My record is 6-1 (games) against Tron in completive REL. Two of those matches were a MM build and the most recent was without. I don't recall ever losing to Tron pick-up games either. But more importantly I've always played 3x Stubborn in my main deck. I also run 2x Dismember and never side it out against them. You can Dismember your own Shadow at their EOT to grow it. Also they run a lot of PW so it's very easy to get Tarmogoyf to 6/7 (or even 7/8 in Tarfire builds). I've always kept 1x Fulminator in the board, and my most recent competitive match against Tron I also had 3x Alpine Moon (which probably isn't necessary). It's crazy to me that you guys are even near 50/50 against them. Maybe I've just been lucky.
You're not lucky, you have a ton of hate for tron (TBR, Counterspells, Fulminator, and sometimes even Alpine Moon? That's a lot.)
I'm interested in Spooly's brewing of a Blueless version utilizing Whispers because I think it could fill a similar (yet proactive) role. But as it stands I consider Stub and TBR part of the core of deck. The removal package, and probably a singleton tutorable creature, are my flex slots. I had a few times where Ghor-clan was critical but I don't think I'd prefer it over a 2nd TBR. The thing with GCR is that he gives your opponent the information (when you tutor it).
You probably saw up thread, but I'm off Whispers. Tarfire is too important to enabling Whispers, but you want to cut Tarfire against control. At least in the shell I'm currently experimenting with, it isn't worth it. Maybe if you find a way to not rely on Tarfire to enable it, but that probably involves Thought Scour and a different shell. I'm also leaning toward cutting the white for blue again, though maybe having 0 blue spells MD. It's just so much easier to move the needle against Tron, Burn, etc, than it is against midrange and control. Though if it were a legitimate option, and right now I would push hard for beating those decks instead.
Re: Ghor-Clan: it's fantastic against Dredge, Humans, and a few other matchups. But I wouldn't cut a TBR for it. why_not_both_girl.jpg. 2 + 1 is right where I want to be.
@Spooly - when you refer to Dredge in these recent leagues, is that including Bridge Vine? What about Hollow One?
Actual dredge. I haven't run into Hollow One or Bridgevine this past week. Though in my experience, any TBR build of Shadow is pretty heavily favored against Hollow One. Or at least any build packing 2 Dismember. I don't have the reps with Shadow shell against Bridgevine to really know, but I suspect it's not as good for Shadow. Though maybe still favored, idk.
Could you elaborate on how you play and side vs dredge in general?
I have always had a rough time with this matchup and I have regarded it as a terrible matchup in my experience (on par with UW control). Other than cheesing them out with TBR what is your game plan?
Basically that
I think it's mostly deckbuilding decisions, not gameplay decisions, that are making the difference. Ghor-Clan Rampager as a Traverse target has been invaluable in the matchup, and Tarfire ties the room together: makes Goyf and Shadow both massive, and gets that Traverse turned on so you can find Ghor-Clan or a giant threat. It even kills Stinkweed Imp in a pinch, if you have a turn where that's important. The fact that they have Creeping Chill now means that you're less likely to have trouble getting your life total low enough to make Shadow massive now, though you do have to close quickly before Chills or a Conflag finish you off. The matchup is all about closing as fast as possible, so play with that in mind. I'm also running 2 Grim Flayer, which helps ensure that I have a decent clock, and is another way to get Traverse online quickly. Plus trample is invaluable.
I'm also running 3-4 GY hate cards in the SB instead of the usual 2 (2 Spellbomb, 1-2 Surgical, and 0-1 Oooze, though Ooze has been pretty poor for me). So postboard I end up with a bit more interaction than normal. When you know you have a quick clock, casting surgical on their first (and only) dredger in the GY can often be great, though if you hand is a bit slower and more interactive you probably want to wait to hit something like Amalgam or Bloodghast. But you probably shouldn't keep many hands like that, unless you have a LOT of interaction. Priority 1 against dredge: establish a clock.
Also note that they may board Leyline of the Void in against you, so you should always have access to Assassin's Trophy postboard. Worst case it removes a blocker during a big attack (like Imp), but best case it turns on your deck.
I'm not playing blue, but having access to a few counterspells adds a few more percentage points. Mostly as Conflag protection, though sometimes you get to pick off a Looting or Reunion, which is also great.
After getting some reps on mtgo comp leagues, I don't think Whispers is worth the squeeze. The killer is that i want to side tarfire out against control, but if i do it's a lot harder to turn whispers on quickly.
That said, i'm winning a lot of matches. 3-2, 3-2, 4-1 across 3 leagues. Absolutely destroying dredge (5-0 in matches, 10-1 in games), and doing ok against humans (2-0 in matches, though they were close). The tron matchup feels like we're a hair away from turning it, but I'm 0-3 (including an egregious punt on my part). That last league I added a Fulminator to my SB as a traverse target, but still got donked on by tron, because of running Thragtusks keeping him out of shadow + TBR range by exactly 1 point 3 turns in a row. Lingering Souls has been nice against Jund, hasn't done much against Mardu (when I do bring it in), and my only control match my opponent kept awful hands and died, so idk there. At this point I'm thinking about cutting them and trying 2x Hazoret instead so I can have (SB only!) countermagic for tron, burn, and the anyone else it's relevant against. Hazzy isn't as good against the grindy decks, but it's so hard to get percentage points there that I'm inclined to basically concede that it'll always be bad and never all that close.
Architects of Will is fine as an enabler, but it's redundant with Mishra's Bauble. Scour is really much better at enabling it, along with having a smattering of planeswalkers and some other weird card types (Tarfire, Seal of Fire, etc). Though I'm thinking in a Jund + White shell, so we don't have access to Scour. In that case, I could see a singleton Architects of Will to increase the chance of hitting an artifact, but it'll be rough. I'm not sure it can be done.
If it's good, I can see it as a 2-3 of, basically what you have.
To give you an idea of what you need to do to support it, here's the Grixis shell I tried (within a 1-2 cards anyway):
That shell could have Whispers turned on fairly consistently by turn 3, but sometimes would have a LOOOT of trouble if it drew the wrong mix of cards. Plus there were all these sequencing issues with delve creatures and Snapcaster. Luckily Tarmogoyf + Traverse solves that problem, but it's still rough to get delirium that fast consistently enough. Notice, I had to sacrifice the IoKs to get it done! Mixing in some Tarfire would help. This was also before Search for Azcanta was printed, which might be an ok 1-2 of in this shell.
I'm really more interested in Whispers in a nonblue shell because, if we can turn it on fast enough, it solves a couple of problems: 1) something grindy that's good against control, 2) something decent against the spell based combo decks and big mana decks to make up for losing countermagic. Then we just let Lingering Souls carry us in the BGx matchups.
Maybe a Jund + White shell that can turn it on just goes HARD on tarfire. I'm not sure if it'll be good enough, but here's a sketch:
I'd like to squeeze an Architects of Will in there, but there's hardly any room. I'd also like a second TBR, but again. Anyway, that's just a sketch. In reality, it's probably a 2 Whispers deck (MD anyway), but to test it going up to 3 is right.
Edit: add 2nd Grim Flayer as another card I want but there's no room for.
(I ninja-edited my last post just before you posted, if you missed it)
Burn is fixable without countermagic though. Phyrexian Unlife, and more Collective Brutality, for example. Valakut, on the other hand, has no real substitutes.
I don't think Snare is going to have a large impact in BGx matchups. It trades 1-for-1 with cards you already have no problem dealing with (2 mana creatures), and Assassin's Trophy. It's fine, but not a major incentive to be blue.
I think Souls is fine against control too. It forces them to wrath. But yeah, that's definitely a matchup where I'd rather have blue and try to protect the queen. Even then, we're probably still significant dog in the matchup. Especially if they're red. I'm not sure how to significantly move the needle in these matchups, and short of that, I'd rather ignore them.
Bedlam Reveler is interesting for sure, but double red is pretty rough, and the susceptibility to graveyard hate is pretty rough, and it's effectively just as slow as Ranger. Most of our manabases only have 2 red lands, so a single mana denial spell is just as disruptive against both Ranger and Reveler. I like Ranger better since it's less susceptible to GY hate, but if you build around Reveler a little more (with more red lands and maybe stuff like Thought Scour) I could flip my opinion. But is it worth it?
The grindy-ish card that actually feels decent against control is Whispers of Emrakul (assuming it's turned on consistently enough). Creatures are too easy for them to interact with, and planeswalkers tend to be a bit too expensive. But discard spell into t2 do some things into t3 hymn into t4 threat might just get them. But turning it on is pretty annoying. Something I might experiment with, anyway, but I'm not super optimistic.
Tombstalker isn't really a haymaker since it's just a dude they can kill. A haymaker should generate value or be annoying for them to kill in some way. Hazoret is pretty good against Jund and BG, but that seems to be it. Against Path decks you can't really justify sinking that much mana into into Hazzy.
Maybe the solution is to cut blue so we can splash white for Souls + Ranger. Before Assassin's Trophy, it was hard to cut blue because you needed a bit more interaction for the combo and especially big mana decks. Trophy happens to be that interaction in several matchups. Not all, but Tron in particular, and it also does some light work against a lot of combo decks that have random permanents we can pick off. Against e.g. Storm or KCI we can supplement with more graveyard interaction than normal. The biggest hole in this plan is Valakut, but as long as that isn't heavily played, I think we're ok. The second biggest hole is Burn, which probably requires some extra SB attention.
Edit: took a Jund + white build (with no Manamorphoses) for a spin in a league, and it felt decent, going 3-2. Lingering Souls was great against Jund, and is probably still fine against UW despite Field of Ruin because we can always LotV them away. Ranger I'm more skeptical of, and want to cut. One of the matches I lost to Amulet, which, add to Valakut and Burn for the list of decks where losing countermagic really hurts us.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Spooly, how do you feel about a build foregoing the traverses and baubles, into a build with mausoleum of secrets and architects of will?
It keeps the same number of cantrips and tutors. It will be a tad slower for sure but I can see it finding threats more consistently. And mausoleum seems to be easier to turn on, just needing a streetwraith or an architect cycle to be enabled. What are your thoughts?
2 mana is kind of a million for Shadow decks, but the fact that can tutor any black card is enticing. I'm skeptical, partially because it's never tutoring Tarmogoyf or a delve threat, so I guess you have to play Grim Flayer if you want to tutor for a threat that is good when your life total isn't low. Which is pretty medium. For it to work, there has to be significant upside. What else are you tutoring? LotV? That's ok, sometimes. Is there some other haymaker it can find, probably that Traverse couldn't previously find?
Edit: thinking about it even more, 2 mana is a real problem. Shadow decks are basically pure tempo decks, sometimes with some light card advantage, and spending 2 mana to find the big thing then however much mana that costs to play it is really at odds with that. However, I could see it as like a 1-2 of in a more standard traverse build, or as a SB card for grindy matchups to get extra copies of high impact stuff when you need it. Sort of like Snapcaster Mage.
The BGx players I talk to are all in on fulminator now because Trophy by itself isn't a tron plan, but systematically attacking their mana with trophy + fulminator + recur fulminator is (plus Surgical).
I don't think you want to side out all of the Street Wraiths against Jund unless you're siding in more cantrips. Cantrips = lands, and in a grindy matchup you want to make sure you can hit that 3rd land drop to cast the grindy spells. Shaving 1-2 is fine, but if you're looking for more space after that, it's typically the discard spells (assuming the TBRs have already come out).
Stub vs jund seems to be controversial around here, but I've never liked it. Too conditional, and they have their own discard spells to e.g. take your threats and leave you with a dead stub in hand. It's probably better now since they're cutting Decays for Trophies, but just structurally it's not great for the matchup.
Hazzy doesn't always get hit by LotV minus, and otherwise they can't kill it. It's ridiculously hard for them to deal with if you have a couple other creatures sitting around. That said, the problem since BBE's printing is that they can just go wide and kill you anyway since you're at such a low life total. But maybe there's a way to mitigate that issue, or maybe Assassin's Trophy means we get Hazzy online early enough consistently enough that they don't have as much time to get wide on us (or find that LotV). Idk, just spitballing here.
Do you think it's correct to board out any discards against Jund? And if so how many?
In the past, I would shave a couple IoK against Jund, or Thoughtseize against Abzan, if I had enough higher impact stuff to bring in. But they aren't the worst there, so it's entirely possible you have the full 8 discard spells against them postboard. It depends on the cards we have in the SB to bring in.
It occurs to me that despite Jund being better at taxing our 3rd/4th/5th colors now, Hazoret might be significantly better positioned against them than before. Assassin's Trophy can't kill it, while it can kill most other haymakers we throw at them (short of Lingering Souls/Ranger of Eos/Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but the mana tax is too high there), and often they'll ramp us by using Trophy on a Death's Shadow or Tarmogoyf. So maybe the play is to go hard on Jund colors, perhaps cutting blue, so that we can justify the Mountain, and have 1-2 Hazoret in the 75. It sucks that Hazzy is bad against the path decks though. One flaw with this plan is that if Jund leans in to the mana denial from Trophy by running a bunch of Fulminator Mage, they're likely to bring that in against us too, which makes casting a 4 drop pretty hard.
You're not lucky, you have a ton of hate for tron (TBR, Counterspells, Fulminator, and sometimes even Alpine Moon? That's a lot.)
You probably saw up thread, but I'm off Whispers. Tarfire is too important to enabling Whispers, but you want to cut Tarfire against control. At least in the shell I'm currently experimenting with, it isn't worth it. Maybe if you find a way to not rely on Tarfire to enable it, but that probably involves Thought Scour and a different shell. I'm also leaning toward cutting the white for blue again, though maybe having 0 blue spells MD. It's just so much easier to move the needle against Tron, Burn, etc, than it is against midrange and control. Though if it were a legitimate option, and right now I would push hard for beating those decks instead.
Re: Ghor-Clan: it's fantastic against Dredge, Humans, and a few other matchups. But I wouldn't cut a TBR for it. why_not_both_girl.jpg. 2 + 1 is right where I want to be.
Actual dredge. I haven't run into Hollow One or Bridgevine this past week. Though in my experience, any TBR build of Shadow is pretty heavily favored against Hollow One. Or at least any build packing 2 Dismember. I don't have the reps with Shadow shell against Bridgevine to really know, but I suspect it's not as good for Shadow. Though maybe still favored, idk.
Basically that
I think it's mostly deckbuilding decisions, not gameplay decisions, that are making the difference. Ghor-Clan Rampager as a Traverse target has been invaluable in the matchup, and Tarfire ties the room together: makes Goyf and Shadow both massive, and gets that Traverse turned on so you can find Ghor-Clan or a giant threat. It even kills Stinkweed Imp in a pinch, if you have a turn where that's important. The fact that they have Creeping Chill now means that you're less likely to have trouble getting your life total low enough to make Shadow massive now, though you do have to close quickly before Chills or a Conflag finish you off. The matchup is all about closing as fast as possible, so play with that in mind. I'm also running 2 Grim Flayer, which helps ensure that I have a decent clock, and is another way to get Traverse online quickly. Plus trample is invaluable.
I'm also running 3-4 GY hate cards in the SB instead of the usual 2 (2 Spellbomb, 1-2 Surgical, and 0-1 Oooze, though Ooze has been pretty poor for me). So postboard I end up with a bit more interaction than normal. When you know you have a quick clock, casting surgical on their first (and only) dredger in the GY can often be great, though if you hand is a bit slower and more interactive you probably want to wait to hit something like Amalgam or Bloodghast. But you probably shouldn't keep many hands like that, unless you have a LOT of interaction. Priority 1 against dredge: establish a clock.
Also note that they may board Leyline of the Void in against you, so you should always have access to Assassin's Trophy postboard. Worst case it removes a blocker during a big attack (like Imp), but best case it turns on your deck.
I'm not playing blue, but having access to a few counterspells adds a few more percentage points. Mostly as Conflag protection, though sometimes you get to pick off a Looting or Reunion, which is also great.
That said, i'm winning a lot of matches. 3-2, 3-2, 4-1 across 3 leagues. Absolutely destroying dredge (5-0 in matches, 10-1 in games), and doing ok against humans (2-0 in matches, though they were close). The tron matchup feels like we're a hair away from turning it, but I'm 0-3 (including an egregious punt on my part). That last league I added a Fulminator to my SB as a traverse target, but still got donked on by tron, because of running Thragtusks keeping him out of shadow + TBR range by exactly 1 point 3 turns in a row. Lingering Souls has been nice against Jund, hasn't done much against Mardu (when I do bring it in), and my only control match my opponent kept awful hands and died, so idk there. At this point I'm thinking about cutting them and trying 2x Hazoret instead so I can have (SB only!) countermagic for tron, burn, and the anyone else it's relevant against. Hazzy isn't as good against the grindy decks, but it's so hard to get percentage points there that I'm inclined to basically concede that it'll always be bad and never all that close.
If it's good, I can see it as a 2-3 of, basically what you have.
To give you an idea of what you need to do to support it, here's the Grixis shell I tried (within a 1-2 cards anyway):
4 Death's Shadow
4 delve threats
2 Snapcaster
4 Street Wraith
4 Thought Scour
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Whispers of Emrakul
3 Fatal Push
2 Terminate
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Liliana of the Veil
That shell could have Whispers turned on fairly consistently by turn 3, but sometimes would have a LOOOT of trouble if it drew the wrong mix of cards. Plus there were all these sequencing issues with delve creatures and Snapcaster. Luckily Tarmogoyf + Traverse solves that problem, but it's still rough to get delirium that fast consistently enough. Notice, I had to sacrifice the IoKs to get it done! Mixing in some Tarfire would help. This was also before Search for Azcanta was printed, which might be an ok 1-2 of in this shell.
I'm really more interested in Whispers in a nonblue shell because, if we can turn it on fast enough, it solves a couple of problems: 1) something grindy that's good against control, 2) something decent against the spell based combo decks and big mana decks to make up for losing countermagic. Then we just let Lingering Souls carry us in the BGx matchups.
Maybe a Jund + White shell that can turn it on just goes HARD on tarfire. I'm not sure if it'll be good enough, but here's a sketch:
4 Death's Shadow
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
1 Grim Flayer
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Whispers of Emrakul
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Dismember
3 Tarfire
1 Temur Battle Rage
I'd like to squeeze an Architects of Will in there, but there's hardly any room. I'd also like a second TBR, but again. Anyway, that's just a sketch. In reality, it's probably a 2 Whispers deck (MD anyway), but to test it going up to 3 is right.
Edit: add 2nd Grim Flayer as another card I want but there's no room for.
Burn is fixable without countermagic though. Phyrexian Unlife, and more Collective Brutality, for example. Valakut, on the other hand, has no real substitutes.
I don't think Snare is going to have a large impact in BGx matchups. It trades 1-for-1 with cards you already have no problem dealing with (2 mana creatures), and Assassin's Trophy. It's fine, but not a major incentive to be blue.
I think Souls is fine against control too. It forces them to wrath. But yeah, that's definitely a matchup where I'd rather have blue and try to protect the queen. Even then, we're probably still significant dog in the matchup. Especially if they're red. I'm not sure how to significantly move the needle in these matchups, and short of that, I'd rather ignore them.
Bedlam Reveler is interesting for sure, but double red is pretty rough, and the susceptibility to graveyard hate is pretty rough, and it's effectively just as slow as Ranger. Most of our manabases only have 2 red lands, so a single mana denial spell is just as disruptive against both Ranger and Reveler. I like Ranger better since it's less susceptible to GY hate, but if you build around Reveler a little more (with more red lands and maybe stuff like Thought Scour) I could flip my opinion. But is it worth it?
The grindy-ish card that actually feels decent against control is Whispers of Emrakul (assuming it's turned on consistently enough). Creatures are too easy for them to interact with, and planeswalkers tend to be a bit too expensive. But discard spell into t2 do some things into t3 hymn into t4 threat might just get them. But turning it on is pretty annoying. Something I might experiment with, anyway, but I'm not super optimistic.
Maybe the solution is to cut blue so we can splash white for Souls + Ranger. Before Assassin's Trophy, it was hard to cut blue because you needed a bit more interaction for the combo and especially big mana decks. Trophy happens to be that interaction in several matchups. Not all, but Tron in particular, and it also does some light work against a lot of combo decks that have random permanents we can pick off. Against e.g. Storm or KCI we can supplement with more graveyard interaction than normal. The biggest hole in this plan is Valakut, but as long as that isn't heavily played, I think we're ok. The second biggest hole is Burn, which probably requires some extra SB attention.
Edit: took a Jund + white build (with no Manamorphoses) for a spin in a league, and it felt decent, going 3-2. Lingering Souls was great against Jund, and is probably still fine against UW despite Field of Ruin because we can always LotV them away. Ranger I'm more skeptical of, and want to cut. One of the matches I lost to Amulet, which, add to Valakut and Burn for the list of decks where losing countermagic really hurts us.
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.
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 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.
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.
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/
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.
2 mana is kind of a million for Shadow decks, but the fact that can tutor any black card is enticing. I'm skeptical, partially because it's never tutoring Tarmogoyf or a delve threat, so I guess you have to play Grim Flayer if you want to tutor for a threat that is good when your life total isn't low. Which is pretty medium. For it to work, there has to be significant upside. What else are you tutoring? LotV? That's ok, sometimes. Is there some other haymaker it can find, probably that Traverse couldn't previously find?
Edit: thinking about it even more, 2 mana is a real problem. Shadow decks are basically pure tempo decks, sometimes with some light card advantage, and spending 2 mana to find the big thing then however much mana that costs to play it is really at odds with that. However, I could see it as like a 1-2 of in a more standard traverse build, or as a SB card for grindy matchups to get extra copies of high impact stuff when you need it. Sort of like Snapcaster Mage.
I don't think you want to side out all of the Street Wraiths against Jund unless you're siding in more cantrips. Cantrips = lands, and in a grindy matchup you want to make sure you can hit that 3rd land drop to cast the grindy spells. Shaving 1-2 is fine, but if you're looking for more space after that, it's typically the discard spells (assuming the TBRs have already come out).
Stub vs jund seems to be controversial around here, but I've never liked it. Too conditional, and they have their own discard spells to e.g. take your threats and leave you with a dead stub in hand. It's probably better now since they're cutting Decays for Trophies, but just structurally it's not great for the matchup.
Hazzy doesn't always get hit by LotV minus, and otherwise they can't kill it. It's ridiculously hard for them to deal with if you have a couple other creatures sitting around. That said, the problem since BBE's printing is that they can just go wide and kill you anyway since you're at such a low life total. But maybe there's a way to mitigate that issue, or maybe Assassin's Trophy means we get Hazzy online early enough consistently enough that they don't have as much time to get wide on us (or find that LotV). Idk, just spitballing here.
In the past, I would shave a couple IoK against Jund, or Thoughtseize against Abzan, if I had enough higher impact stuff to bring in. But they aren't the worst there, so it's entirely possible you have the full 8 discard spells against them postboard. It depends on the cards we have in the SB to bring in.
It occurs to me that despite Jund being better at taxing our 3rd/4th/5th colors now, Hazoret might be significantly better positioned against them than before. Assassin's Trophy can't kill it, while it can kill most other haymakers we throw at them (short of Lingering Souls/Ranger of Eos/Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but the mana tax is too high there), and often they'll ramp us by using Trophy on a Death's Shadow or Tarmogoyf. So maybe the play is to go hard on Jund colors, perhaps cutting blue, so that we can justify the Mountain, and have 1-2 Hazoret in the 75. It sucks that Hazzy is bad against the path decks though. One flaw with this plan is that if Jund leans in to the mana denial from Trophy by running a bunch of Fulminator Mage, they're likely to bring that in against us too, which makes casting a 4 drop pretty hard.