I prefer 22 lands in this deck. I think playing a land for the first three (and often 4) turns of the game is essential for our very mana hungry game-plan. Cards like coco, chord, e-wit, gavony township, and recruiter all require large amounts of mana and perform better with 3 or 4 lands in play. The advantage to playing more dorks and fewer lands is a boost to the effectiveness of coco and and the occasional lategame gavony township and to prevent flooding out. A downside of this configuration is that removal, especially board wipes, can leave you unable to recover since they not only kill your combo creatures but also hit your mana sources. I've played this deck for a while with 23 lands (before devoted druid combo) and have been on 22 since including the druid+vizier combo. I would consider builds with 20 and 21 land with additional dorks a decision to accept the risk of increased mulligan frequency and more issues playing spells on curve when facing removal heavy decks due to too few lands in exchange for potentially more explosive hands that either win or cast a coco on turn 3. It's a consistency issue for me, so I have always preferred to have 22 lands.
I personally think twisted image is a bit dated. Sure it has some good targets and it feels nice to 2 for 1 your opponent, but the purpose of the card was really to hedge against spellskite which was hugely more popular in the past than it is now. Since spellskite is actually pretty rare these days, we don't need to side into removal for it every match since our opponents just aren't bringing it in for games 2 and 3 anymore.
Hi guys new death's shadow player here. I've just picked up the deck about 2 weeks ago and have played in 2 fnms with ok results.
I started with Dylan Donegans list that sided young pyromancers and played sleights of hands in the main.
From the little bit of testing I've done I really don't like yp in the deck at all.
I was wondering if anyone has some experience with the card and could tell me how it's done for them.
Also is there a good one card answer to chameleon Colossus that we can play or do we have to hope to hit it with discard or counter it?
It's interesting that you aren't a fan of young pyromancer, but are looking for a way to deal with chameleon colossus. YP is a great way to deal with the colossus as the stream of 1/1's can easily overwhelm it. Overall I like having additional threats in the board for grindy matches. There may be a better option than YP, but I have been having good luck with them for now. Some folks were using pia and kiran nalaar for a while and seemed like it was solid. It is a bit high on the mana curve, but in a 19 land build it seems like a reasonable option.
The list of cards banned from storm is rather interesting. It's like they know this deck is a problem, but just can't bring themselves to ban the actual storm cards and wipe it out of the format. Compared to how they completely removed other decks, it is odd that storm just keeps getting small nerfs. How many times do you have to ban cards from a deck before we admit it is just not healthy for the format?
I've been thinking out putting Serum Visions and/or Sleight of Hand to see how well is in the meta now. I like the idea of Peek as well because it does the thing as two mentioned before; however, doesn't let us choose what card we can potentially get.
As things slow down, the cantrips start to look better and better. Our deck can't afford to play too many though, since our biggest strength is the ability to overwhelm our opponent in the first few turns with all of our cheap spells. This is much harder if we are spending a mana every turn on filtering our draws. I've been playing 2/3 cantrips for a while since I never really want to see more than 1 in my hand at any time. Playing peek as a one-of has also been pretty good since our deck benefits hugely from the information aspect.
On a side note, I've been thinking about a sideboard plan against shadow decks that involves 4x kitchen finks, 3xwild defiance, and at least 1 dryad arbor. They play extra aggressively with their life total for games 2 and 3 once they know we are infect, so a single shot from a noble, dryad, or finks with a pump spell and defiance trigger is often enough to kill them. This also allows us to board into 4 finks against burn which is also a nice benefit. Has anyone else tried going the normal damage route against these life-greedy shadow decks?
Played in a weekly modern event with infect last night and did better than expected finishing at 4-1.
Round 1 was grixis shadow, the match-up I was hoping to dodge the most... As expected he won the match, but I did manage to win game 2 primarily due to him not finding a threat or much discard enabling me to sculpt a hand that could win through three removal spells. There were some interesting situations involving wild defiance and dryad arbor almost being able to get his low life total, however all the fatal push and izzet staticaster shut that plan down.
Round 2 was against a naya zoo deck. These games were fun, game 1 he played a maindecked magus of the moon which turned off my manlands. I attack with a glistener elf every turn for at least 5 turns using pump spells to kill his blockers, however he continues to find more dudes and I can't find any evasion spells or a blighted agent in time. Games 2 and 3 I just race him and his paths and bolts can't stop turn 4 kills both games.
Round 3 was against an interesting build of D&T. His plan was to flicker a morphed akroma for a fast clock along side the usual mana disruption suite found in D&T. He gets me game 1 with a really good hand that plays leonin arbiter turn 2 followed by turn 3 ghost quarter my inkmoth and path my elf. Game 2 I have a very fast hand that ends the game on turn 4 with protection for his path. Game 3 was a grind with several of my threats being answered. The critical play was him trying to flicker his akroma on my end step and I played vines to counter the flicker. His clock is too slow and blighted agent kills him in short order.
Round 4 was an all-out race against elves. He has me dead on turn 3 in game 1 with a few ezuri activations. Game 2 I kill him on turn 3 with no interaction from either side. Game 3 I dismember his lord and dispel his coco. His hand doesn't do much from there with a bunch of 1/1's being to slow to race my agent.
Round 5 is B/G rock. Game he taps out on turn 4 for a kalitas to clock me, but this leaves him dead to an immense inkmoth on my next turn. Game 2 his clock is extremely slow with just a scavenging ooze in play and he floods out a bit with only a few points of interaction which are easy to outmaneuver.
The deck felt fragile throughout the night, but the ability to race any deck in the format made me feel like I always had a shot in my games. The speed of this deck is frequently underestimated and it probably helps that most people where I play haven't seen it in a while. I'm considering testing a cantrip heavy build in the future to help with consistency issues. Most of the games I feel like I lose are due to drawing the wrong half (no threats or no pump). The deck is still very playable and as long as shadow isn't a major force in your meta, I'd encourage you to play this deck as it's good against a good portion of the meta currently.
Tezzeret's gambit also counteracts chalice on one, correct?
Eh, it's some interesting tech here I guess. My plan for chalice on 1 is pendlehaven, exalted triggers, and become immense. It's normally an uphill grind, but not something I feel the need to immediately scoop to.
Tezzeret's Gambit makes a lot of sense against slower decks like UW control. It provides card advantage and a poison counter for 3 mana which is a pretty good deal if the length of the game is going to be a bit longer.
I'm not sure how much I like the defiance+spellskite plan. It makes the deck a lot slower, albeit more resilient. I think I would consider sideboarding into this strategy against more interactive decks like shadow or BG/x. I still think building the maindeck for the fastest, most streamlined kills is the best thing infect can be doing.
On a positive note, I have been seeing less death's shadow decks lately. If they decline significantly, there may be enough room in the meta for infect to beat up on the big mana decks without getting wrecked by thoughtseize and fatal push.
I am so glad i was right that if you remove infect from modern, big mana decks will become the no.1 strategy one must be following if you want to win.
DS keeps the balances though now but Modern is certainly slowly and steadily becoming format with a bigger representation of big mana, but its not a big mana format yet.
Infect should not be wiped off the face of Earth, especially with fatal push on its way.
I don't mean to be contrary, but I really don't think your position on this is tenable. There hasn't been any consistent evidence to suggest that "big mana decks" have become the "no.1 strategy" required to win in modern as a format. Far from it, we've been seeing an abundance of interactive or alternative types of decks doing very well recently. Coco, burn, shadow, abzan, affinity etc are all at the top, with only Eldrazi really giving any weight at all to your suggestion. Scapeshift is better at the moment that it's been for a long while, which I'd hasten to add is probably a good thing, for quite a few reasons (not least is keeping decks like Tron in check, which the community for some reason despise)
I pride myself on never agreeing with gkorou about anything at all, but I think he might be right here. I'm very close to believing Titanshift and E-Tron are the overall best things you can be doing in Modern.
To apply some context here I would want to know the meta % of all valakut and tron decks currently and where they were immediately before probe was banned. Have they significantly gained ground compared to where they were last year?
I personally think that infect was a bad match-up for valakut and tron decks so I expect their shares would be higher now that one of their predators has been removed.
Hey if WOTC wants to bring Gitaxian Probe back I will gladly sleeve up my Kiln Fiend deck again no problem.
I don't think probe is too powerful in the context of kiln fiend decks or even infect. However, I'd be concerned with the impact probe may have on death's shadow decks.
Scenario - On the draw against Tron and they play a second Tron land on turn 2 and they have an Expedition Map in play. You play a Ghost Quarter on turn 2. How can you get the most mileage out of the GQ, or is this just doomsday?
I'm assuming that they will activate the map on your EOT to search for the last tron piece. My usual strategy is to kill the tower if it is in play since I assume they will hit tron at some point in the game and containing their mana to the minimum amount is helpful for mana leak and logic knot.
I'm thinking through this quote from bloodyrabbit: Remember a trick: if they cast Scapeshift with 7 lands, you can actually keep Cryptic in your hand, let their Scapeshift resolving, then - when the trigger of the land is on the stack, bounce one of their Mountain. You lose only three life, and the opponent wasted a lot of red sources. Also, you can do the same with a Tectonic Edge on the play.
So if they grab 1x valakut and 6x mountains and you bounce 1 mountain wouldn't you take 0? The 5 mountains all see each other, but there is no sixth mountain and you take 0 damage on resolution. Is the three damage coming from the mountain that you have now returned to their hand when they play it next turn? I just want to make sure I understand this situation correctly.
Also is it preferable to play this way to get mountains out of their deck, or does this not really accomplish anything and would we just be better countering the scapeshift with the cryptic to begin with? Does this actually prevent the next scapeshift/titan from killing us?
Bonus Question : Does bouncing the valakut with cryptic do anything here? I'm thinking no as the triggers are already on the stack upon entering the battlefield right?
The trigger from the specific mountain you targeted will hit you. Having 6 mountains is not the condition for a valakut trigger, the condition is having at least 5 other mountains. When the specific mountain you targeted triggers it will will count and find 5 other mountains on the battlefield. The rest of the mountain triggers will search for 5 other mountains and only find 4 others upon resolution.
Depending on the texture of the specific game it could be worthwhile to counter the scapeshift, but I think in most instances you will want to bounce/kill the enabling mountains - it means a lot less mountains in the deck. However, if taking the 3 damage will kill your Gideon, or put you in bolt range or in range of Sakura beats, its worth considering countering the scapeshift.
Your assessment of how bouncing the valakut works is correct - the triggers don't check for Valakut upon resolution, only the number of other mountains.
Thanks for clarifying this, I found the explanation very helpful. Not to go to far with this corner case, but I think another consideration is that now they have a mountain in hand so you are giving up 6 total points of life if you can't shut down the valakut immediately. Much appreciated!
I've been thinking about cutting my maindecked second copy of Jace AOT and maybe running a 4th cyptic or something else. The amount of times where I feel safe casting Jace before turn 7 or 8 are extremely low. I think having a reactive answer that also provides card advantage may just be better. Has anyone considered putting Jace in the sideboard for slower matches or ones where his +1 is relevant? Such as abzan with souls, affinity, tokens, etc.
I'm thinking through this quote from bloodyrabbit: Remember a trick: if they cast Scapeshift with 7 lands, you can actually keep Cryptic in your hand, let their Scapeshift resolving, then - when the trigger of the land is on the stack, bounce one of their Mountain. You lose only three life, and the opponent wasted a lot of red sources. Also, you can do the same with a Tectonic Edge on the play.
So if they grab 1x valakut and 6x mountains and you bounce 1 mountain wouldn't you take 0? The 5 mountains all see each other, but there is no sixth mountain and you take 0 damage on resolution. Is the three damage coming from the mountain that you have now returned to their hand when they play it next turn? I just want to make sure I understand this situation correctly.
Also is it preferable to play this way to get mountains out of their deck, or does this not really accomplish anything and would we just be better countering the scapeshift with the cryptic to begin with? Does this actually prevent the next scapeshift/titan from killing us?
Bonus Question : Does bouncing the valakut with cryptic do anything here? I'm thinking no as the triggers are already on the stack upon entering the battlefield right?
On the topic of U/W control seeing much more play online then in paper, I think a big factor here is the length of games. I have played U/W control in paper for a while and it can be very frustrating when the opponent plays slowly. You can call a judge to watch for slow play, but if the opponent takes a full minute to ponder every decision (which they are entitled to do) you will invariably go to time in the round. The chess clock concept on MTGO causes your opponent to lose in this scenario, but in paper events you likely just got a draw for the round. To play paper events, control decks need a faster way to close out games, and this is why I think we see more results from Jeskai control with burn spells to end games. This is unfortunate in my mind as the deck has enough challenges without having to worry about the pace of play of your opponent.
@Benny and others, would you consider Spell Queller or did anyone tried and it didn't seem to be that good?
Also, @Benny how would you tune your deck in a control heavy meta(and then the usual Shadow, EldraTron, Dredge decks-basically anything other than Ad Nauseam, Storm and Titanshift)?
I am also very interested to hear opinions on Queller. I'm on the Benny mainboard -1 temple of enlightenment and +1 Cryptic Command. However, my board is in a bit more flux as I try to combat my local meta. Last week I brought in Quellers against combo (Ad Nauseum) and Burn. Felt great against combo, okay against burn. I've also been playing with them in the mirror. I'm not sure if this is correct and would love to hear more opinions on that card.
I think vendilion clique is the better card. In the matchups where you would side in either card, I prefer the effect of clique over queller. The additional 1 power makes for a better clock against combo/control and the ability to cycle your own cards is a huge boost for clique. Queller doesn't have the downside of drawing your opponent a card immediately, however I think both offer similar levels of disruption. There are some matchups where each would be preferable. Against decks with 2 power creatures like burn and D&T, queller will have some value as a blocker that can win combat. Clique is better against opponents who have removal so when it dies they don't get their spell back and also better against decks with spells costing more than 4 mana (think primeval titan or Ad Naus). I prefer clique, but I think they are very similar and these are just my own thoughts on the subject.
It's interesting that you aren't a fan of young pyromancer, but are looking for a way to deal with chameleon colossus. YP is a great way to deal with the colossus as the stream of 1/1's can easily overwhelm it. Overall I like having additional threats in the board for grindy matches. There may be a better option than YP, but I have been having good luck with them for now. Some folks were using pia and kiran nalaar for a while and seemed like it was solid. It is a bit high on the mana curve, but in a 19 land build it seems like a reasonable option.
The list of cards banned from storm is rather interesting. It's like they know this deck is a problem, but just can't bring themselves to ban the actual storm cards and wipe it out of the format. Compared to how they completely removed other decks, it is odd that storm just keeps getting small nerfs. How many times do you have to ban cards from a deck before we admit it is just not healthy for the format?
As things slow down, the cantrips start to look better and better. Our deck can't afford to play too many though, since our biggest strength is the ability to overwhelm our opponent in the first few turns with all of our cheap spells. This is much harder if we are spending a mana every turn on filtering our draws. I've been playing 2/3 cantrips for a while since I never really want to see more than 1 in my hand at any time. Playing peek as a one-of has also been pretty good since our deck benefits hugely from the information aspect.
On a side note, I've been thinking about a sideboard plan against shadow decks that involves 4x kitchen finks, 3xwild defiance, and at least 1 dryad arbor. They play extra aggressively with their life total for games 2 and 3 once they know we are infect, so a single shot from a noble, dryad, or finks with a pump spell and defiance trigger is often enough to kill them. This also allows us to board into 4 finks against burn which is also a nice benefit. Has anyone else tried going the normal damage route against these life-greedy shadow decks?
Round 1 was grixis shadow, the match-up I was hoping to dodge the most... As expected he won the match, but I did manage to win game 2 primarily due to him not finding a threat or much discard enabling me to sculpt a hand that could win through three removal spells. There were some interesting situations involving wild defiance and dryad arbor almost being able to get his low life total, however all the fatal push and izzet staticaster shut that plan down.
Round 2 was against a naya zoo deck. These games were fun, game 1 he played a maindecked magus of the moon which turned off my manlands. I attack with a glistener elf every turn for at least 5 turns using pump spells to kill his blockers, however he continues to find more dudes and I can't find any evasion spells or a blighted agent in time. Games 2 and 3 I just race him and his paths and bolts can't stop turn 4 kills both games.
Round 3 was against an interesting build of D&T. His plan was to flicker a morphed akroma for a fast clock along side the usual mana disruption suite found in D&T. He gets me game 1 with a really good hand that plays leonin arbiter turn 2 followed by turn 3 ghost quarter my inkmoth and path my elf. Game 2 I have a very fast hand that ends the game on turn 4 with protection for his path. Game 3 was a grind with several of my threats being answered. The critical play was him trying to flicker his akroma on my end step and I played vines to counter the flicker. His clock is too slow and blighted agent kills him in short order.
Round 4 was an all-out race against elves. He has me dead on turn 3 in game 1 with a few ezuri activations. Game 2 I kill him on turn 3 with no interaction from either side. Game 3 I dismember his lord and dispel his coco. His hand doesn't do much from there with a bunch of 1/1's being to slow to race my agent.
Round 5 is B/G rock. Game he taps out on turn 4 for a kalitas to clock me, but this leaves him dead to an immense inkmoth on my next turn. Game 2 his clock is extremely slow with just a scavenging ooze in play and he floods out a bit with only a few points of interaction which are easy to outmaneuver.
The deck felt fragile throughout the night, but the ability to race any deck in the format made me feel like I always had a shot in my games. The speed of this deck is frequently underestimated and it probably helps that most people where I play haven't seen it in a while. I'm considering testing a cantrip heavy build in the future to help with consistency issues. Most of the games I feel like I lose are due to drawing the wrong half (no threats or no pump). The deck is still very playable and as long as shadow isn't a major force in your meta, I'd encourage you to play this deck as it's good against a good portion of the meta currently.
Eh, it's some interesting tech here I guess. My plan for chalice on 1 is pendlehaven, exalted triggers, and become immense. It's normally an uphill grind, but not something I feel the need to immediately scoop to.
I'm not sure how much I like the defiance+spellskite plan. It makes the deck a lot slower, albeit more resilient. I think I would consider sideboarding into this strategy against more interactive decks like shadow or BG/x. I still think building the maindeck for the fastest, most streamlined kills is the best thing infect can be doing.
On a positive note, I have been seeing less death's shadow decks lately. If they decline significantly, there may be enough room in the meta for infect to beat up on the big mana decks without getting wrecked by thoughtseize and fatal push.
To apply some context here I would want to know the meta % of all valakut and tron decks currently and where they were immediately before probe was banned. Have they significantly gained ground compared to where they were last year?
I personally think that infect was a bad match-up for valakut and tron decks so I expect their shares would be higher now that one of their predators has been removed.
I don't think probe is too powerful in the context of kiln fiend decks or even infect. However, I'd be concerned with the impact probe may have on death's shadow decks.
I'm assuming that they will activate the map on your EOT to search for the last tron piece. My usual strategy is to kill the tower if it is in play since I assume they will hit tron at some point in the game and containing their mana to the minimum amount is helpful for mana leak and logic knot.
Thanks for clarifying this, I found the explanation very helpful. Not to go to far with this corner case, but I think another consideration is that now they have a mountain in hand so you are giving up 6 total points of life if you can't shut down the valakut immediately. Much appreciated!
I've been thinking about cutting my maindecked second copy of Jace AOT and maybe running a 4th cyptic or something else. The amount of times where I feel safe casting Jace before turn 7 or 8 are extremely low. I think having a reactive answer that also provides card advantage may just be better. Has anyone considered putting Jace in the sideboard for slower matches or ones where his +1 is relevant? Such as abzan with souls, affinity, tokens, etc.
Remember a trick: if they cast Scapeshift with 7 lands, you can actually keep Cryptic in your hand, let their Scapeshift resolving, then - when the trigger of the land is on the stack, bounce one of their Mountain. You lose only three life, and the opponent wasted a lot of red sources. Also, you can do the same with a Tectonic Edge on the play.
So if they grab 1x valakut and 6x mountains and you bounce 1 mountain wouldn't you take 0? The 5 mountains all see each other, but there is no sixth mountain and you take 0 damage on resolution. Is the three damage coming from the mountain that you have now returned to their hand when they play it next turn? I just want to make sure I understand this situation correctly.
Also is it preferable to play this way to get mountains out of their deck, or does this not really accomplish anything and would we just be better countering the scapeshift with the cryptic to begin with? Does this actually prevent the next scapeshift/titan from killing us?
Bonus Question : Does bouncing the valakut with cryptic do anything here? I'm thinking no as the triggers are already on the stack upon entering the battlefield right?
I think vendilion clique is the better card. In the matchups where you would side in either card, I prefer the effect of clique over queller. The additional 1 power makes for a better clock against combo/control and the ability to cycle your own cards is a huge boost for clique. Queller doesn't have the downside of drawing your opponent a card immediately, however I think both offer similar levels of disruption. There are some matchups where each would be preferable. Against decks with 2 power creatures like burn and D&T, queller will have some value as a blocker that can win combat. Clique is better against opponents who have removal so when it dies they don't get their spell back and also better against decks with spells costing more than 4 mana (think primeval titan or Ad Naus). I prefer clique, but I think they are very similar and these are just my own thoughts on the subject.