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Thread: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

  1. #161

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    I've seen lists like this (the second one) and I don't like the fact that there is the tension between milling yourself (Angler) and milling the opp (Drown, Gargoyle). The Shadow list with Angler and Scour also has this problem (and you're making extremely questionable trims to fit all of this, like only playing 3 Wraiths and 3 Ponders etc). The upside of playing e.g. 4 Gargoyle and 0 Angler (or vice-versa) in a list with thoughtscour is that you always know who you want to be targeting.

    I agree that there is probably a deck that can afford to play both Angler and Gargoyle but if I have to play so many Thought Scours to enable it I'm probably not interested. I agree that even in a list without scour its probably correct to have at least 1 angler split with gargoyle because it's 'better' and the first 1-2 are without a significant drawback.

    But yeah overall I don't like Scour much, I think it makes more sense not to play Delver in UB and then it seems better to have Hymn as a sufficient "put 2 cards in my opponent's graveyard" effect. Spending 1 mana just to cycle and mill 2 is not really something I'm interested in doing

    edit: I will say that the drawback of "it's so underwhelming when you play this turn 2 vs combo and it can't attack" is possibly overstated because the comparison is with Delve cards that aren't even typically castable in this timeframe. At least gargoyle gives you the option to play it on turn 2 if you have nothing else to spend your mana on and then hold up countermagic for later turns
    Last edited by kombatkiwi; 11-05-2019 at 01:48 AM.

  2. #162

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    I've seen lists like this (the second one) and I don't like the fact that there is the tension between milling yourself (Angler) and milling the opp (Drown, Gargoyle). The Shadow list with Angler and Scour also has this problem (and you're making extremely questionable trims to fit all of this, like only playing 3 Wraiths and 3 Ponders etc). The upside of playing e.g. 4 Gargoyle and 0 Angler (or vice-versa) in a list with thoughtscour is that you always know who you want to be targeting.
    There is some tension of course, though with 4 Thought Scour the tension hasn't been a major problem. Once you realize that you should always mill your opponent with the first Scour in the dark (aka not having either Gargoyle or Angler in hand yet) until you get more info on your opponent's deck as well as your own draws it's not a big deal. Gargoyle also pitches to Fow and if you drew something awkward like 2 Anglers and a Gargoyle you can make use of that and mill yourself with all the Scours you find, which usually enables the second Angler by turn 5, which is still perfectly reasonable. The Shadow list I posted above has more tension and it's true I had to cut into cards that are considered staples, though I could easily play the 4th Ponder over Lilly, Stubs or a removal spell again if I wanted to, and cutting into Wraiths is an experiment I've wanted to do anyway because of how intrinsically bad the card is at everything but enabling Shadows. Whenever you're in a close match and your opponent found some way to deal with your Shadows for now, your draws become infinitely worse than theirs because you're at 5 life and 10ish cards in your deck are essentially bricks to draw because they damage you and put you into Bolt range or whatever.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    I agree that there is probably a deck that can afford to play both Angler and Gargoyle but if I have to play so many Thought Scours to enable it I'm probably not interested. I agree that even in a list without scour its probably correct to have at least 1 angler split with gargoyle because it's 'better' and the first 1-2 are without a significant drawback.
    The UB Delver deck definitely can play both in decent numbers, I think you'd find the same after some testing with it. The Shadow list above is as I said more experimental, because I wanted to find out if it was possible to integrate Gargoyle into it. The answer might just be no if this forces you to cut into cards you didn't want to cut or forces you to cut anglers entirely, which I can't help but find wrong. Once again, I don't consider Gargoyle quite on Legacy power level unless you have Thought Scours in your deck as well, because it's basically a creature with defender against decks that don't play both tons of fetches as well as lots of non-creature spells for 1 mana. Hymn is very slow to rely on to fill their yard. Resolving both a Gargoyle and 2+ Hymns takes a whole lot of mana as opposed to sneaking in a Scour or two where possible. In general I don't like playing more than 5-6ish 2-mana Spells (not counting Daze) in my Daze decks, because any opener with Daze and two-drops but no proactive 1 mana spell is so awkward. Two mana spells are also risky in decks without Basics too.

    All in all, if your main goal is to beat fair blue decks, your Shadow list above is probably as strong as it gets in UB, however, you're inevitably sacrificing a lot of game against the rest of the field.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    But yeah overall I don't like Scour much, I think it makes more sense not to play Delver in UB and then it seems better to have Hymn as a sufficient "put 2 cards in my opponent's graveyard" effect. Spending 1 mana just to cycle and mill 2 is not really something I'm interested in doing
    A lot of this discussion comes down to how much of a sacrifice it is to be playing Scours in legacy. To be honest, it's a totally fine card. The first generation Delver decks played 4 of them alongside Nimble Mongoose and Snapcasters. Every now and then you find someone who plays a few in RUG as well. The card isn't very far off Legacy power level as such, so the more synergies you have, the more playable it becomes. I'm not going to claim that UB Delver is as good or better than other Delver decks out there, but I think it's the deck that uses gargoyle the best. And if Gargoyle isn't good enough in that deck, it isn't playable in legacy at all.

    Quote Originally Posted by kombatkiwi View Post
    edit: I will say that the drawback of "it's so underwhelming when you play this turn 2 vs combo and it can't attack" is possibly overstated because the comparison is with Delve cards that aren't even typically castable in this timeframe. At least gargoyle gives you the option to play it on turn 2 if you have nothing else to spend your mana on and then hold up countermagic for later turns
    That's only partly true, because if that turn 2 play doesn't actually affect the board until turn 5 or later, it's already behind Delve or Shadow Schedule. It also won't even be able to block a decent amount of the time, which makes it even more important that it attacks asap. As long as you're only casting Dazes and Cantrips (also something the UB Delver list is much better at than Shadow) you'll be able to block, but any other creature or discard spell you cast is -1 card and Force is -2. If you cast 2 of those effects and you're on the play you won't have 4 in hand as early as turn 2-3. What makes Gargoyle + Angler + Scour good is your ability to change pace. You realize you're up against a Delver deck, go play out Gargoyle early, mill your opponents with Scour and be fine with Anglers joining later on. You're up against combo, keep Gargoyles to pitch to Forces and turbo out an Angler as early as turn 2 with Scour (only requires one Fetch, one Scour plus two out of Fetch/Cantrip/Tseize/FoW/Daze).

  3. #163
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    ...and cutting into Wraiths is an experiment I've wanted to do anyway because of how intrinsically bad the card is at everything but enabling Shadows.
    Dark Confidant? Even with W6 everywhere Bob seems like a powerful option to play for card advantage/velocity/ancillary life loss to feed Shadows. It isn't as controllable as Street Wraith so I think it pushes you to 4 Ponder at the expense of any Thought Scour to control your Bob flips.

    It could just be my fond recollection of playing Junk for so many years, but Thoughtsieze into Bob feels so good. Now you can do it with Daze/Force backup all the while feeding your Shadows.
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  4. #164

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post
    Dark Confidant? Even with W6 everywhere.
    This is it honestly, I don't think it's correct to play this card when wren/bolt deck is the #1 deck in the format.
    I think JVP is probably too vulnerable and that doesn't even die to Wrenn
    It's not the worst suggestion but I don't think it's the right call at the moment

    @Izor The overall problem with the UB Delver lists is that when I have Delvers I want bolts. Tarmogoyf is probably better than Gargoyle (and maybe Angler) in a lot of situations (in this matchup artifact Gargoyle buffs it) so compared to RUG the UB deck loses Wrenn and loses Bolts and loses a bunch of good SB cards and only gains Thoughtseize and slightly more stable mana. If you're not going to try to 1-up the Delver pseudo-mirror by switching your small creatures for shadows to juke burnspells then I don't think you're doing anything that justifies losing the red cards***. (Admittedly this doesn't really help to answer the 'should you play Gargoyle or Angler in your shadow deck' question).

    ***Playing any kind of non-tropical delver deck means you dodge submerge in the pseudo mirrors which I guess is somewhat valuable

  5. #165

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Surely Delver is at its best when paired with some sort of reach, that's true and the main reason why it's not that great in Shadow decks. Big vanilla critters simply don't profit from Delver chip shots as much. However, another way to provide reach is playing more evasive threats, and that's exactly what the UB Delver list is doing. So while it may not be quite as good as in RUG or RU, it is already miles better than in the original Delver Shadow decks.

    Also, getting to play 3 basics over zero is a bigger deal than you make it out to be imo. Just in the Delver matchups alone UB Delver is significantly better than Shadow, which is one of the main things that drives me away from the card Death's Shadow at the moment. In my last tournament I lost my last round to UR Delver because I was absolutely helpless against their Wastelands with my zero basics and against their reach with my early low life total. So far I'm comfortably winning both the RUG and UR Delver matchup with UB. Delver mirrors are usually about two things: winning the battle over mana and winning the creature board battle. UB Delver wins vs RUG on both fronts and against UR on one while tie'ing the other.

    Shadow is better vs most control strategies and a little better against combo decks thanks to its Hymns, though it takes little to no effort to play Hymns in UB Delver too if those are the matchups you're worried about. I'd likely cut the second Island for the 3rd Sea and be fine. I'm choosing to play none in the main at the moment because they've been lackluster recently.

    A resolved True-Name is another card that is straight up unbeatable for UB Shadow while UB Delver can easily race it with Flyers. Again, I can't say and am not saying that UB Delver is a better overall deck than Shadow at this point, but right now for my personal taste and the metagames I'm facing it seems like the better deck for sure.


    EDIT: I'm not missing red much either apart from where Bolts would be better than Pushes. Abrade is less of a necessity if you have maindeck Brazen Borrowers now that can deal with Ensnaring Bridge and Chalice temporarily as well as Mystical Dispute which acts as a slightly weaker but mostly close enough version of red blasts.

    EDIT2: You should also try Drown in the Loch sometime. Whether in Delver or Shadow decks, this card is seriously good.

  6. #166
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    UB Delver seems quite a bit less real than UB Shadow. Like what does UB Delver even run - the maybeGoyf [Gargoyle]???

    The thing is that even if Goyf cost you might have to run it in Shadow lists on principle, but it doesn‘t really help anything. This play pattern of dude into dude into dude worked for like maybe 2 years after 2012 (pre-Wrenn RUG Delver), and without having DRS and Gitaxian Probe cheese‘ing Therapy this rule holds true. The absence of just DRS allows UR Delver to exist as something more than a somewhat embarrassing budget knockoff of Grixis Delver; the point here though is that they can get off the failing, fractal dude train with access to more burn and a 1/3 “maybe-walker“ (Dreadhorde imitating a PW‘s recurrent value).

    To summarize:
    -dude into dude into dude = recipe for failure
    -dude into PW into dude = recipe for success (current RUG Delver)
    -dude into the maybe-walker aka Dreadhorde (and more than 4 Bolts as burn) into dude = recipe for somewhat more success than failure

    When comparing UB Delver to UB Shadow, we‘re talking about the best presentation of a mostly failing way of playing legacy. Shadow has more power (and more severe drawbacks), and raw power is going to win more games than the dude into dude into dude train that is injecting a *maybe*Goyf in the middle. The overall strategy is flawed [see actual Tarmogoyf‘s comprehensive failure for years in RUG], but you probably want to really stay away from injecting “maybe“ cards into the first two iterations of dudes; it‘s the third dude in that chain that should have the maybes attached (this is the TNN/Gurmag spots).

    Edit: once you start talking about Drown in the Loch in any amount above the fun-of, you‘re casting a lot of doubt onto a deck‘s ability to support Delver (and by extension Daze and Wasteland), as you‘re clearly moving away from constricting how long a game will last. Your getting quickly into territory of 4c snowWrennOko where you want to be casting Snapcasters. Assuming budget constrictions putting you on strict UB, playing Drown should begin push you decisively towards Standstill‘s larger mana, slower pace, and greater variety of tools to deal with problems an unsupported Delver shell can‘t bail you out of. You throw Delver into question, and this too will drag down every dude you‘re trying to chain into after him (which puts us doubly closer to wanting to run Standstill, whose emphasis has shifted starkly away from reliance on creatures as wincons).

  7. #167

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    It's a pretty bold argument saying that UB Shadow was real when it has posted zero results in its entire lifespan, assuming we're talking about the Delverless build here because the rest of your post doesn't exactly imply otherwise. UB Delver with Gargoyle already has more 5-0s online and it hasn't even existed a full month, though that's still nowhere near tier 1 stats or anything like that, but neither was I implying.

    If Goyf cost 1U the entire legacy landscape would have looked completely different for a decade after its printing. I don't even get your argument about Shadow having to play it on principle... you're ranting about suboptimal card choices all the time, yet playing a card on principle even if it doesn't help is fine?

    What's wrong with the play pattern of dude into dude coming out of tempo decks? That's literally what they still do to apply pressure early on. They play the exact same amount of creatures as they did 10 years ago, the only difference is that W6 has taken 3 of the spell slots now. How you sequence your spells depends on your draws and the matchup, there's no fundamental difference in design philosophy between the Delver decks today and those before.

    While I'm not a fan of UR Delver myself that deck has too produced numerous results, even though the hype has died down a little since Arcanist was printed. Once again, a pretty bold statement bashing on an established Legacy deck in defense of a fringe deck with zero results.

    You're taking things out of context too much, really. Shadow is more powerful than Delver, or Goyf, or any other creature that costs 1-2 mana, yes. The problem is that it heavily taxes your deck building, makes you start the game at 10 life, and because of that often even loses the race due to its lack of abilities.

    Once again, bold statement calling Goyf a comprehensive failure in RUG when it's played in the by far best deck in the format right now...

    Are you playing Hymns in your list? I'm assuming you aren't, because everything negative you just said about Drown in a Daze deck applies to Hymn as well, except Hymn is much harder to cast, doesn't pitch to Force and is less flexible. I'm playing 1-2 Drowns in my lists, I'm aware you can't slam 4 of them into a Delver deck. How those 2 Drowns bring me closer to Wrenn pile or Standstill decks is beyond me though, this was the point where I wasn't even sure if you were serious or trolling the whole time. Delver decks have been successfully casting CC2 for 15 years, but I'm sure you know more about the format than anyone else, so I probably don't have to explain that while a Delver deck could never afford to play a counter spell for 2 mana (because you can rarely afford to keep 2 mana up), it can afford to play 2 mana removal spells in low quantities, especially if they are flexible and blue.


    And lastly, I have all dual lands and Fetches available to me, as well as most Legacy staples with no issue to buy more singles if I need them. I like playing two colors because of the advantages I get from it, and because I generally don't like copying the stock lists of the most established decks. If you're restricted for budget reasons that's fine with me, but there's no reason to assume everyone is just because they don't want to play 4-c pile decks that have below 20% against Storm and many other combo decks.

  8. #168
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    I have always been of the opinion that Shadow is supposed to be UBg, and that Wraith is atrocious. Look back at any Shadow threads since Josh Utter-Leyton (I think is his name) won a trios format with UB Shadow that started all this hype; UB has way too many holes to compete without 2 decks from other formats picking up the matches it‘s destined to drop. Outside of team format, UB Shadow is linear and underperforming (owing to that linearity). It also has never had a good matchup versus real Delver decks, benefitting from a tiny window where RUG was still awful and Grixis got banned out of playable, leaving only a budget Delver (UR) that couldn‘t really touch a toughness above 3.

    So while UB Shadow is a bad idea, it‘s bad in the solidly tier 2 sense. It‘s also doing something unique: Thoughtseize as a lifeloss engine. UB Delver is not a bad deck, but rather a worse deck (i.e. a way to play Delver conventionally with worse tools, in a less-winning fashion).

    Interposing a PW between dudes (or the Dreadhorde as a PW imitator) is why RUG Delver is the best deck in the format - this is the mechanism. In the same way Dreadhorde being closer to a PW than Stormchaser Mage is why UR can exist and compete. Slamming dudes-only is an obsolete form of aggro.

    On Goyf costing 1U, it didn‘t matter - Goyf ruined legacy for the better part of a decade until late in 2011 when Snapcaster was printed (like c‘mon, it was even showing up in Merfolk). It remains one the most poorly-designed cards, moreso because it can‘t even trade with itself in combat. When a card is so powerful that you have to resort to “if you can‘t beat them, join them“ it kinda needs to [by itself] be able to declare a victor. A confusing statement perhaps, but applied to design mistakes like Wrenn/Oko at least the first person to get one is probably able to bring a farce of a game to an end.

    What matters about Goyf is that RUG Delver was a joke for years before Wrenn, and adding a theoretical 1U Goyf to UB Delver so that you can emulate a failed model is something of an unnecessary experiment. You would however have to run 1U Goyf b/c the card is so horribly designed that playing it yourself is the only efficient way to negate an opponent having one. This isn‘t to say that RUG Delver never won any games for a period of ~5 years; it still had generically good cards and put up occasional results b/c the individual cards were still independently competitive. The issue with maybeGoyf, is that actual Goyf didn‘t have the ‘maybe‘ prefix and he still wasn‘t accomplishing much.

    Going to put this by itself so it‘s not confused: RUG Delver was kinda trash for like 5 years. Wrenn got printed, and now they‘re the best deck. If during the trash years, if you wanted to win with Delver you should have been on Grixis Delver. This is not a controversial statement; those RUG pilots knew they were piloting the worse form of a Delver deck when Grixis reigned supreme.

    Hymn is it‘s own thing, and for that we need to identify the one best Hymn deck dating back years. During SDT/CB dominance Snapcaster for Hymn was called Shardless Agent (can‘t resolve an actual SCM vs CB/SDT, so you needed the trigger to dig towards Decay). Next it was called Czech Pile. Next it was called Grixis Control. Different names for the same thing, and we‘ll note that Hymn - in it‘s best shell - is not competitive. Yes a pile of staples can win games, but you‘re not going to win reliably by topdecking Hymn vs an opponent who is topdecking Wrenn/Oko and/or Dreadhorde.

    When the best way to play Hymn is ineffective, it should filter down to the suboptimal presentations (i.e. those playing Hymn without Snapcaster) that having Hymn in your deck is quite likely the reason you‘re losing/the card holding you back.

  9. #169
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Drown in the Loch has a great backup plan for being a 2cmc Counterspell you have to pay for, but it still plays at the same pace as actual Counterspell. It‘s inclusion in larger numbers creates the need to hit your land drops like a control deck - and that means playing 20+ lands. Hitting land drops creates play patterns generally antagonistic to Delver as it will become more important to prioritize finding your second colored land. Add in lost land drops from Daze and Wasteland (that‘s just your Wastelands, not counting getting Wasted and the new requirement to run 2-3 basics yourself), and you find yourself in really bad situations where you‘re not doing the Delver nor the Drown particularly well.

    If you‘ve ever played the Esper Mentor stuff [or seen it played] back when it was doing the DRS/Probe/Therapy/Strix stuff, it illustrates the issues with large commitments to bigger mana plans in the setting of Daze and Wasteland. Any current Delver deck with white, runs into these same anti-timings.

    The bigger your deck goes, the more anti-timings you can get away with inflicting upon yourself. It‘s not a Daze/Wasteland + Delver issue only, it shows up as clunky hands in more control‘y decks as well. The thing about traditional Delver decks is that they don‘t really have a recovery mechanism. No matter how much more utility you can get out of Drown in the Loch (vs. Counterspell), a card like Wrenn/Oko or Dreadhorde are tools which combine higher mana investment with a recovery mechanism that also proactively advances how your deck wins. While Drown might feel like an awesome card, it [like Hymn] is something that isn’t going to bail you out after someone resolves Wrenn/Oko. Small amounts of a card like Drown is fine, it just can‘t be an effective power core alongside the Delver core.

    Edit: put another way, imagine opponent has Wrenn. You can't play Delvers anymore, Wasteland stops working, and Daze isn't going to counter anything. They have Wrenn and it's a 1-card combo; they will win the game if you don't do something about it. Drown won't kill Wrenn, and the opponent is already winning - so they should be done casting spells and deploying/protecting creatures...so Drown has no targets. We come back to Delver not being castable into Wrenn, so every other threat in your deck (minus Gurmag) is gonna cost you at least two mana. Now you need to have 4 mana to cast your only way to pressure Wrenn (a creature) and still be able to protect that creature on the stack [or from removal]...and now you need 5 mana if they are a Daze deck. So this doesn't end well for you spending time early on picking up your lands with Daze and activating Wastelands. You're kinda all-in on opponents not realizing when they're winning decisively, who will continue to jam relevant cards into your Drown and make the tertiary mistake of doing something like mind twisting their hand to oblivion to FoW your Drown that they never needed to play into. If the Delver core fails, the Drown core will fail in sequence - this keeps you from being able to submit competitive lists featuring >1 or perhaps >2 copies of Drown.
    Last edited by Fox; 11-05-2019 at 07:07 PM.

  10. #170

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Quote Originally Posted by Izor View Post
    Also, getting to play 3 basics over zero is a bigger deal than you make it out to be imo. Just in the Delver matchups alone UB Delver is significantly better than Shadow, which is one of the main things that drives me away from the card Death's Shadow at the moment. In my last tournament I lost my last round to UR Delver because I was absolutely helpless against their Wastelands with my zero basics and against their reach with my early low life total. So far I'm comfortably winning both the RUG and UR Delver matchup with UB. Delver mirrors are usually about two things: winning the battle over mana and winning the creature board battle. UB Delver wins vs RUG on both fronts and against UR on one while tie'ing the other.

    Shadow is better vs most control strategies and a little better against combo decks thanks to its Hymns, though it takes little to no effort to play Hymns in UB Delver too if those are the matchups you're worried about. I'd likely cut the second Island for the 3rd Sea and be fine. I'm choosing to play none in the main at the moment because they've been lackluster recently.
    This goes both ways though because I think you can easily play basics with Shadow too if you want

    Are you playing Hymns in your list? I'm assuming you aren't, because everything negative you just said about Drown in a Daze deck applies to Hymn as well, except Hymn is much harder to cast, doesn't pitch to Force and is less flexible. I'm playing 1-2 Drowns in my lists, I'm aware you can't slam 4 of them into a Delver deck. How those 2 Drowns bring me closer to Wrenn pile or Standstill decks is beyond me though, this was the point where I wasn't even sure if you were serious or trolling the whole time. Delver decks have been successfully casting CC2 for 15 years, but I'm sure you know more about the format than anyone else, so I probably don't have to explain that while a Delver deck could never afford to play a counter spell for 2 mana (because you can rarely afford to keep 2 mana up), it can afford to play 2 mana removal spells in low quantities, especially if they are flexible and blue.
    This is a good response, e.g. imagine if drown just said "destroy creature with cmc 3 or less, or counter spell with cmc 3 or less". That would still be ok in legacy and doesn't imply that you're trying to take the game until turn 10 or whatever. If the assumption is that Gargoyle can function reasonably early on 7 cards in the opponent's graveyard then of course Drown can be functional from turn 3 or even 2 a lot of the time.

    Hymn is it‘s own thing, and for that we need to identify the one best Hymn deck dating back years. During SDT/CB dominance Snapcaster for Hymn was called Shardless Agent (can‘t resolve an actual SCM vs CB/SDT, so you needed the trigger to dig towards Decay). Next it was called Czech Pile. Next it was called Grixis Control. Different names for the same thing, and we‘ll note that Hymn - in it‘s best shell - is not competitive. Yes a pile of staples can win games, but you‘re not going to win reliably by topdecking Hymn vs an opponent who is topdecking Wrenn/Oko and/or Dreadhorde.

    When the best way to play Hymn is ineffective, it should filter down to the suboptimal presentations (i.e. those playing Hymn without Snapcaster) that having Hymn in your deck is quite likely the reason you‘re losing/the card holding you back.
    This entire line of reasoning is faulty: "Historically the best way of using card X has been in shell Y, so it's a mistake to attempt to use card X in different shell Z".
    Different types of strategies (control/tempo/combo) all use FoW/Brainstorm/Ponder by leveraging them in slightly different ways. Are you going to try to argue that Brainstorm is at its most powerful in e.g. Storm, so therefore Miracles is an inherently flawed deck? If you have an original argument for why Hymn is necessarily bad in a non-pile deck then why not just say that instead of this word-salad of truisms/platitudes.

    Drown in the Loch has a great backup plan for being a 2cmc Counterspell you have to pay for, but it still plays at the same pace as actual Counterspell. It‘s inclusion in larger numbers creates the need to hit your land drops like a control deck - and that means playing 20+ lands. Hitting land drops creates play patterns generally antagonistic to Delver as it will become more important to prioritize finding your second colored land. Add in lost land drops from Daze and Wasteland (that‘s just your Wastelands, not counting getting Wasted and the new requirement to run 2-3 basics yourself), and you find yourself in really bad situations where you‘re not doing the Delver nor the Drown particularly well.

    If you‘ve ever played the Esper Mentor stuff [or seen it played] back when it was doing the DRS/Probe/Therapy/Strix stuff, it illustrates the issues with large commitments to bigger mana plans in the setting of Daze and Wasteland. Any current Delver deck with white, runs into these same anti-timings.

    The bigger your deck goes, the more anti-timings you can get away with inflicting upon yourself. It‘s not a Daze/Wasteland + Delver issue only, it shows up as clunky hands in more control‘y decks as well. The thing about traditional Delver decks is that they don‘t really have a recovery mechanism. No matter how much more utility you can get out of Drown in the Loch (vs. Counterspell), a card like Wrenn/Oko or Dreadhorde are tools which combine higher mana investment with a recovery mechanism that also proactively advances how your deck wins. While Drown might feel like an awesome card, it [like Hymn] is something that isn’t going to bail you out after someone resolves Wrenn/Oko. Small amounts of a card like Drown is fine, it just can‘t be an effective power core alongside the Delver core.

    Edit: put another way, imagine opponent has Wrenn. You can't play Delvers anymore, Wasteland stops working, and Daze isn't going to counter anything. They have Wrenn and it's a 1-card combo; they will win the game if you don't do something about it. Drown won't kill Wrenn, and the opponent is already winning - so they should be done casting spells and deploying/protecting creatures...so Drown has no targets. We come back to Delver not being castable into Wrenn, so every other threat in your deck (minus Gurmag) is gonna cost you at least two mana. Now you need to have 4 mana to cast your only way to pressure Wrenn (a creature) and still be able to protect that creature on the stack [or from removal]...and now you need 5 mana if they are a Daze deck. So this doesn't end well for you spending time early on picking up your lands with Daze and activating Wastelands. You're kinda all-in on opponents not realizing when they're winning decisively, who will continue to jam relevant cards into your Drown and make the tertiary mistake of doing something like mind twisting their hand to oblivion to FoW your Drown that they never needed to play into. If the Delver core fails, the Drown core will fail in sequence - this keeps you from being able to submit competitive lists featuring >1 or perhaps >2 copies of Drown.
    If I'm parsing this correctly you are making the following points here:
    - 2cmc spells are on the expensive side for a Delver deck and you probably shouldn't play too many
    - Drown is not a good topdeck against a resolved PW

    Do you really think anybody disagrees with this? I think you're just tilting at windmills.
    I do think you make a good point with "if your opponent resolves a Wrenn on an empty board then your only chance to win is to resolve a creature through your opponents interaction, and it's difficult to do that when your counterspells cost 2 mana", but see how easily I can communicate that idea in as many words. Burying it under your own proprietary jargon ("If the Delver core fails, the drown core will fail in sequence"... give me a break) doesn't achieve anything.

  11. #171
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    I probably wouldn't use miracles as a comparison to ANT's Brainstorms since they have Terminus, and BStorm is clearly enabling something in a novel way. Delvers combine Bstorm with sandbagging lands. I would agree though that Brainstorm in tap out and jam archetypes leads to a ton of meaningless hellbent Brainstorms, but at the end of the day it gives them better chances early for lands. There's a big difference between who uses Bstorm best, and understanding that what UB Delver is doing with Gargoyle is the same as what pre-Wrenn RUG was doing with Goyf - mainly not winning. Jamming a stream of dudes-only is a recipe for failure, with a very slight [higher variance] exception for dudes that imitate PW value [Dreadhorde].

    Hymn is a separate thing, but we can use the complete absence of Shardless/Czech/Grixis Hymn spammers as a signal that Hymn is bad right now. I get that it's a 2-for-1 and it looks good when you're reading the card, but the issue is that there are resilient value engines coming down on turn 2 that Hymn can't fix for you. When your only answers to these value engines are creatures [4 fewer b/c Delver is dead on arrival vs Wrenn] being cast at sorcery speeds, you need to do a reality check on your deckbuilding. Your creatures need better backup from your spells. At the point of deckbuilding, you know that Hymn is a winmore card that only works when everything is going well - thing is, everything is gonna start going poorly as early as their turn 2.

    Drown, beyond a fun-of, is likely worse than Hymn. At least with Hymn you can spam it at an opponent with a PW and pass, then wait to see what happens. With Drown you're decisively losing vs Wrenn - so count your mana:
    -lose 2 mana for a sorcery-speed creature (unless you happen to find a Gurmag)
    -have 2 mana to protect it with Drown, on the turn you cast it
    -hope you don't need a 5th mana b/c of Daze

    The important point is not that Drown doesn't kill Wrenn - it's that you're losing. If the opponent is competent, they'll never cast anything relevant for Drown to hit when they have a PW like Wrenn in play. The only way to use Drown will become the 4-5 mana pathway of making and protecting a dude - that's 4-5 mana in a deck with 4x Daze, 4x Wasteland, and a total land count of ~18.

    Note that this discussion is about someone coming into a Shadow thread and saying UB Delver is better - and it's like...let me get this straight, you're gonna cut 4x playable-into-Wrenn 1-drops [Shadow], losing access to ~200% more ways to use Drown for only 3 mana against a resolved PW - that's your plan?

    ---

    Just so we're clear, your takeaway points from my posts were off. It's about the backup mode of Drown - forget what the text on the card is, all that matters is that you have exactly one way to use it against a PW, and it costs an egregious amount of mana in combination. When your answer to PWs is only creatures, Drown's only mode is being second card that's like a kicker cost that can only be used if there is a creature to kick. Ergo: fails in sequence.

  12. #172

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    I tried to make clear from the beginning that I'm not trying to say UB Delver was an objectively better deck than Shadow, I'm only saying it's currently my personal choice for a number of reasons, some of which actually coincide with things you've said yourself, like Hymn being unreliable and not great overall right now, especially when this format is more about answering the right things than blind-2-for-1-ing your opponent. If it's wrong mentioning a deck without Shadow in a Shadow thread I'll gladly stop and limit myself to talking about Shadow, which is still a deck that I like playing. I guess it was a combination of the two decks being kinda similar in their card choices and there not being a thread for UB Delver (yet) that made me bring it up. My b.

    Thanks for explaining yourself in those last couple of posts, I understand some of your points better now, however, I still think you're still over-simplifying and over-essentializing a few things that just aren't as black/white in practise. See, RUG Delver is great, but it's not unbeatable. And W6 is a terribly designed Magic card for how over-centralizing it is, but it is not broken or too strong as a card. By including 3 copies of W6 RUG has lost just as many matchup points against various combo decks as it has won against fair decks. Okay... probably not just as many, but it has lost some. Imo the sleeper best deck in this format right now is ANT, because it doesn't care at all about pretty much any of the 20ish printed cards this year and just profits from people playing planeswalkers instead of Goyfs on turn two. Playing 3 empty pieces of cardboard that are tough on your mana and don't flip Delvers or pitch to Force over actual pieces of stack interaction is what combo decks are only dreaming about.

    Anyway, to get back to the point, this format is not just about a turn 2 W6 on the play. Yes, Drown is terrible against that, but so are tons of other cards the format that are still considered good Legacy cards. Neither will they draw and resolve it on turn 2 every game nor will they be on the play and sneak it in underneath something like Drown all the time. And if worst comes worst and you are indeed tapped out and want to protect your Angler, you use it as a pitch card to Force. This is what I see Drown as. I see it as a Fatal Push that isn't dead against decks Push is bad against. If you look at my lists you'll also notice that I play it in removal spell slots, not in stack interaction slots. And as such, the extra mana has been more than worth the upside of getting a Counterspell when I need it or the ability to pitch my normally dead removal spells to Force against Combo. In fact, before it was printed I had already been experimenting with a maindeck Tyrant's Scorn to great success. It's just that great when your dead cards in a matchup become Force fodder, which is by the was also a nice little upside of Gargoyle over something like Goyf, or Shadow's all-black creature base. Against combo you only need to resolve 1 creature to win, any additional one you draw is a pretty bad draw unless you can pitch them.

    I kinda agree with you on UBg Shadow by the way. My latest inclination was also to use Berserk to get around the huge TNN/Strix/Coatl weakness, but in practise it didn't play out as well as I'd hoped.

  13. #173
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Interesting conversation going on here. @Fox: I happen to enjoy your unconventional way of looking at the game, incl. the at-times galaxy-brain phrasings that come with it, but here I got a couple of things to throw in:


    Comparing UB's new creature suite to pre-W6 RUG seems flawed, and w/ it the verdict that dude-->dude-->dude can never work: Gargoyle is not a maybe-Goyf, but a maybe-EVASIVE-Goyf and it's well known how much Angler outclasses Mongoose (as well as Hooting Monkeys). As a matter of fact, beyond Delvers, opp. Bolts are turned completely off here, which seems significant in a meta where RU/G Delver approaches 20% (btw I would not dismiss especially the current UR Prowess builds as budget). This is also where I'd like to reiterate @Izor's point: Not starting the game at 10 life seems like a real good idea right now. And in a deck built to support 3-4 Gurmags, you don't "happen to find" one, it's pretty likely that you will.


    Drown is just a fantastic new flexibility tool for UB and I don't see anyone here arguing to jam 3-4 copies in their Delver list: Why keep harping on the fact that it is not Decay? It's still a better topdeck than literally any other Counterspell and arguably competes for deck space more with the likes of Snare, FoN or non-Bolt removal in a low-to-the-ground tempo deck. (There have been 2cc flex one-ofs in these decks for a long time and Drown so far looks like one of the best of those yet, hence folks are testing up to 2). A lot of things in Legacy don't kill W6 and Oko; Drown at least fights them on the stack at mana & card parity. It's also worth considering that Drown comes with a pair of Brazen Bouncers in these new lists, which do answer resolved PWs and synergize w hard counters like Drown and discard into the mid-late game. Like FoN, Drown is not for protecting your own stuff as much as it is for opp. business spells/permanents, and that is fine. And as for W6: Isn't the whole point of these UB lists to reducing it to Crucible-of-World mode (apart from killing late-to-the-party Delvers) while sitting on 3 basics?

    EDIT: wrote this before seeing @Izor's latest post, some points seem doubled now

  14. #174
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    @Tobitzski It‘s more that stranding Delver all by himself at 1 mana, in favor of 2cmc dudes is pretty rough. If I‘m gonna topdeck a card like Thoughtseize against a resolved PW, I kinda need it to combo towards winning (like growing a future Shadow). If I‘m playing 2cmc power cards like Drown, I kinda need every threat to cost 1 mana so that Drown‘s backup mode isn‘t a pipe dream.

    Beyond the UB Delver stuff, we‘re seeing an amount of JVP + Hymn; but given that CB is gone, Wrenn is here, RUG Delver has no basics, and Depths is here. I think you have to ask why that Hymn isn‘t Trophy. You‘ve got low mana environment requirements (Delver/Daze/Wasteland) and you’re willing to play the low-mana environment Snapcaster (JVP). Trophy‘s backup mode is potentially Sinkhole, and JVP also sees it in the yard. You‘ve got this tool that re-invests into the strategy of low mana, and has a fair bit of text against cards created by undesirable/higher mana environments (also it kills Chalice). People default to Decay but forget that it sits around in your hand doing nothing until opponent has a big mana environment that goes over the top. (BUG Delver takes it a step further by combining Hymn + Decay because they‘re “good“ cards, but the pilots never seem to get just how toxic that combo is to their strategy)

    You play UBg and in comes Berserk and Library as well, and suddenly you‘re able to pursue non-linear paths (Berserk as removal/life loss ramp, etc...). The goal with a deck like Shadow should be to warp the tempo of the game in such a way that the discussion is moved away from “if you kill my dudes I definitely lose and have no backup plan“ and towards “we are now going to fight over not-creature things, like mana and Library‘s CA and JVP maybe becoming a PW.“ Build the deck to pursue those plans until the opponent is unable to deal with undercosted P/T values owing to a mismatch of their remaining tools and their intended speed (that they weren‘t able to operate at).

    Access to those play patterns above is what can make Drown work, having built to avoid the worst case ‘kicker‘ scenario with 2 drop dudes. This will happen regularly to UB Delver, because they can‘t play the game in a different way. As @Izor is pointing out, the UBg Shadow is maybe not working right now, but the concept it embodies is the future of the deck combining the purposeful life loss engine with a plan to demand resources from opponents to play a forced not-creature subgame.

  15. #175

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    To be honest, topdecking a Thoughtseize late in the game isn't the universal boon and combo potential you make it out to be. You're at 5 against a deck with Bolts and your Shadows are staring down a True-Name... how good is that Thoughtseize combo now? How good is drawing Street Wraiths or removal spells that cost 4 life now? These things come up more frequently than that 2 life from exactly TSeize pumping your Shadow the exact amount necessary.

    Beyond the UB Delver stuff, we‘re seeing an amount of JVP + Hymn; but given that CB is gone, Wrenn is here, RUG Delver has no basics, and Depths is here. I think you have to ask why that Hymn isn‘t Trophy. You‘ve got low mana environment requirements (Delver/Daze/Wasteland) and you’re willing to play the low-mana environment Snapcaster (JVP). Trophy‘s backup mode is potentially Sinkhole, and JVP also sees it in the yard. You‘ve got this tool that re-invests into the strategy of low mana, and has a fair bit of text against cards created by undesirable/higher mana environments
    Now this one I don't understand no matter how often I read it. First of all, we're not seeing any amounts of JVP + Hymn in Legacy beyond the few people in this thread who have had some local success with it. In general, and this is a point I've made before, JVP is simply not a Legacy playable card, regardless of the deck. I don't understand why it's bad to play Delver into Tarmogoyf nowadays, but playing Cantrip or nothing into a 0/2 with no immediate text is fine? There's really something off with that argumentation. You're talking about low mana requirements, but firstly, noone plays Delvers alongside JVP, and second Trophy is the exact opposite of a low mana requirement tempo card. Trophy is in fact purely a power level card that chooses to give up any tempo for power. You may argue that Delver-less Shadow has a different game plan than Delver, but as soon as 90% of the deck are identical and you play Dazes, Wastelands, only 14 mana lands and whatnot, you won't convince me of a fundamentally different game plan.

    And how Trophy is supposed to be the answer to all the problems is also something I can't quite understand. We're talking about a Daze + Wasteland deck here, in what world is it a good idea to give out free basics in a Legacy environment with probably more basics than ever before? People play Decay because it's at least uncounterable. You said it before, 2 mana is a lot for a Daze deck, and Decay is at least a card that doesn't worry about soft permission.

    It seems like you take it for granted that at all times during a game of Legacy there's already a planeswalker in play for your opponent. And based on that assumption you say that everything that doesn't kill that pw is bad. That's not how it works. We're not a 4 Thoughtseize + 4 Daze + 4-5 Force plus 6+ big creatures that don't die to W6 deck for nothing. Our primary plan to deal with anything that's more powerful than our cards is tempoing the opponent to a point where those cards can't resolve or become a liability. If that strategy isn't something for you you should maybe play a different deck, one with tons of on-board answers to walkers and no Dazes.

    Or you try something I'd tested before in my Shadow build, which is running 3 Vampire Hexmage out of the sideboard as my primary Chalice answer. Against planeswalker-heavy decks they double as repeated removal spells, especially with Lilly bringing them back over and over again.

  16. #176
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Oh I don‘t think JVP is great, it‘s more a sentiment of: if you‘re going to [mis]use JVP in a non-Grisel deck, you need a better plan than flashing back something for blind value. The UB/UBx Shadow decks have never recovered from wotc banning the only playable black 1-drop (that you can play on turn 1, DRS). No matter what you do, you can‘t recapture Shadow‘s take on 8-4-2 Delver structure (8x 1drop threat, 4x 2drop, 2x big thing like TNN or Gurmag). At least back in DRS times you realized you were on 12-0-2 structure, and you had to answer Chalice when you were deckbuilding.

    Without DRS, many lists are forgetting the need to submit Shadow decks with introspection. While Delver/Daze/Wasteland are legacy staples, they are being undermined by the Hymns/Drowns/Bitterblossoms of legacy which drag games to points where the Delver core can‘t compete effectively. While JVP might not be effective at generating win %, he‘s at least a coherent addition to the strategy of lost land drops (Daze/Wasteland). Staple Trophy onto JVP and you have access to a plan of not just operating within the confines of poor mana, but also dragging your opponent down to your level as well.

    It‘s not nearly as effective as UBx Reanimator‘s JVPs being able to toy with opponents by endlessly re-presenting him back to the board [if not exiled] and never really losing the Reanimate effect they used to force opponent to pass the ‘discard your removal or counterspell‘ test again...but then again, no deck can really compete with JVP + Entomb to find either half of the combo (as Entomb Reanimate is now possible).

    On Trophy as mana denial/low mana environment:
    It may not work at all vs lands if your opponent is on DnT/Gobbos/Merfolk. It may win all by itself vs Depths (instant speed Rain of Salt). Most decks are between those points though, so you need to know the format and constantly assess the gamestate. Are they Fetching around your Wastelands? How many basics do they have left? How many basics of one color type? Will they actually bleed out resources to protect Trophy (+/- JVP) from exposing a fatal flaw? Did they lose too many blue cards against our not-blue, not-creature cards to not die to the undercosted 1-drop?

    You have a new way to play, where you start approaching matchups like UW and realizing that if you have 2x Wastealnd and you murder 2x basic Plains, you kinda just win no matter how many Plows and Snapcasters and Mentors they have in hand. Maybe now that SB Needle that was doing you no favors comes in here and in the absence of a better play, you‘re not above naming a Fetch on turn 1. You play a cards Decay/Wraith instead and you just told your opponent that all they have to do is kill your dudes and they‘ll win by default.

    All the above stuff on Trophy is just the proactive mode; you can still use the reactive side to remove permanents generated by mana-rich investments. Preferentially use cards that are inherently offensive/proactive and defensive/reactive in nature. If you‘re going to monitor the gamestate, give yourself tools to hijack it.

  17. #177

    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Quote Originally Posted by Fox View Post
    Did they lose too many blue cards against our not-blue, not-creature cards to not die to the undercosted 1-drop?
    I'm going to need a quick rundown on why you think this applies to Trophy and not Hymn, the spell which actually takes away multiple resources from the opponent when it resolves. (I expect something like "Hymn doesn't do anything if topdecked against resolved PW" filtered through a thesaurus).
    The goal with a deck like Shadow should be to warp the tempo of the game in such a way that the discussion is moved away from “if you kill my dudes I definitely lose and have no backup plan“ and towards “we are now going to fight over not-creature things, like mana and Library‘s CA and JVP maybe becoming a PW.“ Build the deck to pursue those plans until the opponent is unable to deal with undercosted P/T values owing to a mismatch of their remaining tools and their intended speed (that they weren‘t able to operate at).
    Again, this is exactly how I think about Hymn to Tourach, as one of these 'not creature things'

    Hymn is a separate thing, but we can use the complete absence of Shardless/Czech/Grixis Hymn spammers as a signal that Hymn is bad right now.
    This argument is still faulty and you haven't addressed my earlier objection

    I get that it's a 2-for-1 and it looks good when you're reading the card, but the issue is that there are resilient value engines coming down on turn 2 that Hymn can't fix for you. When your only answers to these value engines are creatures [4 fewer b/c Delver is dead on arrival vs Wrenn] being cast at sorcery speeds, you need to do a reality check on your deckbuilding. Your creatures need better backup from your spells. At the point of deckbuilding, you know that Hymn is a winmore card that only works when everything is going well - thing is, everything is gonna start going poorly as early as their turn 2.
    Here is an example of a current Pile deck not playing Hymn:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/MTGLegacy/c...d_in_20191103/
    I agree that Hymn doesn't make sense in these decks right now along the following reasons:
    A Pile deck doesn't want to keep both players in a super-low-resource state because it wants to get to 4 lands so that it can resolve Jace.
    Due to this desire to make land drops it also doesn't want to pick up its own lands and aims to play to later turns where both players have much more opportunity to topdeck.
    Because of this, the deck is playing only two 1-mana-discard spells and 0 Dazes: it's much easier for opponents to resolve Wrenn vs this deck than it is against 4x Thoughtseize 4x Daze. Hymn would be worse against opponents that can resolve Wrenn easily, so this Pile deck has e.g. Decay instead. But in a deck where you're aiming to trade a lot of resources away and kill the opponent quickly without giving them as many chances to topdeck, plus you have more ways to stop Wrenn from resolving, Hymn has strengths that it doesn't have in more controlling strategies

    If your argument is that TS+FoW+Daze+Hymn still isn't enough to stop the opponent sticking Wrenn reliably and that it's too punishing when they do, then your argument must necessarily be that non-Wrenn Delver-esque decks aren't viable at all, otherwise what additional disruption or better creatures could you add. This might be true but it effectively ends the discussion. I guess your idea is Trophy but I don't think that's the answer (I basically share Izor's same skepticism). If your opponent lets you spend 4 mana and 2 cards to turn your their plains into islands you will just die to JTMS with counter backup, this is not a real suggestion.

    Or you try something I'd tested before in my Shadow build, which is running 3 Vampire Hexmage out of the sideboard as my primary Chalice answer. Against planeswalker-heavy decks they double as repeated removal spells, especially with Lilly bringing them back over and over again.
    I've considered this and it does give you more slots vs fair decks but
    - Getting an X-for-1 on e.g. Moxes from Bomberman or Ballista from Steel Stompy when you kill their Chalice with Ratchet Bomb is pretty good. (Maybe this is a wash because if you put your Bomberman opponents Chalice on 0 it does hurt them a lot). Sometimes you can even get e.g. Trini+Moon or something on 3
    - You're just stone dead if your opponent ever resolves Bridge or Moon, which might be acceptable when you have 6 Forces (and maybe Brazen Borrowers) but I'm still not entirely comfortable with
    - I'm not sure I have space for extra slots against fair decks anyway

    But it obviously does have some other positives, e.g. against moon decks it blocks goblins well

  18. #178
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Hymn attacks a resource that doesn't matter unless you're winning/poised to be winning. The moment they reach two mana and play any onboard value engine you are now losing. Hymn might be a "good" card b/c it's a 2-for-1, but they're drawing 2 cards a turn and you're not really addressing that issue by taking a turn off to Hymn. Trophy has multiple decision trees you can follow, one of which includes killing their turn 2 value engine such that you can do things like play a Delver again (looks pretty bad when opponent has a Wrenn, you Hymn them, and yeah...you still can't deploy a Delver while each turn Wasteland and Daze keep accruing irrelevance).

    This is one of those points where you need to look at your deck's composition and apply the theoretical scenario of "my opponent has a Wrenn." Of your 60 card deck 18 lands + 4 Delver + 4 Daze + 4 FoW + # of Drown/Hymn = 33'ish cards that can't really fix the problem. Then you add 8-10 cantrips and 4 Wraith, which will only be used to find Gurmag or Shadow. There's not any left over space in your deck to do things differently - so you now have this deck that can only be played one way; the result is that all your individual player skill doesn't really matter. You're simply managing a deck, and the opponent has the luxury of now playing against predictable forced moves. All your moves are pretty slow as well (sorcery speed and summoning sick); your deck is lacking tools to incite an opponent to enter your turn with any tapped lands.

    Now Hymn can randomly win a game all by itself, it's just not reliably converting and we know that b/c the Hymn spammers are nowhere to be found. We're at a point in legacy where you need to attack a different resource with multiple card types, rather than wholesale hand destruction. When it comes to other Delver decks every single successful one is playing Wrenn, or Oko (which can kill a Wrenn), or Dreadhorde (the pseudo-PW) - so yes, I am saying that is the case. Delver + Hymn is a losing proposition, Delver + any [or all] of those is how you win.

    In terms of the UW example with Trophy, just let them begin the game with JTMS in play (turn 0) with this condition: you can't use white mana - this is a pretty easy win for Shadow. People that play UW understand that [if they have the tools] they have to fight over anything that threatens their access to white mana. Few decks outside of R/G Lands can really call them out on that weak point, but do understand that this is the weakest point of UW. Any time you make the white side of their deck count for nothing, they lose convincingly.

    It's important to step back after reading what a card does and figure out what it really means. In the case of Trophy you're not just backing up a train of dudes, you're looking to create a subgame your opponent has to sink resources into, such that they can't sit there focusing solely on killing your one-dimensional combat step wincon. You can't create that subgame by throwing raw power [Hymn] at them b/c it's already outclassed by their raw power [Wrenn/Oko mostly]. It's definitely easier to give up and just play Wrenn/Oko/Dreadhorde + Delver, but you can still play dudes-only if your spells are creating a virtual not-creature threat, while also having dual utility to support your dudes.

  19. #179
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    I'm not sure if this card has been discussed in the thread yet, but I was thinking about how Shadow can be a quasi-combo deck on occasion so I started researching tutor effects to support that end (disclaimer: I am also attempting Stifle + Dreadnought alongside Shadow.)

    Lim-Dul's Vault

    Pros
    1) It's a customizable life-loss card that can enable best-case Shadow scenarios at instant speed
    2) It can set up your top 5 draws to optimizing sequencing
    3) It tutors the exact card you need to the top of your deck, provided you have enough life to support it
    3a) Turn 2, 8-9 cards drawn, 51 -52 cards left in deck/5 = 10-11 max life paid to tutor the exact card you need
    3b) Singleton sideboard cards get much more reliable due to (3a) supporting the Shadow plan.
    4) It breaks a Brainstorm lock if you don't have a fetchland or Ponder available

    Cons
    1) It costs 2 mana
    2) It doesn't actually put the card into your hand

    It seems like the pros outweigh the cons, but it's still a 2 mana card in a Daze/Wasteland/18 land tempo deck. Not only that, it's a restrictive cost requiring both of your colors (making basic lands much harder to justify.)

    I would love to hear thoughts on this. I'm thinking of going up to 2 copies in my Shadow/Dreadnought list (along with upping the land count to 20 lands.)
    Brainstorm Realist

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  20. #180
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    Re: [Primer] UB Death's Shadow

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr. Safety View Post

    I used to run it as a fun-of in otherwise-regular UB DS for a while, for all the reasons you state, plus an emergency out to Chalice fetching my MD Ratchet Bomb. (I posted this somewhere back in thread). Street Wraith was cute with it to sometimes actually put the card in your hand. The whole tech is probably on the cute side, tbh, but it worked well enough for me. I'd be skeptical running it a) w/o Street Wraiths and b) next to a plan B that also creates card disadvantage in the Dreadnoughts, and I'd definitely not run 2. Your combo here isn't powerful enough to warrant that kind of cost for a tutor: Even UB Omnitell, a deck that by all means ends the game when resolving its business spell, ran 2 at the most if I'm not mistaken.

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