How to Play Gruul Aggro for Atlanta

Today's soundtrack:

https://open.spotify.com/track/5SgnryLxcHznrwfWbhUHN1?si=4a763d961c1e47dd

Table of Contents

• Intro

• Card by Card Breakdown

• Big Picture Strategy

• Mana Sequencing

• Combat Math

• Matchup Plans & Sideboarding

• Mulligans

• Closing Thoughts

Intro

Big news - I'm not going to be playing Otters in Atlanta, because I don't think it's the deck that gives me the highest winning percentage in standard right now.

As I wrote about back in September, I think deck selection is one of the biggest skills someone can have for succeeding at constructed - on the level of drafting skill for winning at limited. Here's an excerpt from that piece:

I believe there is a "broken" deck in standard - or at least a deck that is clearly the strongest baseline thing people are playing right now. A better word might be "imbalanced" (despite almost every Magic youtube video I come across being some likely-bad brew claiming to have "broken standard").

The current core of red cards in Standard that got introduced with Bloomburrow - Heartfire Hero, Manifold Mouse, and Emberheart Challenger, along with the already-existing Monstrous Rage - is the most powerful red deck we've seen in a long, long, long time. One indicator of this is that these cards immediately shook up Pioneer, a more powerful format, with the RB mice deck. Another sign is that there are approximately a hundred different builds in standard with all 4 of these cards as 4-ofs, and all of them are reasonably successful. A deck with these cards was also the best deck in the room at Worlds (thanks to red master Quinn Tonole).

Adding green for Questing Druid and Innkeeper's Talent I believe adds an entire dimension to this already-very-strong deck. Before this version started popping up, I thought that Otters had a very difficult-to-play, but genuinely even matchup with red. I no longer think this, because the red deck has gotten significantly more resilient and able to last into the lategame with Otters, so surviving the early pressure is no longer enough.

If you can't beat em, you've gotta join 'em.

I switched over to playing gruul on Arena ladder a few weeks ago, and I've been having a very, very good run with it:

To be honest, I'm not used to having this kind of winrate over such a high sample size, in limited or constructed. It feels like I have a significant deck advantage over nearly every opponent I face, and I've been figuring out how to play the deck well enough to take advantage of this.

I don't think I'm the best Gruul player out there -- but I am a highly competent one now, and I also think I'm extremely good at writing deck guides. I feel like I can provide people a lot of value by explaining how I've been winning with a tier 1 deck, so let's get into it!!

Card by Card Breakdown

Here's the list I currently have submitted for Atlanta. It might change a bit in the next 24 hours, but it likely won't by very much:

Here I'm only going to be discussing cards that I'm actually playing, because getting into speculative inclusions is too much for an already-long article like this - but going forward I'm sure there will be some options for how to adjust the deck, and maybe I'll talk about them if people find it useful!

This card is so good they nerfed it on Arena alchemy, which I discovered searching scryfall for the image just now!

On its own, Heartfire isn't great, but with any tiny amount of support it becomes one of your best cards. Get it to a 2/2 and it's already a very meaningful threat, 3/3 and above (which is most of the time) and the game starts to revolve around it.

It is important to recognize how synergy-dependent Heartfire is in this deck. This is almost more of a combo card than an aggro card - how much you value it is going to be heavily dependent on whether you currently have the enablers for it. Fortunately, opponents likely won't know whether you do or not, so it might eat that removal spell anyways.

Even if we had fewer ways to take advantage of the little mouse that could and it was more of a high-variance threat, 1-drops are so essential to aggro decks that I couldn't imagine cutting it.

Watchwolf + Phyrexian Arena? Sign me up.

Emberheart is your highest value threat, because it represents card flow as well as large amounts of damage. Again it's kind of a synergy piece, but can hold its own better than Heartfire. Often synergy pieces are weaker in low-resource games because it's easier to disrupt one half of the synergy package, but if you can identify when the game's going to get grindy, you can usually "squeak" a card out of the trigger before it gets removed, which is extremely nice.

If you can stabilize a board with a Challenger left over and something like a Rockface village, you're likely going to win that game.

Of course, neither Hero nor challenger would be nearly the cards they are without the maestro running the show. Manifold is absolutely incredible with both creatures it enables, and not too shabby on its own. This is the "A+B" combo of the deck. You get to run 8 copies of A, and when you draw B, you have the option to create two of them for resiliency against removal. All of this makes it really hard to keep you off of "combo" forever -- and in your best draws, you can set it up before they even have a chance to play their second land.

The cherry on top of the brokenness sundae, rage is an honorary "B" in the "A+B" synergy package. Not only is this an inherently strong aggressive magic card, it's completely absurd with valiant & double strike.

The biggest thing this card is used for is damage. Pure, unadulterated damage output. Not only is it a lava spike on its own, it's usually a lot more than that when you factor in trample, prowess, valiant, and double strike. It also makes blocking extremely difficult in a lot of cases, especially when combined with removal spells, so if you're playing well you can squeeze damage out of it without even having to cast it. Card's nuts.

I'm going roughly in order of cards' importance to the deck, and I think most people would have Screaming Nemesis or Innkeeper's Talent in this spot, but I think Qdruid is without a doubt the next most important card.

This card, while hard to play with, is quite close to a 2-mana draw 3, which is an effect they've never really come close to printing for a reason.

The most important thing I can tell you about this card in this deck is that you should probably be casting it on turn 2 a lot more. For a while I assumed I was supposed to be playing my 2-drop creatures because I was an aggro deck, and Druid was for when I had run out of gas, but it's actually much more useful as a way to play the early game and hit your land drops while still holding a full grip, to unload whenever your opponent's shields are down.

I've seen some people playing 2-3 of these, but I think 4 is the correct number. Not only does it let you grind super well, it also helps with mulligans and generally is just a card you want to draw at least one of, sometimes two of, in every single game.

The only 3-drop you need to play in the main, nemesis is an incredible card for pushing damage. The ability is more about making it hard to interact with than preventing them from gaining life, but it does come up sometimes.

Nemesis is best when it's facing a deck with only damage based removal and creatures - AKA, the mirror. There aren't really any good tools for dealing with it, so the absolute best you can hope for is a 1-for-1 or a board stall where you get to set up a larger game than them (but even then, nemesis can often represent lethal damage when it blocks an attacking double striker).

Don't be afraid to board it out though. The format has adjusted to Quinn Red, and people are playing a lot more cards that can efficiently deal with Nemesis. It's not good everywhere!

Another Bloomburrow Banger*TM, Innkeeper's Talent is a unique and powerful effect that more or less says "you're not allowed to leave me with a creature on the battlefield for more than 2-3 turns for the rest of this game".

Folks really love this card in the deck, and I agree it's very powerful, but I'm not convinced that it's an automatic 4-of. One of the easiest ways to lose is to have a creature-light draw or a draw where your opponent gets to go wider than you while chumping your only large creature, and drawing 2 talents makes those games more common. It's also just hard to fit so many 2-drops in an aggro deck - you want to be running 4 of each mouse, and I'm personally a big fan of 4 Qdruid, so 4 talent would just be a lot. I like 2-3, and I'm leaning 3 right now for Atlanta because it seems like I underrate the card relative to most people on Sanctum, and I'm willing to admit I might be missing something when this many smart people disagree with me.

Now we're starting to get into the more supporting cards. Hired Claw isn't great, but the deck needs 1-drops, and this is quite a powerful aggressive 1-drop. They are good in multiples so you play 4, but I could see running fewer than 4 if there were a better 1-drop option.

Decks were running Monastery Swiftspear for a while, but I think this is a miscalculation. This is no longer a prowess deck, it's an aggro/midrange deck, and you don't want cards that can be dead later in the game. Swiftspear is also awkward because it forces you to use your spells at times when they're relevant to combat, and you don't want to be forced into that. Claw is a good enough damage output to kill slow decks, a fine enough threat to close a "small" game on its own, and one-drops 5-8 to make sure you have something to curve into Innkeeper's Talent a lot of the time.

As I recently posted, "Pawpatch" might be the best word in standard, and this guy's a big reason why. There have been a host of interactive decks popping up to fight the red menace, and pawpatch is a great way to punish people for stacking up a pile of removal. It's also just really nice to have access to another board-affecting 1-mana play. Though you do prefer to "kick" it most of the time, don't be afraid to use that extra green mana you've got lying around if it makes sense for the game you're playing - especially if you don't have another play to make on turn 1.

A classic red aggro card, and a way to both interact with the board for 1 mana, and add some really-nice-to-have reach to your deck without too much cost. Burst lightning isn't incredibly well positioned right now, but it's such a solid role player that it definitely belongs here in at least a few copies. The kicker is mostly not used, but when it is, it's crucial to have access to. Having a few bursts in your deck makes 4 life no longer a safe life total, and that's always going to be scary for your opponents to plan around.

Sometimes you just want a slightly different burst lightning!

Torch is nowhere near as good here as in Otters, because you have so little bargain fodder - but it's better at dealing with Hearfire Heroes and Enduring creatures, while never being that much worse than burst lightning otherwise. I think currently, you want at least one, possibly two in your 1-mana-removal split.

Another "necessary evil" so to speak - exiling enduring creatures is quite important, and so is killing 3-and-4 toughness guys like Preacher of the Schism. Having access to this effect lets red decks interact in a way that is normally difficult for them, and most lists are running 2.

The cheeky 1-of! Snakeskin veil is a card you can almost always craft a gameplan around if you draw exactly one, but also a card you never need access to, so one is the perfect number. Keep your opponents on their toes in open decklist tournaments!

I'm adding this here just to emphasize that this deck plays every untapped RG dual it can get its hands on, and even a copy of Restless Ridgeline to have 13 green sources, which ends up being enough for the small amount of green cards you play. Untapped lands are hugely important for this deck, because it's very good at spending all of its mana every turn with offspring, talent leveling, questing druid, activating Hired Claw, Emberheart Challenger triggers, and utility lands. Most lists play 22 lands, and I think going up to 23 is totally reasonable.

Speaking of utility lands, this is a great one! Having creatures to target with your spells and abilities is crucial in this deck, and Soulstone does an excellent job of making sure you always have bodies on the board, even if you flood a bit.

Rockface is a great utility land, but it's pretty awkward on your mana, so you only run 2 to avoid drawing 2 at a time. Especially with the Soulstone Sanctuaries, we can only afford so many "colorless" lands - but rockface is still great flood insurance, especially with Emberheart Challenger.

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Sideboard Cards

The other half of the best word in standard, Pawpatch Formation is excellent against a pretty wide range of semi-popular decks, from Caretaker's Talent Mono White to Zur Domain. DSK had a pretty strong enchantment theme, and being able to remove flying creatures is quite nice as well.

I could see not running all 4, but having the full playset gives you a very good dimension against these decks, and the card temporary lockdown can be annoying to deal with - this solves that problem singlehandedly.

Another well positioned card right now, Lithomantic is very strong in a pretty eclectic set of matchups. The new esper pixie deck is one I expect to see a decent amount of, and Litho is the best removal spell you can have against them, especially if they're running Sheltered by Ghosts. It's also one of the best plays you can make against Beans Crab decks, and finally, quite nice against Convoke, dealing with both Warden and Knight. You want your sideboard cards to efficiently answer the opponent's best threats, and Litho is excellent at doing that right now.

A necessary evil for dealing with lots of black midrange threats (Sheoldred, Preacher, Glissa). Pretty self explanatory -- Sheoldred in particular is a card that's really hard to beat without access to this, so I think at least 2 are necessary.

A bit of a weird card to see in an aggro deck sideboard, this is for the mirror and for Nowhere to Run decks. This dodges most removal in the mirror and from decks like Pixie, so it's a surprisingly effective postboard threat. We run an extra Soulstone Sanctuary in the sideboard (22 lands main) for when we're bringing this in and going up to 6 3-drops in the mirror.

This is a card I've found to be decent in the mirror to avoid getting run over by hero into manifold starts, and is kind of a required Convoke silver bullet for any red sideboard. It's also somewhat useful against Otters, so while it's not the highest-utility sideboard card, I think it earns its slot. Your creatures are surprisingly resilient to it, especially since we're boarding out Hired Claws in the mirror.

We're also playing the 4th Screaming Nemesis and a 2nd Torch the Tower in the board, mainly for the mirror, but each have other matchups where they get brought in!

Big Picture Strategy

Now we get to the fun part! Why is this deck so good??

Gruul is a deck capable of pushing out tremendous damage output with only a few cards. Manifold Mouse and Innkeepers Talent both serve as incredible force multipliers for all your other cards, and both demand answers incredibly quickly. This is a deck capable of killing on turn 3 with the perfect draw, and on turn 4 with very strong draws, so you end up getting a lot of free wins just because you won the die roll and ran the opponent over.

However, that's not what makes the deck "broken". The key phrase is "with only a few cards". Gruul is not only an explosive aggro deck, it's a midrange deck capable of grinding into the middle and late game with the other grindy decks of the format. It wins "small" games with remarkable consistency because of its plethora of impulsive draw effects, offspring creatures, and utility lands. You almost always have multiple things to do with your mana in this deck, even late into the game.

When you combine explosive power with the ability to grind, you get a deck that's very hard to go over the top of (because it's just too fast) and very hard to disrupt (because it can pivot into grinding out incremental advantages). Add on top the fact that the deck's manabase is one of the most consistent in standard, and you've got a certified menace on your hands.

Lots of people clown on aggro decks for being brainless to pilot, but it's 2025 now, and we're well past that outdated argument.

The board is empty, and we've got some creatures and spells in hand. What do we do? The answer is very unclear.

We don't have a land to play for the turn, so we could try digging for one as well as getting in for 6 with our Emberheart Challenger. We could play Manifold Mouse, leave up either Rage to protect against a shock or a torch to kill an opposing threat. We could even pass and try to play around a Screaming Nemesis before it can 2-for-1 us, since we're so far ahead on cards!

Turns like this happen constantly in Gruul. How much do we value hitting our land drop? (usually a lot). How much do we value the "40% of a land drop" that a card exiled off the top of our deck represents? (less clear) . Do we want to go slow or fast here? Damage or cards? Mana efficiency or favorable exchanges? Can we bluff an attack? Do we need to? How patient can we be?

Gruul is a very decision intense deck, and playing it like a brainless aggro deck is a great recipe for "not getting" why it's so powerful. My biggest level-up with the deck was learning that often, I want to play my Questing Druid/Seek the Beast on turn 2 instead of running out an Emberheart Challenger, because although one is more mana efficient, the other is much better at setting up a long game and protecting our best threat from getting removed early.

As a general rule, I think people should be making value-oriented plays instead of tempo-oriented plays much more often with Gruul.

The most important thing when playing Gruul is to have faith that you'll be able to win grindy games - you don't need to kill them quickly, just inevitably.

If the opponents have enough cheap removal to interact with you, they probably don't also have a strong enough gameplan of their own to kill you before you draw that offspringed manifold mouse and invalidate everything it took to keep you off of your combo. If your opponents don't have the right interaction, you'll be able to turn the corner with a high-power double striking trampler faster than their own plan can kill you, even if you go a turn slower than you'd like to in order to play around it.

The place this requires the most faith is the card Questing Druid / Seek the Beast.

You should be extremely willing to use your turn 2 casting a Seek the Beast, which is a deeply unintuitive play for an aggro deck to make. As soon as I started doing this, I started winning a lot more!!

The key to the grindy plan working is that a lot of the time, your threats will be putting damage on the opponent even as you're playing them out more carefully than recklessly. Heartfire Hero, Emberheart Challenger, and Screaming Nemesis all do a great job of taking a pound of flesh with them even if they get answered, and that means you get to "turn the corner" really quickly if you end up falling behind and need to wait a turn cycle or two to rebuild the damage engine. Plus, a huge trampling double striker will still kill them if they can't answer it on turn 10, it's not only a way to win games on turn 4.

I'm not going to do in-depth gamelog review in this piece because in text form it takes long enough to be quite tedious (just analyzing 4 draft games was its own entire article last week!), but I want to use this testing game against Esper Pixie as an illustrative example of Gruul's ability to grind with the best of them:

https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241231/b1f8f3e67166480995793122498a260e/0

The first creature we cast (in our aggro deck!) is on turn 3, and it gets countered.

The opponent has a TTABE value loop going nearly the entire game, one of the best grinding tools in standard.

They're even able to remove our Innkeeper's Talent, generally considered one of our best "grindy" cards, and by turn 5 are still at 18 life.

We topdeck a questing druid when we're starting to fall pretty far behind...

And it draws us a Manifold Mouse, which suddenly turns our board into a very intimidating one. Even though the opponent has the perfect answer to an offspring creature, the mice still push through a ton of damage before they're answered...

And we topdeck a monstrous rage to take advantage and close the door the following turn. Victory from the jaws of defeat!

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Did we get lucky here? Sort of. We definitely got lucky in our final 2 draws. But the deck is chock full of cards like this, so it's only a matter of time until you find them, and this deck is usually quite good at buying time for itself by putting the opponent under pressure early. This time, some topdecks let us win a game where we didn't even have early pressure, because the deck's just that explosive. The ability to win games out of nowhere is a very powerful property for a Magic deck to have. Lots of decks fold when they lose the early game, and comeback tools are crucial for scraping out win %.

You could topdeck an Emberheart Challenger when you have Rockface Village in play and are out of cards. You could topdeck a Screaming Nemesis to hold off a full board after your opponent ran out of removal. You could topdeck a Monstrous Rage to push through their chump blockers and trample over for lethal. Nearly every card provides so much damage output, combat material, and sometimes card output, with very minimal synergy requirements.

Like I argued for Quintorious Combo in pioneer - You've gotta have faith.

Mana Sequencing

Mana sequencing is luckily pretty easy at a baseline in this deck - you have a pretty clear order of "better" and "worse" lands, most of your lands come into play untapped, and crucially, most of your spells are just red spells. To lay it out explicitly, the general order you should be playing your lands in is:

• Copperline Gorge

• Mountain

• Thornspire verge

• Karplusan Forest

• [Rockface Village/Soulstone Sanctuary, depending on context]

The 1-of Restless Ridgeline fits into this framework on a case-by-case basis depending on how you want to sequence your spells in a game. Typically if you can curve out by saving it for later, it's better to do so, because early mana spent has a compounding effect on your damage output/board presence in future turns, but obviously watch out for spots where you can sneak it in without much cost (maybe you don't need to leave up that shock if it will still be valuable later).

The tricky part of mana sequencing comes with Questing Druid and Emberheart Challenger. These are likely the two most difficult cards to play with in the deck because of the high variance of the impulsive draw mechanic.

The major thing to note is that you should often wait to play your land until you've seen what you hit off of your impulsive draw. Often you're casting Seek the Beast on the opponent's end step and this will be obvious, but sometimes you need to play it mainphase, and it can be really easy to snap off your land drop before doing so. Be careful!!

Another slightly less common element to look out for is making sure you'll have access to a utility land you want even if you hit a non-utility land the following turn off of an impulsive draw. If you're expecting to impulsive draw the following turn, but you might also want to use your rockface village or soulstone sanctuary, make sure you play it out the previous turn (as long as it doesn't prevent you from casting spells). Also be aware of turns where you want Soulstone to have haste, so you need to get it into play ahead of time.

Finally, you'll sometimes want to save a dual land in order to cast 1-drops off of Emberheart Challenger triggers specifically. Imagine a 5-card hand with 3 lands, Challenger, and an Innkeeper's Talent. Our lands are a Copperline Gorge, a mountain, and a Soulstone Sanctuary. How do we sequence?

I'm usually playing the gorge on turn 1 here, because it's reasonably likely I draw another one, and I want to make sure to get it out before I have 2 clogging up my hand. I also want access to green, because my plan is to go Innkeeper's Talent instead of Challenger on 2 (to juke removal). However, on turn 2, I'm going to play the Soulstone Sanctuary instead of the Mountain (even though this isn't the default order), and then cast Challenger on 3 before playing my land drop. This way, if I hit a 1-mana red spell, I get to play mountain and cast it, but if I hit a land, I get to play that instead of the mountain.

It's hard to give prescriptive rules for land sequencing with the impulsive draw effects, but these are the scenarios I've had come up most often. Luckily, this is the trickiest thing to think about with mana in this deck, because the mana is generally very good.

Combat Math

There is a lot of combat math to think about in this deck, and I'm certainly not going to be able to cover it all here, but I wanted to give at least a quick reference guide to hopefully reduce some mental fatigue for someone playing their first games.

A general rule of thumb is that you should be explicitly doing the math until you start to intuit it correctly every time - calculating things out is how we start to bake them into our own intuition, so do the intuition-building work upfront to save mental bandwidth later!

• Emberheart Challenger + Monstrous Rage = 6/4 trample for the turn, 3/3 trample afterwards

• Heartfire Hero + Monstrous Rage = 5/3 trample for the turn, 3/3 trample afterwards

• Manifold Mouse + Monstrous Rage = 4/2 trample for the turn, 2/2 afterwards

• Hired Claw + Monstrous Rage (+ assuming ability to pump) = 5/4 trample for the turn, 3/4 afterwards

• Heartfire Hero + Manifold Mouse + Monstrous Rage on curve = 17 damage by turn 3 if unblocked (16 from the Hero alone)

• Emberheart Challenger into Manifold Mouse + Monstrous Rage on curve = 17 damage by turn 3 if unblocked (16 from the Challenger, 15 if you sequence Manifold first, which you sometimes want to do if protecting Challenger from removal)

• Heartfire Hero or Screaming Nemesis with trample very roughly translate to "unblockable" damage, minus each point of toughness greater than power your opponent has on board (if the opponent can block the heartfire without killing it, they can absorb trample damage like normal)

• Heartfire Hero + Innkeeper's Talent = 8 damage by turn 3

• Heartfire Hero + Manifold Mouse = 10 damage by turn 3

Things to remember:

• Look out for double blocking with Nemesis! Your opponent will be able to assign all their damage to the non-nemesis creature if that's beneficial for them

• Remember your own burn spells can target Nemesis!

• Sometimes you won't want to give your own creatures double strike because there's an opposing nemesis on the board, and you want all combat damage to happen at the same time (I almost missed out on an MTGO challenge top 8 because I didn't do this)

Matchup Plans & Sideboarding

Here is the sideboard mapping I made this morning. I'll probably update it if I make any changes:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TlwRCMS7Hv--FeRmc_jCvBQhlXzBzavSnbG1_0LkD_Y/edit?gid=0#gid=0

We've already discussed each card in the sideboard, so let's get into the matchup plans:

Mirror

Sample game: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20250101/73870be3cc0c4c80b6d1bee2c2e0411d/0

Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of the Gruul mirror. It's very skill-testing, but also very high-variance. The die roll matters a lot, which is unfortunate for a matchup with so much grindy long-game potential. The reason for this is that it's really easy to put the player on the draw on the back foot, and use that life total advantage to extract value concessions as the game goes on.

A good amount of the time, the game will enter a board stall where neither player can attack. Often this will be because of opposing Screaming Nemeses, which are the best cards by a MILE in the mirror. The most valuable cards to have in these board stalls, other than Nemesis, are Talent, Manifold Mouse, and Emberheart Challenger. Heartfire Hero can be nice to have too if you're trying to grow a huge creature, and board stalls are usually ended when someone eventually draws their monstrous rage and sends in a huge trampling creature, sometimes with double strike. Sometimes board stalls can end when one player develops a much wider board and can attack for lethal through that alone, but going tall usually is what ends up winning out.

The best advice I can give for the mirror is to be careful about keeping hands that are too slow, prioritize access to Screaming Nemesis, and try to be the player who's ahead on life total when the board stall starts. Once it starts, do your combat math carefully, and hope your valiant engine is better than theirs. Good luck to everyone in the mirror except my opponents!!

Dimir Midrange

Sample game: https://mtga.untapped.gg/replay/nZdJmuj4ShQACmHkXii38Q?gameStateId=1 (game 1)

Dimir is one of the better matchups for Gruul, because it's a deck that relies on getting ahead on board and staying ahead, which is hard to do against an opposing aggro deck. Dimir's best plan is either being on the play and getting out to a fast start (something like spyglass siren->floodpits drowner->kaito is usually good enough), or sticking a high-toughness creature like Preacher of the Schism or Sheoldred that Gruul can't answer.

Some builds of dimir are better at making positive tempo plays against your red creatures than others - typically these are builds with Faebloom Trick. It's important to try and not fall too far behind on board early, which sometimes means using your shock on an early creature so they can't Kaito you. Although, if you can develop your board well enough, it's sometimes better to just threaten to kill Kaito the turn it comes down, so that they're punished for deploying it.

If you're ahead on board, try to craft a gameplan that will be able to beat a Preacher or a Sheoldred hitting the battlefield. These are Dimir's best comeback cards, so plan accordingly.

Screaming Nemesis is quite bad here with all the stun counters and spot removal flying around, so we board it out.

Sample game: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241228/814b6a89b0cd4a4dad1ba288c22cedf9/0

Esper Pixie (and some Dimir/Azorius variants) are a style of deck that have really picked up steam over the past few weeks, and I expect to see a good amount of them in Atlanta. Unfortunately, this is one of Gruul's worst matchups, and I suspect this deck rising has been largely in response to Gruul's success.

The matchup's nowhere near hopeless. Unfortunately it's quite tough to give a prescriptive plan for how to approach it, because the pixie builds are all still so different and the games can play out in vastly different ways. Sometimes you're the aggro, sometimes you're the control, and it's always very draw-dependent. The reason it's a bad matchup is that sometimes Pixie has draws that are close to unbeatable, usually involving either Stormchaser's Talent or Hopeless Nightmare and multiple bounce effects. If they're on the play and are casting multiple board or hand-affecting spells by turn 3, it's probably going to be a tough game to win.

Both life total and cards can be crucial here. Sometimes the game comes down to a race against Hopeless Nightmare + flyer damage, and other times you're fighting through a talent + TTABE loop like the game I highlighted above. Whichever player has the early board presence advantage usually dictates this.

Pixie's major weakness as a deck is its inconsistent mana, which unfortunately is mostly out of your control. If you see then stumbling early, try to capitalize. You might have to go for the monstrous rage even if it means getting blown out by interaction if it seems like they have spells stuck in hand due to source counts.

Try to pay attention to whether you're playing against a more controlling Pixie list or a more aggressive one. Control might look like Thundertrap Trainers and Zoraline, aggro might look like Optimistic Scavenger and Sheltered by Ghosts. Of course it's more about the particular draw than the build, but seeing these types of cards geared towards one thing or the other can be clues.

One last thing to note!! Try to keep 7 cards in this matchup if you can. Hopeless Nightmare can be really punishing to mulligans, so you should be a little more willing to keep a hand that's just medium, because it might turn out you had a 6-carder anyways. Better than 5!

We bring in Lithomantic Barrages against Pixie even if they don't have Sheltered by Ghosts, because it's just a great efficient removal spell that helps you not fall behind on board. We also bring in Sentinel of the Nameless City because it dodges Nowhere to Run.

Sample game: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20241230/d0e296e915bd499bb4022fca1e8c602d/0

Zur Domain is the mediocre deck people looooove to play in standard because curving Up the Beanstalk into Green Overlord into Zur /Sunfall feels so good. Don't get me wrong, the deck is powerful, and can run almost anyone over with its best draws, but it's also quite inconsistent and pretty easy to exploit. Luckily, it's one of our better matchups.

This is a pretty simple matchup - Kill them before they can set up their long game, and don't get got by Sunfall. The main way to do this is by only committing 1-2 creatures to the board and using them as pseudo-burn-spells. Make sure to get their life total down quickly, because it's hard to win long games, especially game 1 if they have either Beans or Zur. That said, it's not impossible! Screaming Nemesis does a great job of pushing through damage no matter what, and they often can't afford to let you get the anti-lifelink effect on them.

Now if they don't have Zur or Beans, it's a different story. You get to sit back and win board stalls against their overlords by making gigantic creatures and continuing to force chump blocks until they run out of cards. See the sample game for an example of this against a deck I don't actually think was running any Zurs.

Postboard we get access to 4 Pawpatch Formation, which is really strong and helps us fight their hate cards like Temporary Lockdown and Authority of the Consuls.

Golgari Midrange

Sample game: https://mtga.untapped.gg/replay/BnvrzvbnvFeXNSHcTfK26z?gameGame=2&gameStateId=728 (game 3)

Golgari is a bit different from Dimir in that their gameplan is going to be more controlling, and more reliant on sticking big threats like Glissa and Sheoldred, but largely it's the same kind of black midrange deck with lots of interaction but generally just a slightly slower gameplan than you that you get to go under while still being able to out-grind them pretty often unless they stick an unanswerable threat.

The demon versions are a bit scarier than the non-demon versions because our damage-based removal doesn't do anything against their largest threats, but luckily the Pawpatch Formations in the board can take card of this problem (somewhat -- it's a bit awkward that they're close to dead cards sometimes, so we don't bring in all 4).

Try to keep hands that can kill Llanowar Elves, because this is one of their only ways to get ahead of you on tempo. An elf into Glissa hand can be very tough to fight against.

Simic Crabs

Sample game: https://mtga.untapped.gg/replay/XS8PPC3mui3ihUEmHcWDtu?gameGame=1&gameStateId=407 (game 2)

Crabs is an interesting deck - it can have starts that are absurdly powerful and really difficult to answer, but it can also struggle to even get on the board, or once it does, struggle to keep finding gas without Up the Beanstalk. I think this is a pretty good matchup, but definitely loseable if they have the right draw.

The biggest thing is to put them under enough pressure that they can't easily stabilize with a couple of 5/5s on board. If they cast beans early, you should know that you likely won't be able to compete in a long game and try to kill them before they can establish any kind of board presence. (If they do both quickly, you probably never had a chance).

However, if they spend their early turns casting dig spells instead of Beans, and don't find one, assume they're going to put a couple of 5/5s on the board and then sputter out for a few turns. This usually gives you time to set up some sort of wide or tall board that can attack through the 5/5s and close out the game.

Eddymurk Crab is probably their best card, and games where they draw 2 can be tough. Luckily it's usually pretty telegraphed, so be on the lookout for UU up on your turn and try to plan combat accordingly. Be careful of dying on the backswing -- sometimes it's better to leave the whole team back if you're at 10 or so life and trying to set up a big alpha strike the following turn!

Convoke

Sample game: https://mtga.untapped.gg/replay/nz9eRRGE7BbjLrimeKqErV?gameStateId=1 (game 1)

Convoke is a pretty tight matchup. Board stalls are common, and they can sometimes get out to faster starts than you. I'm still experimenting with my approach here, so I can't give extremely confident advice, but I think what you want to be doing is blocking with Screaming Nemesis to generate board stalls and targeting their Warden of the Inner Sky with your removal (especially postboard, one we have access to Lithomantic Barrages). This usually means you can keep them off of profitable attacks long enough to build a creature that can profitably get in and close the game out. Some games might feel hopeless, but you're the more consistent deck, so that can help!

I have a pyroclasm in the board primarily because this is a matchup I'm a little scared of.

Caretaker's Talent

Sample game: https://mtga.untapped.gg/replay/cXVbvKjZAvnkcQM2caXM9w?gameGame=1&gameStateId=669 (game 2)

Mono white is a deck that's supposed to have a good red matchup, and while it's decent against us, I honestly feel favored. It's just so hard for them to set up a card advantage engine while also not dying to our early pressure, and postboard especially you get to target their talents with Pawpatch Formation and Endurings with Torch the Tower. You are a deck with bunch of 2-for-1s, and they're a deck with a couple 10-for-1s that can be answered before grinding them out. Plus, sometimes you just kill them.

Beza is certainly a good card, but I honestly don't recommend bringing in Scorching Shot to deal with it - just build a big enough creature to attack past it, since Beza into Sunfall is usally pretty disadvantageous for them.

Authority of the Consuls is somewhat scary, it can certainly buy them a lot of time, but it's also an entire card they've invested in essentially lifegain, so you can usually craft a gameplan around getting ahead on board while they durdle because they have a bunch of do-nothing cards.

Otters

Sample game: See all my testing videos with Autumn!!

Last but certainly not least, we have Otters. Sadly, I think this is a great matchup for Gruul. If I'm piloting the Otters side I think I can have a 40-45% winrate, but honestly when I face Otters with Gruul on ladder I'm thinking "free win". It's really hard to summarize how to approach it other than "just kill them", which includes just killing their creatures when you have opportunities to do so. Questing Druid and Innkeeper's Talent are great at refilling your gas when you run out of it, and for the most part, it's hard for them to set up their own combo while not dying to your pressure.

The reason you want to kill and trade with their creatures aggressively is because you want to keep them off big turns with Enduring. This is one of the only ways they can catch back up on tempo after falling behind, so try and make sacrifices to prevent it - for example, I'm usually happy to trade a Hired Claw for a prowess Otter.

The one big thing to look out for is if they pass on turn 3 with 3 mana up - That's usually a Floodcaller, and if they untap with it and cast vitality, you might be dead. Leave up the shock on that turn even if it's awkward.

Otters is a good matchup and I don't expect it to be a popular deck, so we basically don't sideboard. Pyroclasm is a good way to win games you'd otherwise lose!

Mulligans

Mulligans are pretty easy in this deck - Gruul has another one of the best properties a deck can have, which is that lands & spells are usually a keep! Mulligans tend to not be super matchup-dependent, although there are definitely some exceptions which we'll get into.

This is also a deck that mulligans well, so although you shouldn't need to do it a lot, definitely don't be afraid to mull. Playing 4 Questing Druid means we have a lot of 5-and-6 card hands that are actually 7-card hands with a tiny bit of luck, and having a low curve lets us operate on low resources.

The biggest way to take advantage of this is to always mulligan 1-land hands. I mean always. As my Sanctum teammates are fond of saying, this deck is good enough that you don't have to keep 1-landers. Not only is it mana hungry, this is a deck that relies on being ahead on tempo a lot of the time, so missing land drops is extra punishing.

It is theoretically possible to construct a 1-land hand that could be a keep on the draw with this deck in specific matchups, but it almost needs to be these 7 exact cards: Copperline Gorge, Heartfire Herox2, Manifold Mouse, Monstrous Rage, Questing Druid, [Innkeeper's talent / Manifold Mouse #2/Snakeskin Veil]. And again, this is never a keep on the play, it only might be on the draw.

Some aggro decks can keep 1-land hands and take on some risk in order to run their opponents over when they "get there". You are not just an aggro deck, you're a functional midrange deck, so you don't have to do this.

ALWAYS MULLIGAN ONE-LANDERS.

5-landers are trickier. Usually with Questing Druid and at least one utility land they're a keep, but most are mulligans. 4-landers can be mulligans if the spells are low-impact, but a lot of them are keeps. Almost every 2-lander and 3-lander is a keep.

Let's take a look at some opening hands blind:

Easy keep - lands and spells. We get to go 1-drop into questing druid, and have some offspring creatures to grind with. I don't think I'm mulliganing this in any matchup except maybe the mirror (since pawpatch, hired claw, and to some extent Qdruid are pretty bad there, and we really want to see a Screaming Nemesis).

This is probably a mulligan, but it's somewhat close. If one of the mountains were a rockface village, I'd consider keeping, but as is, we have no way to trigger the Emberheart, and are somewhat likely to have not much to do on turn 3. I'd mulligan play or draw in the blind. On the play it's a little closer I think.

This hand doesn't put a creature on board until turn 3, but it's still a keep. Screaming Nemesis is great in combat-focused matchups and matchups where we're at risk of falling behind, and Talent is good (if you have enough creature flow) in removal-focused matchups. This is an easier keep if you're on the play.

This is a pretty easy keep play or draw - even though it's a bit awkward with the tapland, we have enough 1-drops to recover the tempo loss. I'd love for one of the creatures to be a burn spell or a talent, but we don't have to be that picky. Keep.

1-lander. Mulligan. Next hand.

"But we have three ways to use a single red mana and a Qdruid to dig to more lands!"

Don't care. One land = Mulligan. Next.

This is a rare borderline hand. We only have 3 spells, and they're each pretty low-impact. There are lots of draws and matchups that would make this hand quite good, but equally there are some that would make it quite bad. I lean keep, but I'm generally a player biased toward keeping 7s and I know that might be a leak for me, so I'd be very open to someone disagreeing with that!

The matchup where we're most picky about opening hands is the mirror, so I want to give a few mirror sample hands to wrap up this section just to illustrate the difference:

This is a keep I believe, though if your Heartfire Hero eats a removal spell, you might be in trouble. This is a classic mirror hand that's good at putting the opponent on the back foot, so I like it, especially on the play, but i think I'd keep on the draw too. It's worth considering playing the Pawpatch first to juke a burst lightning, but ultimately I probably wouldn't.

This is a great mirror hand, and an easy keep. Screaming Nemesis is our best card, Talent isn't too far behind, we get to hit our land drops, and even have a torch to disrupt an early A+B combo. SNEEP!

1 land, it's a mulligan. Don't care that we have Hero + Manifold, Don't care that we have a Burst Lightning, Don't care that we have a Pyroclasm, Don't care that it would be a near-perfect hand if almost any card was swapped for a land. SHIP IT!!

This is one of the hands I think you have to consider mulliganing in the mirror. 3 lands is usually exactly the number we want to see in an opener, and this hand's got lots of great action, but it's also a hand that has to develop slowly, and in the mirror that's hard to justify. We're not always going to have a good OBolt target on turn 2, so we might be casting Seek the Beast, and this hand doesn't have great catchup tools for turn 3 since all our cards cost 2 mana.

I think we grudgingly keep this if we're on the play in the mirror, and ship it if we're on the draw. In almost any other matchup it's a reasonably easy keep.

Closing Thoughts

In the couple of days since I started writing this guide, I've become a bit less confident in Gruul's dominant position in the metagame. The pixie deck has started to pick up speed as a viable option with a strong Gruul matchup, and the rest of the field seems to have started to respect Gruul as a deck a bit more. It's about time!

That being said, I'm still feeling quite good that this is going to be my weapon of choice going into Atlanta. I think it's going to be easy to clean up anyone who isn't hyper-prepared for it, and even the people who are will still need to draw well to beat the consistency and power of this resilient aggro deck. I'm very excited to be playing a powerful, proactive, consistent strategy for the first time since Quint, a deck that gets lots of free wins, can "just kill them", but can still grind into the lategame with the best decks in the format.

Coming from Otters, playing Gruul feels like easy mode - It's a deck that's a lot more forgiving for play mistakes, but don't let that trick you into thinking it's a low agency deck - far from it. There are massive edges to be gained by expressing playskill with Gruul, and I think the prepared pilots are going to absolutely crush this weekend while people who are used to playing against mediocre Gruul players on ladder will be surprised at how tough this deck is to keep down.

First Otters, now Mice. Come back next time for the... Squirrels guide? Idk, but I'm going to ruthlessly play whatever deck gives me the best chance to win matches of Magic, and I'm going to try to bring folks along with me while I do that.