Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
Eldrazi might be too powerful. We’ve known this since the Pro Tour, and it really has never been a serious question. Since Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, a lot of drama has occurred, both in the Magic community and in the comments of our own site. Maybe a ban is necessary, maybe it’s not. There really isn’t much to gain from this discussion, as everything that can has already been said. Some of these reactions are warranted; others, not so much. I am of the opinion that until pen is put to paper and a ban occurs, any archetype can be beaten, and I do myself and others a disservice to cry “ban” when I could spend my time/effort/words focusing on finding a solution.
Today, I’ll be taking a hard look at Modern’s top dog, discussing ways to beat it sans bannings, and using my unique testing and opinions as framework. These are my findings. Results may vary. Let us begin.
[wp_ad_camp_1]
Why Grixis Control?
As some readers have been quick to question my motives/incentives/thought process lately, I thought it’d be fun to frame my discussion in a question/answer format. Call it a pre-emptive strike.
If we’re interested in beating Eldrazi, why are we messing with Grixis Control?
Grixis Control is what I know best. For as long as I’ve been writing for this site, for as long as I’ve been focused single-mindedly on Modern, Grixis Control has been my weapon. It’s not all I know, as my time spent streaming and producing the late Modern Video Series let me play many other decks in the format, but it is something I love. My knowledge about the deck and intricacies of play translate (usually) to a better understanding and less biased opinions regarding its worth, compared to someone with less experience with the strategy. When you have a goal in mind, it’s usually best to start with the tools you know, before moving on to the ones you don’t.
Yeah, okay. Grixis Control sucks though.
Grixis Control probably does suck. Patrick Chapin put the archetype on the map, Gerry Thompson built an excellent version for the Invitational, and we saw some radical iterations to the deck in the hands of a few other players (Michael Majors had a strong performance with Jace, but wasn’t the only player researching that line). Mostly, Grixis Control hasn’t put up the numbers you would expect with such a pedigree of strong minds behind it, which has contributed to this notion that “the deck must just suck”.
I disagree.
Grixis Control, in my mind, has always suffered from trying to do a little too much, while almost always falling short. Magic players often use jargon such as “cute,” “synergistic,” or “durdly” to describe what Grixis Control does best, but its identity can roughly (emphasis on roughly) be summed up in one card: Rise // Fall.
Discard into Jace, Vryn's Prodigy into Snapcaster Mage-discard into Kolaghan's Command into Rise // Fall goodness.
This is great and all, except we were doing this in a format where Affinity dumps its hand by turn two, or Burn just draws another Deal-Three, or Splinter Twin combos us out anyway, or Jund does the same thing we're doing but better, and with Tarmogoyf. To win, Grixis Control would have to rely on everything going “just right” and hope to dodge a handful of nightmare scenarios. These nightmare scenarios included multiple delve creatures in the opener. Opponents having discard spells. Sitting across from Scapeshift. Sitting across from Burn. Any player getting lucky with any draw step ever. Choke. Boil. Voice of Resurgence. Liliana of the Veil. You get the idea.
You still haven’t said why Grixis Control is good. I’m about 600 words into your article and you’ve made me so angry I’m going to yell at you on the Internet to show you how I really feel.
Grixis Control, in my mind, has always succeeded when it plays as a Jund deck, but with blue cards instead of green. By that, I mean rather than attempting to actually control the game, Grixis seeks to disrupt quickly, then present its own threats and put the onus on the opponent to answer them. Before Pia and Kiran Nalaar were all the rage, I found a lot of success in just going discard-Jace, Vryn's Prodigy-Tasigur, the Golden Fang with removal/counterspells to clean up. Quick, proactive, interactive, and powerful. Sure, there were some nonbos (counterspells with Jace, delving away Jace/Snapcaster targets) but there always was some value in just having powerful things to do. Playing a 4/5 that can draw cards for one mana is always powerful. Casting Rise // Fall… maybe not so much.
In the matchups where it was good, it was great. Infect had no hope. The Company decks were relatively easy as long as you made sure to save removal for their lords (Elves) and present a quick clock (Abzan). Having 5/5s for just a single black, with the ability to play them on turn two forced opponents to keep in Dismember and the like, which played right into our Dispels that are great against everyone post-board. There lay the strength of the deck, which is why we always saw it floating around Top 16s.
The problem? There was too much to fight. A Tier 1 with a handful of different archetypes and a Tier 2 where a dozen other viable decks meant playing a deck that rode the proactive/reactive fence while still trying to play “fair” wasn’t enough to cut it 65% of the time. If only we could see a metagame where the stars aligned, the various decks trimmed down, the shadowy figures on the fringes of reality coalesced into a handful of substantive enemies that we could actually see, and fight.
| Rank | Deck | Metagame % |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Eldrazi | 30.3% |
| 2 | Affinity | 10.3% |
| 3 | Burn | 5.6% |
| 4 | Infect | 4.5% |
| 5 | Jund | 4.1% |
| 7 | Merfolk | 3.8% |
| 6 | Abzan Company | 3.6% |
| 8 | RG Tron | 2.3% |
| 9 | Grishoalbrand | 2.2% |
| 10 | Abzan | 2.1% |
Oh, well would you look at that.
Grixis Control - Trevor Holmes
With this list, I’ve played 20 matches against various flavors of Eldrazi on MTGO, and my win rate is 14-6. Against other archetypes, I’m mostly positive, with some more help needed against the obvious enemies in Burn and Jund.
Yeah, well I don’t trust you, and I’m just here to find fault wherever I can. Where are your facts?!?
I would record my matches, but 20 matches is a lot of video editing, and my processor is doing this weird thing where it gets to 89*C (yes, Celsius) and my computer shuts off. So when I get that fixed, you guys can get some videos. Until then, I guess you’ll just have to trust me.
The Deck
We’ll focus exclusively on the Eldrazi matchup in this section. Most of the other matchups are relatively similar to pre-Eldrazi/pre-ban Modern, but I'll touch on some key differences later in the article. For now, some general anti-Eldrazi discussion, quick-hits style.
- Eldrazi is not easy. The deck is doing some truly powerful things, and we’re doing the best we can to fight it. This is where I’m at after two weeks of hard testing. Game wins take a while, normally I’m not winning until turn 16-17 or beyond.
We win by killing the things, followed by more killing of the things. Thought-Knot Seer is a problem, Reality Smasher not so much, as we don’t need lands past the fifth and usually have a dud that we can discard in the midgame. Gurmag Angler and Tasigur, the Golden Fang hold everything at bay, barring Reality Smasher and large Endless Ones that we need to kill on sight.
- Eldrazi Mimics don’t stay on the board. Between Lightning Bolt, Kolaghan's Command, and discard, we can usually nab those things or kill them immediately, which really blunts Eldrazi’s early plan of attack. Playing a Seer on turn 2-3, or Reality Smasher a few turns ahead, is still fast, but we can handle that if we can get ahead on board.
- To get ahead on the battlefield, it’s absolutely essential to have a turn one discard spell or Lightning Bolt. Nabbing their two drop lets us Mana Leak their follow-up, or play Jace, Vryn's Prodigy without falling too far behind. Always, always hold open that Mana Leak mana if you have it, as their accelerated mana makes it go dead faster than normal.
Game 1s are definitely the hardest, but still winnable. After board, we’re on the Ensnaring Bridge plan. 
Ensnaring Bridge is excellent; if they’re playing Ratchet Bomb, they usually bring it out. As we’re playing a “rogue” deck, they aren’t anticipating Bridge and Game 2 is usually a breeze, as they have no way in their 60 to handle it and we just find and ultimate Jace with ease. Game 3 can be slightly more difficult, as they are wise to our game and (if they’re sharp) bring in Ancient Grudge to fight our Ensnaring Bridges. At this point, they have to find Ancient Grudge to fight Bridge, draw Dismember to fight our delve guys, and cobble together a relevant offense while we are working on disrupting their hand and killing their board. This is Also Known As “A Bad Time”, A.K.A. “The Squeeze”, A.K.A. “Sign the Match Slip Sucker”.
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar is underwhelming every time I cast then, so they're gone. They work as a good way to buy time in the midgame, and a relatively secure way to win under an Ensnaring Bridge (as we can draw for the turn, swing with thopters, and then play our card).
Eldrazi doesn’t have any 1/xs, so we can always safely leave one card in hand anyways. It just feels like cheating to draw, attack, then go hellbent. The Nalaars aren't bad, but they just aren't helping us where we need the extra boost.
- Another thing: attacking for two a turn in the air under a Bridge feels cute, until your Eldrazi opponent Eye of Ugins for World Breaker and you feel bad. Why does it have to have reach?!
- World Breaker is the only card we care about them not finding with Eye of Ugin. This is the reason for Spreading Seas, since Breaker is a major foil to our Ensnaring Bridge plan. Not every list is playing it, but it’s something to keep an eye out for. Don’t get blown out! It’s not that bad, as we can often Spreading Seas an Eye of Ugin they can’t afford to keep in hand, but that still leaves topdecked Eyes and Ancient Stirrings to dodge. I’m not sure if we’re at the Slaughter Games level yet, but we could get there (We're not, don’t do that).
Be careful for Eldrazi Displacer, Eldrazi Mimic, and Spellskite shenanigans which can enable a 0 power Mimic to attack under a Bridge before growing off a Displacer activation on another fatty. Also, watch out for the Displacer and Thought-Knot Seer decking Plan B (more like Plan E), another Eldrazi out if they can't kill the Bridge. We're generally less vulnerable to these lines than other decks because we're still playing Bolt, but you'll still need to know the plays to not get blindsided. Also, Damnation. Maindeck Damnation. I'll leave you with that.
The Field
Even in a field of 30%-35% Eldrazi, we're still facing non-Eldrazi decks two out of every three matches. Thus, a deck that crushes Eldrazi in theory is useless if it can't hold up against the rest of the field. So how does Grixis Control fare against the best of the rest?
The bad matchups are still bad. Merfolk is difficult to beat, as is Burn. Tron can be a coinflip. Not much has changed on this front, and devoting sideboard slots to Ensnaring Bridge and Spreading Seas to fight Eldrazi means (by definition) that we have fewer slots to devote to bad matchups. Luckily, Ensnaring Bridge is a decent plan against Merfolk, and Spreading Seas is obviously great against Tron, so we're not losing as many "points" as you might think.
- After Splinter Twin's departure and Eldrazi's arrival, the metagame has actually shifted to a point where most of the rest of the field is favorable for Grixis Control. Amulet Bloom is gone, which was always a pretty rough matchup for Grixis. Scapeshift was a personal nemesis of mine, though other players claimed success against that strategy. Regardless, it has been putting up numbers since Eldrazi's arrival. Living End is also a bad matchup, and it's good to see its numbers diminished.
On the other hand, take a look at the enemies we're looking to fight. Infect. Affinity. Company creature decks. The field has adapted to a point where we're facing creature decks most of the time, and moving back to counterspells to fight Eldrazi incidentally helps us against combo decks as well. Discard, Mana Leak, and Dispel are still tough for spell-based combo to fight through, and where Grishoalbrand used to be scary I'd be inclined to call it favorable (though I haven't run into it yet to test for sure).
- Moving back to Tasigur, the Golden Fang is, in my mind, the most important change for the archetype. We tried synergy-based Grixis for months and never seemed to "get there", and just having a cheap x/5 is great in this new format. Not having to kill absolutely everything, and being able to apply a quick clock and turn the corner is one of Grixis Control's best attributes. The effect it has on gameplay, sideboarding, and in-match positioning is considerable but not immediately apparent. If you're thinking about picking up Grixis, give the Gurmag and Tasigur a try!
Conclusion
I’ve had some success against Eldrazi. I’m not claiming Eldrazi is not overpowered (it probably is). I’m not arguing against a ban (it's probably coming). Fast mana is not a fair thing to give one archetype and not others, and for that Eldrazi will probably one day see a nerf. Admitting this, the tools to beat the deck exist. It’s likely that not every archetype has these tools, which is bad, but that’s where we come in. If you’re done playing Magic until April, that’s your prerogative. If you hate Wizards for everything they’ve done to destroy your life, you are allowed to feel that way. I’m here, calmly trying to do my part. I hope you found something of value in my words this week. Thanks for reading, and I leave the stage to you…
Trevor Holmes
The_Architect on MTGO
Twitch.tv/Architect_Gaming
Twitter.com/7he4rchitect
Ive been testing Grixis as well here are some of my notes:
Kalitas is a house. Turning removal into more bodies is amazing, and growing Kalitas once means they cant attack without throwing away at least one creature. In addition, he plays great with Lillana and Slaughter pact.
Play more doomblade. First off, doom blade is straight up better than go for the throat and has been for a while. Second off, you should just play more doom blade, Personally, lightning bolt has been the weakest link, so Ive moved 1 or 2 bolts to my sideboard.
Otherwise I like the look of your deck. Spreading seas is actually amazing (better than blood moon most of the time) and ensaring bridge seems like exactly what we want out of the board
This jives with what I’d expect. Kalitas stonewalls the smaller Eldrazi while providing you value from killing the bigger ones (though the “smaller ones” seem to be fewer and farther between of late), and while I’m still skeptical about removing Bolt, Doom Blade does seem better positioned that Go for the Throat at the moment (since the second-most common deck is Affinity and you want every little Game 1 edge you can scratch out against them).
Bolt is less than exciting against a swarm of creatures with 4 or more toughness.
Taking a second look at Kalitas, I actually like a lot of what that card has to offer. If we make two tokens we’re significantly ahead, even the expectation of only making one creature might be enough to justify playing it.
I think if we’re playing one or two copies of Kalitas we might need to trim down to one Damnation. I think that’s fine if we’re still playing Thought Scour, as that significantly helps us dig to it for flipped Jace or Snapcaster Mage. Something to consider.
Doom Blade does seem like there’s little to no drawback, it was a liability when there were other Grixis decks and Dark Confidant to worry about, but Confidant is really the only black creature being played that I can think of off the top of my head and everything else we have answers it.
Great points, thanks for the suggestions!
Hm. Any thoughts on Tomb Stalker in place of Gurmag Angler? Same 5/5 body, but gets flying in exchange for costing one more “real” mana. I’ve been debating finding a home for it.
Patrick Chapin has wrote about this a few times, I’ll paraphrase what he said because I (A) can’t find his article and (B) he summed it up perfectly.
How often will the BB vs. B matter compared to the benefit of flying? Pretty often, I would expect. We lose the ability to ever cast it on Turn 2 with a Thought Scour draw, and we lose the ability to cast it on Turn 3 with removal/Mana Leak backup. Past those early turns, having to spend BB means we probably can’t play a B based removal spell until we untap (as we won’t often have BBB available). Seems like we’re risking too much just to gain flying, which is great in Modern but not worth the drawbacks I think.
Love the deck and love your work most of the time, but please don’t take out your anger at other comments on us, it comes off as you can’t tell us apart anymore. I’ve been reading your work since you started here, and it seems as though commentors are really getting to you. Believing people are just here to find fault in your work or hate on you is, and makes me and probably others as well, feel like your alienating the readers who really care and follow you. I understand people have been rude lately for whatever reason, and I really am sorry they do that to you, but remember all the good work you’ve done here. Your articles on moderns context and on the wheel of archetypes are some of the single most important and thought provoking pieces I’ve read, and I show them to my friends in order to help them get their understanding and skills to the next level right alongside who’s the beat down and other pillar articles of our game. Just remember you do amazing work and there are a lot of people who feel the same way here, even if some people don’t.
That was actually me with the archetype wheel articles 😛
Obviously I’m not Trevor, but I want to say that I really appreciate this kind of communication between authors and the Nexus readership. I think I speak for all the writers here when I say that we care about your interests as readers and want to produce content that resonates with the community. Despite the recent influx of nasty, anonymous comments (which have all but vanished since the update to our posting system), I value the insights and suggestions we get from readers very highly.
So, thanks!
No problem, I had a nagging voice in my head telling me I was half wrong, but great work by the way on the wheel because I write it out and use it more than any sideboard guide. I would call the wheel articles and the context articles Trevor wrote about cards context being so important my two favorites from here. They easily helped me level up my game more than anyone or other article, so thank you for that Jordan and Trevor. And I’m glad the hateful comments are gone as well, now we can go back to discussing the reason we’re all here, magic 🙂
Hey Jesse,
Thank you for your support and your kind words! I apologize if my tone came off as disparaging to you, one of the supporters, that was never my intention.
I will admit that a lot of the negative comments were directly responsible for my tone this week (I did reference “pre-empting” the opposition) but it was never my intention to alienate any of the readers that appreciate my work. I ABSOLUTELY do not see all of my readers as the same, and I don’t take the vocal opposition as representative of the whole. Thank you again for your support and your kind words and I’m glad you like my work! The opportunity to help other players with their game is the reason I write, and will continue to write in the future.
Trevor
Your welcome, you deserve to hear positivity instead of negativity when you create for others as you do, and I apologize for the assertion you saw us all the same in a permanent sense instead of just feeling poorly from the previous articles. All apologies aside your articles on context revolutionized my understanding of our game and modern as a whole, now I can truly say I know why a card is played and it’s context that allows it to continue seeing play. I’ve never been better at this game and I have Jordan, Sheridan, and you Trevor to thank for it. Keep up the amazing work and know I and many others support you for all that you do for us readers
I’m so glad you’re sticking to your guns! I know you have claimed that this is your personal favorite, I hate to see people move away from their favorite decks because of how warped the meta is.
I’m also running Gixis Control, and currently I’ve been running (2) Pia and Kiran and they’ve always felt kind of cute, even if they offer some versatility, I’m glad you mentioned them. I think I might try my deck without them for a while. Someone mentioned Tombstalker…didn’t think of that one, I could use the extra reach! I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.
I DID, however, have good luck with one Goblin Dark Dwellers in the main: a 4/4 body that could potentially cast something like Kolaghan’s Command from the G-yard for free! Also, I would like your thoughts on Vendilion Clique, too cute? I’ve also had good luck with this card.
Your sideboard looks great! I actually came up with an identical one (without the Liliana though, still too rich for my blood). I’m still running Keranos and maybe another counter spell like Countersquall. I would recommend a couple of Artifact removal though, Vandalblast makes Affinity matchups even better!
Anyways, thank you for continuing to fight the good fight! I believe Grixis Control is a deck that can adapt well to a changing meta, even a warped one!
Beryl,
For better or worse, I will probably never give up Grixis Control. 🙂 I’ll take your points one by one:
Try the deck without Pia and Kiran for a while. Tasigur and Gurmag Angler are strong, fun, and offer a unique angle of attack that’s worth experimenting with.
See my above comment to Jacob on Tombstalker!
Goblin Dark Dwellers seems like it’s just a little too expensive for me. I’ll put it this way: For five mana, we are getting a 4/4 Menace with the possibility of a free spell. On one hand, we have Tarmogoyf, the baseline for a strong creature in Magic. For two mana you can get a 4/5 most of the time, so we’re definitely overpaying as Menace (and not having to play green) is not worth three mana. On the other hand, we have a free Snapcaster Mage effect. In the best case scenario of us flashing back something costing three we are spending Snapcaster Mage mana but getting a 4/4 menace instead of a 2/1. This seems “okay” but we lose all of that flexibility that comes with Snapcaster Mage and Goblin Dark Dweller forces us to tap out in our main phase.
Maybe that card is worth it, but I would imagine it in a Jund-style shell before a reactive Grixis list.
I’ve been known to play a Vendilion Clique in the past, often when I wanted a little extra help against Twin, and Tron, and other combo decks. Not sure if it’s great for this format, but it can hit relatively hard and fast. I think this one just comes down to preference and playstyle.
Good luck!
Thank you for the reply! I’m still going to fiddle with the Goblin for now, it may have just been luck that I’ve had good success with it, but it’s definitely not an early turn card, but great on the back end! But I see what your talking about.
I’m also going to stick with the Cliques. I didn’t mention this in my prior comment, but I never liked Jace, and I own 3, and have had them in my deck, but his clock seems way too slow for me in the early game. He just sits there for a whole turn, and then I’m too focused on getting him to flip afterwards. IDK, maybe I’m doing something wrong.
Thanks again!
The way you set up your new and updated list was masterful! I couldn’t help but grin as you systematically and preemptively answered every objection I raised in my head as the article progressed. Very persuasive, and the overall tone of the article was appropriate.
At this point, I had given up any hope of finding a way to beat the eldrazi and had just planned to bunker down and ride out the storm, but your article encouraged me that perhaps I should keep looking for solutions. I had cast away grixis and its parts lie scattered around in spare deckboxes everywhere. Its time to suck it up and buy those damnations I have been holding off on. And the lilianas. And the ensnaring bridges. Hmmm, my spirit is willing but the wallet is weak.
Awesome article and entertaining read.
Tim,
Thanks, and I’m glad you liked the article! Some readers found the tone a little rough, but I’m glad the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm was visible and I enjoy hearing someone enjoys my poor humor (I think I’m a lot funnier than I actually am)
Thanks for reading!
Trevor
Logged in to reply; in a field with 40% colourles creatures, you probably want to play Doom Blade instead of Go for the Throat. Peace.
I will say Throat does hit all the Eldrazi, and dodges Spellskites in the process. Affinity weakness is an issue, but I’m guessing Trevor has thought that through and wanted Spellskite immunity more.
Spellskite was going to eat your terminate next at best, at worse it turns off all of your bolts.
You really want to play doom blade, and as I said in another comment, I think you want to go up to 5-7 total in the main.
Now that we aren’t seeing opposing Tasigur’s out of Grixis (all flavors of Grixis) I actually like Doom Blade a lot more. I think Spellskite is a narrow case and normally doesn’t matter that much against us as we have so much removal (and we can put our opponent way behind if we ever draw a Kolaghan’s Command)
Great suggestion!
I also like Doom Blade over GftT, but it notably doesn’t hit opposing Tasigurs, or Kalitas.
Another thing: for anyone considering a Bridge plan against Eldrazi, know that they’re expecting it and not just reacting with artifact removal. Many builds are now packing one or more Endbringers in the mainboard to have a searchable way to kill opponents under the “lock.” For this reason, I suggest moving away from that plan and focusing more single-mindedly on mana/board control; obviously that’s less attractive than having a one-card out to the Eldrazi decks, but that’s one of the main reasons Eldrazi is Tier 0 in the first place – it’s impossible to answer with a single card.
On World Breaker, know that the Breaker decks usually play something like four copies of him, especially GR Eldrazi. Shutting off Eye of Ugin might stop Eldrazi from searching him up, but they can still just draw one and then smash past your bridge.
Good luck!
I think you still want to play to the one card out because endbringer is only fatal over quite a few turns, and you have many more doom blades and recursion than they have bringers. Sometimes you just have to force them to ‘have it’
It can be really hard to remove Endbringer through Displacer or Spellskite (or worse, both), but you may be right. I honestly haven’t tested against the new Eldrazi builds enough to know for sure. I’d like to hear Trevor’s take on the Bridge plan considering their recent move to Endbringer.
89*C?
Check the fan that sits over your heatsink.
My issue(s) with tuning a deck to beat eldrazi are as follows.
1) Weakens your core plan against non-eldrazi decks
2) Time and money spent tuning the decks becomes wasted in April when everything is banned and we can only use under costed beaters in GREEN, where they belong (?)
My specific suggestions/questions are around the singular remand and the singular Gurmag Angler and their place in the mainboard. Are their inclusions enough that you couldn’t replace them with something with a bit more utility?
I’d normally suggest vapor snag but I think that doesn’t cut it against card that can be recast in the second main step for free and with cards that have ETB nonsense with exiling cards. Bitterblossom with no life gain would make me nervous, similarly delve costs make me shudder with Dark Confidant. So up damnation to three and go for the throat to two?
Lee,
I’m not playing Confidant so delve costs don’t matter for me? Vapor Snag is card disadvantage and really only works if we can take advantage of the tempo, which is difficult. Bitterblossom is a holdover from before, where it was great against Twin and solid against Affinity, Infect, and even Amulet Bloom.
I will always play a singleton Remand over a playset of Mana Leak. One, Leaks tend to be boarded out as matchups become more reactive and opponents play around it. Also, just having options has value, and Remand is great in blue mirrors as you can do all sorts of spicy tricks.
So, I replaced my stock heatsink fan with a Liquid Cooler (I’m using the Corsair H55). I re-applied thermal paste and checked my connectors, I can hear the coolant moving through the tubes and I see the fan running, after re-applying paste my PC stayed on for a good 30 minutes (when it normally shuts down within five) but ended up shutting off again when the CPU temps read 115*Celsius!!! There’s no way that’s possible as boiling water would destroy the tubing and my CPU would melt, so it has to be another issue. My BIOS is out of date and needs an update but I’m worried if my PC shuts down while flashing the BIOS I’ll brick my PC (which I definitely don’t want to happen). I’m not sure what to do from here.
Thanks!
Thanks for the reply, I think remand is a great choice for most decks that tap for U, it was more that there was only one in the deck I was curious about. I’d either run 2-4 or none at all but that’s just me.
With regards Dark Confidant I was just talking to myself out loud against suggesting it as a replacement specifically because of the relatively high CMC of the cards you might reveal off the top, the two biggest offenders were the delve cards. Not that I made it super clear.
As for your temperature issues I’d be super curious to take a screwdriver to the thing and work it out.
Without poking around though my generic, hopefully helpful suggestions would be;
Blast the entire thing with compressed air (I doubt dust is causing this degree of heat but it’s good practice)
Check your north bridge fan if you have one. If you’re over clocking at all then the blocky heatsink that most MB’s ship with might not be enough to handle the extra heat. They usually take 40mm fans.
After it shuts down check to see if the chip is actually hot. A faulty sensor might read 115 and kill itself so it doesn’t melt but the actual temp might not get above 75. (this one I’m clutching at straws with, I’ve never known a MB sensor to go that far out of whack)
Good luck!
I have been testing a similar build, but have ditched the Jace, Thoughtscour, Tasigur, and Anglers. Grixis gets can get hosed by Graveyard hate too easily imo. My current build focuses on kill spells and going wide via Pia and Kalitas. Damnation as a 2 of is necessary nowadays.
I’ll be at Detroit GP and looking to hunt down the Eldrazi decks.
I’d be really curious to see the list, if you’re open to sharing.
I like control decks and am happy to see more control lists posted to take on Eldrazi – thanks for your contribution.
A 70% win rate seems very high – even decks like Junk Combo and Affinity cannot claim this sort of win rate – and they are considered to be the best decks to fight eldrazi. It would appear you might be playing against people that just aren’t very good with eldrazi and/or are not playing any decent answers to what appears to be your win con (Ensaring Bridge and Jace)? It appears the most recent lists are evolving to deal with answers like Bridge..
If you are winning on turn 15 or so I would expect a competent eldrazi player with a well-built 75 to have answers for bridge and Jace. Eldrazi players know that cards like Bridge and Worship are high on the list of answers people are bringing to the table and thus are packing multiple answers including disenchant, stubborn denial, ratchet bomb, hurkyl’s recall, worldbreaker and Endbringer (for Bridge) and a plethora of removal pte, dismember etc (for Jace).
In anycase you seem to be doing well – congrats! It will be interesting to see how the GPs turn out. My prediction is that eldrazi will be at least 30% (with UW and RG variants most popular) of the field and either eldrazi or affinity will take them down..
If you have an HP lap top then crack it open to look where the fan cooling happens. Last year mine was doing the same and it’s because the vents on the inside of the case were almost completely clogged with dust/cat hair.
Probably worth checking without an HP, too.
It’s a desktop PC, I’ll just link you to my cry for help if you’re interested:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2976892/experiencing-random-shutdowns-possibly-overheating.html
Nothing more than: Good article 🙂
Thanks!
I do agree that 70% win ratio sounds a bit high haha. But oh well.
Trevor I’ll test out your list later this week, but feel pretty comfortable with my current list for the Detroit GP. I can email a list if you like. Been a dedicated Grixis player for about a year. So have played most builds. And have a rather good testing team for online and paper.
Initial impressions of your list is that it is not properly suited for both extreme spectrums of our current meta. Which is Linear Aggro and Linear Combo. Aggro you are covered, but you are lacking vs combo.
Being midrange isn’t the best course of action these days, but we can hang in there till April haha.
Give Kalitas a try. He’s absolutely amazing, and gives you some implicit protection against the combo portion of the Company decks. PnK is a great magic card, but I feel that Kalitas does more of what we want to be doing right now. I know Cryptic Command is a powerful magic card, but it puts a remarkable strain on your mana base for just a one of. I’d recommend switching it out for a Kalitas.
Thanks for the suggestions, I probably will make that switch and give it a try!
I’m really excited to see Grixis doing well :D. Since we know madness is coming soon thanks to the spoiled Fiery Temper, do you think a madness engine fueling Liliana of the Veil will push Grixis Control into Tier 1 territory? That synergy alone with Big Game Hunter might be worth consieration, given that your list still has a fair amount of a tap-out control element to it.
Managed with Grixis Control to make day 2 with a 7-2 record.
Blue Moon 1-2
Living End 2-1
Affinity 2-1
Affinity 2-1
Naya Burn 2-1
Goyo Vengeance 2-1
Naya Burn 0-2
Scapeshift 2-1
Collected Company Elves 2-1
Day 2… haha… got peaced out.
UW Eldrazi 0-2
Infect 0-2
UW Eldrazi 0-2
Overall was very happy with the deckids and learned where I could improve my game.