Ok. I've been really busy these past weeks and so this is a wee bit late, but here's the next section of my work in progress, a Type One format-primer. This is section three, discussing prominent decktypes. First, control decks.-------------------------------
Defining DecksThere are a great number of viable Type One archetypes, ranging from the "easily-built" to the "wet dream" category. Here is a list of decks which have proven themselves to be competetive, along with a cursory explanation of how and why they work.
Control DecksKeeper: The flagship deck of Type One, Keeper is a five color control deck that seeks to win through card advantage, silver bullets, flexibility, and sheer power. It uses most of the Power Ten, omitting only Timetwister (and even that is sometimes used in sideboards as an anti-discard measure).
The primary color is blue, with black secondary and both red and white as tertiary colors. Green has always been the odd man out in this deck, and though that changed when Gaea's Blessing was printed, the subsequent release of Yawgmoth's Will has once again pushed green out of the spotlight. Green supplies only Regrowth and Sylvan Library, but recently more green-centered variations on Keeper have been popping up in attempts to abuse cards like Holistic Wisdom and Oath of Druids. Blue provides a solid base of card drawing, search, counterspells, and the preferred kill method of blue decks everywhere - the indominatable Morphling. Black provides a varied host of abilities - discard, creaturekill, and the best tutor of all - Demonic. White is used to combat creatures and for utility, red against control (specifically Red Elemental Blast, but red is pretty good at killing creatures too).
With access to all five colors, Keeper can include virtually any card in the game, should it need to, and as such carries the honor of the most personalizable deck in Magic. It is a deck that relies heavily on player skill - in the beginner's hands it seems a clunky pile of random cards, yet in the hands of an expert it becomes the standard by which all other Type One decks are measured. Capable of winning any matchup, Keeper is a tier-one standard of Type One.
Oscar Tan has written and continues to write an extensive series of articles specifically about this deck, which can be found at
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/archive.php?Article=Oscar%20Tan. Anyone interested in this deck would do well to read his articles - they are both lengthy and numerous, and as such seem quite an obstacle, but are very much worth the effort.
Oath - there are two varieties of this deck, a straight blue/green and a four- or sometimes five-colored version. The deck is built around the interaction of Oath of Druids with Gaea's Blessing to endlessly recurse the library. Oath is usually used a budget replacement for players seeking to play control decks but who are unwilling to invest the money in expensive cards such as The Abyss and Moxen. Oath decks thrive in creature-dominated formats, because Oath itself is often a game-winner against such decks, but also because the heavy counterspell content of Oath is good defense against any players seeking to thwart the creature decks with combo strategies.
OSE - Old School Expulsion, a blue/black aggro-control deck, was created by Darren Di Battista and named after his expectation that the reign of classic five-colored control decks like Keeper was at an end. Though this was not, in fact, the case, the name stuck. Later the deck added red for more creature control and Red Elemental Blast in the sideboard. The deck seeks only to control enough so that its Morphlings, Mishra's Factories, and sometimes Masticores can off the opponent, though it can be considered a full-on control deck from the standpoint of many true aggro decks.
Forbiddian/Mono-U - With the printing of Fact or Fiction, mono-blue control decks were pushed into the top tier of decks and were, for a time, the best deck in the format. This proved to be a little too strong, and Fact or Fiction was restricted, but these decks are still commonplace and quite strong. To replace the loss of Fact or Fiction's card drawing power, many players turned back to the venerable Ophidian, while some sought to add in slower, more powerful draw spells like Braingeyser. Both styles are quintessentially blue though, and use the same core cards - a slew of counterspells, Powder Keg for board control, Morphling as a finisher, and by having the unbreakable manabase of islands, these decks can sideboard Back to Basics as a backbreaker against many multicolored strategies.
Parfait - Parfait, created by Raphael Caron, is a monowhite control deck centered around using and abusing the draw power of Land Tax combined with Scroll Rack. Its kill method of choice is Sacred Mesa, which goes well with Parfait's nearly destruction-proof all-Plains manabase. Parfait decks have an interesting quirk to them - they are relatively inexpensive to build, and thus are favored by players new to the environment, yet they are also fairly difficult to play well.
Enchantress - Enchantress was initially the brainchild of Dan Rosenheck, created to overwhelm the then-dominant monoblue decks of 2000-2001. The original white/green deck used a variety of enchantments along with Argothian Enchantress to outdraw the opponent and Sterling Grove as a search card, and a full four Replenish to endlessly recur the fortress. Later black was added for The Abyss and Duress as an additional weapon versus control decks.
Argothian Enchantress' unique properties allow the deck to use Worship as a near-unbreakable combo against aggro decks, and also allow it to splash black for The Abyss. With the release of Onslaught the deck gained a number of powerful cards, including Enchantress' Prescence, Words of Waste, and the fetchlands, making it a force to contend with.\n\n
