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Grixis Kiki (Combo/Control)

Modern

SweetSupremacy

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Land (22)

Instant (16)

Planeswalker (2)

Creature (12)

Sorcery (8)

Sideboard

Instant (5)

Artifact (2)

Creature (5)

Sorcery (3)

I designed and play this deck like a combo/control deck. Whereas Splinter Twin combo played like a tempo deck with heavy use of Remand, I intend to run my opponent mostly out of resources and eventually win with Deceiver Exarch + Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker .

I'm valuing card advantage over tempo, but the deck is capable of playing like a tempo deck if the match-up calls for it.

Card Choice Breakdown

Snapcaster Mage : Best blue card in Modern? An accident? Should have been red? Read enough forums and you'll hear these things said about Snapcaster Mage. For this deck he represents 2 for 1 card advantage, an instant speed blocker, instant speed reuse of your most relevant instant, synergy with Kolaghan's Command and an alternate win condition. He puts in major work every event and I struggle to see a scenario where I want fewer than the full play-set.

Vendilion Clique : This slot could go to a number of other creatures. Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Spellskite are in the conversation. I chose Vendilion Clique for the utility. It's a flash blocker with enough power to take down many creatures, can protect our combo with the ETB and is instant speed to allow us to continue operating on that axis. Like Snapcaster Mage, he can attack for the win in some games as well.

Deceiver Exarch : The Modern community has a lot of experience with this creature from its Splinter Twin days and it serves a similar purpose here. Ultimately, you want to EOT flash it in and then play Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker on your turn for the win. Be aware of the utility Deceiver Exarch offers on top of being a combo piece. It's a fine flash blocker at 4 toughness, can tap down an attacker before combat, can upkeep tap an Eldrazi Temple to keep your Eldrazi opponent off of their big threat for another turn, can tap your opponent's last blue source to shut down their countermagic during your combo turn and lives through your own Anger of the Gods. Also don't forget that you can make plays on 3 mana like "flash in Deceiver Exarch, untap my Mountain, Lightning Bolt your guy".

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker : Our end-game goblin serves a much more narrow purpose than his friend Deceiver Exarch. A 2/2 at 5 cmc is a terrible rate, but he'll attack for 2 when you and your opponent have gone hellbent and it's all you have. He has some utility in the form of copying Snapcaster Mage or Fulminator Mage every turn if the game calls for it. Being so bad on its own, I tried 2 copies at first but felt like I didn't draw it enough despite the card draw and filtering so I bumped it up to 3 and have been much happier.

Ancestral Vision : AV is critical to the deck. Laying one of these on the table T1 or T2 feels very powerful and so much of the deck is devoted to staying alive for the first handful of turns, I rarely die with one on suspend and the look on opponents' faces when they realize the position this card put them in is very telling of its power.

Serum Visions : I don't like this card much. Am I old-school and spoiled by Brainstorm, Ponder and Preordain? Maybe. The thing is, we need some kind of consistency tools to avoid losing to drawing the wrong part of our deck. We don't have the luxury of having every card contribute to the same linear goal in the way something like burn does, so we need to help ourselves draw the right parts at the right times. The alternative to this slot is something that offers true card advantage instead of filtering. Think Twice and Thought Scour are in the conversation for this slot but I chose SV because I want to be able to dig down and staying at 1 cmc allows me to stay in the area of 22-23 lands.

Lightning Bolt : As one of the most efficient removal spells in the format with cross-functional application in the end game to tick your opponent's life total down, I don't want to go below 3 copies of Lightning Bolt. It's worse these days because you're having to face down big Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf, Grim Flayer, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Gurmag Angler, Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher and Drowner of Hope; but it hits a lot of relevant creatures and is still one of the best things you can do with red mana in Modern. Bolt/Snap/Bolt EOT and attack for a sudden 8 point life reduction is one way we can turn the corner and start killing our opponent.

Terminate : I just mentioned some of the irritating creatures Lightning Bolt is bad against. Terminate does a good job of shoring up that weakness.

Fatal Push : What a great card. It has some cross weakness with Lightning Bolt but could be argued to be better in some metas. It can hit Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf, Grim Flayer and Thought-Knot Seer on the list of things Lightning Bolt is actively bad against. Push/Snap/Push is a thing too. You can sometimes spend 4 mana to neutralize 6-8 mana of your opponent's investment after fetching and end up with a creature in the end. If you go up to 3 copies of Fatal Push, I'd cut a Lightning Bolt and probably make sure you have 10 fetches to go with it since you'll need the fetch option more often.

Logic Knot : Logic Knot is the closest thing we have to a real Counterspell in Modern if we can afford the delve. We aren't doing a whole lot else with our graveyard so a copy of two of Knot should serve as early removal, late game top deck protection and sometimes protection for our combo.
Kolaghan's Command : The permutations this spell allows are all great. The most common being 2 damage to a creature (to kill it) and get back a creature of my own. Effects that affect other cards, like pulling something from the graveyard, scale with how good the other card you're affecting is. Snapcaster Mage is one of the best targets available because he provides further card advantage to create a snowballing effect over the course of the game. There are some pretty good artifacts in Modern worth killing; like the whole Affinity deck, Spellskite, Ensnaring Bridge and Grafdigger's Cage. If your opponent lets themselves go hellbent, be aware of the end of draw play to make them discard whatever they drew. All of this and it gives our combo some resiliency since our combo pieces are creatures. Kolaghan's Command is critical to the deck.

Cryptic Command : Another "useful permutations" card. The most common modes I use in this deck are counter + draw. The team tapping mode is useful in those situations where you just need another turn or two before you can sneak a win with your combo. Be conscious that it says "return target permanent" so you can use it as temporary enchantment removal in a pinch, which is something Grixis struggles with. This is what you want to peel off the top while resolving Ancestral Vision. It is hard countermagic and one of the best possible things to have late-game after stabilizing and looking for a way to win.

Anger of the Gods : I've been very impressed by Anger of the Gods. Some of the best creatures against us control players are those that don't die permanently. Voice of Resurgence, Kitchen Finks, Prized Amalgam and Bloodghast are some common examples that make exiling them with Anger of the Gods feel just awesome. Anger of the Gods has some of the same weaknesses as Lightning Bolt these days but having this effect at 3 cmc is necessary enough that I like 2 copies main. Bonus points for letting us deploy Deceiver Exarch and stall while encouraging our opponent to extend further and then not killing our own Exarch with Anger.

Sweltering Suns : Being able to cycle makes it not dead in control mirrors and against creature-light decks. It just might be a big enough upgrade to give up the utility against Voice of Resurgence, Kitchen Finks and dredge. We'll see. I'm testing this as I get a chance.

Land bases in Modern can vary greatly by deck and by person. I think it's important to find a manabase that works for you because there are a lot of decision points to make while fetching. I'll just point out a couple of key things for this deck.

Balance the number of fetches you use with the number of Fatal Push you run. I'm running 2 push and believe 8 fetches is enough to activate Revolt when I draw it. If I went up to 3 pushes, I think I'd go with 10 fetches.

Keep a Smoldering Marsh around for fetching on Fatal Push turns. You'll need to sandbag a fetchland for a while instead of just getting a tapped shockland EOT. It can be very useful to be able to fetch Smoldering Marsh and bring it in untapped without losing 2 life to a shockland.


Tuning Toolbox

As a control deck, you need to always be tuning to match your meta. Here are some tools I keep around.
Mana Leak : I rarely want Mana Leak for the reason that it's terrible late game and is bad against all of the 1 cmc spells people play these days. I keep it around because we don't have many 2 cmc countermagic options in Modern and sometimes you just need it for answering enchantments or fighting counter wars with other combo or control decks.

Dispel : Great for fighting counter wars or answering important instants like Collected Company.

Countersquall : I don't care much about the 2 life point swing in this deck, but countering a non-creature is relevant with good frequency.

Negate : Similar to Countersquall but easier to cast. I actually prefer Negate in this deck.

Spell Snare : Snare was once great but the cmc on spells is much more varied than it used to be. I feel like I miss a lot with Spell Snare these days so I cut it.

Ceremonious Rejection : This turned out to be a great sideboard card. It has relevance against Eldrazi Tron, BW Eldrazi, Affinity, Tron and Lantern Control.

Logic Knot : Totally reasonable, especially if you cut Tasigur, the Golden Fang.

Disdainful Stroke : Decent sideboard option against TitanShift and Eldrazi.

Dreadbore : Planeswalkers are a giant pain for us since we don't have a lot of countermagic. We can often remove blockers and pressure with our few creatures, but Dreadbore is a clean answer after resolution. I'm low on it because it's a sorcery.
Collective Brutality : I like this in a number of match-ups, like burn especially. If I see more burn, I'll likely add a couple to my 75. It's a sorcery, which hurts my overarching game-plan, but the discard clause does make Mana Leak and Ancestral Vision better late.
Blood Moon : I noticed that my swamp need is really only 1 swamp per game, which allows me to tune to run sideboard Blood Moon. This is mostly for when I see a lot of Eldrazi and Tron.

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Date added 8 years
Last updated 6 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

32 - 10 Rares

10 - 3 Uncommons

9 - 2 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.50
Tokens Copy Clone
Folders Modern, Modern
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