A young man is sitting with his back to a wall. He is playing the most important game of Magic he has probably ever played and he has spent his life preparing to be able to play in games like this.

It is the semifinals of Grand Prix Toronto.

A number of this man's best friends have come with him north of the border and are convinced that he is about to be sent home. They've all been knocked out of plenty of major competitions before, but the game isn't over yet. Things don't look good, but all is not lost.

The man is Michael Rapp. His back is to the wall both figuratively and literally. His friends know what is about to hit him, but they have no idea what cards are in his hand.

This is why we play Magic, but I am getting ahead of myself.

My name is Stephen Johnson. Every Tuesday night I head to my local game store to play Commander with a bunch of friends I've gotten to know over the past few years. Those nights are the "casual" nights. On Saturdays in our Commander league we bring it up a notch and play for a much bigger prize - bragging rights. I've gone out of my way to try to keep the local Commander scene from getting too competitive, but most of us have an appreciation for strong play and competitive players.

Building a community is important to me, and the Magic community around NexGen Comics in Pelham, New Hampshire has been wonderful to watch come together. We have different nights for different formats, so the Commander players may overlap with the Standard, Limited, and Modern players, but we are generally all rooting for each other - especially when one of the local players has a good showing on a big stage.

If a local pro player like Kevin Della Grotte, Jake Haversat, Zac Turgeon, Dylan Murphy, or Jon Orr makes day two of a major event or has one of their games featured on the stream from a Grand Prix (now MagicFest), many of the store's regular players take notice. Our EDH League plays on Saturdays so us filthy casuals were excited to see Greg Caldwell have a 6-0 start at Star City Games Open in mid-January. Greg's a great guy and even won a month of our Commander League back in June of 2016 so most of us had played with him and had good reason to cheer him on.

Earlier this month the entire NexGen Magic community was thrilled to hear that local Modern player Michael Rapp had managed to live the dream.

Michael not only made day two of MagicFest Toronto, but actually won it!

Normally I write about Commander every Monday here on CoolStuffInc.com. My familiarity with Modern is passing at best, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to sit down with Michael and ask him about how he got into Magic, the deck he piloted to victory and his experience at Magicfest Toronto.

Meet Michael Rapp

Michael has been a part of the NexGen community since his previous "home store" closed up shop. He actually first played Magic around the time of Urza's Saga, at the early age of five or six years old. In his youth he played casually until just over 10 years later around Zendikar block when he first started going to FNMs.

His first Grand Prix (now MagicFest) was GP Richmond in 2013. He didn't win. Over the years he was able to "10-5" a few GPs, but Toronto was his first really strong finish. Winning MF Toronto is the culmination of a lifetime of preparation and while a few of his close friends have already punched their ticket to compete in Mythic Championship I in Cleveland, Michael was really happy to have secured an invitation "across the pond" to Mythic Championship II in London at the end of April.

His preferred formats are Modern and Legacy, but today we're going to take a closer look at how he wound up with his back against the wall in Toronto, Canada.

Grixis Death's Shadow

Grixis Death's Shadow was Michael Rapp's deck at MagicFest Toronto.

The deck is like a weird balancing act. It's similar to a Delver deck with undercosted but powerful threats and a game plan to trade life for tempo. Fetchlands and shocklands are important in Modern but they cost you life. Lots of decks try to avoid life loss or try to fetch on the opponent's end step, but Death's Shadow uses these lands to its advantage.

The deck's namesake is a 1 CMC creature who has a base 13 power and toughness but which gets -X/-X where X is your life total. The basic goal is to get your life total low enough to make Death's Shadow a legitimate threat on the battlefield but naturally not so low that you are in danger of losing the game.

The deck runs Street Wraith, which lets you pay 2 life to discard it and draw a card. For removal it runs Dismember, which has a casting cost with two phrexian Black mana symbols, so you can pay 0, 2 or 4 life when you cast it to give target creature -5/-5 until end of turn. It also runs Thoughtseize, which forces a player to discard and will cost you 2 life.

At this point Michael started to talk about how his deck came into being.

His train of thought betrayed an incredibly deep knowledge not only of the format but of the many twists and turns that Modern has been through over the years. He spoke to me specifically about his deck but I came away from the conversation feeling like he could probably have gone into nearly as much detail about a wide variety of other decks in the format.

A History Lesson

Grixis Death's Shadow didn't come out of nowhere.

According to Michael, it took a long time to get figured out in Modern. The deck's namesake is from Worldwake and for a long time it was just dismissed. You could play Jund decks with Dark Confidant and Tarmogoyf but there was no Death's Shadow deck yet.

A few years ago someone came up with a Zoo deck that ran a bunch of colors and forced players to play a lot of fetch lands to be able to get the colors they needed. When those decks were forcing players to pay their life down to let their lands enter untapped, a card like Death's Shadow became much more attractive.

In Michael's experience, Death's Shadow would usually be between a 4/4 and a 6/6 when you would play it. That was when Gitaxian Probe was legal, so you could have an extra spell with a Phyrexian cost in the deck to draw you a card, help fuel your delve spells, pay your life down and let you play your Death's Shadow.

A few months after Zoo was very popular, Gitaxian Probe was banned. Some players figured that Death's Shadow would no longer be played. The evolution of this deck went to a version where you would play Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf and a Jund shell with Dismembers, Thoughtseizes and Street Wraiths. You would search up your major threats with Traverse the Ulvenwald. That deck struggled as the meta moved toward combo, and people started splashing Blue for Stubborn Denial.

At that point Death's Shadow players started experimenting with adding in Snapcaster Mage and moved the deck from Jund into Grixis. Grixis Shadow was popular for four to six months and then along with the printing of Unclaimed Territory, the humans deck rose in popularity. Humans has a good matchup against Death's Shadow as it can play 4 copies of Reflector Mage. When your primary threats are Death's Shadow and Gurmag Angler, Reflector Mage is very powerful.

Coming into MagicFest Toronto, the Izzet Phoenix decks had been growing in popularity and have a very good humans matchup. Izzet Phoenix is a good Death's Shadow matchup, so with the rise of Phoenix pushing Humans down it seemed to Michael like it was a good time for DS to come back.

The Death's Shadow deck doesn't have many atrocious matchups but also doesn't have many great matchups. According to Michael, it wins around 55% of games against the field. When you look at deck win percentages, 55-60% is very good. Over 57-62% is where action might be taken against the deck by Wizards, so Grixis Death's Shadow seemed like it was in a good place to be able to compete. When Krark-Clan Ironworks was in the format it had 62% win rate so Wizards had to do something and "KCI" found itself on the banlist.

Apparently it is commonly said that you can't prepare for Modern because you can wind up playing against anything. According to Michael, if you play a lot of Modern you can notice trends within the format. In the lead up to Toronto, Michael noticed a shift in the meta. He plays Modern once or twice a week at NexGen, plays on MTGO a few times a week, and he is constantly looking at results from events. Looking at all the available data and looking for trends is part of how he prepares and this time he thought he was seeing a lot of Chalice of the Void and decks playing Lava Spikes - Mono-Red Phoenix and Burn decks.

All of this was what led Michael to decide to run Grixis Death's Shadow at MagicFest Toronto.

He had been going to every major event within a reasonable driving distance from his home north of Boston and had been coming off of a six week streak of playing every weekend. He hit New Jersey, Worcester, and Baltimore. His participation had ramped up significantly, as had his preparation.

Michael isn't alone, of course.

Hundreds of players put the same amount of effort into trying to compete at the highest level of Modern play, and that number included the small group of close friends gathered behind the rope divider watching as he was about to stare down a small but lethal flight of Phoenixes in the third game of his semifinal round at MagicFest Toronto.

The Moment

Michael Rapp's back was against the wall.

In Game 1 against Izzet Phoenix he had met a swift end against a starting hand with multiple Phoenixes. Sudden aggression can be tough when you're trying to balance your life total with your tempo and you haven't had the chance to sideboard any answers you might need.

Michael was able to win Game 2, and now it was Game 3.

He was at 8 life and had a 5/5 Death's Shadow in play.

His opponent, Kale Thompson, was at somewhere around 15 life.

Kale cast a Faithless Looting, discarding a Phoenix. Mike figured they would put a Phoenix in play on that turn. He could race a Phoenix, so his opponent would probably have to hold it back to block.

Mike's opponent cast Opt, drew what must have been Thought Scour and cast it.g

The two cards that went into the graveyard?

Two more Arclight Phoenixes.

The onlookers saw the writing on the wall. Three flying 3/2 attackers with haste were about to send Michael Rapp home.

His opponent moved to combat and declared his three Phoenix triggers.

The triggers went on the stack but Michael had a response.

He cast Surgical Extraction, targeting one of the Phoenixes in the graveyard, and his friends erupted. In Michael's words, they "went nuts".

They were sure he was done for. Mike won the game, went on to the finals and was able to go 2-0 against Jaxon Flannagan's Artifact Prison deck for the MagicFest Toronto championship.

These are the moments we all strive for. When I asked Michael if there was a moment or a play from all of the games at MagicFest Toronto that he would remember and keep with him for the rest of his life, he said it was watching his friends erupt in exultation at seeing that he had the right answer at just the right time.

It was a pleasure to talk with Michael and I hope I have faithfully related everything he shared with me. This article wouldn't be complete without a look at his deck.

The Decklist

Grixis Death's Shadow - Modern | Michael Rapp, First Place Magicfest Toronto 2019

• Creatures (15)
• 3 Snapcaster Mage
• 4 Death's Shadow
• 4 Gurmag Angler
• 4 Street Wraith

• Instants (16)
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Temur Battle Rage
• 4 Fatal Push
• 4 Stubborn Denial
• 4 Thought Scour

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 2 Inquisition of Kozilek
• 2 Serum Visions
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Artifacts (3)
• 3 Mishra's Bauble

• Lands (17)
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 1 Steam Vents
• 2 Blood Crypt
• 2 Scalding Tarn
• 2 Watery Grave
• 4 Bloodstained Mire
• 4 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Ceremonious Rejection
• 2 Collective Brutality
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 1 Grim Lavamancer
• 1 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound
• 1 Kolaghan's Command
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Liliana of the Veil
• 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
• 1 Shattering Blow
• 3 Surgical Extraction

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Final thoughts

As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Michael if there was anything else he wanted me to share with my readers.

He admitted that it had been a surreal whirlwind of a week after winning in Toronto, but that two thoughts stayed with him.

One was an answer he had to the question of how to approach the Modern format.

The other is the mantra he kept with him when he would be asked how to deal with continuing to be undefeated as the weekend went on.

If you've enjoyed today's column, you should know that our discussion also touched upon some topics much nearer and dearer to my heart than Modern. I normally write about Commander and I shared everything I learned about Commander Cube from Michael in a separate article under my usual Commanderruminations header.

Thanks for reading!