Small LGS Report with Traverse Shadow
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| Art Credit: Victor Adame Minguez & WotC |
Here's the list I ran at a Modern Monday last week:
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4 verdent catacombs, 4 polluted delta, 3 bloodstained mire
2 overgrown tomb, 1 watery grave, 1 blood crypt, 1 breeding pool
1 swamp, 1 forest
4 street wraith, 4 mishra's bauble, 4 traverse the ulvenwald
4 death's shadow, 4 tarmogoyf, 1 snapcaster mage, 1 tasigur, the golden fang
4 thoughtseize, 2 inquisition of kozilek, 2 collective brutality
3 stubborn denial, 2 temur battle rage
3 fatal push, 1 nameless inversion, 1 abrupt decay, 2 dismember
Sideboard: 2 surgical extraction, 2 liliana, the last hope, 2 ancient grudge, 1 hurkyl's recall, 1 hazoret the fervent, 1 snapcaster mage, 1 scavenging ooze, 1 shriekmaw, 1 reclamation sage, 1 bontu's last reckoning, 1 kozilek's return, 1 radiant flames
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Round 1: UR Wizards
Game 1: I won the die roll, and the initial thoughtseize revealed delvers, bolts, wizard bolts, snare, and snapcaster. I take snare and decide to sandbag my goyf in hand for a couple turns to iok him and then push his delver. After that, I've traded with too many of his resources efficiently for him to come out on top.
Sideboard: I recognize that I am the control deck in this matchup (or that I should be), and bring in koz's return, shriekmaw, lilianas, and scooze. I take out streetwraith and a battle rage I believe.
Game 2: I keep a 1 lander and get punished. Should have chucked it knowing I was down the street wraiths. Enough of my removal is 1 mana that I grasp to life for several turns, but I hit 2 and 3 mana too late to come back. He kills me with snap-bolt swing with delver.
Game 3: This time I have three lands in my opening grip (like a good control deck should) and I trade 1-for-1 for too long for him to keep up. Game doesn't go too long.
W 2-1, Record 1-0-0
Round 2: Ad Nauseam
Game 1: Was not expecting this deck, and I was way rustier on its mechanics than I thought. Also, the dude played a deck that was 90% Russian cards, so that didn't help my understanding very much. Anyway, I have enough discard early to dismantle his strategy. I abrupt decay his phyrexian unlife and bash him with shadows to 0.
Sideboard: I took the opposite line with this round because I am way more confident slowing down vs. tempo decks than I am vs. combo decks with traverse shadow. So I decide that velocity is my win con here, and grinding will just give him inevitability. I take out baubles, pushes, and put in surgicals, snapcaster, hazoret, and rec sage (and something else???).
Game 2: Targeted discard saves me again here, especially when I make a total misplay and dismember my own shadow on the turn I play it (thinking it will survive cuz math is hard), and end up killing it and 2-for-0ing myself....but he just can't get any momentum in the interim. I draw threat after threat, and he blows an angel's grace to save himself from two pact of negation triggers that he uses on the same turn to counter two goyfs I play back-to-back. Another shadow gets me there.
W 2-0, Record 2-0-0
(P.S. Ad Nauseam seems too slow and inconsistent to be a competitive deck anymore, imho. Storm and grishoalbrand just do everything it wants to do but faster or more reliably.)
Round 3: UW Spirits
I was stoked to play against this deck because my buddy is bringing it to GP Detroit with me on Traverse and our other buddy on storm....oh wait....he changed his mind...he's on hardened scales now.
Game 1: Lots of back and forth, but I just don't have enough removal and board-based card advantage to win. A swarm of fliers takes me out.
Sideboard: This is a bad matchup for me, because if I side into slower control midrange, I will get beat to death by fliers slowly, and if I go complete aggro, a couple disruptive spells will gas me. I end up siding the same way I would against humans, minus scooze because it has little value vs. fliers. I take out stubb and wraith, and put in all three sweepers, lilianas, snap, and shriekmaw.
Game 2: Unfortunately, it isn't enough. I pace the game well and we end up even on board, forcing him to fly over for only a little so that he could block the crackback. This gives me an extra turn and I consider my outs as I go to draw. The thought "Temur battle rage wins it for me" literally runs through my head as I draw, and it is indeed rage. However, I look down at my lands and see two tombs, a swamp (from a path earlier) and a breeding pool. No red. I extend the hand.
L 0-2, Record 2-1-0
Round 4: RG Scapeshift
This guy was old-school and I think out of the game for a while. He makes a couple novice errors (like bolting my 2/3 goyf with no instant in the yard), and I win both games easily. This is the second time I've played a valakut deck and stomped it, despite thinking it was a bad matchup. I'm starting to think it is actually a decent matchup for me because of the sheer speed of the deck.
My sideboard plan was to remove bad removal (push, decay since I figured he didn't have chalice) and put in snap and shriekmaw in preparation for a titan landing. Never happened though.
W 2-0, Overall Record 3-1-0.
Conclusion
Deck still feels amazing. Some changes I would make (and some I have to make to give team room to hardened scales) are are follows:
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4 verdent catacombs, 3 polluted delta (-1), 4 bloodstained mire (+1)
2 overgrown tomb, 1 watery grave, 1 blood crypt, 1 steam vents (+1), 0 breeding pool (-1)
1 swamp, 1 forest
4 street wraith, 4 mishra's bauble, 4 traverse the ulvenwald
4 death's shadow, 4 tarmogoyf, 1 snapcaster mage, 1 tasigur, the golden fang
4 thoughtseize, 2 inquisition of kozilek, 2 collective brutality
3 stubborn denial, 2 temur battle rage
3 fatal push, 1 nameless inversion, 1 abrupt decay, 2 dismember
Sideboard:
2 liliana, the last hope, 2 ancient grudge, 1 hurkyl's recall, 1 snapcaster mage, 1 scavenging ooze, 1 shriekmaw, 1 reclamation sage, 1 kozilek's return,
1 Engineered Explosives (+1), 1 Haze of Pollen (+1), 2 Leyline of the Void (+2), 1 Bojuka Bog (+1)
0 radiant flames (-1), 0 surgical extraction (-2), 0 hazoret the fervent (-1), 0 bontu's last reckoning (-1)
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Steam vents being freed up when we said goodbye to storm really improved the access to blue and red. So mana feels really good now.
I would prefer to have surgical than not, but affinity lacks any other fast out to grave stuff, so I am going back to leylines. Rather than play 3, however, I am hedging and playing a singleton bojuka bog, which can actually be pretty versatile, and is traversable, which is a big deal.
Hazoret is out because I just never wanted her in really. Originally she was meant to be extra power with indestructible and haste for midrange and tron, but I don't think I need her when I can play 8/8s for 1 mana and have tasigur to traverse for when push is a problem.
Haze of Pollen is obviously the most surprising card choice, but I was listening to the Turn One Thoughtseize podcast and they were discussing the usefulness of fogs against fast, aggressive, go-wide strategies. Bontu's was feeling very bad because it blew my creatures up too, and time walked me (ouch). So the next aggressive action taken would almost always be my opponent, kinda defeating the purpose of the sweep.
Pollen lets me blank an opponent's turn without sacrificing any creatures of my own, and death's shadow is particularly good on the crack-back (temur battle rage is really good, folks....).
I'm not 100% sure of this switch, but the element of surprise may very well win me at least one game, and cycling it when it's bad is a good hedge to my already hedged bet. I can also snap it back, even if I cycled it first, which can be a pretty sweet surprise itself.
Next weekend is GP Detroit. That's where we will see if all this brewing pays off.
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