Fish Five-0: Is It Even Grixis?
Companions have proven to be powerful and Gyruda, Doom of Depths has proven itself - not that this has anything to do with my love for Demons). With the number of powerful creatures and spells at the even slot, I built this deck during the early access event and it was pretty powerful and quite explosive.
Gameplan
The deck plays like a midrange deck and often times just needs to survive to the later turns. It trims all the odd spells so yes, that means our Dragon-God has been dropped for a giant squid-like demon. But it's okay, the deck is still a ton of fun as we can go from nothing on board to a game-ending board state pretty fast.
On turns where we cast Gyruda, we can potentially hit cards like Spark Double to copy Gyruda and keep the mill train going as Spark Double helps us ignore the legendary rule while also making the double even stronger with the +1/+1 counter. We have a few midrange threats in the deck to keep the value train going like Atris, Oracle of Half Truths and Dirge Bat.
A card that I've been in love with for awhile is Lazav, the Multifarious and I think Lazav might've gotten better with Ikoria as Lazav himself isn't a human which is relevant for mutating! This means we can turn Lazav into Dirge Bat and then mutate onto him to pick off a threat or planeswalker. With the rate we can fill up our graveyard, I had to also include our favorite hungry, hungry titan.
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger feels like an auto include when you're playing an even Grixis deck as we fill the yard efficiently and have Lazav, the Multifarious to shapeshift into him. This will allow us to continuously attack our opponent's hand until we can deploy Gryuda, Doom of Depths. So in a way, we can continue to play our favorite Grixis one for one gameplan as we are loaded with discard spells and whatnot.
Some other sweet mentions from Ikoria are Everquill Phoenix, Extinction Event, and Heartless Act
So far we're trying Everquill Phoenix as a cheap way to Mutate onto a shapefited Lazav and it's nice because the card does force our opponent to exile the phoenix or deal with the token that it leaves behind. We've also included Extinction Event as a ton of the threats that are powerhouses in the meta right now are odd: Cavaliers, Kenrith, the Returned King, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath. They all share one thing in common and it's their odd costs! This means we have a mass exiling effect that will leave our threats around to continue the fight. Lastly, Heartless Act so far has been the removal we've been in need of for the standard format. I've even used this as a combat trick and shrunk Stonecoil Serpent. Until a Gruul deck breaks out and decides to lean into the counters off of Riot, this card is some premier levels of removal.
Conclusion
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The deck finished 5-0 which is sweet but it is still early into the standard meta so a lot of decks aren't tuned (including our own deck). I definitely think we want more Spark Double and maybe even a spicy Lochmere Serpent to keep the monster mash going. I think some things we should look to add is Agonizing Remorse into our deck as we really want to slow the game down. I've also thought about cards like Spawn of Mayhem to cheat on the three-drop slot. Here's an updated list that I used on the ladder!
The four Leyline of the Void out of the board might be a necessity with all the shenanigans going on in standard right now. A fun fact, even though Leyline exiles all of our opponent's cards, Gyruda can still pull it from exile so this allows us to get around cards like Grafdigger's Cage. What if you don't want to play Grixis(although I don't know how this would be possible), there is a Sultai( Zagoth) version! That version does benefit from having a tricycle land in Zagoth Triome and can play End-Raze Forerunners to kill your opponent out of nowhere.
Anywho, Ikoria is extremely fun with intricate interactions so I'm excited to explore the set some more! Seriously, this set is wild.
As always, thanks for watching! See ya at the next one.
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-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger
Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com
