How does everyone feel about the Counters Company matchup? I went up against it recently with a stock Jeskai Geist shell and lost 2-1. I was originally thinking that it was going to be a much easier matchup then it ended up being. However, in game three I could just not grind through their value engines in EWit and Company. I opened up with three pieces of spot removal and a sweeper and just got overwhelmed anyways.
Also, is it wrong to side out Geist against them? I was unsure of this plan yesterday, but I figured that Geist is very unlikely to get through on the ground against them and sided out the 3 for an Anger, a Verdict and a Staticaster.
Bloodrage Brawler makes you discard a card and trades with a Rogue Refiner.
I think I'd sit him out.
No way. The Brawler turns on half the deck and hits like a truck. So far I haven't had too many problems with him being stonewalled. It's possible the situation just hasn't come up and may be more prevalent, but Brawler is way too powerful to not play.
None of these RG Aggro decks are fast enough to not care about pitching a card.
I'd seriously, seriously, need a good reason to play this card.
In the attrition war that is standard, you can't afford to just pitch cards unless you're getting value or killing them so quickly it doesn't matter. Trust me. All I do is play RG midrange/aggro.
There are plenty of other ways to turn on Rhonas -- many of which don't use up a card.
That is a fair point. I've just been impressed enough with the card in testing to want to continue using him. I've also seen decks running Honored Hydra to synergize with Hazoret and Brawler, which is interesting.
Although now that the Cat is gone we don't have to worry about Rogue Refiner so much. It also may let us drop Manglehorns from the maindeck, depending on how the meta shakes out.
You do not need 4 Rhonas, and 3 samut. Both of those cards are horrible in multiples. I would go 2 for each
Also, Hazoret is not very good in this deck so I would cut Hazoret as well.
I would go 4 of Greenbelt Rampager. Also 22 Lands might be an issue. You do not have a lot of low drop creatures, which means you want to hit your land drops. Anything less than 23 would be bad. Attune is nice, but playing attune on turn 3 to hit your land drop makes your curve hurt a lot.
Rhonas is bad in multiples, but at the same time you want to make sure that you draw him every game because of how powerful he is. I could see going to 3, but never 2.
Hazoret could be cuttable, especially when deviating from the Madness theme that some of the other decks have. I'm a bit biased towards him because both he and Rhonas survive sweepers and he turns on the latter, but he might not make the cut.
I've been unimpressed with Rampager so far, but I haven't tried him much beyond his initial trial.
Bloodrage Brawler makes you discard a card and trades with a Rogue Refiner.
I think I'd sit him out.
No way. The Brawler turns on half the deck and hits like a truck. So far I haven't had too many problems with him being stonewalled. It's possible the situation just hasn't come up and may be more prevalent, but Brawler is way too powerful to not play.
I'm very surprised that we haven't seen a RG thread on here yet, considering how powerful the deck has been in testing among various people. Amonkhet has some very powerful cards for this archetype. My 60 is still in flux, but it looks something like this:
Bloodrage Brawler: this card is gross. Discarding a card is meh but he turns on Rhonas immediately and hits like a truck. You'll often have some garbage to pitch anyways.
Rhonas the Indomitable: this card is also gross. He's easy to turn on in this deck and a pain to get rid of. They need Stasis Snare or Cast Out (which is a fantastic card btw) to get rid of him. One of the #1 threats int his deck. Bristling Hydra: this thing is hard to kill, which is what we're looking for. Big, beefy nonsense that's is difficult to get off the table. Not as good as some of the other threats, but serviceable. Glorybringer: This guy is great. Flying + haste is really good. It reminds me a lot of Stormbreath. On top of that it kills basically everything on the ground and answers Gideon very cleanly. Attune with Aether: This deck is very energy hungry. With Servant helping us get to 4 and 5 earlier and Aether Hub acting as a dual land, we really rely on this card to get going early. I may even cut a land because 21 + Servant + Attune may be enough. Samut, Voice of Dissent: This guy is cool, but not as flashy as it looks. I may end up cutting him for more Hazoret or something like Tireless Tracker. Manglehorn: Expect this guy to be everywhere in constructed for the foreseeable future. It hates on both Mardu (kills Ballista, HoK & Harvester) and also hates on the Saheeli combo. The numbers on this guy are probably the most fluid.
Some other cards that I've been looking at, but haven't tested fully yet Blossoming Defense: Seems nice against 3 and 4CMC removal. Not so hot against Harnessed Lightning but oh well. It may end up making the main deck. Arlinn Kord: Might be good enough now? Plays nicely with Glorybringer (or basically anything that hits on the ground). Acts as additional removal. Might be worth a couple slots. Sheltered Thicket: This may be better than Cinder Glade. If we have enough R/G sources in Attune/Servant/Hub/Game Trail than we could consider running these to smooth our draws later in the game.
Speaking of draw-go, how do you guys feel about it compared to the versions that have been popping up lately that drop all the creatures but Snapcaster? I'll admit that my first impression of them isn't super favorable. IMO if you want to go super long then Esper is better but I may be wrong about this.
Going under 3 Colonnades seems real bad to me. You have to win the game at some point.
I actually like the idea of one cycler though. I like to have a land flex slot, which is currently Prairie Stream but could definitely be a Farmland. I'm also not a huge fan of either AV or SV, but I could be persuaded either way.
Personally, I'm interested. They always ETB tapped, which sucks, but they can be fetched as well, which is kind of sweet. On top of that I sometimes have the problem of drawing lands late that I don't need and these can help mitigate that. I may try 1 or 2.
Also, I know that has been discussed already, but I prefer molten Rain over FMage. I used to split 2 Rain/ 1 FMage. The only edge I give To FMage is the ability to attack (often for one single attack, the same damage of Rain) and to delay its effect. Also, uncounterable against the mirror since it's immune to Negate, Squall, Snare and Dispel, and Cryptic comes one/two turns later.
I've found myself to cast multiple rains easier than Multiple FMages.
B/R B/R is objectively easier than RR. That's definitely an edge against some decks.
I was talking about a t3 FMage, and no Grixis decks uses Leak...
Loads of Grixis decks use Leak?
I was referring to you saying that the only edge you give to Fulminator is that it can attack while ignoring that it is strictly easier to cast than Molten Rain.
Also, I know that has been discussed already, but I prefer molten Rain over FMage. I used to split 2 Rain/ 1 FMage. The only edge I give To FMage is the ability to attack (often for one single attack, the same damage of Rain) and to delay its effect. Also, uncounterable against the mirror since it's immune to Negate, Squall, Snare and Dispel, and Cryptic comes one/two turns later.
I've found myself to cast multiple rains easier than Multiple FMages.
B/R B/R is objectively easier than RR. That's definitely an edge against some decks.
Fair. A lot of very good Grixis players have said that they'd rather leave in Ancestral than Bolt. I tend to lean on their side slightly, but I can definitely see both sides of the argument.
Strange. Since speed is key against Tron, playing AV is quite incoherent with that...
The thing is that Bolt is only good against them if it kills them. If I go Bolt/Snap/Bolt that's great and all, but if I don't have a Tasigur applying pressure then I've done literally nothing to affect the game state.
With AV, it can be a bad top deck but Suspending it early and then stopping them from doing stuff for a few turns guarantees that you draw more action to finish off the game.
Like I said, I can see both sides. Neither card is particularly great though.
Hand Disruption is an interesting thing. People love to say that its objectively bad in every measure and that it's not what Delver decks want to be doing while simultaneously ignoring that Legacy Grixis and Sultai Delver will play some number of Thoughtseize and Cabal Therapy. There is a good point to be made that hand disruption and counterspells don't play too well together, since one encourages you to use mana on your turn and the other to use it on your opponent's turn.
I'm not sure how much I like hand disruption in Grixis Delver, but I think it can be a thing. The Grixis Death's Shadow deck plays very similarly to Grixis Delver and ditches most of its counterspells for hand disruption. There's the possibility that this is what we want to be doing, since counters aren't too great right now outside of Spell Snare and Stubborn Denial (when you have Death's Shadow in your deck).
I don't think it's wrong to play some amount of hand disruption if you're expecting to see a lot of Tron, combo etc. But, as always, I suggest trying it yourself and then reporting back how it worked. Theory only goes so far.
Fair. A lot of very good Grixis players have said that they'd rather leave in Ancestral than Bolt. I tend to lean on their side slightly, but I can definitely see both sides of the argument.
Hey guys, I've updated the primer with some new cards and changed the evaluation on existing ones (like Countersquall). I just realized that I never added Fatal Push.
Whoops.
That being said, I had an idea while doing this. Is anyone interested in writing up how we match up against different decks? I'm not interested in "Oh yeah Affinity is totally a 75-25 matchup" with hard numbers but I am interested in "Affinity is considered heavily favored for Grixis Control." I'd love to make this a crowd project with the people here, then we can add them to the front page. Sideboard advice in those matchups would also be helpful for newer players - though once again I'm not looking for hard numbers like "Yeah against Tron side out 2 Spell Snare and put in 2 Fulminator" with no explanation but rather philosophy: "Spell Snare doesn't hit many pieces in Tron and is much more low impact than a land destruction spell like Fulminator Mage."
Anyone interested?
Corey has his guide line for sideboard. During November gp. Could site that for a start.
Tron is easily one of our worst matchups. Grixis decks tend to be grindy and this particular build of the deck is the grindiest of them all. Unfortunately, Tron stomps on fair, grindy decks and plays on an axis that can be difficult for us to interact on. The tools that Grixis can use to interact with lands tend to be limited to Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter and Crumble to Dust (which is often too slow when Tron can come online on turn 3). Mana Leak is bad when there are single lands that can tap for 3 and is't great when Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger can exile two of your permanents even when you counter it.
The best way to combat Tron is to get aggro. Landing a turn 2 Tasigur is key. Landing early Snapcaster Mages can help a lot as well. Tron is not a deck where you can just sit back, suspend an Ancestral Vision and grind 'em out.
For sideboarding, you generally want to ditch some number of your kill spells, starting with Lightning Bolt. Shaving Bolt seems counterintuitive if you want to get aggro, but Lightning Bolt turns into a Lava Spike against Tron (since they run no creatures that it can kill) and your land destruction spells are higher impact.
If you run something like Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter or Crumble, bring those in. If you run Surgical Extraction, that's also a good card to bring in. Cutting some number of Bolts is correct, as it cutting your kill spells. Kolaghan's Command destroys Wurmcoil Engine and Ulamog has indestructible. The only threat your Terminates can deal with is World Breaker or Spellskite and Fatal Push hits almost nothing. Spell Snare is also not spectacular, but it is generally better than Bolt or Terminate.
Conclusion: Tron is heavily unfavorable for Grixis.
Affinity
Affinity is an aggro deck that uses artifact synergies to get out of the gate quickly and bring the pain. They use terrible cards like Ornithopter and Memnite to enable incredibly powerful cards like Cranial Plating, Steel Overseer and Arcbound Ravager. They can kill quickly and efficiently and race almost all the other decks in the format.
Unfortunately for the Robots, Grixis has some of the best cards to deal with these metal monsters. Lightning Bolt is great against them, Spell Snare hits their best cards and Kolaghan's Command is a savage beating against them. We can easily and consistently deal with all their stuff and leave them with a handful of bad cards and lands, after which we can finish them off at our leisure.
Against Affinity you're going to have some number of cards for grindy decks that don't match up well with what they're doing. You likely have some Ancestral Vision, Mana Leak, Countersquall etc that you won't need. They play few noncreature spells and Mana Leak doesn't trade at an equal level, as most of their cards cost 1 or 0.
With that in mind, cutting these low impact counterspells for sweepers is a fantastic trade. Anger of the Gods, Damnation, Languish, Engineered Explosives, Pyroclasm, Izzet Staticaster etc are all great cards against Affinity. Most efficient removal spells or sweepers will make the cut.
Also, is it wrong to side out Geist against them? I was unsure of this plan yesterday, but I figured that Geist is very unlikely to get through on the ground against them and sided out the 3 for an Anger, a Verdict and a Staticaster.
That is a fair point. I've just been impressed enough with the card in testing to want to continue using him. I've also seen decks running Honored Hydra to synergize with Hazoret and Brawler, which is interesting.
Although now that the Cat is gone we don't have to worry about Rogue Refiner so much. It also may let us drop Manglehorns from the maindeck, depending on how the meta shakes out.
Rhonas is bad in multiples, but at the same time you want to make sure that you draw him every game because of how powerful he is. I could see going to 3, but never 2.
Hazoret could be cuttable, especially when deviating from the Madness theme that some of the other decks have. I'm a bit biased towards him because both he and Rhonas survive sweepers and he turns on the latter, but he might not make the cut.
I've been unimpressed with Rampager so far, but I haven't tried him much beyond his initial trial.
No way. The Brawler turns on half the deck and hits like a truck. So far I haven't had too many problems with him being stonewalled. It's possible the situation just hasn't come up and may be more prevalent, but Brawler is way too powerful to not play.
4 Game Trail
4 Cinder Glade
4 Aether Hub
7 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Bloodrage Brawler
4 Voltaic Brawler
4 Servant of the Conduit
4 Rhonas the Indomitable
4 Bristling Hydra
1 Hazoret, the Fervent
3 Samut, Voice of Dissent
4 Glorybringer
2 Manglehorn
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Attune with Aether
Breakdown of some of the cards
Bloodrage Brawler: this card is gross. Discarding a card is meh but he turns on Rhonas immediately and hits like a truck. You'll often have some garbage to pitch anyways.
Rhonas the Indomitable: this card is also gross. He's easy to turn on in this deck and a pain to get rid of. They need Stasis Snare or Cast Out (which is a fantastic card btw) to get rid of him. One of the #1 threats int his deck.
Bristling Hydra: this thing is hard to kill, which is what we're looking for. Big, beefy nonsense that's is difficult to get off the table. Not as good as some of the other threats, but serviceable.
Glorybringer: This guy is great. Flying + haste is really good. It reminds me a lot of Stormbreath. On top of that it kills basically everything on the ground and answers Gideon very cleanly.
Attune with Aether: This deck is very energy hungry. With Servant helping us get to 4 and 5 earlier and Aether Hub acting as a dual land, we really rely on this card to get going early. I may even cut a land because 21 + Servant + Attune may be enough.
Samut, Voice of Dissent: This guy is cool, but not as flashy as it looks. I may end up cutting him for more Hazoret or something like Tireless Tracker.
Manglehorn: Expect this guy to be everywhere in constructed for the foreseeable future. It hates on both Mardu (kills Ballista, HoK & Harvester) and also hates on the Saheeli combo. The numbers on this guy are probably the most fluid.
Some other cards that I've been looking at, but haven't tested fully yet
Blossoming Defense: Seems nice against 3 and 4CMC removal. Not so hot against Harnessed Lightning but oh well. It may end up making the main deck.
Arlinn Kord: Might be good enough now? Plays nicely with Glorybringer (or basically anything that hits on the ground). Acts as additional removal. Might be worth a couple slots.
Sheltered Thicket: This may be better than Cinder Glade. If we have enough R/G sources in Attune/Servant/Hub/Game Trail than we could consider running these to smooth our draws later in the game.
I actually like the idea of one cycler though. I like to have a land flex slot, which is currently Prairie Stream but could definitely be a Farmland. I'm also not a huge fan of either AV or SV, but I could be persuaded either way.
For reference, this is my list:
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Flooded Strand
1 Prairie Stream
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Glacial Fortress
3 Celestial Colonnade
3 Plains
5 Island
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
2 Wall of Omens
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Restoration Angel
Planeswalkers (3)
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Gideon Jura
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Spell Snare
1 Negate
3 Cryptic Command
Removal (10)
4 Path to Exile
2 Condemn
3 Supreme Verdict
1 Detention Sphere
Other (6)
4 Spreading Seas
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Obviously that's asking a lot, so you likely won't get it lots of the time.
Personally, I'm interested. They always ETB tapped, which sucks, but they can be fetched as well, which is kind of sweet. On top of that I sometimes have the problem of drawing lands late that I don't need and these can help mitigate that. I may try 1 or 2.
Loads of Grixis decks use Leak?
I was referring to you saying that the only edge you give to Fulminator is that it can attack while ignoring that it is strictly easier to cast than Molten Rain.
B/R B/R is objectively easier than RR. That's definitely an edge against some decks.
The thing is that Bolt is only good against them if it kills them. If I go Bolt/Snap/Bolt that's great and all, but if I don't have a Tasigur applying pressure then I've done literally nothing to affect the game state.
With AV, it can be a bad top deck but Suspending it early and then stopping them from doing stuff for a few turns guarantees that you draw more action to finish off the game.
Like I said, I can see both sides. Neither card is particularly great though.
I'm not sure how much I like hand disruption in Grixis Delver, but I think it can be a thing. The Grixis Death's Shadow deck plays very similarly to Grixis Delver and ditches most of its counterspells for hand disruption. There's the possibility that this is what we want to be doing, since counters aren't too great right now outside of Spell Snare and Stubborn Denial (when you have Death's Shadow in your deck).
I don't think it's wrong to play some amount of hand disruption if you're expecting to see a lot of Tron, combo etc. But, as always, I suggest trying it yourself and then reporting back how it worked. Theory only goes so far.
That article has been on the front page for a few months now, but it's definitely a good place to start.
I guess I'll start with a few matchups that I know fairly well: Tron and Affinity. Coincidentally, our worst and best matchups.
Tron
Tron is a deck that uses Urza's Tower, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Mine to turbo out gigantic spells like Karn Liberated, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Wurmcoil Engine.
Tron is easily one of our worst matchups. Grixis decks tend to be grindy and this particular build of the deck is the grindiest of them all. Unfortunately, Tron stomps on fair, grindy decks and plays on an axis that can be difficult for us to interact on. The tools that Grixis can use to interact with lands tend to be limited to Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter and Crumble to Dust (which is often too slow when Tron can come online on turn 3). Mana Leak is bad when there are single lands that can tap for 3 and is't great when Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger can exile two of your permanents even when you counter it.
The best way to combat Tron is to get aggro. Landing a turn 2 Tasigur is key. Landing early Snapcaster Mages can help a lot as well. Tron is not a deck where you can just sit back, suspend an Ancestral Vision and grind 'em out.
For sideboarding, you generally want to ditch some number of your kill spells, starting with Lightning Bolt. Shaving Bolt seems counterintuitive if you want to get aggro, but Lightning Bolt turns into a Lava Spike against Tron (since they run no creatures that it can kill) and your land destruction spells are higher impact.
If you run something like Fulminator Mage, Ghost Quarter or Crumble, bring those in. If you run Surgical Extraction, that's also a good card to bring in. Cutting some number of Bolts is correct, as it cutting your kill spells. Kolaghan's Command destroys Wurmcoil Engine and Ulamog has indestructible. The only threat your Terminates can deal with is World Breaker or Spellskite and Fatal Push hits almost nothing. Spell Snare is also not spectacular, but it is generally better than Bolt or Terminate.
Conclusion: Tron is heavily unfavorable for Grixis.
Affinity
Affinity is an aggro deck that uses artifact synergies to get out of the gate quickly and bring the pain. They use terrible cards like Ornithopter and Memnite to enable incredibly powerful cards like Cranial Plating, Steel Overseer and Arcbound Ravager. They can kill quickly and efficiently and race almost all the other decks in the format.
Unfortunately for the Robots, Grixis has some of the best cards to deal with these metal monsters. Lightning Bolt is great against them, Spell Snare hits their best cards and Kolaghan's Command is a savage beating against them. We can easily and consistently deal with all their stuff and leave them with a handful of bad cards and lands, after which we can finish them off at our leisure.
Against Affinity you're going to have some number of cards for grindy decks that don't match up well with what they're doing. You likely have some Ancestral Vision, Mana Leak, Countersquall etc that you won't need. They play few noncreature spells and Mana Leak doesn't trade at an equal level, as most of their cards cost 1 or 0.
With that in mind, cutting these low impact counterspells for sweepers is a fantastic trade. Anger of the Gods, Damnation, Languish, Engineered Explosives, Pyroclasm, Izzet Staticaster etc are all great cards against Affinity. Most efficient removal spells or sweepers will make the cut.
Conclusion: Tron is heavily favored for Grixis.