[Strategy] Countertech

Before the small tournaments held at Underworld Games, I find that most players are just looking at what everyone else is playing and adjusting their choice accordingly. Last week a guy playing FCG stomped everyone's control decks, but not before faking them out by playing Affinity.

Now in such a small environment, which is mostly unpowered, I know what the good players like to play and I also see a lot of sligh. I think it is a really good idea, though, to keep the deck you are going to play a secret and play something else to fake the other players out whenever you see them by playing something else. So, since I am definitely playing Oath or a control deck with white next time, I put together a scrubby monored control deck to mess with everyone's predictions.

Some notes about the metagame here: Only a couple players with duals and drains, and maybe a few pieces of power floating around, but nothing serious. This deck is not intended for a high powered environment!

Diversion.dec

//disruption 11
3 Blood Moon
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Tangle Wire

//damage sources 22
4 Ankh of Mishra
4 Myr Enforcer
3 Isochron Scepter
4 Shrapnel Blast
4 Magma Jet
3 Incinerate

//utility 8
4 Urza's Bauble
4 Mind Stone

//mana 19
1 Grim Monolith
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
4 Great Furnace
4 City of Traitors
5 Mountain
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine

Clearly this deck is horrible against moxes, but the point really is that no one here has them, so this deck doesn't have that weakness. It is just a hate deck to make them pay more attention to disruption and life totals, so they will build and play their decks more conservatively. Chalice is in there to drop for 1, which destroys a low powered envioronment, but can be dropped for 3 if I have a Blood Moon down, or 0 to sac to the Blasts. Bauble's help with deciding what to Imprint on the scepter, cantrip, and also can be used to sac to the Blasts. The Ankhs and Chalices are great with the Tangle Wires also, which again, really buys a lot of time when the mana curves are much more quantized and things have to start at 1.

Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond are horrible. I added the Enforcers later because they would be really cheap anyway with the rest of the deck, and I felt like having a 4/4 for two or three mana is strong disruption, in a way. This is the most open slot of the deck.

The ideal for this deck is to get Blast on a Scepter, because if it resolves you are going to do 5 damager per turn due to the high artifact stock. The Jets and the 8 artifact cantrips help you filter through your deck to get this going.

There are a lot of synergies in this deck, for example, if you tap a City to cast Blood Moon, you get to keep it and you have gained a mana for free. I really like the Mind Stones because they add a permanent for the Tangles, add Affinity for the Enforcers, don't take damage under an Ankh, sacrifice to the Blasts, speed up the deck, and recycle themselves. They really only cost 1, because you can tap them as soon as you cast them.

Anyway, I could use some feedback from people who are familiar with the kind of environment I described and might have suggestions for the maindeck.