trigon of thought may be a card worth investigating. If you have infinite mana you could exile it from your grave and draw every card from your deck. While every card would hurt, perhaps just drawing into the other combo pieces you need to go off?
EDIT: nevermind, the Trigon says "put counter on trigon of thought", therefore you would not be able to charge up your myr to draw. Perhaps Temple Bell instead?
Actually, that does work, as far as I'm aware. Trigon of Thought references itself using it's own name. If something else gains the abilities of Trigon of Thought, it treats a reference to itself by name to mean itself, if that makes sense.
I know for sure that Necrotic Ooze works this way, so I'm pretty sure that this works the same way.
Realms Uncharted is just silly in this deck. I always search for Terramorphic, March Flats, Verdant Cats, and a GW land. If they are smart, they'll give me the GW and the Terramorphic. Either way, you're dumping land into your graveyard for the knights, thinning your deck, getting extra fuel for cobras/emerias, and putting lands into your hand that can easily be tossed to blightning for more win. That being said, I run two. Three is maybe doable, but four is way too much.
Suggestion: Instead of running 2 Terramorphic Expanse. Play 1 Expanse and 1 Evolving Wilds. Helps to be able to search up all "fetchlands" from Realms. ;-)
I would highly recommend some Essence Scatters to solve that problem. 3 Essence Scatters has been phenomenal for me, and it negates the card advantage from problematic creatures like Ranger of Eos and Emeria Angel that spot removal simply cannot.
It's just a more preemptive removal spell (a preemptive strike, if you will lol), and is far from dead against control. There it can answer Sphinx of Jwar Isle when your removal typically can't. A very powerful card right now, in my opinion. I'd highly reccomend it, even with no other counterspells.
Also, on Sign in Blood, when first playing Wafo-Tapa's original list from Worlds, the deck played 4 Sign in Blood and 4 Divination, and at first I played the same draw suite, but found Sign in Blood to be very painful through the course of the long games the deck plays. I think that with this amount of card draw, you draw too many Sign in Bloods, and then need to use them to replace themselves and net another card to have enough answers. It seems to me that only because you draw so many is it too painful in this aggressive environment, so now I'm beginning to think that playing 2 is the right number, maybe 3.
Rather than considering Traumatize vs Tome Scour, start thinking Traumatize vs Archive Trap.
Archive Trap triggers on the fetches in the deck, or Corpse Connoisseur, and you can mill 13 for 0, or you can mill 13 for 5. That's commonly better, but usually within about 3 cards of what Traumatize nets me by the time I can cast it. I much prefer Archive Traps over Traumatize.
I just look at them as essentially the same effect, or very close to it, that will sometimes cost no mana, which is important, since you can slide it in on the first few turns while doing other things to set up like normal.
Very strong deck overall. I put it together after some trading just before FNM, and played it to a 4-1 finish, even with a lot of small mistakes. I was able to come out ahead against several aggressive decks, even Jund. The key here is Rotting Rats and Hedron Crabs as blockers and knowing when to use them as such. All the unearth creatures can basically be cast twice against control decks, and all of them, especially Rotting Rats, will eat most decks' hands very quickly when you have to adapt.
The one loss I suffered was against RDW, and even then it was very close, it came down to me having the win on the next turn, while my opponent dealt 6 while I was at 6, but that was without seeing a fetchland that game, so it's not normally that close. RDW and Boros are the only matchups that are difficult to keep up with, but even there, I was never satisfied siding in removal. It seems to take away too much from the deck, and you need to be tapping out in the first few turns to get set up more than you can afford to spend cards and mana on removal. While you spend resources not advancing the combo, they have more time to throw down more threats...
Even there, the matchup goes fairly well as far as how worst matchups tend to go for most decks.
Also, you can't Twincast a Mind Control. Twincast reads "instant or sorcery" not enchantments, unfortunately.
Nice try on Mono Blue, but it's really not too feasible right now when you can't get a hard counter until turn 3, which is hell for you if your opponent's on the play, especially when you've got low-curve aggro decks at every turn right now.
A blue-focused deck in this environment just performs much better paired with white, red, or even black for some great removal to have some board control. You could probably still work in the mind control/clone theme in that sort of deck, too.
Another thing I noticed was that this is a mono-blue deck without Jace! Jace is very powerful and deserves a space in a mono-blue deck for sure.
So, I've been considering adding Quest for the Gravelord to my list, but I've only seen a few lists playing it. The few who use it, swear by it, but has anyone else tested the card? How does it fare in our control gameplan?
It seems like it would be a perfect fit here. What results have any of you guys had playing it?
I really like the power that Harrow can add, especially with it's color-fixing potential at instant speed, but I'm not sure that green really adds much else that would be necessary.
Also, hitting BW by turn two, into 2G on turn 3 seems fairly difficult. Maybe I'm just being skeptical, but that's my first reaction to the idea.
EDIT: I only just noticed the tremendous synergy between Archive Trap and Necromancer's Covenant in the list Voltiare posted. I'm not planning on using the Covenant as a finisher, but it is one of the tools available to BW as a finisher and that's a cool take on playing it.
As long as your MBC build is built to play the long control game, as it should be, Grim Discovery is a pretty great card for card advantage. It's a 2-for-1, in the vein of Sign in Blood, when your deck is built to utilize it, except you always get two very useful cards out of the transaction that will be immediately useful most of the time.
It's been performing really well for my list. In my build I'm playing 4 Fleshbag / 4 Gatekeepers, so I get back a creature that performs as removal, and a fetch or singleton Castle, which is either utility that will make my Tendrils better, or a threat.
Hmmm... Life-gain is all over right now, and I can see that as being a sizable problem. What can give this type of deck more reach? Just more win-cons, so they can be played earlier going into the same explosive late game Banefires and such?
Bloodghast can be easily taken care of by sideboarding Magma Sprays. That seems like the right move to me, since it is a big problem indeed. I encountered the same headache when playing against Vamps with Mono-Black Control. Also, I'm not too sure about Earthquake, since it's not always an effective sweeper as shown above, plus the damage is symmetrical, which doesn't seem like something you could always handle with this deck since you'd be trying to deal enough with it to put them in range for the big finish.
Consume Spirit really seems like the necessary way to go, for the life-gain it offers. It may play worse against control decks, but playing a set of Consume Spirits and Banefires really seems like a good combination of wins to me.
I may test some various builds of this later on. It seems vulnerable, though, if it would perform well. Graveyard hate would murder the deck :-\
I've been working on a B/W control deck, myself. I'm glad to finally see a thread up for this archetype. I hope we can hash it out and make it a strong option.
I haven't finalized a list yet, but Identity Crisis is an incredibly strong maindeck card and Baneslayers and Nighthawks among other respectable threats make it easy to play aggro against control, and being able to select from all the choice removal spells in black and white coupled with Day of Judgment allow you to easily play control against a more aggro deck until you can wipe away your opponents hand and drop a finisher.
Anohther strong thing going for the deck is powerful sideboard options. For one, someone mentioned playing Luminarch Ascension, and I've relegated Luminarch to the board as a sideboard tool against control. It's very powerful there and doesn't take away much from the deck's typical game plan.
I've found no need to dip into blue and play Esper, as Sign in Blood offers much-needed card advantage, and while playing counters would be nice, I'd rather play without them to maintain a solid gameplan and be able to spend my cards and mana more proactively and aggresively if I can seize the oppurtunity to put the game in my favor early and keep the pressure on with really solid late-game backup.
I'll post my list, probably tomorrow, to get some opinions on it. I really think this archetype has a lot of potential, and it could realistically go in a few different directions.
Actually, that does work, as far as I'm aware. Trigon of Thought references itself using it's own name. If something else gains the abilities of Trigon of Thought, it treats a reference to itself by name to mean itself, if that makes sense.
I know for sure that Necrotic Ooze works this way, so I'm pretty sure that this works the same way.
It's got great synergy with Eldrazi Spawn. Sac a spawn and pay 1 for a Shock.
Suggestion: Instead of running 2 Terramorphic Expanse. Play 1 Expanse and 1 Evolving Wilds. Helps to be able to search up all "fetchlands" from Realms. ;-)
Some think it's good, has anyone tested with it a bit?
It's just a more preemptive removal spell (a preemptive strike, if you will lol), and is far from dead against control. There it can answer Sphinx of Jwar Isle when your removal typically can't. A very powerful card right now, in my opinion. I'd highly reccomend it, even with no other counterspells.
Also, on Sign in Blood, when first playing Wafo-Tapa's original list from Worlds, the deck played 4 Sign in Blood and 4 Divination, and at first I played the same draw suite, but found Sign in Blood to be very painful through the course of the long games the deck plays. I think that with this amount of card draw, you draw too many Sign in Bloods, and then need to use them to replace themselves and net another card to have enough answers. It seems to me that only because you draw so many is it too painful in this aggressive environment, so now I'm beginning to think that playing 2 is the right number, maybe 3.
Archive Trap triggers on the fetches in the deck, or Corpse Connoisseur, and you can mill 13 for 0, or you can mill 13 for 5. That's commonly better, but usually within about 3 cards of what Traumatize nets me by the time I can cast it. I much prefer Archive Traps over Traumatize.
I just look at them as essentially the same effect, or very close to it, that will sometimes cost no mana, which is important, since you can slide it in on the first few turns while doing other things to set up like normal.
Very strong deck overall. I put it together after some trading just before FNM, and played it to a 4-1 finish, even with a lot of small mistakes. I was able to come out ahead against several aggressive decks, even Jund. The key here is Rotting Rats and Hedron Crabs as blockers and knowing when to use them as such. All the unearth creatures can basically be cast twice against control decks, and all of them, especially Rotting Rats, will eat most decks' hands very quickly when you have to adapt.
The one loss I suffered was against RDW, and even then it was very close, it came down to me having the win on the next turn, while my opponent dealt 6 while I was at 6, but that was without seeing a fetchland that game, so it's not normally that close. RDW and Boros are the only matchups that are difficult to keep up with, but even there, I was never satisfied siding in removal. It seems to take away too much from the deck, and you need to be tapping out in the first few turns to get set up more than you can afford to spend cards and mana on removal. While you spend resources not advancing the combo, they have more time to throw down more threats...
Even there, the matchup goes fairly well as far as how worst matchups tend to go for most decks.
Nice try on Mono Blue, but it's really not too feasible right now when you can't get a hard counter until turn 3, which is hell for you if your opponent's on the play, especially when you've got low-curve aggro decks at every turn right now.
A blue-focused deck in this environment just performs much better paired with white, red, or even black for some great removal to have some board control. You could probably still work in the mind control/clone theme in that sort of deck, too.
Another thing I noticed was that this is a mono-blue deck without Jace! Jace is very powerful and deserves a space in a mono-blue deck for sure.
It seems like it would be a perfect fit here. What results have any of you guys had playing it?
Also, hitting BW by turn two, into 2G on turn 3 seems fairly difficult. Maybe I'm just being skeptical, but that's my first reaction to the idea.
EDIT: I only just noticed the tremendous synergy between Archive Trap and Necromancer's Covenant in the list Voltiare posted. I'm not planning on using the Covenant as a finisher, but it is one of the tools available to BW as a finisher and that's a cool take on playing it.
It's been performing really well for my list. In my build I'm playing 4 Fleshbag / 4 Gatekeepers, so I get back a creature that performs as removal, and a fetch or singleton Castle, which is either utility that will make my Tendrils better, or a threat.
Bloodghast can be easily taken care of by sideboarding Magma Sprays. That seems like the right move to me, since it is a big problem indeed. I encountered the same headache when playing against Vamps with Mono-Black Control. Also, I'm not too sure about Earthquake, since it's not always an effective sweeper as shown above, plus the damage is symmetrical, which doesn't seem like something you could always handle with this deck since you'd be trying to deal enough with it to put them in range for the big finish.
Consume Spirit really seems like the necessary way to go, for the life-gain it offers. It may play worse against control decks, but playing a set of Consume Spirits and Banefires really seems like a good combination of wins to me.
I may test some various builds of this later on. It seems vulnerable, though, if it would perform well. Graveyard hate would murder the deck :-\
I haven't finalized a list yet, but Identity Crisis is an incredibly strong maindeck card and Baneslayers and Nighthawks among other respectable threats make it easy to play aggro against control, and being able to select from all the choice removal spells in black and white coupled with Day of Judgment allow you to easily play control against a more aggro deck until you can wipe away your opponents hand and drop a finisher.
Anohther strong thing going for the deck is powerful sideboard options. For one, someone mentioned playing Luminarch Ascension, and I've relegated Luminarch to the board as a sideboard tool against control. It's very powerful there and doesn't take away much from the deck's typical game plan.
I've found no need to dip into blue and play Esper, as Sign in Blood offers much-needed card advantage, and while playing counters would be nice, I'd rather play without them to maintain a solid gameplan and be able to spend my cards and mana more proactively and aggresively if I can seize the oppurtunity to put the game in my favor early and keep the pressure on with really solid late-game backup.
I'll post my list, probably tomorrow, to get some opinions on it. I really think this archetype has a lot of potential, and it could realistically go in a few different directions.
I, too, am curious as to what testing has shown you so far with the deck. Have you tested it much yet?