Standard Deck Tuning: Grixis Control
Standard Meta Analysis - Why Grixis is great right now
https://www.streamdecker.com/deck/j_25jq7iZ
Despite winning my local tournament with Jeskai feather, and climbing to #32 mythic with it... I'm currently not planning to play it at the Arena MCQ qualifier this weekend.
The reason? I predict a meta shift very soon and I don't think the meta shift will be favorable for feather. 11 of the last 14 decks I played last night were vampire decks.. Most of them were high mythic. A high % of MPL was on vampires. . While I'm comfortable with my vampires matchup with feather (It's somewhere between 45-55%), I'm concerned about the next format shift in response to the vampire domination.
I think the best counter decks to vampires are a well tuned Esper or Grixis deck designed to exploit the weaknesses in vampires. Both Esper and Grixis have very favorable feather matchups. Jeskai feather is decent against vampires, but it really wants a metagame flush with green decks to prey on.. If vampires pushes green out to the fringes of the metagame, and some people try to get ahead of the meta and fight vampires with control. Feather would be in a very bad spot.
https://www.streamdecker.com/deck/j_25jq7iZ
Despite winning my local tournament with Jeskai feather, and climbing to #32 mythic with it... I'm currently not planning to play it at the Arena MCQ qualifier this weekend.
The reason? I predict a meta shift very soon and I don't think the meta shift will be favorable for feather. 11 of the last 14 decks I played last night were vampire decks.. Most of them were high mythic. A high % of MPL was on vampires. . While I'm comfortable with my vampires matchup with feather (It's somewhere between 45-55%), I'm concerned about the next format shift in response to the vampire domination.
I think the best counter decks to vampires are a well tuned Esper or Grixis deck designed to exploit the weaknesses in vampires. Both Esper and Grixis have very favorable feather matchups. Jeskai feather is decent against vampires, but it really wants a metagame flush with green decks to prey on.. If vampires pushes green out to the fringes of the metagame, and some people try to get ahead of the meta and fight vampires with control. Feather would be in a very bad spot.
Scapeshift in my opinion is the most powerful deck in the format, but it is fragile and the format has warped egregiously against it. It can beaten soundly by a few good hate cards in conjunction with a bunch of main deck removal like legion's end or deputy of detention. Those cards happen to be totally fine against the rest of the format so decks don't sacrifice much including them to exploit Scapeshift.
I think people are losing with Scapeshift and are starting to jump ship to different decks.
Meanwhile, the world has finally figured out the best base build of vampires. 14-16 1 drops, 4 champion of dusk, 4 Sorin, 2-3 sanctum seeker, 0 Mavrin Fein/icon of ancestry and a strong diversity of disruption post board. These vampire decks are better than ever and have been crushing brews, control and green decks with their aggression, life gain , reach and combo potential with Sorin.
In his recent starcitygames article Brad Nelson claimed Vampires is very similar to RB agro of the previous standard block. A deck where we saw as much as half the field playing in multiple major tournaments... It's very resilient, fast, attacks from different angles and has an excellent removal suite capable of dealing with almost anything the format has to throw at it.
If a lot of people share Brad's perspective, either by copying it, or coming to the same conclusion independently. I expect A LOT of people to be on vampires.
I agree with Brad's analysis about the decks parrallels, but I disagree that vampires is nearly as resilient to a target on it's back as RB agro was. Unlike scapeshift, vampires gets beaten by strategies, not by individual cards... And not many strategies at that.. but those strategies beat them thoroughly... and those strategies are still competitive against the rest of the field.
Mono Black, Esper or Grixis with the right configuration have a great vampires matchup. These decks can beat vampires much more soundly than any deck could beat RB agro... Also, unlike RB agro there's almost nothing vampires can really do about it.
I think the masses are not by aware of the counters to vampires yet. Grixis and Mono black are quite fringe and the current removal suite esper plays does NOT guarantee a good vampire matchup. The removal suite needed to deal with vampires unfortunately do not work well with hero of precinct one, which means esper will need to make some significant changes and sacrifice some of their breeding pool matchups in order to do so.
You need tools to deal with their explosive starts, many answers to adanto vanguard and a way to make Sorin less powerful. If you can kill all their creatures and don't have 3 toughness creatures of your own, sorin doesn't generate any value and becomes dead cardboard. If they don't have many creatures, champion of dusk doesn't generate much value either.
I put my money where my mouth is and have tuned my Grixis deck to beat Vampires + scapeshift and I'm very confident it does both. Am now mythic rank #10 and am 5-1 against vampires.
Why Grixis, Not Esper?
Grixis is a big underdog to risen reef decks and most decks designed to go very big with mass manipulation or command the dreadhorde. It's a small dog against many builds of Esper control, Nexus of Fate and probably a coin flip with Esper Hero. It's a small favourite against Mono Red... It's a strong favourite against Feather, Vampires and Dinos.
Esper has similar matchups, and in a vacuum is a better deck than Grixis. However, Grixis has a few distinct advantages over esper that are exacerbated in this meta-game, to make it a better choice right now.
The achilles heel for Grixis has always been it's inability to deal with enchantments. This has been a death sentence the past few seasons. From wilderness reclamation to search for azcanta to experimental frenzy, the MAJORITY of decks had must answer enchantments.
Right now none of those cards are a major issue in the format.
Grixis is much better than esper at turning the corner and pressuring the opponent. 4 mana bolas is the best card in the deck and esper has nothing that can simultaniously block, stabalize, pressure AND turn into a game ending threat. This is very important against scapeshift and various green decks.
5-mana Teferri is a better card than 5-mana bolas, but ONLY if you can use the mana by untapping lands at the end of the turn. If that mana isn't useful, Bolas gets better quick. Standards in a state where the best cheap removal spell is sorcery speed (Legion's end) , instant speed card draw is bad and counterspells are bad.
3-mana teferri is an excellent card, and incredible at shutting down instant speed shenagins, but it's not great against agro... standard is currently dominated by an agro deck and instant speed shenagins are uncommon. Right now I'd rather have 4 mana bolas by a good margin.
Mortify was much better than bedevil before, now I think bedevil is slightly better than mortify. Vampires have no enchantments and a scary planeswalker.
Nissa is the linchpin of many ramp decks and those decks generally don't have enchantments. If those decks untap with nissa, the game is over.
5-mana Teferri is a must kill walker that esper doesn't have too many answers to.
Wilderness recalmation is almost nowhere to be seen, and most esper decks are esper hero without azcanta. (Experimental frenzy still makes up a small portion of the metagame, and it's very good against grixis)
Ultimately, it's possible esper just needs to be retooled and it will be a better control deck than grixis when the metagame stabilizes... It should win the control mirror because it has more lifegain and thus can leverage the best mirror breakers in command the dreadhorde and Bolas' Citadel better than Grixis. But the "common" builds of Grixis are closer to what this metagame needs right now than the common builds of esper.
Noteworthy Card choices
4 Legion's end
Right now legion's end is incredible. It deals with almost every threat in vampires and has potential to get a 2 for 1.. It answers zombie hordes from scapeshift and answers many key creatures in elementals, from llanowar elf to hydroid krasis. Basically if the opponent is playing creatures, the deck will have good targets for legions end.
It also lets you see their hand, so you can sequence your spells better!
3 Tomebound Lich
This card is EXACTLY what a deck like this needs to increase it's consistency. Since I included this card my win rate with Grixis noteably rose. It serves a very similar function to what discovery//dispersal used to serve, but does it's job better.
The main deck is very creature removal heavy, which means there will be some matchups where grixis will have a lot of dead cards. Looting away dead cards is equivalent to drawing a card.
There will be times where the opponent can't kill it and it turns into a makeshift ophidian by looting all your dead cards.
In an agressive matchup a 1/3 deathtouch lifelink is a fine card alone... and the looting is gravy for smoothing out your hand or digging to what you need. It even hedges against Grixis' nightmare card in Nullhide Ferrox!
It protects your planeswalkers, which are extremely powerful, but fragile in combat.
Grixis is extremly powerful at 4-7 mana. Making sure you don't get stuck at 3 is critical.. and there aren't good mana sinks like a hydroid krasis that make you want more than 7 mana, so looting lands is very valuable.
1 Chandra, Acolyte of Flame main deck, 2 SB
When m20 first came out on arena, I immediately brewed up grixis with three chandra acolyte of flame. Is this the card that finally pushes Grixis into playable range?! Flashing back thought erasure and bedevil?! SICK!
Unfortunatly I wasn't winning much. Breeding pools and Veil of summer were everywhere and ultimately Chandra was less good than I was hoping.
Why? She dies to a gust of wind against creature decks. Against creature decks she's not BAD, but she plays out closer to a 5-6 drop.. which the deck already has plenty of good ones.
However, she's critical to have she access to in the 75. She's probably the best card in your entire deck against esper... She flashes back heavy hitters like elderspell and thought erasure, and most importantly pressures Narset and lil Teferri without being interacted with by cheap removal. If narset is consistently getting 2+ cards of value, esper will drown you in card advantage, and Chandra is the best way to prevent that.
The one in the main deck is a testament to her medium floor, and how bad I want 3 of her in the 75. Sometimes a card that is 95% good enough in game1 is worth including in the main deck, if it's an excellent sideboard card in some matchups.
If it were best of 1, I'd probably include the 4th tomebound lich over her, as it's a much better game 1 card and chandra is a much better game 2/3 card.
2 God-Eternal Kefnet
Kefnet is good right now and I've been very happy with how he has been playing out.
The key to make me lean harder on kefnet was understanding that I need to have flying pressure to have a shot of beating breeding pool decks. In that matchup you are the "beatdown" and need to put hard pressure on them in the midgame.
What I wasn't expecting, was how good Kefnet would be against vampires. Chaining removal spells from Kefnets ability is game over, and there aren't many creatures that can profitably attack through kefnet. They also generally lack the removal spells that kill kefnet.
Most importantly, Kefnet is one of your best threats against them postboard. Vampire lists are running multiple post board devout decrees for the mirror. which overlaps well against your other expensive threats.
Dodging postboard removal and duress is a a big deal. Vampires will slow down a tiny bit against you, but your threats will have trouble sticking. It's bad for the rest of your deck, but better for Kefnet.
Feather can shred through 4 mana bolas, but the 5 toughness is key in that matchup.
The combination of Bolas 4, Kefnet and tomebound lich protects your planeswalkers very well.. My old builds of grixis only had 4 mana bolas as the creature and that alone was often not enough to protect 5 mana bolas. The combination gets the job done.
1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
I wanted another big finisher and I think Chandra is the best one available. For a while, it was too much of a liability to run her main because of all the elemental decks that invalidate her -3...
But now that elementals have died down in popularity, I think she's where I want to be. She's a great hedge against decks running too many counter spells, a sweeper against creature decks, clocks turbo fog through infinite turns and is a must deal with threat against control.
Like the 3 mana chandra, she's a card I really want access to in my 75 but could take or leave the main deck. Her position is close, but right now I'm happy with her in the main. That could change quickly.
1 Cry of the Carnarium Main , 1 side
Now that Vampires have leaned harder on 1 drops, cry of the carnarium is good again. It also hits scapeshift zombies which is very nice.
However, I'll be honest, I don't love it against the rest of the field. Or at least it wasn't great 1 month ago.
I decided to not go too heavy on it, as it's bad in a bit too many matchups, and sideboard, it's less good against vamps as they take out some 1 drops and bring in removal.
However, it's important against vampires as an additional answer to adanto vanguard and their more broken starts on the play.
I think people are losing with Scapeshift and are starting to jump ship to different decks.
Meanwhile, the world has finally figured out the best base build of vampires. 14-16 1 drops, 4 champion of dusk, 4 Sorin, 2-3 sanctum seeker, 0 Mavrin Fein/icon of ancestry and a strong diversity of disruption post board. These vampire decks are better than ever and have been crushing brews, control and green decks with their aggression, life gain , reach and combo potential with Sorin.
In his recent starcitygames article Brad Nelson claimed Vampires is very similar to RB agro of the previous standard block. A deck where we saw as much as half the field playing in multiple major tournaments... It's very resilient, fast, attacks from different angles and has an excellent removal suite capable of dealing with almost anything the format has to throw at it.
If a lot of people share Brad's perspective, either by copying it, or coming to the same conclusion independently. I expect A LOT of people to be on vampires.
I agree with Brad's analysis about the decks parrallels, but I disagree that vampires is nearly as resilient to a target on it's back as RB agro was. Unlike scapeshift, vampires gets beaten by strategies, not by individual cards... And not many strategies at that.. but those strategies beat them thoroughly... and those strategies are still competitive against the rest of the field.
Mono Black, Esper or Grixis with the right configuration have a great vampires matchup. These decks can beat vampires much more soundly than any deck could beat RB agro... Also, unlike RB agro there's almost nothing vampires can really do about it.
I think the masses are not by aware of the counters to vampires yet. Grixis and Mono black are quite fringe and the current removal suite esper plays does NOT guarantee a good vampire matchup. The removal suite needed to deal with vampires unfortunately do not work well with hero of precinct one, which means esper will need to make some significant changes and sacrifice some of their breeding pool matchups in order to do so.
You need tools to deal with their explosive starts, many answers to adanto vanguard and a way to make Sorin less powerful. If you can kill all their creatures and don't have 3 toughness creatures of your own, sorin doesn't generate any value and becomes dead cardboard. If they don't have many creatures, champion of dusk doesn't generate much value either.
I put my money where my mouth is and have tuned my Grixis deck to beat Vampires + scapeshift and I'm very confident it does both. Am now mythic rank #10 and am 5-1 against vampires.
Why Grixis, Not Esper?
Grixis is a big underdog to risen reef decks and most decks designed to go very big with mass manipulation or command the dreadhorde. It's a small dog against many builds of Esper control, Nexus of Fate and probably a coin flip with Esper Hero. It's a small favourite against Mono Red... It's a strong favourite against Feather, Vampires and Dinos.
Esper has similar matchups, and in a vacuum is a better deck than Grixis. However, Grixis has a few distinct advantages over esper that are exacerbated in this meta-game, to make it a better choice right now.
The achilles heel for Grixis has always been it's inability to deal with enchantments. This has been a death sentence the past few seasons. From wilderness reclamation to search for azcanta to experimental frenzy, the MAJORITY of decks had must answer enchantments.
Right now none of those cards are a major issue in the format.
Grixis is much better than esper at turning the corner and pressuring the opponent. 4 mana bolas is the best card in the deck and esper has nothing that can simultaniously block, stabalize, pressure AND turn into a game ending threat. This is very important against scapeshift and various green decks.
5-mana Teferri is a better card than 5-mana bolas, but ONLY if you can use the mana by untapping lands at the end of the turn. If that mana isn't useful, Bolas gets better quick. Standards in a state where the best cheap removal spell is sorcery speed (Legion's end) , instant speed card draw is bad and counterspells are bad.
3-mana teferri is an excellent card, and incredible at shutting down instant speed shenagins, but it's not great against agro... standard is currently dominated by an agro deck and instant speed shenagins are uncommon. Right now I'd rather have 4 mana bolas by a good margin.
Mortify was much better than bedevil before, now I think bedevil is slightly better than mortify. Vampires have no enchantments and a scary planeswalker.
Nissa is the linchpin of many ramp decks and those decks generally don't have enchantments. If those decks untap with nissa, the game is over.
5-mana Teferri is a must kill walker that esper doesn't have too many answers to.
Wilderness recalmation is almost nowhere to be seen, and most esper decks are esper hero without azcanta. (Experimental frenzy still makes up a small portion of the metagame, and it's very good against grixis)
Ultimately, it's possible esper just needs to be retooled and it will be a better control deck than grixis when the metagame stabilizes... It should win the control mirror because it has more lifegain and thus can leverage the best mirror breakers in command the dreadhorde and Bolas' Citadel better than Grixis. But the "common" builds of Grixis are closer to what this metagame needs right now than the common builds of esper.
Noteworthy Card choices
4 Legion's end
Right now legion's end is incredible. It deals with almost every threat in vampires and has potential to get a 2 for 1.. It answers zombie hordes from scapeshift and answers many key creatures in elementals, from llanowar elf to hydroid krasis. Basically if the opponent is playing creatures, the deck will have good targets for legions end.
It also lets you see their hand, so you can sequence your spells better!
3 Tomebound Lich
This card is EXACTLY what a deck like this needs to increase it's consistency. Since I included this card my win rate with Grixis noteably rose. It serves a very similar function to what discovery//dispersal used to serve, but does it's job better.
The main deck is very creature removal heavy, which means there will be some matchups where grixis will have a lot of dead cards. Looting away dead cards is equivalent to drawing a card.
There will be times where the opponent can't kill it and it turns into a makeshift ophidian by looting all your dead cards.
In an agressive matchup a 1/3 deathtouch lifelink is a fine card alone... and the looting is gravy for smoothing out your hand or digging to what you need. It even hedges against Grixis' nightmare card in Nullhide Ferrox!
It protects your planeswalkers, which are extremely powerful, but fragile in combat.
Grixis is extremly powerful at 4-7 mana. Making sure you don't get stuck at 3 is critical.. and there aren't good mana sinks like a hydroid krasis that make you want more than 7 mana, so looting lands is very valuable.
1 Chandra, Acolyte of Flame main deck, 2 SB
When m20 first came out on arena, I immediately brewed up grixis with three chandra acolyte of flame. Is this the card that finally pushes Grixis into playable range?! Flashing back thought erasure and bedevil?! SICK!
Unfortunatly I wasn't winning much. Breeding pools and Veil of summer were everywhere and ultimately Chandra was less good than I was hoping.
Why? She dies to a gust of wind against creature decks. Against creature decks she's not BAD, but she plays out closer to a 5-6 drop.. which the deck already has plenty of good ones.
However, she's critical to have she access to in the 75. She's probably the best card in your entire deck against esper... She flashes back heavy hitters like elderspell and thought erasure, and most importantly pressures Narset and lil Teferri without being interacted with by cheap removal. If narset is consistently getting 2+ cards of value, esper will drown you in card advantage, and Chandra is the best way to prevent that.
The one in the main deck is a testament to her medium floor, and how bad I want 3 of her in the 75. Sometimes a card that is 95% good enough in game1 is worth including in the main deck, if it's an excellent sideboard card in some matchups.
If it were best of 1, I'd probably include the 4th tomebound lich over her, as it's a much better game 1 card and chandra is a much better game 2/3 card.
2 God-Eternal Kefnet
Kefnet is good right now and I've been very happy with how he has been playing out.
The key to make me lean harder on kefnet was understanding that I need to have flying pressure to have a shot of beating breeding pool decks. In that matchup you are the "beatdown" and need to put hard pressure on them in the midgame.
What I wasn't expecting, was how good Kefnet would be against vampires. Chaining removal spells from Kefnets ability is game over, and there aren't many creatures that can profitably attack through kefnet. They also generally lack the removal spells that kill kefnet.
Most importantly, Kefnet is one of your best threats against them postboard. Vampire lists are running multiple post board devout decrees for the mirror. which overlaps well against your other expensive threats.
Dodging postboard removal and duress is a a big deal. Vampires will slow down a tiny bit against you, but your threats will have trouble sticking. It's bad for the rest of your deck, but better for Kefnet.
Feather can shred through 4 mana bolas, but the 5 toughness is key in that matchup.
The combination of Bolas 4, Kefnet and tomebound lich protects your planeswalkers very well.. My old builds of grixis only had 4 mana bolas as the creature and that alone was often not enough to protect 5 mana bolas. The combination gets the job done.
1 Chandra, Awakened Inferno
I wanted another big finisher and I think Chandra is the best one available. For a while, it was too much of a liability to run her main because of all the elemental decks that invalidate her -3...
But now that elementals have died down in popularity, I think she's where I want to be. She's a great hedge against decks running too many counter spells, a sweeper against creature decks, clocks turbo fog through infinite turns and is a must deal with threat against control.
Like the 3 mana chandra, she's a card I really want access to in my 75 but could take or leave the main deck. Her position is close, but right now I'm happy with her in the main. That could change quickly.
1 Cry of the Carnarium Main , 1 side
Now that Vampires have leaned harder on 1 drops, cry of the carnarium is good again. It also hits scapeshift zombies which is very nice.
However, I'll be honest, I don't love it against the rest of the field. Or at least it wasn't great 1 month ago.
I decided to not go too heavy on it, as it's bad in a bit too many matchups, and sideboard, it's less good against vamps as they take out some 1 drops and bring in removal.
However, it's important against vampires as an additional answer to adanto vanguard and their more broken starts on the play.
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