[Deck Discussion] Control Slaver

[AJFirst]

Control Slaver has been a huge contender in the metagame recently, so I figure why not take a closer look at the deck.

For starters, when examining a deck one should look at its goal; What is this deck trying to accomplish? How does it win? The answer is that Slaver is a complex Mana Drain based control deck that utilizes the card advantage of Thirst for Knowledge, as well as its synergy with powerful artifacts and Goblin Welder.

Now let's look at the essentials of the deck to put together the skeleton:

4 Force of Will - It's not called the Glue of Type 1 for nothing.
4 Mana Drain - Obviously a highly overrated card.
4 Brainstorm - one of the most potent card parity spells ever printed.
3-4 Thirst for Knowledge - Essentially runs the deck generating card advantage at instant speed and abusing synergy with the next card.
3-4 Goblin Welder - Bringing back expensive artifacts essentially for free, and tying up your oponent's win conditions and lock pieces seems pretty good to me.
1-2 Gorilla Shaman - Chalice, Moxen, and so on. a good catch-all answer that can randomly win games. Also great synergy with a Goblin Welder to mess with your oponent's board.

Those are the dedicated slots the deck runs on. Then there are the normal broken slots that belong to

1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor

Then the Win Condition slots.
1-2 Mindslaver - The norm, and then usually two of the following creatures:
Sundering Titan - Can be welded in, and is savage in the control match-up
Duplicant - Seemingly less effective since Simic Sky Swallower was printed, but still good against Oath
Triskellion - Welding tricks make him a machine-gun, and is really good in the mirror/any match-up battling for Welder advantage. decently easy to hardcast off a drain, too.
Darksteel Colossus - He's huge, and usually unanswerable, but impossible to Weld and extremely difficult to hardcast, but sometimes he just runs away with games.
Pentavus - A difficult to deal with win condition, even if he is greedy with tying up your mana, he also has a second purpose: creating an infinit lock with 2 Goblin Welders, a Minslaver, and a bunch of extra mana.

Utility slots go to the rest of the non-mana open cards.

Fact or Fiction - Extremely situational, but can really swing the control match-up in your favor because it's a spell that they have to counter on their turn, allowing you to either gain obscene card advantage and dig 5 cards, or leave you with free reign on your turn because they had to use up their resources on theirs.
Vampiric Tutor - The card disadvantage usually gets in the way if this seeing a lot of play, not to mention the mana requirement.
Crucible of Worlds - Another artifact to pitch to Thirst, and allows for an infinit Slaver lock with an artifact land and a welder.
Tormod's Crypt - Another artifact, and can randomly win games against graveyard based decks like IT/Grim Long and Ichorid.
Merchant Scroll - Can get Ancestral Recall, or a counter to back-up your Will.
Gifts Ungiven - I can't stand this card in the deck without recoup. Sorry.
Burning Wish - Allowing you to Will twice, and opening up a toolbox from your sideboard is quite nice, not to mention it can get back that Tinker you had to pitch to Force of Will in the early game.
Rack and Ruin/Fire Ice - Two toolbox cards that are extremely situational and only really useful in the right metagame, so it's hard to judge these cards on their own.
Bounce of some sort - Rushing River, Chain of Vapor, or Echoing Truth, a solid answer to big threats is usually a good thing to have in your toolbox

The mana base usually looks like this:

7 SoLoMox
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Library
1 Tolarian
1 Artifact Land
0-1 Strip Mine
4-5 Fetchlands
3-4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
Then basic land up until you've reached sixty cards. Anywhere from 24-26 mana sources is the norm, but with Strip Mine and more fetches, 26 is a lot safer to run with, while without them 25 is the most common number to see.

If I forgot anything or messed anything up please let me know. Otherwise, I'd like to get some serious discussion done about the most tweaked to perfection build to this date. I'm going to refrain from posting mine as I'd like to see what you guys think deserve slots over other cards and why before I give my opinion, because I may be terribly terribly off, and knowing myself, I probably am.

So what do you think is the optimal build for today's meta. Thanks guys, and let the discussion roll.
-AJ

P.S. Here's the skeleton straight up that I outlined above. Pleast let me know if I messed up:

4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
3-4 Thirst for Knowledge
3-4 Goblin Welder
1-2 Gorilla Shaman
6 Demonic Tutor, Yawg's WIll, Time Walk, Tinker, Ancestral, and Mystical
1-2 Mindslaver
2 Power Artifact Creatures
1 Bounce spell
3-4 Utility
9 Artifact Mana
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Library of Alexandria
0-1 Strip Mine
4-5 Fetches
3-4 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Artifact Land
2-3 Basics

[zeus-online]

Why is Fact or fiction listed as "Extremely situational" ? All you need is 4 mana and the card! Seriously. If i have 4 mana open on my opponents EOT phase and this card in hand, it aint too difficult to figure out what to do...similiarly, if you got drain mana and FoF, it aint hard to figure out what to do. The only requirement for FoF is 4 mana, of which only 1 needs to be blue....why is that extremely situational?

I've never seen a list with 3 thirsts...and i see no reason for not running 4.
Also, gorilla shaman isnt run in all versions, you may want to edit it to 0-2.

/Zeus

[Vegeta2711]

4 Thirsts is pretty much a given.
Gorilla Shaman is hardly an auto-include in the deck, even as a 1-of it's not really 'accepted' by the whole.
The artifact land is also a rather iffy inclusion and definitely not an auto-include.

Otherwise that is the basic base.

[The_spooky_kid]

in a metagame with little to no stax its hardly necessary anymore...  It might as just be welder number 4 if the build doesn't include 4 welders already or just another metagame slot...

[AJFirst]

Fact or Fiction is situational because it's a really bad card in some match-ups, specifically Long. As for the shamans and the thirsts, you guys are probably right, I just winged the numbers from what I've seen and come to expect, so I'm sorry, but you're kind of missing the point of the post which is to find the right cards to fill the metagame/utility slots. Obviously if you're swamped with stax, Rack and Ruin is nuts, but in general, is Burning Wish better than, say, Tormod's Crypt? What do you guys think the rest of the deck should fill out to look like.
-AJ

P.S. Looking at Shay's new list, Memory Jar and Repeal are apparantly savage, although I'm not sure against what exactly (besides the mirror), and I'll be contacting some of the people he's working with to find how testing came to prove them too be good.

[roberts91rom]

Saying Fact is bad against combo is like saying anything that costs 4+ is bad against combo. Because Fact is definitely a huge bomb and nothing at 4 mana touches it, except maybe Gifts. I also don't see what the point of this thread is. You haven't added any insight, you don't offer a topic other than "Here's the deck", you got some of your information wrong and you have a biased on cards such as FoF and Gifts, which BTW are completely broken in Slaver, even without Recoup. All you have done is gone to the SCG database and posted a rough sketch of a deck. Good job, your insight has now bettered our understanding of CS. Without this thread I would not know how to play, metagame or sideboard for Control Slaver. Thank you.

[warble]

Hey, try checking this thread out by...me...in march of 2005

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=22124.0

The evolution that has proceeded since that thread would be:

+1 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Merchant Scroll
+1 Rack and Ruin
+1 Echoing Truth
+1 Vampiric Tutor

-1 Gorilla Shaman
-1 Lava Dart
-2 Duress
-1 Cunning Wish

+1 Triskelion
+1 Darksteel Colossus

-1 Memory Jar
-1 Platinum Angel

+1 Lotus Petal
+2 Underground Sea
+1 Polluted Delta

-1 Seat of the Synod
-1 Shivan Reef
-1 Island
-1 Flooded Strand

Just to correct all of that . . . stuff at the beginning of your thread . . . and to set the record straight for anyone why might have been a bit confused.  The above is correct, what you have stated is uhh well I would just say not optimal for playing CS in this environment.  What we decided was...okay well what I decided was...
Lotus Petal makes turn 1 stronger, and so does vampiric tutor.  Triskelion is the best tutor/tinker target to take down fast aggro because we can't run pyroclasm for the sake of our welders, and against monored Darksteel Colossus is the best tinker target(and lets us play a lot of pure control hands with a single tutor).  Duress is now a 3 or 4 of in the sideboard but against faster aggro it is no longer useful maindeck(darn you ichorid and dredge mechanic...).  Cunning wish only fetched Rack and Ruin or draw power...and most of the time it fetched Rack and Ruin...plus R&R dominates the mirror and workshop and pithing needle and null rod...  Gifts is broken x 10 and merchant scroll is better than recoup in CS.  Finally, black mana is a premium in this deck and therefore the 3rd island is no longer necessary, and neither is the Shivan Reef.  Personally I'm running 2x Gifts but I can't make everyone see the light so whatever.  My apologies for not...bumping my thread from a year and a half ago so I could update it and you could read it...LoL

[roberts91rom]

I don't like Petal. Every time I drew it in testing I wished it was something else, and it was always first on my list to pitch to TfK. Instead of Echoing, Rack and Scroll I run 2xMonkeys and a Crucible. As for my Bots I run Pentavus and Titan. Both are pure Welding gold and Pentavus answers the problem of "bounce" and "artifact removal." Pre-board it is a huge uphill battle versus Null Rod, so instead of "bounce" and "artifact removal" I have instead opted to go Titan/Welder/Tinker or go home. Screw Fish anyways ;P. SB DSC is tech.

[Rock Lee]

So what're the community's thoughts on why Rich Shay is reuniting Jar with CS?

Is it due to the highly controllable non-counterable draw?
Is it for brainstorming artifacts into your jar hand to discard them eot?

Would you drop a 2nd Slaver for the Jar? Personally I feel the 2nd Slaver is key, as a slaver activation is usually GG as team reflections spams us with.

Also what're everyone's thougts on 3 welders versus 4? do you usualy find with 4 that you're forced into playing them pre-emptively? with 3 in mirror matches or against fish are you finding you run out of welders and need to yawg them back?

How in the name of God did Rich Shay fit in Repeal? is it basically just to answer mirror welders and null rod? As non-storm repeal seems weak.

Figured I'd drop a few conversation points, as the topic sofar was, who likes their list more?.. =P

[Demonic Attorney]

A bit of this post will probably reassert the good points already raised in this thread, i.e. Veggies' post.  But for the sake of completeness, here it is anyway:

1.  Gorilla Shaman is not, and has never been, considered a foundational aspect of Slaver by anyone on Reflection.  I understand players on certain other teams might disagree, but if you're attempting a summary, or an analysis, or whatever else, of our build, that's something we've always accepted.  Gorilla Shaman does almost nothing against skilled players, 98% of the time.

2.  Thirst for Knowledge has been a 4-of in every list we've ever ran.  It's one of the most important cards in the deck.  Anyone who runs any less fails to fully understand a major aspect of the main engine of the deck.

3.  If a given build of the deck runs only 1 Mindslaver, a general rule was that it should run an additional way to find Mindslaver, such as Gifts Ungiven.  That said, I don't think anyone on Reflection has run a build with only 1 Mindslaver in quite some time. 

4.  Pentavus' main function is a Tinker target against Stax.  The fact that it can sustain an infinite lock merits maindeck inclusion rather than sideboard status.  However, but for its game-breaking impact in the Stax matchup, I don't think anyone on Reflection would run Pentavus at all.

5.  Fact or Fiction is not situational.  It is always good, because it supplements multiple game plans relied on by Slaver, i.e. a control strategy based on card-advantage and the Welder engine.  There are some matchups in which there are better, more cost-efficient cards to go in the FoF slot.  You've correctly identified one of those as Long, though I'd add that it's usually not spectacular against Stax and frequently gets boarded out against the more potent incarnations of Fish.

6.  Burning Wish is not included in Reflection builds of Slaver.  I can't think of a significant period of time where it ever was.  We found its Sorcery status, and narrow capacity to only find another Sorcery spell that might well take another turn to find the mana to play, too slow in a deck that loses most frequently as a result of being outraced.

7.  Crucible/Artifact land is a prime example of why we wouldn't run Pentavus if not for its strength in the Stax matchup.  Yes, Crucible/Artifact land adds another infinite lock to the deck, but generally does little else for you.  If you incorporate Strip Mine into the deck, you can create another sub-strategy.  The problem here is, you're taking Slaver away from its main game plan in order to attack your opponent in a way that Slaver isn't built to do. 

If you want to rely on a mana-denial strategy, play Stax.  It runs 5 strips and 3-4 Crucibles, and relies on a strategy that maximizes the dividends that Crucible/Strip can pay.      If you want to play a deck that relies on a blue-based control engine and the Mindslaver game plan, play Slaver.  But each of those two decks as at its best when it isn't being diluted with elements of the other.

8.  Gifts Ungiven is not "completely broken" in Slaver.  It's completely broken in another deck that's built to abuse Gifts, and that deck is named after the card itself.  Gifts is fine in Slaver.  It's not bad, but it pays bigger dividends in decks more focused on maximizing its effect.

9.  I can't think of any lists off the top of my head that boards 4 Duress.  Even 3 Duress is sometimes pushing it, unless you retool the manabase to accommodate increased demand for black mana while keeping blue and red available.  I've usually handled this problem by upping the number of maindeck fetchlands, since they make Brainstorm far better and can sometimes shore up your game 1 against Wasteland decks.

10.  There's a lot of disagreement on Lotus Petal.  General agreement is that its purpose is a tempo mechanism, making Drain mana accessible on turn 1 with greater frequency.  I personally don't think this is worth it unless you're in an extremely tempo-oriented environment, i.e. combo-dominated or featuring a large amount of WS aggro.  Even then I usually shy away from Petal since it's not a renewable source of mana, and can sometimes be a liability in supplying an easy Welding target for opponents.  Judgment call, but I virtually never use it in Slaver.

11.  Like Lotus Petal, Repeal is a tempo mechanism.  It's at its best in environments featuring tempo decks, and not so great in environments dominated by control.  Unlike Lotus Petal, Repeal cantrips and therefore almost never becomes a liability.  Whether or not it's an optimal use of 3-4 slots maindeck is an open question, but it certainly won't leave you holding it as a dead card.  It beat 2 aggro decks for me last weekend, for whatever that might mean to those interested.

12.  I'll leave the Memory Jar question to the reasoned opinions of the other posters in this thread.  I'm certainly interested to read what people think.

[nataz]

12.  I'll leave the Memory Jar question to the reasoned opinions of the other posters in this thread.  I'm certainly interested to read what people think.

It's another out v. ichorid

[Mantis]

First of all there is no optimal build for Control Slaver. If you've been reading this forum for the past 6 months or something you will probably have noticed that our premiere CS players (R Shay and B DeMars) are constantly tweaking their lists to the given metagame. It really depends on what you expect. Other than that I think Demonic Attorney and others have pretty much summed up all there is to say here.

[Harlequin]

Firstly GREAT post Demonic Attourny.  Bravo.  It was a great follow-up to the original poster's observation.  To add to the repeal arguement, It also can help recesitate a late game LOA.  Because, like Thrist, it nets you a +1 card in hand. 

I am a bit critical of your analysis of crucible/Strip/artifact land.  I think your logic for why people choose to include these 3 cards is backwards.  The logic, as I see it is this.   You want to run Dark Steel Citadel because you want an un-interuptable, un-counterable artifact for welding.  Now that you have decided to include DSCitadel the choice to include the the Crucible becomes more apealing (Because it will net you positive artifacts in the long run every turn / infinite slavelock).  Once you're running Crucible its almost impossible to argue against running stripmine.  I may be incorrect, but that is the logic train our team used to justify those 3 cards' inclusion in the deck.