MTG Salvation

Quote from Gahouf »

I intend to get the last couple cards I need to play this deck - not that many, as it turns out. However, money is a bit of a concern and Brimaz costs way too much for what he does imo. What would you suggest to replace him in the SB? I saw some discussion on Seeker of the Way, but I'm not convinced. Sheep, maybe? I expect to see a fair amount of Abzan, some Ascendancy decks and at least one UB Control at my LGS.

Edit: on phone, cba with tags - basically the list in the post above is what I'm talking about.

You could always replace the 3 brimaz with like 1 prognostic sphinx, 1 resolute archangel and 1 pearl lake ancient or you could run a couple of aetherspouts in the board too along with a prognostic sphinx so you have several options to work with. Actually I probably would just do 2 prognostic sphinx and 1 aetherspouts or 2 aetherspouts and 1 prognostic sphinx for your metagame if I was going to play there. I have always liked prognostic sphinx against the abzan decks since it gives you some deck manipulation and can't be killed by elspeth while you also just fly over any of the creatures that they throw at you aside from wingmate roc of course.

However, whatever you decide to do as far as changes to the decks goes they should definitely be on how you play the deck and what your preferences are. So if you decide not to run brimaz it's totally fine imo. I still think he's a absolute powerhouse given the current metagame but yeah I am sure you can do without him.

One of the main reasons why I created this thread was because I wanted to give standard players another alternative while keeping the budget players in mind.

Well its been awhile since I last posted here last been pretty busy lately but I finally had some time to playtest a fair bit with uw control it's been testing good, I think the only card I am not really sure about is the 1 devouring light in the board could probably be a fated retribution or a third erase if whip reanimator decks is common in your metagame. So it's pretty much a flexible slot that can really be anything. Here is where I am at right now with the deck which I find to be pretty solid right now:



I have been really liking both brimaz and raise the alarm against the jeskai token decks can definitely buy you quite a few turns to stabilize. I know I have said before that I didn't really like brimaz but now since the format has shifted I definitely like brimaz and I definitely was impressed on how Jim Davis played brimaz when he played on camera as well. You also notice a lack of last breaths in the list but I just find them dead a lot of the time. Although, i have always been about building decks in such a way of what i expect in the metagames i play in so there is that as well.

Anyway, I also think glare of heresy is one of the strongest sideboard cards for uw control since it removes a ton right now with abzan aggro being one of the best decks in the format right now while it's also insanely popular, I mean a lot of the top players play it.

I am also happy to see several people have their own takes on uw control and actually share them in here as well. I am definitely hoping it continues as well.

Lastly, I definitely would register the decklist above in this post at any level of competitive tournament play for those still interested in playing uw control in standard tournaments. I mean there is always a possibility of making some tweeks here and there which there is nothing wrong with that but that's probably the least of my concerns.

Edit: I also just edited the opening post of this thread with the updated uw control decklist for easy access for those that are interested if there is nobody that is interested that is also fine with me.

yep yep, speaking of green and white creatures though, I just put this together a little while ago. I am not sure how good it is but it seems like it could give control like for example casual uw control a real headache.

Here is the list:



Yes I am also well aware it's more then 60 cards but that's ok it's casual. Dunno seems fun to play to me. I also admit that the deck is probably more expensive then an average budget deck but a lot of people should have a lot of the cards in the deck to trade for them.

Yeah, totally spaced hymn to tourach lol thanks, so yeah I agree it's a great discard spell against control decks.

Also yeah vial goblins traditionally has a great matchup against control decks, I should definitely know since I used to play a lot of vial goblins when it was top deck in competitive legacy but for it to make a comeback to a more of a casual setting is definitely something i'd like to see. Plus there is cavern of souls too for goblins which is also crazy.

Or you could make some sort of mono white aggro deck with four armageddons in the maindeck along with vial for that too.

I personally would either build a land destruction deck or some sort of black deck with a bunch of discard spells like duress and despise and possibly thoughtseize if your not on a budget restriction.

Goodluck playing against your control friend with whatever deck you decide to play against him.

A couple of months ago I finished castlevania lords of shadow 2 and also lightning returns final fantasy 13. Right now I am just working on tales of xillia 2.

One of my favorite games is probably star ocean 4: the last hope. Mostly because it's a pretty open rpg and traveling into space to visit other worlds made the game interesting in my mind. There was also multiple side quests that you could do so you can get even more play time out of the game which is pretty cool. I also just love video game console rpgs in general as well.

I am just going to say that this just addresses the general public of this thread and with that in mind, I am definitely not implying anything about what my percentages are as I said I was just guessing of what the matchup percentage are. I've played against boss sligh a fair amount with uw control. I am pretty much fine with people disagreeing with my percentage matchups as well.

But that isn't really that important as percentages from anyone are just percentages, the important thing to keep in mind is just to be prepared for the matchups you expect to face. I mean if you expect a lot of boss sligh in the tournaments you play in then it's obviously a good idea to tweek your deck accordingly. As I am pretty sure, everyone in here knows that already. I mean we are all competitive magic players in here so we definitely play to win.

That is the beauty of playing uw control though, you can definitely tweek your decklist for a lot of different metagames and it'll be fine.

I don't believe boss sligh has that big of a percentage advantage over uw control, I believe it's like closer to 60 percent for boss sligh if your playing against the matchup using a more of a generic uw control list, IMO. I mean, yes 60 percent or more is still a pretty big percentage swing so yes the matchup is obviously pretty tough for uw control but it's probably still winnable for uw.

I guess this all depends on who you talk to though so the matchup percentage can vary quite a bit. I mean if you have more cards in the maindeck that are meant to combat boss sligh then obviously your going to do better then someone that isn't as prepared for the matchup.

As for omenspeaker, I haven't really tested them before in uw control but I could see both pros and cons for running them. For the time being though, I am completely neutral about running omenspeaker.

Oh I know about the primer.

Anyhow, I think I may play in another 8-man with the same list I did before. Mostly just to get in more games in but I might have to wait until later this coming week or something. Busy schedule for me.

Quote from ZooGambler »

Quote from Kevinliu »

Also, yeah, whenever the detailed primer is finished and edited into the opening post of this thread, I'd say moving this thread to established would be good. I hope the primer gets finished soon as well, I don't mean to rush but it'll be nice to have the primer done soon. I personally would suggest that a group of people from this thread should work on the primer together and communicate with each other through pm's. This should be a mtgs community project anyway and so working as a team is definitely good.

Well I have the rough up right now, I've talked to the Mods and I can't edit the first post and they can't give me the rights to edit it. Rujasu has edited the first post to link to my post. I'm really open to feed back and will add in what the community wants but I think the rough is a good place to start, if someone wants to create a picture banner, write up some pieces regarding match ups or general questions, or even just send me questions they want to see answers to in the primer, please just PM me and I'll get it done!

Also, our RDW match up is pretty rough but Raise the Alarm really slows them down. If they enchant their creatures up, you can potentially 3 for 1.

Whatever works, I actually don't mind how the primer gets done or who works on it but I just wanted to mention that I think the sooner the primer gets done the better, no stress or anything like that though but yes it would be nice. As for writing the primer, you should just write on what you initially know about the uw control deck and we'll go from there and no the primer doesn't have to be perfect. You could always update it from time to time as well. Just some advices from me, I've written a couple of pretty detailed primers for the legacy subforum on this site and came close to writing a third primer too for that subforum which was the uw miracles primer. Just didn't really have enough time.

Anyway, yeah I really like raise the alarm a lot against boss sligh, I think if I was going to go to an scg open next weekend I'd definitely would play pimpdonny's updated list or something pretty similar to that.

Edit: Just finished an 8-man standard tournament on magic-league which uses magic workstation and I beat Abzan Midrange 2-0, GR Monsters 2-1 and Jeskai Aggro 2-0. The list I used was PimpDonny's list card for card. His UW Control list is definitely really good.

Quote from JaceIsMyHomie »

@KevinLiu: Thanks, man. I was building a Jeskai Control deck for standard but really wasn't all that comfortable with red. I've always played blue or white and always been a control player at heart. This thread has totally convinced be to build UW. I refuse the believe that control is dead in the current standard and have seen that UW can deal with the current archetypes in the meta very well.

What are your suggestions on how to test the deck? More MTGO? More FNM? Hours of simulated hands?

Just more games in general with the deck(or any deck rather) is good. Although, everyone has their own way of preparing for big tournaments, it's often times better to find out for yourself what is the best ways to prepare them. Everyone has their own skill set with the decks so if they feel they need to practice a lot then they will or if they feel that they don't need to practice all that much then that's reasonable too.

Also, yeah, whenever the detailed primer is finished and edited into the opening post of this thread, I'd say moving this thread to established would be good. I hope the primer gets finished soon as well, I don't mean to rush but it'll be nice to have the primer done soon. I personally would suggest that a group of people from this thread should work on the primer together and communicate with each other through pm's. This should be a mtgs community project anyway and so working as a team is definitely good.

Quote from JaceIsMyHomie »

Curious as to why the consensus is to use devouring light over kill shot ?

Yeah, I have ran kill shot before in uw control in my earlier versions of the deck but then I switched over to devouring light since it exiles sarkhan which becomes a attacking indestructible creature. Yes, it definitely didn't feel good when I would lose to an resolved sarkhan when I would have kill shot in my hand over devouring light. I also like devouring light since you can cast it with less mana off of Elspeth tokens or nyx fleece ram or even resolute archangel.

@prismatic elf: I think your uw control deck is pretty good, I am a fan of weave fate too but I am biased considering any draw spell that can be casted at instant speed will remain close to my heart especially cards like sphinx of revelation, ancestral recall, brainstorm, and think twice.

Quote from TrappedUnderIce »

Quote from Kevinliu »

Quote from TrappedUnderIce »

Quote from Kevinliu »

I just heard from Patrick Sullivan on scg live who is one of the regular commentators of scg also said that brimaz is not that good against jeskai aggro. With jeskai aggro being all over the top tables of any major standard tournament, I am actually glad I decided against buying like two brimaz for my uw control and I was close to buying some like a couple of weeks ago.

I definitely think brimaz is really amazing in other decks like abzan aggro, jeskai aggro or naya since they can constantly apply a lot of pressure in supplement with brimaz but I do not think brimaz is a card that should be the in the sideboard for uw control IMO.

I mean people can still play brimaz in the board if they want to but I am not going to as long as jeskai aggro remains one of the top tier decks in standard and it will most likely for a pretty long time. I am not really a fan of boarding in cards that causes a liability in a matchup where it's suppose to be a card that you should bring in. That's just a recipe for losing, I know it seems obvious generally speaking but I don't think it's that obvious for a sideboard card like brimaz considering it's a great threat. But there is a reason why high profile pros say jeskai agro is considered to be the best deck in standard, considering, jeskai has so many angles of attack and it's able to trump a lot of cards in post sideboard games.

However, I do think uw control is still a viable choice for any given tournament and so I think it's definitely possible for uw control to adapt to jeskai especially in major tournaments.

Brimaz was never in the deck for Jeskai aggro, but for boss sligh, which is just an awful matchup for UW control, pretty much as bad as it was last season. The deck auto loses to Boss Sligh, and Brimaz plus life gain makes the match winnable. This deck beats Jeskai with Negates and life gain; I'm not really sure what the person on camera was thinking by not just relying on Last Breath to take care of Rabblemaster.

Uh, there was three brimaz in yuuya watanabe's jeskai aggro(wins) top 8 pro tour list in the maindeck. Also, I agree boss sligh is a pretty impossible matchup if they have blistering fast starts but if they don't uw control definitely has a good chance. Also, I was implying that brimaz was bad for uw control to board in for jeskai agro because of cards like mantis rider and ashcloud phoenix. I didn't really say he was bad elsewhere. I also would like to mentioned that I usually would smash boss sligh in the previous standard with uw control, fiendslayer paladin from the board really helped that matchup quite a bit. I am pretty sure I am like 2-0 or 3-0(in rounds) against it at the last scg I went to with uw control.

However, since you mentioned it, I am somewhat skeptical of brimaz being good against boss sligh, I mean I am pretty sure they will keep in some hammerhands and some frenzied goblins so brimaz can't block due to the fact that the boss sligh player knows that your bringing in nyx-fleece ram initially in postboard games. Don't get me wrong though I think brimaz is still a great sideboard card but I am still not convinced that he has to be in the sideboard of uw control. With that being said, I am still not sold on running brimaz in the sideboard of uw control. I definitely would run raise the alarm before I would run brimaz even if I wasn't on a budget.

I didn't say that Jeskai doesn't run Brimaz. I personally run two. Brimaz is not in this deck's, UW Control's, sideboard to be brought in against Jeskai. Prepositions and stuff. And what does Brimaz do for UW against Sligh? They Hammerhand it, yeah, but he puts them on a clock and they can't Hammerhand every token that he produces. And the tokens trade one for one with most of their dudes. And if they stoke Brimaz, then he literally reads 1WW: gain 4 life, which I wouldn't be opposed to. Since you can't run 5-6 Nyx-Fleece Rams, Brimaz does the job of clogging up the board and has to be answered by Sligh. I'm not convinced running an instant that produces two dudes is better than a dude who can produce another dude. Raise the Alarm seems better than Last Breath, besides against Courser, but I'm not convinced about running it over Brimaz to give you a fighting chance against Sligh.

Well, then I misread on what you said then. I was also talking about them hammerhand the brimaz the turn it comes into play. Also, I am not here to argue with you dude, I mean if you really want to run brimaz for mono red and for other matchups then go right ahead. I just won't run it myself as I don't think it's an end all be all type of card for a deck like UW Control.

I'll say it one more time brimaz is definitely a great creature there is no doubt about it but I am still not going to run him, I am still skeptical about him being good against jeskai agro like I have said previously. Uw control is definitely a different deck then jeskai agro and from my experience playing uw control I really don't think brimaz is needed at all. But they are fine in a deck like jeskai agro since he supplements the burn and other creatures in the deck as well by simply swinging for a good chunk of damage at the opponent.

Anyway, I am done with debating with why I don't like brimaz in UW control and with that said, I tend to like raise the alarm because being able to chump block to save you potentially a ton damage is definitely something you'd want to do against boss sligh. The more times your able to stall their damage output and the longer the game goes it tends to favor the uw control player. Again, I think one of the biggest draws to running raise the alarm is that it's an instant that costs two mana.

Quote from TrappedUnderIce »

Quote from Kevinliu »

I just heard from Patrick Sullivan on scg live who is one of the regular commentators of scg also said that brimaz is not that good against jeskai aggro. With jeskai aggro being all over the top tables of any major standard tournament, I am actually glad I decided against buying like two brimaz for my uw control and I was close to buying some like a couple of weeks ago.

I definitely think brimaz is really amazing in other decks like abzan aggro, jeskai aggro or naya since they can constantly apply a lot of pressure in supplement with brimaz but I do not think brimaz is a card that should be the in the sideboard for uw control IMO.

I mean people can still play brimaz in the board if they want to but I am not going to as long as jeskai aggro remains one of the top tier decks in standard and it will most likely for a pretty long time. I am not really a fan of boarding in cards that causes a liability in a matchup where it's suppose to be a card that you should bring in. That's just a recipe for losing, I know it seems obvious generally speaking but I don't think it's that obvious for a sideboard card like brimaz considering it's a great threat. But there is a reason why high profile pros say jeskai agro is considered to be the best deck in standard, considering, jeskai has so many angles of attack and it's able to trump a lot of cards in post sideboard games.

However, I do think uw control is still a viable choice for any given tournament and so I think it's definitely possible for uw control to adapt to jeskai especially in major tournaments.

Brimaz was never in the deck for Jeskai aggro, but for boss sligh, which is just an awful matchup for UW control, pretty much as bad as it was last season. The deck auto loses to Boss Sligh, and Brimaz plus life gain makes the match winnable. This deck beats Jeskai with Negates and life gain; I'm not really sure what the person on camera was thinking by not just relying on Last Breath to take care of Rabblemaster.

Uh, there was three brimaz in yuuya watanabe's jeskai aggro(wins) top 8 pro tour list in the maindeck. In addition, the recent scg open has a top 8 jeskai aggro deck that is also running three brimaz in the maindeck.

I also agree boss sligh is a impossible matchup if they have blistering fast starts but if they don't uw control definitely has a good chance to win. Also, I was implying that brimaz was bad for uw control to board in for jeskai agro because of cards like mantis rider and ashcloud phoenix. I didn't really say he was bad elsewhere. I also would like to mentioned that I usually would smash boss sligh in the previous standard with uw control, fiendslayer paladin from the board really helped that matchup quite a bit. I am pretty sure I was like 2-0 or 3-0(in rounds) against it at the last scg I went to with uw control.

However, since you mentioned it, I am somewhat skeptical of brimaz being good against boss sligh, I mean I am pretty sure they will keep in some hammerhands and some frenzied goblins so brimaz can't block due to the fact that the boss sligh player knows that your bringing in nyx-fleece ram initially in postboard games. Don't get me wrong though I think brimaz is still a great sideboard card but I am still not convinced that he has to be in the sideboard of uw control. With that being said, I am still not sold on running brimaz in the sideboard of uw control. I definitely would run raise the alarm before I would run brimaz even if I wasn't on a budget.