I’m new to the forum but have been reading through this thread recently a lot and wanted to contribute.
I recently attended magic fest Calgary last weekend and took 4C traverse shadow to the main event. I had an amazing start to the day with no byes going 5-0 but sadly lost my next three games, ending my tournament at 5-3.
The deck felt strong, and gave me the lines to win if I had played a little better, but decks like this require tight play and the smallest mistake can often lead to our downfall.
Pardon my lack of formatting skills; I’m on mobile and am unsure how to write the decklist out in the graphed columns so I’ll write it as best I can. I’ll talk about my card choices, especially the maindeck island and sideboard.
Sideboard: (15)
1x stubborn denial
2x surgical extraction
1x Rakdos charm
1x bojuka bog
1x liliana, the last hope
1x liliana of the veil
1x scavenging ooze
1x phyrexian revoker
2x fulminator mage
2x assassin’s trophy
1x radiant flames
1x collective brutality
I had played some 80~ games on mtgo prior to the event and attended some Local FNM’s to prep myself as best I could with my job and came to a few conclusions. UW control, Tron, GDS and Hardened scales/ traditional affinity were all ~50% to 40% win rates, either based on a bad MU overall or punts.
For UW Field of ruin, path to exile and any other land denial strategy was backbreaking against this deck and I fiddled with a maindeck island for sometime. It seemed good on paper and never really was bad during the tournament but moving forward id cut it to reduce the potential of abysmal topdecks. This deck lives and dies by the sword, so losing our blue source through repeated land destruction is just the way she goes. Keeping a fetch up for an important turn to
Sandbag one of the two sources is the only real option and often only lasts a turn if the opponent has an active field ready.
GDS is faster and can beat us with snapcaster but I find the matchup to be in our favour slightly, especially with traverse package and abrupt decay to smoosh shadows.
Tron is very beatable game 1 depending on who goes first and the strength of our hand. Postboard they lower their curve with TKS, thragtusk and often we take our removal which has few targets out. We need to fulminator / trophy and hopefully have surgical or a clock to have a chance in this MU and Tron is the more redundant deck.
I found with the rise of Phoenix and dredge , this deck incidentally gets worse with maindeck RIPS, Nihils and Relics our the wazoo nerfing Goyf and our traverse lines greatly.
The sideboard was pretty good all weekend but I’d cut the rakdos charm for a nihil and the revoker for ancient grudge or Hurkyls recall for better specific hate for artifacts.
My matchups were;
1. Vizier combo 2-0 (W)
2. Burn 2-1 (W)
3. Bant spirits 2-0 (W)
4. Whir Prison 2-1 (W)
5. Humans 2-1 (W)
6. UR arclight vs Squachief streamer 0-2 (L)
7. Mono G Tron 1-2 (L)
8. Grisel goryos / arclight pile 0-2 (L)
I’ll write another follow up to the matches and specific plays but I’ll let this post marinate while I gather that info from my logs. I also played in 2 MCQ’s and will write about that with some good wins and punts.
Overall I love this deck a lot but the current meta game runs a lot of graveyard hate maindeck which hurts us and im thinking about trying GDS which is faster and uses their graveyard differently than us with less strings attached in my opinion.
Here to answer and questions and further the discussion of this archetype. Thanks for reading part 1 of 2 and happy grinding.
I’m new to the forum but have been reading through this thread recently a lot and wanted to contribute.
I recently attended magic fest Calgary last weekend and took 4C traverse shadow to the main event. I had an amazing start to the day with no byes going 5-0 but sadly lost my next three games, ending my tournament at 5-3.
The deck felt strong, and gave me the lines to win if I had played a little better, but decks like this require tight play and the smallest mistake can often lead to our downfall.
Pardon my lack of formatting skills; I’m on mobile and am unsure how to write the decklist out in the graphed columns so I’ll write it as best I can. I’ll talk about my card choices, especially the maindeck island and sideboard.
Lands: (18)
1x watery grave
1x breeding pool
1x blood crypt
1x stomping ground
1x overgrown tomb
1x island
1x forest
1x swamp
1x wooded foothills
3x polluted delta
4x verdant catacomb
2x bloodstained mire
Noncreature spells: (29)
4x traverse the ulvenwald
4x mishra’s bauble
4x thoughtseize
4x inquisition of kozilek
3x fatal push
2x dismember
1x abrupt decay
1x kolaghan’s command
3x stubborn denial
1x temur battle rage
2x tarfire
Creatures: (13)
4x death’s shadow
4x tarmogoyf
4x street wraith
1x ghor-clan rampager
Sideboard: (15)
1x stubborn denial
2x surgical extraction
1x Rakdos charm
1x bojuka bog
1x liliana, the last hope
1x liliana of the veil
1x scavenging ooze
1x phyrexian revoker
2x fulminator mage
2x assassin’s trophy
1x radiant flames
1x collective brutality
I had played some 80~ games on mtgo prior to the event and attended some Local FNM’s to prep myself as best I could with my job and came to a few conclusions. UW control, Tron, GDS and Hardened scales/ traditional affinity were all ~50% to 40% win rates, either based on a bad MU overall or punts.
For UW Field of ruin, path to exile and any other land denial strategy was backbreaking against this deck and I fiddled with a maindeck island for sometime. It seemed good on paper and never really was bad during the tournament but moving forward id cut it to reduce the potential of abysmal topdecks. This deck lives and dies by the sword, so losing our blue source through repeated land destruction is just the way she goes. Keeping a fetch up for an important turn to
Sandbag one of the two sources is the only real option and often only lasts a turn if the opponent has an active field ready.
GDS is faster and can beat us with snapcaster but I find the matchup to be in our favour slightly, especially with traverse package and abrupt decay to smoosh shadows.
Tron is very beatable game 1 depending on who goes first and the strength of our hand. Postboard they lower their curve with TKS, thragtusk and often we take our removal which has few targets out. We need to fulminator / trophy and hopefully have surgical or a clock to have a chance in this MU and Tron is the more redundant deck.
I found with the rise of Phoenix and dredge , this deck incidentally gets worse with maindeck RIPS, Nihils and Relics our the wazoo nerfing Goyf and our traverse lines greatly.
The sideboard was pretty good all weekend but I’d cut the rakdos charm for a nihil and the revoker for ancient grudge or Hurkyls recall for better specific hate for artifacts.
My matchups were;
1. Vizier combo 2-0 (W)
2. Burn 2-1 (W)
3. Bant spirits 2-0 (W)
4. Whir Prison 2-1 (W)
5. Humans 2-1 (W)
6. UR arclight vs Squachief streamer 0-2 (L)
7. Mono G Tron 1-2 (L)
8. Grisel goryos / arclight pile 0-2 (L)
I’ll write another follow up to the matches and specific plays but I’ll let this post marinate while I gather that info from my logs. I also played in 2 MCQ’s and will write about that with some good wins and punts.
Overall I love this deck a lot but the current meta game runs a lot of graveyard hate maindeck which hurts us and im thinking about trying GDS which is faster and uses their graveyard differently than us with less strings attached in my opinion.
Here to answer and questions and further the discussion of this archetype. Thanks for reading part 1 of 2 and happy grinding.