Taking MonoU-control down a forked path

[Ssapphire]

This article will be about the evolution of MonoU-control.

For a long time now I have put my thrust in MonoU powered up by 7SoLoMoxen, it's a very strong deck in a meta game where the archetype persist of most Keeper-decks and Combo. But lately there have been a huge shift in the meta game of Type One Worldwide. New archetype are rising, decks like TNT, Stacker, Mask, Grow and GAT. All have claim their part of Typ1. MonoU was forgotten and left in pieces, after being run overred by TNT, outdrawned by Tog and crushed under a massive Naught´. It had nothing to claim anymore. Still in hope that someday, just someday it will work out, and in my mind that MonoU had a huge amount of potential. But what was left to do?

What I love about MonoU is that it have such a redundancy, but when it's not enough i had to give some of that up to make it a competitive Type One deck. Before the recent dominating shift of Type One, the decklist of my MonoU looked like this:


MonoU-Original

Mana(26)
                1 Strip Mine
                1 Library of Alexandria
                3 Wasteland
                1 Black Lotus
                1 Mox Sapphire
                1 Mox Pearl
                1 Mox Ruby
                1 Mox Jet
                1 Mox Emerald
                1 Sol Ring
                14 Island
Manip(8)  
                1 Time Walk
                1 Ancestral Recall
                1 Merchant Scroll
                1 Fact or Fiction
                4 Impulse
Creature(6)
                2 Morphling
                4 Ophidian
Else(20)  
                3 Powder Keg
Counter(17)                
                2 Misdirection
                3 Force Spike
                4 Mana Drain
                4 Force of Will
                4 Mana Leak
        

It still had its redundantcy and had a fair good chance against the Grow decks that people were playing at that time. TNT was harder but Control Magic in the sideboard helps out a lot, same goes for against the Mask decks, if you reach your 4 mana you could manage a win. But soon the format started to void again. Grow mutated into GAT, TNT learned to adjust and Mask started to make friends with other colors and the shine of the Jewelry was to tempting for the 3 colorless combo. The format speed up a bit once again and MonoU got a hard time to adjust to these changes.

First off, there was Onslaught, witch revived the “old time” shuffle/brainstorm manipulation. If you look at much older deck list of MonoU it consist of Impulse + Brainstorm + Thawing Glaciers engine, but in todays format it was to slow. So with the new fecthlands, could it make the Paragon engine fast enough for MonoU? I tried it out and replaced the set of Impulse with Brainstorm and tweaked the manabase by putting in a set of Fetchlands. The changes worked well out. With it's profits and drawbacks. The Brainstorm couldn't dig as deep down as the Impulse, and if you didn't have a fetch you could get really disappointed sometimes. But the engine was faster, and the thinning with fecthlands make the topdeckfights a little better. And of course the putting back + shuffle, was a way to change the direction of the game when you have drawn a lot of lands.

A huge weakness with this build of MonoU was that almost half of the counters were “mana” based so that your opponent could pay a “little” extra mana to get their spell through. Thanks to the manipulation it was a bit better, but the deck had a huge problem with items that resolved. And in the meantime GAT gained power.
B2B was nearly worthless with all Gushes flying around, and all decks (even keeper) run single basic lands to fetch for.
Typ1 were taking a path where doing broken stuff  “going off” became really important, Grow/TNT/Stacker all became hybrids.
MonoU loses the topdeckfights when the opposite deck have more “broken” cards and more cards to get them.

The only thing to do was to quit playing single minded MonoU, or more to say, adjust and make MonoU a hybrid between more colors. But which colors had the best to offer?

Well it all came down to it's most closest friend Mr. Black and it's beloved enemy Miss. Red.

With this in mind i wanted to have the powerlift of a second color but still have the redundantcy of MonoU, so it all would be a splash and not really a two color deck.

I have tested both splashes out and find them to have different uses, depending on the metagame of where your will bring this deck. First the one that i have tried the most. Adition of Black!


MonoU/(black)

Mana(25)
                1 Strip Mine
                1 Library of Alexandria
                1 Wasteland
                1 Black Lotus
                1 Mox Sapphire
                1 Mox Pearl
                1 Mox Ruby
                1 Mox Jet
                1 Mox Emerald
                1 Sol Ring
                2 Flooded Strand  
                4 Polluted Delta
                4 Underground Sea
                5 Island
Manip(8)  
                1 Time Walk
                1 YawgWin
                1 Demonic Tutor
                1 Ancestral Recall
                1 Fact or Fiction
                3 Brainstorm
Utility(7)  
                1 Cunning Wish (Depending, sometimes there are two)
                3 Duress
                3 Powder Keg
                
Dudes(6)  
                2 Morphling
                4 Ophidian
Counters(14)  
                2 Misdirection
                4 Mana Drain
                4 Force of Will
                4 Mana Leak


Side(15)     1 Capsize
                1 Duress
                1 Misdirection
                1 Dominate
                1 Powder Keg
                2 Submerge
                2 Blue Elemental Blast (was quite not needed, today i would have replaced them)
                3 Smother        
                3 Back to basics/Control Magic (metagame call)



This is even better in a control/combo meta game than the original version of MonoU. Here are the card choices what black brings to the deck:

Duress
They are far superior to the three Force spike's I had before. It act's as a premetive counter spell with the bonus that you will see your opponents hand and remove the best card from it. It's simply amazing.

Ophidian V Shadowmage
My point with this splash was to still keep the deck redundant and when it comes to that Ophidian are just superior to Finkel. With the 7SoLoMoxen and 4 Mana Drains providing colorless mana Ophidian is more easy to get into play and easier to protect. Playing with Finkel instead often means that you will have to tap an extra land for the black mana to get it into play. And in the same move you also tap down a potential blue mana source. Which cut down your ability to play one more counter.

Cunning Wish
A huge problem for MonoU was to be able to fix situations where permanents  (that shouldn't) resolved. I have found that the including of a single wish wins a lot of matches that i couldn´t have won otherwise, when it acts as a multi-Silver bullet. Many people run a single Capsize in main deck but it's by far more superior to play a Wish in it's place. And you can always throw it back with brainstorm.

Wastelands
It was to much colorless mana sources in the deck, so I replaced two wasteland with two extra Fetchlands, Witch also gave me a more reliable way to get my second color mana source.

YawgWin and Demonic Tutor
I don't feel any need to explain why these two broken cards are included.


Summary of Black
The main decked Duress helped out a lot against GAT and Mask. This design felt like a package of really strong control cards. And it got a better way to handle creatures that had hit the table. And of course YawgWin which singlehanded won me games as it was designed to do .

This design still had it's problems. Speed insane decks based on Workshops could  just overrun you, and i wanted to test out a better artifact defense instead of black. So i looked at Blacks wife, and a lot of different UrOphid-builds.

My list looks now like this:


MonoU/red (UrOphid)

Mana(25)
             1 Strip Mine
             1 Library of Alexandria
             1 Wasteland
             1 Black Lotus
             1 Mox Sapphire
             1 Mox Pearl
             1 Mox Ruby
             1 Mox Jet
             1 Mox Emerald
             1 Sol Ring
             2 Flooded Strand  
             4 Polluted Delta
             4 Volcanic Island
             5 Island
Manip(8)
             1 Time Walk
             1 Ancestral Recall
             1 Fact or Fiction
             1 Merchant scroll
             4 Brainstorm
Dudes(6)
             2 Morphling
             4 Ophidian
Utility(7)
             2 Cunning Wish
             3 Powder Keg
             2 Fire/Ice
Counters(14)
             2 Misdirection
             4 Mana Drain
             4 Force of Will
             4 Mana Leak

Side(15)
             1 Capsize
             1 Dominate
             1 Submerge
             1 Misdirection
             2 Flametoung Kavu
             2 Shattering Pulse
             3 Blood Moon
             4 Red Elemental Blast


The main deck are not much different from my original main deck MonoU, In the beginning of my UrPhid deck I ran one set of Fetchlands, 3 Brainstorm, 3 Wastelands but found that configuration to be bad more often than good.
Another choise could be to run 4 copies of Fire/Ice but due the lack of Stompy and Slight i have left the forth´ one out.

So what are so specially good about red? Well it's much about GAT now days, so take a closer look at the Sideboard because it's there all the powerhouse-cards are.

Card choises:


Main decked

Fire/Ice
This is a truly multitask card and I love it as a control player. It can buy you time against most decks that have a threat on the table, or kill of a lot of critters against most aggro/weenie decks and clean the way for your Ophidian. And it's never a dead card, you can always cycle it.

4´th Brainstorm
With more than one set of Fetchlands I want to utilize their effect. So the forth brainstorm made the cut.

Second Cunning Wish
This card have a lot more better use in this deck than any of it's hybrids.
Getting one of the strong Sideboard cards in the first game could be strict broken.

Sideboard

This can really by far look very different for the time being. But for sure the strongest cards are:

Red Elemental Blast
It's simply one of the best sideboard cards you can get. For one Red mana you can't get a better or more suitable card. It wins the counter wars and kills the tog´. The thought of including a pair of pyroblast is tempting, as they are so good against Blubased decks like GAT. And the mirror matches.

Blood Moon
Back to Basic isn't close to how good Blood Moon is in todays Meta game. It is the Bomb against GAT, and Keeper-decks. And can't be Red Elemental Blasted.

Shattering Pulse
With GAT rising and the artifact based decks against it, these are amazing, It can singlehanded execute TNT and Stacker, or ducktape´ for that matter. And it's also a great Wish target in the first game against those decks.


The rest

Flametoung Kavu
I sure want to have this one at my side, right now I don't find space for more, but I want to point out their usefulness. Once your reach four mana TNT/Dib and all form of Aggro gets a really hard time, especially if you have multiple FTK´s.

Submerge
It's a good Wish target but I might cut this one for a second Flametoung Kavu. As a last hope it have won me games, and act as a time walk or even better in the right situation.


Cards left out

Hurukyl´s recall
Might add one to the board. I have already two pulse at my side, but the recall can do amazing stuff in opponents EOT or in his/her Jar-hand. One option that came to my mind for the MonoU/(black)-deck is to run a set of these to handle the speedy artifact/workshop-decks, but I have to test that one out before making any more statement there.

Control Magic
This card is a meta game call, and i don't find any broken use for it, with the addition of red the deck have a build in defense against creatures via burn.


Summary of Red
UrOhpid is a great deck right now, in the current meta game it feels like the sideboard have such a potential. It's still lacks the raw power of the main deck that Black had to offer, and not having the Will hurts. But the sideboard feel a lot better. The side helps you win over GAT witch is from the very beginning 'the' big problem. You can't play seriously in a tournament if your deck can't handle GAT. It's also a great deck to play against all the artifact based deck that are gaining popularity. What it miss is the brokenness of mostly the Will, but what it lacks there by far makes up by the redundant main deck and the powerful sideboard.


Final words
The winds of Type One is constantly changing, decks are rising, concepts are adopted and the rest fights it out. In the times of this I am defending the concept of MonoU-control witch are 'redundantcy' and 'stability' over raw power, but this deck can no longer be called MonoU. - a friend is a must.

Note: I will appreciate any comments and thought about these changes and what suggestion you could bring.

[BillTheDuck]

Good article, there are a few things I disagree with (such as WHY OH WHY were you EVER using force spike?), but overall it looks good.

For the U/b you should be using B2B AND Control magic sideboard.
I like the submerge and dominate tech, but I'm not totally sold on taking up the spots for them (esspecially in the U/b where you have only one wish which isnt even enough to bother running it at all).

PS - Congrats on the membership

[Smmenen]

Mono Blue will never truly be a dead archtype simply becuase a) blue is the best color, b) a pile of amazing counterspells with a great win condition has a chance to win games.  

However, Mono Blue has progressively gotten weaker with each new entrant into the metagame foray.  Witness: TnT last Spring, Mask following that (to which we adjusted), Gro (which annhilated me last spring with Chapin piloting himself), and now we have a double blow: GroAtog - which is simply an unwinnable matchup barring a total redesign of the deck (disks, Maze, control Magics, - that still wouldn't cut it) and a deck that is equally devastating but far more brutal: Stax - the 4 Sphere of Resistence monstrosity that will have you locked down before you even get to play a turn and your only chance is to have double Force of Will in your opening hand.

Steve Menendian

[Zherbus]

Moved to Extreme Vintage

[Ssapphire]

Quote Good article, there are a few things I disagree with (such as WHY OH WHY were you EVER using force spike?), but overall it looks good.

Those set of force spike's where stuck there from my original powerless build of MonoU, they worked for me in a long time, but were cut later on.

Quote For the U/b you should be using B2B AND Control magic sideboard.

B2B is nearly worth the place in the board, IMO. Every deck now have a decent answer thanks to all Fetch-lands playing in nearly every deck. And the Gushes. I have played this deck for a long time now, and felt how the B2B lost almost all of it's former power. It is not the powerhouse it used to be anymore. It still cripple your opponent, but it doesn't end the game as it used to do.

Regarding the Control Magic I would more like to play them than B2B. But the U/b design doesn't have a huge problem with creature's. Ok a resolved Jugge, or Su-chi are problematic, thereby i bring up the red splash. If i expect a tournament with lots of TnT or the Stacker II, I would run Control Magic in my U/b version.

Quote I like the submerge and dominate tech, but I'm not totally sold on taking up the spots for them (especially in the U/b where you have only one wish which isn't even enough to bother running it at all).

PS - Congrats on the membership

Thats true, I mentioned that sometimes I play two Wishes. I have to chose either run two Wishes or cut the Wish-look sideboard. If i play two Wishes I also have an Ebony Charm in my board.

Thanks fellow I have for a time now wanted an account. So I wrote this article.


Smmenen: I have seen how you like solid MonoU, It´s a strong archetype, but as Typ 1 looks like today I don´t see any other solution than splashing a second color. As you said you have changed your build and that was not enough. But most important I want to keep the strength from MonoU. Right now regular MonoU have a huge problem to adjust to the current Meta.


Note:
Four days ago I took my U/r-deck to a tournament to test my theories from this article (I wrote it a week ago), the field was something like 15% GAT with 84 registered players with a Unl Black Lotus as first price, I defeated 5 GAT in my way through, after 7 rounds of Swiss the Top 8 looked like this.

GAT
Ur-Phid
GAT
GAT
Hulk-smash
Paragon Keeper
GAT
GAT

I won my first match against a GAT and my only loss in the tournament was in the Semis against another GAT who proceeded to the Finals, but my overall record against that deck-archetype was really good.


Zhrebus: Thanks for moving this to the Extreme Vintage Forum

[Smmenen]

I also notice that you the exact fetch combination that I proposed in the URphid thread in the Vintage Forum.

In fact your entire mana base is *exactly* what i propose:

1 waste/ 1 strip - this is all the colorless you can afford beyond the moxen and the LoA.

1 Sol Ring - better in this archytpes than mono blue.

4 Volc.
5 Island
6 fetch
1 LoA
7 SoLoMoxen

The only question that I couldn't figure out is the precise combination of Wishes/ Fire/Ice and kegs.  That determination could only be made by testing.  

Fire/Ice is such a big unknown to me becuase as a mono blue player i never used it and so it is hard for me to figure out it's place.  I think Fire/Ice has very very low utility as a cantrip and Kegs are much better spot removal in that they can also nail moxen.  The only other thing is that Fire/Ice is very pitchable which is something I have no experience with.  Also, is there a reason *not* to have some sort of burn spell in your SB?  A Bolt could be really handy to fetch with Cunning Wish.

Beyond that I think Dominate is too costly unless you are playing against Mask.  Control Magic is also way to good to not use and you probably need one or two Blue elemental Blasts in the SB.

Steve Menendian

[Ssapphire]

Good points, thanks for the suggestion

First, Fire/Ice

I find this card very pleasant, If three are the right number i dunno. In todays format it's really much about how fast your deck are. And not to have dead cards. To tap a workshop, LoA, Countermana, kill two opposing creatures or buy me an extra turn from something game-ending is quite good. But not in any form broken, or “game” (except for the two creature kills that sometimes are broken ). It feels as such a flexible card, can be pitched away, fetch via Merchant, build in cycling, and can give you card economy. I like to see it as a card that finds it own situations.


Second, Keg

Kegs are quite slow and dead until you have the exactly right number of counters on it. Lots of decks Explodes while you stand there doing nothing. Sometimes i misses the third keg, when facing a Dreagnaut, or the opposing deck have a Cursed Scroll in play. But rather than that i don't miss it at all. It feels quite to slow. Sure it kills moxen, but my own goes with the same blow to. I have thought about the including of mox monkey to replace the destruction of Jewelry


Third, Dominate

I have seen lots of people dismiss this card. I have had great experience of this one. Sure I almost never take control of a creature with casting cost more than two. But the one I most often take are, Dreagnaut, Dryad, Mishra´s Factory ,Gibbons and River Boa. I have felt that the place it takes in the board are worth it. It will stay there at least as a personal touch.


Lastly, Sideboard

I assume you mean that Control Magic should be in the board and not maindeck.
The sideboard as i mentioned could by far look very different. Things I am considering for the Ur-build are:

Add a Fire/Ice as a Wishable burn/utility card.
Add a single Blue Elemental Blast,
Graveyard hate. This deck lacks it now. Is it a need to have? (Tordmont´s crypt?)
Addition of Control Magic. Are they worth the space? I would really want to discuss these onces more closer. In my MonoU-Original build i had 2-4 of them in the board there they were defiantly worth it. But now I have options to creature defense when splashing a color. A question then are Control Magic greater then Flametoung Kavu?- They might are.

[erik]

Ssapphire:

Are you Swedish? If so, I was your opponent in the first round at GothCon. I have to say that UrPhid was a very good choice for that tournament, despite the high GAT presence. Partly because of the Blasts and Moons in the board, but also because accelerated Phids force the GAT player to deploy creatures early, which leaves you in a good position to win a counterwar over a Keg. At least that's how I felt in our match...I had to use to many counters early, which left you in a better position as the game went on since you have the better counters.

So, in regards to Smmenen's comment I don't feel that Phid needs to be totally rebuilt to handle Tog. Acceleration has become more crucial than ever though, as Phids need to come out very early to keep the Dryad at bay for a couple of turns.

The only thing I would consider changing in your deck would be the FI/Keg Ratio. From a GAT perspective I fear the Kegs a lot more, and I think they are the stronger card in most other matchups as well. Picking off Welders are nice and all, but Kegs aren't that much worse against TNT. Dominate is techy as a wishable answer to creatures (as you proved in that game where you beat your opponent with his own Hypnotic ), but I wonder if that slot wouldn't be better off as a third Flametongue. Did you ever get raped by LoA, as you only have two strips? Perhaps a third has to squeeze in somehow...

(Totally unrelated BTW, that Gemstone Mine/Crop Rotation trick we talked about doesn't work. They changed how the announcement of spells work because of some weird Vengeful Dreams/Riftstone Portal interaction. Totally ignore this if you're not the guy I think you are )

[walking dude]

I wasn't directly involved in building this, but before he fell off the face of the earth (a ways back) MAtt D was working on a U/w deck that was bassicly a mono U deck with balance as a reset and the abillity to side in plows for those mathcups where spot removal is really good. The deck made extensive use of fetchlands in the way that lots of people are doing now.

One other thing he did that was cool was pack 3 maindeck disrupts. They were orignally their to get tempo advantage v suicide by stopping an early ritual or duress or hymn or the like, but I imagine they would work well against GAT as well, since stoping an early slight can mess with their mana since gat players often keep one land hands and hope on cantrips to get more lands.

I remember he played the deck in one event going 3-1 or so and then gave it up since he felt dirty for useing B2B to win mathces against all the multi decks he played.

I don't have the list, but thats a road worth looking at.

[Ssapphire]

Hi Erik, Fun to see another Swede here
Yes I am that guy you thought I am.

I have also wondered about the FI/Keg ratio as Smmenen pointed out the only way to find out the best ratio is to playtest them all.

I was almost defeated in a match the 5´th round at GothCon by GAT where both of us had an active LoA the whole game. An extra wasteeffect would have ended that game much easier. The manabase feels  critical but I would really like to see a second waste in there. But thats a thought case to do and still keep the deck at a high level of redundancy. But it's one thing that I miss from the MonoU-Original, the three wastelands.

A third Flametoung would be good, but right now I don't fear creature heavy decks. I am thinking of refine the sideboard but not until lots of ideas have been discussed. People here have already given it some good shots. Thanks all of you!.

Walking dude: In the beginning when I played MonoU-Original the disrupt had a place in my board. They always came in against the Chapin-grow people were playing back then and it gave good results.

MonoU splashing white and still keep it redundant is interesting, the thought about “if magic best card where blue” have come to my mind ages ago. And Balance are truly the best card you can get. I will think about writing about that “road to go” and might add it to my article, and then it's only green left

[PsychoCid]

Disrupt is not bad against anything but TnT (or similar Welder decks).  Until such monstrosities began to take center stage, I had been advocating a few Disrupt being maindecked in mono-blue for some time.  3 Disrupt in BBS made the rest of the field cry like a baby in a broiler.

Point being that I think such an idea must be considered while pondering the metagame.  No TnT?  Mise well.

{For the record, to fit the Disrupts in, I ran -2 Leak, -1 Land.}

[Ssapphire]

After lots of testing I have come to the following conclusions.

I feel that (as some of you suggested), that it's better of running 2 Fire/Ice and 3 Keg. But I would really like to see the third Fire/Ice in there, but that space is hard to get.

A second Waste effect wouldn't be so bad neither.

Quite often it feels like I get a lot of mana. Dunno´ thought because it's only 23 mana source in there. Anyone who have played with this manabase and have the same experience? Because if it's not just a long streak with bad flow of mana, I might replace a land for a second Waste or Fire/Ice.

I have not tested Disrupt in the Ur-Phid, but if they would be in there it would be if I expect a lot of control/combo decks.  Disrupt have alot of requirements to be able to act as a Counter Spell.
But GAT have radical more (in my meta) been playing duress in maindeck, witch give other control decks a harder time. Disrupt might would be a good answer to that,

The Sideboard right now feels like it have lots of potential. I still not certain that Control Magic are necessary when I have Flametoung Kavu and Fire/Ice. It might be a metagame call, if I am afraid of Reanimator decks and Mask.

Against GAT it feels sometime like the REB does more than Blood Moon, Because of it's speed to stop GAT to “go off” when you have very little mana. So I have wondered about adding Pyroblast.
More tweaks,
3 Flametoung Kavu?
1 Fire/Ice in the board?

If you have any suggestions on the sideboard, or experience to share please do so.

[Smmenen]

It sounds like your testing has borne fruit.  I see nothing wrong with 23 mana sources.  In fact, I think that is a strength, not a weakness per se.

Steve