The advantage of the phantoms was that it was 1 counter each time. This is remove "that many" counters. Making it just an objectively worse Endless One.
How are you burning people out when you also need burn spells to answer creatures? And no Expansion // Explosion.
I'm gonna give a long answer to hopefully properly address this, and maybe some other things since you seem to have a lot of questions:
My deck is HARD control. It's slow, grindy, draw-go permission style. 99% of my game takes place on my opponent's turn. I am concerned with a series of 1 for 1s, having an answer for everything they throw, and then building incremental card advantage. Game 1 starts, I'm already ahead. Because a certain number of cards are complete blanks with me having no creatures. Which means assuming nothing else, if I just do 1 for 1s, I end up winning.
Then we have the actual active ways to get card advantage. Obvious ones like Chemister's Insight and Ral. But the biggest one for me personally, as you asked about earlier, is Firemind's Research. This is a 2-drop enchantment that just reads "Card Advantage." Think about it this way. Every time I play a card, I get half a card back. Once I realized through play that that's basically what it does, it wasnt a question of keeping it in the deck, but of how many(I'm up to 3). That thing is a monster. And then, of course, Jump-Start gets an honorable mention because it's pseudo-CA in the lategame pitching irrelevant cards(lands).
Then we have the actual burning. Which is pretty simple when you have extra cards to play with. Obviously Ral getting to 8 is an auto-win, but beyond that we have Browbeat 2.0. Which is normally just an 8-damage burn to the face at instant speed(The cards are a wash if you have Firemind's out, because the 2 casts nets you an extra card to pitch). Inescapable Blaze is a solid chunk of life for a single card, again at instant speed, and a great finisher versus control who have let themselves get low on Risk Factors. Especially if you have both and EOT one on their turn, untap, and cast the other. These are the big burners; and then you have incremental damage here and there from Ionize, maybe throwing a lategame Lightning Strike at their dome, Shocking them once instead of discarding down to 7(happens more than you might think, you get a lot of cards). And obviously when you aren't in the card buying business, Firemind's does have another ability that is relevant to this point.
Do you feel like Firemind's Research holds a worthy place in the deck?
What does your current deck look like?
First off, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. My deck went in a VERY different direction from most others in here. I'm completely creatureless so (almost) every card fuels Research. I was highly skeptical at first too, but the results for me don't lie. I think it's a REALLY underrated card. It does so much work. And for me it does more work than the Azcantas it replaced.(And that's without even factoring in that Research isn't countered by land destruction or graveyard hate...both of which are very common atm)
If you wanna see my current decklist, it's posted a page back. Still tooling with the sideboard.
Well, I have a different take on the deck, and it seemed more appropriate to post here than make a new thread. Counterburn IS a thing despite many misunderstanding of new players to the contrary. And I decided to build my framework around that concept. And there's two main reasons. One is that when you remove creatures completely from your deck(game1), the massive VCA you get in the current standard environment is huge. The second is that having (nearly) everything you do at instant speed allows for a lot more freedom to control the game. Which is the point of a control deck(Counterburn is hard control, it's not tempo).
Crackling Drake: Overrated. For two reasons. One being that it's a creature, which means sorcery speed, lightning rod to the removal that would otherwise be blanked. But the second is the prohibitive mana cost, which really hurts the mana base whether you realize it or not. It's, ironically, not a control card. It's a tempo card.
Search for Azcanta versus Firemind's Research: From my testing so far, Research has felt more impactful early on. It allows you to stabilize easier, which is control's main goal. It's also less of a mana sink to get value than Azcanta, while often(due to the deck being almost exclusively instants), often netting you more than a single extra card a turn in the mid-lategame. Not to mention the added bonus of it being immune to land destruction, which is very popular right now. And as for people saying it's a dead draw lategame...that's literally the point of the jump-start mechanic. To be able to pitch cards like this when they stop being so attractive.
Risk Factor: If you think this card is a Browbeat reprint, you're just wrong. Instant speed is obviously huge, especially for this deck. But being able to cast it twice is arguably more important. 8 damage from one card(and pitching a dead draw/land) is HUGE. 2 of those is basically the game assuming you either draw any other damage or they use shocklands. It's the workhorse of the deck. And if they ever allow you to draw, even better, for obvious reasons.
Inescapable Blaze: Basically this deck's replacement for Banefire. A classic control finisher. But what you trade in versatility, you make up for by getting it at instant speed. It's also one cheaper at that mark than Banefire would be. Control is popular right now, so having an uncounterable, instant-speed burn as a finisher is not to be underestimated. And conveniently, it deals 6 damage, which is precisely the toughness that Carnage Tyrant has...which is sometimes relevant.
Niv-Mizzet, Parun: Carries all the same problems(being a creature, restrictive mana cost, etc) with the Drake, but this creature IS a control card. And a great one. I'm running it in the sideboard atm for mirrors and other matches where he's relevant(sideboard is heavily in flux, so not ready to post one), but I think the value of completely blanking game1 removal means he should stay there.
Detection Tower: Yes, mainboard. Without the Drake and Parun clamping the mana to purely colored lands, you can afford to be a little more liberal with utility lands. And given that Tyrant is the deck's biggest weakness(not to mention the occasional mare or other being a problem sometimes), it worth throwing in. Rarely does it hurt the mana base hard enough to matter, and it's nice to have a mainboard answer to an otherwise untenable situation.
Now, cue people who have little to no idea what they're talking about complaining.
3
3
ABSOLUTE.
MADMEN!
1
I'm gonna give a long answer to hopefully properly address this, and maybe some other things since you seem to have a lot of questions:
My deck is HARD control. It's slow, grindy, draw-go permission style. 99% of my game takes place on my opponent's turn. I am concerned with a series of 1 for 1s, having an answer for everything they throw, and then building incremental card advantage. Game 1 starts, I'm already ahead. Because a certain number of cards are complete blanks with me having no creatures. Which means assuming nothing else, if I just do 1 for 1s, I end up winning.
Then we have the actual active ways to get card advantage. Obvious ones like Chemister's Insight and Ral. But the biggest one for me personally, as you asked about earlier, is Firemind's Research. This is a 2-drop enchantment that just reads "Card Advantage." Think about it this way. Every time I play a card, I get half a card back. Once I realized through play that that's basically what it does, it wasnt a question of keeping it in the deck, but of how many(I'm up to 3). That thing is a monster. And then, of course, Jump-Start gets an honorable mention because it's pseudo-CA in the lategame pitching irrelevant cards(lands).
Then we have the actual burning. Which is pretty simple when you have extra cards to play with. Obviously Ral getting to 8 is an auto-win, but beyond that we have Browbeat 2.0. Which is normally just an 8-damage burn to the face at instant speed(The cards are a wash if you have Firemind's out, because the 2 casts nets you an extra card to pitch). Inescapable Blaze is a solid chunk of life for a single card, again at instant speed, and a great finisher versus control who have let themselves get low on Risk Factors. Especially if you have both and EOT one on their turn, untap, and cast the other. These are the big burners; and then you have incremental damage here and there from Ionize, maybe throwing a lategame Lightning Strike at their dome, Shocking them once instead of discarding down to 7(happens more than you might think, you get a lot of cards). And obviously when you aren't in the card buying business, Firemind's does have another ability that is relevant to this point.
1
First off, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. My deck went in a VERY different direction from most others in here. I'm completely creatureless so (almost) every card fuels Research. I was highly skeptical at first too, but the results for me don't lie. I think it's a REALLY underrated card. It does so much work. And for me it does more work than the Azcantas it replaced.(And that's without even factoring in that Research isn't countered by land destruction or graveyard hate...both of which are very common atm)
If you wanna see my current decklist, it's posted a page back. Still tooling with the sideboard.
1
4 Lightning Strike
4 Risk Factor
2 Inescapable Blaze
4 Sinister Sabotage
4 Chemister's Insight
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Syncopate
2 Ral, Izzet Viceroy
3 Firemind's Research
4 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls
2 Detection Tower
2 Field of Ruin
7 Island
6 Mountain
Crackling Drake: Overrated. For two reasons. One being that it's a creature, which means sorcery speed, lightning rod to the removal that would otherwise be blanked. But the second is the prohibitive mana cost, which really hurts the mana base whether you realize it or not. It's, ironically, not a control card. It's a tempo card.
Search for Azcanta versus Firemind's Research: From my testing so far, Research has felt more impactful early on. It allows you to stabilize easier, which is control's main goal. It's also less of a mana sink to get value than Azcanta, while often(due to the deck being almost exclusively instants), often netting you more than a single extra card a turn in the mid-lategame. Not to mention the added bonus of it being immune to land destruction, which is very popular right now. And as for people saying it's a dead draw lategame...that's literally the point of the jump-start mechanic. To be able to pitch cards like this when they stop being so attractive.
Risk Factor: If you think this card is a Browbeat reprint, you're just wrong. Instant speed is obviously huge, especially for this deck. But being able to cast it twice is arguably more important. 8 damage from one card(and pitching a dead draw/land) is HUGE. 2 of those is basically the game assuming you either draw any other damage or they use shocklands. It's the workhorse of the deck. And if they ever allow you to draw, even better, for obvious reasons.
Inescapable Blaze: Basically this deck's replacement for Banefire. A classic control finisher. But what you trade in versatility, you make up for by getting it at instant speed. It's also one cheaper at that mark than Banefire would be. Control is popular right now, so having an uncounterable, instant-speed burn as a finisher is not to be underestimated. And conveniently, it deals 6 damage, which is precisely the toughness that Carnage Tyrant has...which is sometimes relevant.
Niv-Mizzet, Parun: Carries all the same problems(being a creature, restrictive mana cost, etc) with the Drake, but this creature IS a control card. And a great one. I'm running it in the sideboard atm for mirrors and other matches where he's relevant(sideboard is heavily in flux, so not ready to post one), but I think the value of completely blanking game1 removal means he should stay there.
Detection Tower: Yes, mainboard. Without the Drake and Parun clamping the mana to purely colored lands, you can afford to be a little more liberal with utility lands. And given that Tyrant is the deck's biggest weakness(not to mention the occasional mare or other being a problem sometimes), it worth throwing in. Rarely does it hurt the mana base hard enough to matter, and it's nice to have a mainboard answer to an otherwise untenable situation.
Now, cue people who have little to no idea what they're talking about complaining.