Grixis T4 Kill

Hello everyone,

I got a very promising, and spicy deck that can finally resemble a combo deck in Standard. The nearest ‘combo’ like deck is the Phoenix deck but it isn’t really a combo deck per se. What I’ll be showing you is a potential list I’m sure (or hope) pro players will perfect once the new set is completely spoiled.

I want to put the combo out here before we discuss the deck as a whole.

Turn 1: Play Watery Grave, tapped.

Turn 2: Land, play Diligent Excavator

A 1/3 body is pretty good at stopping turn 1-2 creatures in combat and survive. Blocks Lavarunners, Viashino Pyromancer, Branchwalkers, Dauntless Bodyguard, etc.

Turn 3: Land, play Arcane Adaptation, naming Zombies.

Turn 4: Land, play Liliana, Untouched by Death.

1. -3, to allow you to play zombies from the graveyard
2. Cast Chamber Sentry for zero.
3. Chamber Sentry triggers Historic from Diligent Excavator – milling the opponent 2 cards.
4. Chamber Sentry dies because it will be a 0/0.
5. Recast Chamber for zero from the yard because it’s a zombie via Arcane Adaptation
6. Retrigger step 3.
7. Rinse and repeat step 4-6.
8. Win gloriously.

Even if the combo will need 4 cards, the deck will have ways to fix the draws anyway and we will also incorporate some redundancy.

Cabal Paladin functions the same way as Diligent Excavator but instead of milling for 2, you shock your opponent each time you recast the Chamber Sentry.

Jhoira on the other hand helps us draw one of the kill switches (Excavator, Paladin or…)

Judith is the newest addition from Ravnica Allegiance. She is a more flexible version of Cabal Paladin where you can hit creatures and Planeswalkers.

As a combo deck we need ways to protect our pieces and find them. Thought Erasure does both functions by sniping removal or counter magic, then fixes our next draw. Discovery helps us find our pieces and Dispersal, if needed, can bounce a Tribunal sitting on our Adaptation.

Looking at Orzhov’s afterlife mechanic, we need ways to exile creature so Cry of the Carnarium does a great job at replacing ‘dies’ effect with exile. This replaces Golden Demise as they do the same thing and we’re not really after the City’s Blessing. (visuals still show Demise because Cry of the Carnarium is not showing properly in MTGGoldfish).

With Bedevil giving us the versatility on removing almost anything but enchantments, it’s a great addition to our removal suite. Contempt and Moment of Craving offers us some life buffer in case the red zone becomes to hot for us to handle.

Against creature based decks, the plan is quite simple. Survive long enough to pull off the win condition. Against control however, the strategy needs to give way to some potent distraction.

What better way to distract the opponent with than a 4/4 hand disruption late-game Planeswalker that can win you the game by himself. Since we can support the color anyway, why not play creatures to draw the removal to save your win condition. The good thing though is the distraction is actually a win condition as well.

Be careful when firing off an Unmoored Ego if you know the opponent is playing Expansion. You don’t want to strip yourself so do fire off a Duress first to check if the coast is clear.

We will play a light counter magic suite but I think we need to play the cheap ones because we need to protect our pieces early and guard ourselves from discard. We want to win as soon as we can and catch our opponent off guard before they wise up to our glorious plan.

That’s it for now. I hope you like the deck. I hope to build it once RNA is our in Arena. Looking forward to more brews during the spoiler season!

May you top deck lethal in all your games!

Vanson