It feels really weird to call this Grixis Control with no Cryptics... but I'm sorta blending R/U TiTi with Grixis & Mardu strategies. Maybe this belongs in Deck Creation or some TiTi thread someplace. *shrug*
Sooo... moving away from Cryptic in favor of hand-destruction, ala Mardu, hoping to stick an early TiTi. Between Faithless & Scour I have no problems turning through my deck and filling the GY, which is good for Snappy/KCommand shenanigans and sorta fuels Bedlam Reveler the same way it would Tasigur. It's going to be a little slower (no T2 Rev), but the upside is maybe worth it. Cryptic was sorta my concession to this strategy; can't have 4cmc spells in my hand and play Rev.
On the up side the interaction between Awoken Horrow & Snappy/Rev is pretty much straight gas. I was kinda worried about not being able to refill my hand without something like Ancestral Vision or Think Twice, but so far the incremental card gain has been solid.
Main deck Surgical probably looks weird... but I think it's justified in the current meta with Bridgevine being the current hotness, along with the likes of Mardu, Hollow One, U/W Control & KCI all being Tier 1 or 2. Plus it's a "free" spell for TiTi and prowess enabler for Rev. In bad matchups I can always loot/brutality it away.
Being on the maindeck Surgical plan I opted for Ghost Quarter, running 1 main and 3 in board to hit Tron. The board needs a lot of work, but tried to shore up matchups with Burn and other hypo aggro decks like Elves, Affinity, Infect, etc.
So far in testing I'm enjoying it and having moderate success... but man does it feel strange not having Cryptic. Not really sure if I should still have Thought Scour filing my GY with no Logic Knot/Tasigur, etc or if I should maybe switch to Opt/Serum Visions. I guess I'm just having a hard time completely breaking from my normal Grixis Control roots; it's ingrained in me that Thought Scour is criminally underrated by the MTG community at large lol.
It feels really weird to call this Grixis Control with no Cryptics... but I'm sorta blending R/U TiTi with Grixis & Mardu strategies. Maybe this belongs in Deck Creation or some TiTi thread someplace. *shrug*
Sooo... moving away from Cryptic in favor of hand-destruction, ala Mardu, hoping to stick an early TiTi. Between Faithless & Scour I have no problems turning through my deck and filling the GY, which is good for Snappy/KCommand shenanigans and sorta fuels Bedlam Reveler the same way it would Tasigur. It's going to be a little slower (no T2 Rev), but the upside is maybe worth it. Cryptic was sorta my concession to this strategy; can't have 4cmc spells in my hand and play Rev.
On the up side the interaction between Awoken Horrow & Snappy/Rev is pretty much straight gas. I was kinda worried about not being able to refill my hand without something like Ancestral Vision or Think Twice, but so far the incremental card gain has been solid.
Main deck Surgical probably looks weird... but I think it's justified in the current meta with Bridgevine being the current hotness, along with the likes of Mardu, Hollow One, U/W Control & KCI all being Tier 1 or 2. Plus it's a "free" spell for TiTi and prowess enabler for Rev. In bad matchups I can always loot/brutality it away.
Being on the maindeck Surgical plan I opted for Ghost Quarter, running 1 main and 3 in board to hit Tron. The board needs a lot of work, but tried to shore up matchups with Burn and other hypo aggro decks like Elves, Affinity, Infect, etc.
So far in testing I'm enjoying it and having moderate success... but man does it feel strange not having Cryptic. Not really sure if I should still have Thought Scour filing my GY with no Logic Knot/Tasigur, etc or if I should maybe switch to Opt/Serum Visions. I guess I'm just having a hard time completely breaking from my normal Grixis Control roots; it's ingrained in me that Thought Scour is criminally underrated by the MTG community at large lol.
This build seems very interesting, although it fits into more of a mid range archetype.
Really interested to see the chemistry between TiTi and Reveler
I've been keeping track of a slightly modified version of my earlier Pyromancer Control list, so far I'm 132 matches in. My winrate is 83/50 or 62,4%. So far 3 things are significant:
1) The overall win rate. I only reccord matches in competitive settings, mostly in medium sized paper events. I'm pretty satisfied with that rate.
2) in 132 matches, I have faced a whopping 48 different decks, and by that I dont mean 38 yank brews, but 48 well-known archetypes that either are tiered right now or have been in the past (I don't include matches against brews). The diversity is INSANE in modern right now.
3) The first matchup that is approaching a reasonable number is UW/UWx control, though throwing UW and jeskai together is already questionable. I'm 7-0 against UW Control and 8-2 against Jeskai or 15-2 agsint UWx control. Its still a laughable sample size, but weirdly enough a) I dont miss Jace at all in these matches, b) pyromancer is unexpectedly good in both matchups, especially UW control.
What's your most recent build? I was wondering how you can consistently prey upon UWx control decks. Maybe pyromancer is the secret recipe?
This is the current list (I actually dont know if it has changed since i last posted an iteration of it).
I think I talked about the UWx matchup before. The gist of it is that first, especially against UW Control, Pyromancer is great because they cant cleanly answer him outside a sweeper which puts us up a lot of tempo (which his key), much like getting Tasigur/pyromancer
pathed nets us tempo. After they have dealt with our early pressure, were often up 1-2 lands and can capitalize on that for 3-4 turns, where we can simply cast more spells than them. Second (and a similar idea) Fulminator Mage is, at least for me, a powerhouse against them. It shuts down Azcanta and Colonnade and thwarts their development into their big planeswalkers, all of which is gamewinning. And generally, we want to get ahead with exchanges like "Spell Snare counters Negate" and "Countersquall counters Teferi". Keep them on the ground and trade up in tempo. In other words, we play permanent answers that also provide tempo (as opposed to stuff like Remand).
Thanks for the tips. I do find UWx control a somewhat favorable MU, just not to your degree, thought it'd be a good idea to ask for some tips.
@Aeonsz
I would like to add too that my 4 pyromancer build is pretty favored against UW, and I've tested it against both traditional lists (Jura + Secure the wastes) and the newfangled one with Teferi. I would surmise that it is indeed pyromancer that, similar to delver, comes down early and creates an insurmountable advantage that they can only defeat with path + counterspells to counter your own countermagic, and even then they will have to deal with the tokens that emerge from that stack battle. Or, they can wipe, but with Claim // Fame and Kommand they just can't pull away from it.
My curve being much lower, my plan for their celestial colonnades is 2-of alpine moon. Depending on what I see, I may name Colonnade or Field of Ruin first, to either shut off their manlands or protect my own. The moons replace the terminates, which have no real targets.
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@Aeonsz
I would like to add too that my 4 pyromancer build is pretty favored against UW, and I've tested it against both traditional lists (Jura + Secure the wastes) and the newfangled one with Teferi. I would surmise that it is indeed pyromancer that, similar to delver, comes down early and creates an insurmountable advantage that they can only defeat with path + counterspells to counter your own countermagic, and even then they will have to deal with the tokens that emerge from that stack battle. Or, they can wipe, but with Claim // Fame and Kommand they just can't pull away from it.
My curve being much lower, my plan for their celestial colonnades is 2-of alpine moon. Depending on what I see, I may name Colonnade or Field of Ruin first, to either shut off their manlands or protect my own. The moons replace the terminates, which have no real targets.
Sounds very reasonable, although I tend to move away from YP now.
My reason is that YP isn't a card that we can exploit at no cost, it's an engine that needs to be built around, and for that, Mardu Pyromancer simply does the job better. When I used to play 1-2 copies though i was always happy seeing it, and did wonder if I needed more copies of YP. I currently play vendilion clique in YP's spot as a 1-of, I haven't kept a playing record like Alex though, can't really provide any robust analysis. maybe i'll move back to YP after toying with clique.
@Aeonsz
I would like to add too that my 4 pyromancer build is pretty favored against UW, and I've tested it against both traditional lists (Jura + Secure the wastes) and the newfangled one with Teferi. I would surmise that it is indeed pyromancer that, similar to delver, comes down early and creates an insurmountable advantage that they can only defeat with path + counterspells to counter your own countermagic, and even then they will have to deal with the tokens that emerge from that stack battle. Or, they can wipe, but with Claim // Fame and Kommand they just can't pull away from it.
My curve being much lower, my plan for their celestial colonnades is 2-of alpine moon. Depending on what I see, I may name Colonnade or Field of Ruin first, to either shut off their manlands or protect my own. The moons replace the terminates, which have no real targets.
Sounds very reasonable, although I tend to move away from YP now.
My reason is that YP isn't a card that we can exploit at no cost, it's an engine that needs to be built around, and for that, Mardu Pyromancer simply does the job better. When I used to play 1-2 copies though i was always happy seeing it, and did wonder if I needed more copies of YP. I currently play vendilion clique in YP's spot as a 1-of, I haven't kept a playing record like Alex though, can't really provide any robust analysis. maybe i'll move back to YP after toying with clique.
@Aeonsz
I would like to add too that my 4 pyromancer build is pretty favored against UW, and I've tested it against both traditional lists (Jura + Secure the wastes) and the newfangled one with Teferi. I would surmise that it is indeed pyromancer that, similar to delver, comes down early and creates an insurmountable advantage that they can only defeat with path + counterspells to counter your own countermagic, and even then they will have to deal with the tokens that emerge from that stack battle. Or, they can wipe, but with Claim // Fame and Kommand they just can't pull away from it.
My curve being much lower, my plan for their celestial colonnades is 2-of alpine moon. Depending on what I see, I may name Colonnade or Field of Ruin first, to either shut off their manlands or protect my own. The moons replace the terminates, which have no real targets.
Sounds very reasonable, although I tend to move away from YP now.
My reason is that YP isn't a card that we can exploit at no cost, it's an engine that needs to be built around, and for that, Mardu Pyromancer simply does the job better. When I used to play 1-2 copies though i was always happy seeing it, and did wonder if I needed more copies of YP. I currently play vendilion clique in YP's spot as a 1-of, I haven't kept a playing record like Alex though, can't really provide any robust analysis. maybe i'll move back to YP after toying with clique.
i DID kinda build around pyro, albeit with 2 cards out of the 60. You don't see any other Grixis list on here sporting Claim // Fame. I'm all out for my snaps, jvp and peezies. They hit the battlefield courageously, die as quickly, come back as easily, and the value train won't stop chugging.
mardu has souls, lootings to generate value, while we have kommand, claim/fame. They have bedlam, we have snap. They have discard, we have counters. So its not the same animal by any means but I don't think its fair to dismiss grixis pyromancer either
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Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
Hey all, I just got second in a 5 round PPTQ and wanted to share my list with everyone along with a few thoughts on the archetype as a whole. Let's start with the list I ran and then I'll talk about how it all went down.
I've been having a lot of success with this list and the few odd choices I've been making. I'm down to only 2 scours because I've been constantly reminded that in most games I just don't have the time to durdle in the first few turns. Beyond that I also never want to draw more than one in a game so going down to only 2 copies seems correct and with the extra early spells I can still play a fast tasigur without a need for scours. Nonetheless it still does a lot for the deck (and is hilariously good with JTMS) by letting you hunt down key spells for snapcaster mage so I wouldn't want to cut them entirely.
Bolas is still amazing and while jace has been much maligned in modern, it is another bomb to drop to either pull far ahead or just win on its own. In the past I've ran jace, architect of thought and was very happy with him as there were a bunch of lingering souls flying around making it quite easy to get ahead with him. But lately they've gone down in popularity so it's time to bring out the big guns. The biggest difference in this list is that the addition of bolas makes it far easier to protect him by, gasp, blocking! Sure pyromancer can also block, but that can easily fall apart with a single poor brainstorm while bolas just prevents attacks by virtue of simply being bigger than everything else on board.
Finally are the two main deck angers which I added in out of fear for graveyard centric aggro decks. The lack of path to exile is the primary thing that you're losing by choosing grixis over jeskai and this helps make up for that. I count this as my "interactive flex slots" where it could be angers today or more counter magic next week or possibly extra threats next month. Right now I love having some kind of sweepers in the main, especially since nobody expects it from grixis, and I'll most likely be keeping them for a while.
R1: Jeskai (Ben Nikolich list with peeks and settles) 2-0
I sit down across from a friend of mine that I play with locally and we share a laugh, especially since we both know what deck the other is on and that this is going to be a long and interactive match. Game one they mull to 5 and it wasn't much of a contest. I aggressively use my Kommands as shock discard and spew off snapcasters to double up on the effect. Since they're on such low resources I wanted to force trades as often as possible to preserve a large mana advantage and ability to fight over the finishers. Once they finally manage to get their feet under them I drop a tasigur and bolas in the same turn and the pair clean it up in short order.
Second game we both keep seven and take turns trying for an end step vendillion clique. Mine resolves cycling an azcanta and theirs gets countered. I stick a jace and start to go to town until a combination of snap and electrolyze manages to clear it. Sadly I haven't drawn much of note past a pair of cryptics in hand while their hand is flush with cheap permission but lacking in threats. A bit of draw go later we start a fight over a Teferi which they win. I am able to get a hit on it with a tar pit and follow up with bolas which threatens to clear it.
They force through a jace the following turn leaving me with just a snap in hand and nothing else. I end step a snap Kommand and manage to kill jace and leave teferi at 3 loyalty so short of a wrath or path/snap/path I could clear the board and have some giant monsters ready to fight. Both of us are on empty but I have a massive board advantage with a manland, bolas, snap, and tasigur. They field my creep and make an error when they go for an upkeep cryptic tap+draw. I instantly say resolves, flip bolas, use him to burn down teferi and with just 2 minutes on the clock my opponent decides to concede the following turn.
R2: Humans 2-1
They win the roll and start with cavern into noble. I have a mediocre hand with some dead permission, but I have a turn one push for the noble and a turn 3 Kommand for a champion and aether vile. They follow up with a thalia and lieutenant and a mantis rider the next turn after cycling a canopy. I drop a bolas to get their last card but they have an image to get their own bolas. I take a draw step we trade off dragons and I bolt the rider to clean up the battlefield. Next turn I have a Snap/Kommand to eat their draw step, get back my bolas and chump with the snap. Next turn I cast bolas while they brick on their following turn. I flip bolas. They read it. They scoop.
Next game I keep a really poor 6 that's heavy on lands but has a Kommand and a bolt. I pop their noble and Kommand a thalia, but a back up thalia into bugler plus kitesail prevents me from getting off an anger of the gods and I die the turn before I was able to wipe the board.
Game three we do the threat/answer dance for the first 5 turns and we once again end up in the situation where I have a bolas and they clone it. This time I have the perfect answer and Kommand to shock their image and shatter a vial putting them massively behind in mana. I snap Kommand to take out a thalia and stick a jace the following turn which gets the concession.
R3: Tron 1-2
A very short, almost comedic round, as all three games were identical. Game one they're on the play and run the classic natural tron into turn 3 karn, turn 4 ulamog. Well played. Game two I go turn 3 field of ruin a tower and draw step surgical it, turn 4 bolas and kill you. Skill game. Next game I once again have the 2 card combo of surgical plus LD, but they have the 5 card combo of tower, mine, plant, karn, ulamog and win the match because they won the roll. Out played. But I suppose that's modern for you.
R4: Monored Prison 2-1
Me and my opponent are friends and we tend to play against each other in nearly every event so we both know what the other is on. As I'm walking up to see the pairings, he walks past me and jokes "well it wouldn't be a good event unless you and me end up playing each other, come on let's do this." I win the roll and they announce pregame effects. Uh oh! They drop a gemstone caverns into play pitching an abrade. UH OH! This says a first turn blood moon or 4 drop walker. I fetch a basic swamp and inquisition to see if I should concede right now. They show a hand of ritual x2, Koth, bridge, land. I take a ritual and get to snap inquisition the other rit when they miss land 4 for their pay off. Cryptic comes online and I counter the Koth, they drop a bridge and I play jace to fateseal them out of the game.
Game two they get a turn 2 spirit guide into blood moon and I fetch an island. They follow it up with a rabble master and then top it off with a chandra. I pick up my cards.
Final game I keep a hand with basic island, swamp, scour, tasigur, fetch, and knot. I play my fetch and pass they pitch a spirit guide and cast a sorcerous spyglass. I think for a second and respond by fetching an island. They playfully groan in dismay hoping i would "get got" with a turn 1 LD spell. They name JTMS and I follow up with a turn 2 tasigur, turn 3 knot a chandra, Kommand an Eidolon of the great revel and drop a bolas taking their last card. They peel a chandra to burn down bolas, but they have nothing left so tasigur stands tall. I kill chandra and draw step a clique seeing a boil and only 3 mana available on their side. Shortly after they scoop as they can't assemble an answer to him with no live cards left in hand.
R5: Jeskai (classic secure the waste build) 2-1
Game one I start out fast with IoK, snap IoK, Bolas. They get to lyze the snap, path the bolas and flip a search for azcanta. Unfortunately for me I proceed to draw lands and terminates while they find 3 counterspells off of azcanta. I try to induce a mistake my getting them to use their cryptic on a tasigur plus my own search to sneak through a field of ruin activation but they don't bite and I scoop to save time in the round.
Next game I once again open with a flury of discard spells and leave them with a very weak hand. I follow up with a jace, but the one card I didn't know about was a knot. A teferi comes rolling off the top for them and I respond with a tasigur. They have to drop a bolt and a lyze to handle him and I follow up with a bolas. They're forced to minus teferi on him which lets me Kommand to finish him off and get yet another card out of their hand. I draw a search for my turn and leave up a negate with tags their jace. I drop a search but can't flip in the face of their field of ruin, next up I jam a bolas and they respond with a path. Rampant growth plus free discard in the control mirror? Please and thank you! We trade turns of draw go until I get to end step a clique, they have to electrolyze it and show me a hand of double negate. I untap and just plop Pia and Kiran in face of their negates and they go all the way.
Final game I keep an awkward hand of triple snap, jace, and lands. I draw a scour and hit it on myself end step and my opponent surgicals a milled Kommand and sees my hand of triple snap. So now I'm pretty worried about running out a snapcaster into a potential snap/surgical to get the remaining snaps out of my hand. I end up finding a negate and I try to induce this play and end step snap scour myself. I attack and they flash in a snap to block. I let it happen and they end step try to surgical my snaps but I throw down a negate.
They untap with a search, I field it. I drop bolas, they path. I then run out tasigur and activate, they snap path leaving me up several cards on them with a solid mana advantage. This dance continues for a bit where we trade off threats and answers but mine always leave me up in value. Eventually we get a few turns of the classic draw go and they run out a baneslayer but lose a counter fight over it which leaves me in the clear to resolve PnK to go the distance. Once again the superior card advantage comes through for grixis along with an assist from the opponent playing surgical.
I made the top 8! Huzzah!
Quarters: Humans (rematch from the swiss) 2-0
This goes about the same as before. I turn 1 a kill spell for a noble, terminate their 2 drop, snap bolt a rider, cast bolas and he goes all the way. Game 2 they manage to assemble a nice board, but it's a house or cards with a mage naming my one removal spell and a kitesail holding an anger in exile. However they can't attack because they know I have a clique to eat an attacker which will make their entire board fall apart like dominos. I run out the clique on myself to cycle a jace trying to find a cheap removal spell so I can clear the board in a single turn. Their inability to attack gives me enough time to kill the mage, unlock a push, push their kitesail, anger away their final threats and tasigur walks it in.
Semis: Humans once again 2-1
First game I keep a very strong hand while my opponent is on a mull to 6 and misses their second land drop for several turns. I just dropping bombs on them for several turns and they are never really in it. Next game is much more of a contest thankfully where we take turns exchanging blows with them keeping pace with buglers to keep up with me in cards. They manage to get a strong board presence and I can't find my way to a sweeper and eventually they can attack pass my blockers to take it down.
Final game they start with vial into thalia, but I get to bolt thalia and Kommand the vial with their follow up and snap bolt a rider. With them being stuck playing a single spell a turn, the humans deck is incapable of competing with grixis and I am easily keeping pace with them. They cast dorky creatures, I kill them, I cast jace, I cast PnK and the entire game was rather academic and just the way we all draw it up.
Finals: Storm 1-2
Game one I keep a hand of terminate, cryptic, and 5 lands. I don't feel comfortable mulling a hand with the 2 important cards in it in this match up before board. They end step a gifts, I cryptic, they untap and kill me. Whoa. That was fast.
Game 2 was also fast, but in a much more amusing way. I start with land pass, they shock for a serum visions and tank for a bit. They go double top and I end step surgical their serum visions. I see a hand of many rituals, baral, and an empty the warrens but no lands. I pull the serums from his deck and see that he set up two lands on top. I really dodged a bullet by preventing a potential turn 2 empty for "oodles." They miss a land for two turns before finding it and making a giant mess of goblins. I pop a spellbomb to hit their yard and anger away the tokens. Bolas once again comes down emptying their hand and turning sideways five times.
Final game was another fast one. They go turn 2 thing in the ice with another on the following turn and then manage to flip both of them on the next turn. I have a damnation in the yard but can't get up to 6 mana to snap it back before the horrors eat me up.
I didn't get the RPTQ invite sadly, but managed to walk away with some cash money and another mess of experience with bolas being awesome. The card is very subtle in its power level, but combining the raven's crime effect with IoK and Snap/Kommand makes it very easy to create and then leverage a resource advantage. PnK were great every time I cast them and I'm really happy with the threat package in the 75.
I still want more in the side for storm and/or tron so I'm considering trading a fulminator for a damping sphere and would be quite happy with a second. I feel so overwhelmingly favored against every single fair deck of the format so I don't mind losing something if it can dramatically increase my chances against the super unfair decks. Here's a few of the changes I'm considering.
Main Deck:
No changes.
Sideboard:
-1 fulminator mage
+1 alpine moon
-1 nihil spellbomb
+1 collective brutality
I'm wanting the brutality as burn is still a thing and still bad for us (even though bolas helps a ton there) and is still solid against storm. Most of the time I'm annoyed by casting IoK and being unable to take an empty or a cryptic or gifts which brutality will solve. It still allows me to take out all of my bad cards against control/aggro and bring in cards that I'm happy with. I'm trying very hard to "elephant" my deck so that I can twist and bend my 75 so that post board I'll have little to no bad cards left.
Right now I have an even number of swaps for aggro, control, midrange, but am still lacking a little in the all-in GY decks but there aren't too many of those since bridge-vine has died off in popularity quite a bit. That leaves storm and tron as the primary targets for boarding. Perhaps I could cut a damnation for another wet ball and run a board something like the following:
This leaves me much better off against storm and tron, but leaves me a bit more vulnerable to the graveyard oriented decks. I'm willing to make this trade because of the two main deck angers and the ability to find them with snaps and scours.
Do you have any thoughts on potential main deck or sideboard changes to be better prepared for the unfair decks? I don't want to have to give up large percentages against the fair decks or humans by removing sweepers entirely so I really want to keep a damnation and EE, but still want to wiggle my way up in favor against storm, tron, and KCI. Suggestions? Comments? Halp?
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
You can consider Slaughter Games for Storm and KCI. Actually, Surgical Extraction is a very powerful tool against both. You can also consider Leyline of the Void, which does a lot for 1 card. It'll make those GY strats a breeze too.
I think the number of Alpine Moon can be increased if you're out for Tron. A turn 1 moon effect and then holding up countermagic all the way afterward while clocking with your threats is sound strategy. The thing about Alpine moon is, its still solid against other MU such as UW control, since you can nullify Azcanta before it flips, all copies of colonnade with 1 spell, switch off valakut and kessig wolf run. So even drawing more than 1 alpine moon in the same game is OK.
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i just feel that only running 2 scours may leave your graveyard too empty. you rely quite heavily on it, even for a grixis deck. there've got to be more hands this way that you have to mulligan (like tasigur, knot, azcanta, lands or similar.
I actually haven't been feeling a lack of "graveyard fuel" for the deck to still run smoothly. In the early turns knot as a bad force spike is good enough and delving a single card isn't difficult between the 1 drops and fetches. I'm not at all worried about trying to turbo flip an azcanta outside of control mirrors because I'm too busy casting my spells that I wouldn't have time to activate it even if it had flipped 2-4 turns earlier.
I agree that a turn 2 tasigur is very strong, but I'd want to be on 3 of him before I'd want to go hard on scours just because of the need to have both of them in hand for that play to be possible. Also you are correct that it's easy to slip in a scour eot at some point. My problem with that is that I want to be certain that the early game is 100% taken care of and that means not spending a bunch of spell slots and mana on cantrips.
Lastly, I don’t know about you guys, but since UW Control has become Tier one in Modern and they are really well versed in the control mirror, I think it might be time to bring Akers is back to our SB.
Personally, I believe that we are a heavy favorite in any control mirror so I don't believe that we need anything targeted for them outside of a single generic "fair match up grindy" card in the side.
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Personally, I use nimble as a main deck answer against Tron, Storm and other unfair decks. Since you are playing 2 cliques side anyway, you could just switch that one out.
Secondly, I think you could support Bolas even more with additional discard, I have personally been very satisfied with those and have a bolas list in the 5-0 bracket from two weeks ago as well.
Lastly, I don’t know about you guys, but since UW Control has become Tier one in Modern and they are really well versed in the control mirror, I think it might be time to bring Akers is back to our SB.
Greetings,
Gods
having clocked more games against UW, I've grown even more confident that this isn't a MU we need to focus resources on. My list Claim/Pyro list is a little bit unconventional, but the rest of the 60 is pretty much SOP. Oh, I do run 3 Logics Knots and 0 copies of Delve threats. And also 0 scours and 4 AV.
OK, maybe my list isn't so SOP.
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Has anyobdy given any thought to the new card coming in Ravnica Thought Erasure? I know that deep down we all wish we could run several copies of thoughtseize but know that we just can't afford to. It seems to fix the typical issues we tend to run into with the normal IoK and thoughtseize options. The surveil helps fuel our yard and it doesn't deal us damage like seize while also always providing value even on turn 20 against an empty hand. Also unlike IoK it can take CoCo, Jace, Gifts, and Cryptic. It also lets you take walkers and creatures unlike brutality (which is a fine MD card already). I suppose this is just a super long winded way of saying "unconditional discard spells are good."
I can see it replacing some amount of permission or other discard spells or perhaps a scour or two. I think that the only thing that would hold this card back from being a serious player is the fact that it costs 2 mana unlike the hyper efficient Iok/Seize combo. None the less it is a strong enough effect that it should get a fair shake at testing it out. Personally I'm very excited to play with this one, far more than I was with Bolas. More than that though, I'm much more confident that this will find a home in our lists in due time. Amusingly, I remember myself (and likely several others) suggesting a similar card in the "print this so I can play it in modern" thread. UB targeted discard with some cute benefit on top of it. I couldn't help but throw this out there because of how neat it is.
In any case, does anybody else think this card is real? If you think it's unplayable garbo for modern what makes you say so? And if you do think the card is bad please explain why beyond simply reading the card back to us.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Hey guys,
I'm new to the forum and grixis midrange (Gods_shadow style, big fan btw), i used to play alot of Grixis control with cryptic and such. I have a list to show you, which has no counterspells main deck, what is your opinion on that ? I feel like we sideboard them out
too often, even if they are so good in certain matchups. The list is still in early phase but im currently 7-2 with it against tier 1 decks (lost to hollow one and bridge vine... didnt get my kalitas)
Anyways, here is the list. Please let me know, i'm considering bringing that to the Syracuse SCG (OR my BR Madness brew )
Hi there, I'm considering buying into Grixis Control and I was wondering what would be an appropriate list for my LGS meta: there are NO Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine lists, we have a not-so-regular Human player and the rest is more or less one of each.
Does it make a difference on the list or should I take whatever Corey is playing and build from there? Thanks!
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Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
Hi there, I'm considering buying into Grixis Control and I was wondering what would be an appropriate list for my LGS meta: there are NO Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine lists, we have a not-so-regular Human player and the rest is more or less one of each.
Does it make a difference on the list or should I take whatever Corey is playing and build from there? Thanks!
Are you saying there are no graveyard aggro decks or just no hollow one of that group? If so I'd recommend my list minus the angers for something of your choice that works against what you're more concerned with. Something like extra permission or more walkers or extra cantrips. Here's my list, I wrote about it on the previous page a bit.
Hi there, I'm considering buying into Grixis Control and I was wondering what would be an appropriate list for my LGS meta: there are NO Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine lists, we have a not-so-regular Human player and the rest is more or less one of each.
Does it make a difference on the list or should I take whatever Corey is playing and build from there? Thanks!
Are you saying there are no graveyard aggro decks or just no hollow one of that group? If so I'd recommend my list minus the angers for something of your choice that works against what you're more concerned with. Something like extra permission or more walkers or extra cantrips. Here's my list, I wrote about it on the previous page a bit.
There are aggro/graveyard decks around, just no Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine, and all that listed before. We have one Dredge player occasionally, two Mardu Pyro players, but mostly is Jeskai, Burn, Affinity, UW Control, Tron variations and such.
I will read your comments and take your list as a template. Thanks!
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Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
Quick question that has been bothering me: Why do UW and Jeskai play 2 Main Deck sweepers at minimum, UW even goes up to 5, while we play 1 tops. Is there something about Grixis that makes more sweepers undesirable?
There are a couple of reasons why sweepers aren't commonly wanted or needed in the average grixis control list. The first is that our finishers and best stabilizers by and large are creatures. Supreme verdict is a great way to stabilize the board, but so is a tasigur with the difference between them is that tasigur doubles as a win con and triples as a card advantage engine. Not to mention that other builds might be more creature heavy with pyromancer or bolas which is counter to the primary strength of a wrath of god effect which is breaking the symmetry. The more creatures in your list, the worst damnation becomes.
The second most likely reason is that we usually don't need them because of the fact that we play 7-8 copies of snapcaster mage. Between Kommand Shock + Raise Dead leading into the additional snapcaster triggers, we are stuffed to the gills with spot removal. Much like the UB decks in the soon to rotate standard format, we're able to keep pace quite handily purely through spot removal and killing literally everything that lands. This is why we tend to have a tough time beating multiple copies of lingering souls, it's a perfect counter to our strategy.
Personally, the only reason I main deck two copies of anger of the gods is because of the vengevine decks and various other "turn 3 mega board state" decks of the format. Between them, hollow one, and Scales Affinity I find it all too likely that you won't be able to keep pace effectively. Combine that with the fact that we don't have path to exile for bloodghast and other recursive dorks I think anger is where we want to be right now. However in most iterations of the format that we've seen I have rarely felt the need for MD sweepers outside of when Eldrazi Tron was everywhere.
TL;DR: We have enough spot removal to make up for it and sweepers also kill our finisher and board stabilization threats.
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Hi there, I'm considering buying into Grixis Control and I was wondering what would be an appropriate list for my LGS meta: there are NO Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine lists, we have a not-so-regular Human player and the rest is more or less one of each.
Does it make a difference on the list or should I take whatever Corey is playing and build from there? Thanks!
Are you saying there are no graveyard aggro decks or just no hollow one of that group? If so I'd recommend my list minus the angers for something of your choice that works against what you're more concerned with. Something like extra permission or more walkers or extra cantrips. Here's my list, I wrote about it on the previous page a bit.
There are aggro/graveyard decks around, just no Hollow One, KCI, Bridgevine, and all that listed before. We have one Dredge player occasionally, two Mardu Pyro players, but mostly is Jeskai, Burn, Affinity, UW Control, Tron variations and such.
I will read your comments and take your list as a template. Thanks!
With the decks you listed, i really dont think you should play anger NOR Jace main deck... the rest of the list seems fine to me ! If you dont like that version, you could try Gods_Shadow version (look him up on YouTube). I personnaly would never cut serum vision from any blue deck I play... never again. Thought scour is so underwhelming compared to serum, even with the access to tasigur.
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3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thing In The Ice
4 Bedlam Reveler
Spells: 28
4 Thought Scour
4 Faithless Looting
3 Inqusition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
3 Surgical Extraction
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Rise // Fall
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Watery Grave
2 Blood Crypt
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Island
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Rakdos Charm
3 Sun Droplet
2 Gut Shot
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Collective Brutality
2 Damping Sphere
Sooo... moving away from Cryptic in favor of hand-destruction, ala Mardu, hoping to stick an early TiTi. Between Faithless & Scour I have no problems turning through my deck and filling the GY, which is good for Snappy/KCommand shenanigans and sorta fuels Bedlam Reveler the same way it would Tasigur. It's going to be a little slower (no T2 Rev), but the upside is maybe worth it. Cryptic was sorta my concession to this strategy; can't have 4cmc spells in my hand and play Rev.
On the up side the interaction between Awoken Horrow & Snappy/Rev is pretty much straight gas. I was kinda worried about not being able to refill my hand without something like Ancestral Vision or Think Twice, but so far the incremental card gain has been solid.
Main deck Surgical probably looks weird... but I think it's justified in the current meta with Bridgevine being the current hotness, along with the likes of Mardu, Hollow One, U/W Control & KCI all being Tier 1 or 2. Plus it's a "free" spell for TiTi and prowess enabler for Rev. In bad matchups I can always loot/brutality it away.
Being on the maindeck Surgical plan I opted for Ghost Quarter, running 1 main and 3 in board to hit Tron. The board needs a lot of work, but tried to shore up matchups with Burn and other hypo aggro decks like Elves, Affinity, Infect, etc.
So far in testing I'm enjoying it and having moderate success... but man does it feel strange not having Cryptic. Not really sure if I should still have Thought Scour filing my GY with no Logic Knot/Tasigur, etc or if I should maybe switch to Opt/Serum Visions. I guess I'm just having a hard time completely breaking from my normal Grixis Control roots; it's ingrained in me that Thought Scour is criminally underrated by the MTG community at large lol.
This build seems very interesting, although it fits into more of a mid range archetype.
Really interested to see the chemistry between TiTi and Reveler
What's your most recent build? I was wondering how you can consistently prey upon UWx control decks. Maybe pyromancer is the secret recipe?
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
Thanks for the tips. I do find UWx control a somewhat favorable MU, just not to your degree, thought it'd be a good idea to ask for some tips.
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
I would like to add too that my 4 pyromancer build is pretty favored against UW, and I've tested it against both traditional lists (Jura + Secure the wastes) and the newfangled one with Teferi. I would surmise that it is indeed pyromancer that, similar to delver, comes down early and creates an insurmountable advantage that they can only defeat with path + counterspells to counter your own countermagic, and even then they will have to deal with the tokens that emerge from that stack battle. Or, they can wipe, but with Claim // Fame and Kommand they just can't pull away from it.
My curve being much lower, my plan for their celestial colonnades is 2-of alpine moon. Depending on what I see, I may name Colonnade or Field of Ruin first, to either shut off their manlands or protect my own. The moons replace the terminates, which have no real targets.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Sounds very reasonable, although I tend to move away from YP now.
My reason is that YP isn't a card that we can exploit at no cost, it's an engine that needs to be built around, and for that, Mardu Pyromancer simply does the job better. When I used to play 1-2 copies though i was always happy seeing it, and did wonder if I needed more copies of YP. I currently play vendilion clique in YP's spot as a 1-of, I haven't kept a playing record like Alex though, can't really provide any robust analysis. maybe i'll move back to YP after toying with clique.
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
Sounds very reasonable, although I tend to move away from YP now.
My reason is that YP isn't a card that we can exploit at no cost, it's an engine that needs to be built around, and for that, Mardu Pyromancer simply does the job better. When I used to play 1-2 copies though i was always happy seeing it, and did wonder if I needed more copies of YP. I currently play vendilion clique in YP's spot as a 1-of, I haven't kept a playing record like Alex though, can't really provide any robust analysis. maybe i'll move back to YP after toying with clique.
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
i DID kinda build around pyro, albeit with 2 cards out of the 60. You don't see any other Grixis list on here sporting Claim // Fame. I'm all out for my snaps, jvp and peezies. They hit the battlefield courageously, die as quickly, come back as easily, and the value train won't stop chugging.
mardu has souls, lootings to generate value, while we have kommand, claim/fame. They have bedlam, we have snap. They have discard, we have counters. So its not the same animal by any means but I don't think its fair to dismiss grixis pyromancer either
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Might want to try posting that list in anything BUT alphabetical order if you expect anyone to read it.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
Spirits
2 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Removal
3 Kolaghan's Command
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
Non-Creature Interaction
3 Cryptic Command
1 Spell Snare
2 Logic Knot
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
Durdles
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Thought Scour
3 Field of Ruin
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Damnation
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Negate
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique
I've been having a lot of success with this list and the few odd choices I've been making. I'm down to only 2 scours because I've been constantly reminded that in most games I just don't have the time to durdle in the first few turns. Beyond that I also never want to draw more than one in a game so going down to only 2 copies seems correct and with the extra early spells I can still play a fast tasigur without a need for scours. Nonetheless it still does a lot for the deck (and is hilariously good with JTMS) by letting you hunt down key spells for snapcaster mage so I wouldn't want to cut them entirely.
Bolas is still amazing and while jace has been much maligned in modern, it is another bomb to drop to either pull far ahead or just win on its own. In the past I've ran jace, architect of thought and was very happy with him as there were a bunch of lingering souls flying around making it quite easy to get ahead with him. But lately they've gone down in popularity so it's time to bring out the big guns. The biggest difference in this list is that the addition of bolas makes it far easier to protect him by, gasp, blocking! Sure pyromancer can also block, but that can easily fall apart with a single poor brainstorm while bolas just prevents attacks by virtue of simply being bigger than everything else on board.
Finally are the two main deck angers which I added in out of fear for graveyard centric aggro decks. The lack of path to exile is the primary thing that you're losing by choosing grixis over jeskai and this helps make up for that. I count this as my "interactive flex slots" where it could be angers today or more counter magic next week or possibly extra threats next month. Right now I love having some kind of sweepers in the main, especially since nobody expects it from grixis, and I'll most likely be keeping them for a while.
R1: Jeskai (Ben Nikolich list with peeks and settles) 2-0
Second game we both keep seven and take turns trying for an end step vendillion clique. Mine resolves cycling an azcanta and theirs gets countered. I stick a jace and start to go to town until a combination of snap and electrolyze manages to clear it. Sadly I haven't drawn much of note past a pair of cryptics in hand while their hand is flush with cheap permission but lacking in threats. A bit of draw go later we start a fight over a Teferi which they win. I am able to get a hit on it with a tar pit and follow up with bolas which threatens to clear it.
They force through a jace the following turn leaving me with just a snap in hand and nothing else. I end step a snap Kommand and manage to kill jace and leave teferi at 3 loyalty so short of a wrath or path/snap/path I could clear the board and have some giant monsters ready to fight. Both of us are on empty but I have a massive board advantage with a manland, bolas, snap, and tasigur. They field my creep and make an error when they go for an upkeep cryptic tap+draw. I instantly say resolves, flip bolas, use him to burn down teferi and with just 2 minutes on the clock my opponent decides to concede the following turn.
R2: Humans 2-1
Next game I keep a really poor 6 that's heavy on lands but has a Kommand and a bolt. I pop their noble and Kommand a thalia, but a back up thalia into bugler plus kitesail prevents me from getting off an anger of the gods and I die the turn before I was able to wipe the board.
Game three we do the threat/answer dance for the first 5 turns and we once again end up in the situation where I have a bolas and they clone it. This time I have the perfect answer and Kommand to shock their image and shatter a vial putting them massively behind in mana. I snap Kommand to take out a thalia and stick a jace the following turn which gets the concession.
R3: Tron 1-2
R4: Monored Prison 2-1
Game two they get a turn 2 spirit guide into blood moon and I fetch an island. They follow it up with a rabble master and then top it off with a chandra. I pick up my cards.
Final game I keep a hand with basic island, swamp, scour, tasigur, fetch, and knot. I play my fetch and pass they pitch a spirit guide and cast a sorcerous spyglass. I think for a second and respond by fetching an island. They playfully groan in dismay hoping i would "get got" with a turn 1 LD spell. They name JTMS and I follow up with a turn 2 tasigur, turn 3 knot a chandra, Kommand an Eidolon of the great revel and drop a bolas taking their last card. They peel a chandra to burn down bolas, but they have nothing left so tasigur stands tall. I kill chandra and draw step a clique seeing a boil and only 3 mana available on their side. Shortly after they scoop as they can't assemble an answer to him with no live cards left in hand.
R5: Jeskai (classic secure the waste build) 2-1
Next game I once again open with a flury of discard spells and leave them with a very weak hand. I follow up with a jace, but the one card I didn't know about was a knot. A teferi comes rolling off the top for them and I respond with a tasigur. They have to drop a bolt and a lyze to handle him and I follow up with a bolas. They're forced to minus teferi on him which lets me Kommand to finish him off and get yet another card out of their hand. I draw a search for my turn and leave up a negate with tags their jace. I drop a search but can't flip in the face of their field of ruin, next up I jam a bolas and they respond with a path. Rampant growth plus free discard in the control mirror? Please and thank you! We trade turns of draw go until I get to end step a clique, they have to electrolyze it and show me a hand of double negate. I untap and just plop Pia and Kiran in face of their negates and they go all the way.
Final game I keep an awkward hand of triple snap, jace, and lands. I draw a scour and hit it on myself end step and my opponent surgicals a milled Kommand and sees my hand of triple snap. So now I'm pretty worried about running out a snapcaster into a potential snap/surgical to get the remaining snaps out of my hand. I end up finding a negate and I try to induce this play and end step snap scour myself. I attack and they flash in a snap to block. I let it happen and they end step try to surgical my snaps but I throw down a negate.
They untap with a search, I field it. I drop bolas, they path. I then run out tasigur and activate, they snap path leaving me up several cards on them with a solid mana advantage. This dance continues for a bit where we trade off threats and answers but mine always leave me up in value. Eventually we get a few turns of the classic draw go and they run out a baneslayer but lose a counter fight over it which leaves me in the clear to resolve PnK to go the distance. Once again the superior card advantage comes through for grixis along with an assist from the opponent playing surgical.
I made the top 8! Huzzah!
Quarters: Humans (rematch from the swiss) 2-0
Semis: Humans once again 2-1
Final game they start with vial into thalia, but I get to bolt thalia and Kommand the vial with their follow up and snap bolt a rider. With them being stuck playing a single spell a turn, the humans deck is incapable of competing with grixis and I am easily keeping pace with them. They cast dorky creatures, I kill them, I cast jace, I cast PnK and the entire game was rather academic and just the way we all draw it up.
Finals: Storm 1-2
Game 2 was also fast, but in a much more amusing way. I start with land pass, they shock for a serum visions and tank for a bit. They go double top and I end step surgical their serum visions. I see a hand of many rituals, baral, and an empty the warrens but no lands. I pull the serums from his deck and see that he set up two lands on top. I really dodged a bullet by preventing a potential turn 2 empty for "oodles." They miss a land for two turns before finding it and making a giant mess of goblins. I pop a spellbomb to hit their yard and anger away the tokens. Bolas once again comes down emptying their hand and turning sideways five times.
Final game was another fast one. They go turn 2 thing in the ice with another on the following turn and then manage to flip both of them on the next turn. I have a damnation in the yard but can't get up to 6 mana to snap it back before the horrors eat me up.
I didn't get the RPTQ invite sadly, but managed to walk away with some cash money and another mess of experience with bolas being awesome. The card is very subtle in its power level, but combining the raven's crime effect with IoK and Snap/Kommand makes it very easy to create and then leverage a resource advantage. PnK were great every time I cast them and I'm really happy with the threat package in the 75.
I still want more in the side for storm and/or tron so I'm considering trading a fulminator for a damping sphere and would be quite happy with a second. I feel so overwhelmingly favored against every single fair deck of the format so I don't mind losing something if it can dramatically increase my chances against the super unfair decks. Here's a few of the changes I'm considering.
Main Deck:
No changes.
Sideboard:
-1 fulminator mage
+1 alpine moon
-1 nihil spellbomb
+1 collective brutality
I'm wanting the brutality as burn is still a thing and still bad for us (even though bolas helps a ton there) and is still solid against storm. Most of the time I'm annoyed by casting IoK and being unable to take an empty or a cryptic or gifts which brutality will solve. It still allows me to take out all of my bad cards against control/aggro and bring in cards that I'm happy with. I'm trying very hard to "elephant" my deck so that I can twist and bend my 75 so that post board I'll have little to no bad cards left.
Right now I have an even number of swaps for aggro, control, midrange, but am still lacking a little in the all-in GY decks but there aren't too many of those since bridge-vine has died off in popularity quite a bit. That leaves storm and tron as the primary targets for boarding. Perhaps I could cut a damnation for another wet ball and run a board something like the following:
This leaves me much better off against storm and tron, but leaves me a bit more vulnerable to the graveyard oriented decks. I'm willing to make this trade because of the two main deck angers and the ability to find them with snaps and scours.
Do you have any thoughts on potential main deck or sideboard changes to be better prepared for the unfair decks? I don't want to have to give up large percentages against the fair decks or humans by removing sweepers entirely so I really want to keep a damnation and EE, but still want to wiggle my way up in favor against storm, tron, and KCI. Suggestions? Comments? Halp?
I think the number of Alpine Moon can be increased if you're out for Tron. A turn 1 moon effect and then holding up countermagic all the way afterward while clocking with your threats is sound strategy. The thing about Alpine moon is, its still solid against other MU such as UW control, since you can nullify Azcanta before it flips, all copies of colonnade with 1 spell, switch off valakut and kessig wolf run. So even drawing more than 1 alpine moon in the same game is OK.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
I actually haven't been feeling a lack of "graveyard fuel" for the deck to still run smoothly. In the early turns knot as a bad force spike is good enough and delving a single card isn't difficult between the 1 drops and fetches. I'm not at all worried about trying to turbo flip an azcanta outside of control mirrors because I'm too busy casting my spells that I wouldn't have time to activate it even if it had flipped 2-4 turns earlier.
I agree that a turn 2 tasigur is very strong, but I'd want to be on 3 of him before I'd want to go hard on scours just because of the need to have both of them in hand for that play to be possible. Also you are correct that it's easy to slip in a scour eot at some point. My problem with that is that I want to be certain that the early game is 100% taken care of and that means not spending a bunch of spell slots and mana on cantrips.
Personally, I believe that we are a heavy favorite in any control mirror so I don't believe that we need anything targeted for them outside of a single generic "fair match up grindy" card in the side.
having clocked more games against UW, I've grown even more confident that this isn't a MU we need to focus resources on. My list Claim/Pyro list is a little bit unconventional, but the rest of the 60 is pretty much SOP. Oh, I do run 3 Logics Knots and 0 copies of Delve threats. And also 0 scours and 4 AV.
OK, maybe my list isn't so SOP.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
I can see it replacing some amount of permission or other discard spells or perhaps a scour or two. I think that the only thing that would hold this card back from being a serious player is the fact that it costs 2 mana unlike the hyper efficient Iok/Seize combo. None the less it is a strong enough effect that it should get a fair shake at testing it out. Personally I'm very excited to play with this one, far more than I was with Bolas. More than that though, I'm much more confident that this will find a home in our lists in due time. Amusingly, I remember myself (and likely several others) suggesting a similar card in the "print this so I can play it in modern" thread. UB targeted discard with some cute benefit on top of it. I couldn't help but throw this out there because of how neat it is.
In any case, does anybody else think this card is real? If you think it's unplayable garbo for modern what makes you say so? And if you do think the card is bad please explain why beyond simply reading the card back to us.
I'm new to the forum and grixis midrange (Gods_shadow style, big fan btw), i used to play alot of Grixis control with cryptic and such. I have a list to show you, which has no counterspells main deck, what is your opinion on that ? I feel like we sideboard them out
too often, even if they are so good in certain matchups. The list is still in early phase but im currently 7-2 with it against tier 1 decks (lost to hollow one and bridge vine... didnt get my kalitas)
Anyways, here is the list. Please let me know, i'm considering bringing that to the Syracuse SCG (OR my BR Madness brew
2 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
2 Nimble Obstructionist
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Planeswalker (1)
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Spells (22)
4 Kolaghan's Command
2 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 Fatal Push
2 Rise // Fall
4 Serum Visions
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
2 Watery Grave
2 Swamp
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Field of Ruin
3 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Blood Crypt
1 Izzet Staticaster
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Damnation
2 Countersquall
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Dispel
1 Disdainful Stroke
2 Ceremonious Rejection
Edited layout ^^
Does it make a difference on the list or should I take whatever Corey is playing and build from there? Thanks!
Are you saying there are no graveyard aggro decks or just no hollow one of that group? If so I'd recommend my list minus the angers for something of your choice that works against what you're more concerned with. Something like extra permission or more walkers or extra cantrips. Here's my list, I wrote about it on the previous page a bit.
2 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Removal
3 Kolaghan's Command
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
Non-Creature Interaction
3 Cryptic Command
1 Spell Snare
2 Logic Knot
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
Durdles
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Thought Scour
3 Field of Ruin
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
1 Blood Crypt
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Damnation
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Negate
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Vendilion Clique
I will read your comments and take your list as a template. Thanks!
There are a couple of reasons why sweepers aren't commonly wanted or needed in the average grixis control list. The first is that our finishers and best stabilizers by and large are creatures. Supreme verdict is a great way to stabilize the board, but so is a tasigur with the difference between them is that tasigur doubles as a win con and triples as a card advantage engine. Not to mention that other builds might be more creature heavy with pyromancer or bolas which is counter to the primary strength of a wrath of god effect which is breaking the symmetry. The more creatures in your list, the worst damnation becomes.
The second most likely reason is that we usually don't need them because of the fact that we play 7-8 copies of snapcaster mage. Between Kommand Shock + Raise Dead leading into the additional snapcaster triggers, we are stuffed to the gills with spot removal. Much like the UB decks in the soon to rotate standard format, we're able to keep pace quite handily purely through spot removal and killing literally everything that lands. This is why we tend to have a tough time beating multiple copies of lingering souls, it's a perfect counter to our strategy.
Personally, the only reason I main deck two copies of anger of the gods is because of the vengevine decks and various other "turn 3 mega board state" decks of the format. Between them, hollow one, and Scales Affinity I find it all too likely that you won't be able to keep pace effectively. Combine that with the fact that we don't have path to exile for bloodghast and other recursive dorks I think anger is where we want to be right now. However in most iterations of the format that we've seen I have rarely felt the need for MD sweepers outside of when Eldrazi Tron was everywhere.
TL;DR: We have enough spot removal to make up for it and sweepers also kill our finisher and board stabilization threats.
With the decks you listed, i really dont think you should play anger NOR Jace main deck... the rest of the list seems fine to me ! If you dont like that version, you could try Gods_Shadow version (look him up on YouTube). I personnaly would never cut serum vision from any blue deck I play... never again. Thought scour is so underwhelming compared to serum, even with the access to tasigur.