A different kind of shadow

Modern Competitive Control WUB (Esper)

Caldra

Land (22)

• 3x Bloodstained Mire
• 2x Creeping Tar Pit
• 4x Flooded Strand
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 2x Hallowed Fountain
• 2x Island
• 1x Plains
• 4x Polluted Delta
• 1x Swamp
• 2x Watery Grave

Instant (14)

• 3x Cryptic Command
• 1x Dismember
• 3x Fatal Push
• 2x Path to Exile
• 2x Stubborn Denial
• 3x Thought Scour

Creature (10)

• 4x Death's Shadow
• 3x Snapcaster Mage
• 3x Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Sorcery (12)

• 3x Ancestral Vision
• 2x Lingering Souls
• 1x Painful Truths
• 3x Serum Visions
• 3x Supreme Verdict

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Phyrexian Unlife

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana, the Last Hope

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Sideboard

Instant (7)

• 3x Ceremonious Rejection
• 2x Countersquall
• 2x Dispel

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Stony Silence

Artifact (4)

• 2x Engineered Explosives
• 2x Nihil Spellbomb

Creature (1)

• 1x Ranger of Eos

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Supreme Verdict

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Description is outdated, I will update if someone is interested.

So I have this cool control deck which is really nice but loses so much life from fetches, thoughtseize and an enemy attacking me ... so I was thinking, how can I possibly gain advantage from that?

So now I play Death's Shadow for a really fast clock while controlling the game and drawing cards on masse.

Gameplan and Card choices

It plays like Grixis Control, you have 8 removal spells and 3 board wipes, you should be able to survive till turn 5 BUT you want to take a bit of damage, you want to have around 8 life at turn 5.

At turn 5 things start to get interesting -> Ancestral Vision procs, you can Supreme Verdict and play a Death's Shadow which should be at least a 5/5, you can counter anything or tap the enemy team with Cryptic Command and kill your opponent in 2 turns with your Shadow and Celestial Colonnade.

• You can easily play Supreme Verdict with Death's Shadow because normally you will not play a Shadow before turn 5.

• Lock your opponent out of the game with Esper Charm discard for aggressive opponents or outvalue slower decks with extra cards or destroy that annoying enchantment. :D

• Orzhov Charm is great in this deck, it acts as a hard removal with lifeloss, so you can destroy your opponents single blocker and pump your Death's Shadow for the final killing attack or you can reanimate your shadow with instant speed as a surprise blocker or finisher.

Bad Match ups and Sideboard

Bad match ups are all Tron decks, dredge, infect and maybe burn. (Match up gets a lot better with Death's Shadows)

• For Tron we have 4 Card:Ceremonious Rejection, extremly powerful against eldrazi tron and normal control tron.

• Nihil Spellbomb for dredge, maybe we need more graveyard hate, not sure.

• Another Supreme Verdict for creature decks and Engineered Explosives for tokens.

• More Thoughtseize for every non-aggressive opponent.

This deck is very fun to play and I just love the tension you get when playing with your life total, also you need a lot of experience to play this deck right, you can easily lose a game because you made a wrong decision, like choosing the wrong option on cryptic/esper charm/orzhof charm or if you are too greedy on the self inflicted lifeloss for Death's Shadow, for example.

If you like my deck and want to see more control in the meta, give me an upvote or post a comment and tell me what you think. :)

Have fun playing!

Date added	7 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 38 - 6 Rares 11 - 5 Uncommons 3 - 4 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.37
Tokens	Emblem Liliana, the Last Hope, Spirit 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Cool Black