Help Getting Into Control Slaver!

[netherspirit]

I didn't know where to post this, so if it's in the wrong place could a mod please move this? (Sorry if it is.)

I was just wondering if anyone could give me any insight on how to play Control Slaver or if anyone has any good links, I've been searching the forums here and on other sites but all I've found are decklists and no actual information on how the deck works. I've tried playing with it once or twice and just can't get my head around it....

If someone could please help I'd be very greatful!!
 Netherspirit

EDIT: Decided I should probably add more to the thread.

I mainly play Stax and Oath, so I have a pretty decent understanding of how the cards in Control Slaver work on their own, but unfortunately not on how they work together (such as Goblin Welder, he's been in all the lists I've seen and tried anyway). My decks are often very control oriented, and judging by the name I'd say CS is a control based deck. So I should be able to get a decent grasp on the control aspects quite easily.

My metagame is high on aggro, but I'm not too bothered about that at the moment, just as long as I can understand how the deck works, then obviously I can begin my own build and tweak it more for my metagame.

I know already that the deck relies on Mana Drain, I run this in most blue decks I have that I can fit it into, usually the mana goes into an artifact like Null Rod or a mana sink such as Morphling.

I learn quickly, but I often need a lot of information first so that I can work out the deck and how it plays.

I hope those few points are helpful, if I think of anything more that may be useful I shall post it. Thanks to Disburden for pointing out the lack of content to me!

[Kowal]

Control Slaver actually operates very simply.  When I pilot the deck, I pilot it like I would an Ophidian build more than anything else.  The beauty of Control Slaver vs other control decks is that you don't actually have to try to win--  You certainly can, and it's advisable in some matchups, but most of the time you can simply 'not lose' until you win accidentally via topdeck Tinker or Goblin Welder.

Your first mission is early game.  Your early game kind of sucks, but as I mentioned in the other threads, Night's Whisper alleviates this problem a bit by giving you something to do on the first turn and preventing you from running out of gas mid game.  Play extremely defensively unless your hand is busted--  Your goal here is just to survive until your stronger plays can come online.  Once you have the mana to start pulling things like Thirst for Knowledge end of turn with good stuff on your own, congratulations, you've reached midgame.

Your midgame is very strong.  You have numerous card-drawing options and broken shit like Tinker.  Many of your spells (such as Thirst for Knowledge, or even Memory Jar if you have a bit of acceleration) will cause your welders to go lethal.  What I mean by that is that it transforms your welders from Mon's Goblin Raiders in to a game over scenerio by giving you something retarded to weld.  One thing to point out here is that if you haven't gotten a welder to stick, you may want to discard a mox or Darksteel Colossus ahead of Mindslaver, because after another turn or two we reach:

The late game.  Hardcast Mindslaver is the primary reason Control Slaver's late game is the best in the format.  Similarly at this point it's extremely unlikely you lack a Goblin Welder, and you've probably outdrawn your opponent in the midgame so much that you have access to numerous tutors and counterbackup to resolve those tutor-fueled plays.  Remember to keep your guard up with Mana Drain/Force of Will so your opponent doesn't get an out to break free, and then just throw bombs at them until they die.  Eventually they will.

Three things that don't fit in to the above description very well:

Memory Jar throws all these plays out the window because it's just stupid broken.  When Jar gets active, even if you're in the shittiest scenerios ever, you'll pull out of it.  If Jar doesn't win you the game, nothing would have.  Jar is so fuckdiculous that I advocate any play that gets Jar active any time in the game, including the early game, and especially if you can protect however you're doing it (like Tinker for example)

Yawgmoth's Will is obviously a broken stupid card that wins the game, however its use to seal the deal works best with a Goblin Welder.  It'll be a very strange thing to cast Will without having several moxes and other cheap spent artifacts in your bin from repeated welding, and when you cast Will usually people are scooping because instead of the one or two slaver turns you would have had, you now have twenty and six extra cards in hand.  Even if Will looks strong, I tend to hold on to it until I'm satisfied it's a guaranteed win, and that usually means when I get Slaver active.

Activating a Slaver is typically NOT GG.  People say it is, but it's not.  People Brainstorm their Gifts away before you hit it.  They sacrifice their Smokestacks when they see it active.  They will fizzle going off, plow their crappiest creature, discard animates to Bazaar, wasteland their wastelands, and do a number of other maneuvers to minimize slaver damage.  Often this means what a single slaver does is let you look at their hand, fog their creatures, tap them down, and pray for a sweet topdeck.  However, activating a Slaver two or three times IS GG.  This is especially true when you get familiar with the deck and start seeing how and when you'll be getting Slaver online, so as to let your opponent develop themselves optimally before you slave them.  The more toys to play with, the better.

Hope this helps.

[aosquirrels]

I've tried playing with it once or twice and just can't get my head around it....

Don't give up on CS after only a few tries.  I've found CS to be one of the most difficult decks to pilot well (I still suck at it).  The decision making process is seemingly endless.  However, once you get the hang of it you'll find it quite powerful.  It adapts and competes well in any metagame.  Kowal's short explanation of how it works is right on the money.  Good luck with it.

[The Atog Lord]

I know that the info is old, but the theory under it all still remains.

Here's my ancient Control Slaver primer. The list is of course outdated, but the theory and card interactions are still perfectly good.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=15900.0

[Hi-Val]

Something I realized after repeated losing to Stax is that turn 1 Goblin Welder is NOT the right play if you have to use a Volcanic Island for it. They will typically Waste your land on turn 1 or 2, cutting you off Mana Drain. As Kowal says, Slaver has a slow early game. Mana Drain accelerates the deck into the midgame, and being able to Drain Stax on turn 2 instead of sitting at 1 land, having them play Sphere of Resistance and then never being able to Drain again is a problem.

[netherspirit]

Wow! Thanks for the help guys!!

@Kowal: Thanks for the explanations, looks like I was messing up mostly on the early game.

@aosquirrels: I'm beginning to see exactly what you mean about the endless decision making, it can become very overwhelming. At least I know I'm not the only person who has to think!!

@The Atog Lord: That primer helped so much!! It made the deck so much easier to understand!!

Thanks loads guys!!

Btw, I just ran into this situation:

Me
Hand: Volcanic Island, Island, Thirst for Knowledge, Mana Drain, Mana Drain, Force of Will
In Play: Island
Graveyard: Nothing

Opponent
Hand: 5
In Play: Underground Sea
Graveyard: Black Lotus, Mox Pearl
On the Stack: Tinker

What would you guys have pitched to Force of Will here?

[Hi-Val]

I would pitch Drain. You'll be able to Drain anyway next turn and Thirst will replenish your hand. Counters are useless unless you are drawing more off them.

Also, with an opponent that opens Sea, Pearl, Lotus, why didn't you force the Lotus? That's a classic Pitchlong opening, and against Long, you absolutely counter Lotus. If you'd done that, you would have been able to Drain the Tinker next turn into TFK.

[aosquirrels]

In this case, you would HAVE to try and Force (pitching Drain) the Tinker. The bomb your opponent will drop, most likely DSC, will put you on a two turn clock.  If your Force resolves, then great!  If not, then you are in "pray for a good topdeck" mode (not good).  Your next draw needs to be an answer to DSC (Goblin Welder, E. Truth, etc.) Having a Brainstorm instead of a Drain in your opening hand would certainly have helped matters.

[netherspirit]

Dammit, no wonder I lost, I was dumb enough to pitch Thirst
Well, at least now I know where I went wrong, I think I'm beginning to get the hang of the deck a little more now, and I'm finding it to be extremely fun. Btw, would you guys put Rack and Ruin in the main or sideboard? I'm running one main but I often find myself wishing it was an extra draw card.

[aosquirrels]

Rack and Ruin in the maindeck and/or sideboard in Slaver is strickly a metagame choice.  At GenCon I ran 2 of these in the board.  My MD artifact destruction was two Gorilla Shaman.  This is one of the reasons CS is so cool.  There are about 6-8 slots that you can use to sort of customize the deck to your liking. 

[Kowal]

This is the maindeck I've been running for a while now with great success, as you can see from the Waterbury and Rochester results.


4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Echoing Truth

3 Night's Whisper
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

3 Goblin Welder

2 Mindslaver
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Triskelion
1 Memory Jar
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl

1 Library of Alexandria
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
3 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
3 Island

Some fiddling with the manabase may be necessary if you play in an environment with a lot of stax.  Similarly, running Duress or Mana Leak in the maindeck might be a good idea if you're in a metagame with a lot of Eric Becker.

I prefer this sideboard, it treated me well at Waterbury and seems to do exactly what I want it to do:

4 Sphere of Resistance
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Razormane Masticore
2 Pyroclasm
1 Lava Dart
1 Rushing River
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Tormod's Crypt

[zeus-online]

Wondering, do you think the 'Cores would work in a gifts SB? Havent had time to test it!

/Zeus

[netherspirit]

@Kowal: Would you mind me using that deck to start getting used to Slaver? Seems like a good deck, obviously I won't if you'd rather I don't though.

[sundering jerk]

4 Sphere of Resistance
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Razormane Masticore
2 Pyroclasm
1 Lava Dart
1 Rushing River
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Tormod's Crypt

I like the Deck Kowal but why not have  2 duress and at least 1 more R&R or tormods???  Doesn't this build have a lot of stax trouble?

do you miss the FOF at all?

[Kowal]

FoF is trash.  I will never, ever, ever run that card in any deck that isn't already running 4 copies of Gifts Ungiven.

Rack and Ruin isn't terribly necessary.   I've been known to cut the singleton from time to time.  You maindeck Goblin Welder and basic lands, therefore your stax matchup isn't bad.  I've been paired with it a half dozen times in the past month or so of tournament play and 2-0'd it every time except Caleb Rozwenc round one of waterbury who drew the stone cold nuts.

Duress is less impressive than REB against the drain mirror.  I don't have the space to bring in more than 4 cards against combo, and Sphere of Resistance is better than Duress there.  So instead, they remain REBs.

netherspirit:  That was the idea!  Go to town dude.

zeus-online:  I would imagine they would, but you don't have the option of ignoring junk like Daze and just welding it in.  It's been a while since I considered Gifts to be my bag, so unfortunately I can't give you an accurate answer here.

[zeus-online]

Any particular reason that you're not running a gifts ungiven in your build? no space, no need or is it something else i've missed?
I absolutely love your inclusion of night's whisper!
Although i don't agree with you on FoF.

/Zeus

[The Atog Lord]

I cut gifts/FoF to make room for Night's Whisper. Night's Whisper is a low-mana card that helps your mana develop. Gifts Ungiven is a card that is only good when your mana already has been developed. Getting mana online is one of the most important things for a Drain deck nowadays, especially with Fish and Stax decks running around. Even mirror matches are often about making land drops. So, in other words, Night's Whisper is better than Gifts in this deck, in many circumstances. That's why I cut Gifts.

[Hi-Val]

Dammit, no wonder I lost, I was dumb enough to pitch Thirst
Well, at least now I know where I went wrong, I think I'm beginning to get the hang of the deck a little more now, and I'm finding it to be extremely fun. Btw, would you guys put Rack and Ruin in the main or sideboard? I'm running one main but I often find myself wishing it was an extra draw card.

A lot of people would keep 2 counters instead of 1 and TFK. The reason to keep TFK is that it is more solid with your plan. You need an intimate understanding of the tug-of-war between CS and Long to see it; it's kind of subtle. The gut instinct is to hold onto both counters because hey, you need to counter their stuff. You Drain one threat, you topdeck something not awesome and manaburn. You Drain another threat. If you can't use that mana in a topdecked draw spell, you lose. Pitchlong will eventually draw another bomb or something to force a bomb through. Keeping the TFK and relying on drawing another counter instead of the other way around fits with what Long does. It has to recharge just like you do. Pitchlong has fewer threats than Grimlong, but it can certainly win if all you are doing is stalling and not advancing your plan. Even monoblue ran Phids to recharge. If you pitch TFK, combo forces you into a reactive role, which is right where it wants you to be.

And I think with CS, you almost always counter Lotus if you see it in the first two turns. That's a card that pulls the opponent into the midgame when you are still stuck in the early game, which is where CS is worst. Like I said in your previous example, if you'd countered Lotus, you would have won.

CS is a deck where card choices matter less than knowing what your role is in the game and whether you need to be aggressive or reactive. Rich has an instinctual understanding of this.

Also, if you want to run artifact hate maindeck, you can always look at Scrap or Smash.

[Komatteru]

Dammit, no wonder I lost, I was dumb enough to pitch Thirst
Well, at least now I know where I went wrong, I think I'm beginning to get the hang of the deck a little more now, and I'm finding it to be extremely fun. Btw, would you guys put Rack and Ruin in the main or sideboard? I'm running one main but I often find myself wishing it was an extra draw card.

A lot of people would keep 2 counters instead of 1 and TFK. The reason to keep TFK is that it is more solid with your plan. You need an intimate understanding of the tug-of-war between CS and Long to see it; it's kind of subtle. The gut instinct is to hold onto both counters because hey, you need to counter their stuff. You Drain one threat, you topdeck something not awesome and manaburn. You Drain another threat. If you can't use that mana in a topdecked draw spell, you lose. Pitchlong will eventually draw another bomb or something to force a bomb through. Keeping the TFK and relying on drawing another counter instead of the other way around fits with what Long does. It has to recharge just like you do. Pitchlong has fewer threats than Grimlong, but it can certainly win if all you are doing is stalling and not advancing your plan. Even monoblue ran Phids to recharge. If you pitch TFK, combo forces you into a reactive role, which is right where it wants you to be.

The moral of the story is that you can't sit around forever and expect Long not to win.  Slaver has inevitability in the match, as long as it proceeds with its game plan that is.  If it sits there and just counters spells, not moving forward with its plan of action as well, then it loses the inevitability, and Long ends up winning.

Doug's point is correct: Slaver does need to recharge.  This is one of the biggest reasons that when playing Long, and you Duress, you often want to pluck the draw spells rather than the countermagic.  If you can stand having this and that countered (i.e., have more than a one-threat hand), but by nailing TfK, Slaver won't draw more countermagic, and it won't actually be able to beat you by doing something that actually matters.  Ever had a hand that was awesome until your opponent Duressed away your Brainstorm?

You won't be able to counter everything unless you draw savage cards, so why try?  Counter what you can and try to use that tempo advantage to win the game--or build up such an advantage that Long will not be able to outgun you.

[Disburden]

I have been following this thread for some time as well as the awesome thread on NWCS in the open forum. I have learned so much from you guys on these threads, thanks a lot!

Hi-Val is totally right about countering black lotus within the first few turns. I would also like to say that not only is this true but it also holds a lot of water against aggro decks. This may have seemed obvious to some people, but I had a hard time with the aggro match up lately. This is a very important match for me to test since I see aggro a lot where I play. I see no shops. I had some problems getting ahead of these decks and outracing them into the mid-game. For example my opponent would play lotus, it would resolve, and now I am force of Willing something off the lotus. The bad thing? Well, I just wasted two cards to FOW something and now they play something else off the lotus mana or a land. Now I am behind. Aggro can play a lot of spells within a turn, so countering Lotus instead of the spells afterwoods is very important and something newer players can miss. Maybe I'm dumb but I missed this until I tested about five games.

Also Night's Whisper is great on turn one, it's still good on turn two, but not as much. Against aggro, if you get it later in the game it can suck because you're suffering steady life loss eventually from their attack step. I really like the inclusion of this card though, it can really help you out in the early game.

Also when facing aggro make sure that you hold countermagic if you're DSC is in play. I have lost games off a Artifact Mutation/STP tons of times because I wasted my counters on something stupid they played on their mainphase. Again, this can be obvious, but if I made these mistakes I'm sure someone else did too.

Just wanted to speak about the deck, as I am steadily starting to learn it and love it myself.

Nick


Edit: Kowal, I just remembered you mentioned an article on Nights Whisper Slaver. How is that going? Is it still happening?

[Kowal]

With any luck I'll finally have that finished tomorrow.  I've been testing pretty hard for The Mana Leak and haven't had a chance to do much writing.