Except for that Swamp isn't a legal target for Surgical.

I just like the art. A lot. They're functionally the same as a normal Swamp, but have a strictly cooler name and, like I said, I like the art. It also screws with newer players who think they have some sort of significance to the deck over a normal swamp.

@ToolmasterOfBrainerd And this is why I should go to bed. Ah well, I tried.

$999

Would Monastery Swiftspear help out, maybe as a one of? If you were going to take Liliana out, I'd put in 1 Serum Visions and 1 Monastery Swiftspear in. It is a very good card in most situations, especially when it is unblocked and you can shoot a bolt at em. If you don't want to put swiftspear in, a Remand or Spell Snare could help you keep up in game 1 with merfolk, BG/x, and other decks that run power 2 drops, like tokens.

As a sidenote, Pia and Kiran Nalaar have proven themselves in certain grixis and UR decks.

PiKi is interesting, but I've played against it a few times and never seen it do anything, so I'm pretty skeptical, unfortunately.

Monastery Swiftspear feels a little on the aggressive side. Not a great topdeck and I'd rather play delver because 3/2 flyers are awesome.

Remand and Spell Snare are 2 cards I need to reconsider. I should probably have Remand, but I just don't really like Snare, although the potential against Merfolk and countering Voice of Resurgence are both very relevant to this deck. You know, I think I'll try a 1-of Remand. Worst case scenario it proves to be bad in testing, and since I playtest often I'll find out quickly.

Thanks for the help! I hate to more or less shoot down your advice because that just discourages commenting, but I've been playing this deck for awhile and have it fairly tuned and the deck is super tight, so it's hard for suggestions to find their way in. I am always open to hearing more suggestions though because the more cards I consider, the more likely they are to make it in. Thanks!

Been watching some of SCG's player's championship. From what I have gathered from those playing Grixis Control, PiKi is used much like Lingering Souls, and is used with rather great effect to fight Lingering Souls. Funny thing is, Vampire Nighthawk performs much the same function.
PiKi helps Grixis decks trade up into large creatures. Vampire Nighthawk just chumps those large creatures and kills them.

TheAlexGnan you mean like Kalitas, who also improves our burn matchup AND out BGx matchup? Also is bolt and abrupt decay-proof? Also gets bigger constantly because we can sac Bloodghast to it and makes us an army every time we cast a removal spell? Seriously I'm starting to think that this card was built for our deck, despite the CMC=4 mana cost. Dutogira did a great analysis of the card on Rocket Science.

Hilariously, Electrolyze is the swap that I am least sure about.

The '1 cantrip equalizes 1 land' logic kinda makes sense I guess, but I dunno. I've never regretted having 22 land or really missed the 3rd Visions. Without delver, we really need to hit 3-4 lands by turn 4-5 pretty regularly, which we can't do on 21 lands.

Right now I know this decklist is flawed. It's not ideal. I'm actually happy with this mainboard. The marginal differences in our lists are, at this point, personal preference. Just normal variation you'd expect between the same deck in the flex spots.

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that when Eldrazi gets banned, we're supposed to drop 1 Damnation for something else. Not sure what. That'll bring the board down to 4 counterspells, 5 sweepers, 3 Fulminator, and 3 flex spots.

Spellskite might be pretty good in the side. When do you side it in?

Against burn, they usually side in their Destructive Revelry since it's a safe bet that I'm boarding in Claw or Spellskite. Then when I don't, they have 4 dead cards in their deck. Additionally, against any opposing deck playing counterspells, of which there are a lot in my meta, my post-board plan is that I side in a handful of counterspells myself then casually cantrip and play EOT Burn until I can force through a fatty with countermagic. So basically, I board into Grixis Control post-board.

That said, Burn is still a bad matchup for me, yet it's winnable for you. I'm still trying to figure out how to improve that matchup

These days, I'm not liking Rakdos Charm as much. It's a good card, but I know it doesn't belong in the deck. The problem is matchups like Living End, Grishoalbrand, and Dredgevine, all of which are more or less unwinnable without grave hate. Heavy counterspells and certain types of removal can hurt them, as does a short clock, but grave hate is really the only reliable way to kill them.

To be honest, the jank factor in this deck is what makes it so good. I've seen Bloodghast take over more games than I can recall. I will never even consider playing this deck in modern without him or some close substitute because although jank, every tiered deck was a brew at some point. I know this isn't tier-1 competitive, but it's also much more competitive than I think it gets credit for.

I think I'm going to take GlistenerAgent's advice and just make a list of potential sideboard options. Once I have that, then I'll look at my options and figure out what I want to do. I might not actually want the 3rd Kolaghan's Command in the sideboard. Not sure. Painful Truths has been unbelievably good in my sideboard and probably deserves a spot in this one too.

I am curious why you still have Faithless Looting here when it's incredibly ass with Snapcaster Mage. Liliana of the Veil is also real bad with Snap. I'd recommend Jaces or going Looting --> Thought Scour and cut a Snap or Liliana.

Jace is the better option of the two, although I have never liked Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip. I'll definitely miss going Bolt-Snap-Bolt, but this is meant to be the competitive version, so I guess I'll just have to run Jace.

GlistenerAgent

Well, you were right as usual. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  ^Flip was a big improvement. I still hate Baby Jace, but I have to admit that it's much more powerful in here. This deck had the problem that sometimes there was just nothing to flashback, so running Jace instead not only means that he plays better with lili, but I'm also getting value off of him even when I don't have stuff to flashback.

Now the mainboard feels pretty strong. Perhaps I should have a 23rd land, but there's so much looting in here that it shouldn't be an issue.

The sideboard, on the other hand, is wrong. I have no idea how to fix it and will stubbornly disagree with most suggestions, but the one thing I am certain of is that it is far from optimal.

Potentially useful

Ooh, anecdotal evidence! It was pretty helpful though. Thanks!

I like your deck, but with it the is marginal gain. Of course you can beat your opponents board but you really only have 4 good "threat" creatures. Those creatures however are too vulnerable, once they're gone you either have to wait till you can get the next one or you have to keep killing the board. You don't have a lot of utility to help protect your creatures either. You need to add some counterspells mainboard so that you can counter things you don't want your opponent playing and to protect the creatures you need in order to win.

Bloodghast is much better than is seems for beats. Don't forget Creeping Tar Pit either; that thing kills.

I used to play counterspells main, but they turned out to not work very well. Protecting my stuff isn't super important either. I can use Inquisition of Kozilek to remove the removal spells I care about like Path to Exile, but things like Terminate barely matter. Kolaghan's Command and Rise/Fall mean that my stuff can just die without it really mattering.

Counterspells proved to be awkward since this deck needs to be tapping out for things like Kalitas or Creeping Tar Pit, yet to do that I can't be holding mana for counterspells. Since this isn't a dedicated control deck either, I can't wait until I have mana to cast both Kalitas and a counterspell. At that point, I've already lost.

So guys, I was just playing on untap.in and I beat bogles. My decklist was the exact one I've listed above with that sideboard. Here's how the games went:

Game 1: typical bogles. He plays a turn 1 Slippery Bogle, I can't find Liliana of the Veil, and then he wins.

Game 2: Turn 1 I Thoughtseize his Slippery Bogle. Turn 2 I cast Spellskite. Turn 3 I cast Liliana of the Veil. His decklist had a lot more bogles in it than most lists, so Liliana of the Veil couldn't keep up and eventually died, but Spellskite and a late Kalitas were able to win the game. Come to think of it, the extra bogles were likely out of the sideboard.

Game 3: keeps his 7 and waits to play a Bogle + enchantment while beating me down with Dryad Arbor early. It started good for him, but I was able to Pyroclasm-Snapcaster Mage-Pyroclasm to kill his bogle. Then he topdecked another, so I had to Engineered Explosives that one away. Then I dropped Kalitas and then was able to Kolaghan's Command and snap-Kolaghan's Command him on upkeep to keep him without a hand as I finished him off.

Overall, this is the first time I've actually felt like I've had a chance against Bogles, which is a nice change of pace. Had I been playing with Jace instead of Snap, I likely would have lost. Snap gives me flexibility of casting timing and a clock. Spellskite also saved me because Lili was not enough in game 2. I didn't board in the Rakdos Charm in my board, but the 1-of Spellskite seems pretty good in the sideboard to me.

TheAlexGnan, turns out you were right about Spellskite.

Definitely. bouncing all creatures then getting a really fast clock sorta screws them over.

The sad part is that I traded away my Spellskite when it was $20. Seriously regretting that. I have a friend with an extra so I'll try to borrow his for a bit. Lili was the all-star against that deck though....

So Ancestral Vision is back. So is Sword of the Meek. The latter likely helps this deck since more artifacts running around means we have more excuses to run Kolaghan's Command. Because of this, I've swapped back from Electrolyze to a third Kommand. I'm trying a 4th Kommand in the sideboard, but that will likely become something else.

The Ancestral Vision unban excites me because it will increase the health of the format, however, it likely means this deck is getting more bad matchups. Any ancestral vision matchup will likely be unfavored because they will be able to grind and control better than me. However, I'm a blue deck that has a way to get rid of bad topdecks, so I can play Ancestral Vision to fight back. Because of this, I've changed the 2 Serum Visions to 2 Ancestral Vision and added 1 to the sideboard as well.

After some testing, Ancestral Vision is too inconsistent to be viable in here. So I'm back on the Serum Visions plan. With tron getting hit by the ban, I've dropped 1 Fulminator Mage, since tron was the only matchup where I sided 4 of them in anyway.

From rumors I've heard, Thopter-Sword in non-tez lists is a lot like twin except it doesn't die to Terminate. I'm trying boarding 1 Extirpate since I think it's the best possible tech against that deck as well as 1 Rakdos Charm since there's never been a better time to run it.

I also added 1 Slaughter Games to the board since it is going to be great vs Ancestral Scapeshift, which is a deck I already fear. It's also useable against Ancestral Gifts, Thopter-Sword, and any other combo deck, making it already feel like a solid include.

3 things I am worried about: if Thopter-Sword is big, then there will likely be more grave hate running around, so I think this deck is going to be terribly positioned in a few weeks. Secondly, with Ancestral Vision, it feels like there has never been a better time to play Remand; should I try to play 2 in the mainboard instead of Serum Visions or is that a bad idea? And finally, I still worry about my burn matchup in this deck. Burn will likely die off because of Thopter-Sword, but having counterspells and Spellskite be my only sideboard tech makes me more than a little nervous. I'd love to have 1 more Rise/Fall in the 75, but it feels like a terrible card in the new meta since it's only okay against Ancestral Vision decks and Thopter-Sword decks do not mind me making them discard a Sword of the Meek.

Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Thanks guys!

Why not run Murderous Cut instead of Doom Blade? You aren't running many delve cards like Gurmag and Tasigur at once, and you're using up a lot of power at the same time, and Murderous Cut is a potential one black instant speed kill anything. That's what I have to input.

The original creator of this deck, TheAlexGnan, advocates for Murderous Cut as well. I dislike it because although I only have 2 delve creatures, I also have 4 Snapcaster Mage and 4 Bloodghast, both of which require a card in the graveyard to function optimally.

Basically, I think a 1-of Murderous Cut is too much graveyard stress. What happens when I get both a Tasigur, the Golden Fang and a Murderous Cut in my opening hand?

Additionally, it's very hard to cast Murderous Cut on turn 2. Against really fast decks, I'll play a tapped shock turn 1, then fetch for a basic turn 2 to cast Doom Blade to save a lot of life and be playing removal. With Murderous Cut, the only way to cast it turn 2 is to play a card turn 1 and use 2 fetchlands, which tends to be more life-intensive.

Just my thoughts on the matter. Many people like the 1-of Murderous Cut, so maybe I'm wrong.

TheAlexGnan and wrym1

I've been trying a 1-of Murderous Cut instead of Doom Blade just to see what happens. I haven't drawn it yet, so I don't know much yet about if it fits, but I'll let you know when I'm done testing.

Also on your comment on your Tron matchup - since you run Thoughtseize it is possible to discard their karns, yes? So consider Tribute to Hunger in the sideboard. It's instant speed and relatively cheap but Tron typically only has one threat on the board at a time. Less effective with Wurmcoil Engine but if you could seize those too you might buy time for Crumble to Dust. Tribute on emrakul I've never seen done but +15 life would be a big setback on their plan I'd say! Til they drop a threat next turn -_- (snap-tribute while beating with ghasts?)

I'll definitely have to consider it. Being useable against Bogles, Burn, BGx, most other aggro decks, possibly even affinity to kill Etched Champion, but that's getting into magical christmas land since they almost always have a second creature to sac instead.

Well, first off your sideboard's too big! On a more serious note, I'd probably cut the mana leak and countersquall to get down to 15, and then probably take out the Slaughter Games or Rakdos Charm to fit a second Spellskite into the sideboard, since the card just does so much work in the relevant matchups, of which there are a lot of.

I'd comment on the mainboard, but it looks solid and as mentioned somewhere you don't have any fluff to take out at this point.