Optimizing Control Slaver in the Fall 2k6 metagame

[forests failed you]

@ Warble:  

I sincerely bet I could name every Slaver win condition, because i've probably played all of them at a major tournament at some point in time.  Not to mention popularized a few of them myself.  ie Burning Wish, Duplicant, Solem.

You are ignoring the primary focus on my arguement.

1. Control Slaver is a metagame control deck.

2. It is really good in a field where you are playing against Fish and Stax.  Those are the decks CS is designed to beat up on, along with random jank decks.

3. It is really bad when you are consistently playing against decks that are faster than you.  ie Gifts, Long.

4. If you think otherwise, I would very much advise you to restest the match ups, or suggest to you that you are winning because you are testing against players who a. have combo lists that are worse than your cs list, or b. are not at the same skill level you are.  I had this exact same discussion with Arend when he crashed with me before the last RIW tournament.  He vehemently insisted he owned the combo Gifts match up every time we played it;  we tested 8 games and he didn't even come close to winning one.  And he is a fantastic Slaver player in my opinion, it is just that the match up is THAT bad.  The reasons that the combo decks put up weaker numbers than Slaver is that they are more difficult to pilot correctly and give you less of a window to win the game under pressure.  Meaning, if you screw something up you can't just weld it back in later and your threats don't just come off the top.  Yes, that is an advantage of Slaver I understand... But the point isn't which deck I would advise a new player to play.  We are talking about winning matches here, if you piliot the fast decks right you just kill people all day long and there is very little they can do about it, if you do it right.

5. You can Metagame Slaver to have an improved match up against these decks with tweaking, at the cost of weakening your match up against the rest of the field.


6.  When you metagame Slaver to beat combo it looks like the worst Gifts deck ever.  So why not just play Gifts?  Or Fish if your metagame is full of Combo.  That was the point.

Now I will generalize for a bit.

I'm not trying to discredit the beloved deck of Control Slaver, and I'm not trying to say that any other deck is better than any other deck in general.  I don't care about decks in general, I care about metagames and having the right cards available to me for a specific tournament.  I'm just critiquing your idea of building Slaver as a metagame deck to beat combo;  yes I agree the list looks to have a better match up against combo than before... However, it just doesn't look like a powerful deck in general.  You are playing a lot of narrow cards in the maindeck, and i'm concerned about the rest of your match ups.

Have you ever noticed that there really are not Metagamed Long or Gifts decks?  (transformational Oath sideboard... AWAYY!  Which I'm not even going to talk about because it is more of a cute trick than anything else.  It wins I know, so kudos Oath board.)  Anyways, the reason for this is because those decks are just all busted cards that win and push the format to the max as far as speed and brokeness are concerned.  Those decks are the aggro in Vintage.

The control decks are all of the ones that try to stop the busted decks and then after the threat is neutralized... try to win.  Slaver is a control deck, that does a very poor job at controling those two decks.  I've played it out, I've done the math, I know how it works...  and I've let it go.  The pros of building Slaver as a control deck to beat Combo decks, hardly outweigh the cons; being that you have to play with a bunch of cards that are less powerful than the cards everybody else is playing with to win.

I think the problem is that people acquire pet decks and feel uncomfortable playing anything else.  A big part of it also tends to be comfort zone;  Combo decks require a different kind of undertanding than control decks do.  It could also be that Vintage cards tend to be expensive, so changing decks can be a big investment.  I'm approaching this from the perspective that pet decks are pointless, winning is all that matters, and that money is not a problem.  

Its kind of funny.

Any time one objectively mentions CSs bad combo match up, everybody freaks out, yells at them for calling CS a dead deck, and then spouts off that it only has a 40%-60% match up against combo.  I never said it was a bad deck, and I really like playing Slaver.  Its a lot of fun to play, because it really lets you play the game, develop the board, and make profound plays that affect the board.

HOWEVER:  The trend of the type of deck that has proven to be the strongest in our testing, are the decks that ignore the board, ignore the midgame, and kill people.  I hate to be the one to break it to you... But Slaver is not the deck you want to go up against those decks with.  Even with Duresses, Misdirection, and Tormod's Crypt in the main.  Once again, I'm not saying Slaver CAN'T win, I'm saying that you are not excited that you have to play the match up in round five with a loss, and they probably are very happy about it.  I'm saying that if your metagame has degenerated to the point where MD Duress and misdirection are necessary: "Why are you not playing Gifts?" or for that matter "Pitch Long?"  Aside from the fact that you have foil Goblin Welders and they are hawt?  Believe me, I feel it to... It kills me to play English non foil Merchant Scrolls and leave my playset of Japanese Foil Welders in the car.

I understand that we differ in opinion here; I'm just trying to add perspective to the discussion on the cons to trying to tweak a CS deck for a fast metagame.

And:  for every turn 3 kill with Slaver, Gifts kills you at least triple that on turn two.  And I stand behind that statistic 100%.

[Implacable]

Have you ever noticed that there really are not Metagamed Long or Gifts decks?  (transformational Oath sideboard... AWAYY!  Which I'm not even going to talk about because it is more of a cute trick than anything else.  It wins I know, so kudos Oath board.)  Anyways, the reason for this is because those decks are just all busted cards that win and push the format to the max as far as speed and brokeness are concerned.  Those decks are the aggro in Vintage.

The control decks are all of the ones that try to stop the busted decks and then after the threat is neutralized... try to win.  Slaver is a control deck, that does a very poor job at controling those two decks.  I've played it out, I've done the math, I know how it works...  and I've let it go.  The pros of building Slaver as a control deck to beat Combo decks, hardly outweigh the cons; being that you have to play with a bunch of cards that are less powerful than the cards everybody else is playing with to win.

That is a real truth about Vintage.  The key is recognizing that creatures are bad.  Everything is based around a clock system, with some decks trying to slow it and some decks trying to accelerate it.  Fish is a control deck, and Gifts is an aggro deck.  Once that is understood about Vintage, people can start to focus their decks around that principle, and stop showing up to tournaments with 'metagame' decks that are complete piles.

[Moxlotus]

In addition to what FFY said, I believe it was shockwave that said something like this.

"Sometimes you just have to pick a deck and lose to it.  I'll be damned if I devote any Landstill sideboard slots to the Oshawa match."

If you have to morph your maindeck or sideboard so much to deal with a bad match, you are probably better off just playing another deck.  If you're changing Slaver a bunch to deal with PLong, you should probably just be playing Gifts.  Or just accept your loss to PLong.  You can only improve your match so much and it probably won't be much.  At the same time you'll be making your other matches worse.

[The Atog Lord]

Is Control Slaver a metagame deck? In a way, all Magic decks are metagame decks. For any deck, there is an environment where playing that particular deck isn't a very good idea. This is true for any deck. However, insofar as a deck is good against a general, open metagame, Control Slaver is very good. A metagame deck is a deck which is only good to play in a particular, narrow metagame. Control Slaver, while certainly not optimal in every single metagame, is an excellent choice for most metagames.

Now, on the other hand, I'll reiterate something I've been saying for years. Properly building Control Slaver requires good metagaming. As Brian pointed out, Control Slaver is a deck which assumes a control role in several matches. This means that it must be given the proper tools to assume the control role in the correct matches. I've had many opponents tell me, "I can't believe you maindeck that!" as I cast something game one. This is because Control Slaver requires knowing the metagame and building around that.

So, Control Slaver must be built as a function of a metagame. It is not strictly a metagame deck, because that would mean that it is only viable in narrow metagames.

And this, of course, is why I have many times said that Control Slaver has no optimal build. It has builds that are good in certain metagames. In this way, Control Slaver requires that more time be put into deck design than Gifts. Meandeck Gifts, and to a lesser extend Brassman Gifts, is mostly static as a deck, and given only to minor changes. As for Control Slaver, even among builds I've played there is quite a lot of variance -- and that's just for one person's builds.

In short, my theory is:
The more reactive your deck, the more it needs to be properly designed for a metagame.

[Khahan]

In addition to what FFY said, I believe it was shockwave that said something like this.

"Sometimes you just have to pick a deck and lose to it.  I'll be damned if I devote any Landstill sideboard slots to the Oshawa match."

If you have to morph your maindeck or sideboard so much to deal with a bad match, you are probably better off just playing another deck.  If you're changing Slaver a bunch to deal with PLong, you should probably just be playing Gifts.  Or just accept your loss to PLong.  You can only improve your match so much and it probably won't be much.  At the same time you'll be making your other matches worse.

Thank you. That's something I need to keep in mind. I've designed decks right out of playability by trying to cover all my bases.

[Bubbydan]

As I was reading this I was wondering why Nights Whisper is a good addition to control slaver and Merchant Scroll is not. After comparing both of them I couldn't come up with a reasonable answer.

Pros for Nights Whisper
You draw two cards, netting you one.

Cons
It costs 2 life
It is black, meaning your exposing your mana base quicker.

Pros for Merchant Scroll
You get a card you want. In a broad sense. It gets you answers.
It is blue so it doesnt expose your black mana.

Cons
It doesnt net you any cards. Its a one for one deal on its own.

Am I missing something when comparing these two for CS? I dont see how one is worse than the other.

Dan

[Khahan]

As I was reading this I was wondering why Nights Whisper is a good addition to control slaver and Merchant Scroll is not. After comparing both of them I couldn't come up with a reasonable answer.

Pros for Nights Whisper
You draw two cards, netting you one.

Cons
It costs 2 life
It is black, meaning your exposing your mana base quicker.

Pros for Merchant Scroll
You get a card you want. In a broad sense. It gets you answers.
It is blue so it doesnt expose your black mana.

Cons
It doesnt net you any cards. Its a one for one deal on its own.

Am I missing something when comparing these two for CS? I dont see how one is worse than the other.

Dan

Its a matter of card quality over card quantity. Slaver needs more card quantity outlets than just TFK. For quality it has demonic, vamp, mystical, merchant scroll and brainstorm.   For quantity it has TFK and gifts.  Obviously not all builds run all of these cards. But those are the standard choices.   I'm currently tinkering with a single skeletal scrying and have been very happy with it.  The loss of life is a bit rough, but I have yet to not be happy with it in my hand.

[FlamingCloud]

Any time one objectively mentions CSs bad combo match up, everybody freaks out, yells at them for calling CS a dead deck, and then spouts off that it only has a 40%-60% match up against combo.  I never said it was a bad deck, and I really like playing Slaver.  Its a lot of fun to play, because it really lets you play the game, develop the board, and make profound plays that affect the board.

What do you think CS's combo matchup is? Lets say Rich Shay's winning list from Richmond.  4 Drain, 4 Fow, 1 Scroll, 1 Crypt MD, Chalices/Duresses/REBs/1 crypt in the board.  Seriously there is no way this matchup is worse than 40-60.  40-60 in best of 3 means you win 2 games.  Against gifts I would be suprised if it wasn't a coin flip.  The only real advantage gifts has over cs is that it rolls janky decks instead of sometimes being randomly knocked out by them, and a better combo matchup.  The biggest advantage of CS is imo that it doesn't have horrible matchups like gifts vs fish, stax vs ichorid.  Personally I would rather have a 40-60 versus combo than what gifts has vs fish, and the matchup got worse with timespiral adding wipe away, trickbind and children.

Add to this that most metas I've seen don't have over 10% combo(even the major tournaments), and most that do play combo make too many mistakes to be a real threat, and the fact that trickbind is going to force combo to play duress/xantid again thus greatly increasing difficulty of play and reducing wins off blind draw 7s.

Its a matter of card quality over card quantity. Slaver needs more card quantity outlets than just TFK. For quality it has demonic, vamp, mystical, merchant scroll and brainstorm.   For quantity it has TFK and gifts.  Obviously not all builds run all of these cards. But those are the standard choices.   I'm currently tinkering with a single skeletal scrying and have been very happy with it.  The loss of life is a bit rough, but I have yet to not be happy with it in my hand.

Um, CS has like, the most draw of any deck in the format without night's whisper.  FoF/Jar+4 Thirsts+ maybe library or gifts is about as much as any deck is packing atm.  Gifts has 4xGifts+FoF and that is imo less of a draw engine.  Not saying more draw isn't good, just its not exactly lacking.  In a meta where you can afford to fetch out your sea turn 1 (ie higher combo/control meta) it is probably a superiror choice.  It really worsens your fish/stax/anything with wastelands match ups.  Also it changes how the deck plays quite abit.  Adding so many sorceries really reduces the draw go play style of the deck, depending on your play styles that could be good or bad.

[aryah]

I had this exact same discussion with Arend when he crashed with me before the last RIW tournament.  He vehemently insisted he owned the combo Gifts match up every time we played it;  we tested 8 games and he didn't even come close to winning one.  And he is a fantastic Slaver player in my opinion, it is just that the match up is THAT bad.

Agreeing with your broader points, Im only a slightly confused with this one detail - when saying combo Gifts, you mean MDGifts, i suppose. I remember reading a thread here, not that horribly old thread in fact, where you yourself claimed that you owned Gifts match up, and others were qualifying your points by saying that this is true for MDGifts, but not so true for BMGifts, which is a tough, but slightly favorable matchup for the Gifts, due to having less conditional cards than CS typically has. So basicly, affirming that MDGifts has a worse control matchup, and is in general a worse control deck.
Also, why is a CS build that 'drifted' towards something 'Giftish' the worst Gifts build ever? Isnt that basicly what SSB and BMGifts builds look like? So you consider them suboptimal to MDGifts? I really hoped the space of convergence between Slaver and Gifts has a unique potential...

[brianpk80]

Its a matter of card quality over card quantity. Slaver needs more card quantity outlets than just TFK. For quality it has demonic, vamp, mystical, merchant scroll and brainstorm.   For quantity it has TFK and gifts.  Obviously not all builds run all of these cards. But those are the standard choices.   I'm currently tinkering with a single skeletal scrying and have been very happy with it.  The loss of life is a bit rough, but I have yet to not be happy with it in my hand.

Are you still running Wheel of Fortune?
I found that pretty effective for you in our matches.  It's typically not anticipated in Slaver and doubles as both a draw engine/graveyard filler for you and a serious disruption for any opponent who has invested in scuplting a good hand. 

-BPK

[GUnit]

In my opinion memory jar is the most broken card in CS. It's my most common tinker target and it almost always wins me the game. If you're comparing draw engines, CS vs. Gifts, this should be central to the argument.

[Metman]

In my opinion memory jar is the most broken card in CS. It's my most common tinker target and it almost always wins me the game. If you're comparing draw engines, CS vs. Gifts, this should be central to the argument.

I tested Memory Jar when I was running Burning Slaver and really liked it there.  It gave the deck a combo feel to it.  I haven't liked it over the other big artifacts in Control Slaver though.  I haven't spent a ton of time testing it though, but I have a hard time cutting the second Mindslaver from the deck to make room from it.  If you play MJ maindeck, what are the other artifacts you run?

[Khahan]

Are you still running Wheel of Fortune?
I found that pretty effective for you in our matches.  It's typically not anticipated in Slaver and doubles as both a draw engine/graveyard filler for you and a serious disruption for any opponent who has invested in scuplting a good hand. 

-BPK

For now i've taken it out so I could continue testing other cards in that slot. But I really did like it in slaver. It worked well to both disrupt my opponents hand and to restock my hand and graveyard. It may go in for a tournament.


As for memory jar being card draw, I look at it as more of a card quality issue.  It fills your hand for 1 turn and anything you don't get to play gets pitched and you get your old hand back.  I'm by no means saying its not good. Its one of my most common tinker targets and I try my best to abuse the hell out of it. But because its 'draw' is temporary, I find it be more of a card that affects hand quality than  hand  quantity (and note, that is what I was referring to in my prior post).

When you've just fought a counter war, or tried to jumpstart w/ thirst and got no artifacts or for any reason that your hand is down and you want to restock, memory jar is not the card.

When you want to accelerate your mana, win via tendrils, refill your graveyard, set up a win the next turn etc...then Jar is your man.  But it doesn't do much to put counters in your hand.

[FlamingCloud]

Jar draws lands, moxes, and any other permanants you can play before the end of the turn just because it doesn't draw you force of wills and mana drains for their main phase does not mean its not a draw spell.  Is an ancestral recall that hits mox, mox, lotus not a draw spell?

[Razvan]

I fail to see the point of playing a deck that tries to win small in a field full of bigger, better, faster decks that try to blow you out of the water on turn three.

However, if the field is full of little fishys and Staxsies then Slaver is obviously a good choice.

Because unless you play something like that stupid Egg deck (<3), most decks won't get absolutely perfect hands, or even rely on them. Even fast combo decks like long are forced to quibble over the small battle, like a resolved artifact mana source, a brainstorm, a tutor and such, and the ablity of CS to win those battles can pan out to a game win.

Furthermore, there's always the threat of Welders. A lot of decks ignore the little bugger in order to develop a plan that won't come to fruition until a turn after the welder has gone active, at which point, it might be too late. And the small battle can do exactly that, delay the game by one turn. A strip mine here, a mox killed there, a duress or a counter over here, and hey, there's a turn.

Now, obviously these decks can punch through 3 different attacks from CS, there's nothing you can really do about that, but those hands are rare.

As for gifts in CS, there REALLY needs to be a separate thread/article about that. Hm...

[GUnit]

In my opinion memory jar is the most broken card in CS. It's my most common tinker target and it almost always wins me the game. If you're comparing draw engines, CS vs. Gifts, this should be central to the argument.

I tested Memory Jar when I was running Burning Slaver and really liked it there.  It gave the deck a combo feel to it.  I haven't liked it over the other big artifacts in Control Slaver though.  I haven't spent a ton of time testing it though, but I have a hard time cutting the second Mindslaver from the deck to make room from it.  If you play MJ maindeck, what are the other artifacts you run?

Most recently I ran slaver x 2, jar, DSC, t. crypt and trike in a pair of tournaments and it worked pretty well.

My most frequent configuration historically, though, has been 1 slaver, jar, t. crypt, trike, and sundering titan.

I find that the deck plays quite differently with DSC in the place of Titan, as I mentioned in the topic post. Generally I favour titan, but with the rise of little fishies and combo I feel that DSC is going to be my main man for the next little while. Also, I normally have about 5 relevant weldable artifacts in the deck, which means that you expect to see one every 12 cards. By turn three it's not uncommon to have seen 15 or more cards, so I feel this amount is sufficient.

EDIT: I don't mean to insinuate by not listing it that black lotus is not a relevant artifact to weld- because it's absolutely insane- but that's not the primary reason for its inclusion in the deck.

... Because unless you play something like that stupid Egg deck (<3), ...

Lol, I love Meandeck Tendrils...

But I hate counter goblins 

[Khahan]

Jar draws lands, moxes, and any other permanants you can play before the end of the turn just because it doesn't draw you force of wills and mana drains for their main phase does not mean its not a draw spell.  Is an ancestral recall that hits mox, mox, lotus not a draw spell?

I guess I have to repeat myself for the people who cannot read:
Jar does not restock your hand beyond the turn you use it. If your hand is empty and you need to refill it to go a few more turns would you rather have jar or recall?  Jar or skeletal scrying?  Jar or nights whisper?

To me, brainstorm is about card quality, not card quantity. Does that mean its not a draw spell? No, it just serves a difference purpose than recall. And the effect jar has is more akin to the card quality purpose than the card quantity purpose.

[GUnit]

Jar draws lands, moxes, and any other permanants you can play before the end of the turn just because it doesn't draw you force of wills and mana drains for their main phase does not mean its not a draw spell.  Is an ancestral recall that hits mox, mox, lotus not a draw spell?

I guess I have to repeat myself for the people who cannot read:
Jar does not restock your hand beyond the turn you use it. If your hand is empty and you need to refill it to go a few more turns would you rather have jar or recall?  Jar or skeletal scrying?  Jar or nights whisper?

To me, brainstorm is about card quality, not card quantity. Does that mean its not a draw spell? No, it just serves a difference purpose than recall. And the effect jar has is more akin to the card quality purpose than the card quantity purpose.

If you want to get technical about reading, the oracle text of jar says to draw 7, but let's not continue to be childish about this.

The ultimate purpose of every draw spell you play is to prepare you to win. Jar can do that singlehandedly. Its effect is often similar to resolving a will. It's also worthy of note that it's often the mana bottleneck, not the counter bottleneck, that determines the outcome of control matchups.

If you want to argue about whether or not memory jar is actually a draw spell it would probably be pertinent to start a new thread.


Now, concerning alterations to the decklist; has anyone else had success with cutting the manabase down to 24 slots in favour of more low CC filtering/draw?  I mentioned the changes I made above.

[Metman]

Now, concerning alterations to the decklist; has anyone else had success with cutting the manabase down to 24 slots in favour of more low CC filtering/draw?  I mentioned the changes I made above.

I don't think this is entirely possible...the cutting the mana base that is.  If you take a look at the actual lands in the deck, it's pretty tight.  2-4 Basics, 4-6 Duals, 4-5 Fetches, and throw in 0-3 special (Strip, LoA, TA) and you've got not a whole lot to cut here.  I think this is the fundemental core that the deck needs to function.  So, if we look at the other mana producers in the deck, the artifact mana, we've got ourselves again without anything to cut.  The deck needs all the accelerants as possible considering it's already not fast.  Plus, Slaver uses Tinker as a crutch it seems and nothing is worse that having Tinker with Force back up and no artifacts to sac to it.  The same argument can be used for Goblin Welder.  25-26 seems absolutely mandatory to make the deck function regardless of the casting costs of the cards you are playing. 

On the other hand, I've observed half of what you are suggesting.  That is, the deck has evolved lower casting cost efficient cards instead of the more expensive bombs such as Fact or Fiction and Intuition.  This is most obvious considering the discussions about cards like Night's Whisper, Merchant Scroll, and even Impulse.

I think it has already begun in a small sense, most likely because of how fast the format defining decks are right now ie Long variants and Gifts.

[InfinityCircuit]

Jar draws lands, moxes, and any other permanants you can play before the end of the turn just because it doesn't draw you force of wills and mana drains for their main phase does not mean its not a draw spell.  Is an ancestral recall that hits mox, mox, lotus not a draw spell?

I guess I have to repeat myself for the people who cannot read:
Jar does not restock your hand beyond the turn you use it. If your hand is empty and you need to refill it to go a few more turns would you rather have jar or recall?  Jar or skeletal scrying?  Jar or nights whisper?

To me, brainstorm is about card quality, not card quantity. Does that mean its not a draw spell? No, it just serves a difference purpose than recall. And the effect jar has is more akin to the card quality purpose than the card quantity purpose.

Although I agree with GUnit that we should not continue this discussion much further, I don't understand how you don't feel that Memory Jar can refill your hand.  Can't you cast Brainstorm or Thirst for Knowledge from your Jar hand in response to the end-of-turn trigger?

[Metman]

Jar draws lands, moxes, and any other permanants you can play before the end of the turn just because it doesn't draw you force of wills and mana drains for their main phase does not mean its not a draw spell.  Is an ancestral recall that hits mox, mox, lotus not a draw spell?

I guess I have to repeat myself for the people who cannot read:
Jar does not restock your hand beyond the turn you use it. If your hand is empty and you need to refill it to go a few more turns would you rather have jar or recall?  Jar or skeletal scrying?  Jar or nights whisper?

To me, brainstorm is about card quality, not card quantity. Does that mean its not a draw spell? No, it just serves a difference purpose than recall. And the effect jar has is more akin to the card quality purpose than the card quantity purpose.

Although I agree with GUnit that we should not continue this discussion much further, I don't understand how you don't feel that Memory Jar can refill your hand.  Can't you cast Brainstorm or Thirst for Knowledge from your Jar hand in response to the end-of-turn trigger?

Technically it doesn't.  It may let you drop permanents, let you cast sorcerys, and load the top of your deck with goodies but it doesn't refill your hand.  That doesn't mean that it doesn't give you obscene card advantage though.  In a way you refill your hand full of cards you just played

[marcb]

I guess I have to repeat myself for the people who cannot read:
Jar does not restock your hand beyond the turn you use it. If your hand is empty and you need to refill it to go a few more turns would you rather have jar or recall? Jar or skeletal scrying? Jar or nights whisper?

To me, brainstorm is about card quality, not card quantity. Does that mean its not a draw spell? No, it just serves a difference purpose than recall. And the effect jar has is more akin to the card quality purpose than the card quantity purpose.

  This is of course only true without an active welder. With welder you can stack multiple memory jar activations to keep a new hand chalk full of counters. Granted your opponent gets a new hand too, but that could be an advantage if he had a well set up hand before and now he's lost it. For me, memory jar has been great sometimes and not useful  eithers. The problem is that when it works, it works so well, which makes it hard to cut.

[Khahan]

  This is of course only true without an active welder. With welder you can stack multiple memory jar activations to keep a new hand chalk full of counters. Granted your opponent gets a new hand too, but that could be an advantage if he had a well set up hand before and now he's lost it. For me, memory jar has been great sometimes and not useful  eithers. The problem is that when it works, it works so well, which makes it hard to cut.

I'm curious when it has not be useful?  If you activate it and draw 7 'dead' cards that you can't do anything with, you just accelerated yourself 7 turns.  That may be an extreme example.
More realistically, you get something like 3 to 4 lands and DSC.   You just accelerated through your next 7 draw phases, most of which would have been dead draws (assuming its late game and you don't need the land).

To be honest, I'd cut slaver before I cut memory jar. I get more wins from jar ->will->tendrils than I do from a slaver lock.

[FlamingCloud]

I'm curious when it has not be useful?  If you activate it and draw 7 'dead' cards that you can't do anything with, you just accelerated yourself 7 turns.  That may be an extreme example.
More realistically, you get something like 3 to 4 lands and DSC.   You just accelerated through your next 7 draw phases, most of which would have been dead draws (assuming its late game and you don't need the land).

To be honest, I'd cut slaver before I cut memory jar. I get more wins from jar ->will->tendrils than I do from a slaver lock.

Clearly you are playing the deck like MDG gifts and not being the control deck, or playing the beat down as they like to say.  Playing the deck Jar/Tendril's style is very diffirent than how the deck plays out for other people.  I tend to just counter stuff/draw cards winning little until I stumble onto the win on turn 5-20 randomly.

As to Jar, the amount of times that you filter through close to 7 dead draws is probably pretty close to the amount of times you filter through 4-5 counterspells and lose them all.

[warble]

Control Slaver is really good in a field where you are playing against Fish

Your first point is wrong, CS is NOT good in a field where you are playing against Fish.  Fish wins smaller than CS, so ultimately they will win a battle that will lead to them winning the war.  If you're talking incompetent fish players...yes, I can beat them.  Playing against null rod + misD + FoW + daze + STP + insert random hate here + Kataki + Jotun Grunt + ninja . . . I would never take CS to a fish-infested metagame.  I would try with pyroclasm, but careful play on the fish player's part almost always results in the CS player losing...with 0 mana and the fish player having 7 cards in hand and two ninjas beating your head in.

It is really bad when you are consistently playing against decks that are faster than you.  ie Gifts, Long.

You can Metagame Slaver at the cost of weakening your match up against the rest of the field.

6.  When you metagame Slaver to beat combo it looks like the worst Gifts deck ever.

Your line of reasoning here is valid to a point.  Yes, you are weakening some matchups.  However, against the metagame you will be strengthening your matchups because weakening a winning percentage still means you should win the matchup.  Would you rather have 70/30 against workshop and 40/60 against gifts or 60/40 against workshop and 50/50 against gifts?  If the answer is that you prefer the 40/60 you should go take some of those college math classes that teach you expected value and stuff.

Looks like the worst Gifts deck ever?  Gifts is hateable, CS is not.  Gifts does have a favorable matchup against almost every CS build I know of...but soon, my friend, it will no longer have that advantage.  Doubt evolution and you're going DOWN dude, DOWN!!!!  Hahahahahah! 

[marcb]

I'm curious when it has not be useful? If you activate it and draw 7 'dead' cards that you can't do anything with, you just accelerated yourself 7 turns. That may be an extreme example.
More realistically, you get something like 3 to 4 lands and DSC. You just accelerated through your next 7 draw phases, most of which would have been dead draws (assuming its late game and you don't need the land).

To be honest, I'd cut slaver before I cut memory jar. I get more wins from jar ->will->tendrils than I do from a slaver lock.

 Accelerating through your next 7 draws is not always good when you end up discarding lands and counterspells. I know you said assuming it's late game, but I often like to tinker for jar in the early game where land drops are important.  I often do this because I know that in such a fast environment now adays I need to get into some counters, business, mana, etc as early as possible.  Discarding too many counters early on or missing land drops can be devestating to the win slow control plan of CS, which is the only plan I use since I don't play any combo finishers (tendrils, charbelcher, etc). Admittedly, this does not happen often enough to not include jar. Combine this with the fact that when it works correctly it can practically end games single handedly, and you will see that I agree that it's a very strong card. I have played jar for quite some time in CS, and I'm not planning on taking it out yet. Lastly, although memory jar will often leave me with a huge advantage in tempo over my opponent making it very hard for my opponent to recover, I don't often win the same turn I activate jar the way a CS with Tendrils might. If you would really cut mindslaver before jar, then I really don't see why you don't play gifts. Mindslaver really makes CS the control deck that it is.

Marc

[brianpk80]

For now i've taken it out so I could continue testing other cards in that slot. But I really did like it in slaver. It worked well to both disrupt my opponents hand and to restock my hand and graveyard. It may go in for a tournament.

I'd definitely consider giving that a permanent home in the maindeck.  It seems very synnergic with a lot of Slaver's component pieces.  With Welder in play, it's Thirst for Knowledge #5.  I'd be very happy to see Mindslaver and Wheel of Fortune together in some opening hand with decent acceleration.  Wheel also stands to randomly win the game if you're running Tormod's Crypt maindeck (Opponent just discarded Yawgmoth's Will? How unforuntate), not to mention the sick swing in board position if you manage to Time Walk before or after it resolves. 

As for memory jar being card draw, I look at it as more of a card quality issue.  It fills your hand for 1 turn and anything you don't get to play gets pitched and you get your old hand back.  I'm by no means saying its not good. Its one of my most common tinker targets and I try my best to abuse the hell out of it. But because its 'draw' is temporary, I find it be more of a card that affects hand quality than  hand  quantity (and note, that is what I was referring to in my prior post).

Agreed with what you say about Memory Jar.  It's a very offensive draw-7, if it can even be called that.  If you think (or know) your opponent has Black Lotus, Dark Ritual, and Demonic Tutor in hand, then unless you're also playing Long or some kind of Burning Slaver build, Memory Jar is probably not going to save you from an imminent death once you pass the turn.  Playing a lot of artifacts and a Triskelion or a Slaver you can't activate won't cut it. 

-BPK

[forests failed you]

Control Slaver is really good in a field where you are playing against Fish

Your first point is wrong, CS is NOT good in a field where you are playing against Fish.  Fish wins smaller than CS, so ultimately they will win a battle that will lead to them winning the war.  If you're talking incompetent fish players...yes, I can beat them.  Playing against null rod + misD + FoW + daze + STP + insert random hate here + Kataki + Jotun Grunt + ninja . . . I would never take CS to a fish-infested metagame.  I would try with pyroclasm, but careful play on the fish player's part almost always results in the CS player losing...with 0 mana and the fish player having 7 cards in hand and two ninjas beating your head in.

Yes, clearly I am wrong.  Obviously, I don't know what I am talking about, because obviously I don't know how the deck works or what its weak or strong match ups are.  Its not like I've ever done well with the deck or anything.

Secondly, you have a lot of nerve to come out and tell me I am flat out "wrong,"  I respect your opinion and your right to disagree with my position; but to come out and tell somebody that their opinion is wrong, (Without any real evidence aside for some ridiculous gamestate scenerio where a fish player has all of its cards in play and the CS player is doing nothing and has no cards in hand), especially when that person is probably much more knowledgeable than you on the subject is very rude.

If you are losing to Fish with Slaver, it is most likely because the Slaver list you are playing is all watered down and looks like "the worst gifts deck ever" and is full of Misdirections and Duresses; instead of Gorilla Shamans, Duplicants and Burning Wish, ie Utility Spells that affect the board, which is Slaver's #1 Strength.  It is a control deck that affects the board and intereacts at all times with an opponent:  whether that be by attacking their mana, killing their guys, welding their permenents, or whatever.  Slaver is supposed to beat weenie control decks like Fish, it plays Goblin Welder and artifacts that kill weiners. 

Gifts is not supposed to beat up on Fish.  It plays very little removal for Fish's disruption.... Which are its guys.  and can fall behind and become unable to win very quickly if it doesn't have the nuts (similarly to falling into a Stax lock early game one.)  I think that it is very interesting that you would say Slaver loses to Fish, and beats up on Gifts.  Because that is the polar opposite of how I feel about the match up.  When I was playing Slaver a few months ago, I felt that I had a great match up against Gifts... Because I pwnd it every time I played it at an event.  However, when I started testing the match up with Mark Biller, I found that I could easily smoke him playing Slaver when I was playing Gifts.  And then when we switched decks he would smoke me when I was playing Slaver and he was playing Gifts.  The problem was that if you are a realitively good player you can win bad match ups just because your opponent will invariably make mistakes.  Combo decks do not forgive easily or often.  I would predict that if you played against better combo players you would find that the match up was a lot more difficult that the Fish match up.

I don't really mind Duress in the Maindeck of Slaver so much as I think that Misdirection is absurd.

Duress is a proactive card; and gives Slaver something to do in the early turns against combo while it is developing its mana.  Misdirection is best suited for protecting threats and forcing them into play.  Which is why it is so good in Gifts, because you can push your Gifts Ungiven into play on an opponents end step, untap and win.  Slaver doesn't really have any early threats it wants to protect, aside from Force of Will in these kinds of match ups... so Why play MisD?  Aside from trying to mise random Recalls, or have two pitch counters I don't see the advantage to simply playing Duress in that spot.

[FlamingCloud]

I don't really think of CS as a deck that has a great fish match up, ofcourse this is depending on version and sideboard for both decks heavily.  However it is overall much better for CS than it is for long or gifts.  CS's strongest benefits in my opinion is the lack of really bad match ups, the ability to overcome any situation, and it is a rewarding deck for experienced players who know what they are doing.

[warble]

I don't really think of CS as a deck that has a great fish match up, ofcourse this is depending on version and sideboard for both decks heavily.  However it is overall much better for CS than it is for long or gifts. 

This appraisal is spot-on for a lot of builds, but the key to your statement is the fact that your CS build doesn't have to have such a bad matchup.  I believe that ancestral is quite important in the fish, long, and gifts matchups.  Duressing away the ancestral in these matchups does provide some ability to fight the matchup, but misdirection on the cast ancestral actually swings the matchup to your favor.  Misdirection is also active turn 0, as opposed to duress not only costing a mana but also preventing the full momentum swing that ancestral recall can provide to control slaver.

Control Slaver is a deck that gets stymied in the early game and this is evidenced by the growing popularity of night's whisper.  Night's whisper and repeal are both popular because they strengthen the weakest part of control slaver's gameplan: the early game.  One draws 2 cards, while the other draws 1 and takes care of a nasty board threat or can ramp storm for an early tendrils.  When strengthening the gameplan against gifts and long, it is very important to understand that gifts packs more draw power, long packs more bombs, and either way you have to find an advantage.  One solution is an early mindslaver activation, but that's just equivalent to "I win" anyway so that can't be our plan.  What I propose is to fight the battle that the gifts player would fight, and beat them at their own game.  Because it is misdirection and not duress, our mana is not shot for early welders, brainstorm, tutors and night's whisper/repeal/merchant scroll.  Our card quality shoots up without cards that can potentially be dead, and the "random" misdirection on ancestral is now part of our gameplan.  The main issue is to tweak the deck to include 4FoW, 4Drain and 2MisD.  Do we cut fat artifacts?  Board control pieces?  Draw power?

If I had to describe my Control Slaver builds, I would say each one is both diverse and focused at the same time.  While I dedicate to three or four main win conditions, the variety of threats and protection allow a different gameplan with each opening hand.  Thus, each card tweak must be thoroughly analyzed because certain win conditions and winning methods can become obsolete with the loss of a single card (merchant scroll, gifts, recoup, etc...)

This is VERY like the gameplan for tendrils decks, but the variety of protection and threats give us solid footing starting around turn 3 while tendrils decks begin to suffer at this turn because of the strong focus on winning the early game.  Does this indicate that tendrils > CS?  I won't say yes or no, but I will say that both plans are valid and have different risk profiles.  While I prefer taking CS to a tournament, I would have no issue with taking a tendrils build to a tournament because, while it is a different playstyle, the gameplan and weaknesses are almost symmetrical.  It's this symmetry that I hope to attack with a few misdirections.  The way to bridge the gap for me is to take an opposing gameplan and change it significantly enough so that I have a chance (see "Fist of Legend" - Jet Li).  I would prefer defense to offense simply because if my opponent hits first (wins the die roll) I will have a much better chance against tendrils decks if I play CS, and an almost even chance when playing misdirection.  That being stated, if I knew I could win the die roll every time I would only play tendrils decks.  That is the main reason that misdirection must be played over duress in the maindeck of CS.