The Cult of Immortal Shadows

That's the truth brother! However, I freaking love the choices for the sideboard... My advice: run three signs. Goodluck and congrats on the success of your design!

Not sign in blood. Altar's Reap for this deck.

The demons are essentially an upside to the build, you would theoretically win from Blood Artist and Xathrid Necromancer.

Good point. I thought you were going for the Apostle's ability. Sorry.

Yeah its more of a well this could happen but I'd rather that this happens. Imagine a bunch of apostle's, blood artist and xathrid necromancer... and then mutilate.

I definitely wouldn't want to be on the other end of that lol
Plus, Servitude could bring 'em back for another round!

if you had more demons, you could have blood artist major win :D

ummm what blood artist xD

or the angel that brings all humans back from the graveyard! Angel of glory rise.

BLOOD ARTIST!! and more demons, stuff like lord of the void and a desecration demon or two

yeah desecration is awesome

Skirsdag Flayer is good, but requires a large mana investment. The deck could use some instant speed removal, though, for really big threats like Griselbrand.

Why, when he has the shadowborn apostle's? He would put 6 zombies in AND get a demon out.

Plus with the zombies you put out, the previous turn, you could tap them with Skirsdag High Priest's ability and put in yet another demon.

We actually put the sac engine in (Bloodthrone Vampire) and it works out really well, allowing us to make zombies and pump the vampire.

My friend has also been tweaking the deck in his own right and decided to put in 2 Disciple of Bolas which actually helped out the build a lot for lifegain and card draw.

Not really, my friend and I considered the Harvester of Souls for card draw and it's looking like it might go in.

Nice Build , Made this deck , http://www.mtgvault.com/dragon77/decks/taking-your-deck-apart-slowly/

dragon..... careful..... dont say look at your deck in every post or just about. nobody liked snarling toes. please dont become another one

Sorry , i should back off with the added messages, but on the other hand this site is to help others ! catch 22

Yeah I know. It's just I know how it feels to be raged at by people who are annoyed and I didn't want that to happen to you

that's y i usually give advice and crap then say, hey, i'm working on this deck, you should check it out. or, hey, i have a deck like this, you should look at it and it could maybe give you more ideas.

I do rly like the Immortal Servitude put in this deck btw, very genius.

Its supposed to be standard and the plan my friend and I had was mono-black.

than go with harvester, fulfils all your conditions/faults (card advantage). shadowborn demon sucks

I disagree with that one. He is worse for the deck, but he is still pretty powerful. He has an ETB ability, so if they remove him (and they're bound to, he's too big a threat not to) you still get value. He's removal and heavy creature power in one card. He's big and flies, and in the right deck, is little quirk isn't even considerable to be a problem. For this deck, though, Harvester of Souls is much better.

If only I could like your comment more than once.

Why thank you.

standard. so harvester of souls is the best bet

HotPoloPlayer has deleted this comment.

If you need draw you can add 4 Mentor of the Meek and 3 Harvester of Souls. That combo will give you alot of draw power.

It sucks ya, but he wouldn't be too bad off if he had an Immortal Servitude.

Terminus puts all the creatures into the bottom of the library, so then he'll be sitting there without any creatures hoping to draw something else than a Shadowborn Apostle.

Yeah it is the worse card to face for this deck. That is why this deck has to have some kind of draw.

Terminus needs nerf : P with 1 mana you can do a super boardwipe that gets rid of almost anything. Just do a little brainstorming and you can cast terminus whenever.

GeneralM has deleted this comment.

Woops, I mixed up Terminus with Supreme Verdict.

What red demons are these? Rakdos, Master or Cruelties, and Sire of Insanity? Only three red demons in standard, and I wouldn't even run them.

Harvester of souls

He is far too slow! Sign in Blood or the new 3B enchantment

Sign in blood is good

What about Liliana's Reaver? it could be nice. And you can potentially get out more zombies to sac for your Bloodthrone Vampire. Oh, and idk how good of an idea this is, but you could put in Blood Bairn instead of Bloodthrone Vampire.

Bloodthrone Vampire is a little smaller, but not to forget cheaper too. Faster the deck works, the better. Don't forget this is counted as an aggro deck.

Door costs too much for want to do. We also tried Blood Artist and it didn't work out as well as Necromancer.

Necromancer is definitely better here. Your Apostles sac for 4 damage apiece when the Bloodthrone goes through.

We've playtested this deck against Naya Blitz and 3 out of 5 times it wins. The 19 Apostle's is fine as I usually get 3-4 Apostle's in my starting hand each game.

When we started to make the deck we were talking about how many Apostle's we wanted and with 22 in the deck we found we were getting more Apostle's than we actually wanted. The point of the build isn't to win by turning them into Griselbrand or Bloodgift Demon but its a nice side effect. Mainly you want Necromancer, Bloodthrone Vampire and maybe even High Priest out. Swing with everything, after they declare blockers, sac all the Apostles to the Bloodthrone, then in continuing in response sac all the zombies to the Bloodthrone and thus you have a giant vampire swinging at their face.

Thing is they'll know what's coming and chump block the vampire, then it won't do anything, no matter how big

Indeed haha.

Blood Artist are totally necessary for this deck. Sac outlets, sac targets, and Blood Artists. Makes the world go round, you know? Blood Artists go back in and we're talking about a really successful deck here.

We had blood artist in and it wasn't performing as well as we thought.

Blood Artist actually can slow down a lot of decks, maybe something like Falkenrath Noble, same ability but he is a 4 mana flying 2/2 as well, he also rides the curve nicely

Indeed.

Blood artist works better in an Aristocrat type build with cards like Doomed Traveler, Lingering Souls, and Sorin.

You still need something that happens when you sac. In modern there is Mortician Beetle, but I assume you'll want to keep the deck standard. Falkenrath Noble does ride the curve nicely, but he's a four drop, and then your deck runs much too slowly, with 6 already (Immortal Servitude counts. Nobody casts that for 0). You've got 6 2 drops as well, but I find a deck works most smoothly with more slots filled with twos than anything else. With so much sacrificing, I feel like itmis a shame to not add a little kicker. Personally I would remove an Immortal Servitude and a Mutilate for a half set of the Artists. Maybe that's just me, though.

Blood artist just seems too good not to be in the deck.

We had it as mono-black at one point and unfortunately in Mono-black there is no standard enchantment removal, therefore we added green to allow us the ability to have Abrupt Decay and Naturalize in the sideboard.

^^^, which is a good call you really do need the green I like your side board a lot. It does what it needs 2. So are you going to try this deck at a standard tournament ?

I think you need to go full green removal or forget the enchantment removal, to speed this deck up add green for things like Dreg Mangler.

"Melon57" Yeah my friend and I are going to test it at the next FNM we are both able to go to.

Tripedge I just want to salute you on not acting like a little bitch at criticism and getting on with making the deck more powerful, wish more deck creators were like you!

Thanks Gothy, that means a lot. I find that all criticism is valid as each person has their own point of view, and everyone is different therefore each person will want to tweak the deck to their own standards.

You really are a legend mate, the deck is also absolutely fantastic and when it is tested I think it will have a good chance of doing fantastic, if you want someone else to play test against my team would be happy to play you!

This would be my version of the deck because I am cheap n like to twist it differently. I did make it before I knew of all the m14 cards tho. Take a look n give commits if you like.

http://www.mtgvault.com/melon57/decks/angels-and-demonds-standard/

Will do Melon57.

What standard enchantments are there worth removing, though?

Rest In Peace, Assemble The Legion, Primeval Bounty (we have some people testing it out). Stuff like that.

Makes sense.

Honestly I forgot about Golgari Charm. Thanks for the suggestion man!

No sweat! Hope that helps.

Golgari Charm could wipe your apostles and other small threats, like if Ball Lightning decides he needs a reprint.

I guess he's not really small, though.

The green is mainly for the sideboard so you can add in abrupt decay and Naturalize (soon to be Golgari Charm) for removal of pesky enchantments such as Rest In Peace, which horrible screws over the deck.

Door of Destinies doesn't really fit with the build because it's a four drop and on turn four the deck would rather be dropping apostle's and sacking for demons or playing necromancers and bloodthrones, or even mutilate or servitude.

Add a few dark rituals to ramp up the mana and use the door of destinies on the apostles

Dark ritual isn't a standard legal card, this deck is standard.

We used to have Blood Artist in the build and we found he was too slow for what we wanted to achieve, that and the fact that whenever people at our store see blood artist he dies next turn.

Man, people sure love to bitch on this site.

I think Salvador would need to read the description to understand, if you just looked at the deck and not the reasoning you might get the same idea

And I didn't even get to read his comment....

The comment was about mutilate, wasn't getting why it was here (frankly i still dont) and I was asking about it. And then there were 2 different people answering: polo player up there said something about "bitching" and gothy tryed to help, but the description only lists the changes, doesnt explain them, so i must be missing something....
So I ask again: why do you chosse to have this mutilates here?

I quote, "mutilate... really? nothing worked better than a control for four mana??"

To wipe out everything to get a tonne of zombies while they have nothing

Mutilate is really the best mono-black board wipe in standard right now, and it allows for massive synergy with the necromancer and apostle's plus after we board wipe we can easily just bring back all our apostle's with servitude.

Aaaaah the necromancer, of course! Thank you so much, really wasnt seeing it. Im sorry to everyone if the first comment sounded agressive, it was born out of distraction. See ya!

Honestly I would consider using Killing Wave, as it is much cheaper seeing as you're really only looking for a one-sided boardwipe (your own). Just food for thought, it'd have to be tested and probably come out against aggro for some mutilates

This is so funny, not you guys just how earlier other people said cut the killing wave it doesn't work, and now the comments have gone back to puttin it in!

Yeah, people be crazy. Also, what makes you think that he is looking for a one sided boardwipe?

Isn't the whole point to kill his guys too to get the stronger zombies and them without blockers?

You would need blood artist and trip ledge says it doesn't work in the deck, the artist that is, so the prophecy is likely to kill you

He has said a thousand times already that Blood Artist makes the deck too slow.

I understand that bud, but I'm saying that I believe it doesn't. Especially considering that this deck isn't blazing at its best, I mean its nice comboing and such but it should be ready for the long haul and even two blood artists in the main will create a lot of damage as well as life gain. Putting a blood artist on the field the turn after your bloodthrone vampire means that for sure your opponent is losing life as you boost your vampire, even if it is blocked.

I mean not to sound rude, but it doesn't really matter if you personally think it's better. He wont change it because he believes it doesn't. If you prefer it with Blood Artist then you may play it that way, and he may play it his way.

You misunderstand me, I'm merely offering my opinion and making a case for it, not imposing my view on him. If I wanted to impose like an idiot I'd resort to insults or exaggerations like "its a thousand times better" but that'd be ridiculous because, of course, magic at heart is a game of opinion just as much as it is of proven fact.

True, but so many people have pointed it out before, that, no offense, it has just become annoying white noise.

Define useless junk?

Anything you find yourself no boarding in or more commonly singletons that are very selective on what deck they board in against. Specifically Lifebane Zombie, and Underworld Connections. Now Duress is another too take out don't get me wrong these are great cards and unfortunately they are the kind of cards that if they aren't main boarded then they don't belong in the deck. Now Lifebane Zombie can be sideboarded but only in tempo aggro or mid-range decks. Hope this helps again Nice deck absolutely love it.

Um Lifebane is a great sideboard tool as is Duress, and Underworld Connections is to add more card draw so I really don't understand why you would call them useless junk.

If you can think of other suggestions and reasons to back them up I might consider it but for now there really isn't any reason for me to take them out.

I totally disagree the way manofwar comments, and lifebane zombie is actually a staple main board card for Jund, the deck that just won the players champion ship, it will usually hit something due to multicolour and split colour from Ravnica and is 3 power with intimidate for 3 mana and you get to take a look at an opponents hand and usually remove a card. It also races the new 'The Rock' deck as it removes their Thragtusk, Ooze, Putrefy and Abrupt Decay. Duress is to remove threats from the American decks like Assemble the legion and Sphinx's rev. Underworld connections goes in if the game is going long and you need to have more options than your opponent and slowly beat them as you draw more powerful cards. None of these cards are 'selective' or should come in as singletons as they really are huge game changers. Rant over, carry on people.

I rather agree with manofwar personally. specially about duress. Here's my reasoning. In your sideboard, you only have 1 "Underworld Connections", 1 "Duress", and 1 "Killing Wave". The fact that you have so few of these cards means the likelihood of you drawing one of those cards when you need it is very seldom. the 2 cards I can understand you not putting a bunch of them in would be "Underworld Connections", and "Killing Wave". That being said, I still think only having 1 is too few.

"Duress" is a fantastic card! That being said, if there is only 1 of them in your deck, Then you probably wont get to it tell late game. By that point your opponent will probably be playing top deck. If not then he's holding on to something as a "Just in case" (for example, a board wipe, O-ring, or something of that sort). In this scenario, yes, your 1 duress, if you draw it, will help. But chances are, your opponent will have more then just 1 of those "just in case" cards in his deck.

Maybe take out the "Duress" to add a "Killing Wave", or another "Underworld Connections"? probably more likely the killing wave, because "Underworld Connections" will work as a single against long "drawing the game out" type decks.

Anyways, my 2 cents! (P.S. I liked your deck so much that I had to steal it... or at least most of it! =P)

Thanks, for the back up beast258 it's appreciated.

John Finkel at the 2012 World Championship ran UW control. If you look at his decklist here you may see a couple of one-ofs in the sideboard. Hard to argue with Jon Finkel.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1059500

All the cards are different. the cards that are one ofs in this decks sideboard are not doing enough on there own, you obviously don't know the format of Modern very well. let me explain what John is doing here. 1 Baneslayer Angel it's baneslayer a win con against most deck. Sideboard in a win condition against a specific deck sure. 1 Disenchant makes sense the deck has next to no artifact or enchantment removal, but the format doesn't have a strong artifact presence at the time frame and even if it did he runs Annul. 1 Kitchen Finks uh? it's kitchen finks definite aggro defence and there are more in the mainboard. 1 Phantasmal Image before the rules change this was "Destroy target Legendary creature". not enough legendary threats to run more than one. 1 Vendilion Clique Already mainboards them so if he needs another it's at his disposal. and Control has a better chance of drawing one ofs than any other deck because prolonging the game tends to give you additional card draw. BTW that is a modern deck and I didn't even need you link to remember what was in that deck I watched the live stream. modern has more room for one ofs then the current standard metagame control can run some. our main point is Cards like duress if they are in the sideboard they either belong mainboard or not in the deck at all. Underworld Connections is not a card to sideboard. the Killing wave mildly is but Mutilate does a much better job. Griselbrand is playable as a one of because it functions directly with the decks purpose, and it does a great job against Control. I hope this helps you understand.

Baneslayer is equivalent with Griselbrand here. Simple win condition. Disenchant is for Abrupt Decay and soon to be Golgari Charm (currently Naturalize). The aggro defense here is Killing Wave. He's mainboarding 3 Mutilates in the place of Kitchen Finks already, and killing wave either kills the enemy or all of their creatures and leaves you with several 2/2s. That's for aggro decks. There were definitely legendary threats in the format. One particularly notable one being Thrun, the Last Troll. Exactly the kind of thing to come in against Finkel's deck. Clique is his Duress. It's for card advantage. Simply card advantage. Since you watched the live stream, I don't need to tell you (but I will) that the winning deck, played by Yuuya Watanabe, was sideboarding Thoughtseize, not to mention that it came in against his opponent in the finals. It came in against what Yasooka had described as a "control deck". Underworld connections is the same as Duress. You board it in against control decks to bury them in card advantage. That's how Yasooka beat Finkel. Raw card advantage. I understand all right, I think you don't. The cards in the sideboard are mirrors of cards in the deck with similar functionality, like Arbor Elf and Llanowar Elves. By the way, you made a grammatical error in your first sentence. You used the term "there" when the proper term would have been "their".

Your not understanding the true functionality of the current format and how these cards effect it, and Until then continue doing it your way. I'll take my leave.

You're*. And I understand modern quite well. I'll admit, I'm not nearly as versed in standard, but I do still understand that what to do with a sideboard. I'm not a child. I've been playing magic for some time, and I know how things work. Card advantage is always the most important thing. Jund in modern was really only big because of it. Thoughtseize, Inquisition, Liliana, Bloodbraid, cards that generate massive card advantage. That made the deck work. That's why it was successful. That is why Underworld Connections and Duress are in his sideboard. Lifebane Zombie, too. It's the reason he chose Bloodgift Demon and Griselbrand over any other demon in standard.

This has been discussed multiple times, Blood Artist was too slow for the build and was therefore cut.

HotPoloPlayer has deleted this comment.

Excellent point! One I tried to press earlier but was ignored. Bloodthrone Vampire is useless no matter how big it gets if your opponent has a blocker, but with rancor its a terrifying force. Not to mention you can put it on your apostles to swing in some extra damage before sac-ing them and redistributing the rancor.

It's on the site for a reason, if people weren't using it and just staring at it I think that would be weird.

It's for standard.

Well see? I'm glad I asked that question. I was gonna go on about the different draw cards he could use. But he seems to have good handle on that given it's Standard. I'm not seeing a way to speed up getting out the Apostle's faster though.. the only advice I can think of is to try and get them out faster. I'll look into ways and provide suggestion.

Ok... so I gotta ask. Why Skirsdag High Priest?
Second, with the green that you have in this deck, why not do a little self-mill? Golgari has some ways of doing that, and you have an incredible chance of drawing Shadow born Apostle more than any other card in the deck. and if you already have Immortal Servitude in hand, thats great. I'm not saying drop yourself to 1 card, I'm saying just a few cards here and there. Some cards I had in mind were: Rot Farm Skeleton, Grisly Salvage, Deadbridge Chant, or Jarad's Orders(I like this one Best). All of them put cards in your graveyard. But you wouldn't want too much. so maybe 1 Skeleton. Or maybe 2 Grisly Salvage. A good counter to it, if you managed to put in the wrong cards, is Treasure Find. Just an idea I had while searching through cards. I do think you should Jarad's Orders in, though.
Another idea I had was that you could use dying wish as an alternative win strategy or just hurt someone who decided to throw some removal at you. You could also Essence Harvest for the same effect, plus you don't have to lose whatever creature it is that you have beefed up. I'm assuming Bloodthrone Vampire?
That's all I got right now. But this deck doesn't really need help. It's a good, solid deck as is. Just maybe top decking too much to start off, is all. I really like it. If you happen to come by my page, some of my decks could use some help, a pair of fresh eyes is always good.

I don't play modern but I do have a Shadowborn Apostle EDH deck.

I highly doubt that apostles would stand very well in modern. Modern is most of what I play. Any variation of apostles has to be perfectly sculpted for the format by someone who knows it perfectly. This includes metagame, cards, synergies, how to build a perfect sideboard, etc. and that is not always an easy thing to do. I am not even there yet and I have been playing modern basically since Innistrad came out. Not too long, but nowhere close to skilled enough to build modern apostles.

Could be worth a try, though. Modern can be a brutal format, just a warning.

Volcanic Fallout is Scary stuff.

Pyroclasm. Jund Charm. Any sort of wrath effect. Path to Exile.

You made me want to make an EDH deck with shadow born apostle n this is wat i came up with.

http://www.mtgvault.com/melon57/decks/edhshadowborn-apostle/

while it looks nice in paper why would you want champion of the parish when you could drop a shadow apostle?
the only thing it does is delay Griselbrand, not only because you will be droping a champion of the parish but also because you will have white mana witch will delay even more your game, because you will drop less shadow apostles since you wont have so much black mana.

I think it can work if you have the expensive dual lands, instead of basic plains, but i still think it is better to just have extra shadow apostles :)

Fair enough, thank you for the feedback.