I'm currently in the middle of switching deck roles - I was playing R/G Pummeler as my intro to standard, switched it up to Jund Pummeler for awhile, and a few weeks before Marvel was banned I began switching roles to U/R control as my main deck. I held off on it for awhile as I was missing Torrential Gearhulk and the prices spiked on the card, but since they've lowered back down to sub-$20 each I've been picking them up one per week until I have my 4.
I originally migrated to "U/R Spells" when Enigma Drake was spoiled since I think the card is very powerful. With tons of good spells to choose from, I originally tried a GY centric spells deck that wanted cyclers and to dump spells for draws with Tormenting Voice, Cathartic Reunion, etc. It didn't pan out well. I switched to a U/R energy control style build to make use of cards like Glimmer and Harnessed lightning instead and the deck is just so much better. Currently I'm at 2 Torrentials (working towards 4) but I feel like my deck has enough win-cons built in that it is still relatively competitive.
I'm currently calling the build Control but Tempo might be the correct term for the deck. It uses a variety of answers and really just wants to prevent the opponent from getting any kind of advantage until it can stick a wincon and ride it to victory. Because I'm playing Drakes, I can also get early blockers on the field with 4 toughness, which quickly become massive threats as I protect them with counters or burn out opposing creatures. I diversify my threat level by running Chandra, Torch of Defiance. She provides everything my deck wants - Card advantage, removal, a clock, and a game-winning ultimate.
One thing I think I'm running into however is sometimes a hard lack of answers. I had a few games today where I drew a good amount of starting mana, but low interaction. Those were the games I lost quickly (for a control deck.) Wondering how other U/R spells players would look at my list.
Manabase: Mostly standard list of duals with 4x Spirebluff Canal, 4x Highland Lake (can be Fumarole, but not sure if necessary as manlands will rotate soon). 4x Aether Hub to help mana fix and provide energy. 8x Islands and 4x Mountains. 24 lands total.
Interaction:
11 Counters with 4x Censor, 4x Cancel (will be upgraded to Disallow soon), 2x Negate and 1x Essence Scatter
4x Harnessed Lightning as kill spells
Gas: 4x Glimmer, 2x Hieroglyphic and 2x Pull from tomorrow provide a range of draw effects to keep me ahead. Often resolving a large Pull will win the game. 3x As foretold lets me cheat in wincons while holding up mana for answers, or play draw spells for free, etc. Only need to have one on the field.
Wincons: 4x Enigma Drake, 4x Chandra, Torch of Defiance and 2x Torrential Gearhulk. Will be buffing Gearhulk up to 4 through the next couple weeks, probably dropping one Chandra and one Drake to do so.
Game Strategy: Counter or use Harnessed Lightning to remove any threats while stocking my GY with spells for Drake. Use a variety of draw spells to stay ahead of the opponent card for card until I establish a dominant position. Smooth early gameplay with cycling cards - aim to not miss land drops. When the coast is clear, land a wincon and protect it until victory.
Sideboard is currently set up for the control mirror. I can add Sphinx, Jace, Kefnet, and an extra negate. There are 4 sweltering suns so I can have a sweeper against go wide decks. Extra essence scatters if my opponent is based around creatures. Incendiary flow to exile recurring threats like Scrounger, Zombies, etc. Baral if I want more tempo and filtering.
Aside from the obvious upgrade path I'm still taking - (Disallows, Torrential Gearhulks) I'm open to feedback and criticism. Last two standard events I attended were three rounds each and I went 2-1, and 1-2 respectively. There are almost no blowout losses, most losses were close games or due to me making an error. Overall it has been a very fun deck to use and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a highly interactive deck.
I play U/W control so not really U/R, however, I have played against U/R decks and beat them. I think that U/R needs to focus either more on counters or more on burn because the two don't exactly match, you either counter a small creature or you burn it, but if it has an ETB effect then you would want to counter it, not burn it since it will already be in play and done its job.
Having said that you also need answer to multiple small creatures that make it into play past your counters, in my deck I run Engulf the Shore because my deck is mostly Blue and having only a few White spells and that has saved me a lot from even a couple of 4/4's or 5/5's in play since it bounces them all back.
So, for your deck I would suggest that you play more burn so instead of the 4 Chandra maybe go down to 2 Chandra only, also don't play the 2 Illuminations, and instead play 4 more burn spells. Either 4 Magma Spray or something else that's good in standard.
In terms of counters, I am not playing any Censors in my deck because they don't do the job, most decks are creature decks so I opted to play 4 Essence Scatters main deck and it has worked well for me.
I would suggest you drop the 4 Censor and changed them to 3 Essence Scatter (full playset) and 1 Negate (total 3 Negates main). I would also play 4 Disallow main deck instead of the 4 Cancels since they are infinitely better if you can afford the upgrade.
Also, I think that 2 As Foretold is enough because if you can get them in your opening hand is ok, but if you don't then you will probably not need them for the rest of the game, it's not a card you want to play on turn 6 or 7 or later anyways. With 25 instants it would make your Drake much bigger faster so if you already have a couple of counters and a magma spray or two in the graveyard you can cast the Drake on turn 4 or 5 and have it be at least a 4/4 or even a 5/4.
The first 5-6 turns of the game all you are doing is countering or burning away creatures, after that you can drop a drake or do something else, so you need to have cheap burn which 4 Spray's and 4 Lightnings are good, and a lot of counters against creatures.
As for the sideboard, against other control decks you can put in Dispel and Sphinx of the final word. Against decks running a lot of planeswalkers then Commit/Memory is very good as is Kefnet.
OF course, agaisnt creature decks you can put in the incendiary flows and sweltering suns. Against aggro decks I would take out the 2 pull from tomorrows and the 2 as foretold for sure, and maybe even 1 disallow and sideboard in 3 Sweltering Suns and 2 Incendiary Flows.
Against vehicles decks or Heart of Kiran decks you need to sideboard in 2 By Force and 2 Commit so you can have answers to a resolved Heart of Kiran or another annoying artifact.
Let me know what you think! I have a lot of experience with playing Blue based control decks.
Thanks for the feedback! I think you're probably right about a few things for sure - Adding Commit//Memory to my next purchase for sure, I just bought my 3rd Torrential as well as my Disallows this week so I'm almost there with those. I will probably drop down the # of As Foretold, will run either 2 or 3 total. Also will probably need to increase the number of hard counters in the deck. Thinking to my local meta I'm seeing: Zombies, G/B, Jeskai Control, some homebrews.
I think magma spray is good, but it tends to be a very dead card against many matchups, and a very bad topdeck which is why I'm avoiding it and resorting to sideboarding Incendiary Flow when I need to exile, which although is a sorcery, I think does well enough for those matchups. I do need to sleeve up my Dispels for control mirror and bring in artifact hate for the SB. I will probably go with Release the Gremlins over By Force since I think the body is relevant.
Overall I think you have a good take and I definitely appreciate the insight. Thanks! I especially like that I can use Commit to fight Planeswalkers as Gideon is still pretty tough to deal with.
To tell you the truth I wouldn't even run As Foretold in this deck since it doesn't really help your deck too much and also it's kind of a terrible topdeck as well.
I do play 1 Commit//Memory maindeck in my U/W control deck and I have a second one in the sideboard. I don't play any Gearhulks in my U/W control, but you know that you can cast Memory from the graveyard with your Gearhulk, so it's even more versatile in your deck than in mine, and yes it does bounce Gideon or other planeswalkers as well.
The truth is I haven't played my control deck in the last month and a half because I have been playing my Red Deck Wins aggro deck and having a lot of fun with swinging with creatures and burning people every turn. They are kind of similar since both decks don't really block, the U/W control just doesn't have enough creatures to block with and the RDW always attacks, if I have to block something it means I'm losing.
Magma spray is in my sideboard for the Mono Red deck but that's because I am running Fiery Tempers maindeck as the burn spell of choice besides Harnessed Lightning, however I do sideboard the magma sprays even almost every game because I do want to burn something on the first turn. I also managed to kill a heart of kiran with 2 magma sprays and exiled the hell out of it. I would at least sideboard the magma sprays over the Incendiary Flows because the flows are 2 mana and that's the same as Harnessed lighting.
One key to playing a control deck is to vary the mana cost of your cards, either the counterspells or the burn spells. So that's why I am trying to have some 2 casting cost counters and some 3 casting cost counters and some 4 casting cost counters. It's the same with burn, you want to have some 1 mana burn, 2 mana burn and 3 mana burn, not everything 2 mana because if you don't vary then when you have 3 lands out you will have a harder choice of what to do.
Anyways, I play 14 counters maindeck in my U/W control:
In case I need to put in more counters for creature decks I put in the 2 horribly awry, against control decks I put in the 3 dispels and decks with lots of planeswalkers or Gods I put in the second commit/memory.
Coming back with a quick update. I tried switching out some cards to have more counters and better removal. I put the As Foretold and Hieroglyphics in the S/B, upgraded to 3 Disallow & 1 Void Shatter, and am running more negates and essence scatters. Unfortunately my games were skewed today as I only got to play 6 total games (had a bye in round 2) and 3 of the 6 I ran into serious mana issues (no land hands, or drawing 2 mountains and a full hand of blue spells, etc) which I haven't had as a problem yet. I still want to do more testing and playing but I think the deck will work out better.
I'm still at the moment running Incendiary Flows over Magma Sprays but it has worked out fine - I havent run into a game yet where I wished I had one mana and a Spray. I've usually always had the mana to use Incendiary Flow and have been able to exile out Constrictors and such with it. I think I still prefer that spell as it sort of works like having additional Harnessed Lightnings, even though its not nearly as good.
One thing to note is the zombies decks haven't shown up for the last few weeks. Today the popular deck was G/B Delirium, other decks were: 2 tix Red, U/W Aggro, New Perspectives Combo. I lost a close set to G/B delirium, where game three I experienced bad mana issues and couldnt get going. Bye round 2. Got stomped 0-2 round 3 against U/W Aggro due to mana issues both games. I'm considering adding an additional land or two to the deck, probably just islands. Not sure what I would drop for them yet.
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I originally migrated to "U/R Spells" when Enigma Drake was spoiled since I think the card is very powerful. With tons of good spells to choose from, I originally tried a GY centric spells deck that wanted cyclers and to dump spells for draws with Tormenting Voice, Cathartic Reunion, etc. It didn't pan out well. I switched to a U/R energy control style build to make use of cards like Glimmer and Harnessed lightning instead and the deck is just so much better. Currently I'm at 2 Torrentials (working towards 4) but I feel like my deck has enough win-cons built in that it is still relatively competitive.
I'm currently calling the build Control but Tempo might be the correct term for the deck. It uses a variety of answers and really just wants to prevent the opponent from getting any kind of advantage until it can stick a wincon and ride it to victory. Because I'm playing Drakes, I can also get early blockers on the field with 4 toughness, which quickly become massive threats as I protect them with counters or burn out opposing creatures. I diversify my threat level by running Chandra, Torch of Defiance. She provides everything my deck wants - Card advantage, removal, a clock, and a game-winning ultimate.
One thing I think I'm running into however is sometimes a hard lack of answers. I had a few games today where I drew a good amount of starting mana, but low interaction. Those were the games I lost quickly (for a control deck.) Wondering how other U/R spells players would look at my list.
Link: (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ur-as-foretold-1/)
Manabase: Mostly standard list of duals with 4x Spirebluff Canal, 4x Highland Lake (can be Fumarole, but not sure if necessary as manlands will rotate soon). 4x Aether Hub to help mana fix and provide energy. 8x Islands and 4x Mountains. 24 lands total.
Interaction:
11 Counters with 4x Censor, 4x Cancel (will be upgraded to Disallow soon), 2x Negate and 1x Essence Scatter
4x Harnessed Lightning as kill spells
Gas: 4x Glimmer, 2x Hieroglyphic and 2x Pull from tomorrow provide a range of draw effects to keep me ahead. Often resolving a large Pull will win the game. 3x As foretold lets me cheat in wincons while holding up mana for answers, or play draw spells for free, etc. Only need to have one on the field.
Wincons: 4x Enigma Drake, 4x Chandra, Torch of Defiance and 2x Torrential Gearhulk. Will be buffing Gearhulk up to 4 through the next couple weeks, probably dropping one Chandra and one Drake to do so.
Game Strategy: Counter or use Harnessed Lightning to remove any threats while stocking my GY with spells for Drake. Use a variety of draw spells to stay ahead of the opponent card for card until I establish a dominant position. Smooth early gameplay with cycling cards - aim to not miss land drops. When the coast is clear, land a wincon and protect it until victory.
Sideboard is currently set up for the control mirror. I can add Sphinx, Jace, Kefnet, and an extra negate. There are 4 sweltering suns so I can have a sweeper against go wide decks. Extra essence scatters if my opponent is based around creatures. Incendiary flow to exile recurring threats like Scrounger, Zombies, etc. Baral if I want more tempo and filtering.
Aside from the obvious upgrade path I'm still taking - (Disallows, Torrential Gearhulks) I'm open to feedback and criticism. Last two standard events I attended were three rounds each and I went 2-1, and 1-2 respectively. There are almost no blowout losses, most losses were close games or due to me making an error. Overall it has been a very fun deck to use and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a highly interactive deck.
I play U/W control so not really U/R, however, I have played against U/R decks and beat them. I think that U/R needs to focus either more on counters or more on burn because the two don't exactly match, you either counter a small creature or you burn it, but if it has an ETB effect then you would want to counter it, not burn it since it will already be in play and done its job.
Having said that you also need answer to multiple small creatures that make it into play past your counters, in my deck I run Engulf the Shore because my deck is mostly Blue and having only a few White spells and that has saved me a lot from even a couple of 4/4's or 5/5's in play since it bounces them all back.
So, for your deck I would suggest that you play more burn so instead of the 4 Chandra maybe go down to 2 Chandra only, also don't play the 2 Illuminations, and instead play 4 more burn spells. Either 4 Magma Spray or something else that's good in standard.
In terms of counters, I am not playing any Censors in my deck because they don't do the job, most decks are creature decks so I opted to play 4 Essence Scatters main deck and it has worked well for me.
I would suggest you drop the 4 Censor and changed them to 3 Essence Scatter (full playset) and 1 Negate (total 3 Negates main). I would also play 4 Disallow main deck instead of the 4 Cancels since they are infinitely better if you can afford the upgrade.
Also, I think that 2 As Foretold is enough because if you can get them in your opening hand is ok, but if you don't then you will probably not need them for the rest of the game, it's not a card you want to play on turn 6 or 7 or later anyways. With 25 instants it would make your Drake much bigger faster so if you already have a couple of counters and a magma spray or two in the graveyard you can cast the Drake on turn 4 or 5 and have it be at least a 4/4 or even a 5/4.
The first 5-6 turns of the game all you are doing is countering or burning away creatures, after that you can drop a drake or do something else, so you need to have cheap burn which 4 Spray's and 4 Lightnings are good, and a lot of counters against creatures.
So this is what I would run:
4x Disallow
4x Essence Scatter
4x Glimmer of Genius
4x Harnessed Lightning
3x Negate
2x Pull from Tomorrow
4x Magma Spray
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4x Highland Lake
8x Island
4x Mountain
4x Spirebluff Canal
4x Enigma Drake
3x Torrential Gearhulk
2x As Foretold
2x Commit // Memory (it's amazing with Gearhulk)
2x Incendiary Flow
2x By Force
2x Kefnet, the Mindful
2x Dispel
2x Sphinx of the Final Word
3x Sweltering Suns
As for the sideboard, against other control decks you can put in Dispel and Sphinx of the final word. Against decks running a lot of planeswalkers then Commit/Memory is very good as is Kefnet.
OF course, agaisnt creature decks you can put in the incendiary flows and sweltering suns. Against aggro decks I would take out the 2 pull from tomorrows and the 2 as foretold for sure, and maybe even 1 disallow and sideboard in 3 Sweltering Suns and 2 Incendiary Flows.
Against vehicles decks or Heart of Kiran decks you need to sideboard in 2 By Force and 2 Commit so you can have answers to a resolved Heart of Kiran or another annoying artifact.
Let me know what you think! I have a lot of experience with playing Blue based control decks.
Check out my Youtube channel where I upload MTG content videos twice a week!
Mtg Lifestyle
I think magma spray is good, but it tends to be a very dead card against many matchups, and a very bad topdeck which is why I'm avoiding it and resorting to sideboarding Incendiary Flow when I need to exile, which although is a sorcery, I think does well enough for those matchups. I do need to sleeve up my Dispels for control mirror and bring in artifact hate for the SB. I will probably go with Release the Gremlins over By Force since I think the body is relevant.
Overall I think you have a good take and I definitely appreciate the insight. Thanks! I especially like that I can use Commit to fight Planeswalkers as Gideon is still pretty tough to deal with.
To tell you the truth I wouldn't even run As Foretold in this deck since it doesn't really help your deck too much and also it's kind of a terrible topdeck as well.
I do play 1 Commit//Memory maindeck in my U/W control deck and I have a second one in the sideboard. I don't play any Gearhulks in my U/W control, but you know that you can cast Memory from the graveyard with your Gearhulk, so it's even more versatile in your deck than in mine, and yes it does bounce Gideon or other planeswalkers as well.
The truth is I haven't played my control deck in the last month and a half because I have been playing my Red Deck Wins aggro deck and having a lot of fun with swinging with creatures and burning people every turn. They are kind of similar since both decks don't really block, the U/W control just doesn't have enough creatures to block with and the RDW always attacks, if I have to block something it means I'm losing.
Magma spray is in my sideboard for the Mono Red deck but that's because I am running Fiery Tempers maindeck as the burn spell of choice besides Harnessed Lightning, however I do sideboard the magma sprays even almost every game because I do want to burn something on the first turn. I also managed to kill a heart of kiran with 2 magma sprays and exiled the hell out of it. I would at least sideboard the magma sprays over the Incendiary Flows because the flows are 2 mana and that's the same as Harnessed lighting.
One key to playing a control deck is to vary the mana cost of your cards, either the counterspells or the burn spells. So that's why I am trying to have some 2 casting cost counters and some 3 casting cost counters and some 4 casting cost counters. It's the same with burn, you want to have some 1 mana burn, 2 mana burn and 3 mana burn, not everything 2 mana because if you don't vary then when you have 3 lands out you will have a harder choice of what to do.
Anyways, I play 14 counters maindeck in my U/W control:
3 Negate
2 Void Shatter
2 Disallow
2 Failure // Comply (another hard counter on turn 2, almost never use Comply though)
1 Commit // Memory
My sideboard also has an additional:
3 Dispel
2 Horribly Awry
1 Commit // Memory
In case I need to put in more counters for creature decks I put in the 2 horribly awry, against control decks I put in the 3 dispels and decks with lots of planeswalkers or Gods I put in the second commit/memory.
Check out my Youtube channel where I upload MTG content videos twice a week!
Mtg Lifestyle
I'm still at the moment running Incendiary Flows over Magma Sprays but it has worked out fine - I havent run into a game yet where I wished I had one mana and a Spray. I've usually always had the mana to use Incendiary Flow and have been able to exile out Constrictors and such with it. I think I still prefer that spell as it sort of works like having additional Harnessed Lightnings, even though its not nearly as good.
One thing to note is the zombies decks haven't shown up for the last few weeks. Today the popular deck was G/B Delirium, other decks were: 2 tix Red, U/W Aggro, New Perspectives Combo. I lost a close set to G/B delirium, where game three I experienced bad mana issues and couldnt get going. Bye round 2. Got stomped 0-2 round 3 against U/W Aggro due to mana issues both games. I'm considering adding an additional land or two to the deck, probably just islands. Not sure what I would drop for them yet.