In a standard environment that has been played extensively with a couple of major pro tournaments and a ton of PTQ's, its always difficult to come up with new decks, but sometimes, there are a few that are greatly overlooked.
Grixis is a deck that most people regard as "cute" rather than good. Of course its always fun to slam a Cruel Ultimatum on the table that you know is going to resolve but how competitive is this deck in the current irl and MTGO standard environment? Well the answer is a lot!
If you start by making a list of the most played and successful standard decks both online and paper magic you will end up with something like this:
- Jund
- UW Control
- Next Level Bant
- Mythic Bant
- UWR Super Friends
- Naya
- Red Deck Wins with Summons
Jund is and it will always be until the end of this Standard the deck to beat, you can't really go to any tournament with a deck that's not tuned to beat it unless you want to perform below average. The first thing I will tell about Grixis is that Jund its not by far the best matchup. The have lots of problematic cards that you must deal with and especially in time since they are fairly fast at killing you:
Yeah, Blightning is there twice. Not because there aren't any other troubling cards but just because its by far the worse card they can slam against you. If you take a look at most Grixis builds (scroll down, I'll wait.), the are only 2 cards in the deck that allow you some drawing (barring Spreading Seas), being them Cruel Ultimatum and Jace, The Mind Sculptor. If you played some standard by now you certainly have played with Jace 2.0 and if you played enough standard you obviously played it against Jund, I know I did and most of the time I think I did the wrong Jace decision. It's very tricky to play it in this matchup since there are so many decisions available and most of the time it will be a decision made by speculation. One of the most common plays is playing a Jace versus a board consisting of either a Putrid Leech or a Sprouting Thrinax (if they have both of them already probably jace is not the right call). But in this scenario, what do you do? Of course some times you just want to brainstorm to find the lands you need to cast your other spells, sometimes you want to scry and try to keep Jace alive and others you just bounce the creature and hope for the Time Walk. Well, scrying unless you're already winning the game is just wrong most of the time. If you play your jace on the 4th turn and scry you're basically doing nothing since they have 4 or 5 cards in hand making your decision rather useless. Of course you can send a Bloodbraid Elf to the bottom but to my experience Jund players ALWAYS have a Bloodbraid Elf in their opening hands. Scrying for the +2 loyalty makes your Jace still vulnerable to either Lightning Bolt , Blightning, Bloodbraid Elf , Maelstrom Pulse etc etc etc. You can still make the argument of the Fog effect but that seems fairly poor to a deck that wants to win through card advantage. I mostly brainstorm or bounce depending on the situation. Having a Jace at 2 loyalty or 3 loyalty versus Jund its basically the same thing since most of their creatures already give 3+ dmg and their spells are aiming at the 3dmg. If you bounce a Thrinax or Leech and they don't have the bolt, they can either replay their creature effectively time walking or play Bloodbraid Elf that they were already going to play and then you have the opportunity of a fizzle by their side involving either Terminate or a Maelstrom Pulse that even if it puts you at minus 3 life its still a better board position untapping versus a 3/2 than versus a 3/2 and a 4/4 at plus 3 life. You can't do nothing against a Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning in most situations so don't really be gloomy about it. When talking about Blightning, I've seen a lot of games being lost due to people discarding the wrong cards. Most of the times you have to survey the board and think about whats going to be your win condition in the current game state. I've seen people protect Cruel Ultimatum and Siege-Gang Commander in hand and never get the mana to play it. There isn't again an ultimate formula to either you should discard your 7cc spell or not, but generally its not the card that will win you the match unless you already paired it with an Earthquake. Still talking about Jund the matchup doesn't play out as Control vs Aggro since you have ways to actively race them with Sedraxis Specter , Blightning and Siege-Gang Commander paired up with Spreading Seas and Terminate. Jund is a deck that's also much affected by Blightning since they wanna make their lands drops every turn in order to curve out most of the other decks in the format and an active Specter + Blightning can really put you in the driver seat. Siege-Gang Commander buys out a lot of time, even if they wanna hit the Siege with bolt or Terminate the remaining Gang crew can still make some chump-blocks to live and fight another day especially the famous 2 goblins for one Bloodbraid Elf. After board you have access to some cards that can loop-side the matchup.
Most of the builds (or at least a fair percentage) already run Goblin Ruinblaster in the main deck since its a decent card against most of the field and especially a blowout versus jund if paired up with a decent start. Consuming Vapors is the current overlapping sideboard cards of most Bx decks. It's good against a vast majority of decks and can buy you enough time to get a threat on the table or to protect a Jace, The Mind Sculptor. Flashfreeze had lost some popularity at a time but it can protect your lands from Goblin Ruinblaster or counter a Blightning etc. Vampire Nighthawk is a decent card against most aggro decks especially if jund takes out some of their removal in order for their sideboard cards, that should be an assortment of Duress, Goblin Ruinblaster, Mind Rot , Thought Hemorrhage or Sedraxis Specter if they are playing the Geo Jund deck.Some versions can also bring in Sphinx of Jwar Isle since Jund cant actively take them out of the table, its also a decent card against Blue White X.
UW and URW are probably your best matchups especially because you have the "unknown" factor and most people don't test against Grixis,wich puts them in some awkward positions when they have to make decisions. Sedraxis Specter is the absolute best card against them since if they don't kill it right away with Path to Exile or Oblivion Ring its going to generate some massive card advantage. Creeping Tar Pit its another of your assets since it can be overlooked by them and it can go on and kill either Elspeth or Jace in 2 hits or 1 if paired with a Lightning Bolt or Blightning. You should always try to protect them from early Spreading Seas since the games will generally go long and you can draw out some other red sources to replace the Islanded Crumbling Necropolis. Your own Spreading Seas are bound to make some blood since they can shut off (Celestial Colonade) and against UWR their red source to prevent them from playing a second Ajani Vengeant. Most of this versions are still not packing counters main deck or if they are only 1 or 2, meaning that your Cruel Ultimatum is bound to resolve especially if paired up with Blightning and Sedraxis Specter. Post sideboard they probably bring in some cards:
Jace Beleren its a card that shouldn't stick that long in play since you have lots of 3 damage threats. Celestial Purge is annoying since it can kill your Sedraxis Specter without repercussions and exile your so needed Creeping Tar Pit. Negate and Flashfreeze essentially do the same thing and post board you can always play around them. Versus UW or UWx , Malakir Bloodwitch , Duress and Thought Hemorrhage shine by nullifying most of their win conditions). Hemorrhaging 1 or 2 threats aways puts your far ahead against UW since most of their win conditions are already taken care by the rest of your deck. They usually sideboard out their Day of Judgment which means that Malakir Bloodwitch can seal the deal pretty quickly.
Mythic Bant is a decent matchup. You packs lots of removal and you can actively Earthquake them at an early stage to disrupt their mana. Most of their starts involve a 1 mana accelerator into either a Lotus Cobra or (Knight of Reliquary). The Lotus Cobra + Noble Hierarch makes Earthquake a complete blowout. Terminate and Lightning Bolt play an important role to prevent the Eldrazi Conscription kill. Sedraxis Specter is mostly a stall card by preventing some (Dauntless Escorts) from attacking etc. Cruel Ultimatum again is one of the best answers since they don't pack any counters. If it resolves with a not so lopsided board position it will put far ahead. Siege-Gang Commander its also a good card providing some chumps and killing the accelerators in order to have Cruel Ultimatum take away something relevant. Post board, Malakir Bloodwitch and Consuming Vapors make the matchup so much better especially when the only cards they bring in are probably Negates or Flashfreeze. The Next Level Bant deck or "Master Kibler wins them all!" deck, is a different story, They don't have a blowout turn like Sovereigns of Lost Alara but you cant deal with a recurring Vengevine.I mean , you really can't. Your best chance is to Earthquake them out and use Spreading Seas aggressively on their green sources to preempt them from going Ranger of Eos into one drops, into hasting Vengevine. Post board I would recommend siding in some Hemorrhage since if you hit Vengevine the game will be fairly simple since Consuming Vapors kills them out and some grixis versions can also bring in Consume the Meek that basically destroys most of their deck. Bot of those decks also have a hard time dealing with Malakir Bloodwitch but beware of Mythic Bant that may bring in also Mind Control or Vapor Snare.
Naya is another deck that actually depends on their draws. Vengevine is a pain and they are quicker than NLB at killing you. Earthquake and Spreading Seas are your best friends at trying to contain them to drop a game ending Cruel Ultimatum. The sideboard plan is the same by bringing in Malakir Bloodwitch and Consuming Vapors.
Mono Red its probably your worst matchup. Game 1 is virtually impossible unless you cant get a good draw of Lightning Bolt and Terminate paired up with a turn 7 Cruel Ultimatum . But most of the times your always aiming at the 2-1. Post board you can have access to:
Besides the main deck Countersquall you can always bring in Flashfreeze or Negate. Post board you should expect a lot of Goblin Ruinblaster or even Manabarbs. But depending on your sideboard you should be able to put up a good fight.
One of the advantages of the deck besides putting up good results against most of the decks of the field is that besides Jace, The Mind Sculptor its a fairly affordable deck. I advise you to try it out in some practice matches and its likely that you'll be surprised.
Until next time,
Andrea Fonseca
4 Comments
just a comment on your last line "One of the advantages of the deck besides putting up good results against most of the decks of the field is that besides Jace, The Mind Sculptor its a fairly affordable deck."
So other than the $320 for the jaces its affordable huh?
even more budget friendly is to assume Jace will die fairly quickly a lot of the time and run Ponder or some card drawing instead ... I have a bad Grixis deck - the only rares in it might be Sed. & Hyp. Spectres, 2 Cruel Ult, and 2 Earthquake
I'm not saying it wins me tourneys but I'm a casual player and like to have a cheap version of some of the popular decks
Nice article. This deck always wrecks me, because it's virtually creatureless (and completely un doomblade-able) and I'm always packing loads of removal.
Why doesn't it run sphinx of jwarr isle though? It looks like that would be strong?
On a side-note, I know everybody says vampires isn't a real deck, etc. etc. but I've found that it absolutely wrecks mythic, nlbant and naya ('though i am playing in the tournament practice room, so am probably playing weaker players {then again, I am a weaker player too!}) because of its masses of removal and the ability to just run 4 bojuka bogs main, which nobody seems to expect and leaves lots of exiled vengevines.
It's still a dog to jund, and as I mentioned, grixis steamrolls it, but the U/W and U/W/R matchups are both ~50/50.
I'm not saying it's sick tech for the metagame or anything, but I certainly think it's playable, and is super-super budget (I built the deck for about 14 tickets).
Its true about any Jace deck being overpriced but its also true that we should look at it by putting things in perspective. If you look at Mythic Bant , Next Level Bant , UW Control or UWR Super Friends or even Naya, its easy to see why I mentioned the "affordable" and "Jace" in the same sentence. Compared to the other tier1 decks this one will give you the feeling of putting together a pauper deck.