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Sunday, May 16, 2010

Grixis Control changing into UB?

Well, it's been along time that I wanted to play Grixis Control and I never really managed to play it at tournaments except one qualifier tournament (a long story short...I lent my deck to someone who was wanted to go there but did not show up. instead I went there but the guy did not give my deck back...so I played with my partly proxied Grixis Deck (see Jaces were in UW at that time)).

I started with version that did not run Blightning and run double negatives, essence scatter and negate. Later I was adding more removal and ended up only with 4 countersqualls and 4 blightnings. The final deck after a long time of changing it (I even tried a burn version of Grixis but I did not like it, Snapper aggro did not work either^^. I also tried paying Nicol Bolas and Sorin..but none proved to be as good as Jace TMS^^) had:

Grixis Control
3x Cruel Ultimatum
3x Gatekeeper of Malakir
4x Sedraxis Spectres
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Sphinx of Jwar Isle
2x Countersquall
3x Jace TMS
4x Blightning
4x Spreading Seas
3x Terminate
3x SGC
+26 lands
61 cards in total

This deck was fun but not really for competitive play even though I got quite a nice result with it at GPT BXL. At least I have to say that I had lots of fun with the deck. So I don't regret messing around with this deck for so long. After playing UWR Planeswalker, Grixis Control and UW control I have to say that the deck I chose next was really boring - Mono White aggro. I switched to Jund and failed to qualify for Nationals (I was so close - actually one silly mistake about forgetting that damages don't go on stack anymore -_- *facepalm*). Now I need to come up with something that I would like to play even just for fun.

Lately my friend showed me that similar Grixis deck that won a PTQ Amsterdam.
That player had different mana base than me (27 lands in total vs my 26) and ran Staggershocks instead of Countersqualls, he had different numbers of Jaces (4 in his case), 2 ultimatums and did not run SOJIs (I also tried no-SOJI versions but I felt better with it there anyway). The differences in mana base were as follows. (I write this more for myself to see it written at one place, might be irrelevant but my manabase wasn't the best...I'm not good at this. Figuring out my mana base for my UWR 'walker was a nightmare...hopefully someone intelligent came up with this deck later^^ so I copied the mana base and it started to work right).

3x mountains - 2x mountains
1x catacomb - 2x Catacomb
2x summit - 3x Summit
4x scalding tarn - 3x Scalding Tarn
3x islands - 2x Islands
5x swamps - 4x Swamps

With the new rotation Grixis decks won't be playable and thus I need to come up with something new. I just sat down and started thinking about the new upcoming format. I was thinking about Jund sacrifice/ramp deck with Eldrazi, UG ramp/control and UB control. In the end ... I tried drafting out the UB as this might actually end up as some kind of control without running some crazy Eldrazi (but that also means that I will have to find a way how to deal with Eldrazi match ups).

UB Control
3x Gatekeeper of Malakir
4x Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
2x Sphinx of Jwar Isle
4x Jace TMS
4x Everflowing Chalice
3x Consume the Meek
2x Consuming Vapors (might play 4x)
4x Spreading Seas
4x Cancel (wish there would be more counters I could use)
2x Into the Roil (experimenting with this/otherwise 2x Consuming Vapors)
2x See Beyond (experimenting, it's there as it shuffles the library and draws cards)
---------
4x Drowned Catacomb (or well Refuge but I hope some good dual gets printed)
2x Evolving Wilds (so I can search or shuffle my library, not sure about the number)
4x Creeping Tar Pit (a must)
9x Island
7x Swamp
---------
SB:
Vampire Hexmage (against all those Jaces and Gideons)
Suffer the Past (I want to try this)
Consuming Vapors (if they won't be all MD)
and then who knows what people will play^^
you know stuff like negate or flashfreeze..blah blah.

I haven't tried to play with this deck much yet, but I'm going to do that when I find the time to do so. I played few games against my Grixis Control (ok someone else's now you can say) and it wasn't that bad. Both decks work in more or less the same manner so I really need to test the UB against something else and change the deck accordingly. We will see where this will lead to.

I need to make it work against Eldrazi decks though...

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