Planeswalkers have revolutionized the way we all play Magic. The use of planeswalkers for me has felt mandatory rather than depending on the metagame. In every control deck I have crafted since the release of the earliest planeswalkers, I have included them in my arsenal ready to use in any tournament at any time.
Does this mean they have improved the game? That question is one that can be debated for a long period of time, but the point is moot because planeswalkers are here to stay. WotC is very proud of their creation and the popularity of them is through the roof among players of all types. Casual players opening packs are ecstatic when they crack a Sorin, Lord of Innistrad and get to play him in one of their kitchen table deck, whereas competitive players are excited to order a set of them online and try them in their latest brew.
The power of the card type planeswalker is unmatched in this game. They’re reusable, removal spells, win conditions, and answers all built in single cards. If planeswalkers weren’t printed I’d still be a control hawk, but that doesn’t change the fact that they revolutionized the way we play control. Tapping out is OK when it’s for one of these monsters and they create a safety net to protect you when you drop one.
Garruks: Blocker
Liliana of the Veil: Diabolic Edict
Sorin, Lord of Innistrad: Blocker
Elspeth Tirel: Blockers
Karn Liberated: Removal
These standard planeswalkers all have the ability to protect it and you when casted. I could list all the planeswalkers that have rotated as well, but I’m sure you get the picture. After planeswalkers were printed, control players had the ability to change their style of play up and play more proactively.
It seems that the window to be a bit slower and tap out often has closed since rotation. Delver and Humans make it difficult to play sorcery-speed Magic and Magic players even gave up playing creatures in control decks. When I saw the popularity of using Nephalia Drownyard as way to victory, I knew it was time to go down a different road and make planeswalkers work again.
The best planeswalkers have been in white for a long period of time. I’ve been battling with U/B Control since my Bloodghast tech prior to rotation and my desperate introduction of Curse of Death’s Hold in recent times to defeat Delver. It seems that lately I’ve been an outlet for innovation when it only requires a one-to-three card alteration. Although I enjoy seeing people playing Curse of Death’s Hold maindeck across the board in all control decks as I enjoyed everyone using Bloodghast in U/B Control, I think it’s time to come up with a brand new control deck to start off the new format.
This leads me down the road of Gideon Jura, Elspeth Tirel and of course Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. The printing of Evolving Wilds also pushed me into the tri-color world, which I’ve never been comfortable doing. I see the ease and the safety of playing more than two colors, but the cost never seemed to pay off with extra benefits. I have always been able to manage with a two-color handicap, but these planeswalkers in conjunction are just too damn good.
Playing three colors in a tap out control deck allows for a great maindeck and sideboard that can defend against any of the Tier 1 or 2 decks out there. White gives way for better answers to the control mirror and a powerful spell in Celestial Purge that can answer permanents that can easily defeat control otherwise. The three-color shell also allows for a planeswalker party in the order of Liliana of the Veil, into Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, into Gideon Jura/Elspeth Tirel, and capping off with Karn Liberated. Even if you do any two of those in a row the end result for your opponent will be devastation.
Control decks have always been cold to a resolved planeswalker and their best answer is to counter it, otherwise it resolves and ticks upward to an ultimate that ends the game with ease. The ability to make a threat every turn also presents a problem that control decks fall to.
Aggro decks facing these planeswalkers have a different problem on their hands. Aggro players tend to waste multiple cards to deal with one planeswalker and if that trend continues throughout the game the aggro player will run out of steam and lose miserably. Every time I resolve a Liliana against red it always eats a creature and a Gut Shot. That doesn’t sound amazing, but you have to remember that Magic is a game of resources and the one who utilizes those resources best is the one that emerges the victor most of the time.
Celestial Purge removes threats that control cringes at the site of. Here are a few things that make Celestial Purge look like an all-star:
- Goodbye, Koth
- Adios, Sorin
- See ya, Huntmaster
- Exile that Chandra’s Phoenix
- Exile every non-Shrine card in the red arsenal
- Dominate any Zombie deck with ease
- Murder Grave Titan
- Snapcaster, do it again
A great sideboard is the key!
Rarely does a sideboard card get me super excited, but this one does. I heard and saw some criticisms at the amount of Celestial Purge I chose to battle with last weekend, and the reason was I expected a lot of the new cards and Zombie decks to show some popularity. I did run into Zombies against a competent StarCityGames.com employee round 3 and without Celestial Purge I would’ve lost badly.
The recurring threats that were printed make it tough to survive without removing them from the game once and for all. I would, however, drop the number of Purges to three because the popularity wasn’t as high as I thought it would be. The great thing about playing a control deck with a ton of planeswalkers is that the amount of dead cards in the maindeck is minimal and you’re able to defeat the majority of the field with your main 60.
Another great sideboard card is Geist of Saint Traft. He was an all-star in the mirror match and made the game unwinnable very quickly for most control variants upon resolution. Opponents are eager to get to game 2 to board out all of those Black Sun’s Zenith or Day of Judgment, leaving them susceptible to the massive damage the little guy can do. I play him very aggressively on the play, slamming him into play right away. If they’re missing a Mana Leak the game is nearly in the bag, because only a Liliana of the Veil (a two-of in most decks) can save them now.
More often than not in my matches they don’t have the answer at the beginning and holding back the Geist results in a wasted opportunity. The worst-case scenario is that they have the answer, then you make it rain with the remainder of your planeswalker threats and card draw…which will result in victory the majority of the time.
The Geist teamed up with Praetor’s Grasp allows for a powerful sideboarded deck against the control mirror, and that is necessary for anyone who just picks up a deck without much experience or practice in the current metagame. Ali Aintrazi has championed Praetor’s Grasp for a while now, and I also think it’s a powerhouse in the control mirror. Simply removing their Karn Liberated so they cannot play it the entire game is pretty good, but having their win conditions has led me to many wins against a variety of control mages.
Sometimes the sideboard sucks…
Mistakes were made when making the old sideboard however. I refused to believe it, but here for all of you to see I admit defeat with Timely Reinforcements. I could not accept that the card was inherently weak against aggro decks and even Red Deck Wins. How could a card that gains you six life and makes three blockers be bad in Standard? It took an SCG Open and some playing prior to that to realize the error in my ways and luckily before the tournament I cut the Reinforcements down to one. Of course I drew that one-of throughout the tournament like a champion and each time it either did nothing or I got beat less severely.
The true fallacy in the card is the idea that it creates blockers because in this day and age they don’t block anything. Against red they have Chandra’s Phoenix, Grim Lavamancer, and Goblin Fireslingers and if you’re lucky you’re able to triple block a Stormblood Berserker so they have a use for a Gut Shot or Volt Charge and leave you with nothing. Sometimes it became a burden to draw the spell, and if it was any other anti-aggro card it would’ve been better. The Token decks, Humans, and Delver all fly over your men and even if you could block them they are always bigger. At this point in time we should all give up on Timely Reinforcements for Standard. I will definitely let you guys know when I change my mind on the card, but for the time being there will be zero in my 75.
Another mistake was not having any sideboard for Wolf Run. I wrote the deck off as a weak Tier 2 deck that wouldn’t see play and I wasn’t too far off. The big mistake was having no real sideboard cards for the matchup, and that’s never a good thing. It’s always beneficial to have some answers in the board for every matchup that could be out there instead of trying to win on the power of your maindeck. Wolf Run (especially after its performance at Pro Tour Dark Ascension) is a deck to beat and will join the ranks of Delver and Humans at the top of the totem pole.
This popularity will only increase with the surge in consistency that Huntmaster of the Fells provides. He has enough value in one card that it allows awkward draws to balance out with a turn 3 answer to aggressive decks. He’s obviously pretty decent against control, but his true value comes from being simply better than any single creature for his mana cost. I could go into further detail about how good the Werewolf is, but thank the stars he is a red/green card. That handicap allows us to pack a few more anti-Wolf Run cards in the board, and we should be able to defeat it with the similar ease that control decks had in this matchup previously.
The state of the Control Union is still strong.
Since the birth of U/B in the previous metagame, control has been able to hold its own, and it’s no different now. The planeswalker control deck I present to you today as well as the various multi-color control lists all have the capability of beating the aggressive decks and the ramp decks. With that in mind, there’s no reason to worry about harsh Pro Tour results and the lack of planeswalkers running around. You don’t need me to lecture like I have in previous articles where I delve into the psyche of a control, aggro, and combo player…but people give up too easy on expensive sorceries that remove creatures from play and control the game with power.
I guarantee if you test a control deck with maindeck Curse of Death’s Hold as well as have enough counter magic/removal for the ramp decks between your maindeck and sideboard, you’ll have success in the current field. The main misconception about control is that it’s good in this time period and bad in another, where that is never the case. I’ll say it now as I have always said it before.
Control is NEVER unplayable.
The time period where the Fae lurked up to now where Spirits come down at instant speed, can flash back, and are easily packed with an array of counter magic…control perseveres. I do admit that in some instances control is weaker than in others, but you can always win a tournament when packing mass removal, card draw, and planeswalkers. Let us visit the new era of Planeswalker Control.
Creatures (4)
Planeswalkers (9)
Lands (26)
Spells (21)
- 4 Mana Leak
- 3 Think Twice
- 3 Day of Judgment
- 2 Go for the Throat
- 3 Curse of Death's Hold
- 2 Forbidden Alchemy
- 2 Lingering Souls
- 2 Tragic Slip
Sideboard
This deck shouldn’t surprise any reader that has visited an article of mine in the past. This list has been slightly altered since the Richmond Open and the biggest changes you will notice are in the sideboard. In the maindeck, I have changed out Doom Blade for Tragic Slip, Lingering Souls for the Ratchet Bomb, and dropped Elspeth for a third day of judgment.
Elspeth is great against Zombies and a few other decks, but for the most part the inability for the creatures to block evasion creatures causes her to get the short end of the stick in most of my control lists. Lingering Souls is something that Gerard Fabiano suggested at the Open, and I conveyed that information to Orrin Beasley and Pat Cox who suited up with similar Planeswalker Control builds for the Pro Tour. As you can check out in Orrin’s deck tech, the Lingering Souls are very useful in many situations.
I do however feel that playing four of them in a control deck is borderline insane because control depends on the variety of answers and threats that it has the capability of using in order to beat a slew of different archetypes. Confining your deck to four Lingering Souls puts enemy Curse of Death’s Hold at full activity…shutting down nearly all of your win conditions. This negative combined with how fragile Gideon Jura is can lead to awkward control mirrors where you are simply outclassed. I found that two Lingering Souls gave me the opportunity to abuse the power using Liliana of the Veil, Forbidden Alchemy, or simply a threat/blocker creation with repetition. Playing only two allows those opportunities to present themselves, but the deck plays out fine when that isn’t the case.
I pride myself in the ability to create a list that has all the tools necessary to not only defeat the metagame, but also to ensure success against the control mirror. There is nothing I hate more than getting whooped by another control deck, and I always second-guess card choices when that occurs. Luckily it happens very rarely because of the weapons at my disposal in the sideboard as well as having a control-tight main deck. Orrin and Pat also cut out the Consecrated Sphinx for the same reason people before have dropped it. For you guys I have one word of advice….
Don’t do it.
Consecrated Sphinx is still the best win condition that control has to offer. What of the masses warned not to play Baneslayer Angel due to the popularity of Jund who can just Maelstrom Pulse it away? Would that be enough to toss her in the trash? Because people play answers to Consecrated Sphinx and it’s a target for removal means absolutely nothing now and absolutely nothing in the future.
The popularity of a piece of spot removal let it be Vapor Snag, Doom Blade, Path to Exile, or Swords to Plowshares shouldn’t deter powerful win conditions from being played. A control deck that depends on a land to win by milling or a planeswalker that pumps out 1/1s has a severe handicap that should’ve never existed. On Magic Online, in current real life, and in previous experiences I have won on the back of a Consecrated Sphinx or Grave Titan and not the planeswalkers that accompany them.
The way the deck plays out and the way other control decks play out is that you exhaust their resources with Liliana and an array of card advantage, planeswalker distractions, and battles over small things. When all the dust settles you then drop the Sphinx Almighty, not before. Against Wolf Run almost every match goes counter, removal, hand disruption, Snapcaster Mage, counter….boom Sphinx dead. I hope you enjoyed that oversimplified series of events in a matchup, but it’s the truth! I ask that all readers question any mage who tries to paint this picture of fiction…your opponent holding multiple dead removal spells and you casting a Sphinx that creates an emotional utopian situation for said opponent.
That is an ultra, mega rare occurrence; play Consecrated Sphinx with confidence.
The main changes that occurred in the sideboard were more of a fine-tuning of a badly built one in the previous list. The Despise is the big addition and that’s mainly for Wolf Run. Despise compliments the minimal counter magic and early planeswalkers that we present so well that the matchup increased ten-fold with just the three added. If Wolf Run still presents a problem to you, however, you can easily cut the Praetor’s Grasp and one Batterskull or Celestial Purge for two Flashfreeze. Â
It really depends on the frequency of Wolf Run after its performance at Worlds and if you can manage to win without them. The Ratchet Bombs are great and weren’t too bad in the maindeck, but the sideboard is where they belong. The big weakness of Ratchet Bomb is it’s ineffectiveness against non-planeswalker control mirrors and Wolf Run, so having them for games 2 and 3 against Humans, Tokens, and Delver isn’t the end of the world.
I wasn’t going to include any Modern in this article, but due to popular demand after my last podcast on the Eh Team I decided what the hell….so here is the masterpiece that I attempted to push on the airwaves.
Creatures (15)
- 1 Bile Urchin
- 4 Protean Hulk
- 2 Body Double
- 4 Magus of the Bazaar
- 1 Reveillark
- 2 Viscera Seer
- 1 Snapcaster Mage
Lands (21)
Spells (24)
Sorry that there is no sideboard for this, but I haven’t had a chance to play this wonderful list since the podcast. It all started with a few jokes about the deck I played at Pro Tour Philadelphia, and one of the guests mentioned that Faithless Looting makes this deck a whole lot better. The loss of Preordain and Ponder hurts, but Faithless Looting does fill that gap in some fashion. If you heard the podcast I was on you also heard that I forced to make a pact with them and all listeners to play this deck at the next PTQ or whatever Modern tournament we’d all attend.
If you’re feeling some Hulk Looting and want to help innovate it to the top of the Tier 3 bracket….to arms! All jokes aside, I do feel that the deck isn’t bad…not saying it’s better than Splinter Twin, but it’s also a two-card combo that can catch opponents off guard with a turn 3 win. Give it a shot and let me know how it does for you if you dare.
Thanks as always for reading and supporting me ladies and gentlemen. I have met a bunch of awesome people that compliment and give constructive criticism, and it’s never a bad thing. So if you see me at an SCG Open or GP come by, say hi, and talk about how control will always be better than Primeval Titan or Stromkirk Noble. GP Baltimore is next weekend; I will be attending it for sure and can guarantee my deck having at least eight-to-ten planeswalkers. I suggest for all that are going to at least sleeve up some Liliana of the Veil and a Karn Liberated, but if you’re feeling brave and want to play a planeswalker on every relevant turn give Planeswalker Control a shot this weekend. You won’t be disappointed. Until next time friends.