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Fish Five-0: Everybody Loves Grixis


I just want to take this moment and say thank you to the Wizards team for that B&R announcement as the banning of Omnath made standard so much fun. This may be from standard being unbearable as of recent but the current format is really fun again! I've won games with card advantage and playing one for one Magic. Speaking of that kind of playstyle, yours truly took a Grixis list out for a spin. The original list came from Crokeyz from awhile back. I modified his list awhile back before the banning and it didn't work, but I tried the list in the new format and it has yielded results! 

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Gameplan

Thats right! Grixis Control is playable! With cards like Hydroid Krasis and Omnath, Locus of Creation being absent, we can actually grind people out in a bunch of midrange/control slugfests and it feels amazing! Naturally, people want to know why Grixis over Dimir? The finishers! We get more versatile answers that don't absolutely get dunked on by Garruk's Harbinger as we can actually fight for board with Bonecrusher Giant and burn things down with Shatterskull Smashing! Of course, the deck suffers from the typical three color issues like being inconsistent at the mana base. However, we get some solid finishers!

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Kroxa has been sitting and waiting for his number to get called. With Uro getting the ban hammer, this has to be one of the best finishers for a control deck! The ability to reoccur Kroxa and chew up our opponent's hand is amazing. Is this card broken like Uro? Definitely not. However, a reoccurring 6/6 is all a control deck needs. Especially after firing off tons of spells and filling up the yard. It also doesn't hurt that the meta has Mill and Rogue decks running around that love filling up your graveyard. 

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Since rotation, I've been jamming Cling to Dust in all of my maindecks and it feels like this card's demand is at an all time high. The ability to exile key threats from the opponent's graveyard like Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger or maybe a Phoenix of Ash is amazing. It also helps us have main deck lifegain and for one mana, we can exile noncreature stuff from our opponent's yard to draw! This is more relevant than you'd think with Frantic Inventory and Dance of the Manse targets! It makes me wonder if Erebos's Intervention is playable now?

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Another thing to keep an eye on is the number of The Great Henge and Embercleave popping up in the meta. That's the best way for most aggressive decks like Mono Green and Gruul to get a jump on you. With those cards and decks in mind, Shredded Sails seems like an important card for our sideboards. I could see us increasing the number of this card to three copies as it can even hit Stonecoil Serpent out of the mono green match up. It's also great in control mirrors as it can pick off Shark Typhoon tokens and most importantly, it can blow up Mazemind Tome. At its worst, it can just cycle away for another card!

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Speaking of Mazemind Tome, I feel like the tome is one of the best card filtering/advantage engines we can get in standard. The ability to scry for free or to bury our opponents with cards is amazing. The cherry on top is that it also gains us four life down the line! 

Conclusion

The deck got us to the five win mark but it felt shaky at points. It could use some minor updates like one more real land or an MDFC. I also feel like we could add one more copy of Mazemind Tome and Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. Other than that, the deck is powerful but there is no amount of tweaking that can help us with our mana issues. Our only hope is for a Grixis Triome some time soon. Also, this deck and meta is quite an interesting format when it comes to deck building. the MDFCs add a lot of depth so it's always worth going over that part of the deck again. Pathways have proven to be an amazing but comes with a ton of planning for future turns. This deck is extremely punishing if misplayed but for those that want to feel like they have a huge brain, feel free to try this deck out!

Before I head out I had to ask everyone a question about Kroxa. Why does Kroxa look like he's in excruciating pain because he stepped on a Lego? Either way, thanks for watching and I'll see you at the next one! Huge shout out to all of you who stop by my stream and show love for any or all of my content. Thanks and see you at the next one.

If you ever want a deck to be made into a video feel free to leave a like, comment, Email, and subscribe to MTGGoldfish and MTGGoldfishCommander on Youtube!

-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger

Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com



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