Berserk Shadow

[Thewhitedragon69]

So, as I noted, the biggest hesitancy for me is running a deck where bolt just kills you in response to winning. That got me thinking - what if you run BGW and 4x phyrexian unlife/4x angel's grace? Both of those cards are naturally amazeballs vs tendrils decks, so you get a nice bonus there. AG is essentially time walk vs all decks since most kill you on their turn and only at sorcery speed. White also lets you run Spirit of the Labyrinth, RiP, Leyline of Sanctity, etc, and is probably the best SB color around. With an unlife or grace, you can plunge for 60 to basically DT and guarantee you get berserk. You could probably even run ad nauseum as a plan B kill instead of other beatsticks. You also get anguished unmaking, which helps your DS plan. Shallow grave becomes a fine choice if you have no other creatures in the deck too.

TLDR; Death's Shadow is basically a suicide mission making him 10/10 in a world with bolts anyway - why not go full suicide and live with 0 life?

[John Cox]

@thewhitedragon69
You could say the same thing about doomsday or maybe even PO.
People have mentioned blue (for force of will) and using Thoughtseize in black. You want to win when its safe and not just throw out your win with no back up.
If your really worried about storm [[Hope of Ghirapur]] is a bit better than angel's grace since you can cast it off a ritual.
I think 8-12 protection spells are needed. Blue is nice since you can Plunge for a force if you have a blue card and the combo.

[Thewhitedragon69]

@john-cox Yeah, I'm a big fan of angel's grace. A lot of decks rely on counterspells when they try to go off. If you can just play a 1-mana, split-second "you don't win now" spell, you can straight up steal wins off DD or PO or whatever. At the worst, you time walk vs almost every deck for W.

Plunge is decent, but if you are playing AG or PU, you can run 4x spoils of the vault and just dig your whole library deep and win. You're in black for DS anyway, so you are surely running 8x duress/seize regardless. The PU and AG are just great combo enablers while also solid defense at the same time. If you go with a consultation and 4x Spoils with running AG, You could probably run thassa as an alt-kill yourself (if you get a viable 4-color manabase (and city/confluence/horizon lands seem to be on the "whittle down my life" plan that DS needs anyway).

Hope is okay as a combo enabler, but if I'm not misstaken, you need to attack with it to clear the path (which means you can't ALSO attack with an all-in DS). Hope also doesn't stop losing on your opponent's turn like PU or AG do.

[BlindTherapy]

@thewhitedragon69 said in Berserk Shadow:

4x phyrexian unlife/4x angel's grace? Both of those cards are naturally amazeballs vs tendrils decks, so you get a nice bonus there.

angel's grace is pretty bad against tendrils- the life loss still happens, they move to cleanup step and you die.

also generally using plunge or spoils of the vault in combination with grace requires that you be digging for the berserk effect, as you're all in on winning that turn and barring haste-giver need to have the shadow already in play.

[Thewhitedragon69]

@blindtherapy Yeah - misread AG. Thought your life couldn't go below 1, not just damage. Unlife still works. I'm actually tinkering with a deck now and it morphed into a Thassa/Doomsday/AG/Unlife/Spoils/Consultation deck. Basically Like a thassa/DD list, but with a lot of paths that don't require DD. It's pretty neat.

I tried to make it a DS/Berserk build, but it's just not good enough no matter what I've tried. It's a fragile two card combo that requires multiple turns and is super easy to stop. When compared to mox, orchard, oath; hermit druid; thassa, consult...it's just not where you want to be.

[vaughnbros]

Death’s Shadow isn’t really an early game combo card. I think if you are trying to play it that way, you are kind of playing it wrong.

It is a valuable mid game 1 drop in a deck with life loss cards. You want to look at the best cards that make you lose life, like Necropotence, Thoughtseize, Bob and Bolas’s Citadel. Dark Times was a deck list back in the day that easily could support these types of cards. Those lists can probably be updated to fit the metagame.

[nofuture]

I liked this idea enough to give it a few hours of thought and testing and came up with the following:

Vintage Combo Shadow

1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Black Lotus
4 Mox Diamond
1 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox

2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Bayou
3 Tarnished Citadel

4 Death's Shadow
4 Street Wraith

4 Berserk
1 Spoils of the Vault
4 Plunge into Darkness
4 Once Upon a Time
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mental Misstep
3 Tainted Strike
1 Snuff Out
1 Force of Vigor

1 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thoughtseize
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Land Grant
3 Reanimate

Sideboard

2 Gurmag Angler
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Force of Vigor
3 Veil of Summer
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Duress

As per the original idea the goal is to play Shadow as quickly as possible and then kill with it on your next turn.

Manabase: The goal was to consistently play a Shadow on turn two and win with it the next turn. To do this the deck needs two or three permanent sources of mana for the entire game but the earlier you can put them into play the more likely you are to play a shadow on pace. I went with only BG colors because while the blue cards are powerful, they don't really contribute to our turn three kill plan. Tarnished Citadel a card most people have likely not seen is the best land to put into play as it allows us to take three damage each time it is tapped, the two copies of Overgrown Tomb are there to both damage us and to be found by Land Grant and finally the singleton Bayou is for situations where we cannot afford to take damage, also a good land to pitch to Mox Diamond to slightly increase the chances we find a more painful land.

We play the on-color Moxen, Lotus and Lotus Petal as part and parcel of the Vintage fast mana package. Rounding out our acceleration is the full set of both Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond which while costly allow us to consistently cast our spells and convert unneeded pieces into mana. I would caution people picking up this pile from mindlessly playing out either Chrome or Diamond without considering what you gain from them as they are useful when the accelerate you into something meaningful but can be a trap if used without a purpose.

Finally, we have the playset of Land Grant and Once Upon a Time, these spells will help ensure that we find the lands we need and fix our opening hands. Pay attention to both the restriction on a free OUaT and Grant when assessing an opener, specifically you can use Street Wraith before casting OUaT to gain more information and can use Mox Diamondwe in addition to your land drop for the turn to ensure that Grant is free.

Lifeloss and Utility: To Play a Shadow on turn two or sooner we need to be able to lose at least eight life in those turns, and to kill we will usually need to lose 17 or more life. To do this, profitably, we have a number of cards that both disrupt our opponents (Thoughtseize), cycle to find our own combo pieces or provide mana for ours spells. Street Wraith does double duty as a cycler to find what we need and pinging us for two, it is also good good friends with Reanimate as cycling a Wraith then brining it back puts us to 13, just one life away from being able to cast a Shadow. It is also important to note that Wraith attacks for three which can be an important part of dealing 20 damage and winning the game. As I mentioned earlier, Tarnished Citadelis one of our best ways to lose life, if we land it on turn one we can hit ourselves for nine by the time we are killing, it is a good idea to play it early and tap it aggressively. Tomb does something similar but only once, and is a necessary evil to support the Land Grant. Plunge, Vamp, Imperial Seal and Spoils are all very similar for our purposes as they are going to find a missing piece of our combo and lose us some life along the way. Vamp is the best for pure tutoring while Plunge gives us the most control over out life total. Finally, we have our two 'blue' cards in Misstep and Git Probe both of which are too good not to play and a way to lose some life and gain some value. Snuff Out has been fine for me, you could easily replace it with an Unmask or a Surgical in the main.

Combo: This part is fairly simple, we have the full four Shadows and Berserks as well as three additional similar effects in Tainted Strike. Remember that you can double up on Berserks and even combine it with a Strike if your life total is too high.

Conclusions

This deck functions as advertised, it plays a Shadow on turn two or earlier and kills on turn three or earlier when it isn't disrupted. It loses to itself infrequently (missing on Spoils or something similar) and certainly feels unique. That said it doesn't hold up well to disruption, lots of the Xerox decks are going to overpower a single discard spell and counter our Shadow. PO has been a coinflip in my experience, on the play you are fast enough to beat them and a single discard spell is often good enough. Shops is better that it would appear and usually they will need a good hand to keep up. BUG is unwinnable.

Play this deck for the novelty, I would say that the above list is a good start if you want a very combo oriented version, but do not expect to run the table.

As ever I am happy to talk theory and testing with anyone who is interested in the list or the logic that got me there.

[BlindTherapy]

my first thought on seeing the list is that 14 hits seems pretty low to be running Once Upon A Time. land grant is also probably worse than just playing fetchlands, as those let you lose more life. 4 mox diamond in a deck with only 6 lands+4 land grant is extremely questionable.

[Serracollector]

I would play Unearth over Reanimate as the 1 life loss to reanimate the Shadow is less relevant than being able to cycle unearth when it's not needed, and they both cost 1 mana. Also, this is just preference, but I like having Dark Rituals and the BBB draw 4 lose half your life spells over some of your loss of life tutors.

[BlindTherapy]

@serracollector reanimate isn't just for shadow. in addition to the opponent's creatures, you can cycle street wraith and then reanimate it, getting to lose a full 5 life.

[John Cox]

@blindtherapy said in Berserk Shadow:

@serracollector reanimate isn't just for shadow. in addition to the opponent's creatures, you can cycle street wraith and then reanimate it, getting to lose a full 5 life.

7 life if you count the cycle!

[Serracollector]

Cruel Bargain and Nefarious Contract get you there a lot faster. Maybe I just like drawing cards too much

[BlindTherapy]

@serracollector 2nd legacy deck i ever played was Pact Spanish Inquisition. postboard i cast a 12/12 shadow off a tomb of urami, then stared at my opponent for a few turns as they failed to draw a bolt but eventually drew a 2nd creature while my 2nd shadow was stranded in hand due to the land costing life.
also i think it's Infernal Contract, only "Nefarious" is the Lich, which is its own interesting combo deck

[nofuture]

Okay so in order @BlindTherapy the number of hits is fairly low you are correct, but the opportunity cost of running OUaT is even lower based on my testing. I tried fetchlands and found that they are much weaker than you would anticipate, losing three life one off just isn't good enough and they cannot be found by Grant. I would play the fourth copy of Citadel and at least two copies of Nurturing Peatland before adding any fetches.

The last point against fetches is that this deck really wants to bottom cards and not shuffle unless it is tutoring out an important piece explicitly. Plunge and Spoils both really care about that and a bottom 5 that doesn't find a land or creature is more okay with the overall plan than it would seem.

The Mox Diamonds are again a fairly low opportunity cost and they are actually most important for their ability to turn a the second land in your hand into a permanent mana source and possibly turn on the free mode of Grant.

@Serracollector The Unearth vs. Reanimate thing is exactly as Therapy explained. Additionally, this is not a Dark Rit. deck, you really don't want to play rit when you can't win on the spot and since we are using a creature as a wincon we don't really get to win the turn we go off. We need permanent mana sources because we will have to take 2-3 turns each game and often what we do with that mana changes drastically with new information. Like should we cast rit turn one to fuel a lot of lifeloss to land an earlier shadow only to be unable to cast a tutor or plunge on the turn when we could attack.

The reasons for omitting the BBB draw fours are similar we don't often have BBB + additional mana to use the cards we find with them on the same turn so they end up slowing down the deck by nearly a whole turn.

[A Former User]

I was told someone posted a deck with six lands and four Mox Diamond and had to see for myself because I didn't believe them.