Quote Originally Posted by Fallen_Empire View Post
I'm considering brewing up a list that runs copies of hunted horror and toxic deluge main instead of delver & street wraith. Has anyone else been down this path?
Is this a troll? If you don't get exactly deluge then you can't kill the Centaurs so nothing can attack (Horror AND Shadows AND Anglers), nothing of yours can block or target them, so you're in a very awkward spot if your opponent wants to get aggressive, and you wouldn't even have Delver to fly over them

I played Shadow for the first time this weekend

First event

4 Delver
4 Shadow
2 Tombstalker
4 Wraith

2 Reanimate
2 Hymn
4 TS
4 BS
4 FOW
4 Ponder
4 Daze
2 Dismember
1 Push
1 Darkblast

2 Sea
4 Grave
8 Fetchlands
4 Wasteland

SB
1 Lili
2 Diabolic Edict
1 Bitterblossom
1 Winter Orb
1 TNN
2 Surgical
1 Cage
1 Null Rod
2 Marsh Casualties
1 Dread of Night
2 Ratchet Bomb

R1 Loss for turning up late (whoops)
R2 2-0 Depths
R3 0-2 Miracles
R4 1-2 Miracles

Second Event
Maindeck -1 Wasteland +1 Hymn
Sideboard -1 Marsh Casualties -1 TNN -1 Worb +1 Lili +1 Flusterstorm +1 Unmoored Ego

R1 2-0 UW Delver-Blade
R2 2-1 Miracles
R3 0-2 Miracles
R4 0-2 LED Dredge

As a long-time RUG Delver player it was very interesting to get a feel of playing this deck:

1. You don't have sticky threats (Goose) and you replace a reactive card (Stifle) with proactive cards that become much worse as the game progresses (discard spells). This means that Shadow plays much more like an aggro deck and generally wants to keep its foot on the gas starting from turn 1. Overall I would say that Shadow seems much easier to play than RUG for this reason, because your role is generally inflexible and you have fewer decisions to make in that regard. (Note that this doesn't imply at all that RUG is better than Shadow if both decks are played optimally).

2. Having access to hard-removal spells (specifically edicts) is a huge boon. Facing down a resolved TNN it's very hard to win as RUG but with Diabolic in your deck you can just untap and kill it. This means you can afford to be a bit more 'loose' both in terms of gameplay decisions and sideboarding (e.g. with these additional ways to deal with resolved permanents you can be more confident in boarding FoW out, which is something you want to do in post SB games vs fair decks anyway because you don't want to be 2-for-1ing yourself).

3. "ThOuGhTsEiZe IsN't A tEmPo CaRd" is true in the strictest sense but there are many times where e.g. you Thoughtseize their ponder and they just have to pass turn 1 after playing a land, so you functionally countered their ponder and got info on their whole hand. Not having any counters that cost mana is great because you never have to decide whether to leave up mana or tap out for a cantrip/discard. This isn't just 'training wheels', it's a significant tactical advantage

4. In RUG vs the fair/control decks you wanted to play Winter Orb because the fair decks were too resilient for you to stop them from getting to the lategame, so you needed some way to strangle your opponent's mana so your late-drawn dazes and pierces were still live. When you have black mana in your deck Hymn to Tourach can fill this role because the straight 2-for-1 is a significant resource tax that either strips their spells or hits their lands: together with the pressure that this deck can pump out (foot on the gas) it can force your opponent to play into your Dazes. RUG doesn't have any card that can 2-for-1 the opp by hitting their resources (only Loam, arguably, which isn't even that good vs Miracles anyway) so that deck doesn't have this angle. I therefore think winter orb is probably not the correct fit for Shadow because Thoughtseize and orb are applying pressure from 2 different directions. (I.e. what's the use in your opponents' lands not untapping if they don't have spells in hand to cast). I think the most effective strategy is to focus on burning all their cards away. This seems like it lines up badly vs AK but I think you can play around that with Surgical

5. Tombstalker is much better when you replace Stub with Hymn because A) It's hard to have 3 mana to pay BB for Tombstalker and leave U up for Stub B) Playing Tombstalker as your only BB spell (with Stub instead of Hymn) is awkward because you are raising your curve up for only a couple of cards which means it's hard to make in-game evaluations about how important your lands are. "I'm an efficient Delver deck which can play on 1 mana, oh no wait now I want 3 lands so I can resolve Tombstalker through a Daze." I noticed this problem with RUG a lot in the builds that played 1 or 2 TNN maindeck as the only 3 drop. When you have 2 Tombstalker and 3 Hymn you have a 'lower-variance-manacurve' and can more reliably plan on casting BB spells, and resolve your cantrips/wastelands accordingly. (Tombstalker might still not have enough upside over Angler to be correct regardless, but I think this point is worth explaining).

6. I agree with the arguments put forward by Friedman et al. that this deck doesn't want all 4 Wastelands. I think the swap I made for tournament #2 was good and would be happy playing this maindeck again.

7. Liliana is a very nice swiss army knife in the SB and I definitely think I want 2. At this point I think a confident SB would be something like
2 Surgical
2 Lili
2 Edict
2 Bomb
1 Bitterblossom
1 Cage
The rest feels more flexible and I would want to test the different matchups more to get a better idea of the kind of effects that I want.
The deck is very fun to play and I am looking forward to registering it again