U/R Gushcaster Control

[bisamratte]

Hi guys,

I'w working on an deck concept involving Gush as a drawspell and creatures to beat. After testing with those Remora-Gush-Goyf decks, which are not good enogh against Confidant/Jace imho, I decided to make something else. Here's what i've built:

U/R Gushcaster

Maindeck (60)
3x Polluted Delta
2x Island
1x Library of Alexandria
4x Scalding Tarn
4x Volcanic Island

4x Delver of Secrets
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Vendilion Clique

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Ruby

4x Lightning Bolt
2x Fire/Ice
2x Steel Sabotage
1x Hurkyl's Recall

3x Mental Misstep
3x Flusterstorm
4x Force of Will

4x Preordain
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Ponder
4x Gush

1x Mystical Tutor
1x Merchant Scroll
1x Time Walk

Sideboard (15)
1x Mountain
1x Island
3x Ingot Chewer
1x Mana Crypt
3x Grafdigger's Cage
4x Leyline of the Void
2x Smash to Smithereens

The plan against control is to stall the opponent with counter and spotremoval, while building up card advantage and dealing damage with a large evading creature. The only creature without Flash is Delver, and it just costs 1 Mana. That's why you don't need to tap out during your turn (an advantage over Goyf/Predator builts). Very interesting about this deckconcept is, that you are able to let many spells resolve and play a removal afterwards. That makes you very flexible.

Some choices

Delver:
One-hits Jace and kills within a few turn. Together with Bolts (recycelt with Snapcaster), Delver finishes very quickly.

Snapcaster:
Recycels Counter, Bolts, Anc and Walk, deals damage.

Clique:
Expensive but flashable. Supports the disruption, gets information and bashes for 3 every turn.

Gush without Black and Green:
Gush is no Comboengine in this deck, just a simple drawengine that improves LoA considerably. If you play this deck, you will see how it's drawengine works.

Steel Sabotage:
Bounces BSC and imroves the MUD matchup. Is rarely dead in other matchups.

Lightning Bolt:
Kills Confidants, Jaces, Lodestone and other MUD creatures and Fish. Reduces the clock extremely and synergates with Snapcaster Mage.

Fire/Ice:
Time Walks in the early game (Ice for a land), buys a turn against beaters (BSC, Goyf, Wurmcoil, Hellkite or whatever), burns Confidants, Fish and opponents, pitches into Force. The testings with two of them were very convincing.

If there are other discussable choices, don't hesitate

We've been testing it against Confidant Control and it wins nearly every game without sideboarding pre- and postboard. The worst MU should be MUD, but we also tested it. With a massive sideboard, it becomes positive, too. Testings against Dredge, Gushcontrol and Fish are stil missing, but the Results should be acceptable...

Thoughts?

[ErtaiAdept]

It certainly is interesting.  To me it seems weird to see a Blue deck without Black.  The two colors have become so intertwined in the control archetype that I feel it almost a necessity when building a blue deck.  But kudos to you for thinking outside of the box.

My immediate thoughts, no tinker?  You're going straight blue/red, but tinker for Blightsteel is one of the easiest win cons you could use and fits easily in two card slots.  I might consider adding this, as it can considerably help get quick wins against both shops and dredge. 

That being said, I think you're going to have a hard time beating dredge with this list.  7 Hate cards in the SB is a good number, but with the aggro plan they're going to have too much opportunity to dig for answers, and can easily stall you by dropping narco's and Bloodghasts so adding a quick path to victory would be beneficial for that match up.   I would even suggest running Vault/Key, but with the lack of tutors, pulling the combo pieces is going to be difficult so Tinkering out a Blightsteel is your best bet.

That's my $0.02 for what it's worth.  I certainly like where this deck is heading with some minor tweaks.

[bisamratte]

Thank you for your reply.

I hardly can include Tinker/BSC with only 3 artifacts in the deck and playing more artifacts will cause a collaps of stabilisation. I need a critial mass of business in the deck to ensure, that I always have a counter/solution available if I need one. I usually play black in every controldeck, but neither Will, nore the tutors are worth a slot. What do you want to find? And: if you want to play black, you'd rather play Confidants over Gush. This deck is more like Landstill, not like Gushcontrol or Confidant/Jace. It's not broken, but very controlish and rarely agressive (even if the list implies that).

I'm going to test aginst dredge today, to see what hate is the best. I thought of Leyline behause of the cheap counters to protect it. Unfortunately, you cannot hardcast it. Grafdigger's Cage or Jailer (with a single Usea instead of the Island) could also be nice. We'll see.

[ErtaiAdept]

Ah, ok

I brushed over the fact that you weren't running a full mox compliment.  In that case I agree that tinker would be difficult.  Other things to consider for dredge might be a couple main deck echoing truths (or even just 1).  It's a good on-color solution that can really slow them down especially if they go all in on a single turn.

[Daenyth]

I'd go with 3 cage 4 extraction. Extraction with snapcasters are beastly, and cage sets you up for extract + crypt. Your missteps and flusters can easily overwhelm their anti-hate. Unfortunately you're cut off from effective use of yixlid and leyline, as those are still the best hate.

As Craig said, Truth is a very flexible answer that has gas against dredge. Engineered Explosives is also decent, and pulls double duty against MUD, any tokens that show up, and some fish.

[bisamratte]

We've been testing serverals combinations. 4 Extraction + 3 Extirpate performed best. My opponent's antihate was nearly useless. Only Unmasks, Therapies and Missteps were effective, but not as effective as a removal for Jailer, Leyline or Cage. I was very surprised how good this strategy worked and how relaxed it was to play.

I tried Truth, but it wasn't worth a slot. The Dredger rarely gets to a point where he has more than 2 creatures in play.

Explosives is far too expensive for this deck. I really liked this card in UB Painter some years ago, but without Moxes, (in average) 4 Mana to cast and activate is too much. Even in the fullpowered decks 4 mana is a lot. Wainting and spreading the cost over 2 turns is often too slow.

[TheWhiteDragon]

With only 3 mox/lotus and no vault key (and a slow win), i see no reason you don't run null rods. 

[d0rsal]

@ bisamratte

  I tried Truth, but it wasn't worth a slot. The Dredger rarely gets to a point where he has more than 2 creatures in play. 

if thats the case, then they're doing it wrong!  they should be swinging for lethal turn 2 or 3

  Explosives is far too expensive for this deck. I really liked this card in UB Painter some years ago, but without Moxes, (in average) 4 Mana to cast and activate is too much. Even in the fullpowered decks 4 mana is a lot. Wainting and spreading the cost over 2 turns is often too slow.

4 mana?!  i think you're missing the pt of both E. truth & Explosives against dredge.  E. truth is just flat out a good catchall for things that get past your counters but against dredge its amazingly effective when you cast it naming zombie...  & Explosives wrks the same way, you drop it for zero & use it to sweep the board of all zero CMC zombie tokens

[bisamratte]

if thats the case, then they're doing it wrong!  they should be swinging for lethal turn 2 or 3
 

If your hate works, they don't get zombies. At the point where Truth or Explosives do anything, they develpoed so far, that you probably will loose. That's why I want to play real gravehate and no removal for zomie tokens. It's wasting slots.

 
4 mana?!  i think you're missing the pt of both E. truth & Explosives against dredge.  E. truth is just flat out a good catchall for things that get past your counters but against dredge its amazingly effective when you cast it naming zombie...  & Explosives wrks the same way, you drop it for zero & use it to sweep the board of all zero CMC zombie tokens

I thought of other MUs, not Dredge.

@thewhitedragon: Null Rod doesn't fit in the deck's concept. Without Wastelands it's really bad, and if you play Wastelands, Gush will be bad.

[ErtaiAdept]

if thats the case, then they're doing it wrong!  they should be swinging for lethal turn 2 or 3
 

If your hate works, they don't get zombies. At the point where Truth or Explosives do anything, they develpoed so far, that you probably will loose. That's why I want to play real gravehate and no removal for zomie tokens. It's wasting slots.

 
4 mana?!  i think you're missing the pt of both E. truth & Explosives against dredge.  E. truth is just flat out a good catchall for things that get past your counters but against dredge its amazingly effective when you cast it naming zombie...  & Explosives wrks the same way, you drop it for zero & use it to sweep the board of all zero CMC zombie tokens

I thought of other MUs, not Dredge.

@thewhitedragon: Null Rod doesn't fit in the deck's concept. Without Wastelands it's really bad, and if you play Wastelands, Gush will be bad.

The point of EE and Echoing Truth is not to replace your existing SB hate, it's to augment the main-deck to give you better game 1's.  They can also be used in the event that you have say Jailer, or Cage out and the bounce it.  Before you can re-cast it, they may be able to pump out a bunch of dudes.  Having an Echoing truth in that case may likely save you the turn so you can re-cast the hate card the next turn.

[bisamratte]

The point of EE and Echoing Truth is not to replace your existing SB hate, it's to augment the main-deck to give you better game 1's.  They can also be used in the event that you have say Jailer, or Cage out and the bounce it.  Before you can re-cast it, they may be able to pump out a bunch of dudes.  Having an Echoing truth in that case may likely save you the turn so you can re-cast the hate card the next turn.

If I want to play Truth main, I have to cut Hurkyl's Recall for it. The chance of Hurkyl's being better against MUD seems to me higher than the chance of Truth being better against Dredge. You can say that Truth is good in other MUs as well, but in fact, there are really few targets for it. I've been playing Truth in GAT before 06-2008 and (as I made good experiances with it) in the first version of this deck, but I really wanted to have Hurkyl's against MUD. If I expected a metagame with very few Workshops around, I'd definitively prefer Truth over Hurkyl's.

As my SB-Hate for Dredge consists of 7 (+4) Extirpate effcts atm, there aren't that much tokens on the battlefield after I removed Moeba and Ghast.