Ah, Modern. A format I’ve grown to love over the six years it’s existed, through the early combo era, Deathrite Shaman, Birthing Pod, Splinter Twin, Treasure Cruise, Eldrazi Winter, and the most recent Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll bans. Now, the big dogs in the format are Eldrazi Tron and Death's Shadow, which are basically Legacy-lite decks (Colorless Eldrazi and Grixis Delver, respectively). I was determined to play one of these great decks, but the decision for which one to play was a close one, to say the least. Jacob and I ran through a few MTGO Leagues with Colorless Eldrazi to reasonable, but uninspiring finishes, and we crashed and Burned against a pile of Lava Spikes with ol’ Grixis Death's Shadow. In this case, I did what any reasonable human would do. I punted the decision to the player on the team with the most Pro Tour success, and when Jacob said to just play Death's Shadow and enjoy myself, I was all-too-relieved to enthusiastically accept his decision. Here’s the list we ended up playing, to a personal record of 4-1.

Grixis Death?s Shadow ? Modern | Ben Friedman

• Creatures (15)
• 2 Gurmag Angler
• 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 3 Street Wraith
• 4 Death's Shadow
• 4 Snapcaster Mage

• Instants (17)
• 2 Kolaghan's Command
• 2 Opt
• 2 Terminate
• 3 Stubborn Denial
• 4 Fatal Push
• 4 Thought Scour

• Sorceries (10)
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 4 Serum Visions
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Lands (18)
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Steam Vents
• 2 Blood Crypt
• 2 Watery Grave
• 3 Scalding Tarn
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Liliana of the Veil
• 2 Collective Brutality
• 2 Kozilek's Return
• 2 Ceremonious Rejection
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 1 Stubborn Denial
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Temur Battle Rage

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The deck performed well, with hyper-consistent draws and the potential for some truly busted starts involving multiple discard spells into multiple one-mana fatties while holding up a 1-mana Negate and a Snapcaster Mage to put the nail in the coffin. Oddly enough, the seemingly-busted Street Wraith was the easy cut when it came to sideboarding against most decks, as the card is worse when the games slow down. Not only is it a bad topdeck a lot of the time, but your opponent will frequently damage you as the game progresses, and you often have no problem getting your Death's Shadow to at least a 4/4 (which is all you need for Stubborn Denial!) Add that to the fact that most opponents will kill Death's Shadow on sight, and you have a card that might even drop down to a 2-of in the main in order to push a sideboard card to the main and open up an extra slot. A maindeck Temur Battle Rage, Liliana of the Veil, or fourth Stubborn Denial are all options, as those are the most universally applicable cards.

Grixis Death's Shadow was a pleasure to play, although it takes a good bit of practice to get used to many of the common opening sequences and learn the general guidelines for what hands to keep and mulligan. I recommend it to anyone looking to increase their skill, as it takes a lot of focus to walk the tightrope of death while attempting to kill the opponent one turn before they’d do you in.

But enough about the Modern version. Let’s talk about the fully-powered Legacy Delver deck, which Jacob got to play against Miracles, Elves, Colorless Eldrazi, and Sneak and Show. We argued for quite a while about some of the specific choices, but Jacob had the final say with his inimitable quote, “I will show you the power of Stifle against those who do not respect it.” With a supervillain-esque pronouncement like that, who was I to argue that Stifle was too high-variance? Here’s the list we agreed on:

Grixis Delver ? Legacy | Jacob Wilson

• Creatures (14)
• 1 Snapcaster Mage
• 1 True-Name Nemesis
• 2 Gurmag Angler
• 2 Young Pyromancer
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Delver of Secrets

• Instants (20)
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Daze
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Stifle

• Sorceries (8)
• 4 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Ponder

• Lands (18)
• 1 Tropical Island
• 2 Volcanic Island
• 3 Underground Sea
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Polluted Delta
• 4 Wasteland

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Surgical Extraction
• 2 Diabolic Edict
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Forked Bolt
• 2 Cabal Therapy
• 1 Kolaghan's Command
• 1 Ancient Grudge
• 2 Pyroblast
• 1 Snapcaster Mage

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The sideboard for Legacy Grixis Delver has truly become a free-for-all, with cards as disparate as Dread of Night, Flusterstorm, Invasive Surgery, Darkblast, Sylvan Library, Submerge, Painful Truths, Liliana, the Last Hope, Fire Covenant, Winter Orb, Pithing Needle, and Grafdigger's Cage making the cut. It’s beautiful, in a way, that there are about fifty different unique cards that all see legitimate play as one- or two-ofs in the sideboard of such a ubiquitous deck. It just goes to show that there is still a ton of innovating going on in Legacy, where small sideboard shifts dramatically change the deck’s composition and strategy against huge swaths of the format.

Jacob, as a longtime Delver aficionado who has a dramatically different take on how the deck should operate compared to me, had the following feedback after taking the deck through its paces. “Remarkably, I wanted to draw lots of Snapcaster Mages to have something to do with my mana. I didn’t find Young Pyromancer to be particularly meaningful, and I traded it off with glee multiple times.”

Hmm . . .  more Snapcaster Mages, you say? Now you have my attention. The deck can use Stifle as a proactive disruption spell against combo decks and the fragile mana base of Four-Color Leovold, but Young Pyromancer is frequently not a fast enough clock against combo or a sturdy enough threat against control. It seems like no matter what I do, no matter who I talk to, I just can’t quit Snapcaster Mage. If I end up playing Grixis Snapcaster Delver at a Grand Prix soon, it might look something like this:

Grixis Delver ? Legacy| Ben Friedman

• Creatures (14)
• 1 True-Name Nemesis
• 2 Gurmag Angler
• 3 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Deathrite Shaman
• 4 Delver of Secrets

• Instants (20)
• 1 Dismember
• 3 Stifle
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Daze
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 Lightning Bolt

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Forked Bolt
• 3 Gitaxian Probe
• 4 Ponder

• Lands (14)
• 1 Tropical Island
• 2 Volcanic Island
• 3 Underground Sea
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Surgical Extraction
• 2 Diabolic Edict
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte
• 1 Kolaghan's Command
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 3 Thoughtseize
• 2 Pyroblast

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The sideboard cards first up on the chopping block are, of course, the third Thoughtseize and the second Ancient Grudge. Are three artifact removal spells really necessary? And is Thoughtseize the correct card to play to disrupt combo considering Stifle works at cross-purposes with Thoughtseize a lot of the time? These are the questions that need to be answered before Team Grand Prix Santa Clara, and there’s only one way to answer them: lots and lots of play-testing!

Speaking of play-testing (and of the desire to shove more Snapcaster Mage-type effects in every deck), Rob Pisano didn’t drop a match all day in Standard, winning with Torrential Gearhulks and The Scarab God against a number of his control and Energy opponents. He used Gerry Thompson’s list from the World Championship, after extensive analysis of the metagame results from the tournament. To be fair, there were only three major archetypes represented in that tournament, but Control apparently mopped the floor with Temur Energy, which wiped up most of the Red decks, and didn’t even appear that far behind against the strategically advantaged aggressive strategy. Rob played against Approach a number of times, using Duresses to great effect, and he managed to avoid Red all day (in fact, not one of us played against a single Red aggro deck in all fifteen matches!) It seems like we have a fairly clear metagame in front of us, with Temur, Four-Color, and Sultai Energy in one corner, and Approach control in another, and Mono-Red perched coolly in the third. Of course, there are Grixis Improvise and God-Pharaoh's Gift decks waiting on the sidelines for the right metagame to come along, but the most obvious decks for the upcoming Pro Tour in Albuquerque are right here in front of us, leading up to the most egalitarian Pro Tour in years.

What do I mean, “egalitarian”? Well, the deal for the last several years has been that Pro Tours are tied to new set releases. In Standard, that means that every Pro Tour exhibits a brand-new format, rewarding the teams that put in massive amounts of work over the regular Joes who have to show up with yesterday’s tech. Sure, when there are a few SCG Opens in the intervening weeks between set release and Pro Tour, there are a few clues to help folks feel their way into a format, but often the best decks break out in the hands of members of the various super teams, leaving first-time PT players kicking the dirt and scowling.

That’s not happening this time. If you are qualified for this Pro Tour and don’t have a team to test with, there is no excuse. It’s time to hit MTGO hard. You have all the tools, a metagame is developing in front of you, and if you aren’t there taking advantage of this blessing, you have no one to blame but yourself. Brad Nelson wins so much at Standard because he plays a lot of Standard. Huey Jensen just won Worlds because he, Reid Duke, and Owen Turtenwald spent the better part of the last month working together for hours upon hours to figure out every last iteration of every possible combination of cards for Standard, while drafting to cool down. What happens when you chase an eight-hour session of Standard grinding with back-to-back booster drafts? You succeed. This is what Peach Garden Oath does, and it’s part of why they are so successful. Do the work, get in the reps, and get rewarded. Even a short local tournament like our team event last weekend provides tons of insight, and there’s no replacement for actual competitive play with a legitimate prize on the line. There are formats out there waiting to be broken, and not enough time to break them all, so this is the time to put in the practice that will pay off for the whole upcoming season.

Best of luck!