Neither is a great option against Scapeshift though so I guess it's probably too narrow, as you said.
I've only played one match against Amulet Titan (that I recall) and it really took me by surprise game 1. I was surprised how few main deck answers I had for it. But in retrospect, any deck that virtually doesn't interact at all for the first 3-4 turns should be easy for us with TBR.
I think the big mana decks are tougher than that, whether Valakut, Tron, or Amulet. We aren't consistently fast enough to flat out race them, even if we get a bit of disruption in there with discard spells. Light permission (a couple Stubs) helps, but isn't enough to turn the matchup. You can't Stub Primeval Titan, or Wurmcoil Engine, and both of those typically are game over. You can stub the setup spells sometimes, but not always (natty tron, creature enablers, or they pre-emptively get their ramp / amulet going). A bit of mana denial on top helps too, but isn't always good enough. Assassin's Trophy is basically irrelevant against Valakut, and typically just slows down Tron and Amulet a bit. Fulminator is better, but still pretty weak against Valakut, and pretty slow. Though if you're surgicalling, LD effects get better. Combined with a few stubs the LD probably makes the matchups about 50/50, give or take depending on what they have for us. To push it into slightly favorable territory, you can either go hard on surgical + LD, or hard on countermagic (Delay, Disdainful Stroke, even Mana Leak if you want a MD card). Or both, but then we're talking a lot of MD + SB slots, so that's hard to justify.
How was Collective Brutality against domain zoo? Seems odd being the only creatures you can hit are Noble and BBE. But even the other two modes are useful.
How often do you cast BBE and flip a total dud such as Bauble or Traverse (with no delirium)? There are other examples as well
His list changed a bit, since he lost to me yesterday. (he was also playing Qasali and knight)
Discard Helix, Bolt, Boros, Tribal Flames and more. And gain life if I need to.
Collective brutality has been OK yesterday so far. The master card was TBR against Zoo.
Not having delirium on turn 4 is something that very very rarely happens. Same for having 13 life or more.
Unless, I'm very behind and I have to try something, I won't cast it.
20-0 with the list at FNM level.. and great results online. I'm pretty sure this list have some potential.
20-0 sounds impressive, but what are you playing against? Need more context for your claim.
Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
How was Collective Brutality against domain zoo? Seems odd being the only creatures you can hit are Noble and BBE. But even the other two modes are useful.
How often do you cast BBE and flip a total dud such as Bauble or Traverse (with no delirium)? There are other examples as well
His list changed a bit, since he lost to me yesterday. (he was also playing Qasali and knight)
Discard Helix, Bolt, Boros, Tribal Flames and more. And gain life if I need to.
Collective brutality has been OK yesterday so far. The master card was TBR against Zoo.
Not having delirium on turn 4 is something that very very rarely happens. Same for having 13 life or more.
Unless, I'm very behind and I have to try something, I won't cast it.
20-0 with the list at FNM level.. and great results online. I'm pretty sure this list have some potential.
20-0 sounds impressive, but what are you playing against? Need more context for your claim.
My meta is very diverse;
I fought:
Uw control(final)
Sultai Control
Hollow one
Humans
All in RED
Affinity
Tribal Zoo(final)
Scapeshift
Boros Burn
Izzet Thing
Lanthern (final)
Bant spirit (final)
2x Eldrazi n taxes (final)
2x Counter company
2x Ponza
2x Grixis Death Shadow
Won a ravnica box (36packs), liliana of the veil, Vendillon clique mm foil, and $90 credit store.
I found shadow decks frustrating to play when it had such a massive target on its head. But, now that its just a good deck and an established archetype in modern it seems like a good place to go with where the meta is heading.
I'm a long time gbx player but modern has gotten to the point where it feels like everything easily slips underneath midrange and a lot can go overhead. Drawing multiple lands feels like a death sentence in this format, too, which happens to jund too much, manlands or not.
I have to say the idea of looting being used in shadow sounds sexy, filling up the graveyard and looting away the dead cards or land flooding.
So, in truth, beyond preference, I'm really split on whether to go jund, 4c blue splash or grixis. I dont think the white splash has ever been that fantastic.
Is there a true reason to just go jund? Why go grixis right now? I know grixis grinds better against fair matchups, what is jund and 4c better with? Is 4c the best deck for spell based combo and aggro? Is grixis meant more for spell based combo and midrange?
Has ben friedmans bauble and loot significantly changed a lot?
So...is more than 2 loot just too much for the shadow decks? Ignoring our specific personal meta, what should the sideboards be utilizing?
I know I'm asking a lot about 3 versions of the deck, but it sorta feels like knowing when to transform the deck thats appropriate for the meta.
The archetype is massively customizable.
It feels like jund just...is missing something. Something huge I can't describe. It needs more than just great removal and needs some new releases the way uw did to go from poor to great.
Jund Shadow naturally preys on the spell based combo decks and most graveyard decks. What it's missing is another set of good matchups without sacrificing too much elsewhere. You can divide the rest of the format into 1) grindy matchups (BGx, UWx, and Mardu), 2) big mana (Tron, Valakut, Amulet), and 3) non-gy aggro, (Humans, Spirits, Burn). The big problem is that it's hard to gain % points in one place without sacrificing a lot in another, either because you need a lot of deck/sb slots, or because the few slots you do use end up being terrible in other matchups.
For example, Lingering Souls is the single best SB card to bring in against Jund and maybe BGx generally, but it takes a major commitment to SB slots, and Souls doesn't really do much in any other matchup. A heavy commitment to countermagic in the 75 helps turn the big mana matchups a lot, especially with e.g. Delay or Disdainful Stroke in the SB, and some light mana denial to complement (Trophy and maybe a Fulminator Mage to Traverse for). But, again, it requires a lot of SB slots, and every piece of countermagic you have MD is yet another dead card against Humans. To beat the aggro decks, you can again spend a ton of SB slots, but it's really hard to get a good Humans or Spirits matchup. Luckily Burn isn't so hard: just play countermagic. But the Vial/Cavern tribal aggro decks make Stubborn Denial look really bad, and Reflector Mage + fliers is difficult to beat no matter how we construct our deck.
Realistically, I don't think we can expect to beat the grindier decks. They go just over the top of us, and will naturally be advantage. We can beat the big mana decks if we try really hard, or settle for a 50/50ish matchup and be ok with it (i.e. with a bit of countermagic in the 75 but not a ton). The problem is the aggro decks. Theoretically, we should be able to beat up on aggro decks by taking advantage of our creature sizing, Stub to protect our threats, and TBR to close. And this happens in a lot of aggro matchups honestly: e.g. Hollow One feels pretty easy. But Humans and Spirits happen to be very resilient to that plan because we can't Stub Reflector Mage (or much of anything), fliers ignore our blockers, and they can get very wide very quickly to take advantage of our low life total.
So what do we need? I'd say some way to gain major ground against Humans and/or Spirits. Or somehow removing them from the metagame, but without super grindy decks taking their place. For a hot minute we had that when Dredge was taking over the matagame, but that didn't last. Plus the resulting increase in GY hate in everyone's SBs was also bad for us.
So are you basically saying 4c is bad right now and grixis shadow should he played at the moment?
I don't think Grixis is any better. The fundamental analysis above changes little - Grixis is a little better at dealing with grindy decks because of snapcaster, but it is a little worse at presenting a fast clock against big mana because of the setup cost for Angler and Snapcaster isn't a threat. They're both tier 2ish. They're both in a better spot right now than they were a couple weeks ago anyway.
Looking at where MTGO is heading, Shadow's matchups look well if you can position it towards aggro and combo and accept that UW is just god awful.
I don't know, based of the trajectory I think it's actually about to look up for Shadow, depending on if the GY hate isn't absolutely absurd.
And yeah, outside of UW it's looking pretty hard for a fair deck to be tier 1 right now. UW is too mentally fatiguing and seems to brush up too close to matches going to time for me to pick it up and become good with it.
Looking at where MTGO is heading, Shadow's matchups look well if you can position it towards aggro and combo and accept that UW is just god awful.
I don't know, based of the trajectory I think it's actually about to look up for Shadow, depending on if the GY hate isn't absolutely absurd.
And yeah, outside of UW it's looking pretty hard for a fair deck to be tier 1 right now. UW is too mentally fatiguing and seems to brush up too close to matches going to time for me to pick it up and become good with it.
Honestly, of the fair decks (UW, UWR, Jund, Abzan, BG, Mardu), UW is probably the best matchup for us. We can rip their hand apart early and kill them before they draw out of it, and supplement with a timely counterspell. Not so much in the other matchups. Not that UW is a _good_ matchup, but less bad.
I don't keep Jund in mind at all, it's a lost cause. Not one slot in my sideboard is dedicated purely to BGx decks, I really don't see the point as we're never going to flip the matchup in our favor, even with Souls.
I don't keep Jund in mind at all, it's a lost cause. Not one slot in my sideboard is dedicated purely to BGx decks, I really don't see the point as we're never going to flip the matchup in our favor, even with Souls.
This is the right mentality. To be honest, none of BGx seems to be particularly prominent in the metagame anyway. I played in 7 PPTQs over the summer and between my teammate (piloting UG Infect) and I, we never saw a single BGx Midrange variant, and only 2x Mardu players. These events we're 30-70 players each, major cities like San Diego and LA.
To drive the point home, Humans and Spirits are everywhere, and these are match-ups that can be prepared for (to a realistic degree). I think it's possible to tune your SB for these Wx Aggro decks (including GW Vizier) and also have room to combat Big Mana and burn. Wins against KCI and Storm should come easily anyway
Humans and Spirits are definitely easier to gain percentage points against than BGx, but it's still pretty rough. I think Reflector Mage is probably the single most annoying card in this respect, but the whole package (of both decks) contains lots of annoying elements. But these matchups are still the best place to look to try to bust Shadow wide open, IMO. It probably involves keeping Ghor-Clan Rampager around.
Humans and Spirits are definitely easier to gain percentage points against than BGx, but it's still pretty rough. I think Reflector Mage is probably the single most annoying card in this respect, but the whole package (of both decks) contains lots of annoying elements. But these matchups are still the best place to look to try to bust Shadow wide open, IMO. It probably involves keeping Ghor-Clan Rampager around.
What is best to bring in against Humans and Spirits?
Humans and Spirits are definitely easier to gain percentage points against than BGx, but it's still pretty rough. I think Reflector Mage is probably the single most annoying card in this respect, but the whole package (of both decks) contains lots of annoying elements. But these matchups are still the best place to look to try to bust Shadow wide open, IMO. It probably involves keeping Ghor-Clan Rampager around.
What is best to bring in against Humans and Spirits?
That's the $1,000,000 question. Against humans, red removal helps (Lightning Bolt, Radiant Flames, Grim Lavamancer), but isn't a cure-all. And you still have to find a way to beat Auriok Champion. Languish is interesting in that respect, but 4 mana is a million. The right play may be to bring in protection for Reflector Mage (Apostle' Blessing, Mizzium Skins, etc), and increase the chance of cheesing them out. When it comes to spirits, I'm even less sure because I haven't tried building my SB specifically with them in mind. I don't know what the answer is. I just know the right question to ask.
I think the big mana decks are tougher than that, whether Valakut, Tron, or Amulet. We aren't consistently fast enough to flat out race them, even if we get a bit of disruption in there with discard spells. Light permission (a couple Stubs) helps, but isn't enough to turn the matchup. You can't Stub Primeval Titan, or Wurmcoil Engine, and both of those typically are game over. You can stub the setup spells sometimes, but not always (natty tron, creature enablers, or they pre-emptively get their ramp / amulet going). A bit of mana denial on top helps too, but isn't always good enough. Assassin's Trophy is basically irrelevant against Valakut, and typically just slows down Tron and Amulet a bit. Fulminator is better, but still pretty weak against Valakut, and pretty slow. Though if you're surgicalling, LD effects get better. Combined with a few stubs the LD probably makes the matchups about 50/50, give or take depending on what they have for us. To push it into slightly favorable territory, you can either go hard on surgical + LD, or hard on countermagic (Delay, Disdainful Stroke, even Mana Leak if you want a MD card). Or both, but then we're talking a lot of MD + SB slots, so that's hard to justify.
So how many copies are generally run in he SB? Just one?
1 or 2. But I'd say 1 these days, unless you play against a whole lot of BGx. It's not the best against Mardu either since they go so wide.
20-0 sounds impressive, but what are you playing against? Need more context for your claim.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
My meta is very diverse;
I fought:
Uw control(final)
Sultai Control
Hollow one
Humans
All in RED
Affinity
Tribal Zoo(final)
Scapeshift
Boros Burn
Izzet Thing
Lanthern (final)
Bant spirit (final)
2x Eldrazi n taxes (final)
2x Counter company
2x Ponza
2x Grixis Death Shadow
Won a ravnica box (36packs), liliana of the veil, Vendillon clique mm foil, and $90 credit store.
BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund
I found shadow decks frustrating to play when it had such a massive target on its head. But, now that its just a good deck and an established archetype in modern it seems like a good place to go with where the meta is heading.
I'm a long time gbx player but modern has gotten to the point where it feels like everything easily slips underneath midrange and a lot can go overhead. Drawing multiple lands feels like a death sentence in this format, too, which happens to jund too much, manlands or not.
I have to say the idea of looting being used in shadow sounds sexy, filling up the graveyard and looting away the dead cards or land flooding.
So, in truth, beyond preference, I'm really split on whether to go jund, 4c blue splash or grixis. I dont think the white splash has ever been that fantastic.
Is there a true reason to just go jund? Why go grixis right now? I know grixis grinds better against fair matchups, what is jund and 4c better with? Is 4c the best deck for spell based combo and aggro? Is grixis meant more for spell based combo and midrange?
Has ben friedmans bauble and loot significantly changed a lot?
So...is more than 2 loot just too much for the shadow decks? Ignoring our specific personal meta, what should the sideboards be utilizing?
I know I'm asking a lot about 3 versions of the deck, but it sorta feels like knowing when to transform the deck thats appropriate for the meta.
The archetype is massively customizable.
It feels like jund just...is missing something. Something huge I can't describe. It needs more than just great removal and needs some new releases the way uw did to go from poor to great.
For example, Lingering Souls is the single best SB card to bring in against Jund and maybe BGx generally, but it takes a major commitment to SB slots, and Souls doesn't really do much in any other matchup. A heavy commitment to countermagic in the 75 helps turn the big mana matchups a lot, especially with e.g. Delay or Disdainful Stroke in the SB, and some light mana denial to complement (Trophy and maybe a Fulminator Mage to Traverse for). But, again, it requires a lot of SB slots, and every piece of countermagic you have MD is yet another dead card against Humans. To beat the aggro decks, you can again spend a ton of SB slots, but it's really hard to get a good Humans or Spirits matchup. Luckily Burn isn't so hard: just play countermagic. But the Vial/Cavern tribal aggro decks make Stubborn Denial look really bad, and Reflector Mage + fliers is difficult to beat no matter how we construct our deck.
Realistically, I don't think we can expect to beat the grindier decks. They go just over the top of us, and will naturally be advantage. We can beat the big mana decks if we try really hard, or settle for a 50/50ish matchup and be ok with it (i.e. with a bit of countermagic in the 75 but not a ton). The problem is the aggro decks. Theoretically, we should be able to beat up on aggro decks by taking advantage of our creature sizing, Stub to protect our threats, and TBR to close. And this happens in a lot of aggro matchups honestly: e.g. Hollow One feels pretty easy. But Humans and Spirits happen to be very resilient to that plan because we can't Stub Reflector Mage (or much of anything), fliers ignore our blockers, and they can get very wide very quickly to take advantage of our low life total.
So what do we need? I'd say some way to gain major ground against Humans and/or Spirits. Or somehow removing them from the metagame, but without super grindy decks taking their place. For a hot minute we had that when Dredge was taking over the matagame, but that didn't last. Plus the resulting increase in GY hate in everyone's SBs was also bad for us.
I don't think Grixis is any better. The fundamental analysis above changes little - Grixis is a little better at dealing with grindy decks because of snapcaster, but it is a little worse at presenting a fast clock against big mana because of the setup cost for Angler and Snapcaster isn't a threat. They're both tier 2ish. They're both in a better spot right now than they were a couple weeks ago anyway.
I don't know, based of the trajectory I think it's actually about to look up for Shadow, depending on if the GY hate isn't absolutely absurd.
And yeah, outside of UW it's looking pretty hard for a fair deck to be tier 1 right now. UW is too mentally fatiguing and seems to brush up too close to matches going to time for me to pick it up and become good with it.
Honestly, of the fair decks (UW, UWR, Jund, Abzan, BG, Mardu), UW is probably the best matchup for us. We can rip their hand apart early and kill them before they draw out of it, and supplement with a timely counterspell. Not so much in the other matchups. Not that UW is a _good_ matchup, but less bad.
It really isn't though - Jund is god-awful but UW can be done.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
Abzan is awfully positioned, and Mardu is faded.
Definitely have to keep jund and uw in mind.
I read shmrankas article for jund shadow and it hyped me up. The manamorphose build never really caught on
Playing shadow seems better now, when decks were main boarding chameleon colossus I lost patience with the archetype.
I need to get reps in
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
This is the right mentality. To be honest, none of BGx seems to be particularly prominent in the metagame anyway. I played in 7 PPTQs over the summer and between my teammate (piloting UG Infect) and I, we never saw a single BGx Midrange variant, and only 2x Mardu players. These events we're 30-70 players each, major cities like San Diego and LA.
To drive the point home, Humans and Spirits are everywhere, and these are match-ups that can be prepared for (to a realistic degree). I think it's possible to tune your SB for these Wx Aggro decks (including GW Vizier) and also have room to combat Big Mana and burn. Wins against KCI and Storm should come easily anyway
Draft My Cube!
What is best to bring in against Humans and Spirits?
That's the $1,000,000 question. Against humans, red removal helps (Lightning Bolt, Radiant Flames, Grim Lavamancer), but isn't a cure-all. And you still have to find a way to beat Auriok Champion. Languish is interesting in that respect, but 4 mana is a million. The right play may be to bring in protection for Reflector Mage (Apostle' Blessing, Mizzium Skins, etc), and increase the chance of cheesing them out. When it comes to spirits, I'm even less sure because I haven't tried building my SB specifically with them in mind. I don't know what the answer is. I just know the right question to ask.