Pioneer Peak: Kroxis, Titan of Fun (Pioneer, Magic Online)
This week for Pioneer Peak, we're going to see what #MTGTHB offers us in the world of Pioneer!
Gameplan
The deck dances between a midrange to tap out control play style. We have so many cards that attack our opponent's hand between this wonderful suite of spells!...
Well, #MTGTHB has definitely brought our lord Nicol Bolas & Co. some new toys to continue the attack on our opponent's hand and resources!
With the addition of Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, we're now able to do what the deck loves doing, attacking the opponent's hand and grinding our opponent out of action. Its even better when you can keep casting this 6/6 giant for as long as you have cards in the graveyard. I can't imagine that being too difficult when we're loaded with Opt, Thoughtseize, and other cheap spells to keep our graveyard loaded. Kroxa naturally slots into this as our goal is to put our opponents into a top deck mode and low on answers for all of our big threats like Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, and Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God. One minor downside about playing this card is that we can't afford to play cards like Dig Through Time as we'll be loaded with too many effects that eat up our own graveyard. There was a point where I had Lazav, the Multifarious and a full playset of Kroxa but instead I opted to have a bit more removal and ways to deal with the board in front of us. Speaking of new toys #MTGTHB brought us....
The +1 on Ashiok, Nightmare Muse gives us a 2/3 threat which isn't a joke as this will allow the token to survive cheap red removal like Shock while just helping us gum up the board to play aggressive or defensive. Even better, our little nightmares allow us to eat up our opponent's library and feed into our ultimate ability! Grixis always has issues dealing with problematic enchantments and Ashiok, Nightmare Muse gives us a nice way to bounce back said permanents which will turn our late-game discard into removal! With all the ways we attack our opponent's hand, I assumed that Ashiok will have natural synergies with our deck as opponents will often be empty-handed or low on cards which will just lead to the -3 being a way to exile random permanents when we bounce them back to their hand. I don't think I really need to elaborate on the -7 as the nightmare tokens will load our opponent's exile up quite nicely! It's also very nice how fast this ultimate will creep up on opponents!
Conclusion
The deck definitely does what I like to do when playing Grixis: attacking our opponent's hand and leaving them desperate for answers. Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger definitely did some work and will eventually burn some opponents out with that discard effect so I'm probably going to add another copy. The deck is great at doing the one for one game plan but seems to have wild games against Azorius control where we either do absolutely nothing and get rolled by counterspells or we steamroll them and they never really recover as they're often left empty-handed. The issue is that the games are inconsistent as you saw in one of our matches where we got swept easily by the control deck. Another matchup we're going to struggle with is a big mana deck like mono green ramp so maybe cards like Summary Dismissal can be added into the sideboard to help deal with some of the Eldrazi and their cast triggers.
This list really just updates the sideboard and though there are Ashiok's Erasure in the sideboard, those can easily be swapped out for Summary Dismissal if needed. I just find the ability to have a counterspell that can answer Dovin's Veto while also doing a nice Ixalan's Binding trick on a few key threats is huge in some matches.
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