I'll be starting my testing with 4 FoN. I'm not sure exactly what the deck looks like, but I'm pretty sure FoN is a 4-of since its most powerful in the early game when we are normally having trouble keeping up due to being reactive and having lots of taplands. Redundant copies also pitch to themselves are actually castable in the late game anyways.
The structure of the deck post MH1 is in flux in my mind because of Narset though, not because of FoN; FoN makes you want to play high numbers of JTMS, but Narset makes you want to play less JTMS.
I'll be starting my testing with 4 FoN. I'm not sure exactly what the deck looks like, but I'm pretty sure FoN is a 4-of since its most powerful in the early game when we are normally having trouble keeping up due to being reactive and having lots of taplands. Redundant copies also pitch to themselves are actually castable in the late game anyways.
The structure of the deck post MH1 is in flux in my mind because of Narset though, not because of FoN; FoN makes you want to play high numbers of JTMS, but Narset makes you want to play less JTMS.
yeah even with as much scorn as mh1 has gotten, im not entirely sure what UW control will end up looking like. the build is in flux for the most part thanks to WAR, and now we have to add in FoN (i do think its a card you main-deck in some numbers, then side out) and the archmage charm if possible. truly an embarrassment of riches for this archetype compared to like 1.5-2 years ago.
like im not sure where the 3 cmc walkers fit into the equation when we are getting a 3 mana negate (hardcast) AND a 3 mana swiss army counterspell. even remand starts to look appealing paired with the charm.
ill probably start with a 'hedge' build that jams as much as possible, then tune it down after playing some and particularly when better deckbuilders than myself start posting results. that or just fool around with some jeskai (geist/queller stuff with FoN), grixis midrange (kess!), or esper (new orzhov command) lists till the dust settles.
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I'm not sure we can afford to play 4 maindeck negates though.. That's the problem I have with it. I know for sure that we can replace some of the counters we already play for it but I'm not sure if we can rock 4 of them. Like Tronix said, I'd enjoy playing with the Charm as well, which kinda fights over the same space. Remand feels super good right now because of Veto. I would give it a try if I wasn't so fundamentally against Remand in Control decks.
Adding to the fact that we want the new 3cmc walkers I'm seriously questioning how can we fit all of this into 34-36 slots. The common Legacy wisdom is to play 22 blue spells to support 4 FoWs. It's true that FoN is way more hardcastable than FoW making this number probably not that imperative to meet. Assuming this we have 26 spells already locked. Adding 4 Paths and 3 non-Supreme wipes we're already looking at 35 slots filled, meaning that to add extra white spells we'd have to sacrifice something. I'm not trying to make any conclusion at all, only to point out another mathematical compromise we have to reach in order to build our decks properly.
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My only gripe with running 4 negates in the form of 4 FoN is it means no Veto. Veto stands to gain a lot as control decks rise in popularity.
The issue with running too many copies of a card is usually that it gets clunked up in your hand as multiple copies - FoN sort of deals with that on its own by being able to pitch to itself. I mean sure, if you draw 3 copies in your first 10 cards it could be ugly, but that's not going to happen very often and it's only going to be problematic in game 1s. After game 1 you presumably well either want lots of negates or will have less negates in your deck.
4 could be be wrong, but my guess is that the correct number is 3 or 4 because of how much better the card is in the early game, so I'll start testing high to increase odds of having it early and work down from there.
Veto makes the mirror so different to play. Both Veto and FoN are begging for Remands... Damn would it warrant a spot in the sideboard for the mirror? Everyone will probably play FoN main and a couple of Vetos SB coming MH1, Remanding our own spells after a FoN or a Veto feels almost like cheating.
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Remand on FoN for the 3 for 1 is not going to come up very often - if you're waiting long enough to cast your threats that you have mana left over to cast remand it will be deep enough in the game where opp will be hardcasting rather than pitching.
Remand after Veto is fine, but it's not different than remand after any generic counter spell - it'll come up and it's a nice play, but it means you have remand in your control deck. So, meh.
its just a rough draft, but as i mentioned before about a 'hedge' build this seems like a balanced numbers split. not sure about the walker split tbh, since i dont have the experience with them so i just chose to cut a big teferi instead of a jtms as a nod to FoN to have one more way to shuffle any away if the the matchup or game doesnt care about a negate effect.
terminus is a just something i want to test out, but its a nod to GY decks while being a powerful out to draw in to (or just steal a game lol). coulda been a surgical, which has started to show up in MDs more; however 3 FoN provides some added insulation against the stuff surgical tends to hate on. remand is also whatever, just personally like the idea of remand into charm.
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I've played the mirror a little and also watched nassif stream the mirror a little bit. I don't think remand is where you want to be. Obviously t3feri turns off any counter, but narset potentially make the draw a card text on remand dead. The remand for value play is pretty situational. I think you just want to shove walkers through permission, so it's more about efficiency and threats than value counters. I think veto is just better, especially since it's better versus the field. Another thing to note is the spell snare is not that good in the mirror anymore remand turns on people who play snare.
As for the future builds with modern horizon cards.
Most lists play 2 plains, I think it might be necessary to cut that plains for a mystic gate to play archmage's charm. My gut tells me that's still not enough blue sources so it's doubtful this card will be played in multiples without reworking the mana base.
Do you think fact or fiction is needed to fuel multiple force of negations? Or do the walkers make up for being down a card? And eventually you can hard cast force of negation. I guess that needs to be tested to find out.
I think you want 3-4 snapcasters, the card is just so good. If you run more snaps, opt becomes better, and opt is way better in the mirror to not get crushed by narset.
It's exciting to be a control mage again. Though the lists are feeling a bit legacy light with all the hyper efficient cards. I think it's sad we can't just have a bunch of 4 drop value cards anymore (like playing 4 cryptics). But i guess that's the eventual outcome of a non-rotating format. We'll see what they do with arena and creating a format for the cards that rotate out of standard.
I don't think Fact or Fiction is necessary to support Force, the walkers will likely provide enough CA. Force and Jace are best friends - slamming a Jace onto an empty board on turn 4 used to be a pipe dream in modern against most decks. Not anymore. This doesn't mean FoF isn't worth it though - I really like that FoF gets around opposing narsets for example.
I think I disagree on number of snapcaster though - it's mana intensive and opt-caster mage is a pretty mediocre use of snappy. Though I do think you're right about opt being superior due to Narset....I really like heirogly Illumination for this purpose as well. I've actually just been on 27 land 4 illumination no serum/opt and it's felt good. Solves the blue mana issue for Archmage's charm too.
Im also interested in what happens with arena. I have some strange hopeful feeling (based on the flexibility and design choices of cards like Kaya's Guile, Archmage's Charm and the new cycling sideboard-esque cards like the hurkyls recall one) that Horizons was designed with Arena best of one matches in mind. I wouldn't be surprised to see Horizons be a gateway of some kind into modern or something modern-esque on arena very soon.
I brought up Remand because in theory feels like cheating when the super awesome scenario comes up. I'm 100% against playing Remand in a control deck and you can find several quotes from me on this thread saying it.
Not sure if you guys read the Nassif's article on brewing for MH1 released on 29th.
He considers that the Charm is only good enough if you can reliably cast it on turn 3, which is a valid assessment but I don't think I agree with. I think it's a very powerful card that we could want to adjust the manabase for. He thinks that FoN is a strong card but we can't have too many Negates on the deck. He then acknowledges that it's probably worse than Dovin's Veto. He compliments FoF and he says that it takes the slot of 1 Jace and 1 CC... Personally I don't foresee this as being the right call. FoF has a great appeal but if we are to play FoN we want to take those risks and jam the Jaces into the field. I was excited to have the card in Modern, not that excited to play it in UW Control.
Anyway here's his list:
He has cut down to 2 Colonnades and said that he has played with 0 and doesn't feel that bad about it. He says that we can't afford too many tapped lands specially with the 3cmc walkers. I kinda agree. I've been advocating for the full set because Colonnade has a huge target on its back and usually one isn't enough. No Blast Zone for me its a surprise because it has been overperforming by a lot. It has been better than Field of Ruin actually. The Fblthp is a nod to K4rn, Narset and T3feri but I think it's just too cute. I'd rather play another Snapcaster and use it as an Ambush Viper. He chose to play 1 Vista but wonders if a Delta would be better. I think there's a case to be made for any of the lands. If we want to play the Charm we can probably play a Mystic Gate without cutting a Plains for it. 3 Glacial Fortress doesn't feel right to me at all... Oust is something that I think we no longer need. I'd rather play Snow Basics and play In Thin Ice.
eh i just read that nassif article and tbh i dont think its worth much credence. nassif is a UW control master no doubt, but he has a penchant for unconventional card choices. also his analysis is just surface level and noncommittal since he admits to not even testing any of the cards yet. that and the click-baity title has me thinking its forced content from CFB having the 'control guy' just put something out there.
like he admits that his evaluation of FoF is based on him being big on glimmer of genius for a while; a card that saw intermittent play but was never adopted as standard tech in any UWx control deck. though i will acknowledge his point on it being able to play through an opposing narset; which may be very relevant to someone like nassif who has to prepare against a tournament meta riddled with UW.
i do agree with his rationale of cutting colonnades. the card just isnt carrying as much weight as it once did, and the liability of a ETB tapped land became more pronounced. whether 'cutting' means going down to 1-2 or 0 im less confidant about. i remember a random UW list showing up at some point last year with no colonnades, a lower land count, and mishra's bauble including (some number i cant recall) monastery mentors. i thought it was a novel idea, but never explored it beyond that.
the big question mark with archmage's charm is: can you play it and field of ruin? (with it still being good) field is one of those innocuous things that has acted as a pillar of this decks success for over a year now, making it hard to see UW control without it unless there is a major divergence in builds. blast zone is also strong, but until proven to be much more impactful than i believe it is, its kind of a 1-A flex inclusion.
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Glimmer of Genius never cut it for me. The effect is great but it's essentially a dead card most game. I did ride the bandwagon of Hieroglyphic Illumination and I enjoyed it, specially on the Miracle version. FoF looks a lot like Glimmer with the upside of bypassing Narset. Still it's not enough for me. I'll play my Jaces and my Cryptics.
2 seems too low but I'll give it a shot. Start trimming them one at a time and see if I ever miss it.
Field was detrimental for the resurgence of the deck along with the Teferi. That being said it's dead against many decks and it can feel really clunky. I'm really into Blast Zone and 2 doesn't seem too many. That's why I'm happy with the 3/2 split. Playing these with Archmage... I think we can work it out.
This has "technically" 25+2 Lands, which 4 are colorless, 2 are Plains but with the Mystic Gate we can count as 0.5 Island for the 2 Plains (?!), so theoretical 21.5 blue sources which is between 86.5% and 91.4% chance of casting UUU on turn 3. If we add one extra land, a 2nd Prismatic Vista for example, we get between 91.4% and 95.9% chance of casting the Charm on curve. For me this is more than enough. We can get away with playing the 5th and 6th cantrips instead of adding one land. This would make us cut Colonnades down to 2 because we want to spend Turn 1/2 cantripping instead of playing a tapped land.
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that doesnt seem bad at all. this is of course assuming archmage charm is only worthy of an inclusion when leveraging its best use cases (cast on curve). using the card optimally is important, but cards can also be defined by their performance in the average to poor use cases. thats what im banking on. maybe that means UW only wants 1 copy /shrug
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I won't touch Generous Gift personally. It sounds like a terrible idea to spend a card on a permanent and give them a creature to kill me with then have to kill that creature before it actually kills me. I am not sure how many cards all that requires, but it seems like a lot that I don't want to waste. Instant part isn't worth all that. I would rather find a sideboard card for the actual problem instead of a generic one that creates another.
We have path, on thin ice, oust, condemn and more for creatures.
We have field of ruin for problematic lands.
We have detention sphere and counterspells, teferi bounce for nonland permanents.
If something goes through, well tough *****, it happens.
Question : do you guys will play Generous Gift in the 75 ?
I'll definitely be testing it in UW midrange control. I've already stated I think its being heaving undervalued. With Wall + Jace + Teferi + Sweepers + Kitchen Finks I have no issues dealing with the token in my maindeck.
Winds of Abandon is being slept on a little, IMO. I think this card is better than Oust, and the overload is relevant. I'm probably cutting Wrath of God and Oust for 2x Winds of Abandon to see how that pans out.
I'm not sure about Archmage's Charm. I'm a big advocate of casting your spells on curve, and I agree with Nassif that if you aim to cast it on turn 4 you should just play more cryptics. Together with how crowded the 3-slot is getting, I see Archmage charm as a 1 or 0-of unless you are willing to cut some Field of Ruins.
Fact or Fiction is one of my favourite cards in magic, but with UW becoming more to the ground and efficient I'm not sure it goes in the deck. I feel it also shares the deckslot of Archmage Charm. I could see running 1, 2 already really seems like pushing it.
Force of Negation clearly is the biggest game changer for UW, mostly because slamming a turn 4 JtMS and being likely to untap with him becomes a more common play. I still don't think you want more than 2, but I could see running a third JtMS in light of FoN.
Question : do you guys will play Generous Gift in the 75 ?
I won't and I wouldn't if I were you. A 3/3 is enough to beat us, we're basically downgrading a problem. That's not how we want to be positioned. We want to answer problems not downgrading them at a cost of a card.
Like Humstuck said we have way better answers than this one. Counters are generic enough that we can deal with every type of permanent on the stack.
Winds of Abandon is being slept on a little, IMO. I think this card is better than Oust, and the overload is relevant. I'm probably cutting Wrath of God and Oust for 2x Winds of Abandon to see how that pans out.
I'm not sure about Archmage's Charm. I'm a big advocate of casting your spells on curve, and I agree with Nassif that if you aim to cast it on turn 4 you should just play more cryptics. Together with how crowded the 3-slot is getting, I see Archmage charm as a 1 or 0-of unless you are willing to cut some Field of Ruins.
Fact or Fiction is one of my favourite cards in magic, but with UW becoming more to the ground and efficient I'm not sure it goes in the deck. I feel it also shares the deckslot of Archmage Charm. I could see running 1, 2 already really seems like pushing it.
Force of Negation clearly is the biggest game changer for UW, mostly because slamming a turn 4 JtMS and being likely to untap with him becomes a more common play. I still don't think you want more than 2, but I could see running a third JtMS in light of FoN.
I can't agree with you. Overloading the spell sounds cool and all but overall it's a mediocre spell. It's a 2 mana sorcery that ramps them. It has the same drawback of Path, costs more and is a sorcery... Path is the best we have and it's not on par with the power level of the format... This one goes three steps further. If you want to remove creatures and need Path 5/6, go for On thin Ice, Oust or Condemn. There's no reason to choose anything else.
On Archmage's Charm, you do have to give up a bit to play it but with a mana base like the one I posted a few posts before you're well set to cast it on curve. If you're willing to up the count to 26 lands you can play 4/5 colorless lands with no sweat.
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UW has been going down on lands since it's lower to the ground. With what you propose, you'd have to go up to 25 again and still would be 3 sources short (before cantrips). You also should probably not be playing Serum Visions right now with how important the mirror is, where Narset and Snap+Opt are big factors for who ends up on top.
On Thin Ice might be better than Winds of Abandon. I like the overload on winds a lot, and I like that it can be flashed back. On top of that, it has synergy with little Tef. But all that cool stuff aside, just being half the cost most likely gives On Thin Ice the edge. My only concern is, again, the manabase, and how many snow basics you would need to run it. However that seems fairly doable; you can treat the snow requirement as any other mana requirement, and for a turn 2 OTI you'd need 13 snow sources (T1 would need 14 but then it has to be a snow plains of course)
If I wanted a manabase that can cast On Thin Ice and Arcmage's Charm consistently, I'd start with something like this
21 U, 15 W and 14 ways to get your snow land. With 4 Opt and 1-2 extra cheap cantrips (I personally have loved 2 Wall of Omens) this gets very close to that sweet sweet 95% confidence interval of casting Arcmage Charm on 3.
I know that SV is worse than Opt because of Narset, but with a more restrictive mana base the Scry 2 is really important to setup the mana for the following turns. It's true that Opt circumvents the Narset issue but my plan is to play the SV turn 1, before it comes into play. When we have T3feri on the board SV just becomes way more interesting.
Snow requirements aren't that difficult to achieve. If we start to fetch a basic instead of shock right away we can get there quite easily. The only thing I'm not sure about is cutting the 2nd Plains. I like to be able to cast all my spells under Blood Moon, specially since we don't have a reliable way to deal with it.
The mana base you propose when factoring in the cantrips allows you to play both On Thin Ice on 2 and Charm on 3 with at least 1 spare blue source. I'd be willing to push it a little more and go for 1 more colorless land.
The question that we need to answer is if the Charm is worth the %points against Tron.
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The structure of the deck post MH1 is in flux in my mind because of Narset though, not because of FoN; FoN makes you want to play high numbers of JTMS, but Narset makes you want to play less JTMS.
like im not sure where the 3 cmc walkers fit into the equation when we are getting a 3 mana negate (hardcast) AND a 3 mana swiss army counterspell. even remand starts to look appealing paired with the charm.
ill probably start with a 'hedge' build that jams as much as possible, then tune it down after playing some and particularly when better deckbuilders than myself start posting results. that or just fool around with some jeskai (geist/queller stuff with FoN), grixis midrange (kess!), or esper (new orzhov command) lists till the dust settles.
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WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Adding to the fact that we want the new 3cmc walkers I'm seriously questioning how can we fit all of this into 34-36 slots. The common Legacy wisdom is to play 22 blue spells to support 4 FoWs. It's true that FoN is way more hardcastable than FoW making this number probably not that imperative to meet. Assuming this we have 26 spells already locked. Adding 4 Paths and 3 non-Supreme wipes we're already looking at 35 slots filled, meaning that to add extra white spells we'd have to sacrifice something. I'm not trying to make any conclusion at all, only to point out another mathematical compromise we have to reach in order to build our decks properly.
WUMiracles ControlUW
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The issue with running too many copies of a card is usually that it gets clunked up in your hand as multiple copies - FoN sort of deals with that on its own by being able to pitch to itself. I mean sure, if you draw 3 copies in your first 10 cards it could be ugly, but that's not going to happen very often and it's only going to be problematic in game 1s. After game 1 you presumably well either want lots of negates or will have less negates in your deck.
4 could be be wrong, but my guess is that the correct number is 3 or 4 because of how much better the card is in the early game, so I'll start testing high to increase odds of having it early and work down from there.
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Remand after Veto is fine, but it's not different than remand after any generic counter spell - it'll come up and it's a nice play, but it means you have remand in your control deck. So, meh.
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
Planeswalkers (7)
2 Narset, Parter of Veils
2 Teferi, Time Raveler
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
4 Path to Exile
1 Oust
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
1 Terminus
Cantrips (5)
3 Opt
2 Serum Visions
2 Cryptic Command
3 Force of Negation
3 Archmage's Charm
1 Logic Knot
1 Mana Leak
1 Remand
its just a rough draft, but as i mentioned before about a 'hedge' build this seems like a balanced numbers split. not sure about the walker split tbh, since i dont have the experience with them so i just chose to cut a big teferi instead of a jtms as a nod to FoN to have one more way to shuffle any away if the the matchup or game doesnt care about a negate effect.
terminus is a just something i want to test out, but its a nod to GY decks while being a powerful out to draw in to (or just steal a game lol). coulda been a surgical, which has started to show up in MDs more; however 3 FoN provides some added insulation against the stuff surgical tends to hate on. remand is also whatever, just personally like the idea of remand into charm.
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WCDeath and Taxes(sold)As for the future builds with modern horizon cards.
Most lists play 2 plains, I think it might be necessary to cut that plains for a mystic gate to play archmage's charm. My gut tells me that's still not enough blue sources so it's doubtful this card will be played in multiples without reworking the mana base.
Do you think fact or fiction is needed to fuel multiple force of negations? Or do the walkers make up for being down a card? And eventually you can hard cast force of negation. I guess that needs to be tested to find out.
I think you want 3-4 snapcasters, the card is just so good. If you run more snaps, opt becomes better, and opt is way better in the mirror to not get crushed by narset.
It's exciting to be a control mage again. Though the lists are feeling a bit legacy light with all the hyper efficient cards. I think it's sad we can't just have a bunch of 4 drop value cards anymore (like playing 4 cryptics). But i guess that's the eventual outcome of a non-rotating format. We'll see what they do with arena and creating a format for the cards that rotate out of standard.
I think I disagree on number of snapcaster though - it's mana intensive and opt-caster mage is a pretty mediocre use of snappy. Though I do think you're right about opt being superior due to Narset....I really like heirogly Illumination for this purpose as well. I've actually just been on 27 land 4 illumination no serum/opt and it's felt good. Solves the blue mana issue for Archmage's charm too.
Im also interested in what happens with arena. I have some strange hopeful feeling (based on the flexibility and design choices of cards like Kaya's Guile, Archmage's Charm and the new cycling sideboard-esque cards like the hurkyls recall one) that Horizons was designed with Arena best of one matches in mind. I wouldn't be surprised to see Horizons be a gateway of some kind into modern or something modern-esque on arena very soon.
Not sure if you guys read the Nassif's article on brewing for MH1 released on 29th.
He considers that the Charm is only good enough if you can reliably cast it on turn 3, which is a valid assessment but I don't think I agree with. I think it's a very powerful card that we could want to adjust the manabase for. He thinks that FoN is a strong card but we can't have too many Negates on the deck. He then acknowledges that it's probably worse than Dovin's Veto. He compliments FoF and he says that it takes the slot of 1 Jace and 1 CC... Personally I don't foresee this as being the right call. FoF has a great appeal but if we are to play FoN we want to take those risks and jam the Jaces into the field. I was excited to have the card in Modern, not that excited to play it in UW Control.
Anyway here's his list:
2 Plains
6 Island
4 Field of Ruin
4 Flooded Strand
3 Glacial Fortress
1 Prismatic Vista
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Celestial Colonnade
Creatures:
1 Fblthp, the Lost
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Wall of Omens
Planeswalkers:
1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Teferi, Time Raveler
1 Serum Visions
4 Opts
2 Fact or Ficiton
Permission:
2 Cryptic Command
2 Logic Knot
2 Force of Negation
Removal:
4 Path to Exile
1 Detention Sphere
1 Oust
2 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
Other:
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Celestial Purge
1 Disdainful Stroke
2 Rest in Peace
1 Lyra Dawnbringer
1 Vendilion Cliquye
2 Restoration Angel
1 Stony Silence
2 Timely Reinforcements
1 Teferi Time Raveler
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Dovin's Veto
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR
like he admits that his evaluation of FoF is based on him being big on glimmer of genius for a while; a card that saw intermittent play but was never adopted as standard tech in any UWx control deck. though i will acknowledge his point on it being able to play through an opposing narset; which may be very relevant to someone like nassif who has to prepare against a tournament meta riddled with UW.
i do agree with his rationale of cutting colonnades. the card just isnt carrying as much weight as it once did, and the liability of a ETB tapped land became more pronounced. whether 'cutting' means going down to 1-2 or 0 im less confidant about. i remember a random UW list showing up at some point last year with no colonnades, a lower land count, and mishra's bauble including (some number i cant recall) monastery mentors. i thought it was a novel idea, but never explored it beyond that.
the big question mark with archmage's charm is: can you play it and field of ruin? (with it still being good) field is one of those innocuous things that has acted as a pillar of this decks success for over a year now, making it hard to see UW control without it unless there is a major divergence in builds. blast zone is also strong, but until proven to be much more impactful than i believe it is, its kind of a 1-A flex inclusion.
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WCDeath and Taxes(sold)2 seems too low but I'll give it a shot. Start trimming them one at a time and see if I ever miss it.
Field was detrimental for the resurgence of the deck along with the Teferi. That being said it's dead against many decks and it can feel really clunky. I'm really into Blast Zone and 2 doesn't seem too many. That's why I'm happy with the 3/2 split. Playing these with Archmage... I think we can work it out.
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Glacial Fortress
3 Field of Ruin
1 Blast Zone
6 Island
2 Plains
1 Mystic Gate
1 Prismatic Vista
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR
UWGSnow-Bant Control
BURGrixis Death's Shadow
GWBCoCo Elves
WCDeath and Taxes(sold)Aggro: Naya Burn RWG
Combo: Scapeshift RG
Control: Jeskai Control UWR
Legacy
Control: Miracles UW
Aggro: Burn R
We have path, on thin ice, oust, condemn and more for creatures.
We have field of ruin for problematic lands.
We have detention sphere and counterspells, teferi bounce for nonland permanents.
If something goes through, well tough *****, it happens.
I'll definitely be testing it in UW midrange control. I've already stated I think its being heaving undervalued. With Wall + Jace + Teferi + Sweepers + Kitchen Finks I have no issues dealing with the token in my maindeck.
I'm not sure about Archmage's Charm. I'm a big advocate of casting your spells on curve, and I agree with Nassif that if you aim to cast it on turn 4 you should just play more cryptics. Together with how crowded the 3-slot is getting, I see Archmage charm as a 1 or 0-of unless you are willing to cut some Field of Ruins.
Fact or Fiction is one of my favourite cards in magic, but with UW becoming more to the ground and efficient I'm not sure it goes in the deck. I feel it also shares the deckslot of Archmage Charm. I could see running 1, 2 already really seems like pushing it.
Force of Negation clearly is the biggest game changer for UW, mostly because slamming a turn 4 JtMS and being likely to untap with him becomes a more common play. I still don't think you want more than 2, but I could see running a third JtMS in light of FoN.
Like Humstuck said we have way better answers than this one. Counters are generic enough that we can deal with every type of permanent on the stack.
I can't agree with you. Overloading the spell sounds cool and all but overall it's a mediocre spell. It's a 2 mana sorcery that ramps them. It has the same drawback of Path, costs more and is a sorcery... Path is the best we have and it's not on par with the power level of the format... This one goes three steps further. If you want to remove creatures and need Path 5/6, go for On thin Ice, Oust or Condemn. There's no reason to choose anything else.
On Archmage's Charm, you do have to give up a bit to play it but with a mana base like the one I posted a few posts before you're well set to cast it on curve. If you're willing to up the count to 26 lands you can play 4/5 colorless lands with no sweat.
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR
On Thin Ice might be better than Winds of Abandon. I like the overload on winds a lot, and I like that it can be flashed back. On top of that, it has synergy with little Tef. But all that cool stuff aside, just being half the cost most likely gives On Thin Ice the edge. My only concern is, again, the manabase, and how many snow basics you would need to run it. However that seems fairly doable; you can treat the snow requirement as any other mana requirement, and for a turn 2 OTI you'd need 13 snow sources (T1 would need 14 but then it has to be a snow plains of course)
If I wanted a manabase that can cast On Thin Ice and Arcmage's Charm consistently, I'd start with something like this
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Field of Ruin
4 Flooded Strand
2 Prismatic Vista
1 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Mystic Gate
7 Snow-Covered Island
21 U, 15 W and 14 ways to get your snow land. With 4 Opt and 1-2 extra cheap cantrips (I personally have loved 2 Wall of Omens) this gets very close to that sweet sweet 95% confidence interval of casting Arcmage Charm on 3.
Snow requirements aren't that difficult to achieve. If we start to fetch a basic instead of shock right away we can get there quite easily. The only thing I'm not sure about is cutting the 2nd Plains. I like to be able to cast all my spells under Blood Moon, specially since we don't have a reliable way to deal with it.
The mana base you propose when factoring in the cantrips allows you to play both On Thin Ice on 2 and Charm on 3 with at least 1 spare blue source. I'd be willing to push it a little more and go for 1 more colorless land.
The question that we need to answer is if the Charm is worth the %points against Tron.
WUMiracles ControlUW
RUBGrixis Death's ShadowBUR