18 land mana is advantage in a matchup like this because it means you will draw less lands which at the same time means you will draw more threats/answers to their threats.
I strongly disagree with this statement. Against Jund I want to board in my 3 Lilianas (2 LotV, 1 Last Hope), my extra Kolaghan's Command, my single Engineered Explosives, my 2 Nihil Spellbombs. I will also probably end up cutting at least 2 of my Street Wraiths because I need to keep some disruption of my own to keep their Lilianas off the board. This means that the average CMC of my deck will increase significantly to a point at which having the extra land will usually be more helpful than drawing yet another value card early. Missing my turn 3 land drop can dramatically diminish the value of my Snapcaster Mages and Lilianas. In addition, extra lands can often be pitched to the LotV that one of the players is almost inevitably going to resolve in these games.
As for BGx decks they are good matchups for GDS except for Abzan so you don't need more help here.
I don't feel favored against Jund. It's a grind fest and if they manage to stick a Goblin Rabblemaster or LotV while 18-land-Shadow is frantically trying to fix its manabase, it can get ugly quickly.
Short answer: Yes. My impression is that latest incarnation of Grixis Shadow tries to mimic 4C Shadow too much. It may be a meta call, I get it, then let's hope that the meta will change again soon. Because Grixis Shadow is not that good at playing 4C Shadow's game.
I have won many games against the "new" version of Grixis Shadow in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they cantrip like crazy and get me scared for a moment. But usually they only manage to play one measly creature after eating my IOKs and Thoughtseizes, only to find out that one open mana is not enough to protect it. Then everything falls apart and they sit on a hand full of dead cards. Like a frantic child they try to dig for a threat again, only to find out that my deck has even more ways of disrupting their one trick pony game plan. With a greedy manabase of 18 lands and often just 4 Opts to "fix" it, without Traverse the Ulvenwald for situational tutoring, with delve creatures and Snapcaster Mages getting into each others' ways like they always did to some degree with this deck, there are so many things that can go wrong that something will often go wrong if the opponent's deck packs some disruption.
To me, the "new" Grixis Shadow feels as if somebody has looked at what was already the most fragile of all shadow decks and decided to turn into a full fledged glass cannon. OK, I'm exaggerating, but "new" Grixis Shadow has so far been much easier to beat for me than 4C Shadow because the deck is much less resilient. IMHO, many players who prefer an all out aggressive play style would be better off if they switched to 4C Shadow instead of trying to mimic what it does with a threat-light deck.
This deck always brings out the best in opponents.
I can understand why some people are fed up with this deck on MTGO. On some days during European daytime, every fourth or fifth opponent I get matched up with for Tournament Practice is piloting some variant of the deck. This is not an exaggeration. I can only speculate about the reasons why, but as the majority of my opponents' Death and Taxes decks are mono white, my suspicion is that budget considerations play a role in it. Which is fine, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't help in making the games less repetitive from an opponent's perspective.
And that's the second issue I have with the deck. Death and Taxes is very consistent at what it does, more so than many other decks in the format. But on the flip side, it tries to pull off the same tricks over and over again. As I have played a mind boggling number of matches against Death and Taxes, I have already seen just about every trick the deck has up its sleeve against my preferred type of deck many times. I have long since figured out how to play around Leonin Arbiter as good as I can. I can almost smell Flickerwisp or Restoration Angel before they get flashed in. I have learned how to sideboard in a way that blunts attempts at locking me out of my third color for the most part. I could go on. But in the end, the attrition based nature of Death and Taxes and the deck's consistency in sticking to its plan result in a lot of repetitive lines of play on both sides. My feeling is that I have learned what I could learn from the many games I played against Death and Taxes.
So, at least from my observation (which, I concede, is very subjective), there appears to be a large gap between the popularity of Death and Taxes in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO and the actual presence of the deck on the top tables in tournaments. It's a good deck and I'm glad I had the opportunity to practice against it extensively, but I'm at a point at which I would much rather practice against newer decks like 5C Humans or archetypes that play a wider range of cards like Jeskai Control. This means that when I see a Turn 2 Thalia off Ancient Ziggurat and Seachrome Coast, I get excited, whereas a Thalia off any combination of plains and Concealed Courtyard often makes me cringe. While the typical Humans deck is probably even more linear than the typical Death and Taxes deck, it is fresher and more interesting for me to practice against, just because I haven't practiced against it several dozen times already. The same is true for Merfolk, which tends to be a much harder matchup for my decks than Death and Taxes because of island walk. My win percentage against Death and Taxes is about 50%, probably a little better, while my win percentage against Humans and Merfolk is considerably below 50%. Thus, I'm pretty sure that I don't "rage quit" when I'm unwilling to play a third, fourth or even fifth match against Death and Taxes on the same afternoon.
Now, I'm kindly asking you not to flame me. I'm just trying to explain the situation based on my personal experience. Maybe the presence of Death and Taxes decks is not as high during other times of the day. Yes, there are days where I don't face the deck at all. I'm not stating that the deck makes up 20% of the decks in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO all the time, but it certainly does on some days. Maybe Europeans love the deck more than Americans or are less willing to spend over 250 tix on a Modern deck. Maybe I'm just very unlucky when it comes to matchups. I don't know. But what I know is that Death and Taxes is by far the most prominent archetype I have faced in the Tournament Section of MTGO in the course of over a year. Even though I'm not one of the opponents who has been quoted or exposed on a screenshot in this thread, I can understand the frustration of having to play against the same deck archetype over and over again.
The version with 18 lands and 2 TBRs feels like a cheap rip-off of what used to be a highly flexible deck. This deck could really use some innovation into a different direction.
So my line here would be:
-play fetch and pass, then play Thought Scour at the end of opponent's turn and then play Thoughtseize and Serum Visions on your turn
I'm not sure if this is correct. So what do you guys think about that?
Thoughtseize on turn 1 is so much better against an unknown opponent than Thoughtseize on turn 2. A turn 1 Expedition Map can often win them the game and if they have some discard of their own, you don't want to end up being the one who drives blindly.
Thoughtseize + 2 fetches means that, by turn 2, we know 7 out of the 8 cards our opponent has and can have a 1/1 Death's Shadow. With all this information, we can make more reasonable choices when casting Serum Visions or Opt than we can on turn 1.
Thought Scour would probably the last cantrip I cast in this situation, unless my turn 2 Death's Shadow dies quickly. In most cases, I would concentrate on getting the best cards to grow/protect my Shadow (Serum Visions/Opt). Thought Scour just gives me a random card. It's also noteworthy that I can mill my opponent with Thought Scour on turn 3 in case I really want the second card off my turn 2 Serum Visions. Or I can Opt then if I don't want to fill my opponent's graveyard with cards.
From my experience, Young Pyromancer and Pia and Kiran Nalaar can do just as much in most situations without being affected by Thalia and a smaller risk of getting locked out of the required colored mana. In addition, I don't think that Lingering Souls is well-positioned in the current metagame. Of the top decks, only Grixis Shadow and the weaker creature-based version of Jeskai Control are truly vulnerably to it. If you want to hate out those decks, you can just run extra spot removal or LotV, which are also good against a variety of other top decks in the format.
I have tested Mana Leak in place of IoK for a while and it's OK in a control-heavy metagame (they usually don't have 3 extra mana when they cast Cryptic Command). In Azzerith's list, I would play Lightning Bolt or a fourth Fatal Push over it, though. It's a common misconception that LotV can replace one of the 6 default creature removals. A turn two Dark Confidant or Young Pyromancer can become a nightmare if we miss our turn three land drop, which happens quite often with the 18-Land-4-Opt-Version.
So far, playing against the Mishra's Bauble variant of GDS feels like playing against a bad version of 5C Shadow. Without access to Traverse the Ulvenwald, the deck has a hard time establishing a threat against a disruption-heavy opponent. Typically, the game came to a point at which they were frantically digging for another threat, cycling Street Wraiths and cracking fetches. Funnily enough, they still ended up being land-flooded about half of the time.
Mishra's Bauble adds more air to the deck, which will inevitably result in more hands that look fine *if* we get a another land. I already have this problem with many hands that contain 2 Street Wraiths. I like that Mishra's Bauble can trigger revolt, but this comes at the cost of delaying a draw, which often makes it harder to plan ahead. My feeling is that Mishra's Bauble has better synergy with Serum Visions than with Opt.
Engineered Explosives feels so clunky in a deck that ideally wants to operate on three lands. I have been running a single copy for a while and have been underwhelmed by it more often than not. And that's coming from somebody who loved the card in Grixis Control. It's still OK-ish in GDS, but three copies seems over the top.
I used to be a huge fan of Kozilek's Return, but two damage on turn 3 or 4 often just doesn't seem to be enough anymore. Half of the board of the typical Humans deck usually survives it.
Rakdos Charm is another former pet card of mine. Kolaghan's Command seems so much better than Rakdos Charm against Affinity. It's nearly always a two for one trade and since Affinity is often hellbent after turn 2 and likes to cast its spells on sorcery speed, instant speed discard has been so good over and over again. Instant speed graveyard hate can be great, but most graveyard-centric decks are so low on interaction that it often doesn't seem to matter if they see it coming (Nihil Spellbomb) or not. Plus, about half of the graveyard decks actually run discard spells, so they can often see it coming.
A mix of Stubborn Denial and Inquisition of Kozilek seems better to me, because one of them tends to be a dead card in certain matchups.
One other thing I'd like to mention is that Temur Battle Rage is not particularly amazing in the mirror matchup after sideboarding.
Today on MTGO, I wondered why my opponent didn't put any pressure on me when I had a slow start. As it turned out, by turn six my opponent's hand consisted of a Stubborn Denial (which I took with IoK) and two TBRs. Next turn, my opponent drew and played a Death's Shadow only to have it killed by a Fatal Push (of which I had two in hand). My opponent also already knew that my third card in hand was a Dismember, which would also have been sufficient to shrink his Death's Shadow to a size at which TBR was not going to kill me. Still, my opponent called me a "bigg lucky a**hole" in the chat followed by "f y", which also didn't sound that polite. ;-)
After sideboarding, more than half of the nonland non-cantrip cards in the opponent's deck can get rid of a Death's Shadow in one way or another (discard, spot removal, LotV, Snapcaster Mage targetting removal spell etc.). Plus, opposing Death's Shadows can soak up a lot of damage and might not even die because of the trample.
TBR is fine against combo-ish decks with little interaction, but keeping multiple copies of it in the mirror doesn't seem that smart to me.
how do you guys feel about one or two copies of painful truths in the sideboard? i mean, the card can be very good in grind matchups
I have seen it in some lists in the past, but I'd rather have a Liliana planeswalker instead most of the time. I would also play Ancestral Visions over it, because mandatory lifeloss is not what I want in a grindy matchup. Grindy matchups are often against GB(x) decks that have numerous ways of dealing with Death's Shadow. A low life total is thus often more a liability than a boon in those matchups.
LoTV is good against other fair decks. If you don't face those you don't need her and even then you can still beat fair decks without her.
I'm not the biggest fan of LotV in Grixis Shadow. However, I'd like to point that in a metagame full of unfair decks, LotV is a pretty good maindeck choice. The big mana decks usually don't have any means of refilling their hands while we usually have a few Fatal Pushes to spare in game 1.
I have won many games against the "new" version of Grixis Shadow in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they cantrip like crazy and get me scared for a moment. But usually they only manage to play one measly creature after eating my IOKs and Thoughtseizes, only to find out that one open mana is not enough to protect it. Then everything falls apart and they sit on a hand full of dead cards. Like a frantic child they try to dig for a threat again, only to find out that my deck has even more ways of disrupting their one trick pony game plan. With a greedy manabase of 18 lands and often just 4 Opts to "fix" it, without Traverse the Ulvenwald for situational tutoring, with delve creatures and Snapcaster Mages getting into each others' ways like they always did to some degree with this deck, there are so many things that can go wrong that something will often go wrong if the opponent's deck packs some disruption.
To me, the "new" Grixis Shadow feels as if somebody has looked at what was already the most fragile of all shadow decks and decided to turn into a full fledged glass cannon. OK, I'm exaggerating, but "new" Grixis Shadow has so far been much easier to beat for me than 4C Shadow because the deck is much less resilient. IMHO, many players who prefer an all out aggressive play style would be better off if they switched to 4C Shadow instead of trying to mimic what it does with a threat-light deck.
And that's the second issue I have with the deck. Death and Taxes is very consistent at what it does, more so than many other decks in the format. But on the flip side, it tries to pull off the same tricks over and over again. As I have played a mind boggling number of matches against Death and Taxes, I have already seen just about every trick the deck has up its sleeve against my preferred type of deck many times. I have long since figured out how to play around Leonin Arbiter as good as I can. I can almost smell Flickerwisp or Restoration Angel before they get flashed in. I have learned how to sideboard in a way that blunts attempts at locking me out of my third color for the most part. I could go on. But in the end, the attrition based nature of Death and Taxes and the deck's consistency in sticking to its plan result in a lot of repetitive lines of play on both sides. My feeling is that I have learned what I could learn from the many games I played against Death and Taxes.
So, at least from my observation (which, I concede, is very subjective), there appears to be a large gap between the popularity of Death and Taxes in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO and the actual presence of the deck on the top tables in tournaments. It's a good deck and I'm glad I had the opportunity to practice against it extensively, but I'm at a point at which I would much rather practice against newer decks like 5C Humans or archetypes that play a wider range of cards like Jeskai Control. This means that when I see a Turn 2 Thalia off Ancient Ziggurat and Seachrome Coast, I get excited, whereas a Thalia off any combination of plains and Concealed Courtyard often makes me cringe. While the typical Humans deck is probably even more linear than the typical Death and Taxes deck, it is fresher and more interesting for me to practice against, just because I haven't practiced against it several dozen times already. The same is true for Merfolk, which tends to be a much harder matchup for my decks than Death and Taxes because of island walk. My win percentage against Death and Taxes is about 50%, probably a little better, while my win percentage against Humans and Merfolk is considerably below 50%. Thus, I'm pretty sure that I don't "rage quit" when I'm unwilling to play a third, fourth or even fifth match against Death and Taxes on the same afternoon.
Now, I'm kindly asking you not to flame me. I'm just trying to explain the situation based on my personal experience. Maybe the presence of Death and Taxes decks is not as high during other times of the day. Yes, there are days where I don't face the deck at all. I'm not stating that the deck makes up 20% of the decks in the Tournament Practice section on MTGO all the time, but it certainly does on some days. Maybe Europeans love the deck more than Americans or are less willing to spend over 250 tix on a Modern deck. Maybe I'm just very unlucky when it comes to matchups. I don't know. But what I know is that Death and Taxes is by far the most prominent archetype I have faced in the Tournament Section of MTGO in the course of over a year. Even though I'm not one of the opponents who has been quoted or exposed on a screenshot in this thread, I can understand the frustration of having to play against the same deck archetype over and over again.
Thoughtseize + 2 fetches means that, by turn 2, we know 7 out of the 8 cards our opponent has and can have a 1/1 Death's Shadow. With all this information, we can make more reasonable choices when casting Serum Visions or Opt than we can on turn 1.
Thought Scour would probably the last cantrip I cast in this situation, unless my turn 2 Death's Shadow dies quickly. In most cases, I would concentrate on getting the best cards to grow/protect my Shadow (Serum Visions/Opt). Thought Scour just gives me a random card. It's also noteworthy that I can mill my opponent with Thought Scour on turn 3 in case I really want the second card off my turn 2 Serum Visions. Or I can Opt then if I don't want to fill my opponent's graveyard with cards.
Mishra's Bauble adds more air to the deck, which will inevitably result in more hands that look fine *if* we get a another land. I already have this problem with many hands that contain 2 Street Wraiths. I like that Mishra's Bauble can trigger revolt, but this comes at the cost of delaying a draw, which often makes it harder to plan ahead. My feeling is that Mishra's Bauble has better synergy with Serum Visions than with Opt.
Engineered Explosives feels so clunky in a deck that ideally wants to operate on three lands. I have been running a single copy for a while and have been underwhelmed by it more often than not. And that's coming from somebody who loved the card in Grixis Control. It's still OK-ish in GDS, but three copies seems over the top.
I used to be a huge fan of Kozilek's Return, but two damage on turn 3 or 4 often just doesn't seem to be enough anymore. Half of the board of the typical Humans deck usually survives it.
Rakdos Charm is another former pet card of mine. Kolaghan's Command seems so much better than Rakdos Charm against Affinity. It's nearly always a two for one trade and since Affinity is often hellbent after turn 2 and likes to cast its spells on sorcery speed, instant speed discard has been so good over and over again. Instant speed graveyard hate can be great, but most graveyard-centric decks are so low on interaction that it often doesn't seem to matter if they see it coming (Nihil Spellbomb) or not. Plus, about half of the graveyard decks actually run discard spells, so they can often see it coming.
A mix of Stubborn Denial and Inquisition of Kozilek seems better to me, because one of them tends to be a dead card in certain matchups.
Today on MTGO, I wondered why my opponent didn't put any pressure on me when I had a slow start. As it turned out, by turn six my opponent's hand consisted of a Stubborn Denial (which I took with IoK) and two TBRs. Next turn, my opponent drew and played a Death's Shadow only to have it killed by a Fatal Push (of which I had two in hand). My opponent also already knew that my third card in hand was a Dismember, which would also have been sufficient to shrink his Death's Shadow to a size at which TBR was not going to kill me. Still, my opponent called me a "bigg lucky a**hole" in the chat followed by "f y", which also didn't sound that polite. ;-)
After sideboarding, more than half of the nonland non-cantrip cards in the opponent's deck can get rid of a Death's Shadow in one way or another (discard, spot removal, LotV, Snapcaster Mage targetting removal spell etc.). Plus, opposing Death's Shadows can soak up a lot of damage and might not even die because of the trample.
TBR is fine against combo-ish decks with little interaction, but keeping multiple copies of it in the mirror doesn't seem that smart to me.