Mike Donais Keeps Looking at Extended Mike Donais Counterspell is a good card. It can stop almost everything. It is fairly inexpensive to cast and is great both early game and late game. It is a good card against almost every deck type. At Grand Prix Seattle, the 4 deck types that performed best overall had 4 Counterspells and 4 Force of Wills each. There is a good analysis of the top deck types at www.wizards.com/sideboard/ entitled "Grand Prix Seattle Metagame Analysis". The top 4 deck types overall were Illusions of Grandeur/Donate, Counter Sliver, Forbidian, and Oath of Druids. Of the 220 decks listed, 80 used countermagic, significantly more than the 53 decks that played Necropotence or the 26 decks that played Shock. Personally, I have always been fond of Blue Control. I first played this deck type in type 2 when Thawing Glaciers and Kjeldoran Outpost were printed. A lot has changed since then and a lot has stayed the same. In today's extended format there are a lot of ways to build this deck and every one has advantages and disadvantages. In this article I use the name 'Blue Control' to refer to any deck based around blue but possibly using other colors to control the game. There are 5 major decisions to be made about Blue Control before we can even try to optimize the individual card choices. Here are the 5 major decisions: Should the deck be Blue/White, Blue/Green, Blue/White/Green or just Mono-Blue? Should the deck run Enlightened Tutors and a lot of single cards like Null Rod or Arcane Laboratory that shuts down certain decks? Should the deck run Thawing Glaciers as part of its mana base or use mostly non-basic lands? Should the deck use Oath of Druids for creature control or should it run different kinds of removal like Swords to Plowshares, Wall of Blossoms, Hail Storm, Wrath of God, etc? How will this deck beat a mono blue deck with lots of counters, traditionally the toughest match-up for multi-colored Blue Control decks? None of these are easy questions to answer, and in all cases there is more than one answer depending on what you expect to play against most during the tournament. I built a bunch of different decks answering these questions differently each time. They all had pros and cons, almost all of them are better against certain decks and worse against others. The most popular Blue Control deck right now is without a doubt the deck Bob Maher used to win Pro Tour Chicago and Grand Prix Seattle. Bob Maher's $30000 Oath Deck (from the Sideboard) Spells: 4 Brainstorm 3 Impulse 4 Force of Will 4 Counterspell 1 Forbid 1 Disrupt 2 Gaea's Blessing 1 Morphling 1 Spike Weaver 1 Spike Feeder 4 Enlightened Tutor 2 Swords to Plowshares 2 Oath of Druids 1 Aura of Silence 1 Null Rod 1 Abundance 1 Trade Routes 1 Ivory Mask 2 Sylvan Library Land: 4 Tundra 4 Tropical Island 3 Treetop Village 1 Faerie Conclave 4 Wasteland 3 Flood Plain 1 Savannah 1 Adarkar Wastes 2 Islands Sideboard: 2 Powder Keg 1 Phyrexian Furnace 1 Compost 2 Oath of Druids 1 Crater Hellion 1 Aura of Silence 1 Circle of Protection: Red 1 Sacred Ground 2 Mana Short 3 Annul This deck uses mostly non-basic lands and therefore no Thawing Glaciers. It gains its card advantage from its powerful enchantments or by countering key spells. Like most Blue Control decks it uses blue for deck manipulation and counter magic but uses support colors to deal with creatures, enchantments, artifacts, and lands. One recent main deck change was taking out the Powder Keg leaving no tutored way to deal with an enemy Treetop Village. Still 4 Wastelands and 2 Swords to Plowshares are enough to deal with that most of the time. The deck has proven to be both consistent and strong. The reason that many blue control decks are forced to include white or green cards is because blue has always had trouble with permanents in play. In fact, fast permanents are generally what Mono-Blue loses to. A first turn Jackal Pup or Phyrexian Negator can go a long way versus Mono-Blue control decks, especially when supported by Pillage, Duress or Wasteland. Blue is forced to tap out to deal with the permanents in play (if it can deal at all) and when it does tap out, new threats are casted. However with the recent introduction of Powder Keg blue gains a cheap way to deal with artifacts, creatures and even creature lands like Treetop Village. If the Mono-Blue Control deck focuses on dealing with permanents in play then it can overcome its traditional weaknesses. Here is a Mono-Blue deck that actually deals just fine with fast creature decks. Davidian by David Jafari // Mana 2 Dust Bowl 4 Quicksand 4 Wasteland 4 Thawing Glaciers 12 Island // Creatures 2 Morphling 3 Ophidian // Search 4 Impulse // Removal 3 Nevinyrral's Disk 4 Powder Keg // Counters 1 Mana Leak 1 Dismiss 1 Annul 3 Forbid 4 Force of Will 4 Counterspell 4 Force Spike // Sideboard SB: 1 Whispers of the Muse SB: 1 Hydroblast SB: 2 Dust Bowl SB: 1 Nevinyrral's Disk SB: 2 Misdirection SB: 2 Phyrexian Furnace SB: 3 Hammerhead Shark SB: 3 Annul This deck uses an unusually high number of Quicksand, Powder Keg and Nevinyrral's Disk as its primary defense against permanents that get into play before it can counter. There is also a particularly fast selection of counter-magic in the deck. The four Force Spike, one Annul, and four Force of Will allow this deck to start countering things right away. Also the deck can still counter using these low cost spells if it is partially tapped out. All these things together make up for blue's natural weakness and turn the deck into a fearsome match-up for any other deck. In testing this deck has proven to have no serious weaknesses. The deck could handle another blue land, and in fact I added a Faerie Conclave in my personal version. If I were to play in a tournament right now this would be in my top 3 choices for decks to play. Now we have seen two of the ways that Blue Control decks can help deal with permanents in play, the first was adding white and green for spells like Swords to Plowshares and Oath of Druids, the second was to add cards like Powder Keg, Nevinyrral's Disk and Quicksand. There is another way that blue recently gained to deal with fast beatdown decks. This third method is Crumbling Sanctuary. While working on Red Beatdown earlier in the season I found that Seth Burn's Red deck (which took two of the Top 8 spots at GP Seattle) was beating lots of decks. Rather than playing red I decided to figure out what beat it. Seth told me that his worst match up was Tinker decks because of the fast game winning artifacts. I thought about that a bit, but personally didn't like the consistency of traditional Tinker decks. It could fairly consistently get out one big threat but if that threat was dealt with or even Duressed away before it was cast then the deck could sometimes just stall. Tinker decks also had serious problems with Null Rod. It just wasn't my style of deck. If I could make the deck into more of a control deck then I could play it. I would have to change it a lot though for that. I could take out the one shot mana like Mana Vault and Grim Monolith - instead I would use more consistent artifact mana like Mind Stone and Sky Diamond. A much slower deck but I was not trying to go for speed I was just trying to make a Blue Control variant that beat Red Beatdown. It had Sanctuary and Tinker of course, those were key. The problem at that point was that without the very fast win conditions of traditional Tinker decks I could still become decked. I remembered a fun deck that I had designed for Standard (Type 2) when I first saw Crumbling Sanctuary. It was a blue control deck with more than a hundred cards and in practice it worked much better than I had expected. It used Tinker, Mystical Tutor and Browse to make sure that it got what it needed. I rebuilt the deck for extended and made the deck thinner so that it would be more consistent. Mono-Blue Control/Tinker Deck by Mike Donais // Blue Deck Manipulation 2 Whispers of the Muse 4 Brainstorm 4 Impulse 4 Tinker 4 Mystical Tutor // Blue Creatures 4 Morphling // Counter magic 4 Force of Will 4 Forbid 2 Thwart 2 Miscalculation 4 Counterspell 4 Force Spike // Artifacts // vs Combo 3 Nevinyrral's Disk // vs Tinker 1 Null Rod // core, phid, elves, morph 1 Cursed Totem // Finishers 3 Phyrexian Processor 3 Masticore // Tinkerable board control 4 Urza's Bauble 4 Powder Keg 3 Phyrexian Furnace 2 Scroll Rack // Theme Cards 4 Crumbling Sanctuary 4 Browse 1 Thought Lash // Colorless Mana 4 Mind Stone 4 Wasteland 3 Dust Bowl 4 Quicksand // Blue mana 4 Sky Diamond 4 Remote Isle 4 Faerie Conclave 4 Thawing Glaciers 28 Island // Sideboard // Cards to tinker for SB: 1 Mishra's Helix SB: 1 Nevinyrral's Disk // vs. Tinker SB: 1 Null Rod // vs. Necropotence SB: 1 Winter Orb // vs. Oath's Creatures SB: 1 Jester's Cap // vs. Scald and Pebbles SB: 1 Urza's Armor // vs. Illusions/Donate SB: 1 Fountain of Youth // Blue Sideboard Cards // Mystical Tutor for these SB: 1 Turnabout SB: 1 Capsize SB: 1 Argivian Restoration SB: 1 Hibernation SB: 1 Political Trickery SB: 1 Hurkyl's Recall SB: 1 Hydroblast // vs. combo speed SB: 1 Annul This deck, which I call '134.dec', is made possible because extended has so many good cards available that even though it is double the size of a normal deck I did not have to resort to using any cards that I consider weak, or out of theme. In fact I had to work hard to take cards out of the deck sometimes. The deck plays a lot like the Mono-Blue control deck listed before it - except it has some very good answers to specific deck types. Cards like Urza's Armor will shut down Pebbles decks while a well played Jester's cap can destroy an Oath of Druids deck. If you expect a lot of either of those deck types you could play these cards main deck instead of sideboard. As it is, there are cards in the main deck that hurt these deck types but are more generally flexible, like Nevinyrral's Disk vs. Pebbles and Phyrexian Furnace vs. Oath of Druids. After much testing it became clear to me that this deck wasn't just a silly deck like my Squee decks. It actually beat creature decks, combo decks and control decks with moderate consistency. Forty-nine of the cards were cantrips or deck manipulation of some sort. That made the deck effectively much more consistent than I had expected. Another advantage of this deck is that people will underestimate it. Many people are not open minded enough to take a deck with 134 cards in it seriously. Guidelines for Building a Strong Control Deck (Individual Card Choices): Now that I have talked in general about Blue Control decks, I want to give some more specific advice about single card choices. In combo decks, every card is designed to help you get your combo. In fast beatdown decks, every card is designed to hurt your opponent or disrupt his game. In Blue Control decks, every card is designed to stop your opponents deck. Each card has to meet a long list of requirements to be included in a good Blue Control deck. People often have troubles determining if one card is better than another. Is Whispers of the Muse better than Stroke of Genius? Does either of them belong? What about Jayemdae Tome? Why or why not? I am going to list the rules for individual card choices here because I don't think anyone has ever been very clear on what those very important rules are. Each card must follow as many of the rules as possible. Very few cards can actually follow every rule, but if one does then it will very likely be included in multiples in the deck. Good in the first few turns vs. fast beatdown decks (Counter-Sliver or Red Beatdown). Good vs. control decks with little or no creatures (Necro and Mono-Blue Counterspell). Good vs. combo decks (Necro/Pebbles and Tinker). Inexpensive to cast. Good both early game and late game. Card parity (as opposed to card disadvantage) Card advantage (as opposed to card parity or card disadvantage) I am going to choose some popular control cards and see how many of these rules they follow. Counterspell = 1, 2, 3+, 4, 5, 6. Not 7. A very good card as we all knew. Force of Will = 1, 2, 3, 4+, 5+, 6-. Not 7. Sometimes card disadvantage, but a great card overall. Swords to Plowshares = 1, 4, 5, 6. Not 2, 3, 7. Some serious weaknesses depending on the field. Sylvan Library = 2, 3-, 4. Not 1, 5, 6, 7. A narrow mid to late game card with card disadvantage built in. Whispers of the Muse = 1-, 2, 3, 4-, 5, 6, 7. Though it meets all 7, it is on the borderline of some. Brainstorm = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Not 7. Brainstorm is never really card advantage but meets everything else. Wall of Blossoms = 1, 2-, 3-, 4, 5, 6, 7. Wall of Blossoms meets every requirement because it's a cantrip. Powder Keg = 1-, 2-, 3-, 4, 5, 6, 7-. Powder Keg is not often amazing but it is usually good enough. Nevinyrral's Disk = 2-, 3, 6, 7. Not 1, 4, 5. Disk is a bit too slow, but it is close. Fireball = 1, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5, 6, 7-. Fireball is not perfect but it does have flexibility enough to meet all 7. Wrath of God = 1-, 5-, 6, 7+. Wrath of God is both narrow and slow but very good at killing creatures. Note that very often a card will be so good in one specific situation that people will play it despite its weaknesses in many other situations. For example Swords to Plowshares and Wrath of God are very good at killing creatures but very bad at anything else. Sylvan Library is good if you have lots of narrow cards in your deck and if you have spare life you can even draw extra cards with it, however it is card disadvantage initially and it takes while before it starts helping you. Choose some cards yourself and check to see if they meet the listed requirements. If you have a lot of cards in the deck that are narrow or don't meet all of the requirements then you need to run more deck manipulation to make sure you get the cards that you need, when you need them. Bob Maher's Oath deck is a good example of narrow cards and deck manipulation. David Jafari's Mono-Blue Control deck has more general-purpose spells and therefore much less deck manipulation. I hope this article has helped make you feel more comfortable with control decks in general, and using some of the things outlined here you can go on to build the kind of control deck that fits you personally. Control decks are a challenge to build and a challenge to play but can be very rewarding. If patience is your strong point then Blue Control may be the deck for you. Mike Donais. (Mike_Donais@yahoo.com)