Shelldock Isle?

[slave]

Righto - so I'm considering the uses of a card like Shelldock Isle.

Sure, you can hide an Emrakul or an Omniscience or even a One with Nothing under it, as long as you're brave enough to play a Paradigm Shift or a Doomsday.

Considering blue filter make this card a lot more consistent, do any of you consider it playable?
Is the ETBT shortcoming what kills this card for competitive play, or is it because of land destrcution - or both?

So peeps - Why is it (or not) playable?

[death]

Because many consider Wasteland playable.

[jjjoness']

It is used in DDFT as an alternate wincon. I'm not a big fan (since I don't like passing the turn with my balls on the table while handing my opponent a sledge , but it helps in certain matchups where you have the time to cast a protected Doomsday, but can't realistically get your storm count to 10.
It is vulnerable to wasteland though, as already pointed out, but aside from that, it really is quite reliable. With Doomsday you can even pack answers to Karakas etc.

[Mr. Safety]

The trick to playing Shell-Drazi is to stack that 5 cards from Doomsday to ensure optimal performance.

Against decks that use blue/wasteland, this is generally the plan:

Shelldock Isle
Emrakul
Stifle (for wasteland)
Force of Will (for opponent's Forces)
Laboratory Maniac

Against decks that don't use wasteland, this is generally the plan:

Shelldock Isle
Emrakul
Force of Will
(mana source so you can have 3 available for Lab Maniac)
Laboratory Maniac

This way if they somehow deal with Emrakul or blow up Shelldock Isle, you have a secondary win/con with protection. Simple as that. I'm working on a Doomsday/Shell-drazi deck right now. It doesn't rely on storm (DDFT it is not) but rather a strong focus on tempo denial elements and a 4-shot of delver.

Why could it be good? Against many decks it = Wasteland or lose. It can hide in a U/b tempo shell and then surprise the hell out of opponents by playing Doomsday into Shell-drazi.

EDIT: Brainstorm is really important to this setup as well...as in CRUCIAL. Doomsday gets the goods but puts them into your library...Brainstorm makes them available

[slave]

The trick to playing Shell-Drazi is to stack that 5 cards from Doomsday to ensure optimal performance.

Against decks that use blue/wasteland, this is generally the plan:

Shelldock Isle
Emrakul
Stifle (for wasteland)
Force of Will (for opponent's Forces)
Laboratory Maniac

Against decks that don't use wasteland, this is generally the plan:

Shelldock Isle
Emrakul
Force of Will
(mana source so you can have 3 available for Lab Maniac)
Laboratory Maniac

This way if they somehow deal with Emrakul or blow up Shelldock Isle, you have a secondary win/con with protection. Simple as that. I'm working on a Doomsday/Shell-drazi deck right now. It doesn't rely on storm (DDFT it is not) but rather a strong focus on tempo denial elements and a 4-shot of delver.

Why could it be good? Against many decks it = Wasteland or lose. It can hide in a U/b tempo shell and then surprise the hell out of opponents by playing Doomsday into Shell-drazi.

EDIT: Brainstorm is really important to this setup as well...as in CRUCIAL. Doomsday gets the goods but puts them into your library...Brainstorm makes them available

Thanks.
Yeah I've been trying to get a deck with Paradigm Shift work.
My idea is to use P'Shift together with Tormod's Crypt, and has the added benefit that Crypt is useful against certain matchups. The rest of the deck ispacked with instants and cycling with counter.
Doomsday looks better, but also requires a fairly good manabase.

My thought was to use Shelldock as a way to hide the Maniac, or something like Sphinx of Lost Truths.

[ReinVos]

The problem with Doomsday is that you lose to almost every deck, even with your back-up plan. Like 75% of the format has Wasteland + creature removal, be it Bolt or Plowshares. The other decks are combo decks and they either have counters or discard or they are faster than you. Sometimes both. Oh, and the only deck that doesn't fit either criteria is Merfolk, and they're usually a favorite against combo decks because of counters and a fast clock (and Wasteland). Today's metagame is very hostile towards Shelldock Isle.

[slave]

The problem with Doomsday is that you lose to almost every deck, even with your back-up plan. Like 75% of the format has Wasteland + creature removal, be it Bolt or Plowshares........Today's metagame is very hostile towards Shelldock Isle.

I'm not going to argue - considering SnT/Omni decks are dropping Emrakul and Grisel on turns 2 and 3 possibly, whatever Doomsday hopes to do has to be fast and effective!!
I think that could be why a control shell boasting counter & discard, with the Doomsday win-con might be worth considering.

Laboratory Maniac is an alternative, should you include Edge of Autumn in the stack to cycle away, as instant draw can just be countered.
But re:Shell;
Provided we have a way to untap/tap the Shell, like Cloud of Faeries in the Doomsday pile; Does that change the odds at all?
What if we're packing cycling (street wraith/edge of autumn) what are your thought's here?
It may be possible to house both win-con's in the same deck, at a stretch, for game 1.
Is this what you're trying to do Mr. Safety?

[Asthereal]

Shelldock in a Doomsday deck is only playable as a sideboard plan.
Against Counterbalance it works pretty well, usually. You actually get to cast Emrakul, so you get the extra turn, attack and annihilate for six. That's usually it, because for Terminus to work they need a land during their draw step, but they don't have lands at that point.

Shelldock Isle is great, but there are too many solutions. I therefore don't consider it main deck material. People just play too many solutions main board.

[Jenni]

Maybe in a control-heavy U/B list it would be fine... but triple black for doomsday is really pretty harsh, even in a format with duals and fetches, unless you make room for dark rituals, which are pretty bad when you aren't ready to combo off.
Even then, though it is weak to the usual stuff like counters and discard, as well as stifle, wasteland. terminus at instant speed (thanks to brainstorm) deals with emrakul, karakas deals with emrakul too. The other things you could put out with shelldock, like omniscience, might be more resillient, but then you need to find a way to win off of that, adding more pieces to the combo leaving less room for protection and stalling spells or taking up sideboard space for wishes. It's slow, so you need to have ways to slow down the opponent and protect yourself, or you just die before you can combo anyway.

[Mr. Safety]

My thoughts are that the deck MUST be loaded with discard, countermagic, and protection. You play a tempo/control plan until you can Dark Ritual >>> Doomsday. From there, its just a matter of stacking it right.

Cycling isn't what you need...you need Brainstorm. Brainstorm gets your Stifle or Force of Will in case you need it. Laboratory Maniac would, by neccessity, HAVE to be the alternative plan. You would need three mana sources and cast Laboratory Maniac as your back-up win/con. Then its a matter of living for one more turn, hopefully feasible if they've already tanked your Emrakul plan.

I'm not saying its a great idea...I'm saying it COULD be good. What do the fair decks do against Emrakul? Not much, honestly.

[Tammit67]

I'm not saying its a great idea...I'm saying it COULD be good. What do the fair decks do against Emrakul? Not much, honestly.

The fairest deck in the format (Maverick) fairs fine against Emrakul?

[slave]

Cycling isn't what you need...you need Brainstorm. Brainstorm gets your Stifle or Force of Will in case you need it. Laboratory Maniac would, by neccessity, HAVE to be the alternative plan. You would need three mana sources and cast Laboratory Maniac as your back-up win/con. Then its a matter of living for one more turn, hopefully feasible if they've already tanked your Emrakul plan.

I agree up to a point, but brainstorm is only part of setting up a Doomsday stack.
I argue that you take a closer look at Cycling in regard to Labmaniac.

My current deck I have with Paradigm Shift (which I''ve played with for quite a while) cycling is your win-con with Labman.
No matter what instant removal they cast, you just cycle for the win.
In the games I've played with this deck, the vast majority of decks have an answer to Lab Maniac, and the times you don't have a draw or cycling card in hand they just nail the Labman and you're decked.
The chances of that happening are very much higher in game 2 and 3.
Instant draw spells are okay, but they can be countered or negated by targetted removal - Sorcery speed ones like Preordain/Ponder aren't great either.

And this brings me to Shelldock.
I've been looking for a way to make the Labman work in a deck. My basic list so far wins plenty of games over on MGTO, but I'm looking to make it more consistent, and less of a glass cannon.

[Malchar]

I'm sure that you can consistently get something good hidden under the land. However, I don't think that you'll be able to consistently activate the ability. If you're using paradigm shift or doomsday to trigger the shelldock to sneak something into play, why not just use show and tell instead? Shelldock, in any incarnation, also loses hard to wasteland.

If you're playing a dedicated doomsday deck, then that's another story. However, I still think that shelldock is far from optimal. If you're planning on "protecting" a laboratory maniac under the shelldock, it doesn't really make sense. If you try to "go off" and they have a wasteland, you lose the game instead. Besides, the maniac is still just as vulnerable to creature removal regardless of how you play it. If you're afraid of countermagic, you can just use pact of negation to protect him anyway. Wasteland, on the other hand, is uncounterable, and an unnecessary liability that you assume with shelldock.