Is Grist, the Hunger Tide the New Combo Bad Boy In Modern?
One of the earliest spoilers that Wizards of the Coast announced for the new Magic: the Gathering set Modern Horizons 2 is the new 3 mana Planeswalker Grist, the Hunger Tide. Immediately, there was a lot of discussion amongst the community around how to utilize the card with it’s unique passive ability. Historically, 3 mana Planeswalkers are very powerful cards, but is Grist, the Hunger Tide the new combo bad boy in Modern?
READ MORE: Full Modern Horizons 2 Spoiler Gallery
Doubling Season and Planeswalkers
The first piece of our combo is obviously Grist, the Hunger Tide, but the second part of this is Doubling Season. The interaction between Grist and Doubling Season is one that can allow us to win the game on the spot, assuming some conditions are met first. With Doubling Season in play, when Grist enters the battlefield, it will enter twice the amount of Loyalty counters, which can let us activate Grist’s ultimate right away. This combo of cards is not something new to Modern, as the combo used to be utilized with Jace, Architecht of Thought, and a host of other planeswalkers that can ultimate right away to win the game.
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Doubling Grist Combo
With this knowledge, we can now build our deck to incorporate this combo. Normally, we want to find ways to turbo out our combo to the board, but there are some specific conditions that we need to meet for this combo to work. Grist’s ultimate says that each opponent loses life equal to the number of creatures in our graveyard. We could play a fair midrange game and use Grist a bit more fairly, but the list that we have here is more akin to a dredge-vine list. We look to turbo creatures into our graveyard with Stitcher’s Supplier, and dredge creatures in Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug. We round out the creature package with Silversmote Ghoul, Bloodghast, and Vengevine.
The next part of the deck that we have is our insurance package in case we dredge our combo pieces. Because Grist is a creature everywhere except on the battlefield, we can use Priest of Fell Rites as a way to reanimate Grist from the graveyard, while also fueling our creatures in graveyard requirement. Because we need to pay life for Priest of Fell Rites and we’re doing a lot of self mill, it makes sense to include Creeping Chill. This is our main way to turn on our Silversmote Ghouls as well. Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is our way to get Doubling Season back on top of our library if we mill it over as well.
Finally, we have our finishing combo of Grist and Doubling Season. What’s nice about this list is that we can play a very normal dredge style game and win the game with creatures, but we also have the option to win off the back of our combo, and we have multiple ways to get there.
Grist, the Hunger Tide is definitely one of the most unique and interesting planeswalkers that we’ve seen printed in a while. It definitely has great uses in commander, but do you think that it’s best use case as a combo piece in Modern? Or will it be relegated to more fair use planeswalker?
If this combo, or any of the Modern Horizons 2 cards are exciting to you, you can now preorder Draft Boosters, Collector Boosters, Set Boosters, and Bundles online.
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