What Are The Top Decks In Modern – Grixis Control

Grixis control is a reactive deck that focuses on a very strong suite of removal spells, along with cheap threats in the form of Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler. The game plan revolves around cards that accumulate advantages over long games: Snapcaster Mage, Kolaghan’s Command, and Cryptic Command in particular. All of these cards produce 2-for-1s by either allowing the deck to draw more cards, or by removing multiple resources from the opponent, or simply allowing you to use your spent resources again. Tasigur, the Golden Fang is notable due to the fact that his ability grants the ability to use your resources again, and again, and again, and again! The deck can close out games extremely quickly with the classic Lightning Bolt-Snapcaster Mage-Lightning Bolt line of play, or Gurmag Angler granting a 2 or 3 turn clock. The deck is also well known for its possible Turn 2 Gurmag Angler, or Tasigur, the Golden Fang. This is done with a T1 fetchland into a Thought Scour (3 cards in the graveyard for Delve) and then another fetchland on T2 (4 cards in the graveyard for Delve, and 2 mana). Once a threat has landed the deck can protect it from removal with classic counterspells such as Remand or Mana Leak. Even if a threat dies it can be reanimated with Kolaghan’s Command, and if it dies again you can Flashback the Kolaghan’s Command you used before with Snapcaster Mage. This makes for one extremely resilient deck.
Sideboarding Against This Deck

The deck relies a great deal on the graveyard and therefore cards like Scavenging Ooze, Relic of Progenitus or Leyline of the Void can make things difficult because it removes the ability for you to use Delve on your creatures, and Flashback on your spells. Having said this both Gurmag Angler and Tasigur, the Golden Fang can eventually be hardcast, at which point the opponent is in trouble again. Aggro decks can take advantage of any slowing down in tempo, at which point they can take a swift win, but midrange decks can still be in trouble. Any deck that is able to take swift wins through either combos (Abzan Company) or aggression (Burn) can pose problems as Grixis Control is a fairly slow deck most of the time.