Oh and one tip. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Traverse Shadow. But in the previous version, every traverse was precious. But now, it's okay to "burn" a traverse to hit your land drops. BBE will make up for the lost tempo/threat density.
Oh that is a good tip. I have zero games with the deck so stuff like that is useful to know. Thanks!
You should play at least a few air games before jamming this deck at a LGS or event. I cant speak for the BBE version but, the Pro Tour version of the deck had very complex sequences that are critical on the first two turns. I wish you luck
Oh yea for sure, I have no illusions about it being easy and I will be testing a lot of games before settling on ratios I like. I am picking it up on purpose for the interesting complexity the deck offers over others
It is a deck that allows very complex avenues to route. The paths you take will leave you with sweaty palms, grins, and regrets. I have won alot of games on the back of a TBR with 1-2 health and I have lost alot of games coming up short by 1-2 health.
That sounds like all the fun in the world
Here is one of the decks that just 5-0'd, with me having so little experience with the deck, this is very close to what I had almost settled on for my list, with a lot of SB differences. Is this sort of where we want to be right now if not running BBE? It did 5-0 so there must be some merit to it
Oh and one tip. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Traverse Shadow. But in the previous version, every traverse was precious. But now, it's okay to "burn" a traverse to hit your land drops. BBE will make up for the lost tempo/threat density.
Oh that is a good tip. I have zero games with the deck so stuff like that is useful to know. Thanks!
You should play at least a few air games before jamming this deck at a LGS or event. I cant speak for the BBE version but, the Pro Tour version of the deck had very complex sequences that are critical on the first two turns. I wish you luck
Oh yea for sure, I have no illusions about it being easy and I will be testing a lot of games before settling on ratios I like. I am picking it up on purpose for the interesting complexity the deck offers over others
Oh and one tip. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Traverse Shadow. But in the previous version, every traverse was precious. But now, it's okay to "burn" a traverse to hit your land drops. BBE will make up for the lost tempo/threat density.
Oh that is a good tip. I have zero games with the deck so stuff like that is useful to know. Thanks!
TBR is also perfectly reasonable over the K-commands. If you have a goyf on board and BBE into a TBR they are probably just dead on turn 4.
Yea the problem I have is that there are Storm players, Grishoalbrand, AdNaus, and some other craziness in my meta and being balanced against them but also against some of the other decks is pretty important. Maybe initially I will try to just race in my meta and if things slow down a little then going more grindy with the K-Commands would be the ideal instead... Tough to say right now
I think you need all 4 Traverse's because they allow you to hit your land drops. The Grim Flayer probably isn't needed anymore because our threat density is much higher now than it has ever been. The Seal of Fire's and Tarfire are totally reasonable, they are better at enabling delirium than the bolts, but the extra damage is sometimes important. The Blood Moons/Magus of the Moon in the board are fricken gas. No one is going to play around the Death Shadow deck playing Blood Moon, and it allows you get either free wins or prevent them from killing you with manlands, azcanta, valakut, urza's mine, field of ruin even.
You should be playing with Manamorphose. Just name G/B mana 90% of the time if you're unsure of what you're playing that turn. It allows you to play around mana denial, it enables delirium it lets us play a 48 card deck (which is insane).
The Yixlid Jailer and Minister of Pain are the slots I'm the least sure about so far.
You can change the K-Commands in my list into more 1 mana hand disruption/TBR if you're worried about combo. But I think the list I posted is a great place to start
Great thanks a lot for the feedback! I think I agree about the 1 mana hand disruption over a K-Command because my meta has a bunch more combo than normal. I'll work on it and in the coming weeks after playing it I will post some results
Without much to say in the way of proper ratios or anything, this is the preliminary build of what I was thinking of ordering. For those with some experience playing the BBE version how does this look for a starting point? Thanks for the feedback in advance!
I am unsure about the Maelstrom Pulse in the main, might be better as a SB card and bring over the second Abrupt Decay to the main instead? Also the viability of Seal of Fire and Tarfire are up in the air for me, maybe someone can chime in with a reason to play/not play those cards
I did pretty well in Lyon, but don't remember enough of the games for a full report.
R1 against UR Pyro 2-0: French guy, the matchup is just great and he cannot do much.
R2 against Affinity 0-2: Another frenchie who did a couple mistake but it turns out T1 Plating is still pretty good. G2 I flood and manage to do some sequencing mistakes which cut my outs in half, but I draw a couple blanks anyway.
R3 against Mardu Pyro 2-0: The guy made some mistakes in the games, sideboarded very wrong and complained in the end.
R4 against Infect 2-0: He didn't draw any Inkmoth Nexus and without this card the matchup is pretty unwinnable for him.
R5 against Etron 2-0: G1 I play a discard spell only to see 2 Chalices, a Relic, GQ, Mine, and 2 creatures. I'm on the play and take a chalice, hoping to draw an answer to the second one. He draws a temple, plays it and the relic. I play a Shadow and pass with a blue up. He draws a second temple, plays it and the chalice. I draw a tarmogoyf to go with my DS and kill him on turn 4 with a battle rage.
G2 I keep a one lander with street wraith, play a discard spell and see 2 chalices, 1 Dismember, 0 temples and some lands and a creature that I select. I leave both chalices because I have a Maelstrom Pulse and a Grudge in hand. He draws 2 temples but has no pressure while I can't find lands. on turn 4 he plays the second chalice on 2. I draw 2 lands the following turn and Pulse the Chalice, he draws an Endbringer but my triple Death's Shadow hand kills him anyway.
R6 against Tron 2-0: I misscount his lands G1 and give him the out of drawing the last tron piece on the last turn by taking the wrong card with a Thoughtseize, but even if I had played right and taken the Ugin with Thoughtseize the tron piece was still 90% to win him the game there. G2 is uneventful, he doen't have green mana for Thragdaddy and Stirrings and can't get to Tron.
R7 against Shuhei Nakamura on Jeskai Tempo 2-1: An interesting incident happened there. I won G1 just by playing a big Shadow while I knew he had no Burn or answers to DS in hand. G2 I sideboarded wrong thinking he was on a more controlling build and died to snapcaster bolts with 2 D-Stroke in hand. G3 I'm fairly ahead and at some point I cycle a Street wraith in order to get delirium and play Traverse the Ulvenwald. While I'm searching my library, a friend of mine says us to wait and calls a Judge: it turns out I didn't draw with the Wraith and upon learning that Shuhei laughs immediately. The Judge fixes the situation, we both get warnings and I win the game with the card drawn. At the end of the game, the Judge asks Shuhei Nakamura to come with him and my friends tell me he could get DQ'd because his reaction with the judge call seemed to show he was aware of me not drawing the card and just didn't tell me even though he should have. He has a long discussion with the Head Judge and ends up not being DQ'd.
R8 against Jeskai Breach 2-1: He left the combo in even though it's pretty bad against me, and I take down both postboard games with most of my removal out.
7-1 and happy so far, but I have to keep focusing on each game as best as I can.
R9 against Grixis Shadow 2-1 despite me cracking my Bauble during main phase like a noob when we're in Topdeck war.
R10 against the Mirror 1-2: In G3 my opponents discard my Stubs and Discard and Traverses for a land on turn 3: I think about what I can do against the obviously upcoming Lili, Bauble myself and see a thoughtseize on top, and choose not to play any creature thinking he might want to wait for me to have a board. He doesn't and wins with Lili active for more than 10 turns and me not finding any of my 3 answers.
R11 against Storm 2-0. Easy win G1, and he's mana screwed during G2.
R12 against Bogles 2-0 through T1 Leyline G1 because he only had a Kor. G2 He doesn't have a Leyline and Lili crushed him.
R13 against Burn 2-1 thanks to my opponent letting me resolve my Street wraith cycling which let me draw the Stubborn Denial that countered the Helix he had to cast to survive.
R14 against Abzan Aggro (Time Walk Feature Match, it's at the end of the round) 2-1: I'll let you see all my punts live on Twitch, I did a bunch of them.
R15 against Mardu Pyro 2-0: The guy mulled to 4 G2 and wasn't happy about it :/
I end up 10th on breakers, with a PT invite and airfare plus a thousand bucks. Super stoked with this at my 2nd GP ever, and hope I can keep being this lucky in the future and step my game up.
WOW Congratulations on such an impressive run! Now having run so well with your list is there any changes you would make moving forward? I am about to buy into this deck and am really having a tough time with how to put the deck together. I noticed you have a small blue package with Snapcaster etc. and I am wondering if that is something you would recommend in the new meta with some different decks floating around? If you have any tips or an updated build I would really be interested in your opinions. Thanks for any advice you might have!
The Hostage Taker was pretty bad, everytime I drew it I never had the mana and the time to cast it, but this might be because of the sample size.
2 D-Stroke might be too many: Against Jeskai, you don't want to draw 2 most of the time and 2 manas is somewhat clunky. But given how great they are in some other matchups (Etron, Tron, Through the breach decks) I'm really not sure about this one.
Fulminator Mage was great in a lot of matchups, I'm pretty sure most people should play at least 1 and maybe even more. BGx Midrange (Shadow and non-Shadow), Control, Burn, Infect and Big mana decks make up a large percentage of the meta.
I think TBR is great in the Mardu Matchup and we shouldn't sideboard it out, we have to hope to go faster because it's too hard to grind them out and they don't have that many answers to our big creatures (Like 4 preboard and maybe a couple more postboard). Maybe It's even right to side in the 3rd copy but I haven't tried it.
Snapcaster was pretty good but I'm not sure he deserves a spot in the 75, he was often a bit clunky. I never traversed for it, maybe Grim Flayer is just better even though I'm not playing Souls. Even if you're not playing it, I would still play the breeding pool because of the tron matchup, and having 2 blue sources against Field of ruin decks can be critical (unless you're playing a bunch of Tarfires and Terminate which necessitate a Stomping Ground).
I only found myself wanting to Traverse for a Ghor Clan once but I won the game anyway. I'm not sure it's needed unless swarm decks become much more prevalent (It would necessitate a rework of the mana and/or some manamorphoses in the deck).
I was happy with the removal split. I have no idea what I could cut but getting a couple manamorphose in the deck could be great.
Thanks for the feedback on how those things worked out for you, I will keep that in mind as I put together my own version
I did pretty well in Lyon, but don't remember enough of the games for a full report.
R1 against UR Pyro 2-0: French guy, the matchup is just great and he cannot do much.
R2 against Affinity 0-2: Another frenchie who did a couple mistake but it turns out T1 Plating is still pretty good. G2 I flood and manage to do some sequencing mistakes which cut my outs in half, but I draw a couple blanks anyway.
R3 against Mardu Pyro 2-0: The guy made some mistakes in the games, sideboarded very wrong and complained in the end.
R4 against Infect 2-0: He didn't draw any Inkmoth Nexus and without this card the matchup is pretty unwinnable for him.
R5 against Etron 2-0: G1 I play a discard spell only to see 2 Chalices, a Relic, GQ, Mine, and 2 creatures. I'm on the play and take a chalice, hoping to draw an answer to the second one. He draws a temple, plays it and the relic. I play a Shadow and pass with a blue up. He draws a second temple, plays it and the chalice. I draw a tarmogoyf to go with my DS and kill him on turn 4 with a battle rage.
G2 I keep a one lander with street wraith, play a discard spell and see 2 chalices, 1 Dismember, 0 temples and some lands and a creature that I select. I leave both chalices because I have a Maelstrom Pulse and a Grudge in hand. He draws 2 temples but has no pressure while I can't find lands. on turn 4 he plays the second chalice on 2. I draw 2 lands the following turn and Pulse the Chalice, he draws an Endbringer but my triple Death's Shadow hand kills him anyway.
R6 against Tron 2-0: I misscount his lands G1 and give him the out of drawing the last tron piece on the last turn by taking the wrong card with a Thoughtseize, but even if I had played right and taken the Ugin with Thoughtseize the tron piece was still 90% to win him the game there. G2 is uneventful, he doen't have green mana for Thragdaddy and Stirrings and can't get to Tron.
R7 against Shuhei Nakamura on Jeskai Tempo 2-1: An interesting incident happened there. I won G1 just by playing a big Shadow while I knew he had no Burn or answers to DS in hand. G2 I sideboarded wrong thinking he was on a more controlling build and died to snapcaster bolts with 2 D-Stroke in hand. G3 I'm fairly ahead and at some point I cycle a Street wraith in order to get delirium and play Traverse the Ulvenwald. While I'm searching my library, a friend of mine says us to wait and calls a Judge: it turns out I didn't draw with the Wraith and upon learning that Shuhei laughs immediately. The Judge fixes the situation, we both get warnings and I win the game with the card drawn. At the end of the game, the Judge asks Shuhei Nakamura to come with him and my friends tell me he could get DQ'd because his reaction with the judge call seemed to show he was aware of me not drawing the card and just didn't tell me even though he should have. He has a long discussion with the Head Judge and ends up not being DQ'd.
R8 against Jeskai Breach 2-1: He left the combo in even though it's pretty bad against me, and I take down both postboard games with most of my removal out.
7-1 and happy so far, but I have to keep focusing on each game as best as I can.
R9 against Grixis Shadow 2-1 despite me cracking my Bauble during main phase like a noob when we're in Topdeck war.
R10 against the Mirror 1-2: In G3 my opponents discard my Stubs and Discard and Traverses for a land on turn 3: I think about what I can do against the obviously upcoming Lili, Bauble myself and see a thoughtseize on top, and choose not to play any creature thinking he might want to wait for me to have a board. He doesn't and wins with Lili active for more than 10 turns and me not finding any of my 3 answers.
R11 against Storm 2-0. Easy win G1, and he's mana screwed during G2.
R12 against Bogles 2-0 through T1 Leyline G1 because he only had a Kor. G2 He doesn't have a Leyline and Lili crushed him.
R13 against Burn 2-1 thanks to my opponent letting me resolve my Street wraith cycling which let me draw the Stubborn Denial that countered the Helix he had to cast to survive.
R14 against Abzan Aggro (Time Walk Feature Match, it's at the end of the round) 2-1: I'll let you see all my punts live on Twitch, I did a bunch of them.
R15 against Mardu Pyro 2-0: The guy mulled to 4 G2 and wasn't happy about it :/
I end up 10th on breakers, with a PT invite and airfare plus a thousand bucks. Super stoked with this at my 2nd GP ever, and hope I can keep being this lucky in the future and step my game up.
WOW Congratulations on such an impressive run! Now having run so well with your list is there any changes you would make moving forward? I am about to buy into this deck and am really having a tough time with how to put the deck together. I noticed you have a small blue package with Snapcaster etc. and I am wondering if that is something you would recommend in the new meta with some different decks floating around? If you have any tips or an updated build I would really be interested in your opinions. Thanks for any advice you might have!
I am going to be testing like crazy and seeing if Ancestral Vision is worth including, would likely cut Jace for those but time will tell. I'll have more to report after some real testing
I beat grixis energy, gb snek, esper approach, and grixis improvise. I lost to esper gpg (which feels like a really hard matchup).
I'll be the first to admit that the manabase isn't correct, it was hard to get double red sometimes, I'm cuting an evolving wilds and forest for the 4th crag, another slough, another thicket making it 24 lands instead of 23, I think this will fix it.
The idea was have a lot of explore to fix draws and just jam Phoenix and glorybringers till they die. And that worked really well. Arguels bloodfast is insane as well, if aggro wasn't a thing I'd maindeck 3 and I'm thinking about playing the third in the board. Even the flipped side is great because you can sac your Phoenix in response to exile removal, card is nuts. I had games where I was 15+ cards deeper than my opponent.
Going forward I'm moving the wildgrowth walkers to the board (they were unimpactful but i still think they will be good against aggro). I want 4 deathgorge in the main. Explore fuels deathgorge and deathgorge fuels bloodfast. There is a lot of power here this might not be the optimal build, but there is a tier one deck here somewhere. My matchups that I won felt really easy.
Will post my updated list soon
That is a really cool build, congrats on the result. Blood Fast seems really amazing
I've cut one maindeck Lightning Strike for one Abrade. Both cards are used as removal and rarely (oppurtunity hasn't come up yet) for reach. Makes our game1 against GPG and the likes a little less hard.
Might go up in numbers depending on results.
Also, I think in certain matches i'd really like more Vraska's Contempt. Obvious card to cut is Revenous Chupacabra but the body is very good as a chump blocker in aggro matches. Undecided.
Anyone else actualy playing this archetype and cares to share some match info?
Well I have my cards in the mail so until I get them I won't have anything to report. I am trying both Jund and BR to see. I will be siding Vraska's Contempt for now though until I see a reason to run it in the main. I am torn on the Lightning Strive VS. Abrade question too though. Until GPG decks become much more prevalent I will not main too many Abrade but that card is so incidentally good in that matchup.
Well as a couple of us were talking about going just Black and Red, someone managed to 5-0 with a list almost exactly like I was thinking of building if I was going to drop Green:
I am not sure that is exactly what I am wanting to do but my thoughts were that I would want Green to play Deathgorge, Ripjaw, and cards like that. Maybe they are not 100% necessary?
Great to see more people interested in the archetype.
As a Sultai energy player I took a big hit, so I have been brewing and playtesting something entirely new aside from the Snek shell, focussing on pure value, evasion and/or flexibility per card.
Main reason, I believe a midrange deck like this suit Rekindling Phoenix best. A card which cought my eye the minute it got spoiled and now I've played with it, it's awesome.
So what does a modrsge shell like this need. Removal/Control elements, lifegain and blockers, hard to deal with midrange creatures some card draw.
That last bit is though, But i've got something
As of today, while trying to stay clear of energy use, my list (rough sketch with max 10 matches played online) looks like this:
Have about 50% win rate with amongst them, UB Merfolk, UW Control and some fringe decks, but it's still a small sample size and the deck is far from complete. One thing I know, there is something in here!
Going to keep track of this topic for sure.
I also played the sulta energy , now the deck is demolished... but it look like some people are returning to BG , maybe i will stay there.
Don't you have a lot of legendaries in the deck with kari zev and pia nalaar??
This seems like a sweet deck, I like most of the cards in there I'm just not 100% sold on Ruin Raider. I'm not sure if he is worth it at 2 and maybe those 2 slots could be something else... I played mono Black aggro for a while and he is great there but in a more midrange deck I dunno if he is ideal.
I do agree on the Phoenix though such a cool card and I think this shell is where the card shines. Tomorrow I'll be posting some other ideas I've been having for the deck. I'm glad more people have been considering this direction though I'd like to come up with something real solid
That sounds like all the fun in the world
Here is one of the decks that just 5-0'd, with me having so little experience with the deck, this is very close to what I had almost settled on for my list, with a lot of SB differences. Is this sort of where we want to be right now if not running BBE? It did 5-0 so there must be some merit to it
4 Death's Shadow
1 Grim Flayer
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Street Wraith
4 Tarmogoyf
Sorcery (11)
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
Instant (13)
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
3 Fatal Push
2 Manamorphose
3 Stubborn Denial
2 Temur Battle Rage
4 Mishra's Bauble
Land (18)
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Breeding Pool
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Watery Grave
1 Fatal Push
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Collective Brutality
1 Delay
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Duress
1 Izzet Staticaster
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Surgical Extraction
Oh yea for sure, I have no illusions about it being easy and I will be testing a lot of games before settling on ratios I like. I am picking it up on purpose for the interesting complexity the deck offers over others
Oh that is a good tip. I have zero games with the deck so stuff like that is useful to know. Thanks!
Yea the problem I have is that there are Storm players, Grishoalbrand, AdNaus, and some other craziness in my meta and being balanced against them but also against some of the other decks is pretty important. Maybe initially I will try to just race in my meta and if things slow down a little then going more grindy with the K-Commands would be the ideal instead... Tough to say right now
Great thanks a lot for the feedback! I think I agree about the 1 mana hand disruption over a K-Command because my meta has a bunch more combo than normal. I'll work on it and in the coming weeks after playing it I will post some results
4 Death's Shadow
4 Street Wraith
1 Grim Flayer
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Abrupt Decay
4 Thoughtseize
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Fatal Push
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Temur Battle Rage
4 Mishra's Bauble
2 Seal of Fire
1 Tarfire
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Ancient Grudge
3 Collective Brutality
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Golgari Charm
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Jund Charm
1 Temur Battle Rage
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Fatal Push
I am unsure about the Maelstrom Pulse in the main, might be better as a SB card and bring over the second Abrupt Decay to the main instead? Also the viability of Seal of Fire and Tarfire are up in the air for me, maybe someone can chime in with a reason to play/not play those cards
Thanks for the feedback on how those things worked out for you, I will keep that in mind as I put together my own version
WOW Congratulations on such an impressive run! Now having run so well with your list is there any changes you would make moving forward? I am about to buy into this deck and am really having a tough time with how to put the deck together. I noticed you have a small blue package with Snapcaster etc. and I am wondering if that is something you would recommend in the new meta with some different decks floating around? If you have any tips or an updated build I would really be interested in your opinions. Thanks for any advice you might have!
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Savage Knuckleblade
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Blood Moon
1 Vedalken Shackles
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Electrolyze
2 Boomerang
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
2 Steam Vents
5 Island
3 Forest
2 Mountain
I am going to be testing like crazy and seeing if Ancestral Vision is worth including, would likely cut Jace for those but time will tell. I'll have more to report after some real testing
That is a really cool build, congrats on the result. Blood Fast seems really amazing
Well I have my cards in the mail so until I get them I won't have anything to report. I am trying both Jund and BR to see. I will be siding Vraska's Contempt for now though until I see a reason to run it in the main. I am torn on the Lightning Strive VS. Abrade question too though. Until GPG decks become much more prevalent I will not main too many Abrade but that card is so incidentally good in that matchup.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/899099#paper
I am not sure that is exactly what I am wanting to do but my thoughts were that I would want Green to play Deathgorge, Ripjaw, and cards like that. Maybe they are not 100% necessary?
This seems like a sweet deck, I like most of the cards in there I'm just not 100% sold on Ruin Raider. I'm not sure if he is worth it at 2 and maybe those 2 slots could be something else... I played mono Black aggro for a while and he is great there but in a more midrange deck I dunno if he is ideal.
I do agree on the Phoenix though such a cool card and I think this shell is where the card shines. Tomorrow I'll be posting some other ideas I've been having for the deck. I'm glad more people have been considering this direction though I'd like to come up with something real solid
Yea the Doomfall main might not be the best idea. Could likely be swapped out for something else