If you want to play Berserk, Plunge into Darkness seems good, more so in Game 1. It can sink for surprise huge Shadow, find Berserk, find Dreadnought or Dress Down and in a combo race where you’re not expecting blockers you can Plunge for Shadow. I played something like this a while back but hadn’t thought of adding Dreadnought.
It does something quite similar for connecting Stifle or Dress Down with Phyrexian Dreadnought.
Plunge can also be played as a black impulse, for example if you’d prefer to Brainstorm and then Plunge for 5-6 to get rid of the cards you don’t need, pick up a counterspell or hit a land drop, etc.
A comparable, Lim-Dul’s Vault is also an instant, also a life sink, but it’s blue is better for Force. Getting the card right away means Plunge can be played as a cantrip, a psuedo-tutor, or a combo piece since it sinks life when you look for a Shadow (you might have it already and you want the Force or Daze). When Lim-Dul’s Vault sinks life, you can miss as well.
Aside, out of curiosity I checked Phyrexian Dreadnought’s creature type for Cavern of Souls shenanigans and the gatherer says it’s creature type is Phyrexian Dreadnought. Nifty, Wizards, making Phyrexian a creature type. I was hoping it was a construct.
Luck is a residue of design.
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Expect me or die. I play SI.
I've tested Lim-Dul's Vault a few times, it's ok. Not putting the card into hand is kind of a problem because you don't always have a Street Wraith/Brainstorm to get it right away, and the timing of EOT doesn't always work if you are busy doing other more meaningful things to affect the game (removal, counter wars.)
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Scroll of Fate is another one I’ve seen played with Dreadnought. You can bait Swords with stuff you don’t need. Never considered playing it with Death’s Shadow tho. Shadow as a morph means you can wait til the ideal time to flip it. You can play both beaters underneath Trinisphere, Chalice at 1, Thalia, etc sounds ideal.
Come to think of it, Illusionary Mask is a 2 drop, tho you can’t bait with it. Being able to sneak Shadow or Nought into play sounds good.
Not sure, but I think that creatures flipped faceup with either Scroll or Mask are special actions. I suppose this game plan is weak against Pithing Needle, Phyrexian Revoker, Null Rod, Collector Ouphe. But then there is always the main game plan. Mask could free up Dress Down to be played as anti DNT and anti Goblins tech.
Luck is a residue of design.
I'm an aspiring Psychedelic Trance musician. Please feel free to enjoy my sense of life:
http://soundcloud.com/vacrix
Expect me or die. I play SI.
The issue with being all-in on Scroll is that it plays straight into a Lightning Bolt blowout. Scroll is excellent with Standstill if the matchup allows you to sit with a fistful of cards and convert dead ones into tokens, but if you are playing the 1-for-1 game Scroll walks into Bolt hard. Lightning Bolt is the most played removal in the format and the whole idea of Shadow/Dreadnought is play around that...but Scroll doesn't. It's awkward. Does the combo work? Yes, but you need a plan to utilize scroll outside of just Shadow/Nought combos.
I've been thinking about this deck for a couple days, and the best way to make it work would be to include a 3rd color. That means a couple of very specific deck-building parameters:
1) The deck can no longer support Wasteland without compromising mana
2) It opens up the deck to being soft to Wasteland, which can make it very awkward to hit the land drops necessary to play on curve (Turn t3 Scroll or protected Dreadnought/Shadow)
3a) Once Wasteland is out of the deck, Daze becomes a questionable choice. If I am not actively squeezing opponents mana with Stifle/Wasteland, Daze just sets me back a turn unless I incorporate Standstill and only play Daze post-standstill.
3b) If we aren't playing Wasteland or Daze we naturally push towards the mid-late game, which does not favor Death's Shadow. We are actively taking turns off the clock by whittling down our own life total. It gives opponents windows to just kill us out of nowhere whereas a traditional mid-range blue deck would have their life total as a resource to play longer.
4) If we are playing mid-range we need better than 1-for-1 interaction, we need 2-for-1's. That's hard to achieve when most of our threats cost at least 2 cards to deploy.
5) Conclusion: red is probably the best splash color so we can play less tempo, answer problematic matchups, and be much more combo oriented. We need to do the classic 'count to 20' kind of math that doesn't really interact and instead just tries to get them dead. This means access to good cards like Bolt, KCommand, Abrade, and Pyroblast but also necessitates janky shit like Fling and Temur Battle Rage so we can 'combo kill' our opponents. We're in infect territory now, which isn't a bad thing, but it's a lot different than a Delver or mid-range shell.
I think this deck as UB is a classic case of 'the synergies are all great, but they don't do anything better than an established deck'. As I've written before, the best matchups are combo matchups due to Thoughtseize, counterspells, and a fast clock. This is actually achieved easier by just playing t1 Delver, because we don't need to put together the combo of Stifle/Scroll + Nought or life total<10 + Shadow. Shadow gives some redundancy of having big dumb dudes, but that's it. It doesn't diversify the game plan. When I look to the gold standard of a 2-combo deck that attacks from 2 different angles I always go back to Thopter-Depths from old extended. One used the graveyard and a go-wide token strategy, the other was an evasive one-shot 20/20 kill. Opponent's had to have so many diverse ways of interacting to fight against the inevitability of losing to one of the combos.
If I were to build this deck and play it at a tournament tomorrow, this is how I would do it:
4x Phyrexian Dreadnought
4x Death's Shadow
4x Street Wraith
4x Lotus Petal
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
4x Stifle
4x Force of Will
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Thoughtseize
4x Dress Down
2x Temur Battle Rage
4x Polluted Delta
3x Scalding Tarn
2x Bloodstained Mire
3x Watery Grave
1x Blood Crypt
1x Steam Vents
Sideboard
3x Pyroblast
3x Scroll of Fate
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Force of Negation
1x Duress
2x Abrade
Is that a good deck? Meh, no. It's weak to Wasteland/Daze and I don't even know if 8x protection is enough (TS + FoW.) It would be fun as hell, but not competitive.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
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