Legacy Unlocked - Blue-Based Control in Legacy: Don't

“The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.“
Arthur Miller

There used to be a time when control decks were really good. The format was balanced between multicolor control decks, Survival decks (primarily ATS but some Welder Survival), and Goblin Sligh. Unfortunately people started playing with Resets, Aether Vials, and two-mana 4/4s. The days of mono-Blue versus four-color control attrition-fests are gone, only to be replaced by combat and creature removal. I have spent a lot of time trying to develop a strong control core in order to create a combo-control deck in the style of Standard and Extended’s Psychatog or Vintage’s Gifts, and I wanted to share my experiences with you, mostly in order to stop you from making the same horrendous, critical mistakes I made. This isn’t to say that all Blue-based control decks are horrible; U/B (Duckhunt) and U/B/G/W (BWHC) Landstill both occasionally make it into top eights of tournaments, but I believe that those same players could play an aggro-control deck and do at least as well, or better. Jon Finkel could probably enter a Legacy tournament with U/W Landstill and win, but he could probably also do it with 60 Island.dec.

Over the past two years, the biggest vulnerability I found is in the kill mechanism. If you invest all of your energy into trying to make Psychatog lethal only to have it die to Swords to Plowshares, you are going to lose that game. This is not Standard; you cannot just tap out for Keiga and expect it to rule the board. If you do, Threshold is going to laugh, point Swords to Plowshares on it, and attack for the win. Paying five or six mana for a kill mechanism simply does not make sense in a world where 4/4s cost two mana. In Legacy counter wars, the advantage is almost entirely to the non-initiating player. If you are trying to resolve Morphling, you are already five mana down, and you need as many answers as the other person has. If you open with a creature, you need a counter for every single opposing counter, and answers to their removal. All of this is on top of the cards and mana necessary to land the threat in the first place. It only takes two mana to represent three different counters from Threshold: Force of Will, Daze, and Counterspell. The opposing player needs the creature and mana to play it, and then at least two counters and an extra mana. This is on top of any Swords to Plowshares the opponent might have, and even Goblins are running Swords to Plowshares. The other problem is that you have to fight essentially two wars; if you try to cast a huge creature, I can start a counter war over it on your turn, and then untap and get to use all my mana to try and kill it again. This is on top of already being out the mana you used to cast the creature in the first place, never mind having to have Stifles for opposing Gempalm Incinerators (which are uncounterable). When trying to build control decks, there are a few basic requirements:

A) Hard to kill. You know the difference between Razormane Masticore and Morphing? Morphling has built-in resistance to Swords to Plowshares. For a long time I was even trying to use Jetting Glasskite as a control tool, simply because it was easier to protect from Swords to Plowshares on the turn you cast it. For this reason, traditional finishers like Masticore and Meloku the Clouded Mirror are poor; nothing is stopping the opponent from untapping and hitting it with a Swords to Plowshares. Sure, Meloku will leave behind a trail of 1/1 fliers, but they are only 1/1 fliers! If I am going to pay five mana to cast a win condition, it had better not be casting Raise the Alarm three times. The most dangerous form of removal in the format, Gempalm Incinerator, is not even counterable!

B) Has to be good in multiple matchups. Yes, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is pretty good against both Threshold and Reset High Tide. But against Goblins, it is just a five mana 3/4 that cannot block Piledriver. Morphling is efficient and can attack and block; but it can only block one creature; it cannot even sacrifice itself to kill Goblin Piledriver. Masticore might be the best choice against Goblins because of its machine gunning and regeneration, but it is rather poor against Threshold and a nightmare when trying to keep multiple counters ready against combo decks. If you could protect it, Psychatog is one of the most flexible kill conditions available to Blue decks, but it has no built-in resistance, other than growing.

C) Has to be effective. In one of my test decks, my kill condition of choice was Goblin Charbelcher (with Burning Wish for Mana Severance if needed). That lasted three games, until I failed to kill for four consecutive turns. This is the qualification I feel that manlands, like Mishra’s Factory and Faerie Conclave fail under, since they die to just about everything in the format. Having to swing eight or nine times in order to deal twenty damage can give the opponent a lot of time to draw outs like Pithing Needle.

I showed my latest Psychatog control build to Josh Silvestri to get his opinion, since we were comparing Extended and Legacy. He pointed out the 3 Psychatog, 4 Accumulated Knowledge, 4 Burning Wish package as cards that basically do nothing. Those cards basically only helped you win the game by getting Psychatog lethal, especially since Psychatog is not durable enough to serve as a reliable blocker and win condition. Silvestri’s contention was that drawing cards is fundamentally weak in Legacy. Now I disagree somewhat, but I will admit that often I have been stuck with only draw spells in hand staring down a lot of creatures. Goblins can afford to pay four mana to reload their hand because of Goblin Warchief and Aether Vial; they almost never pay full price for their horde. By contrast, Psychatog has to run three and four mana spells and pay full price for them. This would be fine if you were winning on the fundamentals, but you are not.

Counterspells have the potential to be insanely bad in Legacy mostly because of Goblins. With Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey, Goblins only needs to resolve the one spell and then they can overwhelm the control player without putting the relevant threats (Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Piledriver, Goblin Warchief) on the stack. And with Goblin Warchief and land destruction, the Goblins player can overwhelm the control player with too many targets. Because they usually run only 4 Aether Vial as nonland spells, Goblins blanks the most powerful disruption element the control deck has access to: Duress. In fact, if the control deck goes “fetchland into Underground Sea, Duress, go” they are asking to be answered with a Wasteland. In most circumstances, responding to a turn 1 dual land with “Wasteland, waste your land, go” is wrong, but here it just means an opportunity to manascrew the control player since they did not gain any advantage off their first turn. I generally hate having to run counterspells in my Blue decks; sometimes they are extremely potent at stopping opposing creatures and equipment, and sometimes the opponent just casts incrementally problematic spells, none of which are worth wasting two cards to use Force of Will.

Most Threshold players run the same quantity of disruption and control elements that the Blue control decks do; 4 Force of Will, 3-4 Counterspell and 2-4 other disruption spell (Daze for Threshold, Duress, Force Spike, or Mana Leak for the control player). The strategic advantage in the matchup belongs with Threshold. All Threshold has to do is put a Nimble Mongoose on the table and Psychatog is on the back foot. In the long run, the control player has an advantage. Threshold’s Dazes will become blanks and the control player’s more expensive but more powerful draw spells will bury Threshold’s cantrips. The problem is that Threshold will try to win before the game ever goes that long into the late-game. It is too easy for Threshold to put a Nimble Mongoose on the table before the control deck has established any sort of advantage with Duress. What is sad is that most Blue-based control decks have almost no out to a thresholded Nimble Mongoose. Since it is immune to spot removal, the only answer is whichever expensive board sweeper the control deck decided to run (generally Pernicious Deed or Damnation). Good luck with that. It is trivial for Threshold to cast their cantrips and keep mana open to counter your spells; there are no equivalent draw spells that let a control player draw cards and keep Counterspell mana open before turn infinity.

But wait! Reactive decks with Force of Will and Counterspell keep taking up Top 8 slots! What’s going on?

Dan Spero already covered BWHC Landstill in his previous article so I will not go as far into depth with that deck. First, here is the other reactive deck that lurks around the format, which also happens to be a Standstill theme deck (I mean Landstill variant):

U/B Landstill (Duck Hunt)

Scott Scheurer

Test deck on 03-11-2007

Legacy

Lands (24)

Spells (37)

Sideboard

This build has a few interesting things going for it. It has the Stifle package to defend its own lands from opposing Wastelands and to supplement its own land destruction. It has Decree of Pain as instant speed mass removal to make Standstill less advantageous for Goblins, and it has Engineered Explosives to remove Threshold’s Pithing Needles and Nimble Mongeese at one (and Werebears at two). My favorite card in the deck is Haunting Echoes; although it does not affect the other player’s life total, it can literally just win the game when it resolves, especially against decks like Threshold that put so much of their library into their graveyard.

To be honest though, while I can appreciate several card choices, I hate the deck. Who told control players it was okay to only run 24 lands when eight of them produce colorless mana and four of them die to Swords to Plowshares? The BWHC Landstill deck is the same way, with a whopping ten (!) lands that only tap for colorless. Plus, I hate having to win with Mishra’s Factory. That card only seems good with Crucible of Worlds, which is a two of in both decks. Because the majority of your win conditions are 2/2s, without Crucible you cannot swing into anything but an empty board. Plus swinging with Mishra’s Factory is incredibly slow. Back when I was testing a deck that killed with Goblin Charbelcher, not doing lethal for two or three turns when I had a window was pretty pathetic; I cannot imagine having to keep the board empty for five to ten turns while I spend two or four mana every turn. Compare it versus any of Threshold’s creatures on the numbers. Threshold pays two mana for a 4/4. Landstill pays two mana every turn for a 2/2 that dodges mass removal. I’d much rather just play better and more creatures.

Who cares what I think, right? Landstill keeps performing well at tournaments. Well… yes and no. From the results, we can see that Landstill does either very well or very poorly, and it is often the same players in both cases. More to the point, any deck can perform well with a strong pilot and the right matchups. It is my belief that every time Landstill does well, the deck’s pilot would have performed as well or better had they played a strong aggro-control deck instead. Extended provides a classic example. At the beginning of the Extended season, Psychatog looked something like this:

4 Seat of the Synod
2 Vault of Whispers
4 Watery Grave
1 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
7 Island
4 Psychatog
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
3 Damnation
3 Repeal
3 Vedalken Shackles
4 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Cunning Wish
2 Fact or Fiction
4 Counterspell
3 Condescend
3 Spell Snare
3 Duress

By the end of the season it had evolved into the popular Trinket Tog deck, looking something like this:

4 Seat of the Synod
1 Vault of Whispers
4 Watery Grave
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
6 Island
1 Swamp
4 Trinket Mage
4 Dark Confidant
3 Fathom Seer
3 Psychatog
2 Damnation
2 Vedalken Shackles
4 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Sensei’s Divining Top
4 Counterspell
3 Duress
3 Counterbalance
1 Engineered Explosives

It traded away the expensive Fact or Fictions away for things like Dark Confidant and Fathom Seer that can attack and block, as well as being much cheaper. The addition of extra creatures gives you access to the Counterbalance / Sensei’s Divining Top package as well as virtual immunity to creature removal by not caring. The overall amount of control elements dropped, but that decrease is balanced by an increased ability to find your Duresses and Counterbalances. The fact is that decks like the original Psychatog need to remove every threat. An opposing Werebear or even Silver Knight has the potential to win the game outright if the control deck cannot find the answer in time. Here, if you have to, you can double block the Werebear or even just stick a Fathom Seer in front to chump block. Even better, Trinket Mage can chump block for a turn and find you Engineered Explosives.

Since we are talking about Psychatog, this past weekend’s The Mana Leak Open presented us a split in the finals Day 1 featuring Kyle Dargan’s Psychatog deck. Here is the decklist:

Psychatog

Kyle Dargan

Test deck on 03-11-2007

Legacy

Creatures (3)

3 Psychatog

Lands (23)

Spells (34)

Sideboard

Yes, this list features only three Brainstorms, but also a whopping sixteen slots simply devoted to drawing cards. By his own account, Kyle’s Psychatog deck basically cannot beat Goblins, especially in game ones. Kyle’s logic for playing this deck was that he noticed an unusually small number of Goblin players in the metagame, although other accounts differ. With all the counters and the bombs of Pernicious Deed and Vedalken Shackles, there is a lot of game against other decks in the format (although there could stand to be some anti-combo or anti-control slots in the sideboard to fetch with Cunning Wish).

I would not want to play the deck as written above, although it was obviously a fine choice in the metagame. Personally I just do not feel comfortable playing a deck that cannot beat the most popular deck in the format. If I had to play the deck, I see three directions. The first is to keep it as a monolithic control deck. I think you want to cut the Fact or Fictions and the Circular Logics (possibly moving a Fact or Fiction to the board to Wish for). You fit the fourth Brainstorm into the maindeck and run some sort of anti-aggro package in the maindeck; possibly even something as simple as a set of Stifles to stop Threshold’s fetchlands and Goblins’s Ringleaders and Lackeys. Option two is to set the deck up like other Loam Tog builds proposed and fit in a set of Nimble Mongeese as an anti-aggro package and alternate win condition, optionally with Genesis backup. The alternative that seems most promising to me is to make the deck not focused around Psychatog. I would be very curious to see how the deck functioned if you removed some of the draw and more expensive control elements in favor of a set of Nimble Mongeese and Werebears. You would never need Berserk or Corpse Dance, because Psychatog only needs to score from 10 instead of 20. Alternatively, you would cut the Accumulated Knowledges and use the Fact or Fiction as a draw engine that is not reliant on the graveyard. You have better men against Goblins and stronger draw / counters and Vedalken Shackles against Threshold. All of the narrow hate that punishes Psychatog, like Pithing Needle and Swords to Plowshares, becomes less effective if your primary plan is simply to turn Nimble Mongeese and Werebears sideways. Again, this is just the sort of hybridization logic that I feel helps make stronger Legacy decks.

So what is my kill mechanism of choice? At the moment, I prefer Nimble Mongeese, Jotun Grunts, Nantuko Monastery, and Serra Avengers. These creatures are just so powerful and cheap that any one of them can easily go the distance. I dislike Werebear only because Jotun Grunt feels stronger in that it is also a 4/4 for two mana, but it has full stats the whole time and it offers nominal disruption versus graveyard based decks. There is only a one-turn difference between killing with Jotun Grunt and killing with Morphling, but there is a world of difference between resolving a Grunt and a Morphling. If your opponent resolves Swords to Plowshares on your Morphling, you are going to lose the game. There is no way a control player can invest that much in time and resources on the first Morphling to be able to find and resolve a second Morphling in time to win the game. On the flip side, if you run twelve or more creatures, you can afford to have some killed or countered. Sometimes you do not even have to take awful Fact or Fiction splits just to preserve your single remaining win condition. When a single creature does not have to win from twenty, the entire game becomes easier to win. I have never been upset when my opponent used an Swords to Plowshares on my Jotun Grunt because I did not need that creature to win, but it becomes a real hassle to protect Psychatog from Swords to Plowshares. All I want to do is put enough creatures on the table that my opponent cannot remove them all. After all, “It’s the last fatty that kills you.” The only difference is that my 3/3s and 4/4s (the “fatties” of the format) are actually cheaper than the ever-prevalent Goblins of the format. Nantuko Monastery might be the strongest playable creature in Legacy, second only to Mystic Enforcer. The first strike (which many players forget about) lets it rule the ground, and it taps for mana as well, making it an easy fit. More and more I find myself fitting two or three into my control decks.

If I had to play Psychatog in a monolithic style control deck, I certainly would not plan on attacking with it. The only way I ever felt comfortable casting Psychatog is if I planned to win immediately. Sure, it is possible to use Persecute or Duress and lots of counters to stop the Threshold or Goblin player from killing your Psychatog long enough for it to cross the red zone with the help of Berserk. But why would you bother? All my future plans for Psychatog involve cast Cunning Wish and getting Fling first. Especially if the Threshold player expects you to get Berserk, they are going to frontload their hand with Swords to Plowshares, all of which you blank with Fling. If you resolve each pump separately instead of stacking them, each opposing Gempalm Incinerator and Swords to Plowshares simply counters one pump, instead of killing the creature. Just make sure you can protect Tog. This is tragic only because the cards Cunning Wish can fetch are much less effective than the ones Burning Wish can fetch. Burning Wish gets game winners like Persecute, Duress, Haunting Echoes, Pyroclasm, Deep Analysis, and Shattering Spree. The best Cunning Wish can do is fetch bounce or spot removal.

I do not hate control in Legacy, nor do I hate the color Blue. I think Threshold and my previous U/W/R deck are both solid decks in the format; I just hate counters. I keep finding that most of the time I only want counterspells to beat combo decks. This is a sure sign that I should be running some package of hand disruption and removal instead. The only reason I have not cut Blue entirely from U/W/R or similar aggro-control decks is because Brainstorm is just that good. Still, because of Threshold’s poor matchup versus Goblins and its occasional difficulty with hate, I feel like the future of the format is an aggro-board control hybrid instead of an aggro-blue control hybrid. I feel like a lot of the Extended builds like Aggro-Loam suggest strong potential for the format, and I encourage deckbuilders to look that way.

Kevin Binswanger
Anusien everywhere
[email protected]