I'm wondering if there is a list with the new Monastery Master in a UW control deck, some sort of deck that does not plan to play him as a 3 drop but as a 5+ drop using think twices and other cantrips to create an army from one card.
The problem with this plan is, that the UW colours doesn't provide many cheap spells you want to cast with the Master out. Even if you play him on turn 5 and hold a Counter up, the opponent has suddenly a target for his Decays/Paths/Burn and he will likely not survive that turn. And even if survives, you have to protect him every turn, since he dies to nearly every removal, which is rather bad in a control deck. So, I wouldn't play it in this deck, because of these problems.
Greetings,
Kathal
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Sadly yes, it has allowed delver to have a late game which is where uw shines and now it just makes it harder to continue the card advantage when they late game cruise into more gas to finish you off.
I want to start by saying I'm by no means an expert at mtg, heck I'm not even that good. However I have been running UW 'control' on modo the last few weeks. I'm going to start running it in dailies soon however testing so far has been pretty positive. UR delver is a long way from being impossible or even hard. I'm playing 4 wall of omens, 3 finks, 3 revelations and 3 supreme verdicts maindeck among others which makes it really hard for them to get ahead on cards. They just can't get ahead on cards with a decklist like this. When you go turn 1 path, turn 2 wall into turn 3 finks there's no way you can lose. They are forced to 2 for 1 themselves to remove your creatures and with plenty of card draw and 3 verdicts main you're very likely to have one in hand if young pyro starts pooping out to many dudes.
The best thing is the deck hasn't made sacrifices to be good against UR delver. All the maindeck wraths put the deck in favourable position vs robots, pod, junk and other creatures decks. There's a maindeck final judgement and another in the board which is nuts against pod (and finks + path help get you to 6 mana)
Even discard decks like junk are simple enough to get through thanks again to the sweepers and cards like snapcaster and think twice that are great to recover from.
The main card in this deck is sphinx's revelation. Now from what I've seen people are raving about DTT in control decks but I just don't get it. If you have it in your opening hand you can't cast it for like 5 turns anyway so why not have a revelation? Not only do you not get blown out by remand but when you top deck a revelation on turn 10 and draw 5-7 cards and gain 5-7 life it's just not even close to how good DTT can be. The whole aim of the deck is to just hold off the opponent until you can rev for an obscene amount of cards which more often than not is enough to get them to scoop. Only getting 2 cards just isn't enough of an edge in my opinion.
A last thought. Obviously all these wrath's and the general build towards creature decks does make the deck soft to combo. If (when?) treasure cruise gets banned the deck will need an overhaul. Jeskai Ascendancy is really hard though with the counter magic, paths and tectonic edge it's not unwinnable. Storm is another difficult matchup as you lack proper answers and scapeshift has the same problem. Twin isn't so bad and neither is tron thanks to path and tectonic edge. All the matches get much better post board when you can remove a mass of dead cards and get access to lots of cheap relevant spells.
Having just 2 colours makes the mana a breeze and not running junk like bolt/helix/electrolyze vs all these stupid swiftspear/rhino decks is a blessing. UWR wants double red on 3 for anger of the gods, triple blue/double white on 4 for cryptic/verdict. This doesn't happen without a lot of pain and often just doesn't happen which leads to losses. On top of that blood moon sucks against you and thanks to the colonnades and glacial fortress's choke is also useless against you.
One of the most important things (for me) is the control mirror. UWR just doesn't match up well. Finks is so powerful against them. They either have to path it (and put you at land advantage + remove answers to colonnade) or use 2 burn spells so not only do you save 6-7 life from that but gain 4 from the finks ability as well. If they don't answer you just quietly hit away for 2-3 damage a turn.
Apologies for the long post. Just wanted to get more people onto this deck because it feels so powerful. If you like making you opponents life a misery by shutting them down at every turn but not actually winning for 20 turns this is 100% the deck to play.
I hope to report back positive results on modo in a few days.
Ok so, no hate, I've been brewing this for a little while and I admit on the surface it sounds crazy. I've been playing some form of U/W control for the past 5 years in standard, enough to know how to attack certain lines of play.
What I'm proposing is a straight tap out deck with little to no main deck counters. Before you look at the list consider this:
- Traditional control tries to leak / snare /etc. certain threats but inevitably something will slip though. We may then draw answers, or we may just draw redundant counter magic that doesn't really advance our situation (which is also relatively dead past mid game)
- That would put us automatically dying to Twin / storm / combo if not for maindeck Runed halo
***Thinking critically about Runed Halo*** :
Traditionally u/w decks (both tap out and permission) play some non-zero quantity of Oblivion ring / detention sphere. O-rings will never answer threats such as splinter twin decks or storm, and really only 1 for 1 (or maybe more with sphere).
a- act as a 1 for 1 (playing halo and naming goyf is functionally no different than o-ringing it.
b- act as a detention sphere (in the sense that one halo still nerfs multiple copies of whatever card you name. In this sense, halo is better because copies of the named card that are drawn after halo comes down are still useless, whereas an o-ring doesn't invalidate later goyf's, etc.
c- now onto the good part. runed halo completely derails twin (name exarch, yes there is pestermite, you also have a pithing needle and path's and spellskites) You can name grapeshots, you can name valakut, etc. Imagine if o-ring or d-sphere could do all of that, in addition to having the option of removing a creature for one mana less than o-ring. You can even name man lands. If we were already wanting to play o-ring / sphere, there aren't too many reasons we wouldn't prefer Halo, especially since it allows us to play against combo without hoping to draw into a bunch of counters. not to mention once it comes down, theres no countering it for scapeshift or twin. Obviously they can be bounced with something like echoing truth, but you also have spellskites , etc.
3x spellskite maindeck is solid against RDW and UR Delver, infect, AND especialy Boggles. In other matchups it can be relatively dead sure, that's why your sideboard should accurately reflect what your maindeck has trouble with. Even against Jund or Rock, skite essentially counters abrupt decay and allows a runed halo to live. Or eats a hero's downfall to protect a planeswalker.
It's also important to remember Jace, Architect of Thought +1 does in fact stop Twin Decks. Of course they play some copies of pestermite , but with Bolt being so prevalent, Exarch makes a lot more sense for them to play in larger numbers. Not to mention, you have spellskite and pithing needle. Jace also nerfs young pyromancer tokens and requires UR Delver to invest some resources to get rid of him. A plus one'd Jace also makes monastery swiftspear less than optimal
Combination of spreading seas and tectonic edge are solid against tron / scapeshift / valakut. Seas is better than think twice in this build because you aren't restricted to only needing things to happen at instant speed, and also it can sometimes just RUIN UR delver for a few turns /completely hose the shaky draws some decks will have.
It's not perfect. It needs a board plan versus The mirror (uwr, etc) Primarily luminarch ascension and a few copies of leyline of sanctity to protect against discard.
Anyways, here the list: So far in testing it's performed exceptionally well against the field of top decks with quite a bit of playtesting. See what you think.
The important thing to remember is that you still have the same amount of answers to their threats, they are now just coming in the form of cards you can lay down on turn 2, unopposed, as opposed to doing nothing for most of the game and hoping they don't have more answers than you. Their decks are pretty linear (eggs / twin / scapeshift / storm) and are easily hated on by Halo.
Think about the flexible maindeck cards you have against the relevant match ups:
I like it. You're showing some really out-of-the box thinking and taking a totally different approach to control. Players on this forum (and in general) tend to be nervous about playing something totally different though, so the only way you're likely to generate significant interest is to go play it a bunch and regularly post your results. Also, your deck is different enough from the rest of what's being posted in this thread that if you want to pursue it seriously you should create a separate thread in developing.
Thanks for your input, So far in playtesting with my group I have the following results (all of the following lists are stock lists from Recent events and are lists that have performed well enough for my group to consider them "the" version of each respective deck.
Results are quantified in Games, not matches. All of these are game ones, no sideboard. The purpose of this round of testing was to tweak the main deck, but mostly to discover where our sideboard needs to be. All sideboard / card choice feedback is greatly appreciated.
RDW: 17-3 in games Not a whole lot to say about this one. (Shenhar list from Worlds)
Affinitiy: 19-1 in games You have verdict, walls, runed halo, and gideons. Not a whole lot to say
U/R Twin : 18-5 in games Sometimes they just have it and you haven't got an answer. It happens to any deck, maybe some purges in the sideboard will help both this matchup and jund
Jund / Jund w/ White variants : 22-18 in games Liliana is annoying, and we don't have many ways to interact with her. If they get us in topdecking mode we need to either rip a sphinx rev or we kind if just lose. This is one of the decks "fair" match ups.
U/R Delver(Chapin List) : 23-6 in games Spent an entire day testing this one match. live long enough cast batterskull, or just run them out of resources. If they cast treausre cruise and you Revelation in response you are getting a lot of value.
Eggs : 7-0 Not even worth testing anymore than 7 games. Pithing needle or runed halo Auto-win
Storm : 9-0 Embarrassing for storm, name grapeshot, which leaves (some builds) with either nothing, or empty the warrens. your deck with Jace's gideons, and wraths doesn't really care about 1/1 tokens.
Josh Utter-Leyton Jeskai Ascendancy : 17-8 Interesting match, they can path your spellskite, which would normally interrupt their game. Runed halo naming fatestitcher and a spreading seas or tec edge on Faerie conclave are very effective. Your goal in this match is really to make "going off" mildly inconvenient, and then sticking elspeth / gideon / batterskull. runed halo is an all star, but they will have enchantment / artifact hate post board (usually only 2-3 slots)
Esper Gifts / UW Tron w/ gifts package : 11-13 Sideboard will have to even this matchup out. You can't interact with gifts, so you're only hope is to wrath. Iona naming white will just kill you outright. This matchup needs sideboard improvements, possibly with our own gifts / unburial package, and a big creature that specifically trumps Iona (SPICY)
EDIT : Runed halo can name gifts ungiven , because gift's must target you.
Zoo : 24-0 It's almost like you're starting the game pre-sideboarded. Wraths / Gideon / Batterskull / Elspeth / Paths / Runed halos / Walls. The matchup is absurdly good, even spreading seas is really good early on.
Scapeshift: 19-0 in games Runed halo naming valakut. They have no maindeck interaction cards. Game 2.
Boggles: 14-2 If they nut draw on the play, they can get you, usually they aren't consistent enough. Again, Spellskite ruins them, and Runed Halo makes their hexproof guys bad
And Finally:
RG TRON: 7-15 in games Super terrible matchup if they draw decent. They 7 wins were all on the play, aggressively drawing spreading seas and tec edges, finally resolving elspeth, then batterskull, and using elspeth to make a 7/7 flying lifelink germ token. The 15 losses were turn 3 Karns, etc.
So, so far, this deck has been fantastic against the field of Tier 1 decks being piloted by competent players. The sideboard needs to focus on the 2 tron matchups / Gifts ungiven decks, and Lilliana /thoughtseize decks.
Looking for any sideboard advice, and I'll test it ASAP.
- Seems like it'd be hard to argue against 1-2 copies of dig through time. I realize a lot of the decks is permanent-based, so you don't want more than 2, but it takes a minimum of 6 mana to get more cards from sphinx's rev than dig and you obviously only get those 3 rather than picking the best 2 of 7. That's a lot of mana for a deck that's running 4x tec edge. You could cut a walker/batterskull or two for dig since they're dead in multiples and almost every time you cast dig you'll see a win-con anyway.
- I always felt like wall of omens was awkward in decks that want to cast wrath effects because the wall helps you survive long enough to get to 4 mana but then it dies as soon as you wrath. Any consideration for ghostly prison? Survives verdict, good vs. swarm & other aggressive decks, good vs. twin/kiki combo, effects stack... on the other hand it comes down a turn later and doesn't cantrip.
- I really like that runed halo can name thrun, because it means you can run verdict over wrath of god.
- It seems like vs. UWR/other heavy control lists your biggest problem would be dealing with countermagic. Maybe some number of negate/dispel would be the best plan. Another thought is remand (counter your own spell in response to their counter, draw a card). Even more obnoxious if you've got the mana open to counter & recast your own dispel/negate.
It's very possible that we may be better off playing countermagic and using runed halo and a "2 main - 2 in the board" kind of thing. You're right, wall of omens never does a lot (besides replace itself) It will usually be totally irrelevant, or eat a bolt. spreading seas is good againt tron, until they find the rest of their lands inevitably.
If we are going to play countermagic though, think twice and the other cheap card draw which is available isn't quite good enough.
does anyone have any experience with a small splash for esper charms?
It's very possible that we may be better off playing countermagic and using runed halo and a "2 main - 2 in the board" kind of thing. You're right, wall of omens never does a lot (besides replace itself) It will usually be totally irrelevant, or eat a bolt. spreading seas is good againt tron, until they find the rest of their lands inevitably.
If we are going to play countermagic though, think twice and the other cheap card draw which is available isn't quite good enough.
does anyone have any experience with a small splash for esper charms?
To be honest, I was just thinking a little bit of countermagic in the board to bring in vs. control (unless one has a very control-heavy meta). I think if you tried to run more than a couple counters main-board in your brew, you'd dilute the deck's plan and it would either morph into the traditional UW control list or be a worse combination of the two.
If wall of omens is primarily there just as a cantrip rather than a speedbump, I'd personally advocate for telling time over think twice. I've found that although it only draws you one card instead of 2, it also digs 3 deep for 2 mana and gets rid of something you don't need. I usually don't need one of the cards I drew with think twice anyway. Splashing for esper charm doesn't seem right in a deck running 4x tec edge because you really need all 3 colors on turn 3. If I were to splash black in your deck it would be for lingering souls in the place of wall of omens to serve as a speedbump/card advantage/anti-planeswalker tech/win-con. With lingering souls you could afford to run a singleton watery grave, maybe 1-2 more blue fetches, and maybe 1-2 of some other black source (drowned catacomb/creeping tar pit), and not have to worry about getting black as fast as possible and ruining your stable manabase.
wall of omens does make a pretty good speed bump, he's never really been unsatisfying. I've prepared an alternate list as well for testing, and I'm currently testing both. I'm currently in a position where I don't have to work for a little while, so essentially I'm testing these against various members of my test group for roughly 7-10 hours a day, so I'm able to get a ton of games in.
the reason I present this alternative list is because of where the metagame is going. Preparing for Starcity IQ's and Modern open events on the east coast, the metagame is becoming more and more about birthing pod decks and scapeshift. It's almost impossible for us to beat a deck like GR tron or through the breach Emrakul game one, and would require such a significant portion of our sideboard, that it may in fact be better for us to move some counter magic back in the board so we have game against these decks, and counters are also good against combo. As we all know, control decks always must be meta tuned, and as much as I want to push the design boundaries of competitive control, I think in the current meta, I may just be incorrect.
My best performing list against the expected field (Pod / Zoo / Twin / Rock / Jund / Tron / Breach) is following:
The counterspell suite is designed to make a graceful transfer from early to mid to late game. A significant amount of functional cantrips, which all either nerf manlands / janky mana bases spreading seas, or shadow of doubt which scoffs at pod / gifts / general "stone rain, draw a card" against decks that run fetch lands (roughly 100% of competitive decks)
We still have runed halo mainboard, along with a suite of 10 flexible maindeck counters.
the board is pretty self explanatory and flexible for different matchups, the 2 of frost titan is good in both control mirrors and pod games that can go long.
Doesn't look bad at all. Be sure to post your findings on the creature package. I've been considering a few ouphe's myself. 2-3 Halo is still solid main. Nice
I found this deck online and it looks like a lot of fun to play. This is actually a variation as the original deck has no win conditions. I have never played control in modern (I have Burn and GW Auras at the moment). How do you think this deck will hold up against other competitive decks?
My BG Pod deck just got blown up by the ban list...so I'm trying to figure out which deck I'd like to work on building next. Just brewing at this point... UW Control is looking insanely fun to play...and it seems like it should do well in my current meta (I'm expecting there to be a lot of midrange creature based decks, 1 or 2 b/w tokens, probably just 1 u/r delver and a reanimator deck)...most lean more towards the casual side of things...only a couple of people at my LGS ever run optimized decks (and even than...not always). (and by optimized, I mean using the 'best of' cards in each slot).
...no cryptic commands in my list. I'm just not going to drop $200 at this time if I decide on this deck for a playset. They are cards I'd work towards trading up to eventually though if I decided I liked this deck enough.
My BG Pod deck just got blown up by the ban list...so I'm trying to figure out which deck I'd like to work on building next. Just brewing at this point... UW Control is looking insanely fun to play...and it seems like it should do well in my current meta (I'm expecting there to be a lot of midrange creature based decks, 1 or 2 b/w tokens, probably just 1 u/r delver and a reanimator deck)...most lean more towards the casual side of things...only a couple of people at my LGS ever run optimized decks (and even than...not always). (and by optimized, I mean using the 'best of' cards in each slot).
...no cryptic commands in my list. I'm just not going to drop $200 at this time if I decide on this deck for a playset. They are cards I'd work towards trading up to eventually though if I decided I liked this deck enough.
We aren't allowed to make "budget" posts. There is a budget thread for those kind of decks. We are posting decks we think are the most competitive. The price of Cryptic Command shouldn't be part of this conversation.
We aren't allowed to make "budget" posts. There is a budget thread for those kind of decks. We are posting decks we think are the most competitive. The price of Cryptic Command shouldn't be part of this conversation.
YES SIR! THANK YOU SIR!
/rolls eyes...
...even without the cryptics this is at $300+...how in the world would that ever be considered budget? You really want me to go put this list in the budget part of the forums??? Really?
well i cant quite see what your game plan is? either flash or tap out. with only 4 creatures i would say flash but then there are the finks ?! if you want to play flash then why arent you running the full set of Snapcaster Mages or some Restoration Angels ? and in a creature based meta you could as well use some Wall of Omens but that might be more of an tap out aproach.
I've actually never played U/W control to be quite honest, so I'm far from knowing all of the ins and outs of this deck.
This deck list is a slightly modified version of the U/W deck listed here:
Someone left this article a page or 2 back in this thread...and I liked the list quite a bit (sans dig through time of course).
It's a slower grindy build...Colonnade and Gideon are a couple of the main win cons here...the list above runs 3 finks actually...I think they're just there mainly to keep you in the game early on till you can start out drawing your opponent. Provides an excellent blocker and the life gain can be very important.
Aside from that, it's all about board wipes, spot removal and countering. Typical stuff I think for U/W control. This is just a slow grindy version of the deck.
p.s.
I'd take the 4x mana leaks out for 4x cryptic command in this list. I just feel like this deck is all about hitting the late game, and condescend is just better here. My counter package would be
4x condescend
3x Spell Pierce
4x Cryptic Command
Though it might be better at 3x Condescend, and 4x Spell Pierce (or maybe even skip the pierces all together and go 4x Mana Leak) so I have a little more going for me early game.
Spell Pierce is the worst counter for a deck like UW Control. The reason for this is, that you want to go into the lategame and a softcounter is there just useless. Go with either Spell Snare (a very very very good card), Logic Knot and Mana Leak. Mana Leak seems bad, but it isn't dead till turn 6ish (depends on the opp deck) which makes it better than Spell Pierce. Also it is a catch-all card.
4 Condescend are probably 2 to much. Often you don't have the spare mana to counter stuff with it and or he can pay it. Also tapping out is never good, if the opp can cast another spell (and this will often happen).
In an ideal list I would play something like this as the counter suit:
3-4 Spell Snare (depends on the expected meta)
0-2 Condescend
2 Logic Knot
2-3 Remand (depends on the meta)
4 Cryptic Command
Remand is here for Flashback cards, "timewalks" on turn 2, and just be able to counter your own stuff to play around counters. Also it is great against High CMC cards, since it buys you atleast 1 turn.
But before you are choosing a counter suit, you have to know, what kind of UW Control you want to build. If you want to go draw & go, take the counter shell from above. If you want to go more tap-out Control (with Walls and Finks), you will not play as much counters and especially no Logic Knots (these are bad in the tap-out version). I was playing the Tap-out version for a long time, since I like the Wall of Omens + Restoration Angle value. But first, you have to know, what version you want to play. Otherwise, you will get a mix of both versions and this is most of the times just a very bad list.
Greetings,
Kathal
PS: Don't play so much high end X spells like Sphinx's Rev. You only want 2, because one in the start hand equals a mulligan.
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What I play or have:
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
It is a good sideboard card against Burn, but Timely Reinforcements, Leyline of Sanctity, and Phyrexian Unlife probably are better in that matchup.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Greetings,
Kathal
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/30028_The-State-Of-Modern.html
Esper draw go Control!
Twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/pimpdonny
Esper draw go Control!
Twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/pimpdonny
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
The best thing is the deck hasn't made sacrifices to be good against UR delver. All the maindeck wraths put the deck in favourable position vs robots, pod, junk and other creatures decks. There's a maindeck final judgement and another in the board which is nuts against pod (and finks + path help get you to 6 mana)
Even discard decks like junk are simple enough to get through thanks again to the sweepers and cards like snapcaster and think twice that are great to recover from.
The main card in this deck is sphinx's revelation. Now from what I've seen people are raving about DTT in control decks but I just don't get it. If you have it in your opening hand you can't cast it for like 5 turns anyway so why not have a revelation? Not only do you not get blown out by remand but when you top deck a revelation on turn 10 and draw 5-7 cards and gain 5-7 life it's just not even close to how good DTT can be. The whole aim of the deck is to just hold off the opponent until you can rev for an obscene amount of cards which more often than not is enough to get them to scoop. Only getting 2 cards just isn't enough of an edge in my opinion.
A last thought. Obviously all these wrath's and the general build towards creature decks does make the deck soft to combo. If (when?) treasure cruise gets banned the deck will need an overhaul. Jeskai Ascendancy is really hard though with the counter magic, paths and tectonic edge it's not unwinnable. Storm is another difficult matchup as you lack proper answers and scapeshift has the same problem. Twin isn't so bad and neither is tron thanks to path and tectonic edge. All the matches get much better post board when you can remove a mass of dead cards and get access to lots of cheap relevant spells.
Having just 2 colours makes the mana a breeze and not running junk like bolt/helix/electrolyze vs all these stupid swiftspear/rhino decks is a blessing. UWR wants double red on 3 for anger of the gods, triple blue/double white on 4 for cryptic/verdict. This doesn't happen without a lot of pain and often just doesn't happen which leads to losses. On top of that blood moon sucks against you and thanks to the colonnades and glacial fortress's choke is also useless against you.
One of the most important things (for me) is the control mirror. UWR just doesn't match up well. Finks is so powerful against them. They either have to path it (and put you at land advantage + remove answers to colonnade) or use 2 burn spells so not only do you save 6-7 life from that but gain 4 from the finks ability as well. If they don't answer you just quietly hit away for 2-3 damage a turn.
Apologies for the long post. Just wanted to get more people onto this deck because it feels so powerful. If you like making you opponents life a misery by shutting them down at every turn but not actually winning for 20 turns this is 100% the deck to play.
I hope to report back positive results on modo in a few days.
I agree with you tho that having Sphinx rev is such a powerful end game that including digs instead seems stupid.
Esper draw go Control!
Twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/pimpdonny
What I'm proposing is a straight tap out deck with little to no main deck counters. Before you look at the list consider this:
- Traditional control tries to leak / snare /etc. certain threats but inevitably something will slip though. We may then draw answers, or we may just draw redundant counter magic that doesn't really advance our situation (which is also relatively dead past mid game)
- That would put us automatically dying to Twin / storm / combo if not for maindeck Runed halo
***Thinking critically about Runed Halo*** :
Traditionally u/w decks (both tap out and permission) play some non-zero quantity of Oblivion ring / detention sphere. O-rings will never answer threats such as splinter twin decks or storm, and really only 1 for 1 (or maybe more with sphere).
Runed Halo will :
a- act as a 1 for 1 (playing halo and naming goyf is functionally no different than o-ringing it.
b- act as a detention sphere (in the sense that one halo still nerfs multiple copies of whatever card you name. In this sense, halo is better because copies of the named card that are drawn after halo comes down are still useless, whereas an o-ring doesn't invalidate later goyf's, etc.
c- now onto the good part. runed halo completely derails twin (name exarch, yes there is pestermite, you also have a pithing needle and path's and spellskites) You can name grapeshots, you can name valakut, etc. Imagine if o-ring or d-sphere could do all of that, in addition to having the option of removing a creature for one mana less than o-ring. You can even name man lands. If we were already wanting to play o-ring / sphere, there aren't too many reasons we wouldn't prefer Halo, especially since it allows us to play against combo without hoping to draw into a bunch of counters. not to mention once it comes down, theres no countering it for scapeshift or twin. Obviously they can be bounced with something like echoing truth, but you also have spellskites , etc.
3x spellskite maindeck is solid against RDW and UR Delver, infect, AND especialy Boggles. In other matchups it can be relatively dead sure, that's why your sideboard should accurately reflect what your maindeck has trouble with. Even against Jund or Rock, skite essentially counters abrupt decay and allows a runed halo to live. Or eats a hero's downfall to protect a planeswalker.
It's also important to remember Jace, Architect of Thought +1 does in fact stop Twin Decks. Of course they play some copies of pestermite , but with Bolt being so prevalent, Exarch makes a lot more sense for them to play in larger numbers. Not to mention, you have spellskite and pithing needle. Jace also nerfs young pyromancer tokens and requires UR Delver to invest some resources to get rid of him. A plus one'd Jace also makes monastery swiftspear less than optimal
Combination of spreading seas and tectonic edge are solid against tron / scapeshift / valakut. Seas is better than think twice in this build because you aren't restricted to only needing things to happen at instant speed, and also it can sometimes just RUIN UR delver for a few turns /completely hose the shaky draws some decks will have.
It's not perfect. It needs a board plan versus The mirror (uwr, etc) Primarily luminarch ascension and a few copies of leyline of sanctity to protect against discard.
Anyways, here the list: So far in testing it's performed exceptionally well against the field of top decks with quite a bit of playtesting. See what you think.
4x Flooded Strand
4x Glacial Fortress
2x Hallowed Fountain
3x Island
1x Mystic Gate
4x Plains
4x Tectonic Edge
4x Wall of Omens
2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Gideon Jura
2x Jace, Architect of Thought
4x Path to Exile
1x Sphinx's Revelation
3x Supreme Verdict
4x Runed Halo
1x Pithing Needle
4x Spreading Seas
2x Batterskull
The important thing to remember is that you still have the same amount of answers to their threats, they are now just coming in the form of cards you can lay down on turn 2, unopposed, as opposed to doing nothing for most of the game and hoping they don't have more answers than you. Their decks are pretty linear (eggs / twin / scapeshift / storm) and are easily hated on by Halo.
Think about the flexible maindeck cards you have against the relevant match ups:
VS.
UR delver : wall of omens, spellskite,gideon jura, Path/Verdict/Oust/ Batterskull
Affinity/RDW: wall of omens, spellskite, runed halo, pithing needle
Scapeshift/Valakut/Tron: tectonic edge, spreading seas, runed halo
Jeskai Ascendancy: runed halo, spellskite, pithing needle
Twin / Storm: spellskite, runed halo, pithing needle, Jace / Path for twin
Zoo/Pod/Jund: supreme verdict, runed halo, pithing needle, batterksull, gideon jura
Eggs: runed halo for the win / pithing needle for the win.
I like it. You're showing some really out-of-the box thinking and taking a totally different approach to control. Players on this forum (and in general) tend to be nervous about playing something totally different though, so the only way you're likely to generate significant interest is to go play it a bunch and regularly post your results. Also, your deck is different enough from the rest of what's being posted in this thread that if you want to pursue it seriously you should create a separate thread in developing.
Results are quantified in Games, not matches. All of these are game ones, no sideboard. The purpose of this round of testing was to tweak the main deck, but mostly to discover where our sideboard needs to be. All sideboard / card choice feedback is greatly appreciated.
RDW: 17-3 in games Not a whole lot to say about this one. (Shenhar list from Worlds)
Affinitiy: 19-1 in games You have verdict, walls, runed halo, and gideons. Not a whole lot to say
U/R Twin : 18-5 in games Sometimes they just have it and you haven't got an answer. It happens to any deck, maybe some purges in the sideboard will help both this matchup and jund
Jund / Jund w/ White variants : 22-18 in games Liliana is annoying, and we don't have many ways to interact with her. If they get us in topdecking mode we need to either rip a sphinx rev or we kind if just lose. This is one of the decks "fair" match ups.
U/R Delver(Chapin List) : 23-6 in games Spent an entire day testing this one match. live long enough cast batterskull, or just run them out of resources. If they cast treausre cruise and you Revelation in response you are getting a lot of value.
Eggs : 7-0 Not even worth testing anymore than 7 games. Pithing needle or runed halo Auto-win
Storm : 9-0 Embarrassing for storm, name grapeshot, which leaves (some builds) with either nothing, or empty the warrens. your deck with Jace's gideons, and wraths doesn't really care about 1/1 tokens.
Josh Utter-Leyton Jeskai Ascendancy : 17-8 Interesting match, they can path your spellskite, which would normally interrupt their game. Runed halo naming fatestitcher and a spreading seas or tec edge on Faerie conclave are very effective. Your goal in this match is really to make "going off" mildly inconvenient, and then sticking elspeth / gideon / batterskull. runed halo is an all star, but they will have enchantment / artifact hate post board (usually only 2-3 slots)
Esper Gifts / UW Tron w/ gifts package : 11-13 Sideboard will have to even this matchup out. You can't interact with gifts, so you're only hope is to wrath. Iona naming white will just kill you outright. This matchup needs sideboard improvements, possibly with our own gifts / unburial package, and a big creature that specifically trumps Iona (SPICY)
EDIT : Runed halo can name gifts ungiven , because gift's must target you.
Zoo : 24-0 It's almost like you're starting the game pre-sideboarded. Wraths / Gideon / Batterskull / Elspeth / Paths / Runed halos / Walls. The matchup is absurdly good, even spreading seas is really good early on.
Scapeshift: 19-0 in games Runed halo naming valakut. They have no maindeck interaction cards. Game 2.
Boggles: 14-2 If they nut draw on the play, they can get you, usually they aren't consistent enough. Again, Spellskite ruins them, and Runed Halo makes their hexproof guys bad
And Finally:
RG TRON: 7-15 in games Super terrible matchup if they draw decent. They 7 wins were all on the play, aggressively drawing spreading seas and tec edges, finally resolving elspeth, then batterskull, and using elspeth to make a 7/7 flying lifelink germ token. The 15 losses were turn 3 Karns, etc.
So, so far, this deck has been fantastic against the field of Tier 1 decks being piloted by competent players. The sideboard needs to focus on the 2 tron matchups / Gifts ungiven decks, and Lilliana /thoughtseize decks.
Looking for any sideboard advice, and I'll test it ASAP.
A couple of thoughts on the list:
- Seems like it'd be hard to argue against 1-2 copies of dig through time. I realize a lot of the decks is permanent-based, so you don't want more than 2, but it takes a minimum of 6 mana to get more cards from sphinx's rev than dig and you obviously only get those 3 rather than picking the best 2 of 7. That's a lot of mana for a deck that's running 4x tec edge. You could cut a walker/batterskull or two for dig since they're dead in multiples and almost every time you cast dig you'll see a win-con anyway.
- I always felt like wall of omens was awkward in decks that want to cast wrath effects because the wall helps you survive long enough to get to 4 mana but then it dies as soon as you wrath. Any consideration for ghostly prison? Survives verdict, good vs. swarm & other aggressive decks, good vs. twin/kiki combo, effects stack... on the other hand it comes down a turn later and doesn't cantrip.
- I really like that runed halo can name thrun, because it means you can run verdict over wrath of god.
- It seems like vs. UWR/other heavy control lists your biggest problem would be dealing with countermagic. Maybe some number of negate/dispel would be the best plan. Another thought is remand (counter your own spell in response to their counter, draw a card). Even more obnoxious if you've got the mana open to counter & recast your own dispel/negate.
Keep brewing.
If we are going to play countermagic though, think twice and the other cheap card draw which is available isn't quite good enough.
does anyone have any experience with a small splash for esper charms?
To be honest, I was just thinking a little bit of countermagic in the board to bring in vs. control (unless one has a very control-heavy meta). I think if you tried to run more than a couple counters main-board in your brew, you'd dilute the deck's plan and it would either morph into the traditional UW control list or be a worse combination of the two.
If wall of omens is primarily there just as a cantrip rather than a speedbump, I'd personally advocate for telling time over think twice. I've found that although it only draws you one card instead of 2, it also digs 3 deep for 2 mana and gets rid of something you don't need. I usually don't need one of the cards I drew with think twice anyway. Splashing for esper charm doesn't seem right in a deck running 4x tec edge because you really need all 3 colors on turn 3. If I were to splash black in your deck it would be for lingering souls in the place of wall of omens to serve as a speedbump/card advantage/anti-planeswalker tech/win-con. With lingering souls you could afford to run a singleton watery grave, maybe 1-2 more blue fetches, and maybe 1-2 of some other black source (drowned catacomb/creeping tar pit), and not have to worry about getting black as fast as possible and ruining your stable manabase.
Overall, I really want to like the idea of lingering souls / esper charm splash, but at that point, it's too hard to not just play inquisitions and thoughtseize.
the reason I present this alternative list is because of where the metagame is going. Preparing for Starcity IQ's and Modern open events on the east coast, the metagame is becoming more and more about birthing pod decks and scapeshift. It's almost impossible for us to beat a deck like GR tron or through the breach Emrakul game one, and would require such a significant portion of our sideboard, that it may in fact be better for us to move some counter magic back in the board so we have game against these decks, and counters are also good against combo. As we all know, control decks always must be meta tuned, and as much as I want to push the design boundaries of competitive control, I think in the current meta, I may just be incorrect.
My best performing list against the expected field (Pod / Zoo / Twin / Rock / Jund / Tron / Breach) is following:
4x Celestial Colonnade
3x Flooded Strand
4x Glacial Fortress
2x Hallowed Fountain
4x Island
2x Mystic Gate
4x Plains
3x Tectonic Edge
Removal (6)
4x Path to Exile
2x Supreme Verdict
Winning (4)
3x Batterskull
1x Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1x Condescend
3x Cryptic Command
1x Dissolve
1x Logic Knot
4x Rune Snag
Draw (12)
1x Repeal
2x Shadow of Doubt
2x Sphinx's Revelation
4x Spreading Seas
3x Wall of Omens
Hate (2)
2x Runed Halo
1x AEtherize
1x Celestial Purge
1x Disenchant
2x Frost Titan
1x Hallowed Burial
2x Negate
2x Runed Halo
2x Stony Silence
1x Surgical Extraction
2x Timely Reinforcements
The counterspell suite is designed to make a graceful transfer from early to mid to late game. A significant amount of functional cantrips, which all either nerf manlands / janky mana bases spreading seas, or shadow of doubt which scoffs at pod / gifts / general "stone rain, draw a card" against decks that run fetch lands (roughly 100% of competitive decks)
We still have runed halo mainboard, along with a suite of 10 flexible maindeck counters.
3x batterskull is just good in general , and elspeth, sun's champion let's you go big in the endgame.
the board is pretty self explanatory and flexible for different matchups, the 2 of frost titan is good in both control mirrors and pod games that can go long.
Thoughts?
4x Celestial Colonnade
2x Flooded Strand
5x Island
3x Mystic Gate
5x Plains
4x Tectonic Edge
3x Temple of Enlightenment
3x Supreme Verdict
Enchantment (2)
2x Runed Halo
Instant (16)
3x Cryptic Command
4x Path to Exile
3x Remand
2x Shadow of Doubt
3x Spell Snare
1x Sphinx's Revelation
4x Kitchen Finks
3x Restoration Angel
1x Sun Titan
1x Vendilion Clique
4x Wall of Omens
2x Baneslayer Angel
2x Celestial Purge
1x Disenchant
2x Negate
2x Rest in Peace
1x Spellskite
2x Stony Silence
1x Surgical Extraction
Modern : Huh?
EDH : UBGW Thrasios / Tymna Combo UBGW // GRW Mayael Big Stuff GRW // GU Edric Timewalkers GU
2 Celestial Flare
3 Mana Leak
3 Path to Exile
3 Quicken
3 Render Silent
3 Silence
4 Sphinx's Revelation
Sorcery (4)
4 Supreme Verdict
2 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
5 Island
5 Plains
Artifact (7)
2 Elixir of Immortality
4 Isochron Scepter
1 Sundial of the Infinite
2 Echoing Truth
2 Erase
2 Kataki, War's Wage
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 AEtherling
UW Control is looking insanely fun to play...and it seems like it should do well in my current meta (I'm expecting there to be a lot of midrange creature based decks, 1 or 2 b/w tokens, probably just 1 u/r delver and a reanimator deck)...most lean more towards the casual side of things...only a couple of people at my LGS ever run optimized decks (and even than...not always). (and by optimized, I mean using the 'best of' cards in each slot).
Here's the list I'm looking at:
2x Snapcaster Mage
2x Kitchen Finks
----PLANESWALKERS (3):
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2x Gideon Jura
----CARD DRAW (7):
4x Serum Visions
3x Sphinx's Revelation
----COUNTERSPELLS (11):
4x Condescend
3x Spell Pierce
4x Mana Leak
4x Path to Exile
2x Detention Sphere
----MASS REMOVAL (4):
2x Supreme Verdict
2x Wrath Of God
----LANDS (25):
--FETCH LANDS (4):
4x Flooded Strand
--DUAL LANDS (10):
4x Hallowed Fountain
4x Seachrome Coast
2x Calciform Pools
4x Celestial Colonnade
--UTILITY LANDS (4):
4x Tectonic Edge
--BASIC LANDS (3):
2x Plains
1x Island
...no cryptic commands in my list. I'm just not going to drop $200 at this time if I decide on this deck for a playset. They are cards I'd work towards trading up to eventually though if I decided I liked this deck enough.
We aren't allowed to make "budget" posts. There is a budget thread for those kind of decks. We are posting decks we think are the most competitive. The price of Cryptic Command shouldn't be part of this conversation.
YES SIR! THANK YOU SIR!
/rolls eyes...
...even without the cryptics this is at $300+...how in the world would that ever be considered budget? You really want me to go put this list in the budget part of the forums??? Really?
I've actually never played U/W control to be quite honest, so I'm far from knowing all of the ins and outs of this deck.
This deck list is a slightly modified version of the U/W deck listed here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/30028_The-State-Of-Modern.html
Someone left this article a page or 2 back in this thread...and I liked the list quite a bit (sans dig through time of course).
It's a slower grindy build...Colonnade and Gideon are a couple of the main win cons here...the list above runs 3 finks actually...I think they're just there mainly to keep you in the game early on till you can start out drawing your opponent. Provides an excellent blocker and the life gain can be very important.
Aside from that, it's all about board wipes, spot removal and countering. Typical stuff I think for U/W control. This is just a slow grindy version of the deck.
p.s.
I'd take the 4x mana leaks out for 4x cryptic command in this list. I just feel like this deck is all about hitting the late game, and condescend is just better here. My counter package would be
4x condescend
3x Spell Pierce
4x Cryptic Command
Though it might be better at 3x Condescend, and 4x Spell Pierce (or maybe even skip the pierces all together and go 4x Mana Leak) so I have a little more going for me early game.
A little bit input:
Spell Pierce is the worst counter for a deck like UW Control. The reason for this is, that you want to go into the lategame and a softcounter is there just useless. Go with either Spell Snare (a very very very good card), Logic Knot and Mana Leak. Mana Leak seems bad, but it isn't dead till turn 6ish (depends on the opp deck) which makes it better than Spell Pierce. Also it is a catch-all card.
4 Condescend are probably 2 to much. Often you don't have the spare mana to counter stuff with it and or he can pay it. Also tapping out is never good, if the opp can cast another spell (and this will often happen).
In an ideal list I would play something like this as the counter suit:
3-4 Spell Snare (depends on the expected meta)
0-2 Condescend
2 Logic Knot
2-3 Remand (depends on the meta)
4 Cryptic Command
Remand is here for Flashback cards, "timewalks" on turn 2, and just be able to counter your own stuff to play around counters. Also it is great against High CMC cards, since it buys you atleast 1 turn.
But before you are choosing a counter suit, you have to know, what kind of UW Control you want to build. If you want to go draw & go, take the counter shell from above. If you want to go more tap-out Control (with Walls and Finks), you will not play as much counters and especially no Logic Knots (these are bad in the tap-out version). I was playing the Tap-out version for a long time, since I like the Wall of Omens + Restoration Angle value. But first, you have to know, what version you want to play. Otherwise, you will get a mix of both versions and this is most of the times just a very bad list.
Greetings,
Kathal
PS: Don't play so much high end X spells like Sphinx's Rev. You only want 2, because one in the start hand equals a mulligan.
Modern/Legacy
either funpolice (Delver, Deathcloud, UW Control) or the fun decks (especially those ft. Griselbrand)