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A lot of you have heard about the Grixis deck being good, over in the UK it's been something we've tested a lot and found it plays a lot smoother than other control decks since it can be draw-go more effectively and not worry about making it's six drops to win. Stensia Bloodhall and Brimstone Volley do a lot of the legwork in terms of winning the game and things like Geistflame give you extra removal over an UB shell. ANyway, here is the list, I'll update the OP to make it into a proper archetype thread when I have a bit of time.


4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Wurmcoil Engine
(6)
4 Think Twice
4 Forbidden Alchemy
(8)
1 Tribute to Hunger
3 Geistflame
2 Doom Blade
1 Go For The Throat
3 Brimstone Volley
4 Mana Leak
4 Dissapate
(18)
2 Black Sun's Zenith
(2)
2 Stensia Bloodhall
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Darkslick Shores
3 Mountain
5 Island
(26)

SIDEBOARD(15)
2 Spellskite
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Batterskull/Wumrcoil Engine
1 Tribute to Hunger
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Brimstone Volley
1 Stensia Bloodhall
1 Negate
2 Shatter
1 Whipflare Trap
1 Geistflame


The basic plan of the deck is draw-go. Using Snapcaster and draw spells to play in your opponent's turn and you often win off of Snapcaster chipping away until you hit a Brimstone Volley, or just end of turn Stensia Bloodhall activation.

The sideboard is obviously in flux as the meta keeps shifting, but you have good tools to beat control: Grim Lavamancer(chips away and can sneak into play easily), Negate(another counterspell is obvious), Brimstone Volley(more win conditions), Stensia Bloodhall(Another win con, like brimstone it doesn't require a tap out). I have played 2 bloodhall in the board fr example in control heavy fields.

Tools for aggro are obvious as well.

We're currently trying to work Grim lavamancer into the MD, cutting 1 BSZ for 1 copy is about where we are since he's realyl good in this deck and can eat up mirran crusaders.

I think it's pretty easy to grasp how the deck works, but you spend the whole game in control, it feels really good. Different members of our UK team have been focusing on certain match ups etc, I've spent a lot of time on the control match ups and the deck had a real hard time losing to decks like UW control and UB control. UR counterburn is pretty simple since geistflame kills their board most of the time and you even have dissapate for their phoenix.

Match up wise, GW tokens is soemthign we are shoring up at the moment, if you expect RDW to be big, you can run the full spellskite count and it stalls very well until you hit wurmcoil.

There are four Forbidden Alchemy . Right next to the four Think Twice . :/

I'm so glad you made this thread, Cyrus. I look forward to the discussion.

What about this "Whipflare Trap" though?

EDIT: Nevermind, " Whipflare " from New Phyrexia. Gotcha.

Olivia seems a little cute to be honest. Wouldn't we rather just run out a Titan?

Rest looks good. 

Nov 10, 2011 -- 11:19AM, Hexar wrote:

Nov 10, 2011 -- 10:23AM, Niche wrote:

Olivia seems a little cute to be honest. Wouldn't we rather just run out a Titan?

Rest looks good. 

How's the manabase on this? I know Solar Flare is sort of a trainwreck playing 3 colors because of all the land, so is it treating you well?

The 12 black sources from dual land must help a lot, but does it ever become a nuisance?

Solar flare has enemy colors, this is a allied color trio, so your mana problems are a lot less.

The mana fix in allied color trio is better than a wedge. However WUB and UBR are allie trios and not wedges.

To make it more complex than it needs to be if you're heavy blue then your fixes into the other two are weighted. This deck isn't black centric so it's a little trickier than Flare. Flare is blue centric and it gets equal love for white and black.

Anyway, this is off topic. I think there's plenty of tools to fix an allied color trio base.