Death's Shadow

Creature — Avatar

This gets -X/-X, where X is your life total.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
PreDH	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

moo1234 on Card creation challenge

4 weeks ago

Euron, the black hearted {B}{B}{B}{B}

Legendary creature - human warlock

flying, deathtouch

Hellbent - whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to an opponent ~ deals X damage to target opponent where X is half that players life total round down each time, X cannot be less than 0

You can't win the game and your opponents can't lose the game

5/5

'It's not everyday you get to see a dead body, so you have to make the most of it'

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I really like cards like Abyssal Persecutor One with Nothing and Death's Shadow. Going back to alpha the most powerful card ever printed can arguably be Contract from Below. I think these perfectly encapsulate how I view black in mtg, so I love hellbent as a mechanic.

Glaze for black aside make another black card that gets more powerful as you get weaker in some way (you may use hellbent or the above cards for inspiration)

Balaam__ on A Means to an End

2 months ago

Thank for posting, CommanderNeyo. I suppose there are other options, but I liked the reciprocity between The End costing less @5hp and the way Death's Shadow decks play, so it only felt natural to pair the two. I’d like to keep the combo intact even if there are other, arguably better approaches.

SaberTech on mimeo

3 months ago

I saw your post asking for help with cuts to the deck. Mimeoplasm decks are fun and there's all sorts of interactions to play around with so I get how it's tough to trim the list down.

I don't know what exactly you personally consider fun to play and what cards you are more inclined to keep in, so I think that it might be easier to just highlight what looks to be the core of the deck and try to build outwards from there.

Win-Cons:

• Necrotic Ooze + Phyrexian Devourer: I'm not sure when the change happened, but on Oracle the errata's text for the Devourer's activated exile ability now reads "Remove the top card of your library from the game: Put X +1/+1 counters on Phyrexian Devourer, where X is the removed card's converted mana cost. If Phyrexian Devourer's power is 7 or greater, sacrifice it." Before, you never had to worry about the sacrifice part because it was a triggered ability so the Ooze didn't copy it. Now that the self-sacrifice effect is built into the activated ability it means that the Ooze will kill itself if it activates the ability and ends up going to 7+ power. I don't think this combo is feasible anymore and that you can cut it.

• Blightsteel Colossus: You don't have a way to reanimate or copy this at instant speed in response to its shuffle trigger when it is put in your graveyard, so your only way for it to stick on the board is if you hard-cast it. I don't think that it's worth the effort. And I think that most games will end before you risk decking yourself and needing the Colossus to keep shuffling itself into your library. I'd cut it from the deck.

• Blighted Agent/Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon + big creatures under Mimeoplasm: This is what I would consider your main means of knocking players out. Death's Shadow, Impervious Greatwurm, Lord of Extinction, Titanoth Rex, and Yargle and Multani are your main targets to remove for counters on Mimeoplasm, so these are 7 cards that should definitely be staying.

• Jin-Gitaxias, Core AugurGC: Reanimating this early in the game and getting it to stick is a backup win condition. Buried Alive, Entomb, Fauna Shaman, and Frantic Search are your best ways to try to get Jin into the graveyard. Animate Dead, Necromancy, Reanimate are your best ways to reanimate Jin early. So that's 8 cards you should definitely keep. Victimize helps too but it is a little unreliable early due to needing 2 targets in your graveyard. Still worth running in my opinion.

So that's 16 card + your commander that you know that you want to run to help you win. From there you can mark out the slots for land, ramp, draw, and interaction. What slots are left goes to what best supports you reaching your win conditions. You'll need to really consider which cards help you reach your win conditions and which are there more for fun.

Looking at your list, some things that I can note are:

• You shouldn't count thinks like Conduit of Worlds as ramp since they don't help you get ahead in mana. They just help make your land drop each turn. Matzalantli, the Great Door  ^Flip and Aftermath Analyst also don't help ramp you in the early game. So on the whole your deck is actually suffering from a pretty notable lack of cheap ramp.

• Cards that mill opponents but not you like Mindcrank, Psychic Corrosion, and Ruin Crab do technically help you by getting cards into your opponent's graveyards that you can reanimate or exile with Mimeoplasm. However, they are less useful to you overall than cards that can also mill you because you know that milling yourself helps you reach your deck's build-in win conditions while milling opponents is a gamble.

• Memory Plunder can be fun but you might be better off running a card you are pretty certain that you can use than gamble on useful opponents' cards ending up in the graveyard in a timely manner.

• Archon of Cruelty isn't as impactful in multiplayer games as it is in 1v1. It's still an ok reanimation target if you don't currently have anything better.

legendofa on Card creation challenge

5 months ago

First thought is something like Death's Shadow or Daemogoth Titan, some giant beater with a low MV and big downside. Can't come up with a better idea, but let's see if it can be tweaked a little and go in a slightly different direction.

Tornado Demon

{4}{U}{B}

Creature - Demon Elemental

This creature enters tapped with two stun counters.

At the beginning of your upkeep, put a stun counter on this creature.

Whenever you put a stun counter on this creature, you may put a stun counter on another target nonland permanent.

9/9

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If nothing else, this gets my combo juices going.

Create an Angel Elemental.

Niko9 on Using shrazarad

1 year ago

I've never played with it, but what about a Death's Shadow build? If you lost half your life, cool, if your opponent loses half, maybe better. The fact that there no lifegain and somebody has to lose something might be useful.

legendofa on Duskmourn

1 year ago

Would the 13-lands (does anyone have a better name?) make a difference in Death's Shadow decks? The fetch + shock pattern works well, and Death's Shadow decks don't exactly have huge mana requirements. So probably not.

DreadKhan on The Mimeospasm [Reanimator Terminator] - primer

1 year ago

I feel like it's always better to hold up less mana, but if you're not holding up U people will be more likely to step on the rake you've left out, so there is that. I think I'd go with Stifle if you want to be able to deal with abilities.

The biggest difference would be it can be a tad harder to get Death's Shadow into the graveyard, but I'd think you'd benefit from either similarly, so Death's Shadow would be a cheaper solution. I think I didn't think of Death's Shadow because it doesn't work for Kresh the Bloodbraided, so I filed it under 'doesn't synergize as expected'! Glad you noticed it!

Andramalech on Delirium Shadow (retired)

1 year ago

Holey crap this is super pushed, and super duper cool! Can't believe it's just come up on my radar. I've only recently put together a Death's Shadow deck and I noticed how you've taken advantage of the Goyfs. Really love not only what you have put together here, but previous iterations of this deck. Splendid stuff, +1.