I want to run 8 counterspells, and I think 4 Cryptic Command is a given. So now I have to decide which other 4 I want to run, I can see that Mana Leak is really popular but after having played some with it I don't really like that it loses so much power as the game progresses.
I've also tried Rune Snag and I like it more but you still run the risk of sitting with close to useless spells lategame when the oponent has more mana.
So, what do you guys think about Negate as the 5th to 8th counterspell? I really like the idea, my reasoning is that it's cheap, it's a hard counter so it will not lose power late-game. The obvious problem is that it's only against non-creature spells and I'll try to divide that problem into two parts, early game and late game
Early game the problem might be negated by our easy access to other removal, so in many cases we can just use Lightning Bolt, Terminate or some other burn spell to kill them, netting about the same result
and late game we can still use Terminate, but more importantly, we've hopefully drawn a Cryptic Command by then.
What do you guys think?
Here's the counter suite I'm currently running (main deck):
Izzet Charm is outstanding. It kills creatures, counters things like planeswalkers (or opposing counters), and digs for cards you need. I can't say enough good things about it. Remand may seem out of place in this deck, but I've found that merely holding off their threats for a turn or two can be enough. Drawing a card off it is huge.
The only one I'm not entirely sure about is Spell Snare. It could be that running only one copy I'm not seeing it enough to fully assess how good it is in the deck, but I haven't found it to be all that great. It might be better as another copy of Mana Leak. On the other hand, being able to Inquisition on turn two while keeping up Spell Snare for their Goyf/Bob/whatever is nice.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from Kyrillos »
...this is EDH. If you aren't trying to kill someone in the most ridiculous manner possible, you're doing it wrong.
EDH: Go Crazy or Go back to Standard.
Quote from Cassidy Silver »
Griselbrand is pretty straightforward (in the same way that a nuclear holocaust is straightforward); just draw some cards, beat some face, bathe in the blood of some innocent, and repeat.
My theory is that izzet charm belongs in a deck where you can optimally make use of all 3 modes. In order to do so, the rest of the deck needs to have a low enough mana curve to reliably pitch unneeded lands, turning it into an effective divination.
I'm absolutely of the opinion that remand is better than leak in cruel control. I think the two can be ran side by side, but remand plays a hugely important role in cruel in that it can time walk your opponent to the point where you can resolve Cruel and win. Looking at it analytically, remand and leak are similar, yet very different. Remand is better at setting your opponent back and furthering your own game-plan. At the same point, it's worse at protecting your threats and hand. It's also slightly worse against low cmc cards, but the thing is, any low cmc card your opponent would play is why you play lightning bolt, izzet charm, and electrolyze.
Remand fits cruel perfectly - It keeps larger threats off the board just long enough that you can drop an ultimatum, and ultimately win the game off that. Remand keeps problematic threats from resolving for at least a turn, all while digging for extremely crucial land drops and ultimatums. If you haven't tested this deck with remand, I would absolutely suggest giving it a shot, whether in conjunction with leak or not.
It's important to play this deck from the perspective that everything you should play should support the ultimate gameplan of resolving a cruel ultimatum, with only 2 in your deck. When you pair remand with cryptic command and snapcaster mage, it's not uncommon to timewalk your opponent 3-4 times prior to dropping an ultimatum on-curve. The lovely thing with cruel, is it doesn't matter if your opponent has a few cards in hand from you returning a card via remand since they're going to be discarding 3 anyway.
Now, the role of Izzet charm is mainly as support-removal, and early-game countering. It's true that it's not great at anything in particular, but you don't really need it to be, and against most of the creatures in the format, it's not worse than doom blade or terminate. Against the 5% of the creatures in the format that wouldn't die to doom izzet charm, that's why you play Damnation instead of Pyroclasm. At the very worst, you can try to time walk and keep their board clear of weenies until you can edict their creature with ultimatum or devour flesh.
I'm absolutely of the opinion that remand is better than leak in cruel control. I think the two can be ran side by side, but remand plays a hugely important role in cruel in that it can time walk your opponent to the point where you can resolve Cruel and win. Looking at it analytically, remand and leak are similar, yet very different. Remand is better at setting your opponent back and furthering your own game-plan. At the same point, it's worse at protecting your threats and hand. It's also slightly worse against low cmc cards, but the thing is, any low cmc card your opponent would play is why you play lightning bolt, izzet charm, and electrolyze.
Remand fits cruel perfectly - It keeps larger threats off the board just long enough that you can drop an ultimatum, and ultimately win the game off that. Remand keeps problematic threats from resolving for at least a turn, all while digging for extremely crucial land drops and ultimatums. If you haven't tested this deck with remand, I would absolutely suggest giving it a shot, whether in conjunction with leak or not.
It's important to play this deck from the perspective that everything you should play should support the ultimate gameplan of resolving a cruel ultimatum, with only 2 in your deck. When you pair remand with cryptic command and snapcaster mage, it's not uncommon to timewalk your opponent 3-4 times prior to dropping an ultimatum on-curve. The lovely thing with cruel, is it doesn't matter if your opponent has a few cards in hand from you returning a card via remand since they're going to be discarding 3 anyway.
Now, the role of Izzet charm is mainly as support-removal, and early-game countering. It's true that it's not great at anything in particular, but you don't really need it to be, and against most of the creatures in the format, it's not worse than doom blade or terminate. Against the 5% of the creatures in the format that wouldn't die to doom izzet charm, that's why you play Damnation instead of Pyroclasm. At the very worst, you can try to time walk and keep their board clear of weenies until you can edict their creature with ultimatum or devour flesh.
You bring up some good points on Remand, I'll be testing it out in place of Mana Leak, Augur, and Think Twice. It will take awhile but with enough playtesting, I should be able to find out if it's worth the re-slotting. My list is in the signature if you want to make a suggestion as to what to cut for it.
My only argument against Remand is that I would be exchanging card-advantage for tempo, I don't want to make that sacrifice.
As for Izzet charm, I've played it in all 4 numbers and I've settled on one. The idea is that I want to optimize all 3 modes and the third mode would most likely be used profitably in the late-game but I don't want more than 1 in the early to mid-game. As a rule of thumb, the higher the mana-curve of your deck, the less Izzet Charms you want to be playing. With the third mode, I would most likely be pitching lands, and in the late-game (which is when I'm most likely to draw into it) I won't really need the lands anyway. If by some fluke I draw into it early, then its first 2 modes will likely be at their peak of effectiveness.
You bring up some good points on Remand, I'll be testing it out in place of Mana Leak, Augur, and Think Twice. It will take awhile but with enough playtesting, I should be able to find out if it's worth the re-slotting. My list is in the signature if you want to make a suggestion as to what to cut for it.
My only argument against Remand is that I would be exchanging card-advantage for tempo, I don't want to make that sacrifice.
Remand doesn't lose card advantage, and it gains tempo when used against anything it's more efficient than (as any counterspell does).
Since it replaces itself, it's an even 1 for 1 trade on the card advantage spectrum, and is much better against cards like Lingering Souls or snapcaster-retargets than mana leak is. Remand also gives you some additional play in control mirrors in that you can remand your own spells that they would target with something like Cryptic Command or Spell snare, effectively nullifying their counter, while you don't lose a single card over this effect.
The one distinct thing, is remand is better at digging for important spells and land drops, whereas leak is better at fully stopping something from resolving for good. Both have their obvious advantages, but this deck wants to be drawing lots of cards, and any opportunity to draw cards while affecting your opponent's board or stack is awesome.
As for your deck list. Add 2-3 serum visions to it. Don't comment on it until after you've added them and given it a chance with some tests. If you don't like it, then get rid of it, but every time I've added the visions to the deck, it performed 3x more consistently, and most of the other players in this thread who gave it a try found the same to be true. If you play 3 visions, you can also drop down to 25 land, effectively improving your spell quality.
Also, playing this deck without dreadship reef is silly. Dreadship reef is probably the best card in any control mirror, and enables you to hit ultimatums when you only have 4 lands in play. You don't need 4, but there is a noticable difference when you play 1-2, and you'll love having reef when you're stuck on 4-5 lands with an ultimatum in hand, but still need to play a draw-go playstyle.
I myself sleeved up Cheon's list from the CFB article and it performed like a dream. I actually never liked serum visions which is probably crazy but I preferred having a bunch of different distinct spells over the mediocre card selection that visions offers.
Remand is something I have played with and I like remand and leak about equally. I'm the guy that likes bleeding my opponent out of cards so that generally pushed leak over the top for me, but the way I've found myself playing this list, I'll usually chain teachings instead of finding actual answers in long games and thus my mana leaks end up deader then the average persons so I could see making the change back to remand.
Reef on the other while not in my deck is 100% awesome. I remember it being the most important card in control mirrors way back in spiral block and either side of spiral standard so at some point it's going to get the nod.
For now though, I'm going to keep playing the Cheon list as I like playing with someone's deck for a while before changing cards so that I have a firm idea as to the what's where's, and why's of all the card choices.
I definitely will be sticking with that maindeck pyroclysm/consume the meek sweeper choice though as they compliment each other fairly well and I've rarely found pyroclasm dead in the applicable matchups.
Lastly, while ultimatum is the reason to play these colors over raka, I find I win a fair amount of games with just snappy/clique/tar-pit beatdown and burn. As a guy who's a predominately agro player in formats that have a satisfactory beatdown(nothing non-rotating since nacatl became bad/banned) I usually have an easier time switching gears and finding openings to kill people then the average control mage I think.
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
Nice comments on remand I can't not play at least two. Serum visions is trash.
Yea that whole being able to switch gears and tempo kill people is why bolt and snapy are so crucial to control in this format. Bolt snap bolt is 8 damage! Tarpit IS the best man land ever even if it is more fragile and does less dmg I love that it activates for less than colonnade.
No one else has tried my gifts ungiven and mystic retrieval engine?
Nice comments on remand I can't not play at least two. Serum visions is trash.
Yea that whole being able to switch gears and tempo kill people is why bolt and snapy are so crucial to control in this format. Bolt snap bolt is 8 damage! Tarpit IS the best man land ever even if it is more fragile and does less dmg I love that it activates for less than colonnade.
No one else has tried my gifts ungiven and mystic retrieval engine?
I've used Gifts Ungiven in the past as a way to fetch up cruel ultimatum. The problem I ran into was that it made the deck more graveyard reliant than it needed to be. It also telegraphed what you were doing as, unless you were sitting on 10+ mana even EoT gifts into the two, still meant the opponent had a whole other turn to prepare itself.
Thus i went for the more "lubricated" approach, with cantrips and digging spells instead of the tutor approach. The deck seemed to operate much more efficiently. Serum Vision is obviously no Preordain or ponder, but it fit's nicely into the various open mana our turns offer. Holding Bolt, terminate, serum vision with 3 mana up... cast serum visions and hold onto your answers, set yourself up next turn and still maintain your ability to respond to opposition. It's inclusion is great, hell i'm starting to want a singleton copy of Temporal Mastery, in the deck because of the amount of scrying i'm doing now. People talk about how remand if played right "time walks" your opponent... well why not actually time walk them? That's how well serum visions is performing for me. I've ran Telling time in the past and it's sort of the same card at instant speed, but frankly sometimes the two mana would make it awkward, or forcing yourself to pick one of them to be you're next draw, but this just feels superior.
My only issue with tarpit, is that it comes into play tapped. When I ran 4 of them, i faced way more times where I would either NEED to make a land drop to damnation in time to save my life, or needed to make the land drop to ultimatum to save my life and it would pop up. Or the times where you hold a great openning hand, but stare down at creeping tar pit, dragonskull summit and drowned catacomb. I found that early on i simply did not have spare mana to activate my 2 toughness man land which is very valuable to my overall strategy and late game I would hardly every activate more than 2 (if ever that) so i went down to 2 of them.
Remand doesn't lose card advantage, and it gains tempo when used against anything it's more efficient than (as any counterspell does).
Since it replaces itself, it's an even 1 for 1 trade on the card advantage spectrum, and is much better against cards like Lingering Souls or snapcaster-retargets than mana leak is. Remand also gives you some additional play in control mirrors in that you can remand your own spells that they would target with something like Cryptic Command or Spell snare, effectively nullifying their counter, while you don't lose a single card over this effect.
The one distinct thing, is remand is better at digging for important spells and land drops, whereas leak is better at fully stopping something from resolving for good. Both have their obvious advantages, but this deck wants to be drawing lots of cards, and any opportunity to draw cards while affecting your opponent's board or stack is awesome.
Also, playing this deck without dreadship reef is silly. Dreadship reef is probably the best card in any control mirror, and enables you to hit ultimatums when you only have 4 lands in play. You don't need 4, but there is a noticable difference when you play 1-2, and you'll love having reef when you're stuck on 4-5 lands with an ultimatum in hand, but still need to play a draw-go playstyle.
Well what I mean't to say is that it loses the digging power/relevant body of augur, and it would have less card advantage/resilience to hand disruption than Think Twice. You also have the high interactivity of remand vs the non-interactivity of Think twice, augur of bolas is closer to the middle of this sprectrum while think twice is on the non-interactive side.
As for your deck list. Add 2-3 serum visions to it. Don't comment on it until after you've added them and given it a chance with some tests. If you don't like it, then get rid of it, but every time I've added the visions to the deck, it performed 3x more consistently, and most of the other players in this thread who gave it a try found the same to be true.
Having a lot of 1 cmc sorcery spells (for my style of deck) has interrupted my game-plan just by being there. The scenarios would look like this
It's turn 2, your opponent has a deathrite shaman in play and you put down a second land with an IOK or Serum Visions in hand, you also have a combination 1-2 Mana Leaks, Think Twice, Terminate. I almost always decide to ignore IOK/visions in favor of keeping the mana up to interact with my opponent on their turn, by the time I can cast IOK without getting blown out the next turn with something I have to react to, it doesn't hit anything relevant or they've used all of there cmc1-3 spells anyway, or I even have to choose from IOK/SV over Electrolyze/Damnation/Cryptic Command. The only times IOK and Visions have been effective for me were when I was able to play them on my very first turn, but probability dictates I would be playing them on the following turns instead.
This is my reasoning for possibly cutting Augur of Bolas for Remand since it's more compatible with my game-plan but I would be cutting the digging power i previously got from Augur of Bolas (Also a better top-deck) significantly.
If you play 3 visions, you can also drop down to 25 land, effectively improving your spell quality.
I don't like the idea of spending resources to hit land-drops when I could just play the 26th land but I'll try it out for sure
Well what I mean't to say is that it loses the digging power/relevant body of augur, and it would have less card advantage/resilience to hand disruption than Think Twice. You also have the high interactivity of remand vs the non-interactivity of Think twice, augur of bolas is closer to the middle of this sprectrum while think twice is on the non-interactive side.
Having a lot of 1 cmc sorcery spells (for my style of deck) has interrupted my game-plan just by being there. The scenarios would look like this
It's turn 2, your opponent has a deathrite shaman in play and you put down a second land with an IOK or Serum Visions in hand, you also have a combination 1-2 Mana Leaks, Think Twice, Terminate. I almost always decide to ignore IOK/visions in favor of keeping the mana up to interact with my opponent on their turn, by the time I can cast IOK without getting blown out the next turn with something I have to react to, it doesn't hit anything relevant or they've used all of there cmc1-3 spells anyway, or I even have to choose from IOK/SV over Electrolyze/Damnation/Cryptic Command. The only times IOK and Visions have been effective for me were when I was able to play them on my very first turn, but probability dictates I would be playing them on the following turns instead.
This is my reasoning for possibly cutting Augur of Bolas for Remand since it's more compatible with my game-plan but I would be cutting the digging power i previously got from Augur of Bolas (Also a better top-deck) significantly.
I don't like the idea of spending resources to hit land-drops when I could just play the 26th land but I'll try it out for sure
Fair enough, to me I either play Visions turn 1 when I won't have to bolt something, or wait until I would play it turn 3-4-5-6 where I can start digging for cards I know i'll need in the given matchup, or to search for cruels. It's not a turn 2 play unless you drop inquisition on turn 1-2, and know it's not going to hurt you for tapping out to cast it. I think visions is less effective in decks with more permission like yours however, so it's a tough call.
If you want to hold countermagic up, you just hold the visions until it's more useful later in the game. This is how most of the pros played preordain back during the caw-blade era. If they weren't digging for land drops early on, they would often hold it until later on when their hand was less full, and they could dig for relevant gas at that point in the game.
If you've tried it and don't like it, then fair enough. I've just found the deck worked much more consistently when I had access to 1-3 visions for whatever reason.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find me online - I'm on Cockatrice * Tag - Badd B - Or on MTGO - Tag - Cbus05
Fair enough, to me I either play Visions turn 1 when I won't have to bolt something, or wait until I would play it turn 3-4-5-6 where I can start digging for cards I know i'll need in the given matchup, or to search for cruels. It's not a turn 2 play unless you drop inquisition on turn 1-2, and know it's not going to hurt you for tapping out to cast it. I think visions is less effective in decks with more permission like yours however, so it's a tough call.
If you want to hold countermagic up, you just hold the visions until it's more useful later in the game. This is how most of the pros played preordain back during the caw-blade era. If they weren't digging for land drops early on, they would often hold it until later on when their hand was less full, and they could dig for relevant gas at that point in the game.
If you've tried it and don't like it, then fair enough. I've just found the deck worked much more consistently when I had access to 1-3 visions for whatever reason.
I actually haven't tried it, I was just speculating on its usefulness based on my experience with IOK, totally sorry for not highlighting that detail, I get lost on a few things when typing out my response. I will try it out though, I just don't know what to cut for it
Serum visions just does not do enough. You get a random card and effect your next draw. Remand and even condescend at least effect the board we can not spend one drop of mana in the early turns for marginal dec manipulation. Sure you can hold it but now you have a cantrip instead of an answer in hand, even think twice is better as it provides actual card advantage at instant speed. The number one effect I am looking for is filtering cards already in hand. There is a reason brainstorm is soo good in legacy control decks and even though it costs 3 Thirst for K is a better brain storm.
As for my gifts ungiven plan "telegraphing" and yard hate vulnerability, you don't HAVE to search for the Same thing every time. Heck I just searched 4 lands once against a DRS turn 4. Not every deck can interact with the stack and yard, the upside is so powerful it is easily the best instant speed draw spell. It's not like we would heavily rely on it like the dedicated gifts decks.
I always liked teachings as the 4 mana draw spell of choice in this type of deck. I toy'd with gifts for a while and though you could have some nifty piles, teachings was more consistent.
The reason I think I'm fine with not having visions is probably because I like the fact that a deck running cantrips that actually affect the board and/or provide real card advantage means that I can keep a wider range of hands without hitting air. The only bad draws you really have are lands and getting land flooded in control is usually actively a good thing.
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
I've used Gifts Ungiven in the past as a way to fetch up cruel ultimatum. The problem I ran into was that it made the deck more graveyard reliant than it needed to be. It also telegraphed what you were doing as, unless you were sitting on 10+ mana even EoT gifts into the two, still meant the opponent had a whole other turn to prepare itself.
Thus i went for the more "lubricated" approach, with cantrips and digging spells instead of the tutor approach. The deck seemed to operate much more efficiently. Serum Vision is obviously no Preordain or ponder, but it fit's nicely into the various open mana our turns offer. Holding Bolt, terminate, serum vision with 3 mana up... cast serum visions and hold onto your answers, set yourself up next turn and still maintain your ability to respond to opposition. It's inclusion is great, hell i'm starting to want a singleton copy of Temporal Mastery, in the deck because of the amount of scrying i'm doing now. People talk about how remand if played right "time walks" your opponent... well why not actually time walk them? That's how well serum visions is performing for me. I've ran Telling time in the past and it's sort of the same card at instant speed, but frankly sometimes the two mana would make it awkward, or forcing yourself to pick one of them to be you're next draw, but this just feels superior.
My only issue with tarpit, is that it comes into play tapped. When I ran 4 of them, i faced way more times where I would either NEED to make a land drop to damnation in time to save my life, or needed to make the land drop to ultimatum to save my life and it would pop up. Or the times where you hold a great openning hand, but stare down at creeping tar pit, dragonskull summit and drowned catacomb. I found that early on i simply did not have spare mana to activate my 2 toughness man land which is very valuable to my overall strategy and late game I would hardly every activate more than 2 (if ever that) so i went down to 2 of them.
The problem is probably more to do with you running to many checklands. The cheon list that I'm running runs only 1+3 fastlands(2 darckslick, 1 blackcleave) so I rarely run into the two many tapped land issue and when I do, it's manageable as my deck doesn't have to rely on clunky answers like damnation. Must of the removal should be flexible enough to kill the majority of threats you expect with dreadbore as the "catchall" spell(though really it's there to kill 'goyf and Lily).
LP, I'm checking your article out as well. Behind all of your swag is the brain of one of the most intelligent Magic players I've ever known. I guess that's one more thing for you to add to the wall of ego that is your Sally sig.
I can go with that. LK, you are the Mace Windu of red mages...cool, tempered logic in deliberation, but capable of just flat kicking tail when the situation warrants it.
What's everyone's opinion on Spreading Seas? Is it a modern viable card? If replacing a cantrip/draw spell for it, it shouldn't hinder the power level?
I have tried seas it isn't terrible, some lands certainly are a problem, its a blank vs some decks, but you can just run actual red LD spells in the board any how.
I have tried seas it isn't terrible, some lands certainly are a problem, its a blank vs some decks, but you can just run actual red LD spells in the board any how.
I was just getting tired of having such a bad match-up to tron g1, I was thinking that at least it cycles if it doesn't disrupt anything significantly, also deals with man/utility lands without spending a card.
I was just getting tired of having such a bad match-up to tron g1, I was thinking that at least it cycles if it doesn't disrupt anything significantly, also deals with man/utility lands without spending a card.
I have had a decent matchup against Tron by putting 3 Molten Rain and 2 Sowing Salt in my sideboard. I basically play a tempo game against Tron and try to Remand key spells while beating down with Clique/Snapcaster and taking out lands with Molten Rain. I don't think Cruel Control can rely on just Sowing Salt against Tron. There's no guarantee you'll draw it in time, and even if you do it might be too slow. Tron has felt like such a tough matchup that I don't mind devoting 5 sideboard slots to it.
With regard to Gifts Ungiven, I don't think I'd run it unless I was going whole hog with a white splash and an Unburial Rites package. Otherwise I think it's hard to justify in a world of Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze. I think the better tutor for this deck is Teachings, though I don't think either are absolutely necessary.
...this is EDH. If you aren't trying to kill someone in the most ridiculous manner possible, you're doing it wrong.
EDH: Go Crazy or Go back to Standard.
Quote from Cassidy Silver »
Griselbrand is pretty straightforward (in the same way that a nuclear holocaust is straightforward); just draw some cards, beat some face, bathe in the blood of some innocent, and repeat.
I am playing a version that works around resolving this 2 cards on turn 4 and then gaining advantage from there on, casting Cruel after using Chandra -2 is just sweet =D
They both offer high synergy with cruel ultimatum, I tried them out a couple of games and they've done well. Jace just laughs in the face of splintertwin since pestermite is easy to kill and deceiver only has one power. I feel like Chandra just needs 1 more loyalty counter coming in and the +
1 should be the same as pyromaster. Would that be broken?
Question on pyromaster too, do you have to cast the exiled cards with her ultimate on the same turn?
Here's the counter suite I'm currently running (main deck):
1 Spell Snare
3 Izzet Charm
1 Mana Leak
3 Remand
4 Cryptic Command
Izzet Charm is outstanding. It kills creatures, counters things like planeswalkers (or opposing counters), and digs for cards you need. I can't say enough good things about it. Remand may seem out of place in this deck, but I've found that merely holding off their threats for a turn or two can be enough. Drawing a card off it is huge.
The only one I'm not entirely sure about is Spell Snare. It could be that running only one copy I'm not seeing it enough to fully assess how good it is in the deck, but I haven't found it to be all that great. It might be better as another copy of Mana Leak. On the other hand, being able to Inquisition on turn two while keeping up Spell Snare for their Goyf/Bob/whatever is nice.
Remand fits cruel perfectly - It keeps larger threats off the board just long enough that you can drop an ultimatum, and ultimately win the game off that. Remand keeps problematic threats from resolving for at least a turn, all while digging for extremely crucial land drops and ultimatums. If you haven't tested this deck with remand, I would absolutely suggest giving it a shot, whether in conjunction with leak or not.
It's important to play this deck from the perspective that everything you should play should support the ultimate gameplan of resolving a cruel ultimatum, with only 2 in your deck. When you pair remand with cryptic command and snapcaster mage, it's not uncommon to timewalk your opponent 3-4 times prior to dropping an ultimatum on-curve. The lovely thing with cruel, is it doesn't matter if your opponent has a few cards in hand from you returning a card via remand since they're going to be discarding 3 anyway.
Now, the role of Izzet charm is mainly as support-removal, and early-game countering. It's true that it's not great at anything in particular, but you don't really need it to be, and against most of the creatures in the format, it's not worse than doom blade or terminate. Against the 5% of the creatures in the format that wouldn't die to doom izzet charm, that's why you play Damnation instead of Pyroclasm. At the very worst, you can try to time walk and keep their board clear of weenies until you can edict their creature with ultimatum or devour flesh.
You bring up some good points on Remand, I'll be testing it out in place of Mana Leak, Augur, and Think Twice. It will take awhile but with enough playtesting, I should be able to find out if it's worth the re-slotting. My list is in the signature if you want to make a suggestion as to what to cut for it.
My only argument against Remand is that I would be exchanging card-advantage for tempo, I don't want to make that sacrifice.
As for Izzet charm, I've played it in all 4 numbers and I've settled on one. The idea is that I want to optimize all 3 modes and the third mode would most likely be used profitably in the late-game but I don't want more than 1 in the early to mid-game. As a rule of thumb, the higher the mana-curve of your deck, the less Izzet Charms you want to be playing. With the third mode, I would most likely be pitching lands, and in the late-game (which is when I'm most likely to draw into it) I won't really need the lands anyway. If by some fluke I draw into it early, then its first 2 modes will likely be at their peak of effectiveness.
Remand doesn't lose card advantage, and it gains tempo when used against anything it's more efficient than (as any counterspell does).
Since it replaces itself, it's an even 1 for 1 trade on the card advantage spectrum, and is much better against cards like Lingering Souls or snapcaster-retargets than mana leak is. Remand also gives you some additional play in control mirrors in that you can remand your own spells that they would target with something like Cryptic Command or Spell snare, effectively nullifying their counter, while you don't lose a single card over this effect.
The one distinct thing, is remand is better at digging for important spells and land drops, whereas leak is better at fully stopping something from resolving for good. Both have their obvious advantages, but this deck wants to be drawing lots of cards, and any opportunity to draw cards while affecting your opponent's board or stack is awesome.
As for your deck list. Add 2-3 serum visions to it. Don't comment on it until after you've added them and given it a chance with some tests. If you don't like it, then get rid of it, but every time I've added the visions to the deck, it performed 3x more consistently, and most of the other players in this thread who gave it a try found the same to be true. If you play 3 visions, you can also drop down to 25 land, effectively improving your spell quality.
Also, playing this deck without dreadship reef is silly. Dreadship reef is probably the best card in any control mirror, and enables you to hit ultimatums when you only have 4 lands in play. You don't need 4, but there is a noticable difference when you play 1-2, and you'll love having reef when you're stuck on 4-5 lands with an ultimatum in hand, but still need to play a draw-go playstyle.
Remand is something I have played with and I like remand and leak about equally. I'm the guy that likes bleeding my opponent out of cards so that generally pushed leak over the top for me, but the way I've found myself playing this list, I'll usually chain teachings instead of finding actual answers in long games and thus my mana leaks end up deader then the average persons so I could see making the change back to remand.
Reef on the other while not in my deck is 100% awesome. I remember it being the most important card in control mirrors way back in spiral block and either side of spiral standard so at some point it's going to get the nod.
For now though, I'm going to keep playing the Cheon list as I like playing with someone's deck for a while before changing cards so that I have a firm idea as to the what's where's, and why's of all the card choices.
I definitely will be sticking with that maindeck pyroclysm/consume the meek sweeper choice though as they compliment each other fairly well and I've rarely found pyroclasm dead in the applicable matchups.
Lastly, while ultimatum is the reason to play these colors over raka, I find I win a fair amount of games with just snappy/clique/tar-pit beatdown and burn. As a guy who's a predominately agro player in formats that have a satisfactory beatdown(nothing non-rotating since nacatl became bad/banned) I usually have an easier time switching gears and finding openings to kill people then the average control mage I think.
Yea that whole being able to switch gears and tempo kill people is why bolt and snapy are so crucial to control in this format. Bolt snap bolt is 8 damage! Tarpit IS the best man land ever even if it is more fragile and does less dmg I love that it activates for less than colonnade.
No one else has tried my gifts ungiven and mystic retrieval engine?
I've used Gifts Ungiven in the past as a way to fetch up cruel ultimatum. The problem I ran into was that it made the deck more graveyard reliant than it needed to be. It also telegraphed what you were doing as, unless you were sitting on 10+ mana even EoT gifts into the two, still meant the opponent had a whole other turn to prepare itself.
Thus i went for the more "lubricated" approach, with cantrips and digging spells instead of the tutor approach. The deck seemed to operate much more efficiently. Serum Vision is obviously no Preordain or ponder, but it fit's nicely into the various open mana our turns offer. Holding Bolt, terminate, serum vision with 3 mana up... cast serum visions and hold onto your answers, set yourself up next turn and still maintain your ability to respond to opposition. It's inclusion is great, hell i'm starting to want a singleton copy of Temporal Mastery, in the deck because of the amount of scrying i'm doing now. People talk about how remand if played right "time walks" your opponent... well why not actually time walk them? That's how well serum visions is performing for me. I've ran Telling time in the past and it's sort of the same card at instant speed, but frankly sometimes the two mana would make it awkward, or forcing yourself to pick one of them to be you're next draw, but this just feels superior.
My only issue with tarpit, is that it comes into play tapped. When I ran 4 of them, i faced way more times where I would either NEED to make a land drop to damnation in time to save my life, or needed to make the land drop to ultimatum to save my life and it would pop up. Or the times where you hold a great openning hand, but stare down at creeping tar pit, dragonskull summit and drowned catacomb. I found that early on i simply did not have spare mana to activate my 2 toughness man land which is very valuable to my overall strategy and late game I would hardly every activate more than 2 (if ever that) so i went down to 2 of them.
Well what I mean't to say is that it loses the digging power/relevant body of augur, and it would have less card advantage/resilience to hand disruption than Think Twice. You also have the high interactivity of remand vs the non-interactivity of Think twice, augur of bolas is closer to the middle of this sprectrum while think twice is on the non-interactive side.
Having a lot of 1 cmc sorcery spells (for my style of deck) has interrupted my game-plan just by being there. The scenarios would look like this
It's turn 2, your opponent has a deathrite shaman in play and you put down a second land with an IOK or Serum Visions in hand, you also have a combination 1-2 Mana Leaks, Think Twice, Terminate. I almost always decide to ignore IOK/visions in favor of keeping the mana up to interact with my opponent on their turn, by the time I can cast IOK without getting blown out the next turn with something I have to react to, it doesn't hit anything relevant or they've used all of there cmc1-3 spells anyway, or I even have to choose from IOK/SV over Electrolyze/Damnation/Cryptic Command. The only times IOK and Visions have been effective for me were when I was able to play them on my very first turn, but probability dictates I would be playing them on the following turns instead.
This is my reasoning for possibly cutting Augur of Bolas for Remand since it's more compatible with my game-plan but I would be cutting the digging power i previously got from Augur of Bolas (Also a better top-deck) significantly.
I don't like the idea of spending resources to hit land-drops when I could just play the 26th land but I'll try it out for sure
Fair enough, to me I either play Visions turn 1 when I won't have to bolt something, or wait until I would play it turn 3-4-5-6 where I can start digging for cards I know i'll need in the given matchup, or to search for cruels. It's not a turn 2 play unless you drop inquisition on turn 1-2, and know it's not going to hurt you for tapping out to cast it. I think visions is less effective in decks with more permission like yours however, so it's a tough call.
If you want to hold countermagic up, you just hold the visions until it's more useful later in the game. This is how most of the pros played preordain back during the caw-blade era. If they weren't digging for land drops early on, they would often hold it until later on when their hand was less full, and they could dig for relevant gas at that point in the game.
If you've tried it and don't like it, then fair enough. I've just found the deck worked much more consistently when I had access to 1-3 visions for whatever reason.
I actually haven't tried it, I was just speculating on its usefulness based on my experience with IOK, totally sorry for not highlighting that detail, I get lost on a few things when typing out my response. I will try it out though, I just don't know what to cut for it
As for my gifts ungiven plan "telegraphing" and yard hate vulnerability, you don't HAVE to search for the Same thing every time. Heck I just searched 4 lands once against a DRS turn 4. Not every deck can interact with the stack and yard, the upside is so powerful it is easily the best instant speed draw spell. It's not like we would heavily rely on it like the dedicated gifts decks.
The reason I think I'm fine with not having visions is probably because I like the fact that a deck running cantrips that actually affect the board and/or provide real card advantage means that I can keep a wider range of hands without hitting air. The only bad draws you really have are lands and getting land flooded in control is usually actively a good thing.
The problem is probably more to do with you running to many checklands. The cheon list that I'm running runs only 1+3 fastlands(2 darckslick, 1 blackcleave) so I rarely run into the two many tapped land issue and when I do, it's manageable as my deck doesn't have to rely on clunky answers like damnation. Must of the removal should be flexible enough to kill the majority of threats you expect with dreadbore as the "catchall" spell(though really it's there to kill 'goyf and Lily).
I was just getting tired of having such a bad match-up to tron g1, I was thinking that at least it cycles if it doesn't disrupt anything significantly, also deals with man/utility lands without spending a card.
I have had a decent matchup against Tron by putting 3 Molten Rain and 2 Sowing Salt in my sideboard. I basically play a tempo game against Tron and try to Remand key spells while beating down with Clique/Snapcaster and taking out lands with Molten Rain. I don't think Cruel Control can rely on just Sowing Salt against Tron. There's no guarantee you'll draw it in time, and even if you do it might be too slow. Tron has felt like such a tough matchup that I don't mind devoting 5 sideboard slots to it.
With regard to Gifts Ungiven, I don't think I'd run it unless I was going whole hog with a white splash and an Unburial Rites package. Otherwise I think it's hard to justify in a world of Deathrite Shaman and Scavenging Ooze. I think the better tutor for this deck is Teachings, though I don't think either are absolutely necessary.
They both offer high synergy with cruel ultimatum, I tried them out a couple of games and they've done well. Jace just laughs in the face of splintertwin since pestermite is easy to kill and deceiver only has one power. I feel like Chandra just needs 1 more loyalty counter coming in and the +
1 should be the same as pyromaster. Would that be broken?
Question on pyromaster too, do you have to cast the exiled cards with her ultimate on the same turn?