Blue/White Nether-Go Mike Krzywicki So, traditional Nether-Go has essentially ceased to be a top tier deck. Does that mean your Nether Spirits should go back in the trade book, waiting for some other poor soul to attempt to bring this archetype back to its former glory? Not exactly. Shortly after Pro Tour-Chicago, I took a close look at all the decks that made the final eight, and, thanks to what will hopefully become a standard feature of Constructed Pro Tour coverage, I closely perused the decklists of all the competitors that made Day 2. There was a whole lot of repetition in these decks, which is not uncommon for the more successful decks at a Constructed Pro Tour; all the successful decks in one particular archetype classification tightly resembled each other in most every respect...except for one in particular that caught my eye. Eric Taylor placed 63rd with what, at first glance, looked like the typical W/U control deck that proliferated the Day 2 field. Same countermagic, same card drawing, same permanent removal... but that's when it started to get interesting. Three main deck Briberies were pretty interesting, and the three Recalls were a bit unconventional, but then I went in search of his way to win, and there they were, two lonely little Nether Spirits surrounded by Blue and White cards. Here's the complete decklist: Eric Taylor Pro Tour Chicago 2000 Main Deck Sideboard 10 Island 5 Plains 4 Adarkar Wastes 4 Coastal Tower 1 Dust Bowl 1 Kor Haven 2 Nether Spirit 4 Counterspell 4 Absorb 4 Foil 4 Accumulated Knowledge 4 Fact or Fiction 3 Recall 4 Wrath of God 3 Dismantling Blow 3 Bribery 4 Disrupt 3 Rout 2 Misdirection 2 Teferi's Response 1 Dismantling Blow 1 Story Circle 1 Air Elemental 1 Blinding Angel Who ever said that Nether-Go needed to be B/U? Nether Spirit, which was easily Nether-Go's greatest asset over W/U control, has a double black casting cost, but its game text makes that misleading casting cost relatively easy to ignore. Is this deck better than regular W/U control? Let's see what it has to offer, and how it could be improved: Card Drawing: Accumulated Knowledge and Fact or Fiction both make an encore appearance from their inclusion in B/U Nether-Go, leaving the only card drawer that is fairly unique to this deck in particular: Recall. Not the best card early on, Recall can be absolutely devastating in the mid or late game, by allowing its caster to exchange excess lands in hand for countermagic, card drawing, or a much needed Wrath of God. Throw in the fact that Nether Spirit to be discarded to Recall to make for an equitable rate of exchange (casting Recall [-1], plus discarding X cards in hand [-X] to get back X cards [+X] makes for a loss in card advantage in exchange for a significant improvement in card quality, but tossing a recurring Nether Spirit in the discarded cards adds a +1 to the -X, making Recall an even one-for-one exchange), and the fact that it can be used to yank a Spirit out of the graveyard if both were to unfortunately make there way there, and you end up with a solid card that has good synergy with the deck. Three copies might be a bit hefty for a card that has little or no early game potential, though. Countermagic: Absorb is better than Undermine in control strategies, with the former greatly assisting in getting control of a game, and the latter making victory one turn sooner once control has been established. This deck has foregone the Power Sinks, and instead plays four Foils, which are a lot more important in a Nether-Go deck that doesn't have access to any black mana. There are some instances where this deck might even choose to pay the alternative casting cost of Foil even with ample mana available just for the opportunity to dump a Nether Spirit from the hand, where it does nothing, to the graveyard, where it works wonders. Make friends with your worst enemy Permanent Removal: If you thought Wrath of God was good in W/U decks built around Blinding Angel or Millstone, you just might be amazed how effective it is when you're playing with Nether Spirit. Besides the normal perks associated with Wrath of God, in combination with Nether Spirit it provides a situation very similar to that of the Icy Manipulator/Wrath of God combination in Prison decks several years ago (mono-White control with Wraths, Geddons, Winter Orbs, Serrated Arrows, and very few ways to win). If you have a Spirit coming back every turn, your opponent will be not only encouraged, but actually forced to overcommit on creatures in order to sneak some damage by the Spirit. This means that the Wrath of Gods you cast will almost certainly send more than one opposing creature to the graveyard, depleting the opponent of offensive resources with which to effectively recover from each Wrath, and, meanwhile, that annoying little Nether Spirit hops right back out of the graveyard to start blocking the next wave of creatures, or to start the long process of ending the game if the opposing path is clear. Dismantling Blow can provide a much-needed boost in hand size while eliminating some of the most formidable threats in Standard, such as Chimeric Idol, Saproling Burst, Parallax Wave, and Crusade, but be careful not to hesitate on an unkicked Dismantling Blow while waiting for the opportunity to develop your mana base in order to generate the two card kicker effect. This is a common mistake, and an intricate understanding of your deck and your opponent's deck is the only way that you'll be able to accurately judge when to let a threat peck away at your life total and when to immediately Blow it away. Were there Tsabo's Webs in this deck, Dismantling Blow could also function as a fairly consistent, albeit pricey, card drawing engine to get the ball rolling and draw you into real card drawers like Fact or Fiction and Accumulated Knowledge. Taylor also chose Bribery over Dominate, which might not be the best choice considering the current Standard metagame. While Bribery can be devastating when getting a Rith, the Awakener out of a Blasto-Geddon deck, or an Ancient Hydra out of a Fires deck, it is often uncastable against Rebels and Counter-Rebels, since they don't have much to get to justify paying five mana for in the first place and they have an easy answer, Defiant Vangaurd, to the biggest threat in their deck, Jhovall Queen. Dominate, on the other hand, has the ability to wreck the Rebel chain on its way up by snagging a crucial Defiant Falcon or Lin Sivvi, as well as providing a huge shift in momentum against Green based decks by stealing their Birds or Elves that they were counting on for mana acceleration. Dominate is also another way to deal with Chimeric Idol, and a way to eliminate the first cheap threat that your opponent drops (River Boa comes to mind) so a Wrath of God isn't prematurely forced out of your hand, all at instant speed to boot. Miscellaneous: There is actually nothing in this deck that fits here. Tsabo's Web, which was present in virtually every W/U deck that made Day 2 at Chicago, is noticeably absent from this deck, and that might be a lot of the reason why Taylor ended up 63rd with such a solid, innovative deck design that could probably have taken him a lot further with a few minor modifications. Without Webs, control decks are simply asking to get Ported into oblivion by the decks that pack four of them. With Webs, you have a colorless cantrip two mana Stone Rain when you have two mana up and just got Ported, and, if nothing else, a nice cantrip that has great synergy with your Dismantling Blows later on in the game against decks that don't pack anything that is affected by the Web. The Mana: Everything is pretty standard here, eight dual lands, more Islands than Plains, but enough Plains to ensure two white mana will be seen early enough in the game. The two more interesting inclusions into Taylor's deck are the Kor Haven and the Dust Bowl. The Haven looks pretty good at first glance, but, when you think about it, if most of the creature decks that you're playing against are packing Ports, and the control decks that you will probably be squaring off with are playing Webs in most circumstances, the Haven loses a lot of its initial luster. Dust Bowl was probably intended as this deck's answer to Port, but it is generally inferior to Web in this respect. Dust Bowl does have the ability to chew up some of the mana in Fires, Blasto-Geddon, and Rebels, but they will often be casting important spells over the first several turns of the game that will force a reaction, which, in turn, forces mana to be used for non-Dust Bowl usage. So the Bowl won't really get cranking until the mid or late game, at which point the game versus one of the aforementioned decks has most likely been already decided one way or the other. Throw in the fact, that, like the Haven, it gets locked up by opposing Webs, and you have a prime candidate for removal from the deck. This deck is good as it is, but it can definitely be made better. Tsabo's Web most definitely deserves to be in this deck, and probably in the greatest quantity allowable. So how are we going to make room for four Tsabo's Webs? Well, Recall is good, but three is probably a bit too many, so drop those down to two, and that's our first slot. After switching the Briberies to Dominates, three is once again just a bit too many considering there are creatureless decks floating around, so dropping down to two of those shouldn't be too much of a problem. Now the cuts start getting tough. While all the countermagic in this deck is good, sacrifices need to be made somewhere, and one of the four Foils is probably the most extraneous card remaining in the deck. After that though, we still want one more Web and, from looking at the list, there really isn't another non-land card that can be comfortably cut. There are, however, two lands out of the twenty-five in the deck which we will probably not want to keep around considering the newly added Webs make them pretty much useless. If the Dust Bowl and the Kor Haven are dropped, there is room to put in a Web and replace the other of the two with a basic Island to up the count to eleven of those. Here's how the new and improved W/U Nether-Go looks on paper: Improved Nether-Go Main Deck Sideboard 11 Island 5 Plains 4 Adarkar Wastes 4 Coastal Tower 2 Nether Spirit 4 Accumulated Knowledge 4 Fact or Fiction 2 Recall 4 Counterspell 4 Absorb 3 Foil 4 Wrath of God 3 Dismantling Blow 2 Dominate 4 Tsabo's Web 4 Disrupt 2 Rout 2 Misdirection 2 CoP: Green 2 CoP: Black 1 Blinding Angel 1 Dominate 1 Dismantling Blow There are a few slight sideboard changes, such as Teferi's Response getting axed because of the Webs that are now in the deck, and the addition of COP: Green and Black, which are both devastating against their respective colors, but nothing really major. There it is, the new and improved Nether-Go, and only two Black cards in the whole deck. The White cards just compliment the controlling nature of the deck a lot better than the Black cards, which seem to favor aggressive strategies, could. Tired of getting your Blinding Angel Wrathed or Terrored or your Millstone getting Disenchanted? Try this deck out... you might be pleasantly surprised.