[Deck] U/B Control

[Sarah Angel]

First the deck:

/////Disrupt
1Repeal
3Mana Drain
3Mana Leak
4Force of Will
2Diabolic Edict
4Duress
3Spell Snare
   
/////Draw
4Brainstorm
1Ancestral Recall
3Street Wraith
3Night's Whisper

/////Win
1Tinker
1Darksteel Colossus
1Psychatog
   
/////Tutor
1Demonic Tutor
1Mystical Tutor
1Vampiric Tutor
1Personal Tutor

/////The Usual Suspects
1Mox Sapphire
1Mox Jet
1Mox Pearl
1Black Lotus
1Lotus Petal
1Mana Vault
1Mana Crypt
1Mox Emerald

/////Land
4x Flooded Strand
2x Polluted Delta
4x Underground Sea
3x Island
1x Swamp


I played this at the last Myriad games tournament and went 2-3 then drop.  I lost an extremely close match to Sam's top8 belcher/control deck, coming down to the wire on game 3 and also lost to another top 8 U/W/B Fish deck.  So I think it can be competitive (my other loss was to myr affinity/disciple, which I'm ok with).  Wins were against Ichorid and GAT.

The modifications since then have been:

-1 Relearn, -1 Windfall, -1 Skeletal Scrying, -1 Platz
+1 Tog, +1 Duress, +1 Night's Whisper, +1 Personal Tutor

Before I get in to how the deck works/matches-up (it's pretty obvious), I do understand that my reliance on Tinker>DSC is going to turn most people off from taking this thread seriously.  What can I say, I like the combo, but I am posting here mainly to try to find more win conditions/threats.  So please humor me, if you would.

The deck runs an absurd disruption number (20), if you count edict and repeal.  The ability to stop E.Truth with only one mana open with Spell Snare is a big strength, as are the mana leaks early on (if I dont have 2 blue available).  But spell snare is great and has really been helpful stopping drains and dryads and scrolls.

It matches up well against GAT, in, admittedly, limited testing.  The repeal and the edicts and the spell snares are tremendous against dryads.

However, it matches up very poorly against tendrils and stax, as I have no early threats and generally spend my early turns finding tinker, which allows the opponent approx. 3 turns to build up their resistance (find StP, E.Truth, FoW, goblin welder, sphere of Resistance, etc...) and often leaves me with enough disruption to force tinker through, but then no disruption and/or mana to protect DSC after it hits the board (it got E. Truthed/StP'd alot).

Thus, I'm thinking that in addition to playing more slowly, instead of trying to rush Tinker out as soon as possible, I also would like some early threats to tie up the opponent, while I set up a Tinker that still leaves me mana open to protect DSC.

Some of the stuff I've thrown around w/ pros/cons:

4x Phyrexian Negator - Pros: demands a response fairly quickly from opponent, is very cheap to cast, limited drawback (not a lot of direct damage in the format).  Cons - I'm not using dark ritual, is a black card (can't pitch), could still be potentially harmful from its drawback.

4x Juggernaut - Pros: also demands a response if I get it out early enough, easy on the mana base, no real drawback on the card, can sac to tinker (pretty important).  Cons: is still fairly expensive for the format, 3 toughness could be problematic, dosent pitch.

4x Aven Mindcensor - Pros: would GREATLY improve tendrils matchup, would improve Stax matchup somewhat.  Cons:  Dosent clock opponent, 1 toughness is problematic, and of course, I would have to splash white. 

Those are honestly the only 3 cards I'm really considering, but I would really like some more suggestions.  As for some of the more questionable card choices:

Night's Whisper - has just been incredible.  Extremely cheap, helps keep some semblance of pace with gush (it's no gush, of course, but it's still respectable).  I didnt play skeletal scrying once in the tourney, so I took that out.

Repeal - can't really be dead due to its cantrip ability, my only source of artifact/enchantment bounce, good vs. dryads

Edict - I really should change this to Cruel Edict and probably will do so.  In theory this is great against druids and Fish and titans, welders, etc...I've used it a fair amount of times, maybe not as much as expected.   I'm sort of up in the air on this.  I guess if I wanted to improve my stax/tendrils matchups I should change it.  Not sure.  It is annoyingly dead quite often and a favorite brainstorm target.

Street Wraith - I love this card and believe in its thinning power wholeheartedly (even if it's just slight). But maybe it is the right card to replace with actual threats?

Personal Tutor vs. Imperial Seal.  Pretty much in there for the pitchability, though maybe this isnt worth it?  I generally only need to find tinker, however, so it hasnt seemed to be a problem.

Mana Vault - needed against chalice@0 to sac to tinker.

4 instead of 5 moxen - I dont know, I've goldfished this deck so much that I'm happy with this.  I dont like the off-color moxen, but yet I need them to sac to tinker.  It's sort of a comprimise between playing only on-color vs. playing all of them.

Tog - alternate win condition...needs replacing.

Thanks for your help!

[netherspirit]

Nice looking deck.

I'm going to ask why you haven't got Yawgmoth's Will in there, though. It seems like an auto-include as it would let you gain quite a bit of card advantage and find Tinker.

Also, what happens if you draw Darksteel Colossus? You need a way to get it back into your library, which at the moment appears to be Brainstorm or Psychatog.

You said you want some early threats, so how about Dark Confidant? If you can add in four Dark Confidant, four Cabal Therapy and a Yawgmoth's Will you'd gain an extra draw engine (which would probably need you to cut Street Wraith), early threats, more disruption (which can also be used to shuffle Darksteel Colossus back into your library) and a way to overwhelm your opponent.

Good luck with the deck!

netherspirit

[Sarah Angel]

Appreciate the comments, thanks!

Yawg Will - I guess I automatically dismissed this one simply because I'm not playing storm, but you make a good point about an additional way to grab tinker, plus the original artifact used is sitting right there.

It could definitely help if the game goes unnaturally long, but I guess I just wonder how helpful Yawg Will would be on non-narrow situations, plus it's so dead early on.  Hmmm...I definitely like Durress/therapy with yawg will though, to protect wins/gain a lock (plus random brokenness of the card, of course), so I will certainly do some testing with it.

Thus far, I havent run in to a problem with having DSC in hand.  Between Street Wraith, Ancestral, Night's whisper, I can usually find a brainstorm pretty quickly, though it certainly could happen (and has happened in testing).

I love the Therapy suggestion, as I really like that card.  I will try to find a way to get that in there.  But that would put me at about 24 disruption, which just seems beyond overkill.  Should I cut some mana drains (hard on mana base, never seem to need the drained mana)?  and/or cut some mana leaks?  Need some general thoughts on Therapy vs. Counterspells.

Lastly, Dark Confidant.  Hmmm, the thought crossed my mind briefly.  But he seems to have a lot of drawbacks.  He dosent fly like mindcensor and would you honestly consider him a threat?  I mean, it certainly dosent clock the opponent.  He's nice against Stax, that's for sure.  But card drawing isn't really my problem, it's drawing out opponent's counters/disruption early on.  In fact, I rarely find myself with less than 2 disruption spells, usually just the mana to play them.

It's an interesting idea, but I guess I just want something that the opponent MUST deal with immediately.  His effect takes a while to really make an impact, and a GAT or Storm player can afford to give me 1 or 2 turns worth of extra cards (and marginal damage) without having to address it.

But again, if I added 4x Therapy, what would you suggest I take out?

[netherspirit]

For the Therapies I'd probably cut the Mana Drains and a Mana Leak; come to think of it, Remand may be quite good as well in here.

I think Confidant would actually pose quite a threat; the moment you get him onto the board you're going to be drawing quite a lot of disruption, meaning you can totally wreck your opponent. I think Therapy and Confidant would go well together, Therapy is cheap disruption and Confidant will draw you into it quickly, so you could easily have a hand with Therapy, Duress and Mana Leak, for instance. Your opponent would have a tough time getting around a hand like that.

As for GAT and Storm, that's where your sideboard should shine. Have you got one at the moment?

By the way, I really do like this deck! It looks great fun to play.

[Sarah Angel]

I can't seem to develop a very strong sideboard against Stax.  Currently I'm using:

4 Leyline of the Void  - vs. Ichorid/Flash
3 Hydroblast - vs. Goblins/Moon/Goblin Welder/Red Splash w/ Pyroblast
2 Island - currently using these and the swamp vs. Stax, to cut off mana denial
1 Swamp
2 Massacre - vs. Fish, goblins and other creature decks
2 Energy Flux - vs. Stax
1 Hurkyl's Recall - vs. Stax

My initial thoughts are that I'm spread pretty thin, with lots of 2-ofs and 1 ofs, but I've got 6 slots solely devoted to Stax.

I am testing builds with
-3 mana drain - 1 mana leak
-3 StreetWraith
+3 DC +4 CT  and also trying out Phyrexian Negator in place of Dark Confidant.  I'll post results when I have them.

[Grand Inquisitor]

First the deck:

Holy disynergy Batman!

I can see you put some time into this and some parts of it are really working for you, but let's look at some cards that don't work well together:

3Mana Drain
3Mana Leak
3Spell Snare

When you have lots of 3 of's that do similar things, it's usually a sign that you haven't done your homework (testing).  It seems like one of these has to be the counter you want most.  General guidelines:

Mana drain - if you intend to power out expensive game ending spells (e.g. Gifts Ungiven, Skeletal Scrying, Intuition, etc) this is your man.

Mana leak - if you want to hit everything early (always play reactively) and are running full acceleration, this is a better fit.

Spell snare - if you know this will nail the metagame (scroll, dryads, flash, sphere, etc) this may be your best bet.

Since it seems, in general, you want to play the control roll most of the time, why choose night's whisper?  It ties up your mana early, and it doesn't have a huge midgame effect (like scrying or other larger draw spells do).  NW has much better synergy with daze, misdirection and other free counters, but not the ones that fill out your list.

8x cheap draw
1xTinker
4x tutors
8x artifact accelerants

0x Yawgmoth's Will

Don't playtest this, just add the card in.  Any deck which abuses the UB t1 skeleton of cards and plans for games to last longer than three turns should include Yawgmoth's Will.  The only possible exceptions to this rule is Oath of Druids and Salvager because of the grave recursino element.

/////Win
1Tinker
1Darksteel Colossus
1Psychatog

This depends a lot more on where you choose to take the rest of the deck (if you do in fact change around counter and draw spell configurations).  Psychatog is pretty strong right now as he can hold off fish/red deck armies and can even trump dryads in the short term.  The more togs you play, the more you should consider the Gush engine.  You begin to look more and more like GAT.  If you want to play more dedicated control, you may have to either beef up your draw engine, or find room for mana denial.  Both of these routes are difficult since few draw engines compare well with Gush, and mana denial isn't a strongsuit of blue based control.

[Sarah Angel]

@ GI -

First of all, thank you for the feedback!

I will add Yawg Will.  Netherspirit suggested it and I agreed and then forgot to add it.

Re:  Mana Drain/Leak/Snare

I can definitely say that mana drain has not been used much.  The  is just too difficult to keep open early/mid-game.  Furthermore, when I do use it, I mana burn next turn about 90% of the time.

Are you suggesting I only stick to 4 of one of these three spells?  What about 4 mana leak and 4 spell snare (still frees up one spot)?

I guess it comes down to 2 things.  How much disruption is too much disruption?  Or what is the threshhold of counterspells before you get redundant?  But also more importantly, what am I trying to do with this deck?

I guess my main thoughts were to make a deck with more disruption than any deck currently in the meta, while at the same time using some very meta-specific disruption (Spell snare and diabolic edict).  I know it's about finding the right balance of counterspells and I'm obviously not there yet, but I do have to keep in mind that I want a pretty high pitch-count for FoW.

Re: Night's Whisper -

I have to say it's been very good to me so far and I like seeing it in an opening hand or drawing in to it.  I do understand that it ties things up early on, but I'm not casting it Turn 1 or 2.  Generally I'm playing the disruption I have, and then, once I've got some extra mana through accelerants or whatever, casting NW to refill my hand, while hopefully having FoW or mana open for Spell Snare at least.


Re: Gush/Tog -

You're 110% correct in that I am treading a very thin line between becoming GAT and keeping it where it is now.  My hypothesis is that I can build a deck that has a favorable matchup against GAT (so far so good) and also has at least equal matchups against the other major meta decks.  I could be very wrong here, still need more testing.

If I go with Gush, than it seems I would have to get fastbond and then merchant scrolls.  In that case I would just play GAT, I think.

Or maybe I could make a fairly modified version of GAT?  With snares and edicts?  Hmmm, lots to think about for sure.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Are you suggesting I only stick to 4 of one of these three spells?

This isn't always the case (e.g. I run 2x drains in GAT right now), but often when there's a bunch of elements that do similar things you find what works best and run four.

I'm not casting it Turn 1 or 2

If this is true, wouldn't S.Scrying just be better?  It's not like you need grave synergies.

Or maybe I could make a fairly modified version of GAT?  With snares and edicts?

Outlaw has T8'd with GAT with spellsnare.  Maybe he has a list to share.

[Sarah Angel]

@ GI -

Re: Night's Whisper vs. Skeletal Scrying.

I originally was very enthusiastic about Skeletal Scrying and ran it in the last tournament alongside 2 night's whispers.  But I didnt use the card once and ended up ditching it.

It seems like it's a great card drawer and has a relatively light downside (lose life, graveyard).  BUT, when you look at it, I'm just not sure that the card is inherently competitive with Night's Whisper.

First of all, to get 2 cards w/ SS, you have to pay  , lose 2 life and cut 2 cards from the yard.

Night's Whisper gives you 2 for 1 less mana, and that basically seals the deal in my mind.

  is a LOT to pay.  Maybe not a lot for 3 cards in a relative sense, but it's just a lot to pay in vintage.  And my deck is always doing something (tutoring, duressing, brainstorming) but also needs to leave open as much mana as possible at all times, when it can.  So  for 2 cards is significantly worse than  and  is just not as viable in vintage, where games don't go that long.

Granted, my deck seeks to delay the game for an extra 2-3 more turns than is usual, but I honestly usually have enough disruption as it is, without being able to afford/need the luxury of 

I'm curious to see a GAT deck with Spellsnare.