Grixis is TOO Much Fun in Gladiator (Gladiator, Magic Arena)
Game Plan
If you haven't tried out Gladiator before, its a 100-card singleton format that doesn't have a commander. You can play whatever you want regardless of color restriction and the ban list is actually pretty small so you get to play a ton of the Mystical Archives like Channel and Lightning Bolt
With how lenient the banlist is, we can get into a ton of fun shenanigans and maybe even Lightning Bolt somebody's face and Counterspell a few things to play with some of Magic's most powerful spells. It's also nice that it's not Historic Brawl so we don't have to play against the same broken commanders over and over. The problem with Brawl on arena is that there aren't enough cards to shut down the powerful commanders that will continue to come back every turn. Thanks to the lack of commanders, we just get to sling a bunch of singleton spells back and forth!
Another fun part of Gladiator on Arena is that the cards that have been nerfed through Alchemy are unaffected here. The Meathook Massacre and Hullbreaker Horror do exactly what they do in real life so be ready for that! With all that out of the way, what good is a new format if we don't test Grixis? The whole deck is really just good stuff, binder style, and that's usually a sign of a good time if I can jam a bunch of singletons!
Conclusion
The deck feels very powerful and is packed to the brim with answers and a decent selection of win conditions. The best part about Gladiator so far is how it all feels just like "this is my collection of favorite cards." The format definitely has aggression from Death & Taxes style of decks to mono red decks. It's got a wide array of midrange and combos so naturally, our deck has a chunk of counterspells to fight back against those decks. Try Gladiator out if you haven't!
