The Most CRUEL Color Combination. Lose Your Friends by Playing Grixis

Blue, Black, and Red. Cunning, Cruelty and Ambition at any cost — Grixis is the embodiment of the ultimate combination of absolute control that comes in many shapes and forms. It is also my personal favorite color triad, by far.

Grixis plans, manipulates, destroys, demands, takes, influences, burns, deceives, reanimates and bleeds. Anything you can imagine (except ramping) Grixis does it best. Blue supplies the knowledge and trickery, black provides the ambition and recursion, and red fuels raw destructive impulse. Together they forge a philosophy built on exploiting weaknesses and turning chaos into power.

Having access to three colors opens up our possibilities to the vast endlesness, however the more colors you add, the better and more careful you have to be at crafting a well supporting mana base to go along with it.

Blue, Black and Red all give us access to tutors — Vampiric Tutor | Demonic Tutor Mystical Tutor | Gamble

Blue brings the counter spells — Fierce Guardianship | Force of Will | Force of Negation | Mana Drain

Black brings the flexibility and value — Orcish Bowmasters | Sheoldred, the Apocalypse | Waste Not | Toxic Deluge

Red brings passion and chaos — Wheel of Fortune | Blasphemous Act | Chaos Warp | Deflecting Swat

All 3 gives us access to some of the most powerful cards — Cruel Ultimatum | Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God | Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh | Phyrexian Tyranny

Grixis as an archetype was first born in the plane of Alara, as all other triads. Since then it’s been known as the ultimate control combination.

Archetype 1: Token Control & Amass

First we will explore the angle of overwhelming our opponents at every step of the way with the power of Sauron, the Dark Lord. The gameplan is quite simple: draw cards, amass armies, recur your best threats, and grind value until your opponents buckle beneath an ever-growing mass of Orcs.

The earlier and the longer he is on the field, the better he is. You mostly have to be aware and careful of counterspells as he also already comes with a built-in protection with an annoyingly hard to deal with Ward, which requires sacrificing a legendary artifact or creature.

The deck is built around having a steady stream of huge token creatures, and +1/+1 counters which translates into having a board pressence and also pressuring our opponents. Orcish Bowmasters pings any opponent that dares draw any extra card, while also amassing an Orc Army; Gothmog, Morgul Lieutenant buffs all of our creature tokens by giving them deathtouch, while also amassing Orcs; Saruman, the White Hand amasses Orcs X anytime you cast a noncreature spell, X being its mana value; Lord of the Nazgul gives us 3/3 Wraith tokens anytime we cast an instant or sorcery, while also making them extra scary if we get to 9 of them or more.

Other sources of token generation include Enchantments like Dreadhorde Invasion, March from the Black Gate, Black Market Connections, Mindless Conscription, and In the Darkness Bind Them which are all a steady stream of new or bigger tokens.

We also have creatures that buff our tokens even more, like Mauhur, Uruk-hai Captain which doubles all +1/+1 counters that would be put on any Army or Orc we have; or take advantage of our huge tokens Grishnakh, Brash Instigator which outright steals a creature; Orcish Siegemaster which gives all our Orcs trample, and he himself can become a beast of his own; and Warg Rider which gives all of our Orcs crazy evasion in the form of Menace, while also amassing Orcs every single one of our combats.

With The Reaver Cleaver we can send a huge Army to attack with trample, and even if it doesn’t survive, we get nasty amounts of value by turning all the damage done to a Player or Planeswalker into treasures; Fiery Inscription keeps the pressure even and constant by punishing every opponent any time we cast an instant or sorcery spell; All Will Be One turns each and every one of our counters into raw damage; and The Ozolith is a vessel that makes sure none of our counters go into waste, but back into the field.

On the supporting cast we have Bilbo, Retired Burglar which you can make your Ring bearer as soon as he enters the field, making him very hard to block, and giving you extra mana if he can connect a hit. Moria Scavenger which can cycle your hand, or put a key creature on the battlefield, ready to be reanimated. Gandalf, Friend of the Shire gives us the flexibility to be able to cast our Sorceries as if they had flash. Grima, Saruman's Footman is a good ringbearer as well, as he is unblockable, and also lets us dig into our opponents decks looking for anything we may want to cast for ourselves.

To keep our hand plentiful we also have The One Ring, which also doubles as a one round safeguard: Palantir of Orthanc, which also doubles as a source of extra damage; and Call of the Ring.

As our possible finishers we’ve got Widespread Brutality, Blasphemous Edict, Living Death, Insurrection, and Assault on Osgiliath.

If overwhelming your opponents with every play, while also having the flexibility to turn it all around if things aren’t going in your favour sounds like your style, this is the deck for you.

Archetype 2: Demon Burn

Similar to our last archetype in one aspect, this one relies on casting Demons and letting their presence be what defeats our enemies. With Be'lakor, the Dark Master at the helm, every Demon that Enters the Battlefield under our control does damage equal to its power to any target. He also is flexible in that whenever he himself Enters the Battlefield, we can grab a bunch of cards by relying on our Demon synergy.

We have a bunch of ways to cheapen our creatures mana costs in the form of creatures Nightscape Familiar, Herald of Slaanesh, Ancient Cellarspawn; and artifacts Urza's Incubator, Herald's Horn. We can also boost our mana reserves with mana rocks like Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and Relic of Sauron.

To protect our commander we have the always reliable booties Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots.

Since we fulfill the ETB and Tribal checks, we can use some very powerful cards to their best potential. Enchantments like Molten Echoes and Reflections of Littjara copying all of our creatures. Artifacts like Panharmonicon and Roaming Throne which will double our ETB triggers; Herald's Horn to help us keep our hand filled, and Patchwork Banner to buff all of our creatures.

The gameplay is quite straightforward all things considered. Just set up your pieces to play Be’lakor or any of your demons and slowly but surely take over the game. Demons are some of the most powerful creature types; they usually come with downsides, either a very big mana cost, or penalties for playing them, but if you get over the high costs, they pay-offs are also quite high.

Take for example Prince of Thralls, Archfiend of Despair, Rakdos, the Showstopper and Reaper from the Abyss, all big bodies with very powerful effects attached to them. The high mana cost isn’t too much of an issue since we have a few ways to cheapen their mana costs and to boost our mana generation.

Other powerful and notable demons include: Bloodletter of Aclazotz, Kardur, Doomscourge, Plague Drone, Archfiend of Depravity, Balor, Chaos Defiler, Great Unclean One, and Raphael, Fiendish Savior.

If playing huge creatures that explode the battlefield in various different ways while making others submit to your will seems like something you would enjoy, this is the deck for you.

Archetype 3: Wheel

Commonly known as “Wheel” is an effect that causes players to discard all of their hand, and draw a new one. Seems harmless at first, until you start adding effects that benefit you and punish your enemies for both of those things.

Our commander Nekusar, the Mindrazer is a living Underworld Dreams with the extra of letting everyone draw an extra card. How kind of him. This deck is full of effects like this, so the point is to make everyone keep on drawing cards and kill themselves in the process of doing so. Of course, we will always come out on top, as many of our cards let us take advantage of it.

This archetype exploits every aspect of the wheel in various ways. We have creatures that punish our enemies everytime they draw a card: Kederekt Parasite, Razorkin Needlehead, Glint-Horn Buccaneer, Scrawling Crawler, Fate Unraveler, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse as well as creatures that boost up out damage in the form of Ghyrson Starn, Kelemorph, and Tor Wauki the Younger.

We have ways to force all players to draw extra cards in the form of creatures like Faerie Mastermind, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Stormfist Crusader, Zenith Chronicler, Master of the Feast, and Scrawling Crawler shows up again as a 2 in 1 in this case.

We can also force extra draws with artifacts like Howling Mine, and enchantments like Fevered Visions, Spiteful Visions, and Forced Fruition.

We also take advantage of any discards our opponents will be forced to do. Fell Specter pings them for 2 life each time, same with Liliana's Caress and Megrim. Waste Not gives us flexible advantage whenever a discard happens, and Tergrid, God of Fright straight up steals any permanents that may be discarded by an opponent.

To top it all off, we have our Wheel effects to squeeze every bit of value from our cards. We can wheel with creatures: Jace's Archivist, and Magus of the Wheel. We can wheel with sorceries: Wheel of Fate, Burning Inquiry, Winds of Change, Dark Deal, Molten Psyche, Windfall, Whispering Madness, Incendiary Command, Khorvath's Fury, Reforge the Soul, Time Reversal, Echo of Eons. And, finally, we can even wheel with instants: Wheel and Deal.

We have SO MANY options that it’s almost like Grixis was literally made for this. So if making everyone at your table hate you (and very likely target you from the start) and still win, this just might be the deck for you.

Archetype 4: Discard

Discard is a mechanic Black already excels at, add in Blue for extra control and blink effects, and Red for extra flexibility and damage and you’ve got a deadly coctail in your hands.

With Kefka, Court Mage as our commander the deck is optimized to take advantage of every discarded card, and to keep our enemies on their toes by limiting them to just top-decking via endless discarding, unable to plan anything to get out of our grasp.

Bandit's Talent, Liliana's Caress, Waste Not, Raider's Wake, and Court of Ambition are all enchantments that exploit our enemies for discarding cards, be it by slowly killing them, or giving us extra resources.

On the creature side of things we have low mana cost and very valuable drops that will keep us in the lead by taking advantage of what’s about to happen in the game. The Raven Man, Tinybones, Bauble Burglar, and Tinybones, Trinket Thief.

As for Planeswalkers, both Liliana of the Veil and Angrath, the Flame-Chained keep forcing discards every turn, while Jace, the Mind Sculptor gives us another angle for soft control, or overall value by Brainstorming every turn, or letting us re-play creatures.

Now of course, for the “meat” of the deck we have a bunch of heavy hitting creatures, all very oppressive and powerful on their own. We will divide them in 3 categories. First come the Enter the Battlefield effects like: Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, Sheoldred, Rottenmouth Viper, Archon of Cruelty, and Kefka, Court Mage himself.

Then, we have the creatures with effects that let us Blink (and thus re-trigger our first creature category) other creatures: Displacer Kitten with an easy to trigger effect (casting a non-creature spell), Thassa, Deep-Dwelling blinking at the end of every one of our turns, and Y'shtola Rhul doing the same thing.

And finally, we have the creatures with static and very powerful effects, that do everything just by existing on the field, like: Scrawling Crawler, Sangromancer, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal, Bone Miser, Tergrid, God of Fright, The Haunt of Hightower, and The Locust God.

To round it all up, on the non-creature side of things we’ve got Rhystic Study and Geth's Grimoire to keep ourselves ahead in card draw, Conjurer's Closet as an extra blink effect to keep re-triggering creatures, and finally Dark Deal and Windfall to trigger an explosive turn for us if everything is in place.

Last but not least, even our lands can force discards to happen, in the form of Rix Maadi, Dungeon Palace and Geier Reach Sanitarium.

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure which of the 4 archetypes will make yourself be hated more, but I really lean towards this one, and I love it.

Closing Thoughts

Grixis remains a color combination defined not by a single strategy, but by the shared belief that power should be seized, shaped, and weaponized. Whether through overwhelming boards, explosive triggers, relentless wheels, or crushing discard, each archetype channels Blue’s calculation, Black’s hunger, and Red’s volatility into a focused plan of domination.

As Commander continues to grow and diversify, Grixis stands tall as the home for players who enjoy dictating the pace of the game and bending resources to their will. Whatever expression of cruelty, cunning, or ambition you choose, Grixis gives you the tools. If you’re bold enough to use them.