I really need to get out and play!! Was planning on making it to a GP this year (would be my first), but work leaves me pretty drained. For what it's worth, Censor seems interesting. I want it to be good at least. Having it as a one-of, just as a way to make an opponent think before tapping out on turn 3 on the play seems interesting. Even if you cycle it, it sits there in your graveyard menacingly, daring your opponent to tap out into 4 open mana.
You might be right about that. We could use Censor in our deck as a means to sneak counter-spell our opponent or if they know it is sitting there in the graveyard, to mess with them psychologically and cause them to not take advantage of turns. Good points all around.
If you want to add white to help fight the fastest of burn and zoo decks, it's best to play mainboard Lightning Helix and/or Blessed Alliance. Supreme Verdict is a bit too heavy on white to justify playing in addition to cryptic and cruel and Damnation is good enough and works better with a heavier black requirement for Cruel. Sphinx Rev is fine but it might just be better to play the 2nd Cruel.
Mana wise, you're prob gonna want about 5 lands that tap for white. Something like: 2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Sacred Foundry, 1 Glacial Fortress and maybe a basic plains if you're scared of blo od moon. You're current mana base looks a bit too slow and you're probably be better off running more shocks/buddy lands so you can keep up to speed against those fast decks you're speaking of. I can do you up a land base if you'd like.
DSDX, your idea of a Cruel deck running Blood Moon has been tossed around a bit here actually. Course your land base and spell choices could be improved, but the concept has been talked about before. Have you used this much at all in any modern tournaments or FNMs?
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-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
@DSDX: For competitive play your entire mainboard should be reconstructed. Some obvious suggestions are replacing Languish with Damnation, buying expensive fetches like Scalding Tarns, buying Snapcaster Mage ... etc, etc, etc.
Looking at your sideboard, it appears that you may be sideboarding mostly against Vampire Tribal, Tribal in general and/or Soul Sisters lifegain.
Another thing you should do is mainboard 2 to 3 Kolaghan's Command that you can switch out with either To the Slaughter or Far // Away from your sideboard. You may have to do that sometimes with creature and/or planeswalker heavy decks that are not affinity or artifact based.
If you run into the dilemma of someone running zoo or burn when everyone else is running opposite decks, its going to be rough on sideboard to win all of your games. Orb of Dreams with Grixis only colors or splashing white for Authority of the Consuls works against haste. Try Sun Droplet for burn in general maybe.
Edit: Spell Snare is a good counter-spell against burn itself.
Probably the most use you are going to get out of posting a list here is to read through the primer, buying everything listed there as staples and otherwise recommended there.
It doesn't have to be EXACTLY from the primer, but adding fetches to the land base along with a few shocks and going up to 24 land wouldn't hurt and changing the spell base up would benefit the deck. The Terminates could go down to 3 because four isn't 100% necessary, the Doom Blades could be swapped for Fatal Push just because it hits most creatures in modern, the Spell Pierces (only hit noncreature, won't always counter) and Vapor Snags (bouncing isn't as permanent as killing) could be swapped for three Mana Leak, three Cryptic Command, and two Spell Snare or Countersquall depending on what other decks you play, and the Anticipates and Telling Times, while decent, can be swapped for Serum Visions and either Ancestral Vision for deeper draws or Think Twice if you can't afford Ancestrals which is fine. Banefire struck me as a strange choice for a control deck, but then again with a moon deck, it's a neat idea.
As far as threats go, Gurmag is good, but you don't really have the support to get it delved out early, so it isn't as efficient to have them as it would be if you were going all in on getting those out early. Since you're running Moon, it would help to have a colorless threat like Batterskull involved since it's easy to cast with Moon out. Lastly, it wouldn't hurt to get Snapcaster Mages if budget isn't an issue. The deck can be played without them, but they just give the deck more reach with Bolt-Snap-Bolt being a thing that wins games.
If you need further ideas for your build, take a look at Blue Moon for ideas if you haven't already seen this, they do the same thing but in two colors rather than three.
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-Modern- UUBBBRR Cruel Control BRG BRgBurn BR URStorm
-Commander- B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired] GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Moved 4 color control comments into its own thread. again, its fine to talk about lists that deviate alittle, but vast changes like mana bases have their own deck threads
Suggestion for a bit of a redesign whilst hopefully keeping the core idea. I haven't touched the mana base and tbh I think you want to go up to 24 lands. I'll admit I'm not sold on Moons and Ultimatums in a deck together but I'd be interested to hear if it works out for you!
@Lil_Bolas: Any chance you can update the primer somehow to include splashes where we have next to no answers and in a way that we can talk about this sort of stuff without moderators hitting buttons on you? It seems that the moderators are all up in arms quoting some forum rule despite the fact that I went to a modern tournament, lost to some zoo deck and talked about on here how Orb of Dreams is inferior to Authority of the Consuls to stop haste creatures. It would be appreciated, thanks.
Also, another suggestion is to maybe improve the primer a little by giving cards ratings. For example, Kiora's Dismissal could be mentioned as a way to handle enchantments, but instead of not mentioning it ever it can be rated lower than Vandalblast which handles artifacts.
I will look into when I get some time. Splashes in the spirit of the original 4c/5c cruel are acceptable, but some of the lists posted deviated from that way too much.
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Level 1 Judge
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU "Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR "The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
The only changes I ended up making to my deck was that I added one Mystic Gate, a Godless Shrine and one Authority of the Consuls and that's only because I can fetch that with the Bloodstained Mire and Polluted Delta that I already have. It's not the most efficient way to do it, but it's the only way I can do it and still run the splash without having Scalding Tarn and 4 of those are the last things I am going to purchase for obvious reasons. If that's a list that deviates too much, I wouldn't know what to splash and talk about here. You would think that with the lack of answers our deck has towards specific decks, the moderators won't be that stupid in coming in here and telling people they are deviating too much and hitting buttons on them. The answers out there for our deck in our colors and out won't always be the most common cards that show in statistical lists, so warning someone and threatening to boot them from the forum for the accusation of deviating or for simply finding any appropriate answer for our deck in any color and discussing it here is extremely inappropriate in my opinion.
Hey, what's up guys first time posting. Been playing grixis control for quite some time now. Played it at the last few events I've played, including GP LA. I'm playing at GP Vegas in June, and decided to start testing with the Ultimatum again. So far I have been extremely satisfied with the results. This is where I'm at with my list currently. Any thoughts, critiques, and ideas are welcome. I would post the sideboard, but that will change multiple times before Vegas, I'm sure, considering the constant shifts in the meta. (Sorry in advance for the formatting. Like I said... First time posting):
@SurfNSlam88: It looks like your main focus is discard and counter. It appears that you have built the deck around Liliana of the Veils discard ability and that the 4 snapcasters are there to compensate for your own cards being thrown into the graveyard.
As powerful as Liliana of the Veil is and how having 4 Snapcaster Mages looks good on paper, my opinion is that your deck is extra weakened in that you are now overly reliant on the graveyard beyond the level that a typical competitive Cruel Control deck would be reliant on the graveyard. Other competitive players are going to be aware on how to deal with this planeswalker and that makes it a poor choice for a cruel control deck.
The biggest winning factor for our deck is surprise. Virtually almost no competitive player out there think that a person is going build a competitive deck out of a seven mana sorcery that could possibly beat their top tier deck. This actually works in your favor when your opponent realizes that they have been hit by a Cruel Ultimatum and then does not necessarily understand your deck enough to effectively sideboard against it.
However, I can guarantee you that your opponents would expect others to run decks with 4 snapcaster mages and Liliana of the Veil. There are no surprises with playing these cards and virtually everyone nowdays sideboards graveyard hate; people also tend to know how to play around Liliana and beat her regardless.
My advice is to build a deck based around casting Cruel Ultimatum and to remove Liliana of the Veil. Also, you should be able to win a tournament with as little as 2 Snapcaster Mages without much reliance on recasting from the graveyard.
Here is how my deck is built for reference. You don't have to build it this way, but it makes for good guidelines.
Thanks for the reply.. I hear what you are saying for sure about Lili. Like previously stated, however, I've been playing grixis in one way or another for years, and I've almost always included at least 1 Liliana somewhere in the 75. With a Think Twice in hand, Liliana's plus ability almost never feels bad. With the card advantage through AV, K-Command/Snap, and Cryptics, Lili's Pros WAY Outweigh her cons IMO. It's definitely just my opinion though. As far as building the deck "based around casting Cruel Ultimatum", I feel like the format is too fast for that right now, hence the singleton copy of Ultimatum. Perhaps when the format slows down a little. Thank you for the reply. I will start posting my testing, and tournament results here, from now until the GP.
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Dead at birth as we slowly decay - We're born only to fade away
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
Hey, yo, welcome to the thread, Surf. Your deck looks pretty good, I agree with your reasons for running LOTV even if she nonbos a bit with a counter suite. Looking forward to seeing your tourney results.
Also mentioned this on the discord server, but I started running Pithing Needle in my board when I made changes this past thursday and good lord, was it useful. I didn't realize how good it was until now, but needle just seems like it takes care of so many of the threats in our problem matchups. Like it hits Batterskull, Expedition Map, Karn, Ugin, Walking Ballista, etc., and that's just the tron match.
@Spastik: Running Pithing Needle mainboard does appear to increase the win rate for our specific deck against top tier decks. For example, if you see that they are running Affinity you can just go ahead and Pithing NeedleCranial Plating on the spot, because they always auto-include it as a staple. You can also use it to disable manlands and any planeswalker that could be placed down so they never activate on you.
Although ... if you want to run Liliana of the Veil, run it. Just note that graveyard hate is going to hit you extra hard unless you have some way to neutralize it. Consider that a copy of Tamiyo, the Moon Sage may help to neutralize issues involving the graveyard and also combos well with Cryptic Command and Torrential Gearhulk.
Hey, yo, welcome to the thread, Surf. Your deck looks pretty good, I agree with your reasons for running LOTV even if she nonbos a bit with a counter suite. Looking forward to seeing your tourney results.
Also mentioned this on the discord server, but I started running Pithing Needle in my board when I made changes this past thursday and good lord, was it useful. I didn't realize how good it was until now, but needle just seems like it takes care of so many of the threats in our problem matchups. Like it hits Batterskull, Expedition Map, Karn, Ugin, Walking Ballista, etc., and that's just the tron match.
Thanks for the welcome! Yeah, pithing needle actually seems rather intriguing, specifically in the tron matchup. Stopping Ballista or a resolved Karn seems pretty relevant. Figuring out whether a needle is better than a Dreadbore (in the case of Karn) is worth the card. However, the utility of it seems great!
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Dead at birth as we slowly decay - We're born only to fade away
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
Although ... if you want to run Liliana of the Veil, run it. Just note that graveyard hate is going to hit you extra hard unless you have some way to neutralize it. Consider that a copy of Tamiyo, the Moon Sage may help to neutralize issues involving the graveyard and also combos well with Cryptic Command and Torrential Gearhulk.
Ashiok is a fine card without a doubt. I used to run him, and in a meta filled with Abzan and Jund he seems great. However, for the time being the Lili's are where I'm stayin. Tamiyo on the other hand is really cute, but tapping out on five to play a Walker that temporarily affects the boardstate isn't necessarily where I want to be. If I was going to play another high CMC sorcery-speed spell in the main, it would probably be Batterskull honestly. Again, this is all preference.
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Dead at birth as we slowly decay - We're born only to fade away
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
In my experience, the ratio of having two Terminates plus two Dreadbores plus 1 Pithing Needle mainboard appears to take care of most of the higher tier threats one could face with activated costs, as well as doubling for spot creature removal or at least disabling when you consider that manlands become creatures.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage doesn't just temporarily affect the board-state and all three of her abilities are relevant to a Cruel Control deck. Her first ability helps you to reserve having to play spot removal against a creature and her second ability lets you draw a costless amount of cards after you have played a Cryptic Command. Her ultimate lets you keep all of the cards that you draw out of playing Ancestral Vision. I wouldn't call that cute, it's technically utility. Not to mention that she turns Liliana of the Veil +1 into only effecting your opponent.
That's an ideal situation, though...
Card reviews, web development tutorials, and more at: http://blog.wrightonlineworks.com
Mana wise, you're prob gonna want about 5 lands that tap for white. Something like: 2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Sacred Foundry, 1 Glacial Fortress and maybe a basic plains if you're scared of blo od moon. You're current mana base looks a bit too slow and you're probably be better off running more shocks/buddy lands so you can keep up to speed against those fast decks you're speaking of. I can do you up a land base if you'd like.
WMMT5dx: Car - RK Coupe Track - Hakone Outbound
4x Anticipate
2x Doom Blade
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Spell Pierce
4x Telling Time
4x Terminate
4x Vapor Snag
Enchantment (2)
2x Blood Moon
Land (22)
1x Crumbling Necropolis
3x Dragonskull Summit
3x Drowned Catacomb
6x Island
3x Mountain
6x Swamp
2x Banefire
2x Cruel Ultimatum
2x Languish
Creature (4)
2x Gurmag Angler
1x Sphinx of the Final Word
1x Torrential Gearhulk
2x Anger of the Gods
4x Dispel
3x Exhaustion
4x Negate
1x Pithing Needle
1x Tainted Remedy
Nicol Bolas Dragon Dick
Hanna, Ship's Navigator Heart-attack Stax
Oona, Queen of the Fae Fairy Dance
Vhati Il-Dal Tree of Woe
Scion of the Ur-Dragon Durgensturm
Jolrael, Empress of Beasts Jamuraa's Army
Liliana, Heretical Healer Rise from your Graves and Proliferate
Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Angelic Judgment [
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
Looking at your sideboard, it appears that you may be sideboarding mostly against Vampire Tribal, Tribal in general and/or Soul Sisters lifegain.
My suggestions here is to consider exchanging Tainted Remedy with the more mana efficient Rain of Gore. Exhaustion should possibly be replaced with Cryptic Command in general and possibly Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. Anger of the Gods, Dispel and Pithing Needle are good choices; however, if you have problems with enchantments you should sideboard Kiora's Dismissal and for artifacts you should sideboard Vandalblast. For handling both artifacts and enchantments main and/or side Engineered Explosives. You should consider between Countersquall and Negate in the sideboard.
Another thing you should do is mainboard 2 to 3 Kolaghan's Command that you can switch out with either To the Slaughter or Far // Away from your sideboard. You may have to do that sometimes with creature and/or planeswalker heavy decks that are not affinity or artifact based.
If you run into the dilemma of someone running zoo or burn when everyone else is running opposite decks, its going to be rough on sideboard to win all of your games. Orb of Dreams with Grixis only colors or splashing white for Authority of the Consuls works against haste. Try Sun Droplet for burn in general maybe.
Edit: Spell Snare is a good counter-spell against burn itself.
Probably the most use you are going to get out of posting a list here is to read through the primer, buying everything listed there as staples and otherwise recommended there.
As far as threats go, Gurmag is good, but you don't really have the support to get it delved out early, so it isn't as efficient to have them as it would be if you were going all in on getting those out early. Since you're running Moon, it would help to have a colorless threat like Batterskull involved since it's easy to cast with Moon out. Lastly, it wouldn't hurt to get Snapcaster Mages if budget isn't an issue. The deck can be played without them, but they just give the deck more reach with Bolt-Snap-Bolt being a thing that wins games.
If you need further ideas for your build, take a look at Blue Moon for ideas if you haven't already seen this, they do the same thing but in two colors rather than three.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
4x Think Twice
2x Fatal Push
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Mana Leak
3x Ancestral Vision
4x Terminate
3x Kolaghan's Command
3x Cryptic Command
3x Blood Moon
Land (22)
1x Crumbling Necropolis
3x Dragonskull Summit
3x Drowned Catacomb
6x Island
3x Mountain
6x Swamp
2x Cruel Ultimatum
2x Damnation
Creature (4)
2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2x Torrential Gearhulk
Suggestion for a bit of a redesign whilst hopefully keeping the core idea. I haven't touched the mana base and tbh I think you want to go up to 24 lands. I'll admit I'm not sold on Moons and Ultimatums in a deck together but I'd be interested to hear if it works out for you!
Also, another suggestion is to maybe improve the primer a little by giving cards ratings. For example, Kiora's Dismissal could be mentioned as a way to handle enchantments, but instead of not mentioning it ever it can be rated lower than Vandalblast which handles artifacts.
Just some friendly suggestions.
Level 2 in progress...
UUU Merfolk UUU
"Above the waves you may be mighty indeed, but down here you belong to me."
-Empress Galina
UBR Cruel Control UBR
"The essence of every world, every spell, and every thought is power. Nothing else matters, because nothing else exists."
-Nicol Bolas
CREATURES:
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
DRAW SPELLS / CANTRIPS:
3 Ancestral Vision
3 Think Twice
1 Shadow of Doubt
COUNTERMAGIC:
2 Spell Snare
1 Logic Knot
2 Mana Leak
3 Cryptic Command
REMOVAL:
2 Fatal Push
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Terminate
1 Damnation
UTILITY:
1 Electrolyze
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Cruel Ultimatum
PLANESWALKERS:
2 Liliana of the Veil
LANDS:
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Blood Crypt
2 Steam Vents
2 Watery Grave
2 Darkslick Shores
1 Drowned Catacombs
1 Sulfur Falls
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Wandering Fumarole
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
As powerful as Liliana of the Veil is and how having 4 Snapcaster Mages looks good on paper, my opinion is that your deck is extra weakened in that you are now overly reliant on the graveyard beyond the level that a typical competitive Cruel Control deck would be reliant on the graveyard. Other competitive players are going to be aware on how to deal with this planeswalker and that makes it a poor choice for a cruel control deck.
The biggest winning factor for our deck is surprise. Virtually almost no competitive player out there think that a person is going build a competitive deck out of a seven mana sorcery that could possibly beat their top tier deck. This actually works in your favor when your opponent realizes that they have been hit by a Cruel Ultimatum and then does not necessarily understand your deck enough to effectively sideboard against it.
However, I can guarantee you that your opponents would expect others to run decks with 4 snapcaster mages and Liliana of the Veil. There are no surprises with playing these cards and virtually everyone nowdays sideboards graveyard hate; people also tend to know how to play around Liliana and beat her regardless.
My advice is to build a deck based around casting Cruel Ultimatum and to remove Liliana of the Veil. Also, you should be able to win a tournament with as little as 2 Snapcaster Mages without much reliance on recasting from the graveyard.
Here is how my deck is built for reference. You don't have to build it this way, but it makes for good guidelines.
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Island
1x Mountain
4x Polluted Delta
1x Reflecting Pool
4x Smoldering Marsh
1x Steam Vents
2x Sulfur Falls
4x Sunken Hollow
1x Swamp
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Artifact (3)
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Pithing Needle
Instant (12)
3x Cryptic Command
1x Fatal Push
2x Kolaghan's Command
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Terminate
3x Ancestral Vision
2x Cruel Ultimatum
2x Damnation
2x Dreadbore
3x Serum Visions
Creature (5)
1x Evil Twin
1x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2x Snapcaster Mage
1x Torrential Gearhulk
Planeswalker (4)
1x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1x Jace, Architect of Thought
1x Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1x Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Collective Brutality
2x Dispel
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Izzet Staticaster
2x Kiora's Dismissal
1x Surgical Extraction
2x To the Slaughter
2x Vandalblast
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
Also mentioned this on the discord server, but I started running Pithing Needle in my board when I made changes this past thursday and good lord, was it useful. I didn't realize how good it was until now, but needle just seems like it takes care of so many of the threats in our problem matchups. Like it hits Batterskull, Expedition Map, Karn, Ugin, Walking Ballista, etc., and that's just the tron match.
UUBBBRR Cruel Control
BRG BRgBurn
BR URStorm
-Commander-
B Chainer, Dementia Master - Reanimator
U Teferi, Temporal Archmage - Calimari Tribal [Retired]
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - Delirium/Tokens
@SurfNSlam88 I understand that you want to run Liliana of the Veil and I think one might be okish; but, you should really do playtesting between Liliana of the Veil and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver. Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver historically has done a better job at winning the game for our deck while Liliana of the Veil not so much.
Although ... if you want to run Liliana of the Veil, run it. Just note that graveyard hate is going to hit you extra hard unless you have some way to neutralize it. Consider that a copy of Tamiyo, the Moon Sage may help to neutralize issues involving the graveyard and also combos well with Cryptic Command and Torrential Gearhulk.
Thanks for the welcome! Yeah, pithing needle actually seems rather intriguing, specifically in the tron matchup. Stopping Ballista or a resolved Karn seems pretty relevant. Figuring out whether a needle is better than a Dreadbore (in the case of Karn) is worth the card. However, the utility of it seems great!
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
Ashiok is a fine card without a doubt. I used to run him, and in a meta filled with Abzan and Jund he seems great. However, for the time being the Lili's are where I'm stayin. Tamiyo on the other hand is really cute, but tapping out on five to play a Walker that temporarily affects the boardstate isn't necessarily where I want to be. If I was going to play another high CMC sorcery-speed spell in the main, it would probably be Batterskull honestly. Again, this is all preference.
We got no future, we got no hope
Our life is pain and it's hard to cope.
Edit: Although Kolaghan's Command may need to be switched out for something like To The Slaughter at times from the sideboard.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage doesn't just temporarily affect the board-state and all three of her abilities are relevant to a Cruel Control deck. Her first ability helps you to reserve having to play spot removal against a creature and her second ability lets you draw a costless amount of cards after you have played a Cryptic Command. Her ultimate lets you keep all of the cards that you draw out of playing Ancestral Vision. I wouldn't call that cute, it's technically utility. Not to mention that she turns Liliana of the Veil +1 into only effecting your opponent.
I wouldn't call Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker cute either.
And BTW ... my decklist is 2.8 CMC including those cards which is on average faster. It works better than you would think.