It could be a way to include Snapcaster without playing blue. Snapcaster rebuys your fatal Push, but Mausoleum just buys you a new one. And it can also tutor Shadow (aka Snap into Traverse). I could see it being useful against Jund or Mardu where all their effects send our threats to the graveyard (as opposed to PTE decks)
Certainly not more than 1-2 in the 75. Do you think a small number (1-2) of Architects would worth it as a support piece that also doubles down on Delirium?
I don't think just jamming the tutor in a standard Traverse shell is good, because the payoff isn't that high. I'm not even talking about making sure we can support it. The question is, what are we tutoring? If it's just Death's Shadows and Fatal Pushes and discard spells, Snapcaster sounds better to be honest, because it's easier to support. But Snapcaster isn't great here. So the question is, what are you tutoring for that makes the deckbuilding costs worth it, and that make pseudo time walking yourself worth it? Like I said before, Liliana (otV or tlH or both) is something in the long, grindy matchups, but it's not such a backbreaking haymaker in those spots to make all of the costs worth it.
I think if we're playing this card, it'll take building around it a lot more than just sticking it into a standard Traverse shell with some Architects of Will. Not just in terms of getting creatures into the yard, but also in terms of payoffs.
So much hate on Snappy.. I've personally loved the card. It's gotten me out of some tight binds. But I actually removed it from my deck recently for the same reason I never use KC in the main deck > it costs 3 Mana. I need my deck to be able to win consistently with only 2 lands in play. It's certainly better if I get 3, but it doesn't happen often with only 17 lands (even with 12 cantrips). Snapcaster is great for attrition matches but I've tried to tune my deck mostly for go-wide aggro. I've even considered going down to 2x stub main (probably 1 more SB) but haven't dropped that low yet. Stub has literally been the best card in my deck outside of Death's Shadow and TBR. It has so much potential that even in an aggro-heavy meta I can't bare to cut it. I've won countless games where I stub a critical Planeswalker, Coco, or PTE. Many of my successful stubs have even been "soft"
Phyrexian Unlife? I'm guessing that's for the Burn match-up?
Also, Plague Mare? Seems decent against GW Company but I'm not sure where else it would be significant. It's nice that he's thinking outside the box as far as toolbox SB creatures for Traverse. I've often felt that was an untapped resource for this archetype. The Abzan Traverse builds take full advantage, for example, with cards like Kambal, Kalitas, & Gaddock Teeg.
If it's working for you, great. I have a few personal issues with those neo zooicide lists, namely Tarmogoyf/Immense nonbo, Nacatl being the only card that wants a plains, and lack of discard spells (or probe) to give information on whether or not it's safe to go off.
Also, I feel the format metagame (mtgo & open formats) is anything but non-interactive. Jund and UW rule the metagame, with Humans and Spirits taking a big portion as well (both are interactive tempo based creature decks). I would say KCI, Infect, and Storm are the only true non-interactive decks. Death's Shadow actually considers Tron as non-interactive because we can usually kill them before they assemble, so I'll give you that one too.
Don't worry, you're in the right spot. We've used this thread more as a Traverse Shadow thread than as a Jund thread for some time.
I think your use of Thought Scour is interesting, and is probably a major reason for your differing perception of Snapcaster Mage. In a more standard Traverse shell, Snapcaster would sometimes have nothing to do on turn 3, which is really mopey, but that's far less likely here between the ability to flash back Scour, and flash back anything Scour hits.
It might be worth exploring Whispers of Emrakul in this shell. I've built decks that sufficiently enabled it before, but at the time I didn't think the payoff was worth it. It basically has to be a Death's Shadow shell since you absolutely need Street Wraith. This was in a Grixis shell with delve creatures instead of Tarmogoyfs though. Just changing to the Traverse + Goyf package alone probably make it a little better, and your shell already has 99% of the setup - really just need a 4th Scour, though adding 1 or 2 weird card types helps a bit too (probably just MD LotV, but you could go deeper for Search for Azcanta). That said, I'm not super optimistic about it being good enough without more significant changes. It's easy to get Whispers enabled by turn 3 pretty consistently, but that's not always good enough, and it doesn't really help in the super grindy matchups (BGx, UWx, Mardu) that much. Plus relying on the GY even more has pretty significant costs. But who knows, maybe there's something there.
The biggest change I want to make to your 75 is to get the red source into the MD to free up a SB slot. I reeeeally like having access to TBR, so I don't want to cut them, and in fact want at least 1 MD. But bare minimum, I want that red source main. I also think no forest is probably a mistake, given all of the Field of Ruins and Assassin's Trophies running around.
I haven't picked up a shadow shell since Trophy was printed because I figured it would make the metagame more hostile to us, and outweigh the fact that we picked up a new card. But this list is getting my juices flowing again.
Here's my deck plan right now. I'm trying to decide whether to use the 2nd Blood Crypt and only 1 blue source or to have only 1 red source and use a Breeding Pool or 2nd Watery Grave instead.
What's more important to protect against Astro destroying my mana access, TBR or Stub? Right now I lean more towards protecting my wincon.
Edit: I could just go with a Steam Vents...but couldn't traverse for a swamp if that's all I had.
So I made some significant changes to the mana base. I decided that I wanted to have two sources of R & U so I added a Steam Vents as a safety valve. Because of this I dropped a few Bloodstained Mire and a Verdant Catacombs for G fetches of each color. Doing some maths, I find that this evens out the manabase fairly well, providing access to counters and wincons equally. There are a few awkward starting hands where I won't have access to B or G but these tend to be hands starting with a basic and Steam Vents. Such rare occurrences will just have to be mulliganed. I'll also have to pay more attention to which land I get as not all of my fetches can grab B now, but through my gold fishing it seems manageable.
Anyway, any thoughts or comments on my land configuration per my full decklist below would be great. Thanks.
Steam Vents in a deck with 4x Atrophy sounds like a set up for failure. I used Steam Vents for a while in my 4c Shadow. You need a higher concentration of R/U to make it worthwhile. And even then having any spells that cost BG is a mistake. A way around this could be to run Manamorphose as help with color fixing, but I wouldn't recommend it. When I had Steam Vents my main board relied less on green, such as:
And even with this configuration I still ran into one occasion (that I recall) where I need to cast Traverse into Shadow but Steam Vents held me back. Its nice to hold up a single land for both Stub & Bolt though
How is jund death shadow these days? Can I get and assessmrnt on 2 different cards:
Claim // Fame. Giving death shadows haste seem good.
Discovery // Dispersal. It is an instant and a sorcery and it can put 2 cards in the gravyears. It seems like an easy way to get delerium, and as a good late game card. But it seems like a bad turn 2 play. But with Street Wraight or Bauble + Fetchland + Discovery // Dispersial you can go T1 discard spell, T2 Discovery, T3 Traverde for Death Shadow and plau it.
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During the event, this guy kept beating up on dredge, due to Traverse for Ghor-Clan and (I assume) drawing Temur Battle Rage at some point. Maybe the metagame has finally shifted in our favor? Though that might be temporary. We have a lot of trouble with graveyard hate, and people will certainly react to dredge by adding graveyard hate.
How is jund death shadow these days? Can I get and assessmrnt on 2 different cards:
Claim // Fame. Giving death shadows haste seem good.
It's not that great. It does nothing if you don't have a Shadow or Goyf in the graveyard, which is a large percentage of the time. Even against some decks that kill a lot of your threats, e.g. UW control. The upside just isn't there to overcome that downside.
Discovery // Dispersal. It is an instant and a sorcery and it can put 2 cards in the gravyears. It seems like an easy way to get delerium, and as a good late game card. But it seems like a bad turn 2 play. But with Street Wraight or Bauble + Fetchland + Discovery // Dispersial you can go T1 discard spell, T2 Discovery, T3 Traverde for Death Shadow and plau it.
Spending 2 mana to not interact with the opponent or impact the board is a really hard sell for this deck. If the other half of the card were remotely castable for the deck, it might be interesting. If you want to enable Delirium, the better options are: Tarfire, Manamorphose, or Thought Scour, depending on how you build your deck.
I've definitely been beating up on Dredge with Grixis Shadow, and I would imagine Traverse is even better because you're not as blown out by Leyline of the Void. My strategy with Grixis has basically been to mulligan any hand that doesn't contain either Leyline or Shadow and Battle-Rage. I've beaten the deck on mulls to 4 and 5 because of how powerful those cards are in the matchup.
I actually spent a lot of time trying a few different Traverse lists but I could just never quite get it right. I'd like to give Peter's list a try because I think he got right a few numbers that I just couldn't make up my mind about.
Steam Vents in a deck with 4x Atrophy sounds like a set up for failure. I used Steam Vents for a while in my 4c Shadow. You need a higher concentration of R/U to make it worthwhile. And even then having any spells that cost BG is a mistake. A way around this could be to run Manamorphose as help with color fixing, but I wouldn't recommend it. When I had Steam Vents my main board relied less on green, such as:
Good point. Looking at it again I've come up with the following:
I know, it's kinda crazy getting rid of all the Bloodstained Mire fetches but I can still fetch a Blood Crypt with any of my fetches. I decided to go with a Breeding Pool as it will provide me access to a swamp via Traverse. I did go down a fetch but I think that's not a terrible plan with Astro running around. Anyway, I'll have two sources of U & R this way without denying access to G or B.
I know, it's kinda crazy getting rid of all the Bloodstained Mire fetches but I can still fetch a Blood Crypt with any of my fetches. I decided to go with a Breeding Pool as it will provide me access to a swamp via Traverse. I did go down a fetch but I think that's not a terrible plan with Astro running around. Anyway, I'll have two sources of U & R this way without denying access to G or B.
Looks solid. So you'll run 18 land, 6 shocks and only 10 fetches? Maybe drop to 1x Overgrown Tomb and add another black fetch land? That way you'll have 2x Green shocks, 2x Blue shocks, and 2x red ones, with plenty of black sources still
Maybe we can weather in oncoming wave of GY hate with Assassin's Trophy. The big question IMO: what's our haymaker, if we play one at all? Or do we just try to pile-of-discard-spells into LotV/LtlH the grindy matchups?
Edit: I also am stubborn and still like Manamorphose and Bolt over Tarfire. With all the Field of Ruin running around, the ability to fix your colors off Manamorphose seems too valuable. But if I manage to test anything, I'll give Tarfire the old college try.
Certainly not more than 1-2 in the 75. Do you think a small number (1-2) of Architects would worth it as a support piece that also doubles down on Delirium?
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I don't think just jamming the tutor in a standard Traverse shell is good, because the payoff isn't that high. I'm not even talking about making sure we can support it. The question is, what are we tutoring? If it's just Death's Shadows and Fatal Pushes and discard spells, Snapcaster sounds better to be honest, because it's easier to support. But Snapcaster isn't great here. So the question is, what are you tutoring for that makes the deckbuilding costs worth it, and that make pseudo time walking yourself worth it? Like I said before, Liliana (otV or tlH or both) is something in the long, grindy matchups, but it's not such a backbreaking haymaker in those spots to make all of the costs worth it.
I think if we're playing this card, it'll take building around it a lot more than just sticking it into a standard Traverse shell with some Architects of Will. Not just in terms of getting creatures into the yard, but also in terms of payoffs.
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It was also a 5c list, with 1 Mausoleum Secrets and 1 Architects of Will, to add to the recent debates here.
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGO/comments/9kuhlv/new_modern_5c_deaths_shadow_by_benchsummer_50/
That's a very interesting list.
Phyrexian Unlife? I'm guessing that's for the Burn match-up?
Also, Plague Mare? Seems decent against GW Company but I'm not sure where else it would be significant. It's nice that he's thinking outside the box as far as toolbox SB creatures for Traverse. I've often felt that was an untapped resource for this archetype. The Abzan Traverse builds take full advantage, for example, with cards like Kambal, Kalitas, & Gaddock Teeg.
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Yeah, Unlife is an old school Death's Shadow burn card. There are probably a few other spots where you'd bring it in, but it excels there.
4x Wild Nacatl
4x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Death's Shadow
3x Tarmogoyf
4x Street Wraith
3x Thoughtseize
3x Lightning Bolt
4x Mutagenic Growth
4x Temur Battle Rage
1x Dismember
1x Apostle's Blessing
4x Mishra's Bauble
3x Become Immense
2x Verdant Catacombs
2x Windswept Heath
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Overgrown Tomb
1x Stomping Ground
1x Godless Shrine
1x Sacred Foundry
1x Blood Crypt
1x Forest
1x Swamp
2x Faith's Shield
1x Collective Brutality
2x Ancient Grudge
1x Remorseful Cleric
1x Xenagos, the Reveler
1x Surgical Extraction
1x Assassin's Trophy
1x Wear // Tear
1x Spellskite
1x Dismember
1x Thoughtseize
1x Phyrexian Unlife
I've been futzing with the 4c DS Aggro lists. Feels very powerful right now that people are leaning towards non-interaction.
Also, I feel the format metagame (mtgo & open formats) is anything but non-interactive. Jund and UW rule the metagame, with Humans and Spirits taking a big portion as well (both are interactive tempo based creature decks). I would say KCI, Infect, and Storm are the only true non-interactive decks. Death's Shadow actually considers Tron as non-interactive because we can usually kill them before they assemble, so I'll give you that one too.
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I think your use of Thought Scour is interesting, and is probably a major reason for your differing perception of Snapcaster Mage. In a more standard Traverse shell, Snapcaster would sometimes have nothing to do on turn 3, which is really mopey, but that's far less likely here between the ability to flash back Scour, and flash back anything Scour hits.
It might be worth exploring Whispers of Emrakul in this shell. I've built decks that sufficiently enabled it before, but at the time I didn't think the payoff was worth it. It basically has to be a Death's Shadow shell since you absolutely need Street Wraith. This was in a Grixis shell with delve creatures instead of Tarmogoyfs though. Just changing to the Traverse + Goyf package alone probably make it a little better, and your shell already has 99% of the setup - really just need a 4th Scour, though adding 1 or 2 weird card types helps a bit too (probably just MD LotV, but you could go deeper for Search for Azcanta). That said, I'm not super optimistic about it being good enough without more significant changes. It's easy to get Whispers enabled by turn 3 pretty consistently, but that's not always good enough, and it doesn't really help in the super grindy matchups (BGx, UWx, Mardu) that much. Plus relying on the GY even more has pretty significant costs. But who knows, maybe there's something there.
The biggest change I want to make to your 75 is to get the red source into the MD to free up a SB slot. I reeeeally like having access to TBR, so I don't want to cut them, and in fact want at least 1 MD. But bare minimum, I want that red source main. I also think no forest is probably a mistake, given all of the Field of Ruins and Assassin's Trophies running around.
I haven't picked up a shadow shell since Trophy was printed because I figured it would make the metagame more hostile to us, and outweigh the fact that we picked up a new card. But this list is getting my juices flowing again.
4 Death's Shadow
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Street Wraith
Artifacts
4 Mishra's Bauble
Instants
3 Fatal Push
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Tarfire
4 Assassin's Trophy
2 Temur Battle Rage
Sorceries
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
2 Liliana of the Veil
Lands
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Watery Grave
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Stubborn Denial
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
2 Damping Sphere
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Here's my deck plan right now. I'm trying to decide whether to use the 2nd Blood Crypt and only 1 blue source or to have only 1 red source and use a Breeding Pool or 2nd Watery Grave instead.
What's more important to protect against Astro destroying my mana access, TBR or Stub? Right now I lean more towards protecting my wincon.
Edit: I could just go with a Steam Vents...but couldn't traverse for a swamp if that's all I had.
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
1 Swamp
Anyway, any thoughts or comments on my land configuration per my full decklist below would be great. Thanks.
4 Death's Shadow
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Street Wraith
Artifacts
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Fatal Push
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Tarfire
4 Assassin's Trophy
2 Temur Battle Rage
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
Planeswalkers
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Death's Shadow
4 Street Wraith
1 Snapcaster mage
Spells (30)
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Lightning bolt
2 Fatal Push
2 Dismember
3 Stubborn denial
2 Temur Battle Rage
3 Faithless Looting
17 lands (including Steam Vents)
1 Spell Snare
1 Stubborn denial
2 Delay
1 Island
2 Radiant flames
2 Abrade
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Collective Brutality
1 Temur Battle Rage
1 Abrupt Decay
And even with this configuration I still ran into one occasion (that I recall) where I need to cast Traverse into Shadow but Steam Vents held me back. Its nice to hold up a single land for both Stub & Bolt though
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BGUSultai Shadow
BURGrixis Shadow
BGUSultai midrange
BRWMardu Pyromancer
BGRJund
Claim // Fame. Giving death shadows haste seem good.
Discovery // Dispersal. It is an instant and a sorcery and it can put 2 cards in the gravyears. It seems like an easy way to get delerium, and as a good late game card. But it seems like a bad turn 2 play. But with Street Wraight or Bauble + Fetchland + Discovery // Dispersial you can go T1 discard spell, T2 Discovery, T3 Traverde for Death Shadow and plau it.
During the event, this guy kept beating up on dredge, due to Traverse for Ghor-Clan and (I assume) drawing Temur Battle Rage at some point. Maybe the metagame has finally shifted in our favor? Though that might be temporary. We have a lot of trouble with graveyard hate, and people will certainly react to dredge by adding graveyard hate.
It's not that great. It does nothing if you don't have a Shadow or Goyf in the graveyard, which is a large percentage of the time. Even against some decks that kill a lot of your threats, e.g. UW control. The upside just isn't there to overcome that downside.
Spending 2 mana to not interact with the opponent or impact the board is a really hard sell for this deck. If the other half of the card were remotely castable for the deck, it might be interesting. If you want to enable Delirium, the better options are: Tarfire, Manamorphose, or Thought Scour, depending on how you build your deck.
I actually spent a lot of time trying a few different Traverse lists but I could just never quite get it right. I'd like to give Peter's list a try because I think he got right a few numbers that I just couldn't make up my mind about.
Good point. Looking at it again I've come up with the following:
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blood Crypt
1 Watery Grave
1 Breeding Pool
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Polluted Delta
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Forest
1 Swamp
Can we speculate on why only 3x Verdant catacombs? Seems so odd to me.
Also, only 1x TBR sounds blasphemous... the list looks tuned for Dredge, Tron, KCI, UW, Burn - but maybe weak to Humans and Spirits.
Looks solid. So you'll run 18 land, 6 shocks and only 10 fetches? Maybe drop to 1x Overgrown Tomb and add another black fetch land? That way you'll have 2x Green shocks, 2x Blue shocks, and 2x red ones, with plenty of black sources still
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Edit: I also am stubborn and still like Manamorphose and Bolt over Tarfire. With all the Field of Ruin running around, the ability to fix your colors off Manamorphose seems too valuable. But if I manage to test anything, I'll give Tarfire the old college try.