...well. now i don't feel so special anymore. i watch hakeem's videos and probably even saw one or two of his grixis deck. i did not know it's so close to was i came up witch

i had 3 ulcerate and the shadowborn demon for 4 resounding thunder in there but i could not justify the life i had to pay plus ulcerate is a potential dead card. i want something unique, now i have to build a new deck. be cursed hakeem!

his deck and mine is basically the same except the land and i have 2 voyage's end instead of banefire and inferno titan ....

No worries...it happens. The pool has been explored pretty hard and it's tough to come up with anything unique (and with a limited pool, it does tend to happen that folks come up with the same decks/ideas). It seems lately that the most we can hope for are variants still different enough to call our own even if they share the same theme/shell.

I'm in the midst of brewing a deck that's a combination of a couple themes and reeks of a handful of decks but hopefully it'll still be different enough and considered playable when I'm done.

Keep at it though. We gotta keep breathing life into this game and forums until Origins comes out!


elk

Hi -

Composed the following deck (premium). Held its own pretty well! The strategy with this deck is to cause the player to loss its card drawing advantage. Also, found this deck to work well against a lot of game plays, such as, but not limited to, grave yard retrieval, tokens, and auras/enchantments. Also, a fun combo is equipping Guttersnip with Elder Mastery, then anytime I use an instant or sorcery spell, the opponent has to discard two cards as well as loss two lives. A most unpleasant loss loss surprise.

Lot's of weird synergies in here, but it kind of works. (It could really use some help probably)

So basically, it's a Jalira Combo that allows you to sack elementals that would have sacked anyway, and later switcheroo elementals that will sack after the switch. Raptors get big because most of the elementals trigger it each time they land on the board. Hatchlings provide more triggers and early defense (and excellent candidates for switcheroo). Chasm Skulker is a great target for Jalira, and of course if you sack it when Ogre is in play it should be GG. Plus if it gets sacked it's tokens are good targets for switcheroo. Master of Waves to boost the elementals, and provide perfect switch targets with it's tokens, because normally they would die without Master's bonus. Ogre Battledriver to give boosts as creatures ETB (this actually makes a big difference).

The maggots are in there to protect the combo from removal.

Yeah, that's about it. Don't switch any of the elementals, other than Hellspark, on their first time in play.

Edit: this deck is pretty much garbage, btw.

Jank

I mucked around a bit with the whole Unearth Elementals + Jalira thing in my Izzet Unearth+Evolve build. I found it to be too expensive to really be worth it though. Nothing will make you feel worse than sacing a creature to Jalira only to pull out a Hellspark elemental that sacs at your EoT lol.

Never even thought about using Switcheroo haha!

For as derpy and janky as it is, I could honestly still see this getting there from time to time just because the combo of Cloudfin Raptor + the Unearth Elementals is just such a potentially powerful early game plan.

Janky as it may be it certainly looks like a metric ton of fun to play.

I thought it would be fun too, but it wasn't. It was an ass beating through and through, and that's never fun. This might actually work as an FFA deck though. Worth considering, but I don't play 4 player so I wouldn't know. I was very disappointed, tbh.

Now, as a side element/option in my all U deck, the combo is pretty decent I guess, but it's not important to the way the deck plays, and it's really just an unlikely late game play, that the deck however can/could pull off, under very unlikely, but still awesome circumstances.

First time poster here.

I recently started toying around with a Grixis deck based on triggered abilities. The deck currently consists of a few creatures and a bunch of instant/sorcery spells. In its current state it is more of a concept than a finished deck. I'd very much appreciate any help or criticism.



My main issues creatureside are the two copies of Goblin Electromancer and Charmbreaker Devils. I have them in for cost reduction and reloading spells, but I feel like I can swap them for Kiln Fiend.

The spells, I'll admit, are all over the place. Conceptually I wanted some burn, card draw, resource denial, removal, and a few counters. So far, they've done alright in testing, but I feel like it needs more streamlined. I am, however, at a loss for what to add/remove.

The manabase is pretty solid for the low curve I believe.

I'd love to hear what you guys think of the deck and what should be added in or taken out.

10 creatures? Yeah, i think Kiln Fiend and Talrand would be welcome additions to this spell-heavy deck.

Look at what your black is bringing to the table...not much. 3x mind rot doesn't really do much on its own. You can swap out all the black for a better suite of red removal and blue bounce spells. You'll find that Dissolve doesn't get along well with Kiln Fiend as well.

Yeah I agree. The black splash isn't really pulling its own. I wanted it to be a bit more midrange, but it seems like the cards are pulling themselves in two separate directions.

Nothing very original but I've built this deck recently wanting to try the infinite Time Warp combo in a Grixis shell and have had quite a good success with it so far.



The core shell is basically an Izzet control deck with many trigger creatures with some black in for some more nice removal (Auger Spree), the best card advantage creatures in black (Graveborn Muse and Rune-Scarred Demon) and the possibility to go infinite with Charmbreaker Devils and Time Warp thanks to Suffer the Past.

The same Suffer the Past is also a blessing against GY decks that are legion on Steam. Token producing creatures such as Talrand, Sky Summoner and Young Pyromancer also help you stay alive against Spider Spawning.

Traumatic Visions helps fixing your mana and can be picked up later in the mid-late game by Charmbreaker Devils to serve as a hard counter against any threat.

Even without the infinite combo, Charmbreaker Devils is extremely good in this deck, keeping your hand full of counter and removal spells while you finish off your opponent with Guttersnipe or Talrand.

Any thoughts or advice is always welcome!

so how are you going to empty your yard to get the infinite time warp combo?

Suffer

Yep, Suffer the Past is the key to set up the combo here by removing all sorceries and instants from your graveyard the turn before casting Time Warp. Then Charmbreaker Devils only has Time Warp to get back from the GY.

Elixir of Immortality is a cheaper way to set up the combo but I really like running Suffer the Past in the Steam meta and it gives me an excuse to run other powerful black cards in the deck.

That is the first self suffer combo I have seen. Bonus points for creativity. I believe that the way the card is worded you will neither gain nor lose life when you use it.

I am also a steam player and 1x suffer ends up in my slower controllish decks that splash black.

Two things I will note about this combo:
1) Finding the combo pieces is somewhat tricky. Runescarred demon improves reliability somewhat, but you need to find a one of and one copy of devils, a two of. I am not sure you can find your combo pieces reliably enough to justify 2x suffer.
2) Protecting charmbreaker devils is hard, and if they stick to the board for a turn or two you should win anyway.

One way of protecting the devils is counterlash... but beware, it is a deckbuilding hazard. It has worked well in my dimir control list but I built that deck from the ground up to build on counterlash's strengths (fat creatures on the cheap without tapping you out) and its weaknesses (requires you to leave 6 mana open for several turns).

Thanks although I didn't think of this combo myself, pretty sure I saw it mentioned somewhere else if not in someone else's deck but I wanted to try it and build a deck from it.

I think you are right about the 2 points you mentioned, after some more testing most of my wins actually don't even come from the combo and the 1 time I managed to set it off in a match was without having to use Suffer on myself.

In the matches I lost my main problem besides the occasional mana flood/drought was indeed failing to protect the Devils correctly. I'm not sure though that Counterlash could help here one of the problems I had was precisely leaving mana open to counter removal spells targeted at them. The deck doesn't really lack counters, it's more like they are a bit too expensive.

Maybe swapping the Traumatic Visions for Negates and adjusting the manabase with more taplands could be a solution. I'm gonna try that and see if I can set up the combo more often.

Counterlash isn't another counter you use to protect the devils. You counterlash their creature when they are tapped out, putting the devils into play. They are tapped out. Their turn ends and you untap. This is about as good of a position as you can possibly be in to protect your devils using your other counterspells, and it guarantees that devils will return at least 1 spell to your hand. If the only spell in your GY happens to be time warp or you have time warp in your yard, you automatically win.

This is a way of building your deck around your combo which I do not necessarily recommend. You would have to make other changes to accommodate counterlash. Try it in my dimir build to see if you like it there.

I see, TBH I haven't used Counterlash much so I didn't think of it like that. I assume this is the deck you're referring to?

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=4683&start=500#p293787

Gonna give this one a shot and see if I could fit Counterlash in my deck.

Yeah that's it. Adding red would offer some major positives - shock and anger are great removal, and obviously charmbreaker devils is a great finisher. But I think the mana may be very tricky. Griselbrand in a 3 color deck without some kind of mana fixing is a big nono.

It's pretty playable with Counterlash.. Lash it out, draw 7 right away, attack to gain the life back.. yes please.