This is the last list I ran through a league (went 2-3 - haven't been doing so great since that 5-0 tbh, though part of it is certainly me playing like garbage on MTGO). I'm not claiming this is THE 75, but this is at least where my head is at right now. I want to try a Maelstrom Pulse, for example, and still want a 2nd Abrade.
Roughly, this is how I've been SBing. First, an important general rule: Keep at least 2 Street Wraiths in when you're racing aggro decks. You NEED to turn Traverse on.
If you aren't taking 1-2 2 minute turns per game, you're doing it wrong. Slow down. Think.
Affinity:
-1 Street Wraith, -4 Thoughtseize,
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Can shave another Street Wraith or a Stub for Fulminator; not sure if that's good or not.
Humans:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Thoughtseize, -1 Manamorphose
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Watch out for Dire Fleet Daredevil blowing out your delirium + killing one of your creatures at the same time.
I'm not actually sure what the right mix of cuts is here, but definitely the Stubs, then the other 3 cards are the ones to cut in some quantity. You almost always should take Thalia with discard spells before they can cast it just because of how much it slows you down. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can line up your removal better if you take something else. Thalia is a killer. Also, pay attention to what they can do with their Meddling Mages. If you're not careful, you'll walk into getting key cards in your hand turned off.
BR Hollow One:
-3 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +2 Nihil Spellbomb
They should bring Leyline of the Void in against you, so you can't rely too much on Traverse. Priority 1 is keeping them from having an explosive draw. Take their enablers, kill the Flamebreak Adepts, get Spellbomb into play to stop fast Anglers, Phoenixes, and Bloodghasts. Priority 2 is making sure your removal lines up correctly. You only have 2 Dismembers and 1 Abrade, and they have 4 Hollow Ones and some number of delve threats. You don't want to blow a Dismember on something else if you can help it. Priority 3 is to not die to burn and other forms of reach. Keep Stub up, play Brutality intelligently, and remember Adept has Menace. Priority 0 is to kill them before they kill you. They typically can't stop your combo kill, short of bolting you a couple times to just kill you.
BGx midrange (Jund, Abzan, etc):
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Inquisition of Kozilek
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage
If they're heavy on mana denial, maybe only bring one Jace in. If you know they don't have important 4 drops, cut a Thoughtseize instead of IoK. You can also board in Abrade to kill Dark Confidant, manlands, Tireless Trackers, small Oozes and Grim Flayers, etc. You can keep a Stub in if you like, but they're very inconsistent here. You're kind of trying to get under these guys, but that doesn't really work, so plan B is to hope to topdeck better than them / find Jace on a stable board. (Still not sure if Jace is a great plan here, but there's only one way to find out).
Uxy Control:
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -3 Fatal Push
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage, +1 Stubborn Denial
This one depends a lot on their deck, so the above plan is very generic. If they have lots of burn, cut some Thoughtseizes and change your removal mix so you don't have Dismember. If they don't, you can leave all 4 Wraiths in. If they have creatures, leave more removal in. Decay usually stays because of Search for Azcanta, Runed Halo, Detention Sphere, Spreading Seas, small Gideon, etc. If they have a pile of burn, you can cut all of the Wraiths and bring in the Spellbombs to compensate. It may even be a plus to slow down their Searches and Snapcasters. In general, you don't want the game to go long and you can actually get under them and stay under them as long as they don't have too many creatures. You can leave a single TBR in for this reason. Sometimes it is correct to put yourself dead to Supreme Verdict because the long game is so difficult to win. The caveat is that if you can force them to dump resources defending against your early onslaught, then stick a Jace, they are in A LOT of trouble.
Hopefully this one is obvious. Don't be afraid to counter stuff like Relic of Progenitus with Delay - if Goyf is your threat, he needs to keep beating down!
You want to keep removal in against both of these, though for different reasons. This makes IoK weaker. Abrade kills all the creature enablers + Amulet in Amulet, and Chalice + smaller creatures in ETron. Stub counters Pact in Amulet (and Pact for Hornet Queen is your nightmare), and stuff like All is Dust and Karn in ETron. Grim Lavamancer or Liliana might be good vs. Amulet to pick off their enablers, but they're both slow.
Death's Shadow:
-4 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial
+2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Try to prioritize killing Godless Shrine specifically with Fulminator, especially vs. Traverse builds. If Lingering Souls resolves, it's still a major problem. Against Grixis, they may not have it, so you can blow your Fulminators early if you have a good spot. With this SB config, you'll have to blow a lot of Traverse on lands early. That's OK. I'm not really comfortable taking all of the Wraiths out, to be honest, but I'm not sure what the alternative cuts should be.
You need to go fast. They have two major types of hands: weak ones with Leyline, and strong ones without. If they have the former, you just need to kill them ASAP, so you can't afford to cut too many Traverse enablers. If they have the latter, you want to have as much interaction as possible to slow them down. It doesn't feel bad, to be honest, just prioritize setting up to kill them over not dying. And realize that they have unbeatable draws, so don't try to play around those.
Dredge:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -2 Fatal Push
+1 Stubborn Denial, +2 Delay, +2 Nihil Spellbomb
All of the countermagic is mostly for Conflagrate, though occasionally Delay on Stinkweed Imp will be gamebreaking, and countering Cathartic Reunion and such is always good. Discard quickly gets bad against them, so you don't want too much. Just set up to combo kill them ASAP. You could bring in Lavaman and Liliana to pick off their smaller guys, but that's very slow so I'm not a fan. If you have Sweepers in the SB, they come in here.
All that said, these are definitely tentative SB plans, and I probably do things slightly differently every time I play the same matchup.
That's a massive help, much appreciated. Thank you! Gotta get those reps in, Manamorphose changes the gameplay quite a bit more than I had anticipated. You've sold me on Abrade too - can't believe I'm cutting a Grudge for it but it seems correct in this metagame.
That's a massive help, much appreciated. Thank you! Gotta get those reps in, Manamorphose changes the gameplay quite a bit more than I had anticipated. You've sold me on Abrade too - can't believe I'm cutting a Grudge for it but it seems correct in this metagame.
To be honest, this is roughly how I've always been playing the deck. Just with Manamorphose it gets to be a little more all in. I've been calling this deck Splinter Twin since I won SCG Regionals with it. Yes, we can grind a bit if we want to, and so could Twin with Snapcasters and Keranos. But plan A is to combo them. We're even a dog to Jund without a good way to fix the matchup, just like Twin
Abrade is so flexible it's kind of insane. I've seriously boarded it in against Jund to help prevent Bob from going off. Just so many applications. And it even has matchups where it's not just good, but great - BR Hollow One is the main spot.
Edit: I view Grudge and Spellbomb as the substitutes here. Both are fairly strong hate cards for specific matchups with some other applications, so you pick which one you want based on the metagame, then go from there. Abrade just makes the sting of losing Grudge a little less bad.
Another backdoor SB option worth mentioning: since Hazoret has haste, it isn't the worst to bring in against matchups where you're racing. This mostly matters if you have a ton of things to side out, so stuff like Burn, Humans, etc. Pre-Delay I would bring Hazzy in vs burn just to get more bad cards out of my deck, but with Delay over Stroke that's less of an issue. But it's an option to consider if you start tweaking SB numbers, or want to get all 4 Thoughtseizes out of the deck.
Never thought of Hazoret that way but it makes perfect sense.
Re: Pulse - I've always been a huge fan of the card for its flexibility. What would you cut for it (and the second Abrade) if you went through with that plan? The Jaces? Spellbomb + Grim perhaps?
I've been thinking of shaving a Collective Brutality honestly. Having Delay in the SB means we don't have to have as many dedicated anti-burn cards, so the question becomes does Brutality cover enough other bases to be worth it over something else? Switching a Brutality to an Abrade is pretty easy to do I think, but switching one to a Pulse is a big harder because Pulse is much slower when you want cheap removal.
We're even a dog to Jund without a good way to fix the matchup, just like Twin
I've been playing your morphose version without blue and I've actually found the Jund matchup quite winnable. I'm playing lingering souls in the board and that certainly helps the matchup, but I find that as long as we get off to a decent start they can have trouble keeping up with us since we do so much more in the first few turns than they do and many of their cards actually line up quite poorly against ours in terms of immediate impact on the board. Bolt does virtually nothing except in multiples to our face, scooze requires more investment in mana than they can realistically afford to make it into a credible blocker/attacker, and BBE does draw into a card but until they have 2 on the field to double block isn't really a relevant body at all. If we go discard into threat into interaction + another threat I find the matchup to be totally reasonable as long as we don't fall behind on board, which is doable because of how clunky their deck is compared to ours.
We're even a dog to Jund without a good way to fix the matchup, just like Twin
I've been playing your morphose version without blue and I've actually found the Jund matchup quite winnable. I'm playing lingering souls in the board and that certainly helps the matchup, but I find that as long as we get off to a decent start they can have trouble keeping up with us since we do so much more in the first few turns than they do and many of their cards actually line up quite poorly against ours in terms of immediate impact on the board. Bolt does virtually nothing except in multiples to our face, scooze requires more investment in mana than they can realistically afford to make it into a credible blocker/attacker, and BBE does draw into a card but until they have 2 on the field to double block isn't really a relevant body at all. If we go discard into threat into interaction + another threat I find the matchup to be totally reasonable as long as we don't fall behind on board, which is doable because of how clunky their deck is compared to ours.
I find that they have too much removal for us to consistently take advantage of their clunky hands, and then they kill us with any old thing. Including manlands. They actually go wide fairly easily due to BBE + manlands, and can often set up an alpha strike with lethal even if our 1-2 creatures are massive compared to theirs. Lingering Souls certainly helps, and would help in the blue build, but I'm making a judgement call about were to spend my deck/sb slots. The matchup is still winnable though, just not in our favor. To be favored in the matchup though, I think we'd have to be pretty all in Souls and some other grindy elements, and that just doesn't seem worth it relative to the metagame.
Last question for now Spooly: how do you sideboard against the following?
- Eldrazi Taxes
- Ponza
- Living End
Thanks!
Living End is straightforward: cut the removal, bring in anything at all that interacts.
-3 Push, -2 Dismember, -2 Decay
+1 Stub, +2 Delay, +2 Spellbomb, +2 Brutality
If you wanted to leave removal in to try to beat a small living end, it has to be Dismember.
D&T variants are pretty straightforward too: they will cut you off of colors going long, so plan to go fast. Plus you want all the removal you can muster to kill their key creatures. You might think to shave Manamorphose because of Thalia, but you need the manafixing against them. Instead, shave some of the life loss because dying to fliers is real. I'm not really sure what the right mix to board out is here, but I like cutting Stubs so that you don't actually need blue. But you can fetch it aggressively as a decoy for their GQs and Field of Ruin, to try to protect the Blood Crypt, which IS important. You have 10 discard spells postboard to take their paths though, so you don't really need Stub. I leave 1 TBR in to combo kill them, but I don't think I'd want more.
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Temur Battle Rage
+1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +2 Collective Brutality
Against Ponza, you mostly want to cut removal, but you need some of it to kill early manadorks. Countermagic is also much better.
-2 Fatal Push
+2 Delay
I'm not sure the 3rd Stub is worth it since you don't need to protect threats so much, but you do need to counter haymakers. Push is also just good at slowing down their explosive draws. I'm not really sure here, but I wouldn't change much of the MD in any case. Plan A is just good against them. Also, don't always blow your manamorphose early, since it can save you after a Blood Moon. Prioritize getting a major threat into play and killing them. They can't really interact once you have a fatty.
Defeated Titanshift (2-1), Mono G-Tron (2-1), UW Control (2-1) and Burn in the final (2-0).
Liked the current configuration of creatures. I have tried Snapcaster in the past instead of Grim Flayer but Flayer does so much work, especially post-board.
Abrade is just a more versatile Grudge and very strong against Humans and Hollow One.
Possible future changes: -1 Liliana of the Veil, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope: The deck tends to struggle against small creature strategies preboard and the Last Hope is good against them and also amazing in attrition-based matchups.
I will also probably swap Ranger with Hostage Taker and add 1 additional Battle Rage to the board against all unfair strategies and Burn/Humans.
Ceremonious Rejection is also a card I am currently considering, but don't yet know what to cut for.
RG Eldrazi matchup is not good, people continue to play Eldrazi Tron for some unknown reason which can be IME slightly unfavoured and rejection is great there, and gaining percentage points against Affinity and good Tron isn't the worst plan considering they're common matchups and aren't any where near easy enough that I wouldn't have anything for them in my board at all.
RG Eldrazi matchup is not good, people continue to play Eldrazi Tron for some unknown reason which can be IME slightly unfavoured and rejection is great there, and gaining percentage points against Affinity and good Tron isn't the worst plan considering they're common matchups and aren't any where near easy enough that I wouldn't have anything for them in my board at all.
Is Rejection really better than more Delay? Delay hits far more matchups, and is less likely to miss a key spell against stuff like Tron (Thragtusk for example)
Also, I haven't been having that much trouble with RG eldrazi. It's too early to tell, but a combination of discard, removal for mana dorks, countermagic, and a couple of fulminator seems to disrupt them enough to get under them. I wouldn't call it a great matchup, but it doesn't feel bad either.
RG Eldrazi runs Cavern so Rejection isn't exactly a knockout there. Yes Tron and Affinity are ubiquitous, but we have so many ways to hit them as it is that I don't see the point in adding even more cards to a sideboard that's already super tight. Like Spooly said, Delay counters everything that can be countered.
So far, I found focusing more on a TBR plan is giving me the results desired. I am winning the games that I should win and I have gained early wins vs. the games where we struggle. I went up to 3 TBR, down 2 Liliana, Up to 2 Grim Flayer, down 1 Bloodstained Mire. I run 17 lands and do find that every 7-8 games I have to mulligan to 6 which is fine for this deck. I do love having the extra TBR because I just be loose with the application of the main combo piece. I do like Spooly's 4 Manamorphose but, I just haven't jumped off that cliff. He already has the results, I just think the SB changes in that version of the deck. I was toying with the idea of adding Young Pyromancers and Lingering Souls since we have the ability to go so wide out of the side. Lastly, Abrade has been nuts... Thanks for bringing that up within this thread, I doubt I ever would have tried that.
If anyone is interested in a little spice, Jeff Hoogland just 5-0d a league without dropping a single game on donation deck: sultai shadow, featuring whispers of emrakul. I would take this result with a grain of salt since the match ups were not so diverse as follows:
Hardened steel 2-0
Storm 2-0
Humans 2-0
Humans 2-0
Storm 2-0
Still, not dropping a single game for someone who doesn't even play the archetype is nothing to scoff at.
The main is real solid imo esp all the numbers. I did a lot of playtesting with the deck to ensure the numbers in the main where right, 2x snaps, 3x travers, 17 lands, 1x grimflayer. Sb was more of a slight reaction to boggles, but i change the sb to help with more aggro match ups. I changed one Opt into a Architect of Will, to enable black mana cantriping. I cna def see whisper of emrakul work in manamorphose jund lists , just straight up cuting the IoK for whisper as a futur idea.
How does this sultai list perform against small creatures decks like humans, all flavors of collected company, elves, lingering souls and other stuff that can produce blockers? Does it miss Temur Battle Rage?
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
1 Blood Crypt
1 Swamp
1 Forest
4 Street Wraith
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Manamorphose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Battle Rage
3 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Hazoret, the Fervent
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Delay
2 Collective Brutality
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Abrade
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Roughly, this is how I've been SBing. First, an important general rule: Keep at least 2 Street Wraiths in when you're racing aggro decks. You NEED to turn Traverse on.
Burn:
-2 Dismember, -2 Street Wraith, -3 Thoughtseize,
+2 Collective Brutality, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer
If you aren't taking 1-2 2 minute turns per game, you're doing it wrong. Slow down. Think.
Affinity:
-1 Street Wraith, -4 Thoughtseize,
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Can shave another Street Wraith or a Stub for Fulminator; not sure if that's good or not.
Humans:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Thoughtseize, -1 Manamorphose
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Watch out for Dire Fleet Daredevil blowing out your delirium + killing one of your creatures at the same time.
I'm not actually sure what the right mix of cuts is here, but definitely the Stubs, then the other 3 cards are the ones to cut in some quantity. You almost always should take Thalia with discard spells before they can cast it just because of how much it slows you down. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can line up your removal better if you take something else. Thalia is a killer. Also, pay attention to what they can do with their Meddling Mages. If you're not careful, you'll walk into getting key cards in your hand turned off.
BR Hollow One:
-3 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +2 Nihil Spellbomb
They should bring Leyline of the Void in against you, so you can't rely too much on Traverse. Priority 1 is keeping them from having an explosive draw. Take their enablers, kill the Flamebreak Adepts, get Spellbomb into play to stop fast Anglers, Phoenixes, and Bloodghasts. Priority 2 is making sure your removal lines up correctly. You only have 2 Dismembers and 1 Abrade, and they have 4 Hollow Ones and some number of delve threats. You don't want to blow a Dismember on something else if you can help it. Priority 3 is to not die to burn and other forms of reach. Keep Stub up, play Brutality intelligently, and remember Adept has Menace. Priority 0 is to kill them before they kill you. They typically can't stop your combo kill, short of bolting you a couple times to just kill you.
BGx midrange (Jund, Abzan, etc):
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Inquisition of Kozilek
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage
If they're heavy on mana denial, maybe only bring one Jace in. If you know they don't have important 4 drops, cut a Thoughtseize instead of IoK. You can also board in Abrade to kill Dark Confidant, manlands, Tireless Trackers, small Oozes and Grim Flayers, etc. You can keep a Stub in if you like, but they're very inconsistent here. You're kind of trying to get under these guys, but that doesn't really work, so plan B is to hope to topdeck better than them / find Jace on a stable board. (Still not sure if Jace is a great plan here, but there's only one way to find out).
Uxy Control:
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -3 Fatal Push
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage, +1 Stubborn Denial
This one depends a lot on their deck, so the above plan is very generic. If they have lots of burn, cut some Thoughtseizes and change your removal mix so you don't have Dismember. If they don't, you can leave all 4 Wraiths in. If they have creatures, leave more removal in. Decay usually stays because of Search for Azcanta, Runed Halo, Detention Sphere, Spreading Seas, small Gideon, etc. If they have a pile of burn, you can cut all of the Wraiths and bring in the Spellbombs to compensate. It may even be a plus to slow down their Searches and Snapcasters. In general, you don't want the game to go long and you can actually get under them and stay under them as long as they don't have too many creatures. You can leave a single TBR in for this reason. Sometimes it is correct to put yourself dead to Supreme Verdict because the long game is so difficult to win. The caveat is that if you can force them to dump resources defending against your early onslaught, then stick a Jace, they are in A LOT of trouble.
Tron:
-3 Fatal Push, -2 Dismember, -1 Abrupt Decay or Inquisition of Kozilek
+2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade
Hopefully this one is obvious. Don't be afraid to counter stuff like Relic of Progenitus with Delay - if Goyf is your threat, he needs to keep beating down!
Eldrazi Tron & Amulet:
-4 Inquisition of Kozilek, -1 Fatal Push
+2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade
You want to keep removal in against both of these, though for different reasons. This makes IoK weaker. Abrade kills all the creature enablers + Amulet in Amulet, and Chalice + smaller creatures in ETron. Stub counters Pact in Amulet (and Pact for Hornet Queen is your nightmare), and stuff like All is Dust and Karn in ETron. Grim Lavamancer or Liliana might be good vs. Amulet to pick off their enablers, but they're both slow.
Death's Shadow:
-4 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial
+2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Try to prioritize killing Godless Shrine specifically with Fulminator, especially vs. Traverse builds. If Lingering Souls resolves, it's still a major problem. Against Grixis, they may not have it, so you can blow your Fulminators early if you have a good spot. With this SB config, you'll have to blow a lot of Traverse on lands early. That's OK. I'm not really comfortable taking all of the Wraiths out, to be honest, but I'm not sure what the alternative cuts should be.
Bogles:
-2 Fatal Push, -1 Street Wraith
+2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial
You need to go fast. They have two major types of hands: weak ones with Leyline, and strong ones without. If they have the former, you just need to kill them ASAP, so you can't afford to cut too many Traverse enablers. If they have the latter, you want to have as much interaction as possible to slow them down. It doesn't feel bad, to be honest, just prioritize setting up to kill them over not dying. And realize that they have unbeatable draws, so don't try to play around those.
Dredge:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -2 Fatal Push
+1 Stubborn Denial, +2 Delay, +2 Nihil Spellbomb
All of the countermagic is mostly for Conflagrate, though occasionally Delay on Stinkweed Imp will be gamebreaking, and countering Cathartic Reunion and such is always good. Discard quickly gets bad against them, so you don't want too much. Just set up to combo kill them ASAP. You could bring in Lavaman and Liliana to pick off their smaller guys, but that's very slow so I'm not a fan. If you have Sweepers in the SB, they come in here.
All that said, these are definitely tentative SB plans, and I probably do things slightly differently every time I play the same matchup.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
To be honest, this is roughly how I've always been playing the deck. Just with Manamorphose it gets to be a little more all in. I've been calling this deck Splinter Twin since I won SCG Regionals with it. Yes, we can grind a bit if we want to, and so could Twin with Snapcasters and Keranos. But plan A is to combo them. We're even a dog to Jund without a good way to fix the matchup, just like Twin
Abrade is so flexible it's kind of insane. I've seriously boarded it in against Jund to help prevent Bob from going off. Just so many applications. And it even has matchups where it's not just good, but great - BR Hollow One is the main spot.
Edit: I view Grudge and Spellbomb as the substitutes here. Both are fairly strong hate cards for specific matchups with some other applications, so you pick which one you want based on the metagame, then go from there. Abrade just makes the sting of losing Grudge a little less bad.
Another backdoor SB option worth mentioning: since Hazoret has haste, it isn't the worst to bring in against matchups where you're racing. This mostly matters if you have a ton of things to side out, so stuff like Burn, Humans, etc. Pre-Delay I would bring Hazzy in vs burn just to get more bad cards out of my deck, but with Delay over Stroke that's less of an issue. But it's an option to consider if you start tweaking SB numbers, or want to get all 4 Thoughtseizes out of the deck.
Re: Pulse - I've always been a huge fan of the card for its flexibility. What would you cut for it (and the second Abrade) if you went through with that plan? The Jaces? Spellbomb + Grim perhaps?
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I've been playing your morphose version without blue and I've actually found the Jund matchup quite winnable. I'm playing lingering souls in the board and that certainly helps the matchup, but I find that as long as we get off to a decent start they can have trouble keeping up with us since we do so much more in the first few turns than they do and many of their cards actually line up quite poorly against ours in terms of immediate impact on the board. Bolt does virtually nothing except in multiples to our face, scooze requires more investment in mana than they can realistically afford to make it into a credible blocker/attacker, and BBE does draw into a card but until they have 2 on the field to double block isn't really a relevant body at all. If we go discard into threat into interaction + another threat I find the matchup to be totally reasonable as long as we don't fall behind on board, which is doable because of how clunky their deck is compared to ours.
- Eldrazi Taxes
- Ponza
- Living End
Thanks!
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I find that they have too much removal for us to consistently take advantage of their clunky hands, and then they kill us with any old thing. Including manlands. They actually go wide fairly easily due to BBE + manlands, and can often set up an alpha strike with lethal even if our 1-2 creatures are massive compared to theirs. Lingering Souls certainly helps, and would help in the blue build, but I'm making a judgement call about were to spend my deck/sb slots. The matchup is still winnable though, just not in our favor. To be favored in the matchup though, I think we'd have to be pretty all in Souls and some other grindy elements, and that just doesn't seem worth it relative to the metagame.
Living End is straightforward: cut the removal, bring in anything at all that interacts.
-3 Push, -2 Dismember, -2 Decay
+1 Stub, +2 Delay, +2 Spellbomb, +2 Brutality
If you wanted to leave removal in to try to beat a small living end, it has to be Dismember.
D&T variants are pretty straightforward too: they will cut you off of colors going long, so plan to go fast. Plus you want all the removal you can muster to kill their key creatures. You might think to shave Manamorphose because of Thalia, but you need the manafixing against them. Instead, shave some of the life loss because dying to fliers is real. I'm not really sure what the right mix to board out is here, but I like cutting Stubs so that you don't actually need blue. But you can fetch it aggressively as a decoy for their GQs and Field of Ruin, to try to protect the Blood Crypt, which IS important. You have 10 discard spells postboard to take their paths though, so you don't really need Stub. I leave 1 TBR in to combo kill them, but I don't think I'd want more.
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Temur Battle Rage
+1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +2 Collective Brutality
Against Ponza, you mostly want to cut removal, but you need some of it to kill early manadorks. Countermagic is also much better.
-2 Fatal Push
+2 Delay
I'm not sure the 3rd Stub is worth it since you don't need to protect threats so much, but you do need to counter haymakers. Push is also just good at slowing down their explosive draws. I'm not really sure here, but I wouldn't change much of the MD in any case. Plan A is just good against them. Also, don't always blow your manamorphose early, since it can save you after a Blood Moon. Prioritize getting a major threat into play and killing them. They can't really interact once you have a fatty.
4 Death's Shadow
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Grim Flayer
4 Street Wraith
Noncreature Spells: 29
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Fatal Push
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Temur Battle Rage
1 Dismember
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
1 Breeding Pool
1 Swamp
1 Ranger of Eos
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Collective Brutality
3 Lingering Souls
1 Fatal Push
1 Stubborn Denial
1 Golgari Charm
2 Delay
2 Abrade
1 Godless Shrine
Defeated Titanshift (2-1), Mono G-Tron (2-1), UW Control (2-1) and Burn in the final (2-0).
Liked the current configuration of creatures. I have tried Snapcaster in the past instead of Grim Flayer but Flayer does so much work, especially post-board.
Abrade is just a more versatile Grudge and very strong against Humans and Hollow One.
Possible future changes: -1 Liliana of the Veil, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope: The deck tends to struggle against small creature strategies preboard and the Last Hope is good against them and also amazing in attrition-based matchups.
I will also probably swap Ranger with Hostage Taker and add 1 additional Battle Rage to the board against all unfair strategies and Burn/Humans.
Ceremonious Rejection is also a card I am currently considering, but don't yet know what to cut for.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Is Rejection really better than more Delay? Delay hits far more matchups, and is less likely to miss a key spell against stuff like Tron (Thragtusk for example)
Also, I haven't been having that much trouble with RG eldrazi. It's too early to tell, but a combination of discard, removal for mana dorks, countermagic, and a couple of fulminator seems to disrupt them enough to get under them. I wouldn't call it a great matchup, but it doesn't feel bad either.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Take Care!
Hardened steel 2-0
Storm 2-0
Humans 2-0
Humans 2-0
Storm 2-0
Still, not dropping a single game for someone who doesn't even play the archetype is nothing to scoff at.
Link to video is here with deck list in the video description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMN0dk00iFU
He says the main felt good but the sideboard needs some work.
Ya the list Jeff played is one that i donated for his stream. I made the required updates for the sideboard. Feel free to ask any questions
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/sultai-deaths-shadow-deaths-whisper/
I just saw the stream. A really impressive take on the Death's Shadow Archetype. Well done.
Moving forward - anything to change add, look for?
cheers,
Ezi
I talked to you a little on Reddit about this deck. Seeing it inspired me to try just that. This is the list I am thinking of testing :
4 Death's Shadow
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Dismember
3 Fatal Push
4 Manamorphose
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Street Wraith
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Battle Rage
4 Thoughtseize
3 Whispers of Emrakul
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Blood Crypt
1 swamp
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Watery Grave
The deck is still in the idea phase. Hopping to try it out soon.