How to Pilot Standard Grixis Superfriends in Magic: The Gathering Arena

To pilot Grixis Superfriends in Magic: The Gathering Arena Standard, spend turns 1 through 3 clearing the board with efficient spot removal and sweepers before deploying any planeswalkers. Because planeswalkers are high-cost, sorcery-speed permanents, casting them into an active opposing board invites combat damage that can eliminate them before they accrue value. Once the battlefield is neutralized, resolve your planeswalkers sequentially to compound card advantage, protect your life total, and close out the match.

Early-Game Board Neutralization

Your primary opening objective is trading one-for-one with opposing threats to ensure a safe landing for your four-mana and five-mana permanents. Grixis blends black removal, red sweepers, and blue card filtering to suppress early aggression.

Spell Role	Mana Window	Primary Function	Primary Targets
Spot Removal	Turns 1–2	Efficient one-for-one trades	Early aggressive creatures, evasive attackers
Sweepers / Burn	Turn 3	Board stabilization	Token swarms, wide boards, haste threats
Planeswalkers	Turn 4+	Value generation and closing	Clear or controlled battlefields

Hold up instant-speed interaction such as Cut Down and Go for the Throat during turns 1 and 2 to counter fast aggressive starts. If the opponent commits multiple small threats to the board, use red damage-based sweepers on turn 3 to clear the battlefield rather than casting a planeswalker into hostile attackers.

Planeswalker Sequencing and Loyalty Management

Once the board is clear, prioritize deployment order and ability selection based on the remaining opposing resources:

Assess Immediate Threat Level: If your opponent controls a single substantial creature, use your planeswalker's minus ability immediately to remove it. Spending loyalty to eliminate an attacker preserves the permanent across subsequent turns.
Build Loyalty on Empty Boards: If the opponent has no immediate attackers, activate plus abilities to draw cards, sculpt your hand, or create defensive tokens. Ticking up loyalty moves your planeswalkers outside the range of direct-damage burn spells.
Layer Multiple Walkers: When you control more than one planeswalker, use defensive abilities (such as generating creature tokens) from one walker to shield a second walker that is drawing cards or ticking toward a game-ending ultimate ability.

Mana Fixing and Land Sequencing

Running a three-color deck in Standard requires precise land management to cast spells on curve without falling behind. Grixis relies on double-black for hard removal, blue for card draw and counterspells, and red for sweepers.

Drop Tapped Lands on Turn 1: If you do not have a turn-1 play like Cut Down, play your tapped dual lands or tri-lands immediately to ensure your lands enter untapped on turns 2 and 3.
Prioritize Untapped Mana on Turns 2 and 3: Missing an interaction window on turn 2 or 3 often allows aggressive opponents to establish unrecoverable board states.
Mulligan Color-Deficient Hands: Do not keep opening hands with multiple high-cost planeswalkers but only one or two mana colors. You must have the colors required to cast early removal spells in your opening hand.

Matchup Strategy

Versus Aggro

Treat your planeswalkers' loyalty totals as an extension of your life total. Forcing an aggressive opponent to attack your planeswalkers instead of your face buys crucial turn cycles to find sweepers and stabilize. Do not hesitate to use minus removal abilities on consecutive turns, even if it exhausts the planeswalker completely.

Versus Midrange and Control

Grixis Superfriends holds a structural edge in slower matchups because creature removal spells in the opponent's hand become dead cards. Focus your early interaction on countering opposing threats and planeswalkers. Once your walkers resolve, activate card-advantage abilities each turn to run the opponent out of counterspells and targeted answers, ultimately winning through uncontested loyalty ultimates.