Grixis decks comprise more of a shell that you can fill with the cards that do well in different metas, there are some notable differences between “Blue Jund” and “Grixis Control” eg virtually none of the running jace and none of the former running 4 delve creatures, but there are enough in-betweeners with some of the “control decks” running Jace and a fair share of counter and some “midrange” decks not running jace, but also not running many counters as well.

The difference is probably just a more accentuated version of how Abzan decks can differ wildly from “Big Abzan” as the deck that top8d GP Singapore last summer to a mean and lean package like the one WIlly Edel brough to GP Charlotte with no 4drops and bobs.

The nomenclature gets murky when both Jeskai decks with Geist which is really midrange decks, with the Kiki-combo and those with more ‘proper’ control wincons get lumped together as Jeskai control and you see a similar thing happen with Grixis decks.

This issue is so contentious and, I believe, distracting that I’m going to be merging the Grixis Control/Midrange shares for this coming update. If it doesn’t work or proves to be misleading, I’ll switch it bad for subsequent ones. Jeskai Control vs. Jeskai Midrange is a little more established based on the presence of countermagic, creatures like Geist/Splicer, etc. But the Grixis one started hazy during Chapin’s run at GP Charlotte and got significantly less clear as Grixis started adding more IoK and less Cryptics. Rather than get too distracted by this, I’m just going to try a new classification for the update next week.

Ha good to hear. I know its kind of semantics but I’ve been telling folks that AV is a midrange card and not particularly good for a control deck – was distressing to see the analysis show that actually most of its success is in “control”.

On the front page metagame table its labeled grixis midrange and then jeskai control – I think that’s fair. As Jacob says, control would be defined by few creatures, mostly instants, and I would add in most cases “winning at its leisure” once a soft lock is established rather than trying to be fast.

Thanks for the true return to form guys, I was really scared that the QS takeover ruined everything – I see now that my fears were in error.

It’s a distinct possibility the selected Faeries list is terrible. One of the four Top 8 lists did run Scion of Oona, but there was a ton of variation in approach, including Tasigurs, more spot removal, maindeck Sword of Feast and Famine, and lots of other random stuff.

The standard Faeries package has clearly proven lackluster in Modern, so it makes sense we’d have to make some radical changes to arrive at a Tier 1 or 2 contender.

Regarding Jeskai, a majority of the decks (two thirds) omitted Thopter-Sword. I believe only one was running big Elspeth, with more popular wincons being Elspeth, Knight-Errant, Ajani Vengeant and Gideon Jura.

Some of this is just naming convention, but the Grixis list I posted (and most of the SCG States Top 8 lists were similar) probably does play closer to “Blue Jund.” Of course even Jeskai has always been a glorified burn deck masquerading as control—we’ve yet to see a “true” control deck in Modern in the vein of Esper Dragons or Miracles, with the possible exception of blue-based Tron.

“Control” does not mean “uses lots of instants/counterspells and not many creatures”.

The jeskai deck ill more buy as control – it’s got a much lower body count and is mostly instant speed interaction.

I think I like Ancestral Vision in the Grixis list the most – Goblin Dark-Dwellers is a genius piece of tech, and the only cards I’m not really feeling in the mainboard are Thought Scour (a necessary concession for Tasigur), and Tasigur himself (big body, but I don’t feel like his grindy recursion is as necessary with so many ways to mine the graveyard for value already present). I’m surprised the Jeskai list went with Thopter + Sword as its steady wincon over something like Elspeth, Sun’s Champion (which is what the UW Control lists in Eldrazi Winter employed to very good effect). That Scapeshift mainboard is excellent – I’ve tested it out myself after the tournament results were posted (with some minor manabase tweaks), and it did very well, which is notable because I’m not an experienced Scapeshift pilot. I’m not sold on the sideboard at all, though, especially considering that my take on the sideboard was very different and it still performed well.

My most scathing criticism, however, is reserved for the Faerie deck – I think that the shell that is being presented is not very good, and probably succeeded due to either the skills of the pilot or some favorable variance. It’s overly dependent on Bitterblossom, and is in an awkward spot in the aggressive-to-controlling scale. It’s weak to decks such as Affinity, Gruul Zoo, and Burn because of its utter lack of proactiveness, and other controlling decks will go over the top of its forces fairly easily. I am of the opinion that Cryptic Command and Mistbind Clique are a bit of a trap for Faeries players, as they push you too far down the control path. Additionally, I can’t condone the omission of Scion of Oona, which both protects your Bitterblossom and makes it exponentially more dangerous. I think that a tempo deck with some “go-long” elements such as Ancestral Vision is the optimal way to construct a Faeries shell, and my preliminary testing against decks such as Jund (a boogeyman for Faeries for as long as I’ve been playing Modern) has definitely given me confidence in my assertion.