In the last nine months I played the deck almost exclusively. But in recent months because of work I have not been to big tournaments. The deck is the result of the evolution of metagame in recent months, I recently came back to 23 lands again. The mana is not excellent, but it is perfectly acceptable if we know what its problems and limitations are. This is my last sideboard, but I have a couple of cards that could came in. My last adiction was swap Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second Ceremonious Rejection.
The Remand play-set is interesting. I may revisit that. I didn't like it when I tried it, but I was also playing against a lot of Cavern of Souls then too. Would you say that Remand allowed you to go down to 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker?
The old Death's Shadow Zoo thread is locked and links here. This thread mostly looks like the Delirium builds from before GDS got really popular. Does anyone know of a thread where people are talking about the Wild Nacatl builds like this one: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/modern-4-color-death-s-shadow#paper.
I did in fact go with Collected Company since it enables combos so well by digging for your creatures, putting your combo creatures into play at instant speed EOT and offering some card advantage to make up for running mediocre creatures because they combo. Plus, you're more likely to end up with an Intruder Alarm in play and be wanting to find the creature side of the combo than the other way around because creatures are easier to remove than enchantments in Modern.
A few other thoughts I have after having built it:
I may want more flash creatures to make attacking into Intruder Alarm risky for my opponent.
Creature with strong tap abilities are strong with Intruder Alarm in general because you can tap in response to the untap trigger every time a creature ETBs. I could not find any standouts that fit here in my DB searches.
Creatures with Vigilance gain bonus points with Intruder Alarm. I haven't explored this much.
Wargate can tutor Intruder Alarm or a combo creature (or a Presence of Gond if I added one) into play. 6 mana to end the game might not be out of the question if we're durdly enough.
I'm using about the absolute minimum number of creatures where Collected Company is still good because I don't want creatures every turn. This will help Intruder Alarm function as a controlling card by denying my opponent an untap until they can find a creature.
I might want some big toughness creatures to encourage the game to go longer. Something like Wall of Omens (digs too!) or Wall of Roots might be appropriate.
I played against an Isochron Scepter deck trying to make infinite mana with Dramatic Reversal and a couple of mana rocks today. I didn't get to see it go off because I had so many control spells to stop it, but it seemed like a cool idea.
Is anyone still working on this deck? Not specifically related to my post, but here's my list for those interested, which I like but am tweaking constantly.
The deck has some really good draws. It's weaker to graveyard hate than I'd like but the payoff is quite high too.
On paper, combining the consistent size of Tarmogoyf and Death's Shadow with discard spells and Stubborn Denial and the grinding potential of Snapcaster Mage while maintaining excellent mana efficiency seems awesome.
According to the rest of the internet, Sultai Shadow is all but non-existent. I'm interested to hear what people's thoughts are on this:
I think I'm ready to make a prediction for Monday.
JTMS is getting unbanned.
Street Wraith is eating a ban to weaken Death's Shadow. It is what enables the really fast kills and allows the deck to trim down on lands while still contributing to the suicide plan without spending mana, further allowing you to use that mana on a discard spell or removal spell. You're getting consistency, free life loss (never thought I'd be happy to get that) and tempo all for free. Better than free - because you actively want to lose that life up to a certain point. Banning Street Wraith will slow the deck and push it more towards midrange and less aggo/midrange or aggo/control.
I do not think Death's Shadow itself is going to be banned. You do actually have to work to be able to cast it and being in a state where you've cast it means you're living on the edge hanging out at 12 or less life where some decks can take advantage. It's really the overly synergistic and mana efficient cards around it that broke it.
If we can get a broadly competitive control deck with Ancestral Vision to pull ahead on cards, it will keep Death's Shadow well in check as a competent control player can really do a number on current builds of Death's Shadow Jund and Grixis. JTMS will encourage people to try. I also think we'll need a good countermagic made available pretty soon either through the next Standard set or a change in how WotC adds cards to Modern so they can just add Counterspell.
I wouldn't mind also seeing an Ancient Stirrings ban to weaken Tron and Bant Eldrazi to further encourage a blue control deck to thrive, although this thought is not part of my prediction.
Again, Twin was the only deck in all of magic that really forced players to think when it was there. It was a true patrician deck. Bogles, Zoo, Death's Shadow, Bloom... These are all decks for weak scrubs that need to play babby's first deck. Twin has complicated sequences that reward intuition and skill. The fact that is was banned showed us that wizards only wants to make money off of kids throwing their creatures against each other while destroying pure magic, of which Twin was the last true deck.
lol your profile is perfect. Especially like the signature.
so tron decks and an Abzan deck with +1/+1 counter themes have sprung up a bit around here. the Abzan counter deck uses stuff like hardened scales, winding constrictor and a bunch of modular cards.
has anyone else been seeing this deck?
That's been around for maybe a couple of months. Sounds a lot like this:
I would not mind seeing an Ancient Stirrings ban to weaken the colorless strategies now that the drawback is hardly a drawback. Then the Bant Eldrazi deck for example would be a little more prone to traditional ramp problems where you deal with their Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher and they have to deal with drawing Noble Hierarch instead of Ancient Stirrings for another Reality Smasher.
The Eldrazi cards seeing play in Modern do seem a little strong still with Eldrazi Temple still available. I can live with them however.
I played a turbo green deck that people always frowned about.
Vernal Bloom with Early Harvest and lots of green recursion. I'd make absurd amounts of mana and either cast Tooth and Nail for Emmy and Urbask or Rude Awakening. And people literally had no idea what was going on. The best part was using Garruk to win via his overrun ult.
Emmy + Urabrask. First time I heard them paired together. Deck looks like it's fun to play.
He then proceed to activate mirror entity for 0 killing some human but the Xathrid Necromancer and the mirror entity survived because of a +1/+1 counter previousely placed on them. So he get some zombie.
He activate mirror entity again killing the zombie he created but changing them into human before, so they died and respawn again.
Interesting combo, but what card did he use to change the zombie to human?
___________________________
And sorry, I haven't contributed much to the thread for awhile. All the decks I've played against the past weeks are normal decks in Modern like Death Shadow. Haven't encountered a weird brew for sometime now.
Looks like it was Mirror Entity's ability that did it. "and gain all creature types"
Pretty interesting concept overall. A lot of work to set up but pretty darn interesting. I might have to try it sometime.
I played a turbo green deck that people always frowned about.
Vernal Bloom with Early Harvest and lots of green recursion. I'd make absurd amounts of mana and either cast Tooth and Nail for Emmy and Urbask or Rude Awakening. And people literally had no idea what was going on. The best part was using Garruk to win via his overrun ult.
Emmy + Urabrask. First time I heard them paired together. Deck looks like it's fun to play.
He then proceed to activate mirror entity for 0 killing some human but the Xathrid Necromancer and the mirror entity survived because of a +1/+1 counter previousely placed on them. So he get some zombie.
He activate mirror entity again killing the zombie he created but changing them into human before, so they died and respawn again.
Interesting combo, but what card did he use to change the zombie to human?
___________________________
And sorry, I haven't contributed much to the thread for awhile. All the decks I've played against the past weeks are normal decks in Modern like Death Shadow. Haven't encountered a weird brew for sometime now.
Looks like it was Mirror Entity's ability that did it. "and gain all creature types"
Pretty interesting concept overall. A lot of work to set up but pretty darn interesting. I might have to try it sometime.
I like Hieroglyphic Illumination as a potential Serum Visions replacement in an all-instant-speed deck like Esper Control or some flavors of Grixis. It cycles early to help you hit land drops and is a true card advantage card late game. If your whole deck is instant speed, 4 cmc is a lot easier to swallow. Playing Serum Visions instead of holding Lightning Bolt/Fatal Push up always felt bad early while drawing it late also feels bad. With Hieroglyphic Illumination, you can try to fit the cycling in between the cracks of interacting with your opponent while maintaining the countermagic threat.
Censor is just barely playable IMO. It can be useful early while your opponent is trying to curve and cycling late puts it into that "barely playable" area. I'm still skeptical that it's even better than Mana Leak for control decks however. I feel there was a missed opportunity here to make a playable aftermath card where the front is some kind of tempo card and the graveyard part is counter magic.
Soul-Scar Mage seems playable in Zoo. Damage based removal has been on the decline but this card makes it good against 5 toughness creatures again by making them too small to do combat with your 3 toughness ones.
This card could serve as main-board disruption to several infinite combos, Lantern Control and Tron to a degree while advancing your damage doing plan. I like it in creature based aggro like Zoo.
The Remand play-set is interesting. I may revisit that. I didn't like it when I tried it, but I was also playing against a lot of Cavern of Souls then too. Would you say that Remand allowed you to go down to 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker?
I don't see a lot of other people playing anything like this. I can show you my list anyways - been fairly happy with it.
1x Blood Crypt
3x Bloodstained Mire
3x Cryptic Command
4x Deceiver Exarch
1x Dispel
3x Fatal Push
2x Island
3x Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
3x Kolaghan's Command
2x Lightning Bolt
2x Mana Leak
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
4x Serum Visions
1x Smoldering Marsh
4x Snapcaster Mage
1x Spirebluff Canal
3x Steam Vents
1x Swamp
2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3x Terminate
2x Wandering Fumarole
2x Watery Grave
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Crumble to Dust
1x Damnation
1x Dispel
2x Engineered Explosives
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Negate
2x Spellskite
1x Surgical Extraction
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Noble Hierarch
4x Steward of Solidarity
3x Tarmogoyf
1x Spellskite
1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2x Eternal Witness
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Thraben Doomsayer
1x Vendilion Clique
4x Path to Exile
4x Commune with the Gods
4x Collected Company
Enchantments
4x Intruder Alarm
Lands
2x Botanical Sanctum
1x Breeding Pool
4x Flooded Strand
2x Forest
1x Gavony Township
2x Hallowed Fountain
1x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Plains
2x Temple Garden
4x Windswept Heath
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
I did in fact go with Collected Company since it enables combos so well by digging for your creatures, putting your combo creatures into play at instant speed EOT and offering some card advantage to make up for running mediocre creatures because they combo. Plus, you're more likely to end up with an Intruder Alarm in play and be wanting to find the creature side of the combo than the other way around because creatures are easier to remove than enchantments in Modern.
A few other thoughts I have after having built it:
4 Death's Shadow
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Tarmogoyf
3 Grim Flayer
2 Architects of Will
Planeswalkers
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Liliana of the Veil
4 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Traverse the Ulvenwald
Instants
3 Fatal Push
4 Thought Scour
2 Stubborn Denial
2 Go for the Throat
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Verdant Catacombs
3 Watery Grave
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Forest
I've been adjusting it a lot. Street Wraith vs Architects of Will/Thought Scour, Tasigur, the Golden Fang vs Grim Flayer, Bitterblossom, land configuration.
The deck has some really good draws. It's weaker to graveyard hate than I'd like but the payoff is quite high too.
On paper, combining the consistent size of Tarmogoyf and Death's Shadow with discard spells and Stubborn Denial and the grinding potential of Snapcaster Mage while maintaining excellent mana efficiency seems awesome.
According to the rest of the internet, Sultai Shadow is all but non-existent. I'm interested to hear what people's thoughts are on this:
What's holding Sultai Shadow back in general?
JTMS is getting unbanned.
Street Wraith is eating a ban to weaken Death's Shadow. It is what enables the really fast kills and allows the deck to trim down on lands while still contributing to the suicide plan without spending mana, further allowing you to use that mana on a discard spell or removal spell. You're getting consistency, free life loss (never thought I'd be happy to get that) and tempo all for free. Better than free - because you actively want to lose that life up to a certain point. Banning Street Wraith will slow the deck and push it more towards midrange and less aggo/midrange or aggo/control.
I do not think Death's Shadow itself is going to be banned. You do actually have to work to be able to cast it and being in a state where you've cast it means you're living on the edge hanging out at 12 or less life where some decks can take advantage. It's really the overly synergistic and mana efficient cards around it that broke it.
If we can get a broadly competitive control deck with Ancestral Vision to pull ahead on cards, it will keep Death's Shadow well in check as a competent control player can really do a number on current builds of Death's Shadow Jund and Grixis. JTMS will encourage people to try. I also think we'll need a good countermagic made available pretty soon either through the next Standard set or a change in how WotC adds cards to Modern so they can just add Counterspell.
I wouldn't mind also seeing an Ancient Stirrings ban to weaken Tron and Bant Eldrazi to further encourage a blue control deck to thrive, although this thought is not part of my prediction.
lol your profile is perfect. Especially like the signature.
That's been around for maybe a couple of months. Sounds a lot like this:
https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/modern-monday-abzan-sneks/
The Eldrazi cards seeing play in Modern do seem a little strong still with Eldrazi Temple still available. I can live with them however.
Not consistently. The better Collected Company deck is probably just the stock one everyone plays. But this is "strange magic"!
Looks like it was Mirror Entity's ability that did it. "and gain all creature types"
Pretty interesting concept overall. A lot of work to set up but pretty darn interesting. I might have to try it sometime.
Censor is just barely playable IMO. It can be useful early while your opponent is trying to curve and cycling late puts it into that "barely playable" area. I'm still skeptical that it's even better than Mana Leak for control decks however. I feel there was a missed opportunity here to make a playable aftermath card where the front is some kind of tempo card and the graveyard part is counter magic.
Soul-Scar Mage seems playable in Zoo. Damage based removal has been on the decline but this card makes it good against 5 toughness creatures again by making them too small to do combat with your 3 toughness ones.