Seasoned Pyromancer is very strong, can be hit off of Grenzo at base power and gives you either some nice filtering or even card advantage if you are hellbent. Plus Grenzo always loves extra tokens to sacrifice. I will certainly be looking to try this.
Do we even mind being Hellbent or care about card advantage? All I ever want to do is draw lands and a couple of early utility artifacts. Everything else I want to just keep in my deck. Once the engine is going I really just want to save all my mana for end of opponent turn activation. Card advantage in this deck feels more like disadvantage, as I want everything in my library instead of my hand (except lands of course). Many games I just end up discarding to hand size so I can digger and activate stuff into play for cheaper than it would be to hard cast.
EDIT: After thinking about for a moment I realized Seasoned Pyromancer could be useful once you have recursion going though. I would only want to flip it when I have two high CMC creatures in hand that I don't want to cast and would rather have in my graveyard for future recursion.
The Karn artifact decks are going to be difficult for midrange decks. If anything we would want to try to be even faster so we have more a chance to kill them before the get Karn/Lattice lock or Karn into Bridge.
this has been bugging me a bit the past few days, so I'm gonna post here
against tron and given the choice of either ripping their one one payoff or one of their mana rocks/expedition map, do you take the threat, an egg or the map? does having 2 discard spells change that? I was on the draw and took I believe the map first because that represented whatever he needed and then took the egg, leaving him with Ulamog. He then spun his wheels for a long time and drew the last tron land he needed to cast Ulamog turn before I would have killed him, which is variance I guess
Trying to keep Tron off of Tron is a fool's errand. They tend to have more ways of getting to ramped mana than they have threats once they do. You take the threat then try to kill them before they draw a second one.
So, how do you guys feel about Assassin's Trophy (that will most likely replace Decay in modern almost completely)?
I don't think it necessarily replaces Abrupt Decay. Sure it destroys lands and 4+ cmc permanents, but Abrupt Decay can't be countered. Really feel that it'll be a meta call on which goes in BGx decks.
EDIT: I think it could be similar to Push replacing Bolt for a short while, but now Bolt is very much back.
Thinking of getting into the deck, how is the matchup vs. Humans?
Not great. It is winnable, but difficult. Humans (and UW/Jeskai Control) becoming big are really what pushed Grixis Death's Shadow down a bit. Our deck already struggles with go wide strategies, and Humans' added disruption makes it a bad matchup.
Also, why are traverse lists always on 8 discards and gds on 6. If it's because they are more all in on the kill quick plan, maybe we should consider doing the same now?
My guess would be a combination of no access to Stubborn Denial, and (more importantly) discard grows Goyf but Grixis' second threat needs Thought Scour instead of the extra two Inquisitions.
Thing in the Ice bouncing our own delve creature seems like bad times. Monastery Swiftspear and Delver don't really play well with Death's Shadow as they force you to play threat first and disruption second, while Death's Shadow (both the creature and the deck) wants the opposite.
The second option would be going more all in for a quicker kill, maybe by adding more potential threats like Kiln Fiend for clunky and grindy cards. Does this make the Jeskai/Humans MU better? Probably yes, probably no.
My only issue with adding Kiln Fiend is what do you cut for it? Cutting Angler/Tasigur seems bad since unlike Kiln Fiend they don't die to Bolt, which is seeing more play now due to Humans. Cutting instants/sorceries seems bad since you need them to pump Kiln Fiend. I guess you cut Street Wraith, but that also makes Death's Shadow smaller, which kind of goes against the making the deck faster plan.
Does someone have a SB/SCD (single card discussion) guide on the use of Temur Battle Rage? I mean, I understand what the card does functionally, but what are the best and worst MU's to bring it in? I don't have enough playtime under my belt to have a definitive answer on this. And I do think there are some nuances to it as well. For example, if someone says "take it out for grindy MU's" while pointing to playing against Jund, I think the argument does not apply when playing against a deck such as Mardu Pyromancer, since while it is a very grindy deck, being able to punch through Young Pyromancer tokens and Lingering Souls is important. Are people keeping it in against combo decks to race them? I kept them in against Amulet Titan and have no idea if that was the "correct" call.
Battle Rage is in the deck to allow you to trample over go wide decks and gives you a faster clock against non interactive decks with little to no removal. You usually side it out in grindy matchups like Jund because they tend to have plenty of removal and you'll often just offer up a 2 for 1 when they Push/Terminate/Path your threat with Battle Rage on the stack. Keeping them in against Amulet Titan was probably right since you need to kill them before they can one shot kill you with the Primeval Titan.
We are already favored against Storm, and Disdainful Stroke and Ceremonious Rejection both seem better against Tron since both help in other matchups as well.
I was actually stopping by to post something I may have overlooked in previous discussion. Anger of the Gods is excellent, especially with dredge appearing more but it occurred to me running 18 lands has made that card extremely difficult against most matchups besides dredge(even dredge if they SB GQ). I think running Izzet in its place with Kozilek's or 1-2 Tendrils depending on mix is the way to go. I also thought I'd mention that echoing truth is performing very well for me. Hope everyone is winning! Please criticize, add on etc!
I cut a Tarn instead of the second Blood Crypt to get to 18 lands and have little problems casting Anger. If you cut the extra Crypt and kept all 12 fetches to get to 18 then I would say don't run Anger. I don't see Dredge, but see too many decks where I want the extra damage in my sweeper to run K Return over Anger.
Also, I'm weighing up Anger of the Gods versus Kozilek's Return. Kozilek seems to have the benefits of being single red and instant, but the extra damage and exile function of Anger is desirable. Anyone here have any thoughts?
Anger is better if you're up against a lot of Dredge or GW decks that rely on Kitchen Finks and Voice of Resurgence. Kozilek's Return is way better against Affinity. If neither of those decks matter, it really comes down to if the one extra damage matters. Really meta dependent.
I was thinking about adding TBR in the md (one copy, the other being in sb). Actually I've already done it but move it to the sb again. I think it's a good card that can help us against many different decks such as various swarm decks that can be tough matchups otherwise or just put up faster clock against combo and big mana decks. It's not as good as it is in 5 color shadow but I still think it's worth playing in md. The issue here however is that I don't know what to cut. When I first time tried it I cut 3rd Stubborn Denial but now I put in back in and moved TBR in sb. Depending on the expected metagame TBR might be even better than Stubborn Denial making 2/1 split of the two reasonable but in general I think I still want 3 copies of Stubborn Denial in md. Therefore I started wondering myself if cutting 1 Opt be other possible option. In this case I would play 3x Stubborn Denial, 1x TBR and 1x Opt but I'm note sure if this is good.
Anyway I would like to hear others opinion on this. Does this sound reasonable or it's just stupid idea that I'm better to forget about right away?
Right now I'm on two Battle Rage and the full four Stubborn Denial main. So far I'm liking it, but right now with work I haven't had a chance to play much so after testing that could change.
So my record against Abzan Midrange variants is something like 1-20. Lingering Souls gets me every darn time! I'm pretty sure I have enough answers to it, but I just cannot win. I'm starting to think I'm taking the wrong role in the match-up. Has anybody else had a similar experience? I'm also wondering how you approach the match-up. Do you shock yourself aggressively or do you try to play a slower game? Thanks all!
Are you running Temur Battle Rage? If not give it a try, allows you to run over Lingering Souls.
Do we even mind being Hellbent or care about card advantage? All I ever want to do is draw lands and a couple of early utility artifacts. Everything else I want to just keep in my deck. Once the engine is going I really just want to save all my mana for end of opponent turn activation. Card advantage in this deck feels more like disadvantage, as I want everything in my library instead of my hand (except lands of course). Many games I just end up discarding to hand size so I can digger and activate stuff into play for cheaper than it would be to hard cast.
EDIT: After thinking about for a moment I realized Seasoned Pyromancer could be useful once you have recursion going though. I would only want to flip it when I have two high CMC creatures in hand that I don't want to cast and would rather have in my graveyard for future recursion.
Trying to keep Tron off of Tron is a fool's errand. They tend to have more ways of getting to ramped mana than they have threats once they do. You take the threat then try to kill them before they draw a second one.
I don't think it necessarily replaces Abrupt Decay. Sure it destroys lands and 4+ cmc permanents, but Abrupt Decay can't be countered. Really feel that it'll be a meta call on which goes in BGx decks.
EDIT: I think it could be similar to Push replacing Bolt for a short while, but now Bolt is very much back.
Not great. It is winnable, but difficult. Humans (and UW/Jeskai Control) becoming big are really what pushed Grixis Death's Shadow down a bit. Our deck already struggles with go wide strategies, and Humans' added disruption makes it a bad matchup.
My guess would be a combination of no access to Stubborn Denial, and (more importantly) discard grows Goyf but Grixis' second threat needs Thought Scour instead of the extra two Inquisitions.
My only issue with adding Kiln Fiend is what do you cut for it? Cutting Angler/Tasigur seems bad since unlike Kiln Fiend they don't die to Bolt, which is seeing more play now due to Humans. Cutting instants/sorceries seems bad since you need them to pump Kiln Fiend. I guess you cut Street Wraith, but that also makes Death's Shadow smaller, which kind of goes against the making the deck faster plan.
Battle Rage is in the deck to allow you to trample over go wide decks and gives you a faster clock against non interactive decks with little to no removal. You usually side it out in grindy matchups like Jund because they tend to have plenty of removal and you'll often just offer up a 2 for 1 when they Push/Terminate/Path your threat with Battle Rage on the stack. Keeping them in against Amulet Titan was probably right since you need to kill them before they can one shot kill you with the Primeval Titan.
I cut a Tarn instead of the second Blood Crypt to get to 18 lands and have little problems casting Anger. If you cut the extra Crypt and kept all 12 fetches to get to 18 then I would say don't run Anger. I don't see Dredge, but see too many decks where I want the extra damage in my sweeper to run K Return over Anger.
Anger is better if you're up against a lot of Dredge or GW decks that rely on Kitchen Finks and Voice of Resurgence. Kozilek's Return is way better against Affinity. If neither of those decks matter, it really comes down to if the one extra damage matters. Really meta dependent.
Right now I'm on two Battle Rage and the full four Stubborn Denial main. So far I'm liking it, but right now with work I haven't had a chance to play much so after testing that could change.
Are you running Temur Battle Rage? If not give it a try, allows you to run over Lingering Souls.