Well, Odyssey becomes legal on Thursday, and many a player has been preparing. Not one to be left behind, I’ve been modifying my decks to be compatible with the new format. I’ve decided to keep my B/U/W control deck as my main deck of choice, having had much good fortune with it over the last couple months. It’s about this deck that I wish to talk this week. I’m going to go step-by-step through my thought processes as I came up with my Odyssey-legal version of the deck. If you’d like to see the morphology of a deck from expansion to expansion, read on.
For reference, here’s the pre-Odyssey version:
4x Counterspell
4x Dromar’s Charm
4x Absorb
4x Undermine
2x Nether Spirit
3x Fact or Fiction
4x Accumulated Knowledge
2x Tsabo’s Web
4x Vindicate
3x Wrath of God
2x Rout
4x Adarkar Wastes
4x Underground River
4x Coastal Tower
4x Salt Marsh
5x Island
3x Plains
Sideboard:
15x cards that changed each tournament, always including 1 Misdirection, 1 Aura Fracture, 3 Millstones, and 1 Legacy Weapon
Here’s a quick rundown: Get out lots of lands. Counter stuff, dealing nine to twelve damage with Undermine. Get Nether Spirit into play. Attack four to eight times. Wrath when necessary.
I found this deck to be extremely successful. In a control-heavy environment, it could usually out-counter other control decks while having Nether Sprit give them fits. Against beatdown decks (i.e., Fires), five Wrath effects came in handy. My favorite sideboard maneuver would be to bring in the Millstones and take out the Nether Spirits for game two, in order to nullify any anti-Spirit tech my opponent might be utilizing. You’d be surprised how many times that worked. 🙂
So, all in all, I loved playing this super-control deck. But with Nether Spirit gone, I need to totally rework the deck. No longer will a creature or two plus four Undermines win me the game. Time to switch gears. But in which direction should I turn? I first looked at Jon Finkel Invitational deck, listed below:
2x Absorb
4x Counterspell
4x Dromar’s Charm
4x Fact or Fiction
4x Recoil
4x Vindicate
2x Dromar, the Banisher
4x Meddling Mage
4x Shadowmage Infiltrator
4x Spectral Lynx
4x Adarkar Wastes
4x Caves of Koilos
4x Coastal Tower
1x Darkwater Catacombs
4x Salt Marsh
3x Skycloud Expanse
4x Underground River
Sideboard:
4x Duress
3x Disenchant
3x Hibernation
3x Dodecapod
2x Lashknife Barrier
My first thought was that this deck has six fewer counterspells than I’m used to. Anyone who reads my work often knows that I’m a control player at heart, and I’d much rather Undermine a Spiritmonger than block it indefinitely with Spectral Lynx. Finkel’s deck is a shining example of the new breed of Aggro-Control decks I discussed a couple weeks ago. I, however, would like to see how my deck idea can function in this environment before going over to the more aggressive version of the deck. So I looked at Finkel’s deck and compared it to mine. Here’s what I came up with.
My counters:
4x Undermine
4x Absorb
4x Dromar’s Charm
4x Counterspell
His counters:
2x Absorb
4x Counterspell
4x Dromar’s Charm
So I have an extra two Absorbs and four Undermines. What does he have instead? Two Charms and four Spectral Lynxes.
My removal:
3x Wrath of God
2x Rout
4x Vindicate
4x Dromar’s Charm
His removal:
4x Vindicate
4x Recoil
4x Dromar’s Charm
2x Dromar, the Banisher?
4x Meddling Mage
I’ve got Wraths, he’s got Mages. They can’t coexist. I think, personally, that Dromar is overkill and will not be including it in my deck.
My card draw:
3x Fact or Fiction
4x Accumulated Knowledge
2x Tsabo’s Web
His card draw:
4x Fact or Fiction
4x Shadowmage Infiltrator
With no Accumulated Knowledge, Finkelmage is an excellent replacement.
My win conditions:
4x Undermine
2x Nether Spirit
His win conditions:
2x Dromar, the Banisher
4x Meddling Mage
4x Shadowmage Infiltrator
4x Spectral Lynx
He’s much more beatdown than I am.
My lands:
4x Adarkar Wastes
4x Underground River
4x Salt Marsh
4x Coastal Tower
5x Island
3x Plains
His lands:
4x Adarkar Wastes
4x Caves of Koilos
4x Coastal Tower
1x Darkwater Catacombs
4x Salt Marsh
3x Skycloud Expanse
4x Underground River
So the major difference between our decks: Mine’s more controllish and has global removal, and his is more beatdown with more global removal. Our card-drawing capabilities are about the same. Additionally, his lands are more diverse and less uniform than mine are.
My next idea was to take these similarities and differences and mold them into an effective deck. Wanting to keep more control cards, I tried to see where I could get away with cutting some of the beatdown. Since I like the idea of Meddling Mage and Shadowmage Infiltrator a lot, I’ll definitely be keeping those in. However, in lieu of Spectral Lynx, I decided I would run Undermine. Reasoning: Spectral Lynx is used, in my opinion, as a defensive creature that can turn aggro when no one’s looking. It blocks Spiritmonger and other beats ad infinitum. My choice of Undermine, in comparison to that, performs a slightly different purpose. Instead of dealing with an existing threat, I can stop the threat from ever coming into play. At the same time, I can deal my opponent three damage, making me need less beatdown in the long run, therefore making the addition of Undermine almost symbiotic with removing a creature.
Now, upon deciding to keep in the Meddling Mages and Shadowmage Infiltrators, I had to definitely take out the Wrath effects. That gave me ample space to add Recoil to the deck. As an aside, I think that Recoil will turn out to be just amazing in this format because of the token critters created by Call of the Herd and its ilk. Not only does it get rid of the creature, but it also forces a discard from the hand. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. The fifth Wrath effect slot also allows me to put in a fourth Fact or Fiction.
Now – about those Dromars. I think they’re very unnecessary and pretty much overkill in this deck, costing way too much for an unneeded benefit… So I took them out and put back two Absorbs. My main deck then looks like this:
4x Absorb
4x Undermine
4x Counterspell
4x Dromar’s Charm
4x Fact or Fiction
4x Vindicate
4x Recoil
4x Shadowmage Infiltrator
4x Meddling Mage
24x Land
Okay, I needed some land next. Not having any experience with the new lands from Odyssey, I decided to put a slightly altered version of Finkel’s lands into my deck, pretty much replacing the basic lands of my previous deck with nonbasics. The change I made was to take out the third Skycloud Expanse (the land that gives you UW for 1 and tap) for a second Darkwater Catacombs (the similar land for UB) because of the Undermines put in over Spectral Lynx.
So now I needed a sideboard. I figure that my deck will perform relatively well in the mirror match, but will have a hard time against beatdown decks. I also think that Finkel’s deck is better equipped to handle U/G decks, which might make themselves a force to be reckoned with. So I started by making my sideboard anti-beatdown with the following cards:
3x Wrath of God
1x Rout
4x Spectral Lynx
Now, the four Spectral Lynx gives me a little bit of a surprise factor. Just as I used to bring Millstones in for Nether Sprits, so can I now bring in Lynxes for counters to morph into a more beatdownish deck. I can also side out four creatures (Meddling Mage) and bring in Wrath effects for major beatdown decks, allowing Undermine and Shadowmage Infiltrator to take care of the win. I’m not sure if this theory will work in practice yet (I’ve had relatively little time to test this deck since its creation), but it sounds like it should be sound.
So what else am I afraid of aside from creatures? Red cards. The four red cards I’m most afraid of are, in descending order, Obliterate, Price of Glory*, Tectonic Instability, and Urza’s Rage. With my deck, I hope that my opponent will be dead before reaching twelve lands, and, if not, I can gain, at most, thirty-two life if need be. The two enchantments can be removed by Vindicate, but Recoil (unless with counter backup) is only a temporary solution. Obliterate, of course, is my worst nightmare. So, what do I plan to do about it? Well, much to my delight, this little gem is in Seventh Edition:
Sacred Ground
1W
Enchantment
Whenever a spell or ability controlled by an opponent puts a land into your graveyard from play, return that land to play.
This piece of work solves all my problems with red land destruction – and there’s not much red can do about it. Three of these make it into the sideboard.
That leaves four slots. One Legacy Weapon will be in all of my sideboards (now even more so with the possibility of Traumatize decks that win only by decking), and three Disenchants rounded the ‘board off.
All it needs is a catchy name. Well, since this deck may prove to have entirely too many control cards, I think Too Much Control is actually a fine deck name. Add that to the fact that you can never have too much control, and you’ve even made the deck name clever! So here’s the final product of an initial concept:
Too Much Control.dec v1.0
4x Absorb
4x Undermine
4x Dromar’s Charm
4x Counterspell
4x Vindicate
4x Recoil
4x Fact or Fiction
4x Shadowmage Infiltrator
4x Meddling Mage
4x Adarkar Wastes
4x Underground River
4x Caves of Koilos
4x Coastal Tower
4x Salt Marsh
2x Darkwater Catacombs
2x Skycloud Expanse
Sideboard:
3x Wrath of God
1x Rout
4x Spectral Lynx
3x Sacred Ground
3x Disenchant
1x Legacy Weapon
So the deck is built and ready to be tested. I’ve run a couple games, and it looks promising. I don’t think having no basic lands is a major hindrance, though I’m not entirely impressed with the new lands from Odyssey. I think I’ve succeeded in morphing my control deck into a successful deck for the new Type II environment. Of course, it might turn out that Jon Finkel was right all along – but what are the odds of that happening? (Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Shadowmage Infiltrator is amazing.)
If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to fire them my way. Otherwise, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of Too Much Control. Until next time!
Daniel Crane
[email protected]
* – The enchantment from Odyssey that destroys lands tapped for mana during an opponent’s turn.