I use black splash for Engineered Explosives as well as two Thoughtseize and two Extirpate. 3 Sources of Black in the main board to accommodate the added black splash seems to work well enough. Games where my opponent can Wasteland me are usually not going to stop me from playing black spells because they only cost 1 black each.
I also run a 1 of Volcanic Island to do two things. Throw off my opponents math on what colors i have access to from the sideboard and of course increase potential sunburst from EE. I do NOT use red in the sideboard however. I found that black is superior in almost all of my bad matchups. (of course we do not forget white, blue, and artifacts in sideboard as well)
The Illusions deck is only decent right now because of the meta. It has a very cute position in the meta right now because no one is running cheep sweepers. Day of Judgement is too slow because they just sit on mana leak when they have 2-3 threats down and keep swinging. If decks with Slaggstorm start making a comeback then we should probably see a lot less of these token and weenie beatdown decks.
By threat, I meant drownyard including. What I meant was that it needs 1 threat resolving. If you land sphinx, Titan and it sticks, it's game over. Having a hand with 2-3 wincons is a waste
I agree that you do not need a whole lot of win conditions.
I run 4 win conditions out side of Drownyards which I have upped to 3 in the main board. (Snapcasters not included in the win conditions though I have won through a swarm of 2/1's attaching for 6 turns.)
I agree. A lot of UB has chosen not to run Lily, and she is really good against a creature heavy format. I think part of the reason UB has yet to find it's place is the fact that its refrained from running more lily.
It costs way to much and it's to vulnerable to mass removal or things like Ratchet Bomb
I don't like that kind of argument for this card. Mass removal deals with anything typical UB decks play with so exclude those.(If i play a Grave Titan and they follow up with Day of Judgment Its the same result if i played Army)
Now as for ratchet bomb, Ratchet Bomb isn't in a whole lot of main boards. People tend to leave them in the sideboards because of how dead they are against certain decks.
In many situations I board out my 1 Army of the Damned after game 1 because if they are paying attention to your graveyard and see it, then they should be adding in some number of ratchet bombs "just in case". So when you swap out Army of the Damned for something else, like say Sorin's Vengeance, or maybe just take it out for a random sideboard spell, then you destroy their sideboard plans leaving them with dead Ratchet Bomb draws.
Edit: Mana cost is a non-issue. You are playing the card very late in the game for the win. So even playing 10 mana isn't a big deal. The card can sit in the graveyard if you don't need it and if you have nothing left its a nice last ditch effort kind of card.
Army of the Damned is a think "outside of the box" kind of card. UB has no other "If you don't stop this you are dead on the spot" effects. Everything else can be chomped for several turns or sometimes out raced. This card says "I win next turn, do something about it". Grave Titan can be blocked by several things and never do damage and the tokens are small so sometimes you get 2 new ones to replace the ones that died from blocks. This is bad news especially vs WolfRunGreen when they have a bird chump the Grave and beasts block the zombies. However in the same situation you can play Army and force them to kill you the now or never.
Don't get me wrong, the card has its flaws no doubt. I feel this card will see more action if fast decks start to decline and we start seeing more midrange strategies.
The only replacement I can think of is Divination. Only problem with this card is the current meta doesn't let you play draw spells at sorcery speed until turns where you can draw and hold counter/removal magic.
So to compare them you need to wait till turn 5 to cast divination with mana leak mana open BUT with Think Twice you can draw 1 on turn 4 and 1 more on turn 5 each on the OPPONENT'S turns which is the underling power of the card. If the meta slowed down however (became more midrange perhaps) Divination would probably become much more popular. If not Divination then obviously Blue Sun's Zenith for late game draw power.
I don't like the card for the fact that she can cause serious card disadvantage... Playing her, -1, using her +1 ability, -2 cards just for a crappy discard effect. She can make for interesting plays, agreed, but the card disadvantage just seems wrong and most likely the cause of the price drop.
You obviously have not read the card... There is no -1 on her. (There is an amazing -2 however) Also her +1 discards one from each player. If a card was printed that said "Discard this card instead of paying it's mana cost: Your opponent's each discard a card." Well that is what she makes ANY card in your hand say. (With the added benefit of being able to do this ability if you have no cards in hand) It all comes down to choices and us being the control player we love having more options to choose from.
I run four Delver of Secrets in the sideboard only for the mirror match when i side out 4 black sun's zenith and two tribute to hunger, then i put in 2 frost titans and the 4 Delver of Secrets
You run 4 Black Sun's Zenith main board??? Wow must have a lot of GW tokens in your meta...
I play 3 drown yard and 2 ghost quarter. Love love love them. Win condition or not its a must include.
PS: Self mill is an early game option if you feel like you aren't getting enough value from or need more targets for otherwise dead snapcasters in hand.
one of the cool things about playing UB control is removal is dead against you for a late portion of the game. I feel adding in 4 of this creature just makes their removal useful again while making our list 4 cards tighter.
I also run a 1 of Volcanic Island to do two things. Throw off my opponents math on what colors i have access to from the sideboard and of course increase potential sunburst from EE. I do NOT use red in the sideboard however. I found that black is superior in almost all of my bad matchups. (of course we do not forget white, blue, and artifacts in sideboard as well)
Has anyone been doing anything new with this deck?
Also I would like to hear from some people about what their lists are looking like these days.
I agree that you do not need a whole lot of win conditions.
I run 4 win conditions out side of Drownyards which I have upped to 3 in the main board. (Snapcasters not included in the win conditions though I have won through a swarm of 2/1's attaching for 6 turns.)
This^^^
I give two thumbs up.
I don't like that kind of argument for this card. Mass removal deals with anything typical UB decks play with so exclude those.(If i play a Grave Titan and they follow up with Day of Judgment Its the same result if i played Army)
Now as for ratchet bomb, Ratchet Bomb isn't in a whole lot of main boards. People tend to leave them in the sideboards because of how dead they are against certain decks.
In many situations I board out my 1 Army of the Damned after game 1 because if they are paying attention to your graveyard and see it, then they should be adding in some number of ratchet bombs "just in case". So when you swap out Army of the Damned for something else, like say Sorin's Vengeance, or maybe just take it out for a random sideboard spell, then you destroy their sideboard plans leaving them with dead Ratchet Bomb draws.
Edit: Mana cost is a non-issue. You are playing the card very late in the game for the win. So even playing 10 mana isn't a big deal. The card can sit in the graveyard if you don't need it and if you have nothing left its a nice last ditch effort kind of card.
Don't get me wrong, the card has its flaws no doubt. I feel this card will see more action if fast decks start to decline and we start seeing more midrange strategies.
So to compare them you need to wait till turn 5 to cast divination with mana leak mana open BUT with Think Twice you can draw 1 on turn 4 and 1 more on turn 5 each on the OPPONENT'S turns which is the underling power of the card. If the meta slowed down however (became more midrange perhaps) Divination would probably become much more popular. If not Divination then obviously Blue Sun's Zenith for late game draw power.
You obviously have not read the card... There is no -1 on her. (There is an amazing -2 however) Also her +1 discards one from each player. If a card was printed that said "Discard this card instead of paying it's mana cost: Your opponent's each discard a card." Well that is what she makes ANY card in your hand say. (With the added benefit of being able to do this ability if you have no cards in hand) It all comes down to choices and us being the control player we love having more options to choose from.
6 posts made on that account and 3 were in this thread. Trolling hard today looks like.
You run 4 Black Sun's Zenith main board??? Wow must have a lot of GW tokens in your meta...
PS: Self mill is an early game option if you feel like you aren't getting enough value from or need more targets for otherwise dead snapcasters in hand.