With all of Amonkhet revealed, a new control deck was born. U/W Control was my first thought, and I have been working on it diligently since the first cards were previewed. I mentioned a few times through my articles, social media, and out loud to friends that the bannings a few days ago would create a whole new world of possibilities in Standard. With that mindset, I crafted together a masterpiece of a deck, only to have both Saheeli Combo and Mardu Vehicles survive Monday’s announcement and continue to plague the format.
I shifted to a more synergy-driven strategy using Drake Haven, which yielded positive results against Mardu and control decks but still struggled mightily against Saheeli Combo. This article was going to be written with a somber tone, releasing a sweet deck for you amazing people to try, but I would have admitted the serious flaws against the best deck in the format.
With a single emergency banning, everything now has completely changed.
I will admit that the frustration from writing an entire article and then having to go back and change everything is irritating, but that nuisance was well worth it. Standard was an absolute trainwreck with the combo’s presence, but now the floodgates for innovation are open. Pro Tour Amonkhet went from a future Top 8 devoid of ingenuity to one of mystery and intrigue. I don’t think Mardu can take on the full force of new strategies emerging out of the new set, or even old ones that deploy Ishkanah, Grafwidow. B/G Delirium/Midrange will reemerge as a predator, hunting down Mardu with precision. That, along with all innovative decks showcased in a few weeks, will create room for our Drake Havens, Torrential Gearhulks, and planeswalker tap-out strategies to flourish.
In the article that I just incinerated before writing this one, I had a U/W Control list there that was going to be retired due to its ineffectiveness against Four-Color Saheeli. The deck now is back at Team Lingering Souls HQ, being tuned for the big show in a few weeks. Sadly, I had to recall it to make the appropriate changes, and the team is excited about it being a possible contender for all of us to get behind.
I didn’t get permission to release this U/R Drake Haven deck, but my personality doesn’t provide me the skills to withhold decklists like the big shots do. I take immense pride in the fact that I play the lists that I write about, which is not always the case in the professional community. I have played over 30 matches with this list, and I think a few cards can change slightly with the removal of combo from the Standard metagame.
Creatures (17)
Lands (23)
Spells (20)
I know this isn’t the usual control brew; however, it is a deck that was left for dead in the old Standard and is now revitalized. Drake Haven has given a power boost to this deck, and provides easy wins without the help from Prized Amalgam. In the old U/R Emerge decks, starts without Prized Amalgam were embarrassing. Players were forced to spend the early turns desperately digging for both a Stichwing Skaab and Prized Amalgam or drop a Fevered Visions that caused an immediate loss on occasion.
Fevered Visions is an embarrassing card against Mardu, Four-Color Saheeli, or any aggressive deck that someone threw together. Howling Mine never works out for the player casting it unless they are paired against some poor control player who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Drake Haven absolves us from having those three-mana enchantment woes.
Casting a Drake Haven on turn 3 makes the next turn very painful for your opponent. The thirteen early discard outlets provide you with an opportunity to ditch a Stitchwing Skaab or Advanced Stichwing for a slightly worse upcoming turn. The enchantment resolves the following turn, and then things get exciting. Turn 4, you pitch a couple of cards, get two Drake Haven triggers, create two Drakes, and get back Stitchwing Skaab and even any Prized Amalgams that you may have been fortunate enough to draw. The consistency of this deck has been astounding, allowing for these consistently explosive turns to happen like clockwork. With the combo deck being extinguished, these types of starts are tough for slower decks to handle.
The elephant in the room is the Mardu matchup. There are some starts from the last busted deck standing that crush even the most consistent, powerful starts from U/R Drake Haven. The ways to fix this issue are to include Kozilek’s Return in the maindeck, add additional cheap removal (like Magma Spray), and have a powerful Nahiri’s Wrath turn to sweep the battlefield before going off. The matchup can be evened by tailoring this deck to beat it, but be careful. Tweaking these types of decks too much will ruin the consistency and make them worse all around. The following cards cannot be cut, and the numbers cannot be changed:
That leaves Fiery Temper and a couple of one-ofs as your only options for maindeck alterations. Sideboarding gets a bit easier, because the removal in the maindeck may be worthless against some matchups. Those removal spells become Negate, Fevered Visions, and Chandra, Torch of Defiance, giving the deck that old U/R Emerge feel. The maindeck as-is was hovering around 40% against Mardu but a huge favorite against the other decks in our gauntlet. Those kinds of results have made me confident that there is a spot for this in the new, upcoming Standard.
True Control
I can’t leave you all hanging completely. This U/R Drake Haven deck is the real deal, but I want to at least provide you all with some prototypes of control lists that I threw together for testing after the full set was released.
Creatures (3)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (26)
Spells (28)
Creatures (5)
Lands (26)
Spells (29)
These are two of the base decks that I crafted a few weeks ago, and not much has really changed since. I mentioned earlier that I recalled a U/W Control list after the surprise banning which did not include Drake Haven. The U/W Control list I posted here does, and I honestly don’t know which strategy I am going to go with at Pro Tour Amonkhet.
I feel very strongly about control’s matchup against the unknown entities of this format because the new spells are so powerful. The amount of exile that U/W Control has access to makes it formidable against Mardu, and the best removal spells are still resting in the U/B strategy. I don’t think a third color will outweigh the cost of taxing the manabase.
I get bummed sometimes when I have a ton of basics on the battlefield with no creature-lands, but then I remember all the games where my Esper Control manabase had “enters the battlefield tapped” written all over it. The mana for two-color control in this format isn’t exciting or flashy, but it is consistent. My lands enter the battlefield untapped most the time, and cycling has made constantly missing land drops a problem of the past.
The real loser for control decks is Torrential Gearhulk. The card is powerful, but Glimmer of Genius is simply not an option anymore. The blue flash still is a mandatory piece of any control strategy, but playing four and drawing a couple of premium cards with scry are things of the past.
Pull from Tomorrow is the new control powerhouse, and it has revolutionized the way we should build. Pull from Tomorrow will be an automatic four-of in all my control decks because it’s just too powerful to play less. Sphinx’s Revelation started off as a two-of and gradually capped off at four as people realized what the card was capable of. This “draw X” spell is right up there with it, even without the potent lifegain attached. My teammate Donald Smith joked around about having Pull from Tomorrow as the only win condition of the deck, eventually convincing opponents to just concede due to the raw card disadvantage they have faced all game. Even though he was kidding, it’s not far from how the games play out.
Pull from Tomorrow is a card that I happily cast after a Fumigate, drawing four cards and burying my opponent in card advantage. The instant-speed control saver can also be ditched on turn 4 to hit land drops with unused mana at the end of turn. Playing four copies in the deck allow us to be more liberal in when we use it, and I promise that you’ll forget all about Glimmer of Genius after a few matches with this in your deck.
The only reason I have copies of Hieroglyphic Illumination in the deck is in case my Torrential Gearhulk has nothing to counter or kill the turn I cast it. The four-mana draw-two is an insurance policy, and the energy provided by a potential Glimmer of Genius goes unused in the new Standard. There weren’t many opportunities to use energy outside of Dynavolt Tower for control users, so this isn’t much of an issue.
Both decks are ready for tuning, and sideboards will be developed as we refigure out the metagame. Since all our testing was done with both Tier 1 decks being banned, we are going to have to reevaluate some card choices before a polished list is ready to go. The Mardu deck we tested against didn’t have Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, but it was still quite potent despite that. Now, with the best planeswalker locked in Standard, I’ll have to report back if the percentages change at all.
I hope one of these three decks provides you some excitement for the new Standard, because I am personally ecstatic! I’ll be working on my U/W Control list with no Drake Haven for the next few weeks, which you will all see at Pro Tour Amonkhet. Team Lingering Souls, sponsored by our friends at Quality Beast, will be interviewed by the Magic Historian, Brian David-Marshall, a few days before the event. That interview will shed some light on how our team came to be and the steps taken during preparation.
Take a list, tune it toward your liking, and take this new Standard by storm. Good luck this weekend at #SCGATL!