So how exactly does one stop a 3-mana sorcery from resolving?
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If you haven't figured out the answer yet, I have it right here for you:
Grixis Pyromancer by Nate Barton
4 Young Pyromancer
2 Baleful Strix
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Dack Fayden
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Dig Through Time
1 Thought Scour
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Forked Bolt
1 Counterspell
1 Spell Snare
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
2 Island
1 Swamp
Sideboard:
1 Massacre
1 Innocent Blood
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Hydroblast
2 Flusterstorm
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Blood Moon
1 Pithing Needle
1 Null Rod
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Pyroblast
With Omni-Tell spreading like the plague and Miracles sitting atop the fun police throne, this sure seems like the one deck to rule them all. This deck's Omni-Tell matchup is very, very good between Cabal Therapy to take their important cards out of the equation, counterspells, and a fast clock in the form of Young Pyromancer. The Miracles matchup is a bit trickier but I believe it is favorable. Keeping them off of Sensei's Divining Top is almost impossible, but the fact that you force them to try and function on low resources due to Cabal Therapy makes it difficult for the Miracles deck to really get off the ground and stabilize if you don't play too far into Terminus and can keep Counterbalance off the table.
The Grixis Pyromancer deck is great against decks that require a lot of resources to function or go off because it excels at picking apart its opponents game plan by gaining information about its opponent's hand and either ripping it apart with Cabal Therapy or countering the spells that are most important to its game plan, then pulling ahead with Dig Through Time or your planeswalkers if you aren't just killing your opponent with Young Pyromancer. You are also almost always ahead in the information war playing this deck thanks to Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy. What is your opponent supposed to do when you play a seemingly important spell and they know that you know that they have a counterspell? They don't want to use resources on a spell that isn't important to your game plan, but if you're willing to give them the option of dealing with one of your threats, something more dangerous must be looming, right? I love playing decks that make it easier to leverage a mental edge, and Grixis Pyromancer is definitely one of those decks. This build of Grixis Pyromancer in particular has some nice Cabal Therapy synergies. In addition to the Pyromancer+Therapy combo, Snapcaster Mage and Baleful Strix both combo with Therapy for some sweet value. Turn 1 Gitxian Probe into Cabal Therapy, Turn 2 Baleful Strix or Snapcaster to flashback Probe into sacrificing your value creature to flashback Cabal Therapy makes it so you don't need Young Pyromancer to go nuts with a Cabal Therapy. The cards are also sweet on their own; Baleful Strix cantrips and blocks everything, and Snapcaster Mage is just always good at every stage of the game. It takes a bit of experience to know when it's appropriate to take these lines, since they aren't always the most obvious, but when you don't have a Young Pyromancer in your opener to combo with Therapy, these lines are the next best thing.
The deck certainly has weaknesses, however. Graveyard hate makes some of your important spells uncastable and reduces the value you can get from Cabal Therapy. Additionally, with Young Pyromancer being the deck's most reliable way to close games out, the deck is highly susceptible to Punishing Fire strategies. I also didn't take into account before last weekend that my 75 had literally no way of stopping a Marit Lage except chumping it for a turn with Baleful Strix and either casting Innocent Blood or activating Jace's -1. Needless to say, these scenarios are near-impossible to set up, and I lost a round to Lands due to lack of preparation and because this deck's strategy is just inherently weak against what the Lands deck is trying to do.
I've had some people asking me why I switched to this deck from Stoneblade, and my answer was and still is that it was a meta call for a metagame that is increasingly populated by Omni-Tell and Miracles. Stoneblade is good against almost every deck hanging out on the fringes of the Legacy metagame because it is able to easily outclass or deal with whatever threats its opponents present to it while having access to white sideboard cards to hate out linear combo decks as well as the great catch-alls that blue and white provide like Force of Will and Swords to Plowshares. However, Stoneblade suffers from being a jack of all trades and a master of none. Want a better control deck? Play Miracles. Want a better tempo deck? Play Delver. Want a better disruptive midrange deck? Play Jund or Grixis. I'm still of the opinion that the Stoneblade deck can evolve to beat anything if it wants to, but when the metagame is populated by decks that Stoneforge Mystic itself is not a great option against I'm inclined to try other things.
Looking Forward
The next big Legacy events I'm preparing for are the SCG Invitational in New Jersey at the end of this month, and Grand Prix Seattle in November. I expect Omni-Tell and Miracles will still be rampant in New Jersey, so I'm inclined to stick with Grixis Pyromancer at least for that tournament. Even though Stoneblade is my comfort zone, I'm having a ton of fun casting Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy for the time being. We'll see how I feel about the Legacy metagame after that tournament. My last resort for Seattle will be to simply play Miracles if I can't figure the metagame out by then, although that is mostly just a backup plan for if I can't find a Stoneblade or Grixis build that I like for that tournament.
Post-Script
Highlights from SCG DC would definitely include crushing Omni-Tell players' hopes and dreams, getting baited and outsmarted by Tom Ross at every possible juncture in round 12 (dude is seriously a master), and Tim Muzio's renditions of “Rap God” and “Complicated” on the way home. I love traveling for Magic tournaments and I can't wait until the New Jersey Invitational for more quality time with my homies and tight matches of Magic.
