pie chart

Esper Shadows - Plunge into Death!

Modern Aggro Combo Competitive Jank WUB (Esper)

icehit6

Edit Live Edit
Edit
Upvote 0
0
Deckcycle Feature Queue
Feature Queue
Playtest v1
Similar Deck Space Card Recommendations

Land (19)

Instant (15)

Enchantment (2)

Sorcery (13)

Creature (11)

Sideboard

Instant (8)

Sorcery (3)

Enchantment (2)

Creature (1)

Artifact (1)

Plunge into Death

Since the rules changing on Death's Shadow and negative life, this deck has taken a little bit of a hit. For those who don't know, the deck's original idea had a little combo that allowed me to go into negative life and one shot people with Death's Shadow. Surprisingly, it worked quite a bit.

Here was the combo:

Hand - 3 Street Wraith, 2 Fetchlands/Shocklands, Death's Shadow, Angel's Grace

Turn 1 - Start with cycling all three Street Wraith, bringing you down to 14 life. You NEED to draw a Spoils of the Vault. Next, play a fetch/shockland, netting a source of black, playing Death's Shadow. You'll either be at 11 or 12 life, so either one works.

Turn 2 - Play another fetch or shock land with a white source. Swing at opponent. If they do not block, you can cast Angel's Grace and then Spoils of the Vault naming (insert card not in the deck), going to negative life, buffing Death's Shadow. Angel's Grace prevents you from losing the game, and since they didn't block, you win with lethal damage on turn 2.

Since those days are over though, and I already own the deck in paper, I need to make it competitive again. However, I want to keep the same idea.

It's not going to pull off insane turn two wins anymore (which did happen to me at one Friday Night Magic by the way, so it was possible), rather it is going to be a very effective beatdown control deck that can still win turn 3 potentially.

The only thing that is changing in the deck is 2 Angel's Grace are going to the sideboard, and 2 Phyrexian Unlife are going mainboard.

What does this do? Well, the Angel's Graces are in there as an "oh shit." They're going to enable me to stay alive in sticky situations when I'm playing with ridiculously low life. Angel's Grace as well shut down a LOT of combos, so it's an extremely effective card to run mainboard. Think of it as a timewalk.

Phyrexian Unlife is in the mainboard to ensure safety. I noticed a lot of times while playing that I wasn't able to use Spoils of the Vault to its full effect because of life constraints. And Angel's Grace only lasts one turn, so it's incredibly risky fetching for something in your deck when you have no idea where it is. Phyrexian Unlife ensures that if I fetch something (at instant speed by the way), I wont die. So lets say I need a Stubborn Denial to respond instantly. Now I can fetch without having to worry about dying. Same goes for any piece of removal, and it makes Death's Shadow a 13/13. Overall a highly effective card, and definitely neccessary now that the negative life trick doesn't work anymore.

The color combo is still very strong I believe. Putting in blue allows me to run Serum Visions, Snapcaster Mage, and Stubborn Denial, which are all extremely powerful cards. Overall, this deck is super fun to play, and it has a lot of cool tricks up it's sleeve with life loss, creature removal, and creature protection.

Let me know what you think and check out my other competitive builds if you'd like! Most notably my elf deck :)

Selesnya Elves of the Sun

Storm is the new Splinter Twin

Competitive Infect

Suggestions

Updates Add

After more testing... — May 5, 2017
Edit

So I've been playing some games online with this deck on untap.in - for those of you who don't know it's a free platform to play magic games online.

In testing, this deck is actually surprisingly competitive even with the janky combo in there. As with every deck, it has really good match-ups and really rough match-ups.

Seemingly good match-ups: Storm, elves, goblins, burn, Griselbrand, Bloomless titan

Even match-ups: Infect, Merfolk, Dredge

Really bad match-ups: Any type of control, Eldrazi, Jund/Junk

As for the good match-ups, they seem to make a lot of sense. A lot of the time, my wins didn't actually come from using the combo (as expected), however when I did win from using the combo, it came at the most unexpected times.

For example, in a game against a mono-green stompy, I was down to four life, had three cards in hand, and my opponent had 20 life. It was turn 6. I was trying to stall as much as possible (thanks to Lingering Souls for coming in clutch), and I had Angel's Grace and Spoils of the Vault in hand. I just swung full, he didn't block and I did the combo and won. A very unexpected and surprising win because I was dead next turn.

As for winning normally, I won with normal Death's Shadow play. Hand control with Thoughtseize and effective lifeloss, swinging with Death's Shadow and controlling the board with creature removal.

Continuing on with why I consider the good match-ups good is because Angel's Grace was a fantastic tool for me to stall out the game against combos.

When I went against storm, I wait until they grapeshot and then Angel's Grace. A good chunk of their ramp cards will be exiled due to using Past in Flamesfoil, and as well, cantrips will run scarce too. Angel's Grace will stall the turn out, and make me not die. In one game, I actually used Angel's Grace twice - once by regular cast, another time with Snapcaster Mage and I won the game because my opponent forfeited because he had nothing left.

This deck stumps most other combo decks for that exact reason - once the combo goes off, it's hard to recuperate if you don't win. In elves, which is a more turn consistent combo (meaning it can go off multiple turns in a row), you really just have to play the hand control game. Using Stubborn Denial on Collected Company, Lead the Stampede, and Chord of Calling, and then destroy their board presence by wiping out mana dorks. If Elves doesn't have mana dorks, elves doesn't win.

Dredge is an okay match-up because the deck tends to have very good creature presence. So it is really hard to get swings in with Death's Shadow. As well, removing creatures is very difficult because they tend to be quite permanent. There's quite a lot of graveyard play and in order to get swings in you have to exile their creatures.

As for infect, it's really a race to win. Angel's Grace does nothing in this match-up, and you're very reliant on controlling their hand and creatures to get the job done. If you have no counter spells or creature destroys/exiles or any hand control, you're likely dead. If you get one of the three, you can generally be in an okay spot and make it a really grindy game with Lingering Souls.

Merfolk is an okay match-up because it has the same plan as you. Beatdown, but the difference is that merfolk is generally mono blue, so it's going to run some aspect of control. This can really shut you down. But sometimes if the opponent doesn't get it, you can get a very easy win.

Bad match-ups are pretty easily explained. Jund/Junk, control, and Eldrazi run some aspects of control. Thought-Knot Seer and Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek really make your life hard. As well as hard counterspells, and turn stallers like Remand make it even more difficult. Any type of control will generally win because you won't get out a Death's Shadow (they won't let you), and if it gets seen in a Thoughtseize or Inquisition of Kozilek, it's generally your opponents first choice to take away anyways. So life gets very difficult against control.

I'm making progress with the deck — April 22, 2017
Edit
Image View Timeline
Card Odds v1 Draw hand
Add to folder Copy
Download / Export / Embed Code

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

Revision 9 See all

(7 years ago)

-1 Murderous Cut side
+2 Phyrexian Unlife main
-1 Zealous Persecution side
Top Ranked
  • Achieved #4 position overall 7 years ago
Date added 7 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)

7 - 1 Mythic Rares

27 - 9 Rares

23 - 4 Uncommons

0 - 1 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 1.85
Tokens Spirit 1/1 W
Folders Combo, Expensive Modern Decks, ideckas, modern, Deck Ideas, Decks To Build, favs, Modern, Brilliant Ideas, modern ideas
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views