What I found in my experiments with Shadow + Delver in the same deck was that Wraith wasn’t at all missed in aggro mirrors, but sorely missed against linear combo and big mana. More on those findings here: http://quietspeculation.com/sleight-tweaks-shadow-delver/

The dedicated Shadow decks run Wraith and can just board him out against aggro decks. Not running Wraith doesn’t give us that option. But there may indeed be a serviceable work-around. Good luck finding it!

Thanks Jordan and I agree…Street Wraith and Delver aren’t an exciting pair deckbuilding-wise. To enable the Shadow’s without the Wraiths, I’m looking at Night’s Whisper in some number either alongside or in place of Chart a Course…to keep a critical mass of self-life drain and keeping sorceries/instant count high. I find the manabase is so painful and with thoughtseize…and deciding that Shadow is much later play in the deck…rather than trying to power him out early I think it fine. I will do some more brewing and testing with Shadow, Delver, and Souls in the same deck….

As mentioned above, I do think Tasigur is pretty important to this kind of deck. Lingering Souls appears to plug the same holes as something like Bedlam Reveler, and I think it does a fine job of it—GS already grinds pretty well. I’d be interested in seeing your list and appreciate the Delver vs Inquisition comparison. The main thing I’d worry about is enabling Shadow effectively, since running Delver AND enough lands to support Souls makes it tricky to support Street Wraith.

After some more testing, I have found this deck to handle removal quite well, especially thanks to Lingering Souls. But proactive decks that aren’t sufficiently disrupted by our removal suite are a real pain to take down, especially Burn and Storm. Souls will kill our opponent, but it’s simply too slow and mana-intensive against some decks. We really want a threat there we can land for 1-2 mana that resists Bolt and applies pressure without requiring us to spend more mana (i.e. Goyf).

Since Counter-Cat’s grindy plan is actually pretty okay, and when the Gwixis deck wins it’s usually by huge margins, this realization seems to confirm my suspicion of the deck being worse overall than Counter-Cat.

In my opinion, The only question worth asking in this archetype is wether Lingering Souls sufficiently addresses the main weakness of UR Aggro, which is cheap, efficient spotremoval. You basically swap power and impact (thing) for a go wide strategy (Pyro and souls). Souls is no doubt the best card in modern against spotremoval, but the downside (as you mention) is huge loss of aggression. It’s really hard for this deck to actually kill the opponent if delver doesn’t stick.

Would love to know your thoughts 🙂

Was forced to say the deck name aloud tonight at FNM, was brutal!