MTG Salvation

Since you have all the fetches I would go -2 Steam Vents +1 Watery Grave +1 Blood Crypt -1 Swamp +1 Cascade Bluffs.

Want to make sure that I can reliably cast bolt snare and iok on t1, that means 14 untapped sources. Also want 3 swamp to fetch against blood moon deck
s, not always gonna work but at least it can be a gameplan

Mogis, God of Slaughter:

The reason I love this card so much, is that it comes out a turn prior to what Keranos could and does what I often want Keranos to do. It's more than likely a hit to the face than Keranos possibly whiffing off to drawing you additional cards. Either Gods come back due to Kolaghan's Command. Now, Mogis could whiff if they sac a creature, which is more than likely what we want them to do. But, in my experience, I keep them so pinned down that they are hardly in a position to want to sacrifice a creature, and if they do, they're still going to get rounded the turn afterwards. The only essence I've come to see where Keranos is better, is if they're sac'ing tokens to my Mogis; which, in my case, I am probably losing if I can't withstand some tokens. However, I crush token decks, so I would board him out if I had to. Keranos has to target, whereas Mogis doesn't. Mogis does the damage during their turn versus Keranos having to come back to your turn from first casting such Gods. Now, Keranos might do a hit more of damage, but Mogis has been, in my experience, to be a more stable clock for the win con.

It becomes a point of draw and preference. Keranos is better suited late game, for if he can guarantee the damage or guarantee the draw, whereas Mogis might just be staring down against an army and they might pitch something under the bus and move along, thus making Mogis seem like a joke. I play both Gods.

Your list looks good. I would add Vendilion Clique somewhere in the 75, that card puts in serious work versus other blue decks.

Have you considered Cascade Bluffs? I know that sometimes you want to give your opponent the bird, but I don't think Swan Song is the best card for us to play

I LOVE Monastery Siege so far. It shuts down burn hard.

If the problem is bogles then you can consider Hibernation. Playing a few Annuls would not be that bad to be honest, giving bogles or affinity a 2/2 flyer could result in a flying Cranial Plating or Daybreak Coronet if you are not careful

If enchantments are really a problem go crazy with Engineered Explosives, Ratchet Bomb, Oblivion Stone and even Culling Scales

Engineered Explosives is where you want to be with Boggles. It's very, very good and has cross-application. I wouldn't mess with anything else when it comes to enchantment removal. You can also play with all sorts of weird tech, depending on how deep you want to go with artifacts.

Ratchet Bomb is also reasonable.

Quote from Lil_Bolas »

Your list looks good. I would add Vendilion Clique somewhere in the 75, that card puts in serious work versus other blue decks.

and it's not JUST good against blue decks, its FANTASTIC against combo decks. I would have a lot of trouble thinking of any other card legal in modern that I magically make myself draw vs. any combo deck over a vendilion clique. you just don't get that kind of versatility in such a powerful hoseresque type of card these days. I almost want to main 1 and sideboard 2, but that seems almost too excessive somehow.

I also agree with Engineered explosives. In a LOT of spots if you have it in your opener you're very likely to win vs. bogles. There's just not that many games where they can come back from it if you land it at the right time. The timing can be really tricky though is the only thing. Hibernation was going a little deep, but still ok back when pod was a deck. I'm not sure if its gotten a lot worse, but yeah. At one point it was actually ok to do.

Minor changes to the 75. Blood Moon post board is a really good strategy, especially if you can hide the light splash. Because my list isn't "stock" you can have "gotcha" situations -- which is cute at worst.

Disruption, Damnation, and Ashiok is a very good gameplan against decks like Abzan and Jund. You stick him/her they the need a Abrupt Decay or Pulse in 1-2 turns. Otherwise you slam a Rhino or Courser and start generating advantage and their life starts to suck.

Tron still sucks. Clever Impersonator does work, but I definitely don't want more than one in the board, it just doesn't do enough.

I'm at 16 B sources which is OK. Victim hits most relevant things. Olivia is a foreseeable problem but I feel like my MU is good enough there.

9 R sources postboard isn't ideal, but it's probably not the worst. I could cut a Darkslick Shores and up a Scalding Tarn to get myself to 10, but that impacts the aggro MU since Darkslick Shores is maybe the best card against them (land being best card? that's weird).

Not having Shatterstorm is abosolutely fine. Vandalblast is nasty enough and the mana can handle it.

I completely forgot about Rakdos Charm. Cross applicability is always great and having outs to the random Dredgevine decks is nothing to sneeze at. Those MUs are nightmares.

Given that everyone and their mother is incorporating Blood Moon into their control/aggro/midrange decks, being resilient to them has been great. Would not complain.
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I played UWR control in modern for a long-time. After a while, I gave up after a few too many t1 Powerplants sitting across from me round 1. I then finally branched out and started playing other strategies like Twin and Scapeshift. If those decks taught me anything, it's that pressure is one of the most important parts of running a control deck in modern. You can durdle into Cruel if you want but then sometimes you have to back it up with countermagic and then sometimes you don't even win when you resolve it. It's not often that you don't win when you resolve it, but weird stuff can happen. That's basically why I'm running so many walkers. They generate value when you play them and then they present a clock. If you slam an Ashiok against UWR control on turn3, y'know what happens? They start doing stupid stuff like trying to ambush it with Snapcasters and throwing multiple bolts in it's face. It they don't, they will lose the game when you ultimate her. Combo decks, as well, can't really handle walkers. If you have a bit of early disruption you can start pressuring w/ ultimates and hopefully ride a walker to victory. Whereas with other control decks you're stuck trying to burn them out, sticking an early walker and riding it out for the last couple turns lets you play a tempo game, which is necessary to take out these "inevitability combo" decks.

Anyway, this is the reasoning behind my list. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Slam the Blood Moon and watch your opponent scramble. Force them to answer Ashiok. Force them to deal with Jace. Outside of BGx, decks don't just walk around with Hero's Downfalls, y'know? If you notice winning control lists from SCG IQs, they usually present good and cheap threats -- be they Lingering Souls, Gideon, or Taisugur. This is no longer a format where you can pack 4x Snapcaster and 4x Colonnades and say, "this is good enough. I have inevitability." If you say that the U Tron player will sit across from you and say, "inevitability? I've heard of such a thing. I'll play a Platinum Angel with Spell Burst with buyback on turn 8. GLHF."

Anyway, in most T2 formats, control is the "big" deck, y'know? Where nobody else is doing anything bigger. In modern, there are plenty of decks that just don't care about counterspells and have a bigger end game. So you have to play a sort of midrange w/ counterspells if you want to have any business taking down more than 50% of your games in a large tournament. There are just too many kids who sit down across from you that have no intention of playing a fair game of magic. Non-interaction is reaching saturation, between burn and then a literal slew of tier 2-3 combo decks that can get random heaters and stay in the top brackets.

This is my current build. Note, I change this monster around quite frequently due to local meta, and that I am always testing various cards. Generally speaking, I always have 1-2 Cruel Ultimatums maindeck, but currently I do not. The third Electrolyze in this list, I am thinking of changing - maybe for a Vendilion Clique once more or putting Cruel back in. I am not quite certain how exactly I feel about the two IoK that I am currently using maindeck. I want discard, but then again I do not; a love-hate relationship currently.

Let's breath some life into this thread people.

how do you make the mana symbols in your signature. I was linking my deck lists last night and couldnt figure it out. Also if you want to check my grixis deck list out and tell me what you think that would be cool ;D I added the ruins-explosive combo some of these decks use :3 looks good to me



I'm wondering if i need the Vandalblasts still

Saw this list on SCG: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=84574

Looks like this guy Time Warped to 2008 LOL

Not a fan of this 4c Control in modern, as you die super hard to land destruction/ Blood Moon /Choke

I know the dude personally. Yes, he is, like most of us, an addict to cryptic command. He also has all of his vivids pimped out, because why not?

Most ridiculous singleton card in his deck--extirpate. There's an unbelievable number of games and matchups where you wish you could find ONE copy, never draw multiples, but always have the first one. Mystical teachings makes that possible. Yes, if you turn three blood moon him and he doesn't have charm/leak/abrupt decay/disenchant/whatever up, he does scoop it up. I've lost many games in the vivid control vs esper matchup to his mainboard extirpate cleaning out cryptics, esper charms, or path to exile.

And yes, he started playing during Lorowyn-alara standard, and yes, he plays a bastardized miracles list in legacy and an esper control build in standard.

Sounds like a stand up gentleman.

He is quite the gentleman, complete with debonair attitude and appropriately suave facial hair. If a college student can ever be considered such, at least =)

I actually really like that list...5c Control! Ultimatum, Cryptic, Esper Charm, Verdict, Decay...those are all my jam right there.

It's like all of my favorite cards mashed together into one list. I love it. I need to brew that thing up and give it a whirl, maybe play with the numbers a little. I really want to try to fit an extra Decay in there somewhere. Maybe some Anticipate. I just really love that card.

Hey all, I've recently gone up to 3 vendilion clique , 1 mainboard, 2 sideboard. After trying it out a little so far it seems to be working pretty well. I love it vs combo decks and things like tron etc.(tron is such a bothersome matchup). Also you can side it in vs control matchups as well. What do people think of the 3/1 flying faeries? 2 is of course reasonable but I don't really see too many people running more than that. It seems fairly natural to our deckstyle since we try to resolve ultimatum vs control decks and this is a great way to see if the coast is clear, without having to tap out. Grixis lacks a threat like Restoration angel, is vendilion clique a potential spot filler for that slot(I know they're pretty different, but still some similarities at least)?

Another thing is kolagan's command never really impressed me when trying it out. It just seemed not powerful enough, just ok-ish. The creature buyback didnt seem super relevant, buying back a snapcaster is great but since I only run 3 snaps and barely any other creatures this doesn't really come up often for me. Also the spell seems like something you'd wanna do earlier in the game, like killing something with 2 toughness, But it seems like the other 2 frequent modes (discard a card and resurrect a creature) are later game things. This is a very annoying anti-synergy in the card I think.

Anyway, I figured clique going down in price after MM15 would inspire more people to test out more copies. I know I've seen miracles play 3 copies before so despite the differences in formats, the card is at least a very powerful card.

Hello folks,

I'm in he process of building this deck, but I can't quite figure out a build I 'agree' with (I've looked at several lists people have posted, and I've yet to test any version vs a small local gauntlet so forgive me). In saying that, I've seen several things in plenty of lists I like, but none strike me as being 'the one'.

Thus, I've spent the last evening and today (while working :halo:), and I've come up with an initial list (Untested mind you), with a possibly horrible mana base lol:



I'd love for some input, as I want to be able to live the Cruel dream. The 'meta' at my LGS is something like: 2 Burn, 1 Elves, 5 Twin, 3 Junk, 1 Storm, 1 UB Faeries, a Phyrexian Unlife combo deck, misc others.

Hey guys, I'm very excited to share with you a recent and incredibly incredibly fun version of Cruel Control configured by yours truly :)! It all started when I faced a deck online that used Commandeer against me. It absolutely destroyed me but I noticed it was a monoblue deck and I thought he could really use other colors in the deck to shore up aggressive/other matchups that he was probably weak against. Another card that I faced that impressed me a lot was Disrupting shoal. Now people have been trying hard to make these cards viable in modern for a long time because they have alternate 0 mana costs to them, making them prime candidates for "Breaking magic"(In fact the red shoal is already banned in modern!). I decided that I just simply couldn't resist making a deck with these 3 GORGEOUS magic cards (and hey! they have interesting synergy!)

So without further ado, I present you guys with Cruel Command!


So I knew from the beginning I wanted to play with a high amount of Spell Snare and disrupting shoal, with these two in hand we can counter both 1 mana and 2 mana spells for either 1 or 0 mana. This is of course very powerful even if it means having to 2 for 1 ourselves. (it reminds me a lot of control decks of old that played force spike to be able to counter early drops on the draw) Some spells we just HAVE to counter. Theres a long list of these cards, and a lot of other cards just don't matter that much from a lot of decks. A list that comes to mind includes cards like: Liliana of the veil, Geist of saint traft, bitterblossom, slippery bogle, cranial plating, etched champion, scapeshift, splinter twin, (even aether vial could be worth it to disrupting shoal pitching a spell snare depending on the hand), expedition map, amulet of vigor, Blood Moon etc. The list goes on! (oh and don't forget those completely absurd hate cards against us Choke and Boil .... ) but you'll notice that most of these fall in the 1-4 CMC drop range. So I knew I had to play with a LOT of blue spells that filled these CMC requirements if I was going to make this deck work.
So I had a base for 1's and 2's being counterable very early on in the game. I added some Quicken to the list to be able to quicken thoughtseize, damnation, and even cruel. But also it cycles early if they don't have the dangerous one drops, and if they do it lets us pitch it to disrupting shoal. It also lets us skimp on land just a touch, this deck plays only 25 land. It also enables a bit more delve fuel. Do you hate mana leak? this is the deck for you because it plays 3 logic knot! these of course cannot be spell snared(yay resilience!) and they also pitch covering our 2's (our 2 CMC pitching is very covered in this deck, which is great for countering those pesky mana leaks trying to stop us from ultimatuming!, and if we pitch a 2 cmc to stop their mana leak with our shoal, it cannot even be spell snared!).

now, an important thing to note is if you disrupting shoal for anything greater than Zero, it cannot be spell snared because the x gets added to the 2 blue. I made this deck to be very resilient to spell snare because that card is everywhere.

Next was 3 to add some reslience against liliana of the veil, blood moon, choke, geist of saint traft, and wild defiance. So I chose 2 main clique, 1 board. Plus this card is just bonkers against tron/combo. Another 3 CMC blue spell in the deck is electrolyze! This is such a natural fit, it cycles which is exactly what we want in a pitch card and it is blue! yay!

finally 4 CMC. This is where Jace, architect of thought does some work along with cryptic command. At this point however we don't necessarily need too many 4's since at that point in the game we have access to a little more mana and are getting closer to spiking in power as we are a control deck.

on a side note, even cruel ultimatum can pitch to counter something like a Karn, liberated or a sphinx rev. for x=4. These don't come up too often but vs. Tron I could see happening a little more realistically. A SUPER important thing to note is that you can just pay X with your mana to counter something with the shoal. You don't HAVE to pitch a card, it can very easily just be a spell blast that costs 1 more blue mana to cast. Not the strongest card, but this is it's worst mode. Also this deck REALLY rewards you for knowing the modern format inside and out. Knowing the most threatening cards in an opponent's deck can give you a HUGE edge with these shoals.

A real prize/payout of the deck however is that with all these blue cards you get to play Commandeer in the sideboard against Tron. I think that this is very awesome because one thing control hates to play against is tron, and Commandeering a Karn or Ugin is definitely something that can put us firmly in the drivers seat. I've also commandeered bitterblossom and boy was it fun and also strong. yes commandeer sets you back a bit in cards but a thing that I had to learn about it was that it stealing a prime threat that you didn't pay mana for can Definitely be well worth it.

With the pitch cards and cycling cards like Quicken the GY filling is also a powerful aspect to this deck. The fact logic knot dodges spell snare is HUGE, it also a lot of times is basically Counterspell. This is a huge boon to the deck that really combined with everything else really gives it some real power.

One last thing I wanted to say about this deck is that I noticed the most powerful thing about it was it solved some of the biggest issues with cruel ultimatum in modern. Have you ever wanted to apply pressure with those tar pits, but were scared of tapping low vs the opponent, but you knew you HAD to apply pressure because they had inevitability? Have you ever tapped out and played cruel ultimatum only to die after passing the turn to something you could've dealt with the next turn? Have you ever even tapped out for a batterskull against burn only to die to their last card a lightning bolt, and you still had plenty of cards in hand but they were just too fast? This is where disrupting shoal truly shines for this deck. We can be truly abusive and use our card advantage in these situations with the shoal to shut down these opportunities that our opponent have while we are tapped out. It is the closest thing to playing with force of will that we will ever get in modern, and I have to say after playing with the deck a bit, when your opponent feels safe behind a spell snare and mana leak/remand, forcing through a threat like cruel ultimatum [shoaling pitching something like mana leak or snapcaster(mind you this shoal cannot be snared!)]bypassing this counterwall (and invalidating spell snare especially) feels incredibly powerful (this type of scenario happens all too often). additionally when the opponent plays their Key spell after seeing you have tapped out, only to have it shoal'd the surprise factor is super awesome and even threatening. It's just like browbeat's flavor text, even the threat of power has power :).