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By: jay85, Jay Nelson
Aug 12 2015 12:00pm
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 Man, I've been having an absolute blast competing in Legacy! It wasn't always like this. I'm a Modern player who used to just dabble in the eternal formats like Legacy and Vintage. I always thought those formats were fun but I never took them seriously. But something happened after I participated in the Modern Festival Finals. I realized that I knew the Modern format like the back of my hand. I knew the metagame and I knew what was most likely in my opponents' hands by the type and amount of mana they had open. I could name the archetype they were on sometimes after the first land they played.

 I realized the format was becoming a little too boring for my tastes. I needed another format to learn and obsess over. Modern will always have a place in my heart, but lately I've been enthralled with Legacy.

 Today I'm going to teach myself how to beat Grixis Control. I like to write these "Beating _____" articles mostly to help myself out. I love to write and I learn the best from writing things down. I figure I might as well do that on this awesome website known as puremtgo.com and let other players read it, as well! Maybe it will help you, too.

(For a more in depth analysis of BUG Delver you should check out my deck tech on it. The article can be found here!)

 I made some minor changes to the list. I replaced Spell Pierce for an extra Verdant Catacombs, ticking my land count up to 20. Spell Pierce was a fine card but it was useless a lot of the time and I was having mana issues a little too often. I'm thinking this change will smooth things out a bit and adding one more fetchland can't hurt, especially when you're playing with Brainstorm.

 The second change is I'm no longer running Marsh Casualties in the sideboard. I was discussing this with Rerepete and Paul Leicht in my Beating ANT article and after talking with them I've decided to try out Illness in the Ranks. I've never liked Marsh Casualties and I'm thinking Illness in the Ranks will be good. Other options included Dread of Night, Engineered Plague, or even Toxic Deluge. I'm behind all those, as well, so I'll be testing the waters and seeing which one best serves the deck. 

 So I expect some grindy games against Grixis Control. In a way, it's kind of like a mirror match. I feel like it's going to come down to who can stick a threat first. Let's take a look at one of these decks so we can see what we are up against.

 

  Kemper Pogue took this particular list to a 6th place finish at SCG Legacy Premier IQ Richmond.

 So first off, I can see we're going to be having some problems on the battlefield. Their creatures look more impressive than ours, and the fact that theirs will more than likely survive longer since they're packing a playset of Lightning Bolts, a Forked Bolt, and one Terminate for our guys. At our disposal we got Disfigure and Abrupt Decay, neither of which can destroy True-Name Nemesis or Gurmag Angler.

 Cabal Therapy can decimate us pretty easily, too. Our best bet in dealing with this is to make sure our opponent doesn't resolve Young Pyromancer, or if he does we need to make sure he can't start making tokens with it. This is best accomplished by wrecking his hand as soon as possible with Thoughtseize and Hymn to Tourach. Pyromancer isn't much of a threat without a hand of instants or sorceries to go with it.

 Post sideboard it can get tougher for us. Blood Moon will hose us and make it extremely hard, if not impossible, for us to cast a spell because we don't have a single basic land to fetch for. We can still use Deathrite Shaman to create mana but it'll be limited on how many lands are actually in graveyards.

 

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Disfigure Illness in the Ranks Golgari Charm Golgari Charm

Maelstrom Pulse

 There is an argument for bringing in both the Disfigures but the reason why I don't is because we're already bringing in a ton of other spells to deal with 1/1s and we still have a playset of Abrupt Decay to use. If you see creatures like Delver of Secrets than you can bring in the other Disfigure

 Against a Young Pyromancer deck I'm thrilled to have Illness in the Ranks at my disposal. It will completely shut down the token generating which in turn will make Cabal Therapy worse. Also, bringing in Golgari Charm will kill Snapcaster Mage and True-name Nemesis.

 Maelstrom Pulse comes in because it will be the only way for us to deal with Gurmag Angler or Tasigur, the Golden Fang.

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Hymn to Tourach Liliana of the Veil Force of Will Force of Will

Force of Will

 Between one Thoughtseize and one Hymn to Tourach, I'm not really sure which should come out. Thoughtseize is good in snatching up a Gurmag Angler but Hymn to Tourach is better at getting rid of their hand, especially later in the game when they may only have two cards left. This is good because whenever they can land a Young Pyromancer I don't want them to be able to start the token engine. In the end I went with replacing one Hymn to Tourach because I'm terrified of Gurmag Angler and Tasigur. I feel we are overloaded in dealing with tokens and cheap threats, but we are severely lacking in big creature removal. Thoughtseize can take a key card from them while Hymn to Tourach may or may not; it all depends on your luck.

 Another option is to leave in all the discard spells and just trim down on Abrupt Decay. Going down to just three when we are bringing in so much mass removal like Golgari Charm and Illness in the Ranks may actually be correct. The thought of siding out an Abrupt decay never occurred to me before, but leaving in all the discard spells so it's likely the Grixis opponent is in top-deck mode sounds like a more solid plan.

 Liliana of the Veil will be sitting out on the sidelines in games two and three. She's awesome, but when your opponent can make a swarm of tokens she becomes less than exciting. She could technically deal with Angler but I think relying on her to do that against Grixis Control is a Hail Mary, something I'm not interested in trying to do here.

 Yeah, yeah, Force of Will is cool and all, but against controlling type of decks it really isn't. This match is going to come down to card advantage. We're attempting to shrink their hand with Hymns and Thoughtseizes while they try to do that to us with Cabal Therapy. I really don't want to help my opponent out by two-for-oneing myself with Force of Will.

 Okey-dokey, I've set up my plan. I think it's sound. Not much else to do but see if I can beat Grixis Control. Ready, set...

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  Well, it seems my opponent was not playing the exact Grixis list that I'm showcasing, but that's ok. Looking back on it, it seems like he was on some sort of Grixis Control/Grixis Delver hybrid. The opponent seemed to have a full playset of Deathrite Shaman like a Delver build, but it's hard to know if he actually had Delver of Secrets without actually seeing it. We did, however, see Cabal Therapy and Young Pyromancer so that tells me it was a Grixis Control deck. Both archetypes are similar so...I don't know, man.

 Also, I know it may seem tempting to shut down opposing Deathrite Shamans with Pithing Needle, but I can't help but think it's 100% wrong when you yourself are also running Deathrites. I believe my opponent screwed that up. I'm not going to sit here and rail on him, though. I feel like I didn't play optimally, as well. But when do I ever feel like I played a match optimally? Whenever I watch my replays I always see mistakes I made or discover lines of play that I didn't see at the time. Everyone makes mistakes. Yes, even you. The only thing to do about it is to learn from them and hope you don't repeat them in the future.

 Seriously though, this match-up can go either way. BUG Delver will sometimes lose to Grixis Control, but to dip the odds in your favor you have to have a strategy laid out and a strong sideboard plan. This is my goal when writing these articles. To not only provide a game plan for myself, but also for my readers. I really do hope I helped some of you out. You may not be playing BUG Delver but reading this can still aid you in developing a goal with your own deck when you're up against Grixis Control.

 Thanks for reading and watching!