Grixis Aggro

[Jeff]

Looking for something silly to play while I take a break from my regular deck, I stumbled into this, which has been actually generating decent results in my limited testing so far. I figured I'd throw it up here and see what people thought about it.

Essentially I started building this because I was seeing Burn do decently well at SCG opens as threshold gains in popularity, and I wanted to see what burn+brainstorm would look like. Eventually I added black for some better game against combo, and a better answer to Tarmogoyf (since my Goblin Guides were outclassed so fast I needed to control the ground)

Here's where I'm at right now

Creatures (11)
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Goblin Guide
3 Vendilion Clique

Spells (30)
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Spell Pierce

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Chain Lightning
1 Fireblast

3 Terminate

4 Thoughtseize

Land (19)
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Badlands
10 Fetchlands
1 Island

Sideboard (15)
3 Tombstalker
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Pyroblast
1 Terminate
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Duress

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General sideboard plans

Canadian Threshold/Merfolk
-4 Force of Will
-4 Thoughtseize

+3 Tombstalker
+1 Terminate
+3 Pyroblast
+1 Snapcaster Mage

Zoo
-4 Force of Will
-4 Thoughtseize

+3 Tombstalker
+1 Terminate
+4 Snapcaster Mage

Combo
-3 Terminate

+2 Duress
+1 Snapcaster Mage

U/W Stoneforge
-3 Terminate
-1 Fireblast

+3 Pyroblast
+1 Duress

Team America
-1 Fireblast
-2 Spell Pierce
-4 Chain Lightning

+1 Terminate
+3 Tombstalker
+3 Pyroblast

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In general, you drop one of the 8 one drop beaters, then keep the field clean and attack like crazy. Finish them off with burn if necessary. Terminate has been an allstar, and coming from playing Team America and having to choose between all the different black removal spells, it's nice to just have a card that kills whatever. It's not quite Swords to Plowshares, but it's still pretty good.

Snapcaster is a good card, but I'm eschewing him main because I'm trying to be faster. The deck really wants to be doing damage in a fast way, and I'm running so little land that I don't reliably have 3 land all that early, so Snapcaster isn't that great a lot of the time. However, in pseudo mirror matches with decks that have lots of little dudes and lots of removal, snapcaster is great, so he comes in against zoo, and some of them come in against RUG and Merfolk.

I'm seriously considering turning the 3rd pyroblast or the 3rd tombstalker into a 3rd duress, and just bringing in more snapcasters against RUG/Merfolk, and then having more discard against combo.

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Soooo . . . . any thoughts? I know this isn't a tier one deck, but I'm just gonna be taking it to a little local weekly tournament and just have some fun with it.

[Greenpoe]

No Daze? But you do have Pierce? You curve out pretty low anyway. No Confidant? The deck isn't exactly blistering fast, so I don't see any reason not to include Confidant. You shouldn't worry too much about lifeloss since the removal/burn will stop their creatures from hitting you anyway.

[Jeff]

Confidant would have to replace one of the existing creatures. At the speed I'm trying to win at, I want to play something in the vein of 30 instants and sorceries to make Delver work, so I'm not using Ponder and Brainstorm to set him up, he's just flipping naturally a lot of the time. I considered replacing Guide with Confidant, but I'm not convinced that's necessarily a good trade. What would you cut for confidant?

Daze and Goblin Guide have absolutely zero synergy. Pierce at least taxes them a little more, and I think the 2 is way more relevant than 1 here. I can't see running Daze and Goblin Guide in the same deck though. Would you swap Guide and Pierce for Confidant and Daze? I'm not convinced that's really a good swap

[from Cairo]

I would think you'd want Snapcaster Mage main rather than Sb. He gives you more versatility and ability to come back from a bad board state than Vendilion Clique. Being able to flashback Terminate or Bolt. If playing Thoughtseizes and Duresses one has the ability to get a pseudo Clique effect played at Sorcery speed.

It might make sense to diversify your removal - maybe a Ghastly Demise, Go for the Throat and a Terminate leaves you some options if you're kept off Red. If you're comfortable that all in on Terminate's been working, maybe that's right.

I think Fire//Ice gives you better options than Chain Lightning. Pitchable to FoW against control or combo; and able to fog a big attacker against agro. Additionally, there's a lot of 1 toughness guys seeing play right now, unless your meta has tons of Zoo there aren't that many things 3 damage kills that 2 doesn't.

Cool list/concept though, with the success of RUG Tempo I think it definitely makes sense to explore the other URx options.

[Jeff]

All in on Terminate has been great so far. It has no restrictions, I can't imagine playing Go for the Throat over it. I could maybe see Demise, just for the CMC savings, but so far I haven't really felt that was necessary. Importantly, I'm far more likely to get cut off of black than red. I play more Volcanics than anything else. If you're familiar with actually playing Team America, think of black in this list as green in that list.

I could see swapping 1 or 2 chains for Fire/Ice, but with so few lands I'm thinking the 1 CMC is pretty important. Pitchable to FoW is nice, though.

I think your comment about Snapcaster Mage pushes this deck in a direction away from where I'm trying to go. I want to be clear. I recognize that where I want to go may not be possible. However, I would like to try that direction for a little while before giving up. I'm trying to be an incredibly aggressive deck with more disruption than a traditional aggressive deck would have. I'm also trying to maximize on evasive, high power creatures. Vendilion Clique fits that role perfectly in a way that Snapcaster Mage doesn't. When the ground is gummed up, I want most of my creatures to be able to get through, and if I'm running Snapcasters and Guides, that's just not going to be the case.

In other words, I not trying to design a deck that is excited to play a Snapcaster and get some card advantage out of it. I want to play so aggressively that I don't care about card advantage. I'm bringing Snapcasters in against decks where that strategy is less effective, and the game is going to go long.

So when you say Snapcaster gives me the ability to come back from a bad board state, I feel like you and I are talking about different things. RUG tempo wants a way to come back from a bad board state. I want to be so all in that I kill them before the board state can get bad.

In other words, I'm not interested in making a less good RUG Tempo. If I'm going to play a grindy resource advantage U/R deck, then I want Tarmogoyfs over Terminates. As an aggro deck, I just want to kill you fast.

Sorry if I sound like I'm getting all defensive about my decklist. I really am looking for input and criticism, I just have a clear idea of how I want games with this deck to play out. I'm not interested in making a bad RUG deck, if that were the case, I'd just play RUG. In testing so far, this BEATS rug, and that's what I'm looking to do, since RUG is so wildly popular.

J

[catmint]

I don't like the deck, since it appears to me not to have a very powerful linear strategy.

The problem you might have is that you have a relatively low threat density... what if your first creature gets killed and you hold some counterspells, burn and sicard. Since you very often won't have enough burn to play like a burn deck, you will end up in late game situations where a lot of good legacy decks will play more powerful spells than you.

That is also the reason why I think Goblin Guide is only good in a deck that purely focuses on burning to the dome and winning before any bomb like KoR, Jace,... becomes relevant... The drawback is significant!


I think the deck can be taken into 3 different directions:
1) A burn or fast zoo deck including blue with a higher threat density
Blue Zoo on thesource (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?20129-Deck-Blue-Zoo)
Blue Burn on thesource (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?22661-Blue-Sligh)

2) A probably worse RUG Tempo or Team Amercia...with Stifle, Wasteland, Daze

3) A probably worse control deck like BUG control with a lot of lands, snapcaster mage, Jace,... without Goyf & Deed, but a lot of burn