Tuesday, October 16

UWb Control in STD

I've finally played a few games of Standard, and with a mostly original list no less. I have no idea where the deck stands against Zombies and Jund since I have done very little with it so far, but the deck is showing some promise.

The idea behind the deck is to be a control deck that doesn't rely on a creature to win. It generally gets advantages by keeping Planeswalkers alive. It usually takes a looong time to kill with...

4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Plains
4 Island
2 Nephalia Drownyard

4 Azorius Charm
3 Think Twice
4 Lingering Souls
2 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Detention Sphere
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
1 Curse of Death's Hold
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
4 Terminus
3 Syncopate

2 Angel of Serenity
1 Dispel
4 Dissipate
2 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Sever the Bloodline
1 Sundering Growth
2 Ultimate Price

From the top, we have 26 lands with as many black sources available to us without playing Swamp. The reasoning there is that I'd like to be able to Azorius Charm very consistently.

Nephalia Drownyard seems innocuous but it is actually a game changer for other control decks. They usually have very few ways to answer it (Tamiyo) and so little happens in G1s that Drownyard just takes the game eventually. It's not the primary win condition because a lot of decks have graveyard synergy and you don't actually want to activate it on them but you can still activate it on yourself if you have nothing else to do.

Azorius Charm is one of the best things you can do both early in the game as well as late. I kinda wanted some Ultimate Price in the deck but I ended up just putting them in the SB.

However much I would love to play Sphinx's Revelation, Forbidden Alchemy gets the slot over it because it allows you to abuse all the graveyard interactions seen throughout the deck.

Curse of Death's Hold is a pretty narrow card and I'm pretty sure it will be the first card I cut when I'm looking for room but I didn't want to board it because a lot of decks will be bringing in enchantment hate anyways. It does do a pretty good job against opposing Lingering Souls though.

At the start of this format I thought that counterspells would be near unplayable. That changed very quickly. It turns out they are still playable and you actually want to have them in a number of matchups. Dissipate is certainly better than Syncopate, but the most important thing is being able to interact on turn2 so Syncopate gets the slot and Dissipate is in the SB.

UPDATE 10/29:

My updated list looks like this now:

4 Glacial Fortress
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Isolated Chapel
2 Swamp
3 Plains
4 Island
2 Nephalia Drownyard

4 Azorius Charm
3 Ultimate Price
4 Lingering Souls
4 Detention Sphere
1 Sever the Bloodline
4 Jace, Architect of Thought
3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
1 Supreme Verdict
3 Terminus
3 Sphinx's Revelation
1 Syncopate / Remove Soul

2 Angel of Serenity
1 Negate
3 Dissipate
3 Geist of Saint Traft
1 Pithing Needle
3 Seraph of Dawn
1 Sever the Bloodline
1 Ultimate Price

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the list Hetrick, seems solid!

    I agree with you about counters. Check this list from a tournament in Japan, it ran 8 - www.mtgpulse.com/event/11029#153513

    I also agree with your twitter post about zombies. It was good in a format where playing creatures without etb was a huge risk, and one drops excel. Now playing something like wolfir avenger or vampire nighthawk isn't embarrassing, and those just completely stonewall zombies.

    Good luck brewing and congrats on your recent gp top 8!

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  2. The deck looks really solid, would you recommend it to a player looking for a control deck in standard? Or do you feel like the deck is good but not quite there

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  3. Currently, yes. I've only played it a bit so far but I like it a lot. It's kinda hard to play though.

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  4. Stream some dailies or 2-mans with this deck ^^

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  5. im super interested in this list. im really playing around with it also. red would give us access to some really relevant cards, i wondering if killing 4 white sources and possible taking more shock damage could make it worth it. the control mirror would be a cakewalk with access to rakdos return, dreadbore, and counterflux.

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  6. nevermind about the 4c, got mana screwed the second time i tried it. need green for fixing and its not worth it.

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  7. Curious as to why you removed the Witchbane Orb from the previous iteration. How do you match up with Slaughter Games

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