I think it makes more sense to run a second Foothills over the Misty as the latter doesn't fetch Crypt. The former doesn't fetch Grave but that's an occasional post-board issue and I wager the Crypt is more important 90% of the time.
Is Watery Grave worth the SB slot? I'd rather have -1 Stomping Ground, +1 Watery Grave MD, then open up a SB slot for something else. Maybe some GY hate, given what you already have. Nihil Spellbomb if you want a bonus card against Mardu, Surgical Extraction if you want a bonus card against KCI.
As with Snapcaster, Rampager is a card you never want to see in your opening hand. I personally wouldn't ever play it for exactly this reason as I believe every card in our 60 should be keepable in your opening hand on its own merit.
I'm not a big fan of Rampager either. I could see it in certain metagames where pushing through chump blockers is super important, but I don't think that's where we are at.
Flayer is a bit slow, Push is fully dependent on your metagame and Manamorphose doesn't make much sense as a singleton, I'd sooner run 1 Looting in that list if I was pressed for an answer.
I'm pretty much off Looting after trying it. We have a lot of trouble profitably casting it early without something to discard for value, which kills it for me. I think the core of the deck is basically this:
That leaves 3 slots to play with, though you could also tweak the removal suite. But right now Bolt is really valuable because of Humans, and Decay feels slow and clunky. Options for the last 3 slots: 1) 1-3 Stubborn Denial of course, but maybe we don't want blue at all, 2) 1-2 Grim Flayer to get more threats and fuel delirium. 2 seems like a stretch, but maybe 1, 3) more removal - another push or bolt is reasonable, but a Tarfire might also be worth it. 4) a traversable haymaker. Bedlam Reveler is my #1 here, but it seems like more of a SB card, 5) planeswalkers - 1-2 LOTV and/or 1 LtlH, 6) more TBR.
My prefered options are: 1) 2 Stub, 1 TBR, 2) 1 Flayer, 1 TBR, 1 removal spell, maybe a Tarfire. 1) is old reliable, 2) is experimental, removing blue from the deck entirely and being as aggressive as possible. I might give it a shot soon, but first I gotta try the suicide zoo build that Daryl Ayers just 5-0ed a league with.
Yeah I've been messing with that Suicide list online. It's incredibly explosive when you draw well but has a very hard time recovering from the back foot. Not having Traverse is really killing it for me. High risk high reward for sure.
Maybe there is something to say for going pure Jund with blue in the side right now. I was always firm about saying you might as well play Jund if you're gonna drop blue but Jund is so bad right now that this is clearly a better choice either way.
Went 4-1 with basically the same list I played a few weeks ago, I'm liking the 2 Looting a lot. Beat Burn x2, Humans, and Jeskai (lost to Jund). Looting doesn't enable starts as fast as Manamorphose, but with a good hand you can still get massive creatures out ahead of schedule easily. It can be awkward but I actually found it less clunky than Manamorphose, and it lets you pitch fetches you can't use or dead cards like Push/Stub in G1's where you won't need them to enable Delirium and dig for a threat or TBR.
the suicide list impressed me. literally replacing the 4 probes from the old suizoo lists with land + 3 random cards and it's still good. I have some ideas to try in that shell.
Yeah, I have to agree. The card has a learning curve but it speeds things up like crazy when you get the timing right. If you're not running 4 I don't see any point in running any at all.
Manamorphose is great, and primarily functions as a delirium enabler that also fixes your mana at times (and gives you game against mana denial). However, it does contribute a great deal to the awkwardness of the deck. To illustrate what I mean, consider that you are now playing 2 Bolts in the maindeck. Previously, the entire deck was BG with the exception of TBR and Stub. When you are cycling Manamorphose to find action, you have to be able to predict the colours you need. Making BG allowed you to play just about anything that you might draw off the top with Manamorphose; when we add red cards like Bolt, you risk drawing them without making the right colours. For this reason, I actually think adding non BG spells to the maindeck is somewhat problematic. If anything, this factor alone makes me lean away from Bolts and Looting in the main.
Manamorphose is great, and primarily functions as a delirium enabler that also fixes your mana at times (and gives you game against mana denial). However, it does contribute a great deal to the awkwardness of the deck. To illustrate what I mean, consider that you are now playing 2 Bolts in the maindeck. Previously, the entire deck was BG with the exception of TBR and Stub. When you are cycling Manamorphose to find action, you have to be able to predict the colours you need. Making BG allowed you to play just about anything that you might draw off the top with Manamorphose; when we add red cards like Bolt, you risk drawing them without making the right colours. For this reason, I actually think adding non BG spells to the maindeck is somewhat problematic. If anything, this factor alone makes me lean away from Bolts and Looting in the main.
Yeah, fair point, I've run into this issue myself a few times. However, I think we're far too reliant on red mana in the post-board creature matchups anyway, so either we cut Manamorphose entirely or risk the wrong gamble now and then.
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I somewhat like the 75 of Aj Kerrigan better. Looking to the top 16 of the classic portion makes me feel that Stubborn Denial needs to be in the sideboard as it does not have an awful lot of good matchups. However, the team portion was full with control decks! What are your thoughts?
I think Snapcaster is absolutely awful for us. Strange sideboard too. Alpine Moon? For what? We have far better cards available to us against Tron.
Postboard we tend to have a lot more red spells, so it's less of an issue. I hate making that gamble mainboard, especially when I'm not convinced that I prefer Bolt to Push/Decay against the meta at large.
I somewhat like the 75 of Aj Kerrigan better. Looking to the top 16 of the classic portion makes me feel that Stubborn Denial needs to be in the sideboard as it does not have an awful lot of good matchups. However, the team portion was full with control decks! What are your thoughts?
If everyone is playing control, I want to be as far away from Death's Shadow as possible to be honest.
Postboard we tend to have a lot more red spells, so it's less of an issue. I hate making that gamble mainboard, especially when I'm not convinced that I prefer Bolt to Push/Decay against the meta at large.
I largely agree, but think this puts us in a catch-22. If humans is a big enough % of the metagame, we want bolt and not Decay (though Push is still fine). If it's not, then that probably means control decks are prominent, which means we probably shouldn't be playing a Shadow deck.
There's another pseudo-catch 22 here. In many metagames, Humans does a better job of doing what the Shadow decks do: decently fast clock + disruption to beat a wide swathe of unfair decks in the format. The reason Humans is better than Shadow at this is not necessarily how well it does in those matchups, but how well it does in other matchups - it can steal games against the midrange decks more easily IMO. The exceptions to this involve Tron, which allegedly Humans isn't fast enough to have that great of a matchup against, and aggro decks, where Shadow can get an edge just by having a pile of removal. So for Shadow to justify itself, it has to be good against big mana and/or fast aggro, including humans. And beating humans specifically necessitates Lightning Bolt, again. While beating big mana necessitates other deckbuilding decisions, like countermagic.
Honestly, I have trouble seeing how Death's Shadow can fit into the meta given all of this. I mean, if you don't care about maximizing your win percentage at the expensive of literally every thing else, it's still a fine choice (like many decks in modern), but I think it's unlikely that the stars align and Shadow is a legit tier 1 deck.
That said, IMO the most likely possibility is something that shoves in on TBR and tries to kill everyone, aggro, big mana, even midrage decks, ASAP, while potentially cutting blue. It'll still have plenty of trouble with midrange and control decks, but maybe that's enough to win the aggro and big mana matchups at the same time (while still doing its thing against spell-based combo), which does a better job of justifying the deck as something to play instead of humans. Maybe this even means cutting some discard spells! I'm not sure.
Edit to add: the other spot where Shadow can justify itself over Humans is specifically against KCI. Humans has a medium to slightly unfavorable KCI matchup, it turns out, because of stuff like EE and pyrite spellbomb and Ghirapur Aether Grid. But Shadow dunks on that deck, especially if it keeps the countermagic in the 75.
It sounds like what you're advocating is essentially the old suicide zoo lists? Rather than playing a ton of interaction, just go faster and play similar to infect?
It sounds like what you're advocating is essentially the old suicide zoo lists? Rather than playing a ton of interaction, just go faster and play similar to infect?
Maybe not that far. I'm still thinking the Traverse shell, just tweaking the flex slots + interaction to optimally fight the format. And probably getting a Grim Flayer in there too just to make sure we have the early pressure. Suizoo requires a whole lot of different things in order to support the combo-centric nature of the deck.
Not that I don't think Suizoo is worth exploring. I did try it in a weekly last Wed, and crushed - 4-1, only losing to burn in the last round on some pretty poor draws. It still felt pretty powerful. The one MTGO league I ran it through resulted in a 2-3 though, so maybe it was just the level of competition :D. In any case, I think Suizoo operates differently enough than the Traverse/Grixis/Mardu/whatever shadow lists that the above reasoning doesn't really apply. The proper comparison isn't Humans, it's Infect, Hollow One, and Burn. Aggro/Combo with light disruption elements.
I have seen that all the last lists are not including the white SB package (basically 3 of Lingering Souls and one Godless Shrine). Is the current meta the main reason to take it out? Is possible to keep it in the SB? Thank you.
Sure it's possible, it's just not a great card right now. It forces you to play the long game against decks that are much better at the long game than us.
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Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
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Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
4 Street Wraith
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Manamorphose
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Thoughtseize
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Temur Battle Rage
2 Dismember
2 Lightning Bolt
That leaves 3 slots to play with, though you could also tweak the removal suite. But right now Bolt is really valuable because of Humans, and Decay feels slow and clunky. Options for the last 3 slots: 1) 1-3 Stubborn Denial of course, but maybe we don't want blue at all, 2) 1-2 Grim Flayer to get more threats and fuel delirium. 2 seems like a stretch, but maybe 1, 3) more removal - another push or bolt is reasonable, but a Tarfire might also be worth it. 4) a traversable haymaker. Bedlam Reveler is my #1 here, but it seems like more of a SB card, 5) planeswalkers - 1-2 LOTV and/or 1 LtlH, 6) more TBR.
My prefered options are: 1) 2 Stub, 1 TBR, 2) 1 Flayer, 1 TBR, 1 removal spell, maybe a Tarfire. 1) is old reliable, 2) is experimental, removing blue from the deck entirely and being as aggressive as possible. I might give it a shot soon, but first I gotta try the suicide zoo build that Daryl Ayers just 5-0ed a league with.
Maybe there is something to say for going pure Jund with blue in the side right now. I was always firm about saying you might as well play Jund if you're gonna drop blue but Jund is so bad right now that this is clearly a better choice either way.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Yeah, fair point, I've run into this issue myself a few times. However, I think we're far too reliant on red mana in the post-board creature matchups anyway, so either we cut Manamorphose entirely or risk the wrong gamble now and then.
I think Snapcaster is absolutely awful for us. Strange sideboard too. Alpine Moon? For what? We have far better cards available to us against Tron.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
If everyone is playing control, I want to be as far away from Death's Shadow as possible to be honest.
I largely agree, but think this puts us in a catch-22. If humans is a big enough % of the metagame, we want bolt and not Decay (though Push is still fine). If it's not, then that probably means control decks are prominent, which means we probably shouldn't be playing a Shadow deck.
There's another pseudo-catch 22 here. In many metagames, Humans does a better job of doing what the Shadow decks do: decently fast clock + disruption to beat a wide swathe of unfair decks in the format. The reason Humans is better than Shadow at this is not necessarily how well it does in those matchups, but how well it does in other matchups - it can steal games against the midrange decks more easily IMO. The exceptions to this involve Tron, which allegedly Humans isn't fast enough to have that great of a matchup against, and aggro decks, where Shadow can get an edge just by having a pile of removal. So for Shadow to justify itself, it has to be good against big mana and/or fast aggro, including humans. And beating humans specifically necessitates Lightning Bolt, again. While beating big mana necessitates other deckbuilding decisions, like countermagic.
Honestly, I have trouble seeing how Death's Shadow can fit into the meta given all of this. I mean, if you don't care about maximizing your win percentage at the expensive of literally every thing else, it's still a fine choice (like many decks in modern), but I think it's unlikely that the stars align and Shadow is a legit tier 1 deck.
That said, IMO the most likely possibility is something that shoves in on TBR and tries to kill everyone, aggro, big mana, even midrage decks, ASAP, while potentially cutting blue. It'll still have plenty of trouble with midrange and control decks, but maybe that's enough to win the aggro and big mana matchups at the same time (while still doing its thing against spell-based combo), which does a better job of justifying the deck as something to play instead of humans. Maybe this even means cutting some discard spells! I'm not sure.
Edit to add: the other spot where Shadow can justify itself over Humans is specifically against KCI. Humans has a medium to slightly unfavorable KCI matchup, it turns out, because of stuff like EE and pyrite spellbomb and Ghirapur Aether Grid. But Shadow dunks on that deck, especially if it keeps the countermagic in the 75.
Maybe not that far. I'm still thinking the Traverse shell, just tweaking the flex slots + interaction to optimally fight the format. And probably getting a Grim Flayer in there too just to make sure we have the early pressure. Suizoo requires a whole lot of different things in order to support the combo-centric nature of the deck.
Not that I don't think Suizoo is worth exploring. I did try it in a weekly last Wed, and crushed - 4-1, only losing to burn in the last round on some pretty poor draws. It still felt pretty powerful. The one MTGO league I ran it through resulted in a 2-3 though, so maybe it was just the level of competition :D. In any case, I think Suizoo operates differently enough than the Traverse/Grixis/Mardu/whatever shadow lists that the above reasoning doesn't really apply. The proper comparison isn't Humans, it's Infect, Hollow One, and Burn. Aggro/Combo with light disruption elements.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki