Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
This weekend I piloted Grixis Delver to a 7-1 record in the Modern portion of the Columbus Invitational. The deck is great, and the interaction between Snapcaster Mage and Kolaghan's Command makes playing an honest game of Magic against the deck extremely difficult. The weakest card in the deck has been Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets, but I haven't been able to find a way to cut the card. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) for the Magic Community, Matt Costa broke it.
Grixis Control
I'm not much of a Blood Moon guy, but the card solves most of the problems that the deck has when you cut Delver- that is wanting for a clock against decks like Tron and Amulet Bloom. Turns out that you don't need a clock if you cut them off of the ability to execute their game plan in any sort of timely manner.
This change does make you weaker against decks like Infect where your deck just isn't as efficient and you can't really race, though Blood Moon does at least shut off Blinkmoth Nexus. I would be wary about playing against something like Collected Company Elves with this build, but the sideboard Engineered Explosives do some serious work there. Which reminds me of one of the cooler pieces of technology from this deck...
Ruins is great not just for recurring Engineered Explosives, but also for combating all of the opposing Kolaghan's Commands in the format in games where you want Spellskite and/or Vedalken Shackles. It's also worth noting that once you've drawn Academy Ruins you can rebuy any of these artifacts that you mill with a Thought Scour. Ruins and Blood Moon are certainly at odds, but the impression that I get is that Blood Moon is either winning you the game or you're not casting it.
