i played two small events with this list this week with good results, could have been better with more
tight play, this is only the second time ive really played this deck and im a bit rusty with modern.
I didnt have access to my entire grixis box so the sideboard and maindeck may seem a little weird, i was out
town.
I only ran 20 lands literally because i cant math, i counted 5 stacks of 4 as 24 and thought i was running 24
lands. while not realising this over the course of 7 matches, i can say that with the card selection of 8 cantrips
finding enough lands was never really an issue. A few times i may have took to much caution in fetching basics
to preserve life instead of getting optimal colors, but this was not a mana base problem only my own fault.
the first time i built this deck was pre jace, it was basically the same list minus the PWs and moons, and i won
a rptq lcq with it so i new the shell had some merit to it.
with jace now, i wanted to build as close as i could to a legacy grixis control shell
the first event i had anglers instead of titi, anglers are nice in legacy, but they felt a little lack luster in
modern, and titi provides a suedo board with with the large body and i feel a better comlement to Jtms. i realize its
nombo with pyromancer, but that is mostly irrelevant being a control deck.
out of the 7 matchs
2-1 merfolk
1-2 elves
2-0 red affinity
2-0 jeskai accendency
2-1 boggles
1-2 G tron
0-2 u/r pheonix
merfolk was nothing to note, they played guys, i killed them
same for affinity
jeskai, i was able to surgical wish game 1 and kill all his dudes, mull to 4 game 2
boggles did boggles game 1, game 2 got him with a geths verdict, then flooded the board with tokens until jace ultimate
game three he didnt draw many enchantments and pyromacer and burn was able to out race him
the losses here i feel are more important as almost all of them were due to poor decision making
the elves game 3 i was on the draw and kept a hand with island/swamp but red removal hoping i would draw a red source,
i didnt and he dorked and lorded it up and i died in short fashion by the time i found a red source. should have mulled the hand
i was kicking my self all night about this tron loss. so game 1 tron did its thing and i scooped to turn 5 ulamog. game 2 i played a turn 3 moon
followed by turn 5 jace and immediately began fatesealing, i managed to kcommand an ostone/discard karn twice before h could activate or cast either.
game 3, 1 IoK, thoughseize took his land finding spells, but left him with 2 karns and new emrakul, i negated the first karn on his turn 4, then turn 5
snap thoughtseize, only to find 2 more karns and emrakul stil, take emrakul as he can cast it next turn. he plays karn and pluses, attack with snappy down to 8, play jace
and brainstorm to find land, rejection, counterflux. I also have a bolt and pyro in hand. he minuses on jace, i bolt karn eot and finish him off with snapcaster beats.
play a pyromancer and pass, counterflux the second karn, and reject an ugin and start the clock countdown to victory with a snap back up for what ever he finds. And then i toss the match down the
drain with greed, he passes at 10 life, i decide to go for the win with snap bolt, only to get blown out by kozilecs return. draw a land and pass he then plays a 6/6 balista
and kills me in 2 turns.
the pheonix match loss i would attribute to a bit of inexpirence with the matchup, never played it before
game 1 he plays a titi, i play a titi, i thoughtseize him and see drake and double pheonix i take the drake hoping he tries to get the birds back from the yard because i have surgiacl in hand.
he draws a 4th land and just cast the 2 pheonix, only found discard and creatures with no removal
game 2 i feel like i had locked up, kill all his things had jace at 9, he played a drake and i decide to brainstorm to find an anwser to the lethal drake.
as soon as i finish brainstorming and realize im dead i see the line of bouncing my own snapcaster to
kill drake with my full yard, i probably looked at my yard 3 times that turn trying to figure what to do.
looking back on my list now,
Liliana isnt really great in modern as it is in legacy, not enough x/1s to get value, although when defended by pyromancer getting to ultimate is easy.
im unsure if i would want her in the 75 at all.
Kcommand again, amazing in legacy mainly due stonefore mystic, and still great at grinding in modern. it felt clunky and not very useful outside of tron.
i woulndt cut them completely, but probably 2 is correct number in this deck.
the oddballs
i chose to run kalitas, moons, surgical, and negate to have outs maindeck game 1 to some of the difficult matchups.
there are so many options to chose from for flex spots, it makes it hard to choose what is right. i tried kalitas just to
try him out, it had minimal impact. it won me a game vs elves and thats about it, i think he is just to slow for his affect, but the lifelink can be
a savior.
negate is negate, nice to have, almost every deck has something.
i ended up playing a lot of matchs where moon really wasnt great, but the plus side is that my life total wasnt taking a beating from shocks.
i think i would keep it main, it can get free wins, shuts off man lands, no one will expect it game one.
a lot of people say grixis has issues with the meta right now due to so many recursive threats. well i thought
why not, one surgical main, give myself a fighting chance game one, it also pairs well with titi and pyromancer.
i was very rushed putting my side board together and i didnt have all my cards with me. being modern, you cant
board for everything so i would chose to focus my choices to fight meta heavy decks not bad matchups.
i would really want 2 collective brutality but it really is only good for burn i feel, but if burn where to see
a big upswing i would incorporate them somewhere.
3 young pyromancer
2 thing in the ice
1 kalitas, traitor of ghet
4 serum visions
4 sleight of hand
4 lightning bolt
2 fatal push
2 terminate
2 thoughtseize
3 inquisition of kozilec
3 kolaghans command
1 negate
1 surgical extraction
2 jace, the mind sculptor
1 liliana, the last hope
2 blood moon
4 polluted delta
4 scalding tarn
2 bloodstained mire
4 island
2 swamp
1 mountain
1 steam vents
1 blood crypt
1 watery grave
sb
1 anger of the gods
2 cerimonious rejection
1 negate
1 counterflux
1 geths verdict
1 devour flesh
1 spell snare
1 dispel
3 surgical extraction
2 pithing needle
1 collective brutaility
i played two small events with this list this week with good results, could have been better with more
tight play, this is only the second time ive really played this deck and im a bit rusty with modern.
I didnt have access to my entire grixis box so the sideboard and maindeck may seem a little weird, i was out
town.
I only ran 20 lands literally because i cant math, i counted 5 stacks of 4 as 24 and thought i was running 24
lands. while not realising this over the course of 7 matches, i can say that with the card selection of 8 cantrips
finding enough lands was never really an issue. A few times i may have took to much caution in fetching basics
to preserve life instead of getting optimal colors, but this was not a mana base problem only my own fault.
the first time i built this deck was pre jace, it was basically the same list minus the PWs and moons, and i won
a rptq lcq with it so i new the shell had some merit to it.
with jace now, i wanted to build as close as i could to a legacy grixis control shell
the first event i had anglers instead of titi, anglers are nice in legacy, but they felt a little lack luster in
modern, and titi provides a suedo board with with the large body and i feel a better comlement to Jtms. i realize its
nombo with pyromancer, but that is mostly irrelevant being a control deck.
out of the 7 matchs
2-1 merfolk
1-2 elves
2-0 red affinity
2-0 jeskai accendency
2-1 boggles
1-2 G tron
0-2 u/r pheonix
merfolk was nothing to note, they played guys, i killed them
same for affinity
jeskai, i was able to surgical wish game 1 and kill all his dudes, mull to 4 game 2
boggles did boggles game 1, game 2 got him with a geths verdict, then flooded the board with tokens until jace ultimate
game three he didnt draw many enchantments and pyromacer and burn was able to out race him
the losses here i feel are more important as almost all of them were due to poor decision making
the elves game 3 i was on the draw and kept a hand with island/swamp but red removal hoping i would draw a red source,
i didnt and he dorked and lorded it up and i died in short fashion by the time i found a red source. should have mulled the hand
i was kicking my self all night about this tron loss. so game 1 tron did its thing and i scooped to turn 5 ulamog. game 2 i played a turn 3 moon
followed by turn 5 jace and immediately began fatesealing, i managed to kcommand an ostone/discard karn twice before h could activate or cast either.
game 3, 1 IoK, thoughseize took his land finding spells, but left him with 2 karns and new emrakul, i negated the first karn on his turn 4, then turn 5
snap thoughtseize, only to find 2 more karns and emrakul stil, take emrakul as he can cast it next turn. he plays karn and pluses, attack with snappy down to 8, play jace
and brainstorm to find land, rejection, counterflux. I also have a bolt and pyro in hand. he minuses on jace, i bolt karn eot and finish him off with snapcaster beats.
play a pyromancer and pass, counterflux the second karn, and reject an ugin and start the clock countdown to victory with a snap back up for what ever he finds. And then i toss the match down the
drain with greed, he passes at 10 life, i decide to go for the win with snap bolt, only to get blown out by kozilecs return. draw a land and pass he then plays a 6/6 balista
and kills me in 2 turns.
the pheonix match loss i would attribute to a bit of inexpirence with the matchup, never played it before
game 1 he plays a titi, i play a titi, i thoughtseize him and see drake and double pheonix i take the drake hoping he tries to get the birds back from the yard because i have surgiacl in hand.
he draws a 4th land and just cast the 2 pheonix, only found discard and creatures with no removal
game 2 i feel like i had locked up, kill all his things had jace at 9, he played a drake and i decide to brainstorm to find an anwser to the lethal drake.
as soon as i finish brainstorming and realize im dead i see the line of bouncing my own snapcaster to
kill drake with my full yard, i probably looked at my yard 3 times that turn trying to figure what to do.
looking back on my list now,
Liliana isnt really great in modern as it is in legacy, not enough x/1s to get value, although when defended by pyromancer getting to ultimate is easy.
im unsure if i would want her in the 75 at all.
Kcommand again, amazing in legacy mainly due stonefore mystic, and still great at grinding in modern. it felt clunky and not very useful outside of tron.
i woulndt cut them completely, but probably 2 is correct number in this deck.
the oddballs
i chose to run kalitas, moons, surgical, and negate to have outs maindeck game 1 to some of the difficult matchups.
there are so many options to chose from for flex spots, it makes it hard to choose what is right. i tried kalitas just to
try him out, it had minimal impact. it won me a game vs elves and thats about it, i think he is just to slow for his affect, but the lifelink can be
a savior.
negate is negate, nice to have, almost every deck has something.
i ended up playing a lot of matchs where moon really wasnt great, but the plus side is that my life total wasnt taking a beating from shocks.
i think i would keep it main, it can get free wins, shuts off man lands, no one will expect it game one.
a lot of people say grixis has issues with the meta right now due to so many recursive threats. well i thought
why not, one surgical main, give myself a fighting chance game one, it also pairs well with titi and pyromancer.
i was very rushed putting my side board together and i didnt have all my cards with me. being modern, you cant
board for everything so i would chose to focus my choices to fight meta heavy decks not bad matchups.
i would really want 2 collective brutality but it really is only good for burn i feel, but if burn where to see
a big upswing i would incorporate them somewhere.
ideally it would look like
4 ceremonious rejection
3 surgical extraction
1 pithing needle
1 sorcerous spyglass
1 negate
1 dispel
1 counterflux
1 geths verdict
1 devour flesh
1 consume the meek
the last thing i feel like i needed was one more red source, i would probably cut a mire for a second mountain or steam vents
hope this gives people more ideas or inspiration for the archtype