Griefblade

Modern Blink Competitive Stoneblade WB (Orzhov)

Entrei

Land (19)

• 4x Concealed Courtyard
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 3x Godless Shrine
• 4x Marsh Flats
• 2x Silent Clearing
• 2x Snow-Covered Plains
• 2x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Kaya, Orzhov Usurper

Creature (19)

• 4x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 4x Grief
• 1x Lion Sash
• 4x Solitude
• 4x Stoneforge Mystic
• 2x Tourach, Dread Cantor

Instant (8)

• 4x Ephemerate
• 4x Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip

Artifact (3)

• 1x Batterskull
• 1x Kaldra Compleat
• 1x Sword of Fire and Ice

Sorcery (8)

• 2x Damn
• 2x Prismatic Ending
• 4x Thoughtseize

Enchantment (2)

• 2x Touch the Spirit Realm

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Sideboard

Creature (6)

• 2x Loran of the Third Path
• 3x Sanctifier en-Vec
• 1x Tourach, Dread Cantor

Sorcery (2)

• 2x Necromentia

Artifact (3)

• 1x Chalice of the Void
• 2x Engineered Explosives

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Rest in Peace

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Maybeboard

Artifact (8)

• 1x Pithing Needle
• 1x Sword of Body and Mind
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine
• 1x Sword of Hearth and Home
• 1x Sword of Light and Shadow
• 1x Sword of Sinew and Steel
• 1x Sword of War and Peace
• 1x Void Mirror

Creature (7)

• 1x Augur of Skulls
• 1x Callous Bloodmage
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Fulminator Mage
• 1x Lion Sash
• 1x Plague Engineer
• 1x Remorseful Cleric

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Damn
• 1x Prismatic Ending
• 1x Thoughtseize

Instant (2)

• 1x Kaya's Guile
• 1x Surgical Extraction

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Leyline of the Void

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Elemental Core

The first engine of this deck seeks to cheat out an evoke elemental (Grief, Solitude) on turn one, and then save it using Ephemerate, Undying Evil, and Malakir Rebirth  , getting two, or even three ETB's in addition to a body. To optimize the odds of this occuring, a total of twelve one mana save effects are included in the deck, in addition to a Agadeem's Awakening   and Emeria's Call   to serve as lands that can be pitched to the elemental if needed

Stoneforge Core

Complementing the disruption provided by the elemental core, the second engine in this deck is Stoneforge Mystic to present an aggressive clock. Kaldra Compleat and Batterskull are all stars here, providing either a hyperaggressive threat, or a slower, safer clock. Rounding out the equipment core is Maul of the Skyclaves to provide both evasion and evasion blocking, Sword of Fire and Ice for being a phenomenal equip regardless of your opponents colors, and Sword of Truth and Justice as a meta call to deal with white cores such as control and hammer time.

Misc Cards

The rest of the deck is filling up the gaps in this deck, while synergizing with the ETB core. Skyclave Apparition and Shriekmaw serve as secondary removal. Charming Prince provides a body with a flicker, or a scry in a pinch. Persist serves to both recur removal magnet stoneforge, and to help cheat out elementals. Lastly, Tourach, Dread Cantor is a meta call specifically to deal with white interactive decks, primarily U/W/X control, in addition to the added bonus of being a good clock into hammer time lists.

Consistency

As with most Grief lists, this deck is very mulligan heavy, and commonly mulls down to 6 due to some combination of not having the pieces of either core in hand, color/land issues, or being too heavy on equipment in opener.

Breaking it down into the two main reasons to keep a hand; having the ability to cheat out an elemental and having Stoneforge, the decks opening hands can be divided as followed:

~56% of hands will have both an elemental and a cheat card in them (for those who bother to check this, persist counts towards this calculation, yielding 8 elementals and 15 cheat cards), and ~30% of hands will start with a Stoneforge in hand, meaning that ~70% of opening hands will have one or both cores.

Sideboard

Chalice of the Void: Cascade decks, and decks that are reliant on spamming 1 drops. Footfalls, Living end, Hammertime etc

Drannith Magistrate: Cascade decks, anything that seeks to cheat out spells. Footfalls, Living end, bring to light, etc

Engineered Explosives: Token reliant decks/things that like their one/two mana permanents. Food, Crashing Footfalls, Hammertime etc

Fracture: Pretty much anything relying on artifacts or enchantments in the mainboard. Hammer, Scales, Moon lists etc

Kataki, War's Wage: Decks that rely on a critical mass of artifacts to work. Hammer, Scales, Food, etc

Sanctifier en-Vec: Anti graveyard/Rakdos lists. Zoomer Jund, Burn, Yawgmoth etc

Tourach, Dread Cantor: More pro-white. Hammer time, U/W/X control lists, etc

Maybeboard

These are primarily 'meta call' cards that could be integrated into boards depending on how the meta develops in the future.

Augur of Skulls, Thoughtseize: anti combo

Callous Bloodmage, Kaya's Guile: anti graveyard

Fulminator Mage: in case Tron ever comes back

Dauthi Voidwalker, Vindicate, Damn, Prismatic Ending: added as needed if the deck evolves into a midrange list

Remorseful Cleric, Pithing Needle, Leyline of the Void, Plague Engineer, Void Mirror, Surgical Extraction: fairly self explanatory

Swords: its a stoneblade list. Probably won't need these, but meta could change to necessitate these guys, so having the option helps

Matchup Guide

Hammertime: generally favored. Elementals provide large tempo advantages against low to the ground decks like this that rely on one or two cards, and mainboard Tourach and SoTJ make game one fairly simple.

Post board; Kataki, Fracture, and the third Tourach (and explosives depending on the exact list) in exchange for Persist, Shriekmaw, and a prince(or three) solidify this matchup.

U/R Murktide/Blitz: even-ish (moderately favored). SoFI, Solitude, and Batterskull do a lot of work in this matchup, and murktides efficacy between grief,solitude, and SoFI is a lot lower than it could be.

Post board; sanctifiers in exchange for a prince and two apparitions does a good bit of work. Same basic gameplan as before, either disrupt their game plan or plop down an uninteractable creature, but now there’s 3 creatures outright immune to one of their colors in addition to being generic yard hate.

U/W control: even-ish (they’re somewhat favored). These matches are painful. Game 1 comes down to whether you get an aggressive start with grief/stoneforge type openers or an early Tourach, but if game isn’t cleanly in your favor by turn 6 things aren’t going to end well

Post board: Tourach, 3x fracture in exchange for Shriekmaw, Kaldra, 2x prince. Gameplan is much grindier, seeking to either land an early Pro-white creature to land enough damage to turn the game while having clean answers for walkers with fracture; or to get off an early grief to cripple their hand while applying early pressure.

Yawgmoth: Favored. Game 1 is fairly straightforwards, with both elementals presenting large issues to Yawg decks.

Postboard: even more lopsided, as most Yawg decks don’t really have a sideboard tooled for this matchup, and the substitution of shriekmaw + 2 princes in exchange for Sanctifiers makes games 2/3 a race between them trying to combo off, and you just turning them off for long enough to kill.

Notes/Interactions

Due to the nature of Ephemerate decks, there are a couple interactions that aren’t completely obvious, but can be used to great effect

Ephemerate + Grief during opponents draw step before main phase: allows you to strip whatever card they just drew from their hand before they can play it in main phase. Only out they have is if it is an instant, which they can play in response. Solid way to keep an opponent locked out for an additional turn.

Ephemerate + Stoneforge Mystic : activate stoneforge mystic, and respond with trigger on the stack with ephemerate. Allows you to get another equipment into hand before resolution of the ability. Very useful against discard, or if your first equipment was dealt with.

Charming Prince + Solitude (only works with one prince on field and a second in hand): play prince, and on ETB target the other prince, exiling it until end of turn. When it re enters, exile the solitude instead, so it enters on the beginning of your opponents end step. Not a common line, but it is helpful if you urgently need to preserve tempo. Works with skyclave apparition as well

Grief works best on the play, and wants ephemerate as it’s turn one enabler.

Solitude works best on the draw, and wants undying evil as its turn one enabler.

Maul can be used in conjunction with Stoneforge Mystic as a combat trick.

When evoking the elementals, order triggers so etb resolves first, followed by the evoke sacrifice, especially in the case of grief.

In the case of grief, this allows you to strip any removal they have in hand that would risk disrupting the combo, and respond to their removal with the save spell if they cast it before trigger resolves.

For solitude, this allows you to deal with any LTB effects from your target.

Stoneforge tutoring: generally speaking, Stoneforge etb will be searching for either Kaldra to apply pressure to close out games quickly, or to preserve life total while balancing out the field. However, swords are common tutor targets in matches against interactive blue/white/red decks. Avoid tutoring maul unless there are flyers that need to be dealt with.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	1 year
Key combos	Ephemerate + Grief Ephemerate + Stoneforge Mystic Charming Prince + Solitude
Legality	This deck is not Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)	20 - 3 Mythic Rares 24 - 9 Rares 8 - 0 Uncommons 4 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	2.44
Tokens	Phyrexian Germ 0/0 B, Zombie 2/2 B