This deck is based off the modern Grixis control deck, but with no snapcaster mage. Instead, Jace and Gearhulk provide the instant / sorcery recursion engine, with k-command providing the creature recursion. The end goal is to just chain Dig into Gearhulk into more Digs and Gearhulks, with Gearhulk being especially good hitting delve cards.
Fatal Push What I think to be one of the better removals for the deck. Very efficient and clean for most any creature in the format. This deck also plays a higher number of fetch lands to begin with for other synergies (delve, jace) so a better chance to hit revolt.
Fiery Impulse Another great and efficient answer to most early creatures.
Ultimate Price A solid removal that is going to be live a very fair portion of time.
Grasp of Darkness Another solid removal that hits a lot of different creatures, gets around indestructible, and can even team up with a blocking gearhulk against something large. The double black may or may not be an issue, depending on build.
Ruinous Path A solid piece of removal for virtually anything truly threatening. The sorcery speed hurts though
Murderous Cut An excellent unconditional removal that synergizes with everything else in the deck. Hitting a delve card with a gearhulk is amazing value, and surprisingly easy to accomplish
Unlicensed Disintegration A nice generic instant speed unconditional removal that has a small bonus when gearhulk is out.
Dispel, Ceremonious Rejection, Invasive Surgery These are more fringe / situational counters. While the format is still unknown I'd probably avoid them, but they offer serious blowouts against the decks they're good against.
Negate Your generic 'other' counter spell. good against anything that..... well... isn't a creature.
Revolutionary Rebuff, Spell Shrivel, Clash Of Wills I lump all 3 of these together as more of the tempo style counter spell, usually good in the early game, but lose a good bit of value as the game goes on.
Disdainful Stroke A pretty decent spell in a deck that has trouble finding cheap answers to more expensive, complicated threats. My opinion though, is this counter competes with the similar role of Transgress the Mind, and I prefer transgress.
Languish Probably one of the better sweepers. Kills most, if not all, early aggro and gearhulk dodges it too.
Radiant Flames Another great aggro sweeper that really helps against the very low to the ground aggressive decks. Only 3 mana lets you get it in against Atarka or Scales before they get out of control.
Flaying Tendrils A good option only if the exile clause is needed in a match up.
Duress Probably the perfect discard spell in matchups where you want to cast discard. It let's you get a peak at only 1 mana, usually almost always castable before countermagic mana comes up, and usually hits something fairly important. Really bad against creatures though, and people do tend to include creatures in their decks.
Transgress the Mind Probably one of the better discard, hitting most anything you would care about discarding, in match ups where you want to cast discard. Against aggro its pretty worthless.
Collective Brutality A card that has potential, as its generic enough to do well in most any matchup. This along with K-command can give you a lot of flexibility. That being said I honestly don't like it, the modes all being relatively individually week.
Treasure Cruise Decent card draw but better suited for a tempo, cantrip style deck. Hitting it with a gearhulk is a pretty powerful move though, as with all the delve cards.
Glimmer of Genius Not a bad rate, 3 virtual cards for 4 mana, all at instant speed for gearhulk to flashback, but the energy goes to waste.
Read The Bones Sorcery speed hurts all the black card draw spells because of not being able to recur with gearhulk. RtB This has always been a solid staple at 3 mana, offering a bit of both draw and filtering.
Painful Truths Probably the best rate for card draw, not bad to cast early against grindy opponents to shape your hand.
Anticipate Most accepted card filter. Though certainly no Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand it gets the job done at 2 mana for color fixing and smoothing out your draw.
Dragonlord Silumgar Great against planeswalkers and big threats. Best move is to steal an enemy walker and ultimate with it.
Ob Nixilis Reignited Can instantly replace itself, or protect itself by killing a creature. Another walker that takes over the game if you get to untap with it
Chandra, Flamecaller Solid finisher that can act as sweeper, card filter, and finisher.
Liliana, The Last Hope Decent at controlling the board, especially with JVP, and can help with the recursion engine.
Here is my current decklist. It's pretty generic right now, going to try and update it as time goes by and a meta starts to develop
Testing has been mixed. When I go off and can chain multiple digs with gearhulks or get a Jace flipped I easily take over.
I've made a couple of changes. Turns out, 3 cmc for a Cancel effect is too expensive. With the artifact removal option for kolaghan's command, I've been using Revolutionary Rebuff with somewhat decent results. I'm not a huge fan of it where the 2 biggest aggro decks in the format are Ensoul with lots of artifacts, and g/b scales which runs both Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker, however the format is quite a bit faster than standard so I think the 3 cmc countermagic spells are just a little too expensive.
I've also included both a Crumble To Dust and a Foul-Tongue Invocation in the SB to help deal with a Darksteel Citadel if it gets enchanted with Ensoul Artifact or a Tezzeret's Touch. Foul Tongue is the only edict I can think of that's instant or sorcery, if there are any cheaper edict effects in frontier that I missed I'd love to know them.
For sweepers I've gone to 3 Radiant Flames maindeck. both Languish and Crux of Fate were just a little too over costed for their effects. Flames seems to be the only sweeper that does what I want early enough to keep me alive. The format is almost fast enough to justify Damnation, but alas, I will have to keep Anger of the Gods with no exile.
A particularly troublesome creature has been Savage Knuckleblade. Without revolt, this card is extremely hard to deal with. I've been considering including some number of Grasp of Darkness or just some more Murder in the 75 somewhere to help with some of the bigger and more complicated threats. Probably would go with Unlicensed Disintegration as my Terminate.
I've also included 1 maindeck Silumgar's Command as a better answer to planeswalkers or just hard to deal with threats, and a good gas card to flashback with Gearhulk.
The big 3 aggro decks are grixis ensoul, abzan scales, and good old fashioned red deck wins, which has a couple of iterations, either the burn and creatures version, or the artarka pump version. If I can get the main deck to better help with these matchups I think the deck could see more success. I'm not sure, but I've also been thinking that white is needed, and Dark Jeskai (or Grixis White) might be better, as white gives you some very beneficial lifegain spells that all synergize real well with this deck, mainly stuff like Soulfire Grand Master, Ojutai's CommandBlessed Alliance, and Arashin Cleric.
I'm kind of meh about collective brutality. Against burn it is probably good, as 2 mana is a good rate to kill a threat and remove a burn / pump spell. The floor is pretty low on this card though, 2 damage for 2 mana is a pretty bad rate, and if you miss with the discard you're down a card. Could make the cut in the sideboard if I'm desperate for more cards to help with burn, but against ensoul and scales the card is very bad. Could be good against Dark Jeskai though, kill a Grandmaster and make them discard a dig. I suppose it has potential for 1-2 sideboard slots.
This deck is based off the modern Grixis control deck, but with no snapcaster mage. Instead, Jace and Gearhulk provide the instant / sorcery recursion engine, with k-command providing the creature recursion. The end goal is to just chain Dig into Gearhulk into more Digs and Gearhulks, with Gearhulk being especially good hitting delve cards.
Fiery Impulse Another great and efficient answer to most early creatures.
Ultimate Price A solid removal that is going to be live a very fair portion of time.
Grasp of Darkness Another solid removal that hits a lot of different creatures, gets around indestructible, and can even team up with a blocking gearhulk against something large. The double black may or may not be an issue, depending on build.
Ruinous Path A solid piece of removal for virtually anything truly threatening. The sorcery speed hurts though
Murderous Cut An excellent unconditional removal that synergizes with everything else in the deck. Hitting a delve card with a gearhulk is amazing value, and surprisingly easy to accomplish
Unlicensed Disintegration A nice generic instant speed unconditional removal that has a small bonus when gearhulk is out.
Negate Your generic 'other' counter spell. good against anything that..... well... isn't a creature.
Revolutionary Rebuff, Spell Shrivel, Clash Of Wills I lump all 3 of these together as more of the tempo style counter spell, usually good in the early game, but lose a good bit of value as the game goes on.
Void Shatter, Disallow, Scatter To The Winds All of your normal Cancel with upside. The upside I have found most useful is the exile on void shatter more so than the other counterspells
Disdainful Stroke A pretty decent spell in a deck that has trouble finding cheap answers to more expensive, complicated threats. My opinion though, is this counter competes with the similar role of Transgress the Mind, and I prefer transgress.
Summary Dismissal The main 2 threats that go over the top of you are Ulamog, The Ceaseless Hunger and Emrakul, The Promised End, having an answer to both the cast trigger and the threat is real nice.
Radiant Flames Another great aggro sweeper that really helps against the very low to the ground aggressive decks. Only 3 mana lets you get it in against Atarka or Scales before they get out of control.
Flaying Tendrils A good option only if the exile clause is needed in a match up.
Crux of Fate A generic 5 mana Wrath of God but for black.
Transgress the Mind Probably one of the better discard, hitting most anything you would care about discarding, in match ups where you want to cast discard. Against aggro its pretty worthless.
Collective Brutality A card that has potential, as its generic enough to do well in most any matchup. This along with K-command can give you a lot of flexibility. That being said I honestly don't like it, the modes all being relatively individually week.
Glimmer of Genius Not a bad rate, 3 virtual cards for 4 mana, all at instant speed for gearhulk to flashback, but the energy goes to waste.
Read The Bones Sorcery speed hurts all the black card draw spells because of not being able to recur with gearhulk. RtB This has always been a solid staple at 3 mana, offering a bit of both draw and filtering.
Painful Truths Probably the best rate for card draw, not bad to cast early against grindy opponents to shape your hand.
Anticipate Most accepted card filter. Though certainly no Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand it gets the job done at 2 mana for color fixing and smoothing out your draw.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang Grindy threat that can come out somewhat early.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet Good zombie and other G/Y hate.
Thing In The Ice Good against pretty much any creature beat down deck and really useful SB card when opponent sides out their cheap creature removal.
Weaver of Lightning Great thopter hate.
Ob Nixilis Reignited Can instantly replace itself, or protect itself by killing a creature. Another walker that takes over the game if you get to untap with it
Chandra, Flamecaller Solid finisher that can act as sweeper, card filter, and finisher.
Liliana, The Last Hope Decent at controlling the board, especially with JVP, and can help with the recursion engine.
Here is my current decklist. It's pretty generic right now, going to try and update it as time goes by and a meta starts to develop
4 Fatal Push
3 Anticipate
1 Negate
1 Transgress the Mind
4 Kolaghan's Command
3 Void Shatter
3 Languish
1 Crux of Fate
2 Murderous Cut
4 Dig Through Time
Creatures (8)
4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4 Torrential Gearhulk
4 Sunken Hollow
3 Smoldering Marsh
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wandering Fumarole
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 Island
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
3 Duress
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Negate
2 Radiant Flames
1 Summary Dismissal
3 Transgress the Mind
1 Void Shatter
1 Painful Truths
I've made a couple of changes. Turns out, 3 cmc for a Cancel effect is too expensive. With the artifact removal option for kolaghan's command, I've been using Revolutionary Rebuff with somewhat decent results. I'm not a huge fan of it where the 2 biggest aggro decks in the format are Ensoul with lots of artifacts, and g/b scales which runs both Walking Ballista and Hangarback Walker, however the format is quite a bit faster than standard so I think the 3 cmc countermagic spells are just a little too expensive.
I've also included both a Crumble To Dust and a Foul-Tongue Invocation in the SB to help deal with a Darksteel Citadel if it gets enchanted with Ensoul Artifact or a Tezzeret's Touch. Foul Tongue is the only edict I can think of that's instant or sorcery, if there are any cheaper edict effects in frontier that I missed I'd love to know them.
For sweepers I've gone to 3 Radiant Flames maindeck. both Languish and Crux of Fate were just a little too over costed for their effects. Flames seems to be the only sweeper that does what I want early enough to keep me alive. The format is almost fast enough to justify Damnation, but alas, I will have to keep Anger of the Gods with no exile.
A particularly troublesome creature has been Savage Knuckleblade. Without revolt, this card is extremely hard to deal with. I've been considering including some number of Grasp of Darkness or just some more Murder in the 75 somewhere to help with some of the bigger and more complicated threats. Probably would go with Unlicensed Disintegration as my Terminate.
I've also included 1 maindeck Silumgar's Command as a better answer to planeswalkers or just hard to deal with threats, and a good gas card to flashback with Gearhulk.
The big 3 aggro decks are grixis ensoul, abzan scales, and good old fashioned red deck wins, which has a couple of iterations, either the burn and creatures version, or the artarka pump version. If I can get the main deck to better help with these matchups I think the deck could see more success. I'm not sure, but I've also been thinking that white is needed, and Dark Jeskai (or Grixis White) might be better, as white gives you some very beneficial lifegain spells that all synergize real well with this deck, mainly stuff like Soulfire Grand Master, Ojutai's Command Blessed Alliance, and Arashin Cleric.
JundBGR
RW Blood MoonRW
Pauper
Delver U
Elves G
Control B
Commander
Edgar Markov BRW
Captain Sisay GW
Niv-Mizzet, Parun UR
Tymna and Ravos WB