I’ve been on the forefront of 4-color Control’s design for years now. Over those years, I had slipped into the habit of tweaking the deck to survive, popularizing it, letting it get invalidated (either by hate or a substantial environment shift), then again tweaking the deck to survive. That is, until I felt that the format was too broken for it to even consider.
Part I: The Ultimate Metagame Deck
Without looking too far back in ancient history like the late Oscar Tan was often fond of, I am only examining the history that is relevant to us today. The underdeveloped environment that was slowly developing has almost no resemblance to today’s Vintage scene. I feel that history with decks is interesting and sometimes helpful, but not to extent of repeating four years worth of articles here. For this piece, I’ll start with mid-2004.
4cControl was starting to make waves in a field where Exalted Angel, backed up by a Skeletal Scrying engine proved to be potent. At its peak, during the first SCG P9 tournament, 4cControl was piloted to a first place finish. The dominant decks of the day were easily Fish, Workshop Aggro, Control Slaver, and 4cControl, a metagame that would be easy to break. Sure enough at Gencon, 4cControl (and Fish) was trashed in an environment that was heavy with non-basic land hate (Back to Basic, Blood Moon, Sundering Titan, Crucible of Worlds).
This metagame shift forced the bulk of Vintage decks to run a more solid manabase with the norm being 5 basic lands. This new standard of mana development was something that 4cControl had a hard time conforming to, since it lacked the room to support both 4 colors reliably and additionally run its traditional mana denial. At the same time, a rise in decks abusing Dark Ritual created an even more complicated dynamic in which it seemed impossible for many decks to reliably compete with turn 1 combo decks and Workshop decks.
This isn’t the first time that Vintage has showed 4cControl the door. A year ago, I started a primer series on “Keeper” that I never finished. It became outdated before I could finish the second part. However, the metagaming explanation I wrote will always remain relevant.
“When Keeper is THE Deck to Beat
When Keeper is the best deck in the format, it gets caught up in hate from all directions. One such period in Vintage history where Keeper was king (and all else was second-rate) was right after Accelerated Blue (or BBS) had its key card draw spell restricted. During this time Keeper had Suicide Black starting to pack Null Rod, Sligh ran Price of Progress, mono-blue (now Ophidian-based) ran Back to Basics, and even the mirror utilizing Blood Moon in some cases.
…
What did this mean for the overall well-being of Keeper players? In some areas, Keeper won with regularity. In others, Keeper went from being the dominator of Top 8’s to losing to decks aimed to beat it.”
(sidenote: the decks found here were considered “good” once. If you’ve been bitten by the curiosity bug, give that whole series a read and your historical thirst will be quenched.)
A major difference between earlier environments and today is the number of viable decks available for use. In 2001, we had roughly six playable archetypes with only about three actually being really good choices. Today, we have a pretty long list, which makes regional metagames an important factor when attempting to make a new build of any deck.
Four years ago, people were more content to stay with a single deck and only need to change a few slots on the fly. Now, the Vintage player base is more prone not only changing around whole decks, but to switch to entirely new deck genres entirely. With that in mind, the environment can shift on a dime unless it contains something that truly deserves restriction.
“When There is Another Definitive Deck to Beat
Two of these periods come to mind – The domination of BBS and the domination of Gro-a-Tog. This was the darkest times to play Keeper, since you’re doomed to second-rate status until the imbalances are fixed. However, this is basically true no matter what else you play. When Gro-a-Tog and BBS were left unchecked, there wasn’t much standing in the way of them winning any given tournament outside of the mirror match.”
When the environment gets hit with over-dominance, the only reason to play any other deck is because you’re either stubborn, stupid, or you don’t care about winning. Unless the deck you play can be the foil of an over-dominant deck, you’re honestly best taking your chances with the mirror.
Even still, multi-colored control has enough flexibility that it normally is worth the attempt at making the deck into a foil-deck. The Germans did this with Krosan Reclamation, Oath of Druids, Yawgmoth’s Will, Grim Monolith, and Power Artifact. In a time where Tools n’ Tubbies was the definitive deck to beat, control players often went the combo route.
“When the Metagame Has Balance
…
Keeper cannot exist without constant evolution. What was once a deck that could keep the same list over the course of many new sets is now forced to change before every tournament that it plays. Type 1 as a format grew from stagnant and uninspired, to constantly evolving and unpredictable. In this respect, Keeper should be a reflection of its format. No longer should a Keeper player look over the spoiler lists to see only what possible additions to the deck there may be, but the Keeper player needs to look over all potential cards that may impact Type 1.”
Multi-colored control is the most reactive deck in Type 1’s history. Even its close cousins Tog, Meandeck Oath, Mono-Blue, and Control Slaver differ in that their game plan is to win via whichever method suites the deck. Multi-colored control exists to stop the opponent from winning. When you take this into account, it’s usually best to tweak the deck to stop what’s being played and add a win condition that best suites the environment. For example, if aggro or aggro-control were ever seriously format defining, Exalted Angel would be a perfect call.
So What List Would Work Well Against The Current Environment?
As I’ve mentioned, I’ve championed multi-colored control for years. I had success over this past summer with the Germbus Project when I collaborated with Meandeck teammate Matthieu Durand and Team CAB’s Stefan Iwasienko, Kim Kluck, and Carsten Kotter. I really thought the deck had reached its peak of success since it was making the most Top 8’s of any deck for the first time in years.
In September, I played it for the very last time at Waterbury. I over-metagamed the deck, but learned some valuable lessons from that experience. Among those lessons, I felt from that point forward that while 4cControl was caught between so many difficult dynamics, that the deck couldn’t be considered a wise deck choice. It struggled against Stax because of the vulnerable manabase, it couldn’t keep non-Dragon combo in check with only Force of Will as a defense, and it certainly couldn’t succeed in the control role against Control Slaver when so much was devoted to trying not to lose to Stax and Combo.
In November, I played Goth Slaver on a whim at a Hadley event. I was a little disappointed with the flow of the deck. On one hand, when it worked, you saw like 10 cards of your deck a turn. On the other hand, like most type 1 decks, it really had no answers to contingent situations. I’ve always been a “safe” player. I always want to minimize the cards I lose to when going into a tournament. Even when I thought that I had considered everything that I could lose to in the current environment, I lost to Ground Seal.
In January, fresh off of the holiday madness, I played Meandeck Tendrils at Waterbury after two months of preparation. The deck was the polar opposite of what I was used to playing in that rather than the deck giving an answer, it posed the questions. The two biggest strengths of the deck (speed and surprise) were outweighed by the lack of a coherent sideboarding plan. I wanted to play this deck originally because it was faster than the other combo decks, so I wouldn’t have to worry about racing them and the probability that Workshop both went first and opened with a Trinisphere was enough in our favor that the matchup wasn’t deemed difficult since we could go off unimpeded the remainder of the time. The number one card our team lost to that day was Platinum Angel.
Now, in February, we needed a deck that could survive the large amount of Control Slaver being played. Not only that, but it would need to beat both variants of the deck. The more traditional Control Slaver, championed by Rich Shay and the less accepted, but powerful Intuition-based Goth Slaver. The rest of the environment would be diverse enough to require attention towards other archetypes in order to succeed. It would need a manabase to survive Trinisphere/Crucible-based decks and something disrupting to combo.
Here was a list I had from before participating in the Meandeck Tendrils project.
//Blue Bombs
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
//White Bombs
2 Disenchant
3 Abeyance
//Draw
3 Skeletal Scrying
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
//Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Tinker
1 Demonic Tutor
//Broken
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
//Removal
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Balance
2 Isochron Scepter
//Win
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Platinum Angel
//Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Plains
3 Island
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
Sideboard
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Damping Matrix
2 Crucible of Worlds
3 Duress
1 Skeletal Scrying
2 Decree of Justice
4 Chalice of the Void
From a few nights of testing, the maindeck worked terribly. You’d get narrow effect cards a lot (Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares) and Abeyance never worked the way I wanted it to. Also, Scepter always showed up when I didn’t need it. Sure it was a beast when I could just drop it with Abeyance turn 1, but it rarely happened and it actually resolved on an even rarer occasion.
Interestingly, after sideboarding against Control Slaver and combo, the deck performed amazingly well. I would sideboard out the narrow effect white cards and Scepter while bringing in Duress, Decree, and the fourth Scrying. It performed so well, that I just altered the maindeck to be a post-board version since Duress works nicely against Trinisphere and combo as well.
A few test sessions and three or four revisions later, here is the list I would consider close to optimal for today:
//Control
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
2 Cunning Wish
4 Duress
//Draw
4 Skeletal Scrying
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ancestral Recall
//Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
//Broken
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
//Removal
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Balance
//Win
3 Decree of Justice
1 Old Man of the Sea
//Mana
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Lotus Petal
4 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
2 Island
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
Sideboard
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Disenchant
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Diabolic Edict
3 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Coffin Purge
3 Serenity
4 Chalice of the Void
I hope you enjoyed the introduction of my new build. The next article will be on card choices in multi-colored control as well as alternate card choices and a mini-report from splitting first place at Myriad Games in Salem, NH.
Steve O'Connell
Zherbus on TheManaDrain.com, StarCityGames, and IRC
Owner and Administrator of TheManaDrain.com
Zherbus at gmail.com