On Wednesday, I went to Wednesday Night Standard at Pandemonium Games in Cambridge. I took my recently completed Grixis Standard Control deck, and didn’t really do all that well. I went 1-3 in match play, winning only against RDW. Here’s the list I played:

Grixis Standard Control

Author:

Tomas Quinones

Forum Tag:

[mtgdeck]151237[/mtgdeck]

Type:

None

Cards:

Casual

Format:

60

Rating:

0.0 (0 votes)

Cost:

$333.83

Views:

371

Deck List

3Black

• 1 x Sever the Bloodline
• 2 x Ultimate Price

10Blue

• 3 x Augur of Bolas
• 2 x Dissipate
• 4 x Snapcaster Mage
• 1 x Think Twice

13Gold

• 2 x Counterflux
• 3 x Dimir Charm
• 3 x Dreadbore
• 3 x Olivia Voldaren
• 2 x Rakdos's Return

24Land

• 4 x Blood Crypt
• 3 x Dragonskull Summit
• 3 x Drowned Catacomb
• 3 x Evolving Wilds
• 2 x Island
• 1 x Mountain
• 4 x Steam Vents
• 2 x Sulfur Falls
• 2 x Swamp

10Red

• 4 x Desperate Ravings
• 1 x Mizzium Mortars
• 4 x Pillar of Flame
• 1 x Thundermaw Hellkite

Sideboard

2Artifact

• 2 x Rakdos Keyrune

2Black

• 2 x Tribute to Hunger

2Blue

• 2 x Dispel

5Gold

• 2 x Izzet Staticaster
• 3 x Slaughter Games

4Red

• 2 x Blasphemous Act
• 2 x Searing Spear

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This match was very frustrating. The guy I was playing with had a good game plan using Runechanter’s Pikes to attach to his Invisible Stalkers along with a lot of U/B Control spells to protect the creatures and the Pikes. It made things very difficult and slow and he eventually just got me entirely with his Stalkers. I did figure out that I badly need some kind of way to deal with Stalkers and other Hexproof things since my deck does not realistically have any way to deal with Hexproof and unblockable guys other than trying to race them. I’m going to pick up two copies of Devour Flesh today to rectify this. In retrospect, at the time I should have sided in the Blasphemous Acts but I didn’t.

Sideboard exchanges: +2 Dispel, +2 Rakdos Keyrune, +2 Rakdos’s Return, +2 Searing Spear, -2 Chandra, -1 Counterflux, -2 Ultimate Price, -1 Sever the Bloodline, -1 Think Twice

My plan was to cut out cards that weren’t doing much like Ultimate Price and Think Twice (which is only good when you have time to create card advantage with it) and replace them with things that would deal better with the control stuff he was playing and give me more burn. It didn’t particularly work, unfortunately. I kept a slow hand and paid for it with a second loss in largely a similar manner as the first.

This was probably my toughest match of the day. In game one I dealt with all of his important creatures but he also dealt with all of my Olivia Voldarens in timely fashion. We were both whittling away at each other until he was able to get a Sphinx’s Revelation off for seven life and new cards that I couldn’t stop when he was sitting on one life. Game two took so long that we went to time, so he won the match 1-0. Bitterly contested the entire way.

Sideboard exchanges: +2 Dispel, +2 Searing Spear, +2 Rakdos’s Return -2 Chandra, -1 Sever the Bloodline, -1 Mizzium Mortars -2 Dimir Charm

I honestly cannot remember what I subbed out for the last two cards I needed. It may have been two of the Dimir Charm copies but it could also have been Counterflux. I don’t know for sure. The basic plan was to create more damage again, much like against the U/B Invisible Stalker deck, with the hope that doing so would burn him out in tandem with the creatures. It was working somewhat but he had enough answers to hold me off until we ran out of time.

This is when things FINALLY started turning around in the evening. He beat me in game one due to manascrew; I started with two lands in my hand and never got another one for the rest of the game until he killed me. In game two, my deck started doing exactly what I built it to do, which is to beat aggressive and midrange decks that use creatures. All of his creatures that came out were answered and I got off a Rakdos’s Return for three towards the end of the game that took three out the four cards in his hand including a Restoration Angel and a Boros Reckoner. I don’t remember what the third card was, it may have been a Thragtusk because I know he had those. I won in short order after that. Game three was another very frustrating example of mana screw. I was sitting on blue and black mana the entire time and could never draw a red mana which was what I needed to make my hand work, and he had a Dryad Militant down which was exiling all of my Instants and Sorceries so I couldn’t even Snapcaster anything. Ugh.

Sideboard exchanges: +2 Rakdos’s Return, +2 Searing Spear, +2 Dispel, +2 Keyrune, -2 Chandra, -1 Sever the Bloodline, -3 Dimir Charm, -2 Ultimate Price

Dimir Charm came out in favor of Dispel because he was using ramp to get up to large creatures and instants that would buff the ones he already had. I never saw Dryad Militant in game one and dealt with it swiftly in game two with Pillar of Flame, so I suspect that that was his sideboard tech. Sever the Bloodline came out because he wasn’t playing Lingering Souls and I wanted to use my lower-cost removal on the things he did have. Ultimate Price was straightforwardly replaced with Searing Spear because I thought it’d be useful to have the option to burn him or deal with a Thragtusk if we got to the point where that was relevant. Chandra was never a relevant thing I wanted to be doing against him so she came out in favor of the Keyrunes, which offered me blocking protection and an extra source of mana should I ever need it.

This match played out much like I expected it to. I built my deck to beat aggressive variants, and nothing in either game really bothered me on her side. I didn’t go down to less than ten life in either game before stabilizing and then locking the game up with Olivia, Augurs that fetched me answers to clear her creatures away or create more burn, and Snapcaster Mages.

Sideboard exchanges: +2 Rakdos’s Return, +2 Searing Spear, -3 Dimir Charm, -1 Sever the Bloodline.

The basic aim here was to create a bigger burn clock and more powerful disruption. I didn’t get to use Rakdos’s Return, but Searing Spear helped me close out the game in game two, so it all worked out.

The deck does its job against aggressive and midrange strategies. For the most part, that is, Invisible Stalker may need other answers but we’ll see. Chandra has been taken out because she was not useful ever during the course of the day, and has been replaced in the main deck with Rakdos’s Return, which I believe should help a lot. Devour Flesh has been placed in the Sideboard as a small update. I’m going to play it again tomorrow to see how things turn out at FNM in Gloucester. Stay tuned!