Before War of the Spark, the Modern format of Magic: the Gathering was known for its stability. Fast forward two years, seven Standard-legal sets, and one straight-to-Modern set, and stability has gone out the window while the Modern landscape has been in a constant state of flux.
The Modern format is almost unrecognizable from this time last year.
The times have changed, but Grixis Death’s Shadow has not changed with them. In fact, a brief perusal of MTGtop8 results shows that the top variants of the deck did not change much at all between January 2019 and immediately prior to the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths.
During that time, the shell has stayed mostly the same: 4 Death’s Shadow, 4 Gurmag Angler, 4 Street Wraith, 3 Snapcaster Mage, 4 Thoughtseize, 2 Inquisition of Kozilek, 4 Stubborn Denial, some number of removal spells (4–6 depending on how creature heavy the meta is), 4 Thought Scour, 4 Mishra’s Bauble, 2 Temur Battle Rage, and 17–18 lands. Without making any changes to what many considered “essential” to the deck, we were only left with 2-4 flex spots for any number of The Royal Scions, Kolaghan’s Command, Serum Visions, and other spicy 1-of includes.
For awhile, the deck was “solved.” How far should we go in reimagining Grixis Death’s Shadow? First, we’ll have to answer a few essential questions.
Why Did Grixis Death’s Shadow Struggle?
Prior to the printing of Ikoria, the meta had been dominated for months by control and midrange decks. Grixis Death’s Shadow struggled—in rather epic fashion—in that meta. Longtime proponents of Grixis Death’s Shadow had been warning people away from the deck for at least weeks, if not months, prior to Ikoria, many of them citing the meta as the reason. Now that the Companion mechanic has been nerfed, the meta has mostly returned to its pre-Ikoria state. So you can expect more control, more midrange, and probably more struggles for GDS.
Grixis Death’s Shadow should be adapting, but instead, the traditional build of the deck has grown stale. It’s no longer helpful to reflect on old versions of the deck because, with the direction of the meta, it’s already fair to assume that the old versions will not fare well.
The deck is going through an identity crisis. It was built as an answer to combo decks, but there are not enough of those in the meta that we should consider sticking to any “tried and true” formula for the deck. In order to better answer the current Modern meta, now’s the time for rethinking the entire makeup of the deck.
What, Specifically, Wasn’t Working?
The deck can sometimes fall prey to an opening hand that just doesn’t do anything. In the “solved” version of the deck, the resources were distributed as such that it was difficult to find that perfect opening hand. In order to power out a turn 2 Gurmag Angler, you need exactly a Mishra’s Bauble, a Thought Scour, a fetch land, and either a Street Wraith or another fetch land. And if your opponent happens to bounce Angler back to your hand with Teferi, Time Raveler on turn 3, you might have just burned all your resources with nothing to show for it.
With a combined total of 8 threats, the deck often plays a protect-the-queen game plan. Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Stubborn Denial are a great help in this regard, but when the meta is dominated by midrange and control strategies, there is often too much removal and too many answers for us to handle all of it.
The other problematic feature of the deck was that there seemed to be two distinct sets of cards: one set that worked with Gurmag Angler and another that worked with Death’s Shadow. As mentioned, the Thoughts Scours and Mishra’s Baubles were central to the turn 2 Gurmag Angler plan. Likewise, Street Wraith and Thoughtseize were central to the Death’s Shadow plan. Thoughtseize looks a lot better in a Death’s Shadow hand, and Inquisition of Kozilek looks a lot better in a Gurmag Angler hand. The deck presents a number of opportunities for the wrong hand, the wrong top deck, and generally finding the wrong version of a card that you have another version of in your deck.
Maybe I haven’t made my feelings clear about Thought Scour, but there are a lot of things I do not like the card. From my perspective, our only options are to cut it or build around it in a meaningful way. Kroxa brings us a step closer to building around it, as does the remainder of Snapcaster Mage, but with so many 1- and 2-mana creatures in our deck, we could also include Unearth to make our graveyard synergy even stronger.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things I do not like about Street Wraith. Although it is a 5-mana 3/4 with Swampwalk, we almost never get to cast it as a threat (in fact, in 8 months of playing Grixis Death’s Shadow, I’ve never once cast it), which means that the only text we really care about is “Cycling: Pay 2 life.” Although this ability does enable the growth of a Death’s Shadow and also helps us dig for answers, Street Wraith otherwise doesn’t contribute to the game plan in a tangible way.
Thus, my conclusions for ways to improve the deck are 3-fold:
- More threats to withstand removal
- More protection for our threats
- A more cohesive and focused version of the deck, where every card contributes to a piece of the same general game plan
What Are Our Other Options for Shells?
As I alluded previously, we can make adjustments to the shell for Grixis Death’s Shadow, which opens up even more spots for adapting to the Modern meta.
Not happy that your Gurmag Angler gets bounced to your hand by Teferi, Time Raveler? Maybe try out Sprite Dragon instead. It is an evasive threat that gets bigger the longer it remains unanswered. Although it is 2 mana and starts off as a measly 1/1, it gets a +1/+1 counter for each noncreature spell we cast—and with no less than 26 noncreature spells in the deck, Sprite Dragon can get unruly in a hurry.
If Sprite Dragon is the threat of choice, then Dreadhorde Arcanist is the complementary piece that could make the most sense. With so many 1-mana instant and sorcery spells in the deck, there will almost always be viable targets to flash back for free, giving us access to even more resources to grow Sprite Dragon larger and larger each turn. Another benefit of Dreadhorde Arcanist and Sprite Dragon is that it allows for other cantrips besides Thought Scour; Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand become decidedly better when you’re flashing back spells at sorcery speed.
Perhaps you could live with exiling your graveyard to cast a Gurmag Angler only to see it returned to your hand, if only you could get some value out of it beforehand? Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger might be the threat for you. By forcing our opponent to discard a card every time Kroxa enters the battlefield or attacks, and forcing them to discard a spell under the threat of 3 damage to the face, Kroxa not only provides value each time we cast or escape it, but it also pairs particularly well with Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek. That synergy grows even stronger as the game wears on and the opponent’s hand size dwindles, increasing the chances that they’ll have to take 3 extra damage.
A Kroxa-based shell would lean toward a grindy deck that gets better as the game goes longer. Even better, Kroxa makes Thought Scour slightly better. After all, if we mill a Kroxa into the graveyard, we can always escape it later in the game.
I’m not sure which direction is better, but both Kroxa and Sprite Dragon are good enough on their own to split the space between them. If Sprite Dragon proves to be the far superior threat in my testing, it could be worth adding a couple Dreadhorde Arcanists and overhauling the rest of the build to maximize the synergy of the threats.
What about the Sideboard?
Make no mistake; the Modern meta is still shifting. Between our creature removal, our non-creature counters in Stubborn Denial, and our discard, we have a wide range of answers already. The only other concern is keeping enough other answers in our sideboard so that we can adjust our game plan according to our opponent. This means having enough creature removal to swap in for our Stubborn Denials and enough cards to swap in against decks that are light on creatures, where our removal will be dead draws.
Grixis Death’s Shadow has always been light on threats, but one strategy we’ve not seen recently is to run more threats in the sideboard. While we’re experimenting, we might as well try out some unique creatures here. I’ve always liked Lightning Skelemental for its trample and its crippling damage trigger that forces the opponent to discard two cards. Its role seems the strongest in the control matchup where the discard can be a significant help, forcing our opponent to either waste a counter or removal spell on it or suffer the consequence.
Otherwise, the sideboard still addresses most of the biggest problem decks in the format.
The List
The moment you’ve all been waiting for, here’s where I’ve landed with my current list.
I’ll be taking this list through another Modern webcam league in the PlayEternal Discord server, and I’ll share my findings here.
What do you think? Have I completely missed in my evaluation of any of the cards I added or cut? Am I a fool for even trying to play Grixis Death’s Shadow? In this economy?! Hit me up on Twitter @mtgfrenzy and let me hear it!
MTG Frenzy 