MTG Salvation

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.

Quote from Godrik1374 »

http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/124541

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.

Quote from VidarThor »

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.

Quote from EctoMark »

Very well reasoned, thank you for replying. The only point I'm going to challenge is that Looting is more air-- I believe the card functions in the exact opposite capacity as an air-compressor by reducing the overall volume (number) of the cards in hand to increase the density (quality) of said cards.

Yeah, that's the argument for stuff like Opt and Serum Visions too. But it's still air in the sense that 1) you have to spend mana (i.e. time) casting it, and 2) it doesn't impact the board or your opponent's ability to enact their game plan. I think that is largely anathema to the construction of Traverse Shadow, which wins games by casting more spells that impact the board or the opponent's game plan in the first few turns of the game than almost anyone else. Taking time off to sculpt gives them time, and time is the last thing I want to be giving them. So I really value the cantrips/selection being free, or "free". That said, I'd definitely play brainstorm in this list if it were legal, but I doubt Looting is at a high enough power level to overcome these issues. Maybe if there was a bit more value to squeeze out of it when we are discarding, but I don't think Lingering Souls is it. Even when it comes to delirium, Looting is not a card type we have trouble putting in the GY, while Manamorphose is in many matchups, so while Looting does help in this respect, the difference isn't massive.

But by all means, experiment. Looting does seem worth trying. But gun to my head, if I had to make a choice right now for a GP or whatever, I wouldn't play it. I definitely don't want more cantrips than the deck already has, and I value the "free"-ness and fixing of Manamorphose pretty highly.

+1 on probe. It makes shadow builds absolutely insane.

Quote from DeFish »

What's more consistent about the Traverse build vs Grixis? I thought that consistency (via blue cantrips) was one of the reasons people migrated to Grixis in the first place?

I think Traverse is a little more consistent about putting a fatty into play early, but that's about it. Grixis is more consistent in most other ways.

Quote from whocansay »

That's a massive help, much appreciated. Thank you! Gotta get those reps in, Manamorphose changes the gameplay quite a bit more than I had anticipated. You've sold me on Abrade too - can't believe I'm cutting a Grudge for it but it seems correct in this metagame.

To be honest, this is roughly how I've always been playing the deck. Just with Manamorphose it gets to be a little more all in. I've been calling this deck Splinter Twin since I won SCG Regionals with it. Yes, we can grind a bit if we want to, and so could Twin with Snapcasters and Keranos. But plan A is to combo them. We're even a dog to Jund without a good way to fix the matchup, just like Twin

Abrade is so flexible it's kind of insane. I've seriously boarded it in against Jund to help prevent Bob from going off. Just so many applications. And it even has matchups where it's not just good, but great - BR Hollow One is the main spot.

Edit: I view Grudge and Spellbomb as the substitutes here. Both are fairly strong hate cards for specific matchups with some other applications, so you pick which one you want based on the metagame, then go from there. Abrade just makes the sting of losing Grudge a little less bad.

Another backdoor SB option worth mentioning: since Hazoret has haste, it isn't the worst to bring in against matchups where you're racing. This mostly matters if you have a ton of things to side out, so stuff like Burn, Humans, etc. Pre-Delay I would bring Hazzy in vs burn just to get more bad cards out of my deck, but with Delay over Stroke that's less of an issue. But it's an option to consider if you start tweaking SB numbers, or want to get all 4 Thoughtseizes out of the deck.

This is the last list I ran through a league (went 2-3 - haven't been doing so great since that 5-0 tbh, though part of it is certainly me playing like garbage on MTGO). I'm not claiming this is THE 75, but this is at least where my head is at right now. I want to try a Maelstrom Pulse, for example, and still want a 2nd Abrade.



Roughly, this is how I've been SBing. First, an important general rule: Keep at least 2 Street Wraiths in when you're racing aggro decks. You NEED to turn Traverse on.

Burn:
-2 Dismember, -2 Street Wraith, -3 Thoughtseize,
+2 Collective Brutality, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer

If you aren't taking 1-2 2 minute turns per game, you're doing it wrong. Slow down. Think.

Affinity:
-1 Street Wraith, -4 Thoughtseize,
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Can shave another Street Wraith or a Stub for Fulminator; not sure if that's good or not.

Humans:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Thoughtseize, -1 Manamorphose
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Watch out for Dire Fleet Daredevil blowing out your delirium + killing one of your creatures at the same time.
I'm not actually sure what the right mix of cuts is here, but definitely the Stubs, then the other 3 cards are the ones to cut in some quantity. You almost always should take Thalia with discard spells before they can cast it just because of how much it slows you down. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can line up your removal better if you take something else. Thalia is a killer. Also, pay attention to what they can do with their Meddling Mages. If you're not careful, you'll walk into getting key cards in your hand turned off.

BR Hollow One:
-3 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
+2 Collective Brutality, +1 Abrade, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +2 Nihil Spellbomb

They should bring Leyline of the Void in against you, so you can't rely too much on Traverse. Priority 1 is keeping them from having an explosive draw. Take their enablers, kill the Flamebreak Adepts, get Spellbomb into play to stop fast Anglers, Phoenixes, and Bloodghasts. Priority 2 is making sure your removal lines up correctly. You only have 2 Dismembers and 1 Abrade, and they have 4 Hollow Ones and some number of delve threats. You don't want to blow a Dismember on something else if you can help it. Priority 3 is to not die to burn and other forms of reach. Keep Stub up, play Brutality intelligently, and remember Adept has Menace. Priority 0 is to kill them before they kill you. They typically can't stop your combo kill, short of bolting you a couple times to just kill you.

BGx midrange (Jund, Abzan, etc):
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial, -1 Inquisition of Kozilek
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Grim Lavamancer, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage

If they're heavy on mana denial, maybe only bring one Jace in. If you know they don't have important 4 drops, cut a Thoughtseize instead of IoK. You can also board in Abrade to kill Dark Confidant, manlands, Tireless Trackers, small Oozes and Grim Flayers, etc. You can keep a Stub in if you like, but they're very inconsistent here. You're kind of trying to get under these guys, but that doesn't really work, so plan B is to hope to topdeck better than them / find Jace on a stable board. (Still not sure if Jace is a great plan here, but there's only one way to find out).

Uxy Control:
-2 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -3 Fatal Push
+1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope, +2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +2 Fulminator Mage, +1 Stubborn Denial

This one depends a lot on their deck, so the above plan is very generic. If they have lots of burn, cut some Thoughtseizes and change your removal mix so you don't have Dismember. If they don't, you can leave all 4 Wraiths in. If they have creatures, leave more removal in. Decay usually stays because of Search for Azcanta, Runed Halo, Detention Sphere, Spreading Seas, small Gideon, etc. If they have a pile of burn, you can cut all of the Wraiths and bring in the Spellbombs to compensate. It may even be a plus to slow down their Searches and Snapcasters. In general, you don't want the game to go long and you can actually get under them and stay under them as long as they don't have too many creatures. You can leave a single TBR in for this reason. Sometimes it is correct to put yourself dead to Supreme Verdict because the long game is so difficult to win. The caveat is that if you can force them to dump resources defending against your early onslaught, then stick a Jace, they are in A LOT of trouble.

Tron:
-3 Fatal Push, -2 Dismember, -1 Abrupt Decay or Inquisition of Kozilek
+2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade

Hopefully this one is obvious. Don't be afraid to counter stuff like Relic of Progenitus with Delay - if Goyf is your threat, he needs to keep beating down!

Eldrazi Tron & Amulet:
-4 Inquisition of Kozilek, -1 Fatal Push
+2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial, +1 Abrade

You want to keep removal in against both of these, though for different reasons. This makes IoK weaker. Abrade kills all the creature enablers + Amulet in Amulet, and Chalice + smaller creatures in ETron. Stub counters Pact in Amulet (and Pact for Hornet Queen is your nightmare), and stuff like All is Dust and Karn in ETron. Grim Lavamancer or Liliana might be good vs. Amulet to pick off their enablers, but they're both slow.

Death's Shadow:
-4 Street Wraith, -2 Temur Battle Rage, -2 Stubborn Denial
+2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, +1 Hazoret, the Fervent, +2 Fulminator Mage, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +1 Liliana, the Last Hope

Try to prioritize killing Godless Shrine specifically with Fulminator, especially vs. Traverse builds. If Lingering Souls resolves, it's still a major problem. Against Grixis, they may not have it, so you can blow your Fulminators early if you have a good spot. With this SB config, you'll have to blow a lot of Traverse on lands early. That's OK. I'm not really comfortable taking all of the Wraiths out, to be honest, but I'm not sure what the alternative cuts should be.

Bogles:
-2 Fatal Push, -1 Street Wraith
+2 Delay, +1 Stubborn Denial

You need to go fast. They have two major types of hands: weak ones with Leyline, and strong ones without. If they have the former, you just need to kill them ASAP, so you can't afford to cut too many Traverse enablers. If they have the latter, you want to have as much interaction as possible to slow them down. It doesn't feel bad, to be honest, just prioritize setting up to kill them over not dying. And realize that they have unbeatable draws, so don't try to play around those.

Dredge:
-1 Street Wraith, -2 Thoughtseize, -2 Fatal Push
+1 Stubborn Denial, +2 Delay, +2 Nihil Spellbomb

All of the countermagic is mostly for Conflagrate, though occasionally Delay on Stinkweed Imp will be gamebreaking, and countering Cathartic Reunion and such is always good. Discard quickly gets bad against them, so you don't want too much. Just set up to combo kill them ASAP. You could bring in Lavaman and Liliana to pick off their smaller guys, but that's very slow so I'm not a fan. If you have Sweepers in the SB, they come in here.


All that said, these are definitely tentative SB plans, and I probably do things slightly differently every time I play the same matchup.

Abrade is amazing vs. BR Hollow One and Affinity, is a much needed removal spell that kills both Mantis Rider and Mirran Crusader against Humans, is a piece of artifact destruction against Lantern and Chalice decks, is better than a Thoughtseize against Burn (and we have A LOT of bad things to side out), and is otherwise a removal spell for when it's good to have another one of those (Elves, Merfolk, Zoo, Counters Company, etc.). It's just so flexible and helps in so many matchups.

Quote from bobmtg »

This list by SPOOLINATOR was in today's 5-0 batch. 4 Manamorphose took the room of some Stubborn Denial and LOTV.

DeckMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures (12) 4 Death's Shadow 4 Street Wraith 4 Tarmogoyf Spells (31) 4 Inquisition of Kozilek 4 Thoughtseize 4 Traverse the Ulvenwald 2 Abrupt Decay 2 Dismember 3 Fatal Push 4 Manamorphose 2 Stubborn Denial 2 Temur Battle Rage 4 Mishra's Bauble	Lands (17) 1 Blood Crypt 1 Bloodstained Mire 1 Breeding Pool 1 Forest 1 Overgrown Tomb 4 Polluted Delta 1 Swamp 4 Verdant Catacombs 2 Watery Grave 1 Wooded Foothills	Sideboard (15) 1 Stubborn Denial 2 Collective Brutality 2 Delay 3 Fulminator Mage 1 Grim Lavamancer 1 Hazoret the Fervent 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1 Liliana, the Last Hope 2 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Radiant Flames

Lingering Souls seems much better positioned against this metagame than Stubborn Denial, but this list is heavy on the blue. Manamporhose also wants a more proactive gameplan and Souls is a better fit.

Thoughts on 4 Manamorphose going forward?

Oh hey, that's me

I've been advocating for 4 manamorphose in this thread for a long time (ok, since the PT). It turns on delirium and helps fight through the mana denial running around. For example it won me g3 of the last round of that league by allowing me to cast TBR with only a Forest and a Breeding Pool in play vs. mono white taxes. Plus, you see your most important cards more often. TBR is now 2/48 cards in the deck instead of 2/52. You will find it even more often.

I really like this MD going forward, except -1 Watery Grave, +1 Overgrown Tomb. The extra blue source was a concession to being able to cast Jace through Field of Ruin, but I'm not entirely sure I want Jace in the SB anyway. I really like the 2 decays right now because of all the Bogles running around.

The SB is a bit of mess, but some quick thoughts:

Grim Lavamancer often feels too slow / not really what this deck want to do. I'm thinking of cutting it. But it's occasionally very strong. Radiant Flames, on the other hand, I'm more apt to cut. I'd like to get 2 Abrade in the SB, and that's the first thing to go. Maybe the Lavaman too, maybe not.

Fulminator is your plan against grindy decks, especially control. Try to get under them and stay under them, and prevent manlands from being so obnoxious. It's also the plan in the pseudo-mirror. Can't lose to Lingering Souls if they can't cast it. We're still a dog in most of the grindy matchups, but I'm fine taking my lumps there and beating up on the rest of the format.

Delay has been super impressive. The downside still hasn't come back to bite me, except that I don't side Delay in vs Uxy control where I might side Stroke in. On the other hand, Delay comes in vs. Burn, Bogles, Living End, etc., where Stroke doesn't, and I keep winning games vs Tron variants because Delay can counter stuff like Relic, O Stone, Chalice, etc. I also expect it to be good vs. Amulet in the same way, but I haven't run into them yet.

Jace has only seemed good against the control decks, but less so against stuff like Jund or the pseudomirrors. If that's really the case, he probably isn't worth it --- too narrow. Hazoret, on the other hand, has been gas. I've been calling her Hazoret, the Jace Killer. And she's even better against Jund and the like.

Ninja edit: I'm intentionally not trying to grind people out with Lingering Souls or BBE because I think Shadow decks will be naturally disadvantaged at that. It's mostly playing right into UWR or Jund's hands to try to prolong the game, because they have much better cards than us going long, plus manlands. Lingering Souls is still very good against them and does improve both matchups, but I don't think it moves the needle enough to be worth it. The BBE builds are a different story, but I kept losing to random bolts + manlands (especially Tar Pit and Colonnade) even when I was grinding them into the dust with BBE, so I'm a bit skeptical there too.

Quote from Sinister_Minister »

Last but not least, there's the DeadOnBoard "Ultimate Death's Shadow Primer and Tournament Report" which is the most sizable guide/report I've found. It especially helps to examine lines the author took during the tournament:
https://deadonboardmtg.com/2017/11/08/the-ultimate-deaths-shadow-primer-and-tournament/

For anyone not in the know, that's me

I've written a couple more articles about Traverse Shadow at DeadOnBoard since then, but that one is definitely the best.

The K-commands are definitely expensive, but they do allow the deck to do something it didn't have before:

You can actually grind your opponent to nothing. Before, we usually won by by finishing our opponent off before they stabilize. The 4 BBE, 4 Traverse, 3/4 Kcommand package starts what I call the BBE Freight Train. I found that once I casted the first BBE, the rest just seemed to jump out of my deck. You end up with sequences like:

t4: BBE into Goyf
t5: Traverse into BBE into Bolt
t6: KCommand back my BBE + make you discard, and cast a Shadow
t7: BBE into Traverse that gets another BBE

That's not unreasonable. It happens almost every game that just gets to 4 mana. This one doesn't really feel like the Shadow deck from before. Instead this feels like an aggro version of Snap/Kcommand value loops but your deck is so thin (and has 1 mana tutor) that once it starts you can just cast BBE's every turn until your opponent dies.

So this one feels favored against every fair deck deck except maybe UW (its hard to chain if you cant cast your spells, although maybe manamorphose changes this). The amount of 1 mana removal lets you keep parity against the little creature decks, and the Blood Moons are big game against a lot of decks. I know Blood Moon doesn't beat Tron on its own, but pressure+moon does, and this deck can very consistently apply the pressure.

The K-commands are one of the few ways we can kill Hollowed One which is on the rise. I know we can play dismember and such, but they also have 4 delve creatures which means we can't ever have enough removal spells for the amount of threats they have. K-command is slow, but it gives us some outs.

So in summary, I've felt I've gained percentage against the majority of the field, and lost some percentage against the spell based combo decks. Of which there are basically 2. Ad Naus and Storm. I still feel okay against storm overall (grafdigger's cage and brutality are still good), and Ad Naus also randomly has a rough time beating a Blood Moon. I'm okay with taking a small hit to a small part of the metagame and gaining percentage basically everywhere else.

If you want cumulative percentage, here's that for all 4 categories, 52% chance that they're 10 or less by the end of T3 and about a 50% chance of 5 or more power on the board by the end of T2. Both are kind of "50% chance the opponent is about to get rekt or has been rekt already".

I still have all the game replays so I could look at T4, but it's too many games to go back and look at and I think the most interesting/crucial turns are T2 and T3. I'll keep stats like this for a while. I also have W/L separated by deck, but there were only a few decks that I played against more than once so there's not much interesting there. That stuff is more interesting for my Burn deck, since I have 2323 games worth.

Quote from Spooly »

No one knows with the new list exactly. But with the old bushwhacker zoo lists:

Terrible vs most legitimate control, e.g. Jeskai Nahiri, Esper, & UW (since they run wraths MD), and Dredge.

Bad vs most midrange, e.g. Abzan, Abzan CoCo, Jund, though it depends a lot on the build. Grixis control always felt bad but not as bad as Jeskai, Esper, or UW.

Even vs "small" midrange, e.g. Jund when they are trying to be sleek and aggressive. Like most grim flayer builds. Probably also applies to the Flayer builds of Abzan. This can be better if you have Paths main, and worse if you don't have them in your 75.

Around even vs Grixis Delver, depending on what they have.

Around even vs Burn and Affinity, though it depends on your SB cards.

Good vs Infect, most combo decks, Tron, RUG/BTL Scapeshift, Lantern (if your SB doesn't suck), and most random stuff.

It also has a nut draw that can beat just about anyone if they don't try to interact.

This was all true pre-bans and pre-AER. So: dredge gets better, any match vs a deck that gets to play push probably gets a bit worse, but in general we probably get better against anyone without sweepers. Beyond that, it's hard to know this early.

I told myself I wanted to make it to 100 games before making a post reflecting the testing I have done with the list in my signature. I've now reached 102 games from playing on Cockatrice. My overall record is 64-38 (0.6275 win rate) in games and 25-12 (0.6757 win rate) in matches, where a match is a set of games against an opponent where one player reached 2 game wins and it doesn't include opponents who I only played to 1-0, 0-1, or 1-1. I decided to save the following bits of information from every game: amount of power cast by the end of T2, power remaining on board by the end of T2, opponent's life total at the end of T2, and opponent's life total at the end of T3. My goal was to illustrate how quickly this build can put power on the board and then convert it into damage. I somewhat regret not recording T4 data, but it's usually either I won/was close to winning or I was behind for some reason and lost. I also recorded the number of games in which the opponent was either dead outright by the end of T3 or conceded before going to T4 (or drew a card and conceded), and that number was 25 or approximately 1/4 of games.

Histograms of the recorded data are attached. Simple gaussian fits with mu and sigma are in the legend, though admittedly some of these are not necessarily gaussian functions.

This deck on average puts 6 power (3 creatures, since most creatures are 2 power) creatures on board by the end of T2, and the opponent has lost an average of about 4 life by this time. The opponent is under 15 life by the end of T2 about 22% of the time, which is generally due to Bushwhacker T2, but could have been aided by self damage.

By the end of T2, the power remaining on board has an excess at 2 and 4 power due to opponent's removal spells shifting higher cast power results down to these levels. About 1/4 of the time, I had 4 remaining on board after T2. This isn't a bad spot to be in ahead of a T3 1-drop->Bushwhacker. Some of the lower numbers here are due to mulligans as well as some times when a 1-lander didn't pan out, and with 18 lands and 20 1-drops 1 landers will happen and can be kept when they're strong enough.

The T3 opponent's life is rather broad. Cases where I had a strong board presence but no Bushwhacker easily reached the 10-12 life range here. Broken things under 5 life happened about 30% of the time, and I had an outright kill by T3 about 15% of the time. Getting my opponent under 10 life by T3 on average, however broad that distribution may be, feels pretty nice.

I had a couple very broken turns. Herbalists can't cast Bushwhacker, but it can put down 2 of Narnam Renegade/E1/Nacatl as well as chain with itself and BTE. My most broken game so far was T1 Nacatl, T2 attack, play HH,HH,BTE,BTE, T3 Atarka's Command and Mutagenic Growth for 21 damage on T3 alone. There were also some HH, HH/BTE, BTE, Bushwhacker turns that are pretty broken. In one game, I had T1 Ape, T2 HH, HH, BTE, Guide and attack with Ape and Guide, and my opponent said "alright... yeah i'm not gonna waste my time testing against this" and rage quit because his 1 Bitterblossom Faerie wasn't going to keep up with any of that.

Overall, I think that Narnam Renegade is an automatic 4-of in the deck going forward. I also think that Hidden Herbalists should be as well simply because such a green heavy build can lead to more broken turns even without Bushwhacker and things just become stupid when paired with BTE. However, I don't have any history playing with Flinthoof Boar, which is what would have filled this slot previously. There were times when I would have liked to play a topdecked Flinthoof and given in haste but had Herbalists instead. I believe this was less frequent than being happy to have T2 Herbalists into something broken.

Opposing archetypes through 102 games have been all over the place, so I don't have much to say about what the deck is strong or weak against.

Yeah my normal play test partner has decided to build the BW version of the deck, so now I have to figure out how to fight it. From what I can tell, if you try to face them like tron and go combo centric, you can get demolished by discard. If you fight them like jund and go controlling, you get wrecked by ulamog and friends over the top. Overall our best chance is through aggro. I have the best chances of winning by just slamming snap on turn 2 to get in damage, get my opponent worried about the ground rather than my hand, but bolt snap bolt is how you win the match. Against the BW version, blood moon is amazing, against mono black, it's ok. But blue red snapcaster aggro seems to be the way to go, or they forget to pay for slaughter pact....

Quote from Spitlebug »

I can see what you are saying ktkenshinx, but at the same time if you are going by x/100 value in percentage you will find the prevalence will almost always be 5-6 decks.

Still seems pretty shallow to me.

Is there any reason it seems "shallow" beyond personal preference? The whole point of the system is to get away from these super subjective definitions of what makes decks good. Just look at those numbers. You can't call a deck that makes up only 3.3% or less of the metagame tier 1. That's just bad information for players.

If you want depth, that's what the tier 2 subforum is for. That gives a much wider range of viable decks. But to be truly tier 1, a true deck-to-beat that you are likely to see at tournaments across Modern, you need to meet some standards. Instead of defining those standards based on gut feel ("Well, 10 decks seems about right to me!"), we use a statistics-based system that gives some mathematical justification.

As a final point, given the high viewership of the forums and the relative lack of complaints in PMs, deck threads, and Modern General threads, this really just doesn't seem like a serious issue. We aren't aiming to please everyone. We are definitely aiming to create a defensible, logical, and accurate system that people can rely on. We may not have entirely succeeded at that, but we are much closer to that goal than we were in the past (or, for that matter, any other site that tries this sort of thing).