway, none of this is to say "Guys, I've cracked the code", but I know that this is a discussion that's come up and wanted to toss out my ideas for facilitating it.
I'm not sure how to feel about the bitter-blossom, the grixis clock is short if you drop that and get shadow where you want it.
I do think Hazoret replacing Ranger may be a great idea, I have one in the mail right now.
Once you actually play your grindy matchups tell us how it goes.
I don't like Bitterblossom in this shell at all, for the same reason that Dark Confidant is bad. It's good in some spots, but you'll topdeck it at 4 life far too often, and it doesn't help the Jeskai matchup at all.
Pre GP OKC I thought Hazoret was better than Ranger. After OKC I'm not so sure anymore. Genuinely uncertain. I played a no-white list in OKC and had a medium 5-4 finish (really 4-4 w/ one free win due to an opponent no-showing). I lost a lot of games to my opponents topdecking very well, but that's how you lose games in the 8 discard spell deck. Not having white may have cost me one match on the day and I didn't play against any of the Field of Ruin / Ghost Quarter decks anyway, so the white would have been better. The MTGO metagame was just very inbred and I probably put a bit too much stock into it. My build did look pretty good against the top 8, though of course not that great against all of the UWR decks at the top tables / in the top 32. I'll have a tournament report w/ decklist and other thoughts written up some time this week.
I agree, the biggest difference between Bitterblossom/Confidant and Souls is that Souls is great on turn 3 or 13. My original sketch for the non-white list involved running 3 Dark Confidant in the sideboard with the intention of swapping out Street Wraith when swapping them in, but that seemed a little too extreme for a first pass. I arrived at Bitterblossom after looking around for something that could do a better Lingering Souls impression than Pia and Kiran.
I think that cards like Bitterblossom and Confidant alter your play patterns a bit, where you want to be a bit more conservative with your life total early on, and I'll admit I don't know if that's good or bad. Not shocking and then having those cards either not resolve or not drain enough health could be a very real problem. It's very possible that I'm chasing ghosts and that Lingering Souls is just the best card for the job, but Modern is (presumably) kind of set in it's current place until the Pro Tour, so I figured I'd do some experimenting in the meantime.
Looking forward to your report Spooly, I've also been having issues with the MTGO metagame being very different from the paper one lately.
I'm not doing well with this deck. Burn has been difficult for me to navigate in general with shadow decks
I lost tonight with my opponent at 1, I couldn't get that third land to cast temur and hold up stub.
So, I've done poorly 3 out of 4 nights. Kinda bummed out, I'm really not catching on to this deck compared to most midrange decks. I still lack experience in grixis shadow, too.
I'm pretty sure that most of us would agree here that this deck is quite difficult to pilot. The tight rope you have to walk with shadow can be difficult (every single fetch/shock decision can have a huge impact on the progress of the game) and you have small interactions with bauble and street wraith that can definitely add up over the course of the game. In addition to this we are playing a 4/5c manabase, have a tutor effect for added complexity, are often casting multiple discard spells a game (making incorrect decisions here can also punish you a lot), and our mulligan decisions can be quite difficult (how many cantrips makes a 1 lander keepable? Is a hand with no threats keepable? what about a hand with only threats and little interaction.. etc)
The deck is fricken hard to play man. Keep working at it, I'm sure you will get it eventually.
I've been playing discard decks for years, I feel incredibly comfortable with that aspect
It's definitely the tight-rope aspect, and the fetching/life loss for sure.
Deck is tough for sure, I'm used to catching on to a deck after two weeks or so. I'm a little bummed by my lack of progress, and performing poorly against burn is one my hugest fears, I've never gone to an IQ or PPTQ and avoided this matchup.
Brad Nelsons new article was a huge bummer, too.
The deck is good, I'm just really struggling to play it well after years of experience with midrange decks in modern
Yeah, would've been useful if you at least linked to it so people know what you're talking about..
It's on Starcity and you have to be a premium member to see the article.
He basically just says he's giving up on fair decks and that he doesn't even want to touch Shadow decks because people have figured it out and it doesn't get free wins anymore. I know he got 1st place with it on something months ago so he's not completely salty. Him and Duke are THE GBx players so it was a disappointing read
Yeah, would've been useful if you at least linked to it so people know what you're talking about..
It's on Starcity and you have to be a premium member to see the article.
He basically just says he's giving up on fair decks and that he doesn't even want to touch Shadow decks because people have figured it out and it doesn't get free wins anymore. I know he got 1st place with it on something months ago so he's not completely salty. Him and Duke are THE GBx players so it was a disappointing read
Oh no, better sell my deck and play Tron because one pro player is upset about not getting free wins anymore.
Come on man - this deck is exactly what we need to beat unfair big mana decks whilst still being able to put up more than a decent fight against the fair ones. Stick with it.
Hey guys, I’ve been playing this deck for a fairly long time and did kinda well at tournaments at the local store. We have a lot of Tron players here and I always lose to Tron recently. I feel that Fulminator Mage may be better than Disdainful Stroke against Tron. Sometimes they just have multiple threats in hand and countering one of those just doesn’t do much. IMO Land destruction is just more effective and traversing for F mage sounds good to me. When I played Jund shadow with only white splash a few months ago, I rarely have trouble with Tron bc of F Mage. Spooly said it’s clunky in his article and I do know that sometimes we just don’t hit the 3rd land, but it’s really something when we have the 3rd land. I’m not sure tho, but I’ll be running 2 in the SB for now, just to test it out again.
Yeah, would've been useful if you at least linked to it so people know what you're talking about..
It's on Starcity and you have to be a premium member to see the article.
He basically just says he's giving up on fair decks and that he doesn't even want to touch Shadow decks because people have figured it out and it doesn't get free wins anymore. I know he got 1st place with it on something months ago so he's not completely salty. Him and Duke are THE GBx players so it was a disappointing read
Oh no, better sell my deck and play Tron because one pro player is upset about not getting free wins anymore.
Come on man - this deck is exactly what we need to beat unfair big mana decks whilst still being able to put up more than a decent fight against the fair ones. Stick with it.
I never said I agree
I'm sticking with it, I'm just not used to doing so poorly
Hey guys, I’ve been playing this deck for a fairly long time and did kinda well at tournaments at the local store. We have a lot of Tron players here and I always lose to Tron recently. I feel that Fulminator Mage may be better than Disdainful Stroke against Tron. Sometimes they just have multiple threats in hand and countering one of those just doesn’t do much. IMO Land destruction is just more effective and traversing for F mage sounds good to me. When I played Jund shadow with only white splash a few months ago, I rarely have trouble with Tron bc of F Mage. Spooly said it’s clunky in his article and I do know that sometimes we just don’t hit the 3rd land, but it’s really something when we have the 3rd land. I’m not sure tho, but I’ll be running 2 in the SB for now, just to test it out again.
Fulminator Mage is really underwhelming against ETron. Battle Rage and Stroke are our main win conditions against them and you really want to be casting LOTV at 3 mana if anything. I think Fulminator is a trap.
When Shadow first got popular I ran an Abzan version with 2 Flayers in the main and was really happy with them. I'm not sure exactly what kind of meta you'd want to play them in, but it's definitely a viable option if you're looking for more maindeck threats.
Reid's games against Grixis Shadow make a very strong argument for Lingering Souls over any of the cards I was talking about on the last page.
Yeah, I get really confused every time I see someone speculating about cutting Souls. It's the best possible card we have to improve our worst matchups, I can't possibly imagine not running it.
New to the sub here, but I played a 4-color version of the deck this weekend at GPOKC. I went 7-2 day one with this list (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/858562), but had worse luck day two – ending the tournament 9-6. Decided to drop the white in the sideboard for the GP, as I hated my sideboard containing a land and could not justify running a mainboard Godless Shrine. The Lingering Souls were also extremely underwhelming in testing leading up to the event. I managed to play against Grixis Shadow three times over the course of the tournament finishing up 2-1 versus the deck, and though it is a small sample size, I can say that the matchup is not as bad as it appears on paper. The only sideboard card that was pretty trash was Golgri Charm. I was expecting a lot more Supreme Verdict decks as well as Company decks, which is how it ended up in there. Have been considering a Snapcaster in its place. I would love any advice or suggestions to further improve this list.
I'm 200% sold on Hazoret over Ranger in this deck. She's explosive, surprisingly good against Lantern, is a huge trump in the mirror, and is just generally a pain to deal with. She does die to Path and Dismember, but your opponent usually has to fight through some number of Goyfs and Shadows before you play her, so I've had good experiences with her surviving to end the game. The combination of Goyf/Shadow, Hazoret, planeswalkers, and Lingering Souls makes this deck very difficult to answer post-board in grindy matchups.
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I do think Hazoret replacing Ranger may be a great idea, I have one in the mail right now.
Once you actually play your grindy matchups tell us how it goes.
I don't like Bitterblossom in this shell at all, for the same reason that Dark Confidant is bad. It's good in some spots, but you'll topdeck it at 4 life far too often, and it doesn't help the Jeskai matchup at all.
Pre GP OKC I thought Hazoret was better than Ranger. After OKC I'm not so sure anymore. Genuinely uncertain. I played a no-white list in OKC and had a medium 5-4 finish (really 4-4 w/ one free win due to an opponent no-showing). I lost a lot of games to my opponents topdecking very well, but that's how you lose games in the 8 discard spell deck. Not having white may have cost me one match on the day and I didn't play against any of the Field of Ruin / Ghost Quarter decks anyway, so the white would have been better. The MTGO metagame was just very inbred and I probably put a bit too much stock into it. My build did look pretty good against the top 8, though of course not that great against all of the UWR decks at the top tables / in the top 32. I'll have a tournament report w/ decklist and other thoughts written up some time this week.
I think that cards like Bitterblossom and Confidant alter your play patterns a bit, where you want to be a bit more conservative with your life total early on, and I'll admit I don't know if that's good or bad. Not shocking and then having those cards either not resolve or not drain enough health could be a very real problem. It's very possible that I'm chasing ghosts and that Lingering Souls is just the best card for the job, but Modern is (presumably) kind of set in it's current place until the Pro Tour, so I figured I'd do some experimenting in the meantime.
Looking forward to your report Spooly, I've also been having issues with the MTGO metagame being very different from the paper one lately.
I lost tonight with my opponent at 1, I couldn't get that third land to cast temur and hold up stub.
So, I've done poorly 3 out of 4 nights. Kinda bummed out, I'm really not catching on to this deck compared to most midrange decks. I still lack experience in grixis shadow, too.
The deck is fricken hard to play man. Keep working at it, I'm sure you will get it eventually.
It's definitely the tight-rope aspect, and the fetching/life loss for sure.
Deck is tough for sure, I'm used to catching on to a deck after two weeks or so. I'm a little bummed by my lack of progress, and performing poorly against burn is one my hugest fears, I've never gone to an IQ or PPTQ and avoided this matchup.
Brad Nelsons new article was a huge bummer, too.
The deck is good, I'm just really struggling to play it well after years of experience with midrange decks in modern
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
It's on Starcity and you have to be a premium member to see the article.
He basically just says he's giving up on fair decks and that he doesn't even want to touch Shadow decks because people have figured it out and it doesn't get free wins anymore. I know he got 1st place with it on something months ago so he's not completely salty. Him and Duke are THE GBx players so it was a disappointing read
Oh no, better sell my deck and play Tron because one pro player is upset about not getting free wins anymore.
Come on man - this deck is exactly what we need to beat unfair big mana decks whilst still being able to put up more than a decent fight against the fair ones. Stick with it.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I never said I agree
I'm sticking with it, I'm just not used to doing so poorly
Fulminator Mage is really underwhelming against ETron. Battle Rage and Stroke are our main win conditions against them and you really want to be casting LOTV at 3 mana if anything. I think Fulminator is a trap.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Reid's games against Grixis Shadow make a very strong argument for Lingering Souls over any of the cards I was talking about on the last page.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki