Modern

Attacking the Eldrazi Menace

Okay, so the Pro Tour is over and everybody is talking about the new baby spaghetti monsters on the block. The Eldrazi decks certainly put up a performance for the ages, with 6 of the 8 spots taken up by these decks abusing [card]Eye of Ugin[/card] and [card]Eldrazi Temple[/card]. On top of that, the Grand Prix top 8s this past weekend were littered with Eldrazi. These decks were so impressive that a lot of people on my Facebook feed were clamoring to find the missing pieces to go along with the draft commons/uncommons they already had to make up the deck. One person who was not so excited was me. So if you are looking for the new, spicy tech for these Eldrazi decks then you have come to the wrong place. But if you share my desire to keep the peace on the plane of Zendikar and fight the good fight, then let us do battle together.

The first place I looked to in order to help battle for Zendikar was a deck I recently put some time into, and that is Lantern Control. While watching the Pro Tour, I couldn’t help but think about how soft these decks were to [card]Ensnaring Bridge[/card]. In fact, the only answer the Eldrazi deck has to an [card]Ensnaring Bridge[/card] on the battlefield are their sideboard (or possibly main board) copies of [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card]. And even then, getting a [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] up to three counters and then activating it is no small task against the deck with access to four copies of [card]Pithing Needle[/card], most of which are in the main board already! Sam Black played Lantern at the Pro Tour to an 8-2 record in Constructed, playing against several Eldrazi decks along the way. Now, just because the Lantern deck has a fantastic tool in the form of [card]Ensnaring Bridge[/card], doesn’t mean you are out of the woods yet.

The Eldrazi deck didn’t put up the results it did without being resilient. The deck has access to four copies of [card]Thought-Knot Seer[/card] and four copies of [card]Chalice of the Void[/card], which do a good job of keeping you off of your expensive haymaker and plethora of one mana spells respectively. But all hope is not lost. The Lantern deck has a decent amount of flex slots, and many of them are often used on cards like [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], which can help against those pesky Chalices, as well as discard. Typically the discard spell of choice has been [card]Inquisition of Kozilek[/card], but with Burn on the decline due to the speed of the opposing decks and [card]Spellskite[/card] being a card seeing play in main decks, it may just be safe to dust off those [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s. Here is a list similar to the one I have been playing, with some changes to help with the high amounts of Eldrazi, Infect, and Affinity decks.

Lantern Control by Jesse Swanson

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Academy Ruins
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Forest
4 Ghost Quarter
4 Glimmervoid
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Tendo Ice Bridge
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Ancient Stirrings
4 Codex Shredder
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Ghirapur Æther Grid
4 Ghoulcaller’s Bell
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lantern of Insight
4 Mox Opal
3 Pithing Needle
2 Surgical Extraction
4 Thoughtseize
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Spellskite
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Pithing Needle
1 Nature’s Claim
3 Pyroclasm
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Sun Droplet
2 Welding Jar
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I have gone up to 4 [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]s, since it is the only way to answer a [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] that is on the battlefield. Not only that, but [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] is just a very solid card, and is rarely dead. Being able to hit [card]Glistener Elf[/card], [card]Cranial Plating[/card], and the ever problematic [card]Noble Hierarch[/card] (which attacks through your Bridges!) makes it a pretty low risk include. One thing not mentioned above is this deck’s ability to run [card]Ghost Quarter[/card], which is positioned very well currently, and so I also went up to 4 of those. [card]Inkmoth Nexus[/card] is running wild, and destroying one of the double mana lands out of the Eldrazi deck can make their hands very clunky.

If Lantern Control isn’t quite to your taste, I’ve also come up with another idea for avoiding getting smashed by the Eldrazi decks, as well as having an excellent match-up against both Affinity and Infect. Again, I look to an archetype I have had a lot of experience with in the past, and this time it is Grixis Control. Grixis has always had a great time against creature decks due to the high concentration of cheap removal and two for ones. But is this deck really capable of handing a world full of 5/5 hastes and 4/4 Vendilion Cliques? In its current state I believe the answer is no. Between [card]Thought-Knot Seer[/card] being able to strip your hand of your key cards and [card]Reality Smasher[/card] requiring two cards to be answered (and that’s only if you have a one for one answer for a 5/5), the Eldrazi deck should be able to make one of their fatties stick on the table and quickly end the game with it. But Jesse, if the Grixis deck can’t handle the Eldrazi deck, why are you wasting my time? Well, while the current state of Grixis isn’t equipped to handle these large threats, it is an extremely adaptable deck. Many of the cards can be changed around to help battle the threats you expect to face. At the Pro Tour, players were going into unknown waters, not knowing what answers they were going to need to bring. Now that we have a clearer picture, there may be something we can do. I believe that the best way to move forward with Grixis is to move backwards. Why reinvent the wheel when it is already there in front of you. This is the list I am going to be playing moving into the new meta:

Grixis Control by Jesse Swanson

[deck]
[Lands]
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Darkslick Shores
2 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Swamp
1 Watery Grave
[/Lands]
[Spells]
3 Cryptic Command
1 Doom Blade
2 Electrolyze
3 Kolaghan’s Command
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Mana Leak
1 Remand
4 Serum Visions
1 Spell Snare
3 Terminate
2 Thought Scour
3 Thoughtseize
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Terminate
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Spellskite
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Crumble to Dust
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Bitterblossom
1 Vandalblast
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Tribute to Hunger
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This new world may simply be too fast for our old pal Jace. I would already side him out vs. Infect due to the presence of [card]Twisted Image[/card], and Jace would be on the short list of cards I would want to cut vs. Eldrazi. So let’s cut out the middle man and just leave Jace at home for now, and go more towards a shell that resembles the very first takes on Grixis Control, which were more permission heavy. One way to avoid the pesky abilities on [card]Reality Smasher[/card] and [card]Thought-Knot Seer[/card] is to never allow them to be summoned in the first place. While a lot of the cards in the Eldrazi deck can hit very hard and very fast, the deck is actually very threat-light compared to other proactive decks. The blue/red version would be more of an issue due to having cards like [card]Drowner of Hope[/card] and [card]Vile Aggregate[/card] instead of cards like [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] and [card]Simian Spirit Guide[/card], which are not nearly as threatening if the games are about attrition and not speed. This version has many more clean answers to the threats the deck is presenting, and so you will be less likely to find yourself without one.

Whether or not you are a fan of this wild and crazy metagame, it seems like Eldrazi decks are here for the foreseeable future. And with all the fast mana and threats that dodge the common removal spells in the format, it’s not hard to see why. And so if you are not one to play big scary monsters and bash your opponents face in, you had better well be ready to deal with them yourself. Happy hunting!

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