The latest and greatest of... Shamans!
Modern Deck Help forum
Posted on Jan. 20, 2016, 9:39 p.m. by RoarMaster
So Shamans. Ive been trying for quite a few years to put together a 'Good' shaman deck. I posted a few lists here back in the day, but since then I have refined the deck(s) quite a bit and believe that this new build is worth reexamining.
With Twin gone the way of the Doddo and Pod, combo has taken another kick to the nuts and dumb decks like midrange shamans may have a chance to win on occasion now :P
Here is the decklist: Keeping Shamans at the Top
The description is fairly in depth, so I will just skip to some opinions Im looking for.
22 Lands. More or less? Normally for a deck with this sort of curve I would be looking at running 24 lands, but this deck has a variety of ways to cheat and ramp things into play so I dont feel that it is so required here. On the other hand they are less reliable/resilient or in some cases fast as lands.
1,2 or 3 Oracle of Mul Daya? Without a field her viewing is useless, and if you have no field its unlikely you have a ton of cards in hand and need the extra land drops to cast stuff, since having cast her (aside from shenanigans) you would have already needed to have hit 4 mana. So I kind of feel its a bit of a win more card and a poor topdeck late game.
Madblind Mountain should probably go, right?
Temple of Triumph Is the scry worth the slow land? Normally definitely not, but we are getting some added synergy out of them here, is it enough though?
Mutavault The colorless is hampering when trying to chain cards together, and the only time you will get any tribal synergy out of it will be if you activate it before a Rage Forger enters. Im not really sold on it, but manlands are nice...
Fetches, Caverns and Shocks. I could use more fetches to up my shuffle effects, but I do like the relatively painless land base, and I dont really feel more than 1 shock is required when I have cavern of souls for most of my needs. Im also thinking about doing the whole Blood Moon SB package, and keeping my landbase simple helps both with that and against others similar plans. Im only running 2 Cavern of Souls as I have AEther Vial both as backup for color problems and counterspell problems. Seems like it should be enough I figured.
Any other thoughts, criticisms or ideas welcome. And yes, we all know this is not a modern breaking deck, so please keep that in mind when making critiques, thanks!
RoarMaster says... #3
rothgar13 I think you may have overlooked the purpose of some of the cards.
Also, your build is much closer to the classic aggro deck(with the addition of CoCo) than this more midrangey build.
Madblind Mountain probably doesnt pull its entered tapped weight, but it does have a purpose, and that is to shuffle my library at instant speed during my upkeep to shuffle away non-shamans.
Oracle of Mul Daya It does have a mana dump, and that is Sensation Gorger, also it plays an incredibly huge roll of making sure my kinship triggers go off. Viewing the top card combined with shuffle and scry effect allow for a near flawless kinship track record.
I meant Temple of Abandon, lol. But the scry lands see play in various competitive modern decks, twin, delver, bloom titan, martyr, burn, ect ect. There are a lot of fast and aggressive decks in that list that do not seem to suffer from them, and many of them cannot benefit from the scry as much as shamans can with the needed kinship triggers.
Considering both of our decks have very similar curves, I have 2 more 4 drops and you have 2 more 3 drops, and you have no applicable ramp(bosk doesnt work), and you are equally required to have 4 mana on fourth turn for CoCo, it is strange that you would suggest I needed more lands. You as well are running 22 lands, and you cannot benefit from Bosk Banneret or the AEther Vial + Burning-Tree Emissary combo like me in order to get to your 4 mana cards out, turn 3 easily even.
I do like CoCo, and have a playset, but they fill different roles here completely, knowing what Im putting down and when is key in the deck. The ability to flash draw past a dead kinship trigger, ramp myself for 2 with Burning-Tree Emissary, and the needed hand dump to maximize the use of Sensation Gorger. Add to the fact that Aether vial starts working sooner, and is much more counterpell resilient(harder to counter something T1 than T4), and shamans are already so full of card and mana advantage that CoCo fills much less of a gap here than in other decks that can lack those traits midgame.
I have a love hate relationship with Flamekin Harbinger. He was run in the classic lists to find Rage Forger, the decks win condition. In this less aggro and more midrangey build, I find myself less reliant on getting a Rager out fast and beating myself against their defences until one of us is dead. I can play a little bit of a slower game when needed and gain incremental board advantage as the game progresses. I ran him in all of my previous builds I think, but he is just too dead of a play late game as although he puts the tutored(rage forger) card on top, which is nice for kinship, its just too slow and too restrictive in targets otherwise.
Anyway, I hope this has helped flesh out the understanding of the deck some more, there is always the deck description which covers most of the points I made here already if you wanted to check that out in more depth. I got the impression you missed out on the madblinds and oracles purpose originally.
Thanks for the reply, Im definitely taking out the mutavaults. The ravines fit super nicely, its too bad that they do not get a rage forger trigger the first attack though, that would have been nice!
January 21, 2016 1:21 a.m.
The scry lands are decidedly NOT played in Delver, Burn, or any of those decks you mentioned. I don't know where you're getting your lists, but the competitive ones on MTGTop8 will NOT have that. Scry-lands are terrible for anything that's not dedicated combo (and even then fast combo decks like Bloom skipped out on it), and this Shaman deck is not that.
Oracle of Mul Daya dies to Lightning Bolt, Electrolyze, and Kolaghan's Command as a 4-drop, which makes it a very bad tempo proposition for a midrange deck. Your opponent will value-play you into the dirt if you dare run it, or simply kill you before it's relevant. The likes of Huntmaster of the Fells Flip and Olivia Voldaren can get away with being fragile 4-drops because they either provide value coming in, or can snowball into an unstoppable advantage. The Oracle thus neither, and is thus bad (also, Sensation Gorger is nearly as bad of a card - symmetrical card refill will get you killed in this format). And if the Madblinds are in there for just that, then they should also go.
Counterspells are a small part of the meta right now (and they might get even smaller if ex-Twin players move on to decks with a different playstyle), and even if they weren't, Shamans have Vexing Shusher and Cavern of Souls - that base is well-covered.
Your deck is more deliberate and slow, and it lacks the card advantage tricks and disruption that slower decks need to thrive in this format. Fast aggro will crush you, and combo will go off on you while you sit there with not enough of a board state to finish them off. I urge you to reconsider your approach and streamline if you hope to craft anything competitive.
January 21, 2016 1:35 a.m. Edited.
RoarMaster says... #5
I got my stats from mtgtop8 as I usually do. Check it out for yourself if you disbelieve :)
As for card advantage, Im not sure how this deck doesnt have it as you claim. Half the deck is card advantage... I will agree that it lacks much disruption though, but there is not much to be done in R/G in that department unfortuantely.
My main point of considering lowering Oracle was due to its low P/T as I said in the OP. I dont know that it doesnt have an immediate effect, it allows you to potentially play a free land from the top of your deck once it enters, as you maintain priority on its entering. It also potentially snowballs, in combination of other cards admittedly, but it doesnt require a bunch of mana donated to it like Olivia.
If by saying "I urge you to reconsider your approach and streamline if you hope to craft anything competitive.", you mean to say "Make a Clone of the old Shamans List", then that is just horrible advice, lol. I have played shamans for years, You yourself are a Shamans player, and as such you must of course know that the current classic Shaman deck simply is not that competitive either, and by saying stick to something that is failing is just a fallacy. We know current shamans dont work well enough, so instead of sticking to a tried-and-true-strategy-for-failure, Im attempting to improve, expand, and adjust it to the point of being more effective. Long story short, shamans.dec hasnt worked for awhile and Im trying to change that by making neo-shamans.dec
You yourself said shamans.dec isnt perfect(as judging by your Maybe-board), so lets try and make it better rather than just playing the same deck we love but always lose with! :)
January 21, 2016 2:45 a.m.
Well, the problem that my current Shamans build admittedly runs into is that it's a bad version of Gruul Zoo, which is much more explosive and can easily finish games on Turn 4 (or 3 if you have a good hand and your opponent doesn't derail you too much). Streamlining doesn't necessarily mean making the deck more aggressive - it means picking out a style and sticking with it. Since I don't think that making the deck as fast as Small Zoo is possible, I think you're on the right track in terms of thinking midrange. I just don't like the cards you've chosen.
I think that in order for a midrange edition of Shamans to thrive, we have to be thinking value chains. Collected Company + Eternal Witness is a tried-and-true way to get tons of value out of one's deck, and it combines with Rage Forger to create a very potent board advantage. I think that, along with Burning-Tree Shaman to punish decks that try to mess with you using permanents, is the place to start. Next, we're going to have to come up with some interaction of our own in order to ensure we don't get out-raced. My thinking is that some sweepers and land hate could do the trick, since the 
interaction toolkit is sadly a bit limited. I don't know how much of it goes mainboard, but I'd be looking to test Magus of the Moon (bonus synergy with Collected Company).
January 21, 2016 2:53 a.m. Edited.
Programmer_112 says... #7
@RoarMaster: just thought I'd point out, rothgar13 is right about scrylands. Bloom played 0-1 Temple of Mystery, Ad Nauseam plays some scrylands, and Grishoalbrand plays Temple of Malice, and as far as I can tell, that's it. The thing these decks all have in common is that they're combo decks that need some combination of cards and some amount of mana on the same turn to go off, but don't do much with their mana until then. Shamans doesn't fit this description, because if you miss a land drop before Turn 4, you don't really have a way to come back. Playing an ETB tapped land is equivalent to missing about 1/3 of a land drop, which is really painful in this deck.
January 21, 2016 11:07 a.m.
RoarMaster says... #8
rothgar13 Some good points. Ill get back to you as soon as I can. Super busy today though.
Programmer_112 I searched for just one temple, temple of triumph. Has 16 top 8 results for decks with that one type of scryland. So, um, no, you and rothgar are not right. As I told rothgar, look it up if you do not believe...
January 21, 2016 4:53 p.m.
I just went through every Bloom Titan, Burn, Delver, and Martyr Lifedeck posted in the last 2 months, just to make sure. Only Bloom Titan runs Temples, and only Bloom Titan should, because those are bad cards unless you can untap them. In the case of the other decks, your search terms must have been faulty, or you might have picked up someone's short-lived experiment with it when the Temples were new and no one truly knew how they fit in, but rest assured, they have no place in your deck.
January 21, 2016 5:27 p.m. Edited.
Programmer_112 says... #10
@RoarMaster: that's 16 decks in the history of Modern. None in the past 5 months. Most in dailies. None in large events (biggest was an SCG IQ 2 years ago, ~150 players). So, although you can win with a scryland in your deck, they're not good cards in Modern.
January 21, 2016 6:11 p.m.
RoarMaster says... #11
rothgar13 Sorry I dont have time for a larger post, as I said, short on time, Im cementing a new woodstove in place today. I feel kinda dickish just replying 'your wrong', I hope you forgive. I have some great shaman thoughts i want to share but dont have time at the moment. Anyway, when you go to mtg top 8, click search, then put in modern and a temple. It will show you all decks that used said card. Thats not a faulty search, simply a comprehensive one. It really matters little as to when a card was used, aside from meta changes(none of which change scry lands performance), the fact that they were played successfully and especially the fact that they took top spots even though they cannot abuse the card as much as us, should point out the fact that the cards are not unplayable. They can, and have, been successful in decks. Decks that cannot take advantage in them. Specifically to Programmer_112, I dint bother to spend the time to look up each scryland that was played and add it all up, so yes, 16 decks in the history of modern have won with that specific card, Im assuming at least 50-100 decks have won with scrylands in total. Thats what, an infinite amount of times more than Shamans have won since scrylands were printed? Saying "decks with this card only win a small percentage of X games" is rather irrelevant when the deck in question only runs Lightning Bolt as ANY card that sees play in the format.
TL;DR
Saying a card that is run in decks that have won in the past few years is not good enough for a deck that has not won in the last few years is a fallacy.
The question is if the ability to get more than 50/50 chance at a kinship trigger, and simple filtering, is worth a tap land? A few tap lands are common in most decks in the form of manlands after all, the question is is there room for both? Is there need for both? Can Shamans specifically benefit enough to be worthwhile?
January 21, 2016 8:15 p.m.
I think it matters a great deal when a card is run, actually. The reason why I say that is because seeing a blip on the radar happens quite often - some people experiment with cards in their rotation, and those cards can be innocuous enough to not affect the winrate in either direction (which usually means they get cut for something that will give you a boost). From what I'm seeing, it seems that Temples see semi-steady use in Bloom (which makes sense), and are spot cards here or there that are never seen again (which also makes sense). I advocate following trends over isolated data points, and decks that do what this Shamans deck would theoretically do often skip out on Temples.
Debates about when a card was used aside, I'm of the opinion that the tapped-land drawback is a critical flaw, even when Shamans have Kinship triggers that depend on it. The reason why I think that is because I believe that Raging Ravine is going to be an integral piece of the midrange shell (it gives you a finisher that dodges sorcery-speed removal), and you can't really afford many more tapped lands than that and still hit your 2, 3, and 4-drops on curve consistently, and that's a problem for any midrange deck.
As far as strategy goes, I'm pretty enamored with the concept of value plays: Chord of Calling and Collected Company to flood the board, Eternal Witness to recast as necessary, and Domri Rade for card draw and pseudo-removal if the creature count is big enough.
January 21, 2016 11 p.m. Edited.
RoarMaster says... #13
Alrighty. So here are some of my thoughts on directions for Shamans there rothgar13.
First off we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions in order to get a clearer view of what we want.
1) Why do we(secifically you and me) want to play shamans?
2) Why do people choose to run tribal decks in competitive play?
Answer 1) I cant speak for you, but I personally wish to run shamans for nostalgia, and because it was been a pet tribe of mine for a long time. This means I am fairly restricted in my card choices for the deck, as it is an inherent goal of mine to be playing Shaman tribal, I dont really just want to add random non-shaman goodstuffs. I am assuming you are of a similar mind, because otherwise, there is not a ton of reason to run Shamans.
Answer 2) Tribal decks see play in competitive environments due to the synergy of the combined cards working together, unlike most competitive decks who rely less on the synergy between the cards in their deck, and more on stand alone efficient cards. Basically there is no point in running a tribal deck unless you plan to cash in on the tribal synergies they provide, as it is that synergy that gives them any chance of keeping pace against better value cards.
Question and answer 2 was the important one for the next part here.
Question 3) What tribal synergy are we relying on with shamans? What gives them that 'leg up' to compare to stand alone better cards?
Answer 3) Shamans have 3 things basically. Bosk Bannerets mana reduction, various Kinship triggers, and one cool lord Rage Forger. These are the tribal benefits that we are relying on for success.
Extrapolations on question 3) Is Bosk Banneret that much, or at all better than a dork most of the time? Generally the only time he is better is if you are casting multiple shaman creatures a turn, and if we are not doing this, then there is not much or any point in running him over a dork.
What kinship trigger do we have, and how good are they? Your version of the deck only runs 1 kinship dude, Wolf-Skull Shaman. Is wolf skulls kinship ability that good? Its a bear(blah) that makes a bear 50% of the time. Its alright, nothing special, and far from reliable. As he stands he isnt really very good, if he had a lager success rate on triggers I would go so far as to call him good to great depending on his %.
We also have access to Leaf-Crowned Elder, whose ability is much much more powerful, providing use with free mana/cards/boardstate. In fact I would go so far as to say it is the strongest tribal synergy going for shamans aside from possibly Rage Forger. As I mentioned before, we are required to cash in on these synergies, especially the good ones like this, if we wish to use a tribal deck competitively, as its the only thing we have as a leg up over the competition. This card has been replaced with CoCo in your list, which is cool.
Theres also Sensation Gorger, but we wont go there right now :P
Finally we come to the 'Gem' of shamans, Rage Forger, the card that originally put it on the map with its powerful aggro, straight-to-the-face abilities. Lets look at the forger a little. Two abilities, one shaman related, the other +1 counter related. Adding a +1 counter to your guys is both better and worse than a normal lords static buff, and his 3 cost isnt as efficient as other tribal lords, which leads me to believe that Rage forgers awesomeness comes as much from his direct damage ability as his buff. Knowing this, and the fact that he doesnt care if you are a shaman or not, opens up a whole bunch of new possibilities...
Summary: If bosk banneret is no better than a dork in your build, and if Wolf skull will just be an inefficient bear for you half the time, is it really worth running shaman tribal simply to put +1/1 counters on guys with rage forger? You are basically making yourself run a bunch of sub-par cards simply for the rage forgers EtB ability.In my opinion, no, its not worth running all of these cards at less than their optimal efficiency simply for that one buffing effect. So unless we are going balls deep shamans with a better than 50/50 kinship chance, more kinship triggers, and attempting to cast multiple shamans a turn, we are not taking advantage of the tools we have been given in the tribe, and should be unsuprized when it doesnt work well.
I personally love Rage Forger and his ping effect, as do you, as you are running tutors specifically for him. But it almost seems like with your deck you might as well drop the shamans and build it into some kind of +1 counter deck, Avatar of the Resolute and Servant of the Scale and shit.
There could be something there actually... Hmmm, may have to play around with that idea myself a bit!
Super summary: Unless you play into the tribal strengths of a tribe, the deck will fail. How many non-synergy creatures do merfolk, goblins, slivers, elves, or any other competitively successful tribal deck play? Very very few, unlike the 3 cards with some kind of shamantic synergy your deck is running( I know, mine only has 4, but the fourth is a strong one! Lol).
rothgar13 says... #2
So, to answer your questions:
22 lands? Yes. You want to hit a T4 Leaf-Crowned Elder every single game, and since you don't have mana dorks, that means you have to have enough lands to make 4 consecutive land drops every game.
Madblind Mountain? Does pretty much nothing. I'd cut it from the decka altogether.
Temple of Triumph? No way. I wouldn't even run Temple of Abandon. You need to get to an aggressive a start as possible to have a chance, and the Temples work against you there.
Oracle of Mul Daya? Horrifically bad card for you. You don't have mana dumps, and its 2/2 body is way below curve. Drop it and never look back.
Mutavault? I'm with you - the
does interfere with the deck's typical function. Because of that, I'd recommend Raging Ravine as the manland of choice (note its synergy with Rage Forger, by the way - because it can give itself +1/+1 counters, it can benefit from the Forger's ability, despite not being a Shaman itself).
AEther Vial is also interesting (because you do have a lot of 2-drops), but I'd rather play Collected Company in a
-based deck. It gives you card advantage (which strengthens your midgame), and can result in super explosive turns if you flip one or more Rage Forgers.
Overall, I think your approach should be more aggressive - there are some beefy Shamans out there that you're not using, and I'd like to see you increase the consistency of your Rage Forger draws by packing Flamekin Harbinger to slow-tutor him. Here's my take on the deck, which I feel gets off the blocks much more aggressively:
Days of Rage
Modern rothgar13
SCORE: 1 | 0 COMMENTS | 47 VIEWS
Granted, I don't think this deck is perfect (as the large Maybeboard implies), but I do think this aggressive approach that I am espousing results in a better chance against the meta.
January 21, 2016 12:01 a.m. Edited.