Theorycrafting in Modern: Griefblade

It’s become clear at this point that the Modern meta is fairly open. Yes, MH2 had some clear winners—Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Shardless Agent, Urza’s Saga—but decks without these cards continue to compete and do well. One card that the playerbase had a collective panic attack about, myself included, hasn’t really lived up to its spoiler-season potential though, and that card is Grief. Yes, it’s seen some play, but it’s been a far-cry from the format warper that most of us thought it would be. After the set released and we got our hands on the card, the hivemind assessment was that the card just wasn’t good enough. Playable, yes, but format-warping, no. That being said, the hivemind isn’t always right.

I’m exploring the Griefblade archetype, a deck I feel is criminally underplayed right now. I’ll address the archetype’s shortcomings, the core of the deck, builds the deck has taken since MH2’s release, angles the deck attacks on, and how to shore up potential weaknesses. 

Why Griefblade

The biggest question a pilot needs to answer when selecting a deck is “why this deck?” Well, why not? Griefblade is an exhilarating deck that has a fun, powerful strategy. Disrupting your opponent early with two to three “free” discards and then beating down with a 3/2 creature with menace is a blast when it works. Kaldra Compleat is also very strong and ridiculously hard to deal with. Solitude is even more undervalued than the Grief + Ephemerate combo. Not to mention, the deck dodges a lot of the hate targeted towards the higher-represented decks. Spot removal? Blanked by flicker spells and reanimation (and the elementals dodge Prismatic Ending, for the most part). Alpine Moon and Blood Moon? We have no Urza’s Sagas to hit, and we can usually discard Blood Moon before it becomes a problem. Chalice of the Void stops our flicker spells, but does a poor job of disrupting Stoneforge Mystic, and it’s not uncommon to just hardcast the elementals anyways.

Let’s take a look at my build of the deck and then go over the different components and how they compare to the other versions being fielded.

Core Strategy

First, the core of the deck. Four Grief, four Solitude, and at least ten “flicker” spells comprised of Ephemerate, Malakir Rebirth, and Undying Evil . Yes, you read that right. Ten of these spells, at a minimum. Griefblade plays more like a combo deck (think Dredge, not Heliod) than a midrange deck, and you want to be able to keep your evoked elemental on turn one. What’s the point of shredding roughly half your hand if you don’t get to keep the Grief or Solitude at the end of it? So, for the most part, you want to mulligan for a hand that can evoke an elemental and flicker it, and that’s a lot harder to do when you’re only running a playset of Ephemerate and 2-4 Malakir Rebirths.

Another thing people seem to ignore is how often you’re able to hardcast your elementals. Yes, even Solitude. I’ve probably flashed it in, full cost, more than I’ve evoked it at this point. It’s not even strategically bad to do in your deck full of Stoneforge activations and combat tricks. Open mana against a non-codified deck is terrifying. You could have anything, and it’s on your opponent to play around perceived threats.

Then there’s the utility these flicker spells offer via combat tricks, value blinks, and saving your creatures from spot removal and wraths. The undying spells can function as spot removal, letting you block to kill a creature and then bring your own back. Bonus points if you’re recurring a Solitude, because now you’ve hit two of their threats. Pointing spot removal at Grief becomes awkward for your opponent because as long as you have open mana, they’re risking losing two cards and still not killing your Grief. And since most Griefblade decks have shaved their undying spells, odds are your opponent won’t be playing around Malakir Rebirth and Undying Evil past the second copy, if that. And sometimes they can’t afford to, so they “get got.” So while Ephemerate is the strongest of the flickers, the undying spells are still powerful and shouldn’t be underestimated.

Stoneforge Package

With all of these flickers, Stoneforge Mystic goes way up in value. I’ve seen some lists trimming down their equipment, but that’s the wrong direction to take with this deck, especially since we’re so heavy on the flickers. It’s not uncommon to have Stoneforge tutor multiple times in a match, especially if you’re saving her with Malakir Rebirths or (ideally) Ephemerate. I’ve never felt like the deck is overcrowded with equipment. If anything, I’ve started exploring a Yorion, Sky Nomad build so I can include more. However, I’ve had some consistency issues with it in testing, which makes sense because you’re diluting your ability to evoke and save an elemental on turn one by increasing deck size. That being said, the deck should be playing Batterskull, Kaldra Compleat, and Sword of Fire and Ice or Maul of the Skyclaves at a minimum. While SoFI is great into the Dragon’s Rage Channeler/Murktide Regent meta, I’ve found Maul particularly useful since it equips at instant speed and gives flying. This gives you yet another combat trick if you have a Stoneforge activation available but also adds a bit of evasion to let you push through that final bit of damage. A flying Kaldra is an absolute terror to deal with, and Grief’s menace means it’s often impossible for your opponent to block.

Elephant in the Room

All right, time to tackle the question on everyone’s mind: Where is Tidehollow Sculler? For a deck looking to have a bunch of Orzhov multi-colored cards to pitch to the elementals, doesn’t it just make sense to include Tidehollow Sculler? It’s a black/white card that gives the deck some disruption and has a mini-combo with Ephemerate. If you flicker Tidehollow with its trigger on the stack, that means you get to permanently exile something. That’s fantastic, right? Well, not really.

For starters, Tidehollow Sculler isn’t a great creature in a vacuum. A 2/2 that only temporarily disrupts your opponent isn’t great, and it doesn’t have evasion or great synergy with the rest of the deck, like Kitesail Freebooter does in Humans. At least 60% of our flicker spells don’t combo with Tidehollow (fully two-thirds if you’re playing all twelve), and even if you have the Ephemerate, you can’t pull off the mini-combo until turn 3 at the earliest. And the worst part is you have to retain priority to complete the combo, giving your opponent the opportunity to kill your Tidehollow in response to the Ephemerate, and now you’ve lost a ton of tempo along with your flicker. True, you still get to permanently exile one card this way, but you’re still losing a threat and potentially the rebound on Ephemerate. Despite being the right colors, Tidehollow Sculler is just plain bad.

Back-up Plan

If we’re not playing Tidehollow Sculler, then how are we filling that slot? The card I’ve liked most in place of Tidehollow is Priest of Fell Rites. Having the option to reanimate our creatures is a huge boon to the deck. Not only does Priest give you the option to evoke an elemental without a flicker spell, but it also allows you to rebuy creatures that have gotten picked off via spot removal or chump blocks. And Priest forces your opponent to have a ton of answers. They need to deal with your elementals, your flicker spells, your Stoneforges, and now they need to counter or kill the Priest or something they answered before is coming back. And if they countered Priest, it’s coming back uncounterably later with its Unearth ability.

I’ve really, really enjoyed the additional pressure Priest brings to the deck. Other pilots have had a similar idea, ranging from nazart (a pilot who’s 5-0’d multiple leagues with their whacky build) adding Persist to their builds, to going full-on Reanimator. While I do think that Grief can work well in a Reanimator shell, often functioning as a Modern-legal Unmask, I don’t think Griefblade can go too heavily into the Reanimator strategy without just dropping the Grief + flicker plan and becoming a devoted Reanimator deck, or not having enough self-discard pieces to support the Reanimator package, like this version.

Utility Spells

Beyond the core elemental + Stoneforge shell, the rest of your threat suite is up to you. I’ve personally enjoyed Damn, as it combos well with Kaldra, since you can put Kaldra into play and then wipe the board with an overloaded Damn to clear the path for your indestructible germ token. Shriekmaw has also really impressed me, being a Doom Blade you can flicker and reanimate. While Vindicate has served me well, it’s really slow, and I might shave a couple moving forward. 

One thing the deck really struggles with is card advantage. While SoFI can help with that a little, one Sword isn’t enough. I’ve found Wall of Omens to be quite useful in this regard, giving you a valuable flicker target and allowing you to stonewall early aggro (like Ragavan). Charming Prince can also do this quite well, letting you filter your draws better with its second ability, as well as giving the deck even more flicker effects with its third ability. The last-resort lifegain option is also nothing to sniff at.

Main Deck Graveyard Hate

With the dominance of UR Murktide, Kaya’s Guile has been an all-star. Lifegain, an edict effect, exiling the graveyard, making a chump blocker—Kaya’s Guile does it all. The best part is the edict happens before the graveyard exile, so whatever creature your opponent sacrifices is just gone.

Thought not quite as versatile, Callous Bloodmage fills a similar role to Kaya’s Guile, but comes on a body, which can be relevant in match ups where you want more pressure and don’t care about the graveyard exile as much. Bloodmage also creates a roadblock against aggro, replacing itself with a token that gains you life when it dies, and gives you the option to draw a card, something that Kaya’s Guile does not. With Murktide seeing a slight decline from the target on its back, Callous Bloodmage might be a better main deck option than Guile. I’ve seen one deck play Rankle, Master of Pranks to try to fill a similar role to Bloodmage/Guile, but I’m not sure Rankle is cost-effective enough.

Manabase

Most Griefblade players seem happy with a fetchland manabase, and for good reason. Fetches give you consistent mana, outs to Blood Moon, and the mythical deck-thinning. But there is a very real cost to having a fetchland manabase: Archive Trap. With the printing of Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Mill has become a force to be reckoned with in the format. Even if it’s not dominating the metagame, it can still rock this match up. But the fear of Mill has never stopped Modern players from playing fetches before, why should it now? Especially since Indantha Triome means Griefblade can theoretically swap Vindicate for Prismatic Ending, especially since Horizon Canopy and Sunbaked Canyon exist.

Well, the answer is “What if you could pitch your lands to Grief?” Thanks to Zendikar Rising, we have Agadeem’s Awakening and Emeria’s Call, which fit beautifully by both increasing the range of keepable hands while also being untapped lands when we need it. The always-tapped static on Indantha Triome is a big cost since we want our lands untapped to be able to flicker on turn one, and if we’re not running fetches, then it’s really hard to remove this downside.

The other aspect is how mana intense the deck is early on. With Stoneforge Mystic, Persist, or Priest of Fell Rites, we want to use all our mana in the early turns, and taking a turn off to fetch a tapped Triome sucks. (Same reason you’d want Hive of the Eye Tyrant and not Shambling Vent.) Being able to maintain land count while increasing the amount of spells to pitch to the elementals is just insane. Nazart has managed to maintain a +62% winrate with this manabase after a thousand matches on the deck. 

From my testing, deck construction affects which manabase you choose. If you play fetches, you’ll need to run multi-colored spells to support evoking your elementals. However, you can get away with mono-colored spells if you can pitch a fourth of your lands to Grief and Solitude. Since there aren’t a lot of great Orzhov spells in Modern, I think the Agadeem’s/Emeria’s manabase deserves further exploration beyond nazart’s lonely championing. One final note, Castle Locthwain is just a good utility land, and you should be playing it in either version of the manabase.

Sideboard

The card selection available to Griefblade is actually pretty stellar. While Rest in Peace and Sanctifier en-Vec sound like great graveyard hate on paper, they’re less than ideal, since they shut off Malakir Rebirth, Undying Evil, and Priest of Fell Rites/Persist. Dauthi Voidwalker is a potential option, but with all the creature hate running around and Griefblade being a creature-based deck (so your opponents won’t be siding out their removal), it doesn’t seem like a good fit at the moment.

Much better is Leyline of the Void, which can come down turn zero and has some sweet synergy with Kaya, Orzhov Usurper’s ultimate. Kaya herself has looked well-positioned in the meta enough that I’m considering running her in the main, but she’s also a solid sideboard option to answer Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Dragon’s Rage Channeler, Death’s Shadow, Aether Vial, opposing Kaldra Compleat germ tokens, as well as being great incidental lifegain. Yes, there’s a slight nonbo with her uptick and Leyline, but you don’t always want both (and you don’t always get both, either). 

For artifact hate, Griefblade has access to Kataki, War’s Wage, Stony Silence, and Fracture. While Fracture can hit enchantments and planeswalkers as well, it’s been the most narrow of the three and I’ve found both Kataki and Stony Silence[c] to be better in answering artifacts, despite [c]Stony Silence playing poorly with Batterskull and the Swords. If you really must answer enchantments, such as a local meta with some Enchantress pilots, then Fracture[c] is probably your go-to. [c]Fracturing Gust is an option, but it’s a slow one, and most likely only good against exactly Enchantress, which doesn’t often have a fast kill. 

Against Cascade decks, Griefblade can field Chalice of the Void, Void Mirror, or even Drannith Magistrate. Griefblade is surprisingly good against Chalice on one, and so boarding that against decks like Prowess is also a strong consideration. Engineered Explosives is another potential card that can hit more than just the Cascade matchups, although I haven’t tested it much yet in my own builds. 

As for the rest of the board, tune it to your preference. I’ve always enjoyed Thoughtseize as a good anti-combo, anti-control card, but if you’re playing a Reanimator build then you’ll want Collective Brutality instead. Vanishing Verse is a great Orzhov card that cleanly answers Murktide Regent while also hitting a plethora of other mono-colored permanents, like your own Germ token when your opponent steals it with Archmage’s Charm. Vindicate and Prismatic Ending are also possible sideboard removal. The once-great Path to Exile is still an option, but has mostly fallen out of favor since most players consider it too narrow and the downside to giving your opponent extra mana too great. Ashiok, Dream Render is probably better than Leyline in an Amulet-heavy meta. There are a ton of really good cards in these colors, so customize to your heart’s content.

Wrap-up

Griefblade has quickly become one of my favorite decks in Modern. It has game against pretty much everything, and the vast majority of my losses have been from my inexperience with the deck and making poor threat evaluations. Deciding whether the “fair” hand is good enough, knowing when to evoke an elemental without a flicker and when to wait, where to point Damn or if it’s better served waiting to overload it, flicker sequencing—there are lots of lines to this deck, and it’s easy to focus on the scoreboard rather than the decisions you made throughout the game that led to a victory or defeat. The deck is far from figured out, and there’s a lot of room for improvement. 

And the best selling point: you don’t need Ragavan, Urza’s Saga, or Lurrus of the Dream Den to play this deck. I’ve been hearing a lot of “monkey fatigue,” not just with play patterns but price tag as well. Yes, Stoneforge is a little expensive, but the rest of the deck is fairly affordable, especially with the recent fetchland reprints. Sword of Fire and Ice and Chalice of the Void are the only other truly expensive cards in the deck, and I’ve found some of the “budget options” strong in their own rights. Maul of the Skyclaves giving flying has been extremely relevant in multiple matchups, and both Void Mirror and Drannith Magistrate function well enough against Cascade in place of Chalice. Void Mirror is especially relevant with the recent dominance of Elementals, since it hurts the Elementals player far more than us.

So if you’re looking for a fun, customizable Modern deck that can hold its own without needing the big-name MH2 cards, consider Griefblade. It’s such a blast, and I can’t wait to see how the deck progresses over the coming weeks.