SCG forcing the name of the deck to be Shardless Sultai..... lame....
So I recently took this list to an unknown meta (just moved, new store), wanted to do a quick write-up:
4x Deathrite Shaman
2x Baleful Strix
4x Tarmogoyf
4x Shardless Agent
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Hymn to Tourach
2x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
3x Force of Will
4x Brainstorm
4x Ancestral Visions
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3x Misty Rainforest
3x Polluted Delta
3x Verdant Catacombs
2x Bayou
2x Tropical Island
3x Underground Sea
1x Swamp
2x Creeping Tar Pit
2x Wasteland
Sideboard:
2x Disfigure
1x Force of Will
1x Golgari Charm
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Hymn to Tourach
1x Maelstrom Pulse
2x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Null Rod
1x Pithing Needle
2x Spell Pierce (under consideration: 2x Chill, some combo of Hymn/Thoughtseize/Lili)
1x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
Round 1: Death and Taxes (2-0)
Boarded in- 2x Disfigure, 1x Maelstrom Pulse, 1x Null Rod, 1x Thoughtseize, 1x Toxic Deluge
Boarded out- 3x Force of Will, 1x Liliana of the Veil, 2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I'm still messing with my SB plan here. You can make a case for adding in the Charm, 3rd Hymn, 3rd Thoughtseize, or Needle, but the only card I'd really want to cut is the 2nd Lili and even then, I only really want the 3rd Thoughtseize. I'll keep messing with this split though, feedback from you guys is very welcome!
Round 2: Mono-Red Sneak (1-2)
Boarded in- 1x Force of Will, 1x Hymn, 1x Maelstrom, 1x Null Rod, 1x Pithing Needle, 2x Spell Pierce, 1x Thoughtseize
Boarded out- 4x Abrupt Decay, 4x Ancestral Visions
This deck was pretty brutal, he played 4 maindeck Blood Moon, Chalice, and Revoker, as well as 3 boarded Trinisphere's. Usual wincon of Sneak Attack and Grisel/Emmy. Lost G1 to a T1 Chalice on 1, Turn 2 Blood Moon, Turn 3 Chalice on 2 (GG, on to boarded games). Game 2 the discard overload worked fine, ripped apart his hand and beat him down with creatures. G3 was very similar to G1 with a trinisphere on T3 instead, basically no way to come back from that. My takehome lesson here is that I really feel Spell Pierce is underpowered from the SB, I rarely find myself wanting to not tap out and I'd rather just pull a Thoughtseize, Hymn, or another Liliana.
Round 3: BUG Bogles Jank (2-0)
Boarded in- 2x Disfigure, 1x Toxic Deluge
Boarded out- 3x Force of Will
This poor guy had never played a legacy event before, and came with unsleeved cards, guildgates, and some other things (had never heard of Brainstorm before). Basically he played a handful of hexproof creatures, Champion of Lambholt, some trample aura, and some unblockable enchants and tried to push in combat damage with stuff like Primordial Hydra. The games weren't particularly close, so I gave him some tips on how to improve and felt really bad for sideboarding.
Round 4: Burn (2-1)
Boarded in- 1x Force of Will, 1x Hymn
Boarded out- 2x Thoughtseize
I think I sideboarded this one wrong, but was still able to pull out a win in close spots. I should probably remove both Jace's (as getting to 4 mana vs a PoP deck is reaaallly scary) and put in the two Spellbombs to clear the GY for Grim Lavamancer. Force felt ridiculously good in this matchup, as the Visions package was still around to regain lost cards and being able to snipe a really scary spell for 1 life and 2 cards was insane.
All in all, pretty good day. I think I'm going to turn my two Spell Pierce SB into 2 Chills for my next event/GPTs coming up. Little bit of excitement around that new Red Khans 1-drop after Bob Huang topped with U/R Delver. Also, does anyone play Shardless online? I've heard it's a lot of burn and combo decks, so the Chill SB should come in handy then too, and I'd love to test a 75 that I'll be taking to a tournament. Not nearly enough Legacy in my area to give me the practice I'm wanting, so I figured MTGO is the next "best" thing. Thanks for reading!
This deck is very well positioned right now since it crushed Delver decks in general. Tested cruise delver against BUG Shardless and BUG Shardless is still the overwhelming card advantage king since pretty much every card generates advantage while Delver only has cruise and actually loses speed to accommodate cruises.
I have found exactly the opposite. Shardless bug is now dead, UR delver is faster and has a ton of card advantage with TreasureCruise at least as much as BUGshardless (even more in testing),
has access to blood moon to punish you and PoP.
Though it seems that playing ourselves 3 TC might be a good idea and change the matchup
Last edited by adrieng; 10-03-2014 at 09:18 AM.
Ur was already a hard matchup as it was ultimately more of a burn/aggro strategy than a tempo one
One deck =\= shardless being dead
Originally Posted by iatee
You can always play on cockatrice (pretty expensive to buy into shardless in a meta dominated by burn). That being said, the play is way tighter on MTGO and there are plenty of elves and miracles to prey upon.All in all, pretty good day. I think I'm going to turn my two Spell Pierce SB into 2 Chills for my next event/GPTs coming up. Little bit of excitement around that new Red Khans 1-ur Bob Huang topped with U/R Delver. Also, does anyone play Shardless online? I've heard it's a lot of burn and combo decks, so the Chill SB should come in handy then too, and I'd love to test a 75 that I'll be taking to a tournament. Not nearly enough Legacy in my area to give me the practice I'm wanting, so I figured MTGO is the next "best" thing
Is this real life? How can say Shardless is the deck to prey on Elves? Miracles yes. But ELVES.
In regards to Legacy:
I was referring more to Tempo Delver like UWR OR BUG. Ur is more similar to burn which is a terrible matchup.
Have any of you guys played against the newer UR treasure cruise/Swiftspear Deck?
I played against it in a mtgo daily last night and it seems like an awful match-up. I managed to win game three after he/she bricked like 6 turns in a row with me at 3 life.
If this deck is a real thing I was thinking of switching up my sideboard. I already run one Blue Elemental blast for mono-red, so I was thinking maybe a Zuran Orb or something to slow Price of progress down. Any thoughts on what you guys do? Mono Red is always a rough one and this deck seems really similar.
You could play Circle of Protection: Red actually, especially if you play with meddling mage-board (board in Savannah). It's both a cascade target and pretty castable with DRS. Have not tested that though. Chill seems pretty good too?
Chill is very good, I play almost exclusively on MTGO now and I pack 2 sideboard. That matchup is still rough, as they usually have some number of REB effects they bring in SB and it's just a very lean, efficient deck. Here's how I usually sideboard (full list is in my sig):
In: 2x Chill, 1 FoW (up to the full 4), 1 Hymn (up to max 3), 2x Disfigure, 1x Maelstrom Pulse
Out: 2x Thoughtseize, 1x Toxic Deluge, 2x Jace, 2x Ancestral
I'm thinking of adding in one Blue Elemental Blast sideboard as its very strong against Burn, UR Delver and has some splash hate for Sneak & Show, Painter, and random Blood Moon decks.
I guess BEB is decent, I personally do not (with strong emphasis on not) like reactive spells below cmc 3 in shardless, probably the 3:d chill is better? Or Scavenging Ooze/Sun Droplet?
I've never used droplet for fear of Smash2S. It might be fine if you go for discard and then get a Droplet or have a counterspell in hand.
Do you really think someone would side in a smash against your droplet and two main deck artifacts?
Strix is an artifact, Shardless is an artifact; from that perspective it is 2. From the perspective that 10% of your deck is artifacts and you're really really likely to have one (especially after cantrips)..it's not ludicrous that they would have it.
Droplet seems fine, I'm just pointing out that if your hate is weak to Burn's sideboard strategy (which probably includes some number of smash; but maybe not) then your hate has less chance of working. Chill always works. I'm not a shardless player at the moment, but it happens to SFM decks for the same reason, hence you run an enchantment or creatures that hate on them (so they have to waste spells.)
EDIT: By "really really" i apparently mean 60% by your first natural draw, 72% if you use a cantrip and believe that the artifact creature is helpful to you; this is before including additional artifacts from the side.
I understand what are you are saying, but what are they siding out for 3 s2s? I feel like both searing blaze and searing blood are way better against you. This is why I hesitate to play a sideboard ooze.
I am thinking of going with a Zuran orb, because Pop is so insane against us, and the one sideboard Blue blast. Still going to be a rough one either way.
How has everybody been siding against miracles? I've been toying around today with the idea of no discard, going something like this:
In: 1x Force (up to 4), 1x Maelstrom Pulse, 1x Null Rod, 1x Pithing Needle
Out: 2x Thoughtseize, 2x Hymn
This is obviously for the non-SFM decks, but Miracles always seems to be able to power out of early discard using Top/Brainstorm/Ponder and discard is a terrible lategame topdeck. A lot of people seem to struggle with the metagaming aspect of leaving Abrupt Decay in if they're siding out Counterbalance, but it can still kill a top during its activation, kills Clique and Snap, and can take out an angel token off of Entreat at instant speed with uncounterability. Oh...and it also kills Blood Moon. The only thing it doesn't kill is Venser and Jace, but oh well. Sure way to stop a Venser is by Waste'ing their Karakas and Pithing Needle stops Jace (and Pulse in a pinch, but I REALLY like trying to save that for the Entreat tokens). Anyone have thoughts?
A good miracles player will only play entreat at eot making your pulse dead. My plan is to board one abrupt out of you feel confident that counterbalance is out. I think hymn is pretty poor unless it hits all their lands, and the potential for misdirection to blow you out is huge with hymn. I like thoughtseize though. Helps you resolve spells like jace and vision. Needle it's fantastic in this matchup. One of the best cards is sylvan library. I've been playing one main and outs been phenomenal.
I disagree about pulse being dead, sure a lot of times it will not be able to hit Angels but it does have it's uses in the match up. A 5th way to kill a counterbalance, not as good as Decay but it has a pretty good chance of resolving through CB. Killing Jace, it also has some more uses depending on your other permanents, if you have null rod on the board sorcery speed entreats become more common, or combined with Jace will allow you the chance to fateseal a top. I don't think the card is amazing in the match up by any stretch but I would not leave it in the board.
Sorry for a not very contributive post, but I am rather curious to know what future awaits for this archetype as I have been meaning to build it and now it seems that Treasure Cruise has made this deck at least a little inferior to others. So, will this deck remain a tier 1?
Also, maybe it would not hurt to pack a TC or two?
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