If you’ve met me then you know that I am a die-hard Legacy fan. I don’t need to enumerate the reasons why the format is awesome and why it has remained great (with some hiccups) for as long as it and its predecessor, Type 1.5, have existed.Those that know me probably also know that I am a serially fair player, in the sense that I am averse to linear combo strategies and ‘big mana’ decks. I have played combo in competitive level Legacy events all of twice, where I had a brief stint playing the absurd [card]Jeskai Ascendancy[/card] combo deck with [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] and [card]Fatestitcher[/card]. There were [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s and [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] in it, okay?
The fair/unfair dichotomy is an interesting thing, however. In my observation, when you are playing unfair answers ([card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] / [card]Cabal Therapy[/card]) instead of unfair threats ([card]Griselbrand[/card], Spaghetti Lord) you are typically classified as the fair player. Still it seems to me that, done right, there’s nothing fair about being the fair guy.
Here is my deck of choice for the current Legacy metagame:
Grixis Control – Ben Winokur
[deck]
[Lands]
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
1 Wasteland
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 Innocent Blood
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Kolaghan’s Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Murderous Cut
2 Painful Truths
4 Ponder
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spell Snare
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Baleful Strix
1 Gurmag Angler
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Young Pyromancer
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
1 Flusterstorm
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Price of Progress
1 Dismember
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Pithing Needle
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Blood Moon
2 Surgical Extraction
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
One point of admission is immediately in order; Miracles is the big dog of the format right now and this deck does not play [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]s to break up its permanent-based permission engine. I will get to why I still think the Miracles matchup is reasonable. For now, though, I want to start from the beginning.
From Treasure Cruise to Gurmag Angler
UR Delver cemented itself as the bully of Legacy shortly after [card]Treasure Cruise[/card] was printed. The deck was a filthy, un-lovable pile of cantrips and [card]Ancestral Recall[/card]s. Cruise got banned. Life was good.
Then [card]Dig Through Time[/card] had its day in the sun. I quite liked that format, though no doubt things are healthier now. At the time, I had taken to playing a list not unlike the one above. The pure Grixis control deck of that format was best at utilizing [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] and answering opposing Delver strategies as well as the absurdly powerful Omnitell deck that has decreased in popularity post-bannings.Why did we need 3/2 fliers when we could just play more permission, more removal, and an M14 uncommon creature to seal the deal? Our build was set up to perform well against both the aggressive creatures and linear combo decks, all while having too much velocity for even Miracles to stomach.
The banning of [card]Dig Through Time[/card], though deserved, left a card advantage vacuum for the blue decks which, as it had been before Khans of Tarkir, was inevitably filled by [card]Shardless Agent[/card] strategies. I had the briefest of stints playing Shardless many moons ago. I was always bothered by the deck-building restrictions it forced on you; you were sacrificing a lot of game against Legacy’s many unfair decks in order to trump the other fair decks of the format, and even then you could sometimes lose to a Delver player who held their Dazes for your top-end and their Stifles for your [card]Ancestral Vision[/card]s. Maybe this is an oversimplification and not entirely fair to Shardless players. In any case, my play style pushed me to play BUG Delver for a long time. My only major complaint was that Wilkin Chau, a friend of mine and Dead Guy Ale expert, attends too many Legacy events in the GTA.
Fast-forward to the post-Dig era, in which Grixis Delver quickly cemented itself as the best delver strategy. The deck capitalized on the freshly minted [card]Gurmag Angler[/card] as a replacement for [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]. As a result it opened you to black cards (namely [card]Cabal Therapy[/card]) which allowed for a new dimension of proactive hate against combo and miscellaneous previously unbeatable decks like MUD and Cloudpost. I assumed that the end of the blue delve spells would mark the deck’s resurgence. That never really crystallized, and I can only conclude that this is because BUG Delver, despite having powerful 2-drop interaction like Hymn and [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], lacks the velocity of a deck backed by [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] coupled with a higher density of cantrips.
Why doesn’t this narrative just lead us to conclude that Grixis Delver is, after all, the place to be for a player like myself? I should preface what follows by saying that if Delver decks tickle your fancy, they are still good. While I have had success with Grixis Delver in the new metagame, there are still good reasons to move in other directions.
Grixis Control in a New Era – the move away from green mana
So you don’t want to cast [card]Shardless Agent[/card] and you don’t want to cast [card]Delver of Secrets[/card]. You’re not a Miracles player, and you’re combo-averse. Color me an excessively idiosyncratic scrub; why not play one of these great strategies?
Because we don’t have to.
[card]Painful Truths[/card] is an exceptional card. It took a minute for people to realize it. I did not explore its applications for Legacy right off the bat either. It was only when I found myself struggling with my Miracles and Lands matchups while playing Grixis Delver that it struck me: [card]Painful Truths[/card] is powerful and appears poised to be the new card advantage engine of choice for the fair UBx players. The cards you couple with it can be reactive, instead of proactive, since you’re not trying to fill your graveyard up to gain future card advantage via delve spells anymore. You get play basics if you’re playing the long game. There are still other ways to play, and a three mana sorcery will never rival the Khans delve spells, but nobody gets to play with those anymore.
By the time I started tinkering with a [card]Painful Truths[/card] list, the card was getting some serious discussion in Legacy circles. Abroad, its influence had been quickly demonstrated. Here is Joona Tiinus’ list from November 28th, where he took 1st in a field of 109 players:
[deck]
[Lands]
1 Badlands
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Force of Will
3 Gitaxian Probe
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Painful Truths
4 Ponder
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 True-Name Nemesis
4 Young Pyromancer
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Blood Moon
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Envelop
2 Flusterstorm
1 Izzet Staticaster
1 Painful Truths
1 Pithing Needle
1 Pyroblast
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Surgical Extraction
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
This list was not the impetus for my return to Grixis Control. I didn’t see this until after my recent 2nd place finish at the December 6th Sunday Showdown at Face to Face Games Toronto. Still, the list got a lot right. Seeing this result vindicated the chain of reasoning that brought me back to the Delver-less Grixis shell. The mana base in Tiinus’ list is a bit shaky and the inclusion of [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is a matter of some contention. The big draw to a list of this sort is [card]Abrupt Decay[/card], a card that cleanly deals with a resolved [card]Counterbalance[/card]. I do not think that [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] is especially crucial outside of the admittedly sizeable applications against [card]Counterbalance[/card]. There are other ways to keep the Chalice decks in check without green mana, and one can always double up on blue permission (as I have) to keep 2 CMC blue enchantments in line.
[card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] is good, but does it solve the problems a Grixis control deck typically has? More threats to extend into Terminus do not interest me, and the fact that we are not on Daze and Wasteland(s) takes away two of our best ways to abuse the card in the early game. Of course Shardless BUG has always played [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] as well, but that deck is far more mana-hungry than my Grixis list. In BUG it makes sense that you want to curve into [card]Shardless Agent[/card]s with impunity.
I cannot claim that the above list is built improperly, or that the inclusion of extra threats and mana resources has no advantages, but it is certainly not – to my mind – a hard-lock for how to build a control deck of this kind. One less frequently acknowledged advantage of staying threat-lean is that we have a greater degree of control over how our opponents use their spot removal. Often enough, we can wait for disruption before sticking a Pyromancer. When you play a greater number of threats over mass amounts of permission, you’re forced to run your threats out, turning on opposing removal. Cards like Deathrite are must-answer in the right decks, but turning on your opponent’s cards has a real cost. There’s only one way to cast these kinds of cards: immediately and on your main phase. Who said creatures are good? Has holiday cube taught you nothing?
Moreover, come sideboarding time, staying threat-light forces your opponent into awkward positions where they want to keep their removal but have insufficient targets to feel comfortable doing so. Think of the recent Reanimator lists running Jace, Vryn’s prodigy; so few targets for [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], but ever so crucial that the opponent has them or something analogous. What do they cut to make room for their [card]Relic of Progenitus[/card]?
As for the other creatures in Tiinus’ list: Tasigur is another issue entirely; the card really should just be [card]Gurmag Angler[/card]. Why give your Miracles opponent another way to interact favourably with your creatures? Don’t get Karakas’d, fam. I do like the two Snapcasters, though, and I’ve also considered finding room for a second, but without [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card] you have to be very economical with how many 3 CMC+ plays you want to make in a game. It is safe to stay lean and play an interactive card in its place, rather than trying to glut your list with 2-for-1s just for the sake of value. Like Tiinus, My one copy of [card]Baleful Strix[/card] could very well be a [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] if I was more concerned with clocking over maximizing my Cabal Therapies.
Then there is the basic land configuration. The above list does not have the basic [card]Mountain[/card]; adding it would be criminal given the presence of [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] in the main. Naturally, this makes no difference for the integrity of his [card]Blood Moon[/card]s, but it makes a big difference for being able to play red cards around [card]Wasteland[/card] lock. 3 basic lands (see my list) ensures that you’re hitting 3 mana every game that goes long enough, unless your opponent is also on [card]Ghost Quarter[/card]s (and sees them; the card tends to be a one-of in Lands lists). This is also pretty big game against Death and Taxes.
The Details
Looking closely at my list, you see that there are several fun-ofs. Believe it or not, though, I tend to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out just which fun-ofs to run. They’re technically not just splashy cards that I enjoy playing and in a sense they aren’t really fun-ofs at all, if that term tends to invoke the idea that they are one-ofs that are only played because of the pilot’s idiosyncrasies. They fairly regularly add new dimensions of play to a deck that is cantrip-heavy. Since you see them often, you need to be sure that they have wide application against a plethora of strategies. [card]Innocent Blood[/card], [card]Murderous Cut[/card], and Forked bolt round out your early interaction against creature strategies (giving answers that, with some variety, offer outs to [card]Tarmogoyf[/card], [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card], and Elves). [card]Spell Snare[/card], [card]Spell Pierce[/card] and [card]Counterspell[/card] offer additional interaction against just about everything else. The Snare is most definitely a concession to [card]Counterbalance[/card], though it is also just an excellent card to have on the draw and a clean answer to opposing Pyromancer decks. The [card]Kolaghan’s Command[/card] takes the spot of what could otherwise be a [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] or third [card]Painful Truths[/card]. It is card advantage, but gives game one interaction against [card]Chalice of the Void[/card] and allows you to compensate for the fact that your first Pyromancer or Two might get bolted off the table. I prefer it to the alternatives for its artifact destruction option game one, and because overloading on three-mana sorceries is a precarious strategy in its own right.
The maindeck [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card] / [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] engine ensures that you have proactive interaction against just about everything, all the time. This is something that the Grixis Delver decks lack game one, which they compensate for via better clocks and soft permission a la Daze. The reasons for why I am not content to rely on cards like Daze is, once again, that they line up poorly against Miracles and, in general, savvy opponents who know when to pick their spots. I’m not even close to going on a crusade against Daze; I’ve cast the card countless times, but I haven’t missed it in this type of list. Enough games are simply over once you’ve Therapy’d them a few times and countered whatever else matters. [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] single-handedly ends so many games that the aggressive plan of playing [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] just feels superfluous. Add to this the fact that Delver decks are frequently forced to overextend into Terminus and cannot beat Lands to save their lives, and you have reasons to eschew that strategy altogether.
A final comment about the maindeck should have been anticipated already. A singleton [card]Wasteland[/card] might strike one as a bizarre choice. We don’t play a sufficient density of land destruction to actually play a mana denial game, so why bother? The short answer is that we can. We could play the second island or the first Badlands instead, or we could play the first answer to [card]Academy Ruins[/card], [card]Maze of Ith[/card], [card]Dark Depths[/card], [card]Rishadan Port[/card], Karakas, and so on. I’m not dogmatic, here.
The Sideboard:
The sideboard is straightforward enough, I suspect, though a few cards are worth speaking of. The [card]Creeping Tar Pit[/card] is something I have always appreciated having access to where possible; it not only slightly insulates you against being wasted out by the non-Loam [card]Wasteland[/card] decks, but also doubles as a resilient threat against other [card]Jace, the Mind Sculptor[/card] decks.
The elephant in the room is obviously the one copy of [card]Ob Nixilis Reignited[/card], which I was not running when I first put this list to task. It was added on the recommendation of judge extraordinaire and fellow legacy enthusiast Matt Chow. The reasoning was that Ob Nixilis was coming in for the same fair blue matchups where, in its stead, I had previously run a second copy of Jace. Ob Nixilis is not vulnerable to opposing Pyroblast-type cards and its ultimate is – just like Jace’s – a legitimate kill condition. Drawing one card isn’t a [card]Brainstorm[/card], but loyalty goes up when you do. This slot may very well change, but I’ve been frequently impressed with the card thus far.
To round it all out, you have the popular sideboard counterspells, removal, [card]Pithing Needle[/card], and a [card]Rakdos Charm[/card] that couples as both additional Chalice hate and Loam hate (cards that are frequently coupled together in Lands and Aggro-Loam, giving the card a powerful modularity against some of our tougher matchups). If anything else is spicy, it’s the 1-of [card]Price of Progress[/card] which is effectively lights out for any big mana / lands strategy.
Closing Thoughts
Admittedly, it remains to be seen whether you might just want to butcher the smooth manabase and configure your list with [card]Abrupt Decay[/card]s and [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s, and I expect to remain in the minority that thinks it unnecessary. It also remains to be seen whether Grixis Delver is just the leanest, most streamlined deck you could play in these colors. My experience is that this isn’t the reality, at least not obviously. Having better Miracles / Lands matchups is a real thing in the GTA, and the extra removal that these lists have access to means you’re just fine against those Delver decks as well.
On request I might amend this article with a sideboard guide. For the time being, I’m happy to leave you alone.
-Ben ‘Wonkr’ Winokur