Few enough changes but we're far enough along from the original that it warrants a full reposting. A couple things worth mentioning:

1) Shock is not here. A fantastic card against the difficult matchup of all-in aggro strategies (especially those with Kiln Fiend) and the small amount of reach sometimes makes a difference, but it's a fairly weak late draw most of the time. I wanted as much as possible for my late draws to be live in any matchup.

2) Courier's Capsule over Inspiration. As not playing Shock weakens the aggro matchup, getting Anger of the Gods in those matchups is even more important. Capsule lets you see more cards more quickly, and if it finds Anger you can cast it on turn 4 instead of 5 as Inspiration would force you to do, which is often too late.

3) Suffer the Past occupies a utility slot here that I rotate fairly regularly, usually with Banefire as my best guess regarding the meta dictates. Spider Spawning and Seance decks aren't easy for Grixis to deal with so this is here to shore that up a little.

Shock isn't that bad in the lategame if you're playing two Obelisks because you can kill X/4s for and it makes your Tributes better. The Obelisk is the reason I don't play Flesh to Dust in my deck anymore because the black mode allows you to scale up your other removal and hit bigger targets. You're playing counterspells so Flesh to Dust's mana cost is a pretty big liability at times. It's usually going to eat your full turn.

I can see the argument for Capsule over Inspiration, but it's not an instant and I want my deck full of instants. It's my favorite card type.

HAILGRIXIS.

The only things here I am iffy on are Flesh to Dust.

I get why you are using them, as you are trying to push the deck as much as possible to being effective in the late game. I just fear that they may wind up sitting in your hand when you really need to kill something but don't have 5 mana or yet.

Maybe Voyage's End would be a better choice for those slots? Would be more useful than Flesh to Dust in most of the Aggro matchups by being able to be used sooner. The Scry could theoretically help to set up draws to be able to hit your for Anger of the Gods and if nothing else gives you some more control over what you are drawing. You have a few counterspells too, so bounce with counterspell mana open makes it a potentially decent late game draw as well on top of the Scry effect.

I also like the single copy of Suffer the Past. Working Banefire in here may be a good option, but I think having at least 1 copy of Suffer the Past is really important for a deck like this that is looking to go into the long game. GY strategies are some of the better decks in the meta overall, so having some hate against them is always gravy. On top of that, the card is one of the few real viable answers to Kozilek, which is pretty common in the meta. This deck is looking to go long too, so you are probably more likely to see old Cozy Leg get dropped by your opponent here than you are in a deck that looks to close out games faster.

I'm making a new post for this deck because I've featured it on YouTube and I want to be able to link to it from there. The table will reflect any changes made after the recording of the deck tech.

I think Danno is right about Spider Spawning being a bad matchup. I took this deck out for a spin this morning and ran into two Spider opponents and lost both times. There just aren't enough Traumatic Visions in the deck to deal with it. Maybe Dissolve instead of Tribute to Hunger would be better.. it would also help vs the ever problematic, Triplicate Spirits.

Actually.. the more I think about it.. the more it seems right. It's an instant speed deck, and Dissolve can handle everything Tribute to Hunger can, and more.. without having to have a clear board. The only thing you lose is the Lifegain.. which Obelisk can provide still. The Scry is just gravy.

I don't want this to be a permission deck but rather a "kill everything on sight" deck. With that said, I think you're correct.

Sigh.

This is why my Grixis deck runs 2x Goblin Arsonist which we talked about before, it is one of the few tools control has to deal with multiple tokens at once and not end up down on CA. We have discussed this in the past though.

Another potential option would be to try and worm in a couple copies of Archaeomancer to give you a way to recycle Anger of the Gods. I know this deck doesn't particularly want to be tapping out to play creatures (especially ones that aren't real threats themselves), but Anger of the Gods is one of your few outs to heavy token based strategies(and Spawning in particular). Being able to wipe a board of Spiders and then recycle it later to deal with Flashback Spiders may really be worthwhile.

Edit: Where are all the black sweepers when you need them. Somewhere Damnation is dieing a little inside. They really couldn't put a single one in the game? Really? Not even a Marsh Casualties? Hell, at this point I think I would still be happy being able to run Mutilate in a 3 color deck >.<

Yeah, black kinda misses it's best mechanics in DotP2015 - no good removal, no board wipes etc.

I played 8 games with Dissolve in place of Tribute to Hunger.

I did what Hakeem said he does and asked myself, "Would I rather have Tribute to Hunger here?" Only one time did I feel that way.. against a resolved Arbor Colossus, very late game where the opponent had enough mana to activate Monstrosity the same turn as casting. This meant I needed 9 damage to kill it. Thankfully I had Kozi in hand thanks to Rune Scarred.. so I still won.

Every other time, Dissolve was either equal to or better than Tribute. By equal to.. I mean it wouldn't have mattered which one I had.. a lone bomb on a clear board with mana open to cast either. A lot of times it was better.. stopping big nasties with significant ETB effects, most notably Rune Scarred and Pelakka Wurm.

I didn't run into Terra Stomper.. but yeah.. that's a thing. If I recall correctly, that's why Tribute was put in there in the first place. However.. I still would rather have Dissolve, bc entire decks are built around Spider Spawning and Triplicate Spirits (and those decks are 2 of the top 3 most powerful decks/archetypes in the game), and I rarely ever see Terra Stomper on the other side of the board.

Marsh Casualties would be nice, and on par with the overall power level of the pool. I'd like that.

Blister Beetle is also an option for stopping tokens fairly effectively.

I don't think the danger with marsh casualties would be the power level of the card per se, but rather the overall number of mass removal spells that the designers want to allow.
And the real problem is actually cultivate: that card makes it so easy to just put all the mass removal in the same deck, regardless of color. So I think it's good that we only get a total of 4.

I actually think that the biggest design flaw in the cardpool was the inclusion of anger of the gods as opposed to something like slagstorm / flamebreak, since the exiling effect makes it so much harder to build a deck that can fight efficiently against removal, even though at first sight there are cards in the card pool that would do just that: vengevine and bloodghast - which just die to anger.
They even included the 7/2 plant guy that comes back from the graveyard as if they were really trying to make anger look as good as possible; and it sure looks awesome in this game.


edit: let me add a creatureless grixis deck that I just made (it's an upgrade to the Izzet version that I posted some time ago):


This version splashes black specifically for tribute to hunger, which may seem a bad idea since the card is not great in this environment full of satyr wayfinders and tokens.
However this deck actually has to kill (or counter) all those crappy 1/1 creatures since it doesn't have the option of making them irrelevant with a blocker. Which is exactly the situation where tribute is bad: when the opponent has a creature in play that is completely irrelevant, just waiting there in case a chump-blocker is needed. But this deck is willing to shock soldier tokens and counter elvish visionary to stay alive (or just wipe them all away with anger) so that's not really a problem.

On the other hand the lifegain is very important against banefire, and having a hard removal spell in hand makes it much safer to tap out to play a wand.

So I'm going to test my deck with Dissolve in place of Tribute to Hunger, but I was thinking of cutting Inferno Titan since Monk and I got away from it in our four-color control list. If I were to cut the Titan, which of the following cards would you add?

Suffer the Past
Archaeomancer
Flesh to Dust
Stormbreath Dragon
Griselbrand

I'm leaning towards Suffer the Past because this deck does fill up opposing graveyards with dead things and having an out to Spider Spawning decks seems good. It also is nice reach and the lifegain could be relevant now that Tribute is out of the deck.

Well in my very first game I fried my opponent's board with Anger of the Gods and couldn't get any value from Suffer the Past. Despite how much of a blowout it can be in certain matchups, it's too narrow to maindeck.

I think Griselbrand is getting called up.

How about keeping 1 tribute?

@ Hakeem

The deck was always strong and I've always enjoyed playing it. I'm down with the testing of Dissolve over Tribute to Hunger (although this does require early if you want to use it on curve) but I have to say that I'm partial to the removal angle versus the permission aspect (Traumatic Visions was usually enough for big threats and drawing into the other answers was part of the fun/appeal of the deck).

I'm not sure why Inferno Titan hit the chopping block though. Your youtube video series had Titan show up and save the day several times. It's a decent body with some removal potential and it's always been a wincon in this card pool. I'm not saying Griselbrand is a bad idea though. It is a beefy wincon that can contribute to life gain and can draw into additional answers you might need. I just question how often you'll need those features when Griselbrand finally hits the board. I'm assuming by that time you should have stabilized and can basically choose your 'road' to the finish (and depending on life total, will have to swing first before using his draw function).

elk

Just trying to mix it up a little, I thought of it because of the discussion over in the Ink-Treader thread. I've actually been liking Dissolve in the little testing I've done, though it's only been about five games.

I formally recant my earlier comments about Shock

I'm not quite a fan of Banefire. It's sometimes a fireball that kills your opponent, but control wants to play at instant speed and I'd rather run more counters than tap out for my opponent. Same with Rune scarred demon, the tutor is sweet but it means taking the shields down for far too long. Traumatic visions is also not a practical counterspell at five mana.



It's interesting to see that a lot of decks have traumatic visions over nullify, presumably because they want to cycle for lands at 2, where mine is looking to counter a creature. The deck has a lot of blue sources and untapped islands because the countermagic suite is very full, and requires double blue. Negate is too narrow to play 4 of, and I think even 2 might be too much, but one is probably necessary with spider spawning being so good against you, and it hits problematic value enchantments too. Auger spree is one of the better kill spells in duels, 4x inclusion feels right. I was skeptical about the usefulness of the cycling upside to resounding thunder, but it doesn't cost anything to replace guildgates with savage lands, and it feels really good when it happens, although 8 mana means that I'm often allowing big things to attack me so that I can end step resounding thunder to keep the shields up, which is sort of what I expected. I was initially not a fan of obelisk of alara, but it's actually impressed me against the decks that play elvish visionary into wayfinder into more annoying do-nothing 1/1s, or bloodghast. I hated getting pinged by those things every turn, and I hated blowing shocks on those things. The lifegain and looting modes have been top-notch too, and it's a slow wincon in a pinch. The green mode isn't terribly relevant, but four out of five useful tools is not bad. Unfortunately, it turns on artifact removal, which some jokers run that I'd be more than happy to otherwise blank. Griselbrand is a lot of black symbols for the number of black sources available, but you are not trying to play threats on-curve as a control deck. Tribute to hunger might actually be one of the worse removal spells in the deck with all these dumb cycling 1/1s and raise the alarms being thrown around, although I've appreciated it a lot too.

The lack of targeted hard removal hurts, but assassinate is not good enough, and I chose Grixis over UWx control because the white removal is overcosted and frankly unplayable in control, barring reprisal which doesn't hit everything. Because of this, I went with a heavy set of countermagic, with the blue base to back it up, to take the place of the bad kill spells in duels 2015.

Needed to shake things up a bit so I tried to make a tempo list. There's some good synergies here and there (Agent of the Fates plus Artful Dodge is my favorite), and it can accumulate velocity really quickly sometimes. I just started testing with Brain Maggot this morning because I had too many threes and wanted some more twos, and the early returns are that it's amazing, you can win games on the back of that guy. Sometimes you will get set up for a hyper blowout if you grab a removal spell, but if that's the case you probably weren't going to make it through anyway. I've also got a one-of Young Pyromancer who has been pretty good, I'd love to play more than one but I don't think there are enough triggers in the deck (as it currently stands) to warrant that. I wanted to keep a relatively high creature ratio for maximum keepable hands (no turn 1 plays and often no turn 2 either, so once the pressure starts in turn 3 you can't shut it off).

Hakeem recommended Pestermite over Frost Lynx. It's a question of surprise and evasion vs. tapping a blocker for 2 attacks. I can't yet tell which is more valuable more of the time, so I'm going with a split for now. Could be that's correct.

The deck certainly has its bad matchups, like Pelakka Wurm and a fast start from Spider Spawning decks for instance, but I'm hoping Brain Maggot will now mitigate those. This one probably won't ever be tier 1, but take it out for a Player Match, I guarantee you'll have fun with it.