I think there is definitely a meta argument for main deck Surgical. I played at a store a couple of months ago and, in five rounds, I encountered Phoenix twice. Surgical main deck would have won me one of those matches probably.
Hi there! After playing with and against pretty much every Modern deck there is, I managed to reduce my options to just two: BG Rock and GDS. Both decks feel good to me, but I can't decide which one should I invest in (playtest time is quite reduced for me nowadays).
I'll be posting this on the forum as well, I hope that's ok.
That said, my question is: why should and shouldn't I play GDS? The local meta is quite diverse, with Dredge, UW/Jeskai control, G-Tron, Storm, Ponza and Burn being played frequently.
I understand that GDS requires quite a lot of practice and it will make you work hard for your wins. On the other hand, BG Rock seems to be more consistent but lacks card selection and speed to close up the games.
I know that there isn't a right answer, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks a bunch!
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Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
Yea, I think we are very much on the same page. I've spent so long yelling at people about Surgical Extraction and how bad people are at using it, but the format is just ridiculous enough that you could very easily be right.
Interesting Star City Games article by Ben Friedman. I wonder about Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If anyone has experience, I would be interested. I'm not excited about running additional cantrips so I would like to have more answers. I'm not sold on Rise//Fall. I've run it off and an. I think it was better as an answer in Grixis Delver where you didn't expect a random discard spell. On the other hand, it seems like Rise is a good answer to Phoenix decks.
I really like the Jace. It actually won me a game vs whir prison after ensnaring bridge which was halarious. It is quite good in grindy matchups like Jund etc... Not sure if it is better than the 4tb snap, but I am sold on it right now.
I have just started running rise // falls because Michael Rapp sold me on it... We will see how that goes. I like boarding it in against low land count decks, and yeah the Phoenix application is useful. I will probably end up cutting it soon though because it doesn't feel good enough for me to be honest.
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Grixis Death's Shadow
I'd like to promote a discussion about our cantrip selection. I've seen many decks recently split our cantrips in 3 copies of Thought Scour, Bauble, Serum Visions/Opt, and 1-2 Faithless Looting. I firmly believe that 4 Thought Scours are needed in order to power up our early delve threats. Likewise, if our goal is to get those threats on the board ASAP, I don't see how the first copy of Serum Visions/Opt is better than the 4th copy of Bauble. I'd much prefer to pop 2 Baubles and play a discard spell T1 than T1 discard with Visions/Opt in hand.
Since our deck is no longer designed to grind (1 or 0 K commands, 3 Snaps, no LoTV) I don't see how spending mana on Serum Visions or Opt can be beneficial for our strategy. For example, if the pilot feels they constantly need to dig for land, the 18th land should be preferable than one the 2-3 loose copies of extra blue cantrips.
What's your experience with these splits and what are the pros and cons of your split? I'm currently running 4 Thought Scour, 4 Baubles and 18 lands. I'm very happy about it, specially due to being able to hit land drops for 3 CMC spells in the sideboard.
Looking forward to hearing your comments!
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Modern: BUR Grixis Death's Shadow/Control BUR & WBC Eldrazi & Taxes WBC
EDH: UG Edric, Spymaster of Goodstuff UG
Hey guys. Wondering how we approach the UW Spirits matchup specifically. It seems like Bant is easier because our Stubs can hit Coco, but UW feels very bad. Haven't won a game against my team member except when he scooped on a mull to 5.
I'd like to promote a discussion about our cantrip selection. I've seen many decks recently split our cantrips in 3 copies of Thought Scour, Bauble, Serum Visions/Opt, and 1-2 Faithless Looting. I firmly believe that 4 Thought Scours are needed in order to power up our early delve threats. Likewise, if our goal is to get those threats on the board ASAP, I don't see how the first copy of Serum Visions/Opt is better than the 4th copy of Bauble. I'd much prefer to pop 2 Baubles and play a discard spell T1 than T1 discard with Visions/Opt in hand.
Since our deck is no longer designed to grind (1 or 0 K commands, 3 Snaps, no LoTV) I don't see how spending mana on Serum Visions or Opt can be beneficial for our strategy. For example, if the pilot feels they constantly need to dig for land, the 18th land should be preferable than one the 2-3 loose copies of extra blue cantrips.
What's your experience with these splits and what are the pros and cons of your split? I'm currently running 4 Thought Scour, 4 Baubles and 18 lands. I'm very happy about it, specially due to being able to hit land drops for 3 CMC spells in the sideboard.
Looking forward to hearing your comments!
I run 4 scour, 2 serum visions, 1 looting, and 3 bauble. It feels perfect to me. I like this because I agree with you, the 4 scours are necessary, and I love the looting game one to bin useless cards.
I still am on the serum visions because I like how it grinds. You mentioned our deck is no longer meant to grind, but I think that is partly incorrect because there are definitely matchups where we do grind them out still - the meta is just a bit too fast to want the 4th snap and playset of visions in our mb.
Those are just my initial thoughts from your comment. Hope this provides a somewhat different viewpoint to the visions argument.
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Grixis Death's Shadow
I have always been of the opinion that people who play less than 4 Thought Scours are just total psychopaths. Gurmag Angler is the best thing this deck does, and Thought Scour is the best enabler. Playing less than 4 makes no sense to me.
Bauble is great, but it isn't just strictly better than the blue cantrips. People still really undervalue Snapcaster-cantrip, but Baubles don't let you do this. They also still offer selection when you draw them without fetchlands, and Serum Visions in particular is the best selection cantrip available in the format. Bauble is explosive, but the delay makes it slower and more awkward in the mid to late game.
Opt and Serum Visions are also just really, really powerful Magic cards. You don't need them to have specific, flashy reasons to "contribute to out strategy". They are part of the reason we can play 17 lands, and the reason that we can play 1- and 2-ofs in the sideboard. They improve our velocity, consistency, and threat density. The Legacy version of this is Ponder and Brainstorm, and while we have to play Street Wraith and Thought Scour for other reasons, the selection cantrips are still integral to the deck's power.
I honestly don't think you need the 18th land, and would just play a Serum Visions in that spot. It still lets you find your third land drop post-board, but it also lets you ditch lands late game or in Game 1s when you just need gas.
The bigger cantrip question for me is this: What is up with the people lately playing Sleight of Hand over Serum Visions? It has been in a number of lists lately, and I would love to hear the reasoning form someone who is using it.
And yet, Ben Friedman just wrote an article yesterday defending a full playset of Baubles. 16th place at GP Tampa, his 75 had zero copies of Serum Visions or Opt. He also recommended these cards in the flex slots that could be any number of additional Snapcasters, K Commands, Stubborn Denials, and so forth. Even looking at mtgtop 8 averages and totals within the last two weeks shows less than half of the decks are using Visions, and most of them only two copies. The others are using two copies of Sleight of Hand instead.
The combination of Friedman's expertise and these points of data show that this deckbuilding aspect is not as trivial as "Serum Visions/Opt are powerful blue cantrips, play them." In fact, the low number of copies of a single of those effects makes me think they are not particularly impactful.
To add to the Serum Visions vs Sleight of Hand debacle, I believe what divides pilots is the issue of selection now or later. Not too long ago people were saying that Serum Visions' scry is useless in GDS due to the amount of fetching and shuffling involved. Sleight of Hand (or Opt for that matter) digs deeper for the card in your hand now instead of providing a random draw and a setup for later turns. I think this argument anti-Serum is debatable in the sense that Visions' scry makes Bauble and Wraith blind draws better, but it has its own merits.
To be clear, I don't think 4 Baubles is wrong and I don't think the blue selection cantrips are sacred cows. Basically all of them have pluses and minuses, the only sacred cows are Wraith and Scour. I definitely get the argument for 4 Baubles, especially if we want speed. It is a great card in this deck.
Opt: I only like this if the deck is operating a lot at instant speed, which right now it honestly isn't. The more Bolts I play, the more I like it, but I don't think it is good enough.
Serum Visions: I understand that people value the immediate selection, but I could make a counter argument that Shadow is the best Visions deck in the format specifically because of its play patterns. Other decks have to make sub-optimal plays, or fetch basics pre-emptively to keep the scry. Shadow fetch-shocks all the time regardless. The other big strength is Street Wraith, as you mentioned.
Sleight of Hand: A big plus I see currently is how it helps us dig specifically for Surgical on turns 1 and 2 againt Pheonix. If we are trying to play long mirrors and duals with GB and control, give me Serum Visions all day. Thats not the meta as it currently exists, though.
A 17 land deck needs cantrips. From my point of view, there are 14 slots in the deck to fill. 4 Wraith, 4 Scour, 3 Bauble are set (others will argue the 4th Scour is debatable, but I strongly disagree). Any of the above three blue options, as well as the 4th Bauble, an 18th land, and Faithless Looting are all in the running. This deck hates flooding and without Command is even worse when it floods out, so the land is a non starter for me. I wouldn't call any other selection "wrong".
Looking for a SB replacement for my Phoneix match up. I don't have any surgicals, so it's Crypts or Spellbombs? What's the pick here? Is the 1 mana that important?
Looking for a SB replacement for my Phoneix match up. I don't have any surgicals, so it's Crypts or Spellbombs? What's the pick here? Is the 1 mana that important?
I am personally on 1 surgical 2 spellbombs because I don't have the other 2 surgicals. Just my thing though, I like them.
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Grixis Death's Shadow
Looking for a SB replacement for my Phoneix match up. I don't have any surgicals, so it's Crypts or Spellbombs? What's the pick here? Is the 1 mana that important?
I am personally on 1 surgical 2 spellbombs because I don't have the other 2 surgicals. Just my thing though, I like them.
Ravenous trap is the best replacement. Even Ben Friedman said that this card has a similar value than surgical against phoenix and dredge. You may practise with traps and you will see it clearly. I recommend traps strongly in this modern metagame.
That looks really good. I didn't know about them. How does priority work with Traps? I mean, you normally wouldn't be passed priority after he pitched a card. So when does priority go back to you to cast this instant? let's say he faithless looting into Gut shot...three cards hit the bin, well 4, but at what point is priority mine?
That looks really good. I didn't know about them. How does priority work with Traps? I mean, you normally wouldn't be passed priority after he pitched a card. So when does priority go back to you to cast this instant? let's say he faithless looting into Gut shot...three cards hit the bin, well 4, but at what point is priority mine?
You wait to cast the trap in response to one of their triggers. For example, they dredge three cards with Life from the Loam, hitting a Creeping chill. With the chill trigger on the stack you cast ravenous and exile the whole graveyard. Now they can't choose to use the chill trigger.
Similar for Phoenix. You let them looting and play a bunch of other spells. Then when they attempt to move to combat, they place the Phoenix triggers on the stack, you respond with ravenous trap, exiling the whole graveyard including the Phoenix.
I will add that Ravenous Trap works great with Jace VP also because his ability allows you to cast it for free from your graveyard although not at instant speed which kinda hurts the trap aspect. Snapcaster however does not allow the trap to be cast for 0 as flashback
Instant speed edict with potential discard (obviously also at instant speed..)!
This is what you want in grindy match-ups, in which there rarely are more than one creature and a card in both players' hands (although if you control a Liliana planeswalker, you're in a good position usually). And it always works against Boggles, no matter how many Leylines they have. One or two copies will become a staple in Shadow sideboards.
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Who is truer: you who are, or you who are to be?
Currently sleeved: WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
I wonder if angrath's wrath would be any good. while the card is not optimal, in that Liliana's Triumph for example is instant edict, Abrade / Dread bore you can target the creature / artifact / planes walker. Running 2 of these in the sideboard can give you answers to a lot of different threats and open up a few more spots in the sideboard. either a few more specific cards for certain matchups, or anger of the god's for go wide strategies.
I am thinking something along the lines of
cut the shattering blow for 1 hurkleys recall (which he mentions in his article)
move the bolt to the main, and cut a fatal push
cut a disdainful stroke
cut a stubborn denial from the main
Cut Liliana of the Veil / last hope
in the side add 2 angrath's wrath's. and either engeneered explosives / anger of the god's / or keep the planes walkers.
Add a 1 Kolaghan’s Command to the main
This should give the deck multiple answers to fast creature decks, midrange decks, boggles, graveyard hate, artifact hate, Tron hate (as good as this deck can). a chance to get out from a JTMS or Liliana or other walkers.
I'll be posting this on the forum as well, I hope that's ok.
That said, my question is: why should and shouldn't I play GDS? The local meta is quite diverse, with Dredge, UW/Jeskai control, G-Tron, Storm, Ponza and Burn being played frequently.
I understand that GDS requires quite a lot of practice and it will make you work hard for your wins. On the other hand, BG Rock seems to be more consistent but lacks card selection and speed to close up the games.
I know that there isn't a right answer, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks a bunch!
I really like the Jace. It actually won me a game vs whir prison after ensnaring bridge which was halarious. It is quite good in grindy matchups like Jund etc... Not sure if it is better than the 4tb snap, but I am sold on it right now.
I have just started running rise // falls because Michael Rapp sold me on it... We will see how that goes. I like boarding it in against low land count decks, and yeah the Phoenix application is useful. I will probably end up cutting it soon though because it doesn't feel good enough for me to be honest.
Ad Nauseam
Grixis Death's Shadow
I'd like to promote a discussion about our cantrip selection. I've seen many decks recently split our cantrips in 3 copies of Thought Scour, Bauble, Serum Visions/Opt, and 1-2 Faithless Looting. I firmly believe that 4 Thought Scours are needed in order to power up our early delve threats. Likewise, if our goal is to get those threats on the board ASAP, I don't see how the first copy of Serum Visions/Opt is better than the 4th copy of Bauble. I'd much prefer to pop 2 Baubles and play a discard spell T1 than T1 discard with Visions/Opt in hand.
Since our deck is no longer designed to grind (1 or 0 K commands, 3 Snaps, no LoTV) I don't see how spending mana on Serum Visions or Opt can be beneficial for our strategy. For example, if the pilot feels they constantly need to dig for land, the 18th land should be preferable than one the 2-3 loose copies of extra blue cantrips.
What's your experience with these splits and what are the pros and cons of your split? I'm currently running 4 Thought Scour, 4 Baubles and 18 lands. I'm very happy about it, specially due to being able to hit land drops for 3 CMC spells in the sideboard.
Looking forward to hearing your comments!
BUR Grixis Death's Shadow/Control BUR & WBC Eldrazi & Taxes WBC
EDH:
UG Edric, Spymaster of Goodstuff UG
UWR Control
BR Hollow One
I run 4 scour, 2 serum visions, 1 looting, and 3 bauble. It feels perfect to me. I like this because I agree with you, the 4 scours are necessary, and I love the looting game one to bin useless cards.
I still am on the serum visions because I like how it grinds. You mentioned our deck is no longer meant to grind, but I think that is partly incorrect because there are definitely matchups where we do grind them out still - the meta is just a bit too fast to want the 4th snap and playset of visions in our mb.
Those are just my initial thoughts from your comment. Hope this provides a somewhat different viewpoint to the visions argument.
Ad Nauseam
Grixis Death's Shadow
Bauble is great, but it isn't just strictly better than the blue cantrips. People still really undervalue Snapcaster-cantrip, but Baubles don't let you do this. They also still offer selection when you draw them without fetchlands, and Serum Visions in particular is the best selection cantrip available in the format. Bauble is explosive, but the delay makes it slower and more awkward in the mid to late game.
Opt and Serum Visions are also just really, really powerful Magic cards. You don't need them to have specific, flashy reasons to "contribute to out strategy". They are part of the reason we can play 17 lands, and the reason that we can play 1- and 2-ofs in the sideboard. They improve our velocity, consistency, and threat density. The Legacy version of this is Ponder and Brainstorm, and while we have to play Street Wraith and Thought Scour for other reasons, the selection cantrips are still integral to the deck's power.
I honestly don't think you need the 18th land, and would just play a Serum Visions in that spot. It still lets you find your third land drop post-board, but it also lets you ditch lands late game or in Game 1s when you just need gas.
The bigger cantrip question for me is this: What is up with the people lately playing Sleight of Hand over Serum Visions? It has been in a number of lists lately, and I would love to hear the reasoning form someone who is using it.
The combination of Friedman's expertise and these points of data show that this deckbuilding aspect is not as trivial as "Serum Visions/Opt are powerful blue cantrips, play them." In fact, the low number of copies of a single of those effects makes me think they are not particularly impactful.
To add to the Serum Visions vs Sleight of Hand debacle, I believe what divides pilots is the issue of selection now or later. Not too long ago people were saying that Serum Visions' scry is useless in GDS due to the amount of fetching and shuffling involved. Sleight of Hand (or Opt for that matter) digs deeper for the card in your hand now instead of providing a random draw and a setup for later turns. I think this argument anti-Serum is debatable in the sense that Visions' scry makes Bauble and Wraith blind draws better, but it has its own merits.
BUR Grixis Death's Shadow/Control BUR & WBC Eldrazi & Taxes WBC
EDH:
UG Edric, Spymaster of Goodstuff UG
Opt: I only like this if the deck is operating a lot at instant speed, which right now it honestly isn't. The more Bolts I play, the more I like it, but I don't think it is good enough.
Serum Visions: I understand that people value the immediate selection, but I could make a counter argument that Shadow is the best Visions deck in the format specifically because of its play patterns. Other decks have to make sub-optimal plays, or fetch basics pre-emptively to keep the scry. Shadow fetch-shocks all the time regardless. The other big strength is Street Wraith, as you mentioned.
Sleight of Hand: A big plus I see currently is how it helps us dig specifically for Surgical on turns 1 and 2 againt Pheonix. If we are trying to play long mirrors and duals with GB and control, give me Serum Visions all day. Thats not the meta as it currently exists, though.
A 17 land deck needs cantrips. From my point of view, there are 14 slots in the deck to fill. 4 Wraith, 4 Scour, 3 Bauble are set (others will argue the 4th Scour is debatable, but I strongly disagree). Any of the above three blue options, as well as the 4th Bauble, an 18th land, and Faithless Looting are all in the running. This deck hates flooding and without Command is even worse when it floods out, so the land is a non starter for me. I wouldn't call any other selection "wrong".
RUBDa ShadowBUR
I am personally on 1 surgical 2 spellbombs because I don't have the other 2 surgicals. Just my thing though, I like them.
Ad Nauseam
Grixis Death's Shadow
Ravenous trap is the best replacement. Even Ben Friedman said that this card has a similar value than surgical against phoenix and dredge. You may practise with traps and you will see it clearly. I recommend traps strongly in this modern metagame.
RUBDa ShadowBUR
You wait to cast the trap in response to one of their triggers. For example, they dredge three cards with Life from the Loam, hitting a Creeping chill. With the chill trigger on the stack you cast ravenous and exile the whole graveyard. Now they can't choose to use the chill trigger.
Similar for Phoenix. You let them looting and play a bunch of other spells. Then when they attempt to move to combat, they place the Phoenix triggers on the stack, you respond with ravenous trap, exiling the whole graveyard including the Phoenix.
I will add that Ravenous Trap works great with Jace VP also because his ability allows you to cast it for free from your graveyard although not at instant speed which kinda hurts the trap aspect. Snapcaster however does not allow the trap to be cast for 0 as flashback
Draft My Cube!
Instant speed edict with potential discard (obviously also at instant speed..)!
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569
This is what you want in grindy match-ups, in which there rarely are more than one creature and a card in both players' hands (although if you control a Liliana planeswalker, you're in a good position usually). And it always works against Boggles, no matter how many Leylines they have. One or two copies will become a staple in Shadow sideboards.
Currently sleeved:
WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
This is Miachael Rapp's recent deck from https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/grixis-deaths-shadow-guide-first-place-at-grand-prix-toronto/
2 Watery Grave
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Steam Vents
1 Swamp
Creatures
4 Death’s Shadow
4 Gurmag Angler
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Street Wraith
2 Dismember
1 Faithless Looting
4 Fatal Push
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Mishra’s Bauble
2 Serum Visions
4 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Battle Rage
4 Thought Scour
4 Thoughtseize
1 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Collective Brutality
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound
1 Kolaghan’s Command
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Shattering Blow
3 Surgical Extraction
I am thinking something along the lines of
cut the shattering blow for 1 hurkleys recall (which he mentions in his article)
move the bolt to the main, and cut a fatal push
cut a disdainful stroke
cut a stubborn denial from the main
Cut Liliana of the Veil / last hope
in the side add 2 angrath's wrath's. and either engeneered explosives / anger of the god's / or keep the planes walkers.
Add a 1 Kolaghan’s Command to the main
This should give the deck multiple answers to fast creature decks, midrange decks, boggles, graveyard hate, artifact hate, Tron hate (as good as this deck can). a chance to get out from a JTMS or Liliana or other walkers.
http://www.cubetutor.com/cubeblog/63569