Hello everyone and welcome back to BrawlingInATopHat. I’m Zoe, sometimes MonkeyInATopHat over on the socials, and today I have a fun little brew for you. This is one of my more “meta” lists; its a control-combo deck based around taking infinite turns in Grixis! The deck’s goal is to keep opponents’ boards clear of threats until it can assemble one of its infinite turn combos. While the deck has a few of those combos, the one that I think is the most fun involves this interesting Alchemy exclusive card.
Cue jazzy opening credits.
CROSS FADE TO:
You son of a gun — I’m in.
Okay, Crew, so Here’s How It’s Gonna Go Down…
In every famous heist movie, the protagonist needs to assemble a crack team of individuals with special skill-sets that come together to get the job done. When building a Bank Job deck, it’s no different. So let’s play some snappy, up-tempo music and start montaging through our crew. First up is our mastermind – the one that puts it all together and makes the whole thing work. The leader, the shot caller, and the looks. Let me introduce you to Timestream Navigator, who is capable of jumping to the bottom of our deck every time she takes an extra turn. In combination with our titular card pulling from the bottom of our library every turn, we’re able to take infinite turns.
But wait! That won’t work on its own, will it? It’s too slow, what with summoning sickness slowing our girl-boss down. Luckily the Caper-paradigm provides the perfect solution. The crew needs a wheelman. A gadget guru that’s also a bit of a grease monkey. Catch my drift? Someone capable of speeding everything up and giving Timestream Navigator the haste she needs to make this work. Enter: Reckless Ringleader, straight from the tin street himself! He can put haste on the Timestream Navigator so she can get in and out all in one turn!
There’s a 95 pound Pirate with an infinite number of turns behind this door. Let’s get her out.
Its all coming together now. Just need one last piece — some muscle to make it all go smoothly.
SMASH CUT TO:
The Control Package
So we’ve got our nifty little combo and a couple ways to set it into motion. The rest of the game is going to be about protecting and enabling that. To succeed, the deck needs to run a balanced suite of interaction to go alongside its combo finish. That means, ideally, we want to be able to handle any threat our opponents bring our way. In my experience, the biggest threats are creatures; however, they’re also the easiest threat to deal with.
When looking at creature interaction, I like to aim for one or two mana, and to get cards with the least specific qualifiers for the creature they remove. That means the text “Destroy target Merfolk.” is worse than the text “Destroy target non-Merfolk.” Make sense? Good. The other way to deal with creatures is to let them pile up a bit, then cast a board wipe, like:
It’s the fuzz; cheese it!
Some aggressive decks will walk right into board wipes, so let them. Oops! Game over. Pro tip, if you are ever facing a commander that looks like it wants to make a lot of little guys really fast and swarm you with them, prioritize hands with board wipes in them, even if they are low on lands. You run more lands than board wipes, and you cannot beat them without one of these in your pocket.
The next threat we’ll deal with is less obvious – I need to handle my opponents’ interaction. It’s a much bigger threat than any artifact, enchantment, or ‘walker could be. That’s because it can disrupt the combo in real time. In worst case scenarios, they can leave no way to get it back. To get around that we need broad-and-hard counter-magic alongside hand disruption. Broad means cards that counter any spell, and hard means it doesn’t give them an out, like paying mana to ignore the effect. Two great examples are Mana Drain and Counterspell. They both deal with anything and give no recourse to avoid it – and at the low rate of two mana.
Hand disruption enables proactive interaction for any opponents’ disruption, while counter-magic allows us to be reactive to it. We need our muscle to be able to cover everything.
Get ’em, boys!
Remember, Crew, Always Have a Backup Plan
Now you might be asking yourself, “Why did you pick Cormela, Glamour Thief as the commander?” Well, not only is she great at ramping your mana to spend on all your interaction, but you also have a soft lock with her. Let me introduce you to the backup plan.
Always have a backup plan for when it hits the fan.
If you manage to flip it, Fable of the Mirror Breaker is, on its own, an infinite turn combo with Timestream Navigator. But it can also be used with Saiba Syphoner to cast any instant or sorcery spells over and over. Spells like Time Stop and River’s Rebuke. Good, clean fun. No salt here; no sir—
— annnnd I’m getting roped by a Jace-avatar again. Well, that happens. Some crews just can’t handle the heat of the job. Not our guys though.
Back to work! Let me show you the latest in secret Commander tech. Sublime Epiphany can be used to make a copy of Cormela, Glamour Thief, which will immediately die to the legend rule. This allows you to get back Sublime Epiphany. And hey, that new simulacra is untapped to pay for that Sublime Epiphany you just got back! Trust me, opponents love this!
Loop this interaction on threats until you find what you need, or, more likely, they quit. This interaction can also be used with Saiba Syphoner to slowly fill your board with 2/2s, but it’s more expensive without Cormela’s mana backing it up.
Tips and Tricks: Timing is Everything for Grixis Turns
The hardest part of playing this deck is patience. You need to only go for the win when you can do so without being interacted with in a way that stops it all from working. The timing on that varies greatly depending on what type of deck your opponents are playing. Against aggro decks, its easy; just do it as soon as you can, or else they run you over. But against some midrange and most if not all control decks, it’ll be about creating an opening.
Keeping hand disruption spells held back for when you’re about to attempt to win can be incredibly helpful for this. I cannot emphasize the power of knowing what’s in your opponent’s hand at any given time. For this reason, don’t dump all your hand disruption the second you draw it. Sure, first turn Thoughtseize away, but then don’t follow it up with that second turn Duress. You got the information and a card already. Hold it for later when you need to know if it’s safe to go all in.
Step One: Crack mind.
Step Two: Crack safe.
Hand disruption is useful, sure, but what happens when you then see a handful of various counterspells? Well, a good way to handle that is to find your Cavern of Souls and choose Human or Pirate. But that’s not always an option, as we can’t always choose our draws. So then it turns into a game of trying to get more mana and counters than they have. You have to wait for them to try to go for it, stop them, then counter on their turn if they’re tapped out. Or you can try to get a big enough mana, card, and board-state lead on them that you can go for it and still defend yourself. Beware, those games tend to go long.
Switching Up the Crew
Just like with the heist film genre, this deck can work with several different setups. There are many black-red-blue commanders that you can choose to run this combo in. Of course there is every flavor of that dragon guy, but don’t limit yourself! Admiral Beckett Brass, and Admiral Brass, Unsinkable are two different Pirate-type themed commanders, and did you know Timestream Navigator just so happens to be a Pirate? Or maybe lean harder into committing crimes and go with Marchesa, Dealer of Death. The nice thing about “the 99” of this deck is you can put any different commanders at the helm and still succeed with minimal tweaking.
Do it. Give in to those base urges. Play your obsession.
Until Next Time
Please, if you like my articles, follow me over on my Bsky and Twitch. Here are all my socials links! I’ve started streaming a couple formats on Twitch, some paper Commander variants, but, more importantly, the decks from these articles! You can see them in action there, and on my YouTube the following day. Coming up in the near future, you can keep your eye out for some MTG: Arena eternal metagame articles, as well as some theory-crafts for the potential Brawl commanders coming in the next set!
Now remember, keep your head down until all this blows over. No big purchases, and if we see each other on the streets we don’t know each other. Now scram!
New to Brawl? Check out our complete Beginner’s Guide to playing the format.
