So I'm noticing a theme at my LGS...
Modern forum
Posted on March 1, 2016, 11:37 a.m. by TMBRLZ
Bear with me because I digress a lot.
If you don't know me yet - I'm TMBRLZ, call me Speedy. I am an employee at a fairly successful LGS in my area. For those of you familiar with the pros and/or watch the big tournaments, we are also the home store for Jeff Hoogland and one of my coworkers at this LGS is Jacob Dyer, the fellow who took 4th at SCG Louisville.
Now that that's out of the way -
I've begun to notice a theme as of late in our store. As many of you who regularly play Modern tournaments can probably tell, aggro is dominating the format hard right now. Eldrazi Aggro reigns dominant, and in response all the other slower flavors of aggro rise up since their best bet to win is to race the Eldrazi menace.
If it says anything, in a 12 player 4 round tournament last night hosting all typical Modern archetypes, one rather skilled pilot took Standard flavor Atarka Red to victory at 3-1, having only lost to the sole U/R Eldrazi we had last night.
To be honest we had five 3-1s last night with no 3-0-1s or 4-0s. An honestly uncommon occurrence. However the highest ranked among these 3-1s was one such fellow whom I wanted to make a point of in this thread.
Grixis Control. He has also come out at 4-0 with Grixis control multiple times before, sticking all the aggro decks beneath his feet, including U/R Eldrazi, albeit it's a difficult matchup.
If I ever see a control deck score prize (3-1, 3-0-1, 4-0), as of late, it's Grixis Control, and isn't just this particular pilot. Nothing else really gets there that isn't Aggro or a skilled midrange pilot (Abzan/Jund).
I guess my thoughts and question for discussion for all you Modern junkies is:
Is Grixis Control the control players' savior for Modern in this current world of aggro?
Grixis has been putting up results of late. It has the removal density to slow down the Eldrazi rush, and since most flavors of Eldrazi aggro don't attack the graveyard much, it can then grind them out by recurring everything from Terminate and Damnation to Mana Leak and Lightning Bolt using Snapcaster Mage and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Additionally, the advent of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet means that if they survive to Turn 4, they have massive inevitability in the form of either tokens to go wide, or a beefy lifelinking creature the Eldrazi can't punch through (once it eats one or two of its Zombie tokens).
tl;dr: It looks fairly well positioned at the moment, now that people have adjusted to the Eldrazi reality.
March 1, 2016 11:47 a.m. Edited.
U/R Eldazi, potentially, however, maybe not colorless (Black...ish). I'm talking about the deck with Wasteland Strangler. Grixis control has a heavy reliability on the graveyard, and this particular Edrazi deck relies soley on stomping graveyards. Baby Jace gets stopped, tasigur gets stopped, snaps get half-assed. It just isn't the match up for grixis. every deck has their Achilles heal. Grixis is a great match for the "best" deck in the format, but it is what it is....
March 1, 2016 11:48 a.m.
Colorless Eldrazi has been forced to the background by 
, 
, and 
. It loses the mirror to all 3 of those decks. It's still around and you have to account for it (and Grixis matches up rather poorly against it post-board because of their Relic of Progenitus and/or Grafdigger's Cage), but it's not the dominant variant.
The Processor builds, on the other hand, are extinct in the current meta. They're not fast enough to compete. You won't face maindeck Relics, except from maybe Tron (which is on life support).
March 1, 2016 11:50 a.m. Edited.
I'm curious what makes you think Tron is in such danger rothgar13. Based on what I see at my LGS that's an unexpected opinion.
March 1, 2016 11:53 a.m.
At my LGS, most of the Tron players simply switched to Eldrazi. Tron has a mostly horrific Eldrazi matchup - they mostly blank Pyroclasm and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, so it's mostly T3 Wurmcoil Engine Karn Liberated, Oblivion Stone, or bust. It gets worse once you consider that Thought-Knot Seer can take the Oblivion Stone away. Furthermore, the likes of Eldrazi have Path to Exile in the mainboard and can side in Stony Silence against it ( also has World Breaker in the mainboard), at which point you have very few outs. Tron survives because it matches up well against the control decks that are gearing up to kill Eldrazi, but having a bad matchup against a deck that's 30% of the meta isn't a good place to be. Furthermore, it also matches up very poorly against the likes of Affinity, Infect, Merfolk, Gruul Zoo, and all the other fast aggro decks.
March 1, 2016 12:03 p.m. Edited.
TMBRLZ Tron is nowhere to be seen in the competitive meta. It's completely outclassed by every Aggro deck that kills it before T4. When your only way to save yourself is Oblivion Stone -- you're in a bad spot.
March 1, 2016 12:04 p.m.
Can you get me a handful of Jeff Hoogland's hair? I promise I am not grinding it up, mixing it with hard drugs, and snorting while performing blood sacrifices in order to gain his power.
March 1, 2016 12:07 p.m.
All good points. I guess there's only one fellow who consistently plays R/G Tron in our store, and I mean consistently (almost always in the money). So he's got experience on his side keeping him afloat. And I guess I didn't stop to consider how scarce it's become at the competitive/professional levels.
LeaPlath - You want some of that Kiki-Chord swag don't you? :P I'll see what I can do.
March 1, 2016 12:13 p.m.
TheAnnihilator says... #11
Control is in a wierd place right now. It's actually doinv oddly well. I've been playing Esper Draw-Go for a few months, and it has actually gotten better since Tron is gone. I went to gp Louisville with Esper and came out 6-3, with two matches being very close 1-2 losses despite my relative inexperience with them (Infect and Kiki Chord -- nobody at my shop plays tbe decks often, and I don't see them much on Xmage). It was also my first big tourney, so a 6-3 record is pretty good for playing a "dead" archetype and an "unplayable" deck.
March 1, 2016 12:18 p.m.
Yeah, a seasoned pilot can overcome a lot of things. Bogles is a shaky matchup for Merfolk on paper, but I frequently beat Bogles players (with or without the likes of Chalice of the Void in my sideboard), and one of the big reasons why is because I'm much more experienced, and I often know their deck better than they do.
March 1, 2016 12:21 p.m. Edited.
Control is doing well right now because the format is creature orientated. Run those sweepers and terminates and you'll do very well. It's in a better spot than before where you had to deal with creatures AND burn AND liliana. These days you answer 30% of the meta with board clear.
March 1, 2016 12:29 p.m.
So what is it about Grixis control that's putting it ahead of other types?
Is there untapped potential in other color schemes or control gimmicks out there that could shine in this meta?
March 1, 2016 12:34 p.m.
It's better at turning the corner than Jeskai is, and better at crowd control than Esper. You can get the party started with Thoughtseize, Mana Leak, and Terminate, then slap down a 1-mana Tasigur while holding up more removal and get to work on their life total. It also has access to stuff like Engineered Explosives and Anger of the Gods to combat the Mimic-fueled nuthand (provided they can dodge a Thought-Knot Seer). It's a combination of resources that other control variants can't quite replicate.
March 1, 2016 12:37 p.m. Edited.
TheAnnihilator says... #16
TMBRLZ Grixis already has an established player base, and it has a nice advantage by having both unconditional removal and Lightning Bolt and and friends against smaller creatures decks like Infect, Merfolk, Affinity, and Burn. The main area it lacks in is resilient wincons, since Keranos is slow, Batterskull is slow and weak to artifact removal and Eldrazi Displacer, and Tasigur/Angler are both weak to removal spells.
I like Esper, since it has supreme card advantage with Esper Charm and Sphinx's Rev. The main area it's weak in is cheap removal, but Condemn does a great impression of it alongside Path.
March 1, 2016 12:41 p.m.
GlistenerAgent says... #17
Grixis has the best cards, simple as that. Cleanest win condition, awesome value cards and the best 1-for-1s.
March 1, 2016 2:45 p.m.
I wouldn't judge a deck's relevance on being able to beat the Eldrazi nuthand - no one can really beat the Eldrazi nuthand, which is probably why the deck is going to eat a ban (or two) come April. I think that an important part of adapting to this meta is that you have to give up on greedy spells like Cryptic Command (which demands triple in addition to 4 mana overall) and focus your efforts on blunting the initial rush. There are few combo decks out there that are capable of punishing you for not running 10+ counterspells.
March 1, 2016 6:04 p.m.
My experience have been that Mono Red Control is the way to go. I have been stomping all over Eldrazi, Chord/CoCo, U/W/x Control, Grixis and Affinity. I think Mono Red is the way to go for consistency and raw power that can match anything out there.
March 1, 2016 7:14 p.m.
Jimmy_Chinchila says... #20
I think Esper Control still has some good tools to beat Eldrazi, it's just hard to play control at all with so much Aggro. I'd bet a dedicated Esper pilot could put something together to rival Grixis, just seems like a lot of people following pro decks rather than brewing/working on an archetype not seeing much play. One Top 8 and it could see a resurgence though. I think people frustrated with Eldrazi so leaning heavily on what pros are using to combat it, and so the playing field gets narrowed.
March 2, 2016 2:10 p.m.
I'd argue it's easier to play control than it is in most environments right now, at least in terms of preparation. Most of the combo decks that have survived the Eldrazi onslaught are creature-based (the only exceptions being Ad Nauseam and Scapeshift), so they die to the same stuff the Eldrazi do. Control is all about crafting the proper toolbox to answer any given situation you might find yourself in, and if you know it's a big ol' aggro-fest, you can prepare accordingly. Whether that succeeds or not depends on variance and the quality of tools you have access to, but at least putting the deck together is fairly straightforward.
March 2, 2016 2:13 p.m.
I've been seeing a lot of Grixis control at my LGS doing well.
It appears that Kolaghan's Command + Snapcaster Mage and/or Tasigur, the Golden Fang is quite powerful and puts the deck over the top.
The versatility of Kolaghan's Command and it being an almost automatic 2-for-1 is strong enough... add the repeatability brought by Snappy and Tasi, and it can be quite oppressive.
March 2, 2016 2:48 p.m.
Kolaghan's Command was definitely a gem of this Standard.
I've got one I keep trying to get rid of but nobody wants to pay cash for it.
I think without KCommand, Grixis probably wouldn't see nearly as much favorability as it does. The variance of effects put any control deck in a strong position in Modern.
DrFunk27 says... #2
A Tier 1 -1.5 deck in the hands of a skilled player is better than a tier 1 deck, or dominant deck i.e. Eldrazi, in the hands of a lesser skilled player.
I thin Grixis Control could be very good in the meta now -- with changes to the way it was played a few months ago.
Strictly my opinion, but it could be good.
March 1, 2016 11:44 a.m.