After posting the Grixis singleton list in my last article, some people (myself included) were interested in what a “real” Grixis Control list would look like. Grixis received a few new tools from M14, and I took advantage of the two-day window when M14 was Standard legal on Magic Online but hadn’t been released in print yet.

This means that I got a head start on trying out these reprints:

Okay, perhaps you aren’t as excited for these cards coming back as I am. The importance is that they help fix some of the previous problems with the Grixis Control archetype.

Doom Blade isn’t perfect and is particularly bad against Junk Aristocrats, but it has less downside than other instant-speed removal spells: Victim of Night is hard to cast early and can’t hit Stromkirk Noble or Huntmaster of the Fells; Ultimate Price can’t target a lot of things; and Searing Spear is less than ideal against Boros Reckoner and Restoration Angel. Warped Physique is one of the better options, but it’s a bad draw if you’re down to a low number of cards in hand.

Ratchet Bomb deals with a lot of things that Grixis normally has trouble with, namely, enchantments and boards full of tokens. Along with Far // Away, it makes the Hexproof matchup manageable, but the Bomb is a fine card in a lot of different situations.

Lastly, Opportunity is Grixis’s Sphinx’s Revelation. We need a way to refill our hand after trading off cards early and a way to compete with other decks’ Revelations. Being able to find a “draw four” with Augur of Bolas is a huge development for Grixis.

Here’s the deck that I’ve been battling with in two-mans and daily events:

[deck title=Grixis Control]
[Creatures]
3 Augur of Bolas
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 AEtherling
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
[/Planeswalkers]
[Spells]
3 Pillar of Flame
2 Doom Blade
1 Dreadbore
2 Essence Scatter
1 Izzet Charm
1 Ratchet Bomb
4 Think Twice
2 Dissipate
1 Rakdos Keyrune
4 Far//Away
2 Opportunity
1 Rakdos’s Return
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Watery Grave
4 Steam Vents
3 Blood Crypt
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Sulfur Falls
3 Dragonskull Summit
1 Island
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Desolate Lighthouse
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Appetite for Brains
2 Duress
1 Pillar of Flame
1 Negate
1 Ratchet Bomb
1 Underworld Connections
1 Barter in Blood
1 Evil Twin
1 Slaughter Games
2 Curse of Death’s Hold
1 Jace, Memory Adept
1 AEtherling
1 Rakdos’s Return
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This is basically an updated version of Joel Larsson’s Grixis deck from SCG Worcester, designed by Gerard Fabiano. Since M14 hasn’t really changed the overall strategy for Grixis Control, I’ll just go over some of the specific inclusions and omissions.

2 AEtherling (maindeck + sideboard), 2 Cavern of Souls
This is the most inevitability that a control deck can have. Ætherling closes games out fast, and there’s usually no way of stopping it. Note that Cavern of Souls naming Shapeshifter also casts Evil Twin out of the sideboard, which is relevant against blue decks with Thragtusks that you want to clone (Bant Control).

0 Nephalia Drownyard
Your opponent is also unlikely to be able to interact with getting Drowned to death, but it takes a lot longer. Milling your opponent is also dangerous when so many decks can gain from it with cards like Lingering Souls, Think Twice, Chandra’s Phoenix, Unburial Rites, and Varolz, the Scar-Striped.

2 Essence Scatter, 2 Dissipate, 0 Syncopate, 0 Counterflux
Choice of counterspells can honestly come down to preference, but I have found Dissipate and Essence Scatter to be the best and most efficient.

0 Turn // Burn
I don’t like Turn // Burn very much in general. Plus, we have Far // Away at the same mana costs. The scenarios when Turn//Burn is a blowout are just less likely to happen.

So far, I like how the deck plays out. It’s built for a varied field, so every matchups feels “winnable” but not superb. You could easily tune the deck to crush control or to be better against aggro.

Updating Cedric Phillip’s “Unfriendly Skies”

The next deck that I’ve been messing around with is a bit more proactive:

[deck title=Jund Aggro]
[Creatures]
4 Arbor Elf
2 Elvish Mystic
4 Flinthoof Boar
3 Strangleroot Geist
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Borderland Ranger
2 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
3 Ghor-Clan Rampager
4 Thundermaw Hellkite
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Dreadbore
1 Putrefy
4 Bonfire of the Damned
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Stomping Ground
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Blood Crypt
3 Rootbound Crag
4 Forest
2 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Kessig Wolf Run
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
3 Pillar of Flame
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Burning Earth
2 Garruk Relentless
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Olivia Voldaren
2 Zealous Conscripts
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

This deck is like a more robust version of RG Aggro, packing the powerful top-end of Falkenrath Aristocrat, Thundermaw Hellkite, and Bonfire of the Damned. Not much has changed since Cedric Phillips took his “Unfriendly Skies” deck to the top eight of an SCG Open, but I think that M14 has some promising new cards for the deck.

Elvish Mystic brings our mana elf count up to a maximum of eight. While Gyre Sage could grow to a considerable size in the long-term, replacing it with Elvish Mystic adds another one-drop and is just a more consistent way to accelerate out dragons.

It’s only been a couple weeks, and Scavenging Ooze is already a mainstay in Jund Midrange and Naya decks. The Ooze provides maindeck graveyard hate, which, again, comes up in a plethora of matchups but is also just a solid threat once you grow it a couple of times. If a game goes late, it’s a way to get some extra value out of your dead creatures (along with the actual scavenge mechanic of Varolz, the Scar-Striped).

If you aren’t an aggro deck and you aren’t scared of Burning Earth, well, you should be. Burning Earth is threatening out of the sideboard of Mono-Red, but can be just as threatening in this higher-end aggro deck where Burning Earth can hit the table faster and have a greater impact over the course of our relatively longer games. Unlike with Manabarbs, we are able to cut down on self-inflicted damage by playing a bunch of basic lands and Borderland Rangers, as well as having mana elves like the old Manabarbs decks also had.

This deck felt a little unwieldy in testing but definitely has powerful draws. The manabase can be just as erratic. I don’t think it’s even close to being tuned, but there are some great things going on in this first build: Bloodrushing a Rampager and Scavenging it later on; stealing a creature with Zealous Conscripts and sacrificing it to Falkenrath Aristocrat or Varolz; and tutoring for Olivia, Thundermaw, or Zealous Conscripts with a flipped Garruk. I think this deck could be prime for a comeback – all it needs is some more fine-tuning, and maybe a card or two that I’m missing.

Looking at the results from this past weekend at the SCG Invitational, though, it’s clear that the midrange variety of Jund is going to be the deck to beat. Good luck solving that one!

Alex Bianchi
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