You’re reading that title right. I’m back. Grixis is back, baby!
If you’re newer to Magic, welcome! I’m Corey Burkhart, better known as “The Grixis Guy” amongst many other pseudonyms for the last decade. Since the inception of the Modern format, I’ve been largely playing midrange black or blue control decks, and in 2013, working with Michael Majors and Gerry Thompson lead them to building a Grixis control deck that I continued to iterate on, and 4 GP top 8s and a PT 9th place with the deck have lead me to gaining such a title.
But you didn’t come here for a history lesson, you came here to ask the question: “Grixis, in 2025? In Modern no less? You’re crazy right?!” Well… I am crazy, but there’s a method to my madness. I want to run you through why I brought Grixis to the Spotlight Series event in Indianapolis, how I got onto the deck, and why I think it can continue to iterate and being a player in the metagame.
The big props for the inception of this list comes from Piegonti (@PiemontiAndrea) on X. An Italian grinder who’s been putting up some serious results lately. Here was his list:
A solid starting point. The big take-aways looking at this are combining the old faithfuls of Grixis control (Push, Bolt, Snapcaster mage) with the new standouts from the recent Horizons sets (Tamiyo, Ragavan, and Psychic Frog). It wasn’t revolutionary work, but the list looked coherent. You have solid ways to snowball games with each of the aforementioned threats. Thanks to lightning bolt and fatal push you can push those threats through and assemble several double and triple spell turns to swing a game in short order, and Counterspell is much better when you’re being proactive about getting the game done with.
I liked the ideas. I tried it out myself, and the first thing I felt was that Ragavan, while still an awesome card, was just too finicky. It was hard to push the little monkey through while also holding up counter magic or your Flame of Anors. In short, Ragavan plays one way, he goes into the red zone and is coming out with your opponent’s top card or is hitting the graveyard. I didn’t love that mentality. Something I found the rest of the deck did fantastically well was being able to pivot back and forth from the aggressor-to control-back to the aggressor. I loved that play style, it gave the sense of 2010 faeries constantly keeping the opponent off balance. I decided this was real, this did have legs, but it was going to need some serious work. And this is where rather than just trying 10 different cards I stopped myself.
I started by trying to do what I normally do in Modern which is “target an existing metagame.” Unlike in the 2010s when I was grinding 15-20 grand prix a year, the Modern metagame is much less stagnant now. Players are much more willing to change decks and adopt the new hot tech. So I needed to catch myself up with what that was. Looking at MTGGoldFish the metagame as you’d expect was consolidated at the top, but rather diverse as you went down.
The big things I wanted to target were as many of the big 5 as I could. With Energy and Prowess being the clear top two, and Amulet being well represented in North America with several good pilots, I knew I also wanted a good combo game. A big ask and with only 10 days to the event, I didn’t have tons of time to sort all my problems out! What problems did these decks propose however:
- Phlage – The key reason you’d lose to energy, they’d find a way to dump this into the graveyard and then spam this turn after turn as a threat that basically wins the game on its own.
- Expressive Iteration – While Slickshot and Cori-Steel Cutter are really the cards killing you from prowess, their raw efficiency and ability to play Expressive Iteration was the key thing causing problems.
- Scapeshift – The ways that the Amulet Titans had positioned themselves in the last few months made them much more of a Scapeshift deck than rawly a titan deck. I was much more worried about dying to a turn 4 scapeshift as they could double spell these in the same turn rather than a 6 mana titan.
With the targets and clear problem cards on my radar, I got to work. I knew for Phlage and for Titan I wanted more graveyard cards. I also found that because the Ragavans were under performing I had some easy cards to cut and make room for cards I could add. I quickly added a second Cling to Dust. Not the most fancy card, but being able to draw cards exiling lands from Titan or gaining life against energy or prowess, all the wild getting to tag something like Phalge or a creature giving delirium was a key part of my plan. Cling to Dust was also a key card in being able to spend your graveyard and your mana as resource in really long drawn out games. So I was really happy to add a second to the deck.
Initially, I had been going down on Spell Snare and up on Stern Scolding. Stern Scolding is an awesome option against a field with several Seasoned Pyromancers, Thought Monitors, and Flickerwisps, but having noticed the issues with Expressive Iteration I knew I wanted 3 snares in my deck for indianapolis.
The last key change here was noticing how Boros could play around Cling to Dust. Many of the stock lists on MTGO were forgoing Seasoned Pyromancer and instead playing Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Given the way priority works they could discard the Phlage and then because it’s their main phase right away play an untapped land and Escape Phalge from the graveyard. This because a recurring problem from good energy players and I needed a way to solve this problem. Enter Orcish Bowmasters. Now, if the Energy opponents wanted to discard that Phlage into the graveyard I was going to get a trigger onto the stack because they’d draw a card and I could possibly pick off some of their other creatures. More importantly, that trigger would then give me a chance to respond and use cling to dust to exile the Phalge from the graveyard.
Adding in my sparkly one-ofs, and patented technology of adding a land to the deck, I was off to Indianapolis, with hopes of simply having a fun time (I didn’t expect to do all that well). Luckily, because I was playing an off-meta deck, and did manage to run up the score on day one, I managed to pick up several feature matches against some great opponents that you can catch on youtube. Over the 15 rounds, here were my matches and my final list:
There were several keys to my success this weekend, and watching back some of these matches on the SCGCoverage Youtube channel can hopefully help you learn a bunch.
The first match I wanted to take a moment to look at is round 2 against Pro Tour Finalist Benton Madsen playing Boros Energy. We’re deep into game one, and while I’m ahead on the board, I’m getting crushed in terms of card advantage. Benton has a Fable going, and is choosing if he wants to discard any cards to his Fable in his main phase into my on board Orcish Bowmasters.
This was the spot I had been dreaming of. Benton is clearly pained by the choice, trying to sort out what can go wrong if he discards that Phalge in his hand and goes for what looks like an incredible turn of events taking out my Psychic Frog. Fast Forward 2 minutes and I manage to Cling to Dust this Phalge and force Benton to make another tough play of running out the second Phalge from his hand targeting my frog. Now I have 2 cards left in hand, Force of Negation I chose to not use against the Fable of the Mirror Breaker and a Spell Snare. The reason this spot is tricky is that if I want to save this frog, I’m essentially putting all my eggs in a single basket, and I still have this Phlage of his about to hit the graveyard and threaten to come back on the next turn.
While I might think of myself as the control deck in this matchup, this is a spot of being able to identify how am I winning this game. Sure if Benton has another Galvanic Discharge or a copy of Static Prison I’m doomed. But if I don’t try and draw cards off of this frog and maybe exile this second Phalge, how am I realistically winning this game? I took the aggressive line, essentially going all in on my frog, and I managed to steal this game 2 turns later.
In round 5, they join my match in progress and I’ve been stuck on two lands for about six turns. The game might be looking hopeless as my opponent this round, Ryan Comer on Boros energy has multiple cats in play (from a flipped Ajani) and a Goblin Bombardment in play, a card that historically slaughters decks using removal to try and catchup. But you don’t always need to use Orcish Bowmasters as removal. One thing I really enjoy about bowmasters is how flexible it is, I use it here to shoot Ryan in the face and block his cats stabilizing the board. I use them later in this same game to shoot themselves on ETB to cause a revolt to kill a haste Phlage thanks to a copy of Fatal Push. Despite being off of double blue for the first 8 turns of this game, I manage to rally back and take the match.
Another key here is always trying to identify what’s your path to victory? What needs to happen in the game for you to be able to turn things around. I knew I needed Ryan to stumble a bit, get caught with too much reactive elements in his hand, and that happened for a couple of turns, and I decided to wait until I could both run out a threat either with a second threat or along side counter magic so that I could spend all of my mana both pressuring ryan’s resources but then having protection in case he drew one of his better spells like a Phlage. In my hand in this picture is several threats in Psychic Frog, but there’s not really a reason to take the shields down off of these counterspells. I know that if I control these Seasoned Pyromancers in his graveyard I’m off the races, and thankfully this patience paid off. I felt like after this match, I was really on pace to have a great tournament.
The last match I wanted to cover was the best match of the whole tournament, round 9 against my teammate Lee Webb on Mardu Energy. The reason this match is important is because it highlights sideboarding. Lee did an excellent job in this match to position himself as a better midrange deck than I did and boarding in such a way to make my spell snares really weak, trying to strand them in my hand when he sees them with Thoughtseize. Where most Boros players LOVE their Goblin Bombardments against Grixis’ small creatures, Lee realized how I would win was churning a mana advantage. Being able to use spell snare to catch me up in the early turns and then drawing weaker overall cards than mine on turns 5+ when we could both double or triple spell. As a result, Lee stocked his deck with a full set of Seasoned Pyromancers, 0 bombardments, and he even managed to have a copy of Showdown of the Skaalds in his deck, which causes me to have the most disgusted look on my face.
Props to Lee, he earned this victory. I wish we could have made the top 8 to have a rematch, but both unfortunately ended 11-4 after this match.
Despite going 11-4, I ended up 16th place, an awesome finish with a Rogue deck like Grixis. There are some things I’d look to change going forward of course, and it would always depend upon how things in the metagame change also.
- Kaito under performed all weekend. I wish this had just been a Kolaghan’s Command or a 4th Snapcaster mage (both in my sideboard).
- The Bowmasters were flexible and shined in my 6 energy matchups, but I do think I’d rather have just 2 of these (As I was sideboarding one of these out against energy to make room for more grindy cards). I think cutting this you’d likely want another piece of cheap interaction. The 4th push, second Subtlety are both top of mind for me for that slot.
I can’t recommend this deck enough. I had dozens of players come up to me excited to talk about the deck. Twitch and Youtube were excited to see something wonky and off the rails, and I had an absolutely blast. After the upcoming pro tour in Las Vegas I’ll record a league on MTGO with the deck and I’ll be sure to share that with you all, as I just can’t get enough. As Carmen said, “It’s a real love of the game situation.” I love grixis and it continues to show me love. Modern is once again my favorite format, and I’m hoping to get to qualify for Pro Tour Edge of Eternities in Atlanta later this year to put on a clinic for you all with the deck!
If you ever have any grixis questions you’re itching to get answered, feel free to hit me up on X, I’m @Corey_Burkhart, I’d love to talk about all things Grixis!
