Death's Shadow Decks

I have used Death's Shadow in the cube before in a number of different applications. He is rather naughty with Varolz in a niche synergy kind of brew. It is also just a good card for Necropotence style decks. The former is not something that happens often by any means nor is it possible in mine, or most other peoples drafting cubes. The latter used to be good but has been struggling to keep up for quite some time now. Despite being aware of the strength's of Death's Shadow I have never built a deck any thing like the various iterations of it that are dominating modern. That being said, most of the good versions of Death's Shadow in modern are already tier one cube archetypes just without the actual Death's Shadow component. Grixis lists look a lot like the Delver/delve decks that do very well in cube. Jund Death's Shadow lists look a lot like a good Jund list and so forth.

It is very easy to convert a number of archetypes into a Death's Shadow deck with very few changes, not even needing any niche and narrow things other than the Shadow itself in most cases. The issues faced by this strategy are mostly that all the lists have a huge demand on some of the very best cards from multiple colours and need amazing mana bases. You really need a lot of the best one drops to make this sort of thing work and obviously they are some of the most contested cards. There is a decent amount of redundancy in the non-black one drops you need but far less so in the two drops where you really want high powered exclusive stuff. All told it will be very hard to get an optimal list in a sealed or draft situation. That is probably fine though, there is plenty of back cards, these are all very potent decks to begin with and the Death's Shadow package is generally pretty broken. Or is it?

So yeah, that is the second big issue with Death's Shadow in cube. It is far less effective than it is in modern. Cube is a bit more diverse than modern, decks tend to do a bit more of everything. In modern you know what things might kill you if you drop to various low life counts. In cube so very many things will threaten to kill you if you do too much self hurt that the card is a whole lot riskier. It doesn't mean it can't be good but it means you need to be safer or more proactive when using it.

One thing that is very nice about these lists in cube is that they are themed on fat vanilla dorks. Between Goyf, Angler, Tasigur and the Shadow you are looking at a 1.25 mana 5/5 or so on average, which needless to say is pretty good! Fat vanilla dorks are typically rather uninteresting in cube, Goyf for example is far less interesting and played in cube than in constructed. When you have a deck with a critical mass of such cards you can start to play to that strength a lot more.

I have given three example lists of how I would roughly look to build this deck in what I deem to be the best three tri-colour pairings for the deck. White is a viable addition but it is bland and boring and brings less support to the table than the others. Two colour is likely viable too but will be a lot more restricting. Without the third colour it is harder to look like the constructed decks. I have tried not to be too greedy with these builds (and it doesn't look like it at all...) as they already have such a high demand on loads of top picks in across multiple colours. Not forgetting these lists will all need amazing mana bases to support them as well!

I have also tried to include relatively few niche cards that are seldom found in drafting cubes. Such cards are there but they are very replaceable and serve mostly to show which are the best of the rarer cards. One recurring issue I did find was that I typically wanted more delve cards than I felt I could sensibly support. More than two delve cards starts to get risky and clunky. Especially when this is potential for negative synergy with delirium or other things trying to utilize the yard. The black core of each deck remained very similar. While rounding out the lists I found each looked very weak to swarm strategies and found myself ramming in a mass removal option.


Sultai List

25 Spells

Death's Shadow
Deathrite Shaman
Fatal Push
Inquisition of Kozilek

Thoughtsieze
Thoughtscour
Stubborn Denial
Gitaxian Probe

Traverse the Ulvenwald
Vampiric Tutor
Serum Visions
Birds of Paradise

Collective Brutality
Snapcaster Mage
Dark Confidant
Abrupt Decay

Tarmogoyf
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Satyr Wayfinder
Grapple with the Past

Baleful Strix (or Coiling Oracle  as fine backup)

Pernicious Deed / Toxic Deluge

Snuff Out

Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Treasure Cruise

15 Lands


Grixis List

25 Spells

Death's Shadow
Fatal Push
Inquisition of Kozilek
Thoughtsieze

Thoughtscour
Stubborn Denial
Gitaxian Probe
Vampiric Tutor

Lightning Bolt
Claim / Fame (Hour of Devastation new card!)
Brainstorm
Delver of Secrets

Serum Visions

Collective Brutality
Snapcaster Mage
Dark Confidant
Jace, Vryn's Prodigy

Dreadbore
Daze
Looter il-Kor

Dismember
Kholgan's Command
Toxic Deluge

Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Gurmag Angler

15 Lands


A Jund List

25 Spells

Death's Shadow
Deathrite Shaman
Fatal Push
Inquisition of Kozilek

Thoughtsieze
Faithless Looting
Traverse the Ulvenwald
Vampiric Tutor

Lightning Bolt
Elves of Deepshadow
Claim / Fame
Forked Bolt

Collective Brutality
Dark Confidant
Abrupt Decay
Dreadbore

Tarmogoyf
Satyr Wayfinder
Grapple with the Past
Night's Whisper

Kolghan's Command

Umezawa's Jitte

Street Wraith

Gurmag Angler
Tasigur, the Golden Fang

15 Lands


Of these three lists the Grixis list looks best but mostly for mana base reasons. It has a very light dependency on red compared to the other lists on their third colours. For the Sultia or Jund lists to perform you are really going to need to see all three colours in your opening hand. I think all the lists work well and have a good range of things you can put in them or replace things you wanted with. A lot of these feel like you could stick in an Emrakul, the Promised End theme in them and it would work well and offer good overlap. A 13/13 theming! Some notable cards that you can make work or run to good effect in these lists includes Force of Will, Liliana of the Veil, Dack Fayden, Reanimate and even Berserk! I think blue offers more good support for filling up yards efficiently than the other colours. It isn't that Serum Visions is better than Faithless Looting or Satyr Wayfinder, the issue is that red and green have far less of those kinds of cards than blue does. If you don't play blue you are at risk of not getting sufficient support. The Jund Shadow list looks good but it might just end up being a less powerful or less consistent version of conventional Jund. Perhaps even both! Certainly it is the list that I think would benefit most from the Emrakul theme.

Cards like the new Claim / Fame, Grapple with the Past, Kolaghan's Command and the various tutors are all very important in these lists. They both help find and reuse your Death's Shadow which is pretty important when a lot of your deck is based around abusing one card. You are still pretty soft against exile removal and something like a Spellskite might be a needed solution to that. While you do have other fatties none are as scary as the Shadow!

Running lifegain may also seem like a bad plan but I feel in the cube having some control over things and some built in buffer should things not go to plan is fairly wise. A mild option to top your self up on life here and there will greatly increase the safety of all your lifecost cards.

All these lists look very strong and I would expect them to perform well against pretty much everything in cube excepting burn decks. That being said, these decks don't look wildly realistic to get very often regardless of the format in which you are using your cube in. I also don't think that the relatively narrow Death's Shadow adds enough to these kinds of deck to merit a cube slot or restricting yourself so much in the build. The less cards you get to discard things the worse your delve and delirium cards are, the less you can pay life the less good and less control you have over the shadow. As you cut away any of these elements you fail to support you lose critical mass on your fatties and as such they lose value as a game plan.