I want to build the best EDH control deck possible, a tough prospect considering there are three other players all slinging fatties and bomb spells around.
So far I think that the best decks focus on recurrable and reusable control elements, since you will never have enough control cards in your deck to keep EVERYONE at bay.
Possible Generals:
Child of Alara: Gives access to every card in magic as well as being a recurrable sweeper and a 6/6 beater, having trouble looking past this one.
The Mimeoplasm: Reusable grave hate, utility clone and potential finisher, tradeoffs include the lack of white's enchantment hate and exile effects.
Angus Mackenzie Reusable fog effect, loses black's tutor and recursion power for white exile effects and enchantment hate, downside of not being his own finisher.
Sen Triplets All the control you ever need, but loses green's ramp and permanent destruction, also likely to recieve lots of hate and not a self contained wincon.
Those are my primary ideas for decks, if anyone else has any ideas or a reason to pick one of the given generals over the other your input would be appreciated.
Ideas for evil things I can do to my opponents are also welcome
Might be worth considering Thraximundar. I ran a creatureless deck with him for a while. It was pretty much pure control with some elements of stax in there. I used Thrax primarily just as a finisher, but between the counters, creature hate, and mass sacrifices, it did get the job done.
I have a friend playing Angus Mac. Every deck he builds is really tutor reliant so of course its built around Sisay and lots o legends. Works well although it lacks a strong finish. I don't think Helix Pinnacle is a good wincon, but his control is pretty strong.
I would not do Child of Alara. A five colored deck is gonna be really hard to not get color screwed in, you will have to have a very expensive mana base to not get screwed in - think duals.
If you want control, limit yourself to one or two colors with a low cost general that has some kind of controlish ability. Then use cards that lock down the game state and allows you to grind the other players out. If they're flinging fatties and bombs everywhere, chances are you'll achieve this before they have the mana to do anything crazy. grand arbiter augustin IV or gaddock teeg would be a good start.
So if I were to say "you're a complete douchebag who has his head up his ass so far he's using his own eyeballs as glasses," you'd simply shrug it off?
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From what I gather, Damia is the ultimate control commander. I am sure you can find a list on here somewhere to get ideas from.
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I would not do Child of Alara. A five colored deck is gonna be really hard to not get color screwed in, you will have to have a very expensive mana base to not get screwed in - think duals.
If you want control, limit yourself to one or two colors with a low cost general that has some kind of controlish ability. Then use cards that lock down the game state and allows you to grind the other players out. If they're flinging fatties and bombs everywhere, chances are you'll achieve this before they have the mana to do anything crazy. grand arbiter augustin IV or gaddock teeg would be a good start.
I own every dual, fetch and shock so it's not much of an issue for me, and Child is far less likely to get hated off the table than Grand Asshat and Gaddock Teabags
Stax is by far the strongest form of control in magic.
A lot of people don't like to play against it though.
I like stax, but is it really that good in EDH? It has to come down early or after a sweeper because once your opponent achieves their preferred board state (army of dudes, tons of artifacts, tons of enchantments, pillow fortress of doom) sac'ing one permanent or paying 2 extra doesn't have that much of an impact. Also draws an endless amount of hatred.
Every time they try to use targeted removal/theft (or target you for hate), draw two cards (drawing into more answers). Phase out Rayne whenever she's in trouble (or Vanishing is in trouble). Hell, the draw from Rayne is exactly what you need to fuel Forbid to counter whatever triggered Rayne in the first place!
Every time they try to use targeted removal/theft (or target you for hate), draw two cards (drawing into more answers). Phase out Rayne whenever she's in trouble (or Vanishing is in trouble). Hell, the draw from Rayne is exactly what you need to fuel Forbid to counter whatever triggered Rayne in the first place!
I'd say Damia, GAAIV or 5cc with Child or Horde are your best options. Wydwen and Dralnu are great too and Oona can be solid. I've been wanting to build a 5cc with tons of board control and counters and Oath of Druids to hit big fat eldrazi-esque swincons for some time. You should do that. You get to play fun stuff like Conflux and Maelstrom Nexus (obviously nexus means less counters but may be worth it).
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Standard: Humanimator
Modern: Jund, Wafo-Tapa UWR
Legacy: Witch-Maw Stoneblade
EDH: Ruhan of the Fomori, Hazezon Tamar, Maga, Traitor to Mortals
Best control I've run into is Azami. Mono blue, almost every counter, most bounces, global bounce... which leads to discard, tuck, and insane draw... it's the draw that I think is the killer. Screw tutoring, which the deck does have (transmute, too), it'll just draw half the deck and keep it in hand (gaining massive life with a Vensor's Journal out... you know it's there) and then sit back and smug-it-up.
It's almost impossible to get through the deck's permission. It's almost impossible to get at its resources due to said permission... which there is a lot of. Get something on the board? Good luck keeping it there!
I watch a Kaalia get Kaalia bounced 5 times (incredibly lucky opening hand for Azami that had her in possession of a Capsize and Extraplanar) in a row... just to get tucked the 6th time she hit the board. You'd think that I'd have been able to do something while Azami pissed on Kaalia's day turn after turn... but no... Force, and then a Erayo-lock ended the game is short fashion.
In my opinion Azami get's the nod as the most controlling deck.
I want to build the best EDH control deck possible, a tough prospect considering there are three other players all slinging fatties and bomb spells around.
So far I think that the best decks focus on recurrable and reusable control elements, since you will never have enough control cards in your deck to keep EVERYONE at bay.
Possible Generals:
Child of Alara: Gives access to every card in magic as well as being a recurrable sweeper and a 6/6 beater, having trouble looking past this one.
The Mimeoplasm: Reusable grave hate, utility clone and potential finisher, tradeoffs include the lack of white's enchantment hate and exile effects.
Angus Mackenzie Reusable fog effect, loses black's tutor and recursion power for white exile effects and enchantment hate, downside of not being his own finisher.
Sen Triplets All the control you ever need, but loses green's ramp and permanent destruction, also likely to recieve lots of hate and not a self contained wincon.
Those are my primary ideas for decks, if anyone else has any ideas or a reason to pick one of the given generals over the other your input would be appreciated.
Ideas for evil things I can do to my opponents are also welcome
Based on what you have here, my vote is for triplets. Frankly, if you use the best mana rocks possible, the lack of ramp is going to be irrelevant. Plus, Necropotence and other awesome cards! What's not to love?
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Might be worth considering Thraximundar. I ran a creatureless deck with him for a while. It was pretty much pure control with some elements of stax in there. I used Thrax primarily just as a finisher, but between the counters, creature hate, and mass sacrifices, it did get the job done.
I second this idea. Thrax-Stax is an awesome control deck. Through all the Stax effects and sacrificing, you should have no trouble controling the board with Thrax and counter-magic.
Child or the sage of stone would be my vote I like child because of the constyant board wipe however she is going to get tucked real quick, maybe not as quick as the sage but she allows for great card draw and gives you P-deed and damnation plus counter and recure. I have always been a fan of the BUG
The winless decks I've built have been absolutely the most oppressive control decks I've ever seen in EDH. UB seems to be the stronger of the two because it has access to creature control that mono-U does not, but if you took out 2-3 cards and put in win conditions you would get there. The best way to make "The Ultimate EDH Control" deck is, unfortunately, to create a meta deck since most of what people will suggest here may or may not work for you. The fact that Night of Souls Betrayal is complete house here doesn't mean that it will do anything elsewhere.
The winless decks I've built have been absolutely the most oppressive control decks I've ever seen in EDH. UB seems to be the stronger of the two because it has access to creature control that mono-U does not, but if you took out 2-3 cards and put in win conditions you would get there. The best way to make "The Ultimate EDH Control" deck is, unfortunately, to create a meta deck since most of what people will suggest here may or may not work for you. The fact that Night of Souls Betrayal is complete house here doesn't mean that it will do anything elsewhere.
+1
The best answers will be unclear until you figure out with some reliability what your opponents are doing. Counterspell may do nothing in some metas, and things like Spell Crumple and Faerie Trickery will be needed. In other areas, the 3cc counters will be too slow. And that's just for counterspells, which are actually the most versatile answer cards in the game. For board control, answers must be even more precise.
Black is the best control color in EDH, next to Blue ofc. Premium cards like The Abyss, Nether Void, Death Cloud, Ill-Gotten Gains and others are game breaking versus the correct opponents. You just have to figure out which are the right ones, and build your deck around them if necessary. Sadistic Sacrament, Bitter Ordeal, etc, are also often needed, depending on how tuned the decks are. Black also has the best graveyard hate, which you might need, and again might not.
In artifact, oddball cards like Torpor Orb, Grafdigger's Cage, etc. go a lot way, and of course Blue works best with artifacts, and you will probably want countermagic anyway.
One thing to consider when building a control deck is how you're going to win. If your general isn't capable of dealing 21 on their own in a reasonable time frame, you're going to have to devote slots in your deck to win conditions. This isn't so bad if you're going for a combo finish, but I'm not one who likes to sit around and wait for my combo, so I have to fill my deck with awkward fatties that sit useless in my hand if drawn at the wrong time. I've found a better strategy is to run zero win conditions in my deck and rely exclusively on my general for kills. This unfortunately rules out common generals like Angus, Azami, or even Lady Evangela because they can't close games on their own.
To this end, my favorite control general has to be Jenara, Asura of War. She can come down early and block if needed, she's cheap to recast, has an instant speed mana sink if you have nothing else to do with it, and is fully capapble of dealing 21 in one hit. She also is in the three best colors, giving access to copious amounts of counters, removal, and ramp. She also lets you do shenanigans like Seedborn Muse + Alchemy's Refuge.
The deck is not capable of dictating what every opponent does on every turn. It only interferes with the board state in two circumstances: when it's being directly threatened and when someone else is about to win. It has the tools to deal with any situation, but it will never have a threatening board position so nobody has reason to notice it. The goal is to survive until it becomes 1v1 and then bury the last opponent in card advantage.
The neat thing about this list is that other than Seedborn Muse and Alchemy's Refuge, every other slot is completely open. It's looking for types of cards and which card you choose to fill that function is very customizable.
I'll second the vote for Oona. My meta is very creature-heavy, which plays to black's strengths (creature removal) and doesn't exploit its weaknesses (lack of efficient removal for other permanent types). If your meta is also creature-heavy, I would definitely recommend Oona or another UB general for a control deck. I find the best control generals are the ones that A) gain you a disgusting amount of card/board/tempo advantage just by being in play (e.g. Damia, GAAIV) or B) act as a finisher (e.g. Oona or any other combo general with blue).
For a control deck, you want the deck to be geared towards the control elements as much as possible, with the actual finishers being both extremely powerful and taking up as little real estate in the deck as possible. Unlike in standard, a single creature typically isn't powerful enough on its own to be a finisher; it can be killed, exiled, tucked, stolen, cloned, or otherwise dealt with relatively easily. For that reason, infinite combos are the best finishers, which makes generals that are also combo pieces extremely good as control generals. You spend a few card slots in the deck on combo pieces and you have your finisher. You run tutors, which you would run anyway, and in the early game you fetch control cards, whereas in the late game you fetch your combo pieces. The rest of the deck is just lockdown.
My Oona deck, for example, plays out as a control deck until I have the combo pieces in hand and enough mana to cast them and go off in a single turn with counterspell backup. I (typically) don't have to worry about amassing a superior board position, I just have to hold off my opponent until I can assemble this combo. It's a lot easier to simply keep from dying, make land drops, and then combo off than it is to cast big creatures and try to win through damage.
TL;DR: Combo generals like Oona work great as control generals as well because you can spend most of the card slots on control cards and a few slots on the combo, which works great as a finisher because it wins you the game on the spot.
The winless decks I've built have been absolutely the most oppressive control decks I've ever seen in EDH. UB seems to be the stronger of the two because it has access to creature control that mono-U does not, but if you took out 2-3 cards and put in win conditions you would get there. The best way to make "The Ultimate EDH Control" deck is, unfortunately, to create a meta deck since most of what people will suggest here may or may not work for you. The fact that Night of Souls Betrayal is complete house here doesn't mean that it will do anything elsewhere.
Indeed. It purely depends on your meta. Seek their weaknesses and they shall fall
I am in the Oona camp. Her ability is very relevant with lots of tutors, so you can let the tutor resolve and then just exile the top card, also, you can get rid of the pesky tops. She is Blue/Black in colors, so excellent removal. You can use "bounce to the top of library effects" as other removal with Oona's ability. She is also a beat stick. Would recommend her.
I appear to be the only one who thinks Child is a viable option. I have played the kid a long time ago and it can be quite powerful. Obviously the mana base is the tricky part, but not very. Include ramp spells that fetch out duals and eschew all others unless it be shard convergence. Include more green mana to ensure that you have a green source in your opening hand for your ramp. Have a fair amount of sac outlets (especially ones that don't get blown up with Child) and tutor for corpse dance. Do not overly rely on the graveyard to avoid getting blown-out by hate and use various forms of control (counters, kill spells, board lock, bounce, theft, discard and grave-hate). Use good draw spells and recursion (all sun's dawn is a must in this deck as is volrath's stronghold. Then throw in some good win-cons. The Child himself can present a good clock if there is a haste enabler (ie Anger).
I'm actually looking to make a creature less Grixis control/stax deck. Is there any resource here on the forums about cards that make the battlefield an incredibly toxic place for creatures?
Play to win. If you don't, you're disrespecting everyone you're playing with by wasting their time. The Douchbag check is at the level of deck construction.
The problem with defining this format by what is "fun" is that everyone seems to define fun as what they don't lose to. If you keep losing to easily answered cards, that means you should improve your deck. If you don't want to improve your deck, then you should come to peace with the idea that you are going to lose because you chose to not interact with better strategies.
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So far I think that the best decks focus on recurrable and reusable control elements, since you will never have enough control cards in your deck to keep EVERYONE at bay.
Possible Generals:
Child of Alara: Gives access to every card in magic as well as being a recurrable sweeper and a 6/6 beater, having trouble looking past this one.
The Mimeoplasm: Reusable grave hate, utility clone and potential finisher, tradeoffs include the lack of white's enchantment hate and exile effects.
Angus Mackenzie Reusable fog effect, loses black's tutor and recursion power for white exile effects and enchantment hate, downside of not being his own finisher.
Sen Triplets All the control you ever need, but loses green's ramp and permanent destruction, also likely to recieve lots of hate and not a self contained wincon.
Those are my primary ideas for decks, if anyone else has any ideas or a reason to pick one of the given generals over the other your input would be appreciated.
Ideas for evil things I can do to my opponents are also welcome
[Primer] WUB Dromar, the Banisher Stax [SOON TO BE OLORO]
If you want control, limit yourself to one or two colors with a low cost general that has some kind of controlish ability. Then use cards that lock down the game state and allows you to grind the other players out. If they're flinging fatties and bombs everywhere, chances are you'll achieve this before they have the mana to do anything crazy. grand arbiter augustin IV or gaddock teeg would be a good start.
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Be the giver or the undertaker
Unlock and open the door
Be the healer or the breaker
The keys are in your hands
Realize you are your own source of all creation
BOf your own master planB
A lot of people don't like to play against it though.
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UAzami, Locus of All KnowledgeU
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WBRTariel, Hellraiser StaxWBR
Annul is really good in EDH
I own every dual, fetch and shock so it's not much of an issue for me, and Child is far less likely to get hated off the table than Grand Asshat and Gaddock Teabags
I like stax, but is it really that good in EDH? It has to come down early or after a sweeper because once your opponent achieves their preferred board state (army of dudes, tons of artifacts, tons of enchantments, pillow fortress of doom) sac'ing one permanent or paying 2 extra doesn't have that much of an impact. Also draws an endless amount of hatred.
Every time they try to use targeted removal/theft (or target you for hate), draw two cards (drawing into more answers). Phase out Rayne whenever she's in trouble (or Vanishing is in trouble). Hell, the draw from Rayne is exactly what you need to fuel Forbid to counter whatever triggered Rayne in the first place!
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UAzami, Locus of All KnowledgeU
BMarrow-Gnawer, Crime Lord of ComboB
WBRTariel, Hellraiser StaxWBR
Annul is really good in EDH
Modern: Jund, Wafo-Tapa UWR
Legacy: Witch-Maw Stoneblade
EDH: Ruhan of the Fomori, Hazezon Tamar, Maga, Traitor to Mortals
It's almost impossible to get through the deck's permission. It's almost impossible to get at its resources due to said permission... which there is a lot of. Get something on the board? Good luck keeping it there!
I watch a Kaalia get Kaalia bounced 5 times (incredibly lucky opening hand for Azami that had her in possession of a Capsize and Extraplanar) in a row... just to get tucked the 6th time she hit the board. You'd think that I'd have been able to do something while Azami pissed on Kaalia's day turn after turn... but no... Force, and then a Erayo-lock ended the game is short fashion.
In my opinion Azami get's the nod as the most controlling deck.
Based on what you have here, my vote is for triplets. Frankly, if you use the best mana rocks possible, the lack of ramp is going to be irrelevant. Plus, Necropotence and other awesome cards! What's not to love?
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I second this idea. Thrax-Stax is an awesome control deck. Through all the Stax effects and sacrificing, you should have no trouble controling the board with Thrax and counter-magic.
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+1
The best answers will be unclear until you figure out with some reliability what your opponents are doing. Counterspell may do nothing in some metas, and things like Spell Crumple and Faerie Trickery will be needed. In other areas, the 3cc counters will be too slow. And that's just for counterspells, which are actually the most versatile answer cards in the game. For board control, answers must be even more precise.
Black is the best control color in EDH, next to Blue ofc. Premium cards like The Abyss, Nether Void, Death Cloud, Ill-Gotten Gains and others are game breaking versus the correct opponents. You just have to figure out which are the right ones, and build your deck around them if necessary. Sadistic Sacrament, Bitter Ordeal, etc, are also often needed, depending on how tuned the decks are. Black also has the best graveyard hate, which you might need, and again might not.
In artifact, oddball cards like Torpor Orb, Grafdigger's Cage, etc. go a lot way, and of course Blue works best with artifacts, and you will probably want countermagic anyway.
To this end, my favorite control general has to be Jenara, Asura of War. She can come down early and block if needed, she's cheap to recast, has an instant speed mana sink if you have nothing else to do with it, and is fully capapble of dealing 21 in one hit. She also is in the three best colors, giving access to copious amounts of counters, removal, and ramp. She also lets you do shenanigans like Seedborn Muse + Alchemy's Refuge.
For reference, this is the list I ran with her.
1 Brainstorm
1 Expedition Map
1 Impulse
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sylvan Library
1 Trinket Mage
//Card Draw
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Deep Analysis
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Jace's Ingenuity
1 Keep Watch
1 Opportunity
1 Yavimaya Elder
//Counterspells
1 Arcane Denial
1 Counterspell
1 Desertion
1 Exclude
1 Forbid
1 Hinder
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Spell Crumple
1 Willbender
//Spot Removal
1 Bant Charm
1 Capsize
1 Gilded Drake
1 Krosan Grip
1 Oblation
1 Path to Exile
1 Pongify
1 Return to Dust
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Wing Shards
1 Akroma's Vengeance
1 Fracturing Gust
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Rout
1 Terminus
//Recursion
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Holistic Wisdom
1 Regrowth
1 Snapcaster Mage
//Ramp
1 Cultivate
1 Explore
1 Harrow
1 Far Wanderings
1 Kodama's Reach
1 Sol Ring
//Graveyard Hate
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod's Crypt
//Goodstuff
1 Batterskull
1 Constant Mists
1 Mindslaver
1 Moment's Peace
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Seedborn Muse
1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
//Land
4 Forest
8 Island
3 Plains
1 Azorius Chancery
1 Boreal Shelf
1 Calciform Pools
1 Celestial Colonnade
1 Coastal Tower
1 Command Tower
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Hinterland Harbor
1 Krosan Verge
1 Savannah
1 Seachrome Coast
1 Seaside Citadel
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Sunpetal Grove
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Vivid Creek
1 Academy Ruins
1 Alchemist's Refuge
1 Kor Haven
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Strip Mine
1 Tolaria West
The deck is not capable of dictating what every opponent does on every turn. It only interferes with the board state in two circumstances: when it's being directly threatened and when someone else is about to win. It has the tools to deal with any situation, but it will never have a threatening board position so nobody has reason to notice it. The goal is to survive until it becomes 1v1 and then bury the last opponent in card advantage.
The neat thing about this list is that other than Seedborn Muse and Alchemy's Refuge, every other slot is completely open. It's looking for types of cards and which card you choose to fill that function is very customizable.
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For a control deck, you want the deck to be geared towards the control elements as much as possible, with the actual finishers being both extremely powerful and taking up as little real estate in the deck as possible. Unlike in standard, a single creature typically isn't powerful enough on its own to be a finisher; it can be killed, exiled, tucked, stolen, cloned, or otherwise dealt with relatively easily. For that reason, infinite combos are the best finishers, which makes generals that are also combo pieces extremely good as control generals. You spend a few card slots in the deck on combo pieces and you have your finisher. You run tutors, which you would run anyway, and in the early game you fetch control cards, whereas in the late game you fetch your combo pieces. The rest of the deck is just lockdown.
My Oona deck, for example, plays out as a control deck until I have the combo pieces in hand and enough mana to cast them and go off in a single turn with counterspell backup. I (typically) don't have to worry about amassing a superior board position, I just have to hold off my opponent until I can assemble this combo. It's a lot easier to simply keep from dying, make land drops, and then combo off than it is to cast big creatures and try to win through damage.
TL;DR: Combo generals like Oona work great as control generals as well because you can spend most of the card slots on control cards and a few slots on the combo, which works great as a finisher because it wins you the game on the spot.
another vote for Azami.
Indeed. It purely depends on your meta. Seek their weaknesses and they shall fall
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