After getting stomped on a couple of weeks ago, I did a bit of a overhaul on the deck to make it just a little bit faster, and giving it more ways to deal direct damage. Pillar of Flame, Searing Spear, and Flames of the Firebrand came in and Magmaquake came out, to be replaced by Mizzium Mortars. I actually found that Magmaquake was doing some great work for me, especially against planeswalkers such as the Garruks and Liliana of the Veil, but since I also decided to up my planeswalker count and switch into Super Friends, it was going to do me more harm than good. Jace, Architect of Thought and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage have come in, and because they represent extra draw power Staff of Nin has come out. I love you Staff, but you are just too damn expensive. I also switched Counterflux for Dissipate to be able to handle Reanimator better, as well as upping the counterspell numbers in general between the deck and board.
So how did these changes fare in the field of battle?
Round 1 vs Junk Reanimator (1-2)
Even the mighty Bolas cannot stand against the current darling of Standard. The result is partially my fault for misplaying around Lotleth Troll (note to self, don't Rakdos's Return your opponent when they have the Troll on board and the mana to keep him regenerated indefinitely, cuz they're just going to pitch creatures to him), and mostly the skill of the guy piloting it. I managed to take game one in a very tight race, but game two I never saw any of my counterspells OR Grafdigger's Cages. Ouch.
Round 2 vs Rakdos Midrange (2-0)
The only real play my opponent managed to make this match was when he Dreadbored Nicol Bolas... the turn after I stole his undead Geralf's Messenger away from him. A few burn and counter spells later and he was dead to his own creature. Game two was even worse, as he managed to keep a hand with mostly land, Slaughter Games and an Appetite for Brains that managed to take nothing. By the time he got to any of his creatures my hand was stocked with answers and I had all three Rakdos Keyrunes on board and swinging.
Round 3 vs Esper Cipher (2-0)
Someone had to try it, and I'm actually kind of interested in seeing if I can make it work myself. Unfortunately, without anything encoded on it Invisible Stalker doesn't present much of a threat, and either my opponent wasn't running Geist of Saint Traft or didn't find him, so he wasn't able to put much pressure on the board. Ult. Tamiyo + Searing Spear ended game one, and Lord Bolas himself put away game two.
Round 4 vs Mono-Green (0-2)
Unfortunately, sometimes in Magic your luck just runs out. After an extremely close game one, both mana and colour screw in game two after a mull to five made for a very anticlimactic end to the day. As a side note, the Mono-Green deck is really fun to both play and play against (my opponent and I took a hand at piloting each others decks after the event) and Predator Ooze is a BEAST in the current meta. Indestructible + grows? I'll take some Pit Fights with that please!
Overall, I'm fairly happy with the way the deck performed, especially since the only other person I've seen piloting a Grixis deck is KrazyCaley and it is still a totally niche archetype. The mana-screw hurt a lot, but that it just luck... and maybe tweaking the land numbers a bit
