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Deck Doctor: U/G Control Post
CHK Mark Herberholz 
Ah, the deck doctor column. This idea has been around for ages, I myself remember sending decks into the likes of Zvi Mowshiwitz and Alan Comer trying to receive a little help from the masters of deckbuilding. So naturally when the opportunity came up for me to do a deck doctor column I was thrilled and honored at the thought that I have come so far from being the guy sending the deck in searching for some hidden tech, to being the guy receiving the deck and dishing out tech left and right. This deck doctor column is a little different from other ones as normally people would send in emails, instead we just took a promising deck off of the forums and are going to make some changes to it to try and make it competitive enough for you to be confident in taking it to your local tournament. So without further ado here is the deck that I selected off of the forums, it was posted by Spiny Starfish. Check out the original forum post here.
The deck is a standard U/G Control deck that is basically transferred over from Block. I personally didn't like the deck in Block but I think that type 2 is a much slower format so control decks are in turn much better. Now it seems that type 2 should be faster given the larger card pool but it is slower in the fact that the field is not 30-40% Affinity anymore. With a wide array of decks out there Affinity should probably decline in popularity, especially with the new set coming out and people wanting to experiment with their new cards. Still, with Affinity present in the metagame, I think that you have to speed this deck up a bit to have a decent chance vs. them. First off, let's take a look at the cards that you definitely want in your deck. 4 Solemn Simulacrum 4 Viridian Shaman 4 Eternal Witness 4 Hinder 2 Rude Awakening All of these cards provide card advantage, counter spells, or are very good win conditions. The rest of the cards are up for debate as they don't really have that powerful of an effect or provide enough card advantage. So now let's look at the possibilities of cards to add to this deck: Oxidize, Oblivion Stone, Mana Leak, Concentrate, Thought Courier, Vedalken Shackles, March of the Machines with Darksteel Ingots, Duplicant, Time Stop, and Triskelion all seem like they could find their way into this deck. Ok March of the Machines and Darksteel Ingots are too one sided in their uses as they only really are good vs. Affinity decks so they are out, and the same can be said for Oxidize. Mana Leak seems like your best counterspell in the format. It gets the nudge over Condescend because it will counter a spell early much more reliably than Condescend, which is what you want from this type of spell. Ideally you want to go: turn two Mana Leak your spell, turn three get it back with the Eternal Witness. With Condescend that is a bit harder to do. Concentrate, while being a great card drawer, it is a bit too slow. I think that Gifts Ungiven is just better, regardless of the fact that it is also too slow, and to play it you need to put a variety of cards that do the same thing to make it work, ex: Tel-Jilad Justice, Oxidize, Viridian Shaman, and Naturalize. Duplicant and Triskelion are pretty good if you decide to stick with the Crystal Shard plan but that didn't see much play in block as it was a bit too slow and fragile so I think they get the axe, however if you decide to play the shard you should include probably 2 of one of those cards, I would lean more towards Triskelion if your field is more affinity and more towards Duplicant if there is more R/G decks and stuff with Arc-Slogger in it. Oblivion Stone should definitely fit in this deck. It does what U/G has always had a problem with, deal with permanents. It just seems better than Engineered Explosives and I like it over Crystal Shard too because they are both slow and fragile, but Oblivion Stone has a much more devastating effect. #####CARDID=11533##### Vedalken Shackles is another card that is extremely powerful but slightly fragile. However, I think that its effect is worth the risk of playing an Artifact in your deck. I think that the format will most likely have a bit less Artifact destruction than Block, and Vedalken Shackles is a card that can simply own a game if your opponent can't deal with it. Therefore a few copies made it into my U/G deck. Time Stop seems amazing at first glance when you get pipe dreams of countering an Obliterate and wrecking your opponent's day. The problem is that's just what it is; a 6 Mana counterspell. 6 Mana is a lot to pay for a counterspell, and since most players like to cast spells after they attack the next part of this card never really helps you out. Thought Courier is an amazing card in the U/G deck. I have always loved this card, especially since people are playing less and less ways to deal with it. It just seems strictly better than Serum's Vision in power level. The only thing that Serum's Vision does for you is it helps fix your Mana base a bit in the deck. So to fit Thought Courier in I added an extra Land to the deck. Echoing Truth manages to stay in the deck as it provides you with a little help in dealing with permanents which the U/G deck lacks and it can be pretty devastating to bounce a couple of your Eternal Witnesses, Viridian Shamans, or Solemns. Now let's take a look at the sideboard. 4 Tel-Jilad Justice 4 Oxidize 4 Annul 3 Last Word I like every card except Annul. That card just rubs me the wrong way, and I think with all the other Counterspells you don't need to add another situational one. I think that bringing in the eight Artifact elimination spells vs. Affinity is enough and I don't really see what else you would want - Annul vs. Oxidize and Tel Jihad Justice are pretty self explanatory. Last Word is pretty good versus the control decks. So in place of Annul I would most likely add another Last Word and another card that I think will be amazing against control decks and slower strategies. Journeyer's Kite. If any of you played back in the days of Thawing Glaciers you'll know how important it was in control decks. Out landing your opponent in a control match-up is one of the most important things to do to ensure a win. This lets you do that and it also gives you Thought Courier fodder. Sure it seems a little pricy, but you can always do it on their end step and it helps you bluff a Counterspell better if you leave your mana untapped every turn to go search out a land. Not to mention that it also helps ramp up to Rude Awakening and power up your Vedalken Shackles. So now the new and improved sideboard looks like this. 4 Tel-Jilad Justice 4 Oxidize 3 Journeyer's Kite 4 Last Word Finally after all this work we end up with the updated version of the U/G control deck.
Ok now I'll go over the cards I cut and why that weren't explained above. Mirrodin's Core is a bit too clunky for its effect. In a two color deck you won't need the Mana fixing that much and with the addition of the Vedalken Shackles, you want more Islands in your deck. Gift's Ungiven is a bit too slow and unreliable, you will most likely never get the card you want, however I think that it would be good in a U/R deck where u can play many different Counterspell type cards and creature elimination spells. Engineered Explosives is just inferior to Oblivion Stone and Vedalken Shackles is just much better than Crystal Shard. Hinder stayed in the deck because it is a hard Counterspell which is always nice to have. The rest of the cards that stayed in are more self explanatory. Now if your local format is still rather heavy on the Artifact destruction maindeck, then you probably want to cut the Vedalken Shackles for some Condescends. Also, many of the decks that would be heavy on Artifact destruction would also have a decent amount of ways to kill Thought Courier so he may get the axe too. Here is what I would play if that were the case.
So if your local field is more or less leaning towards using the newer cards and employing some new strategies I think the first deck is the right choice as it has a bit more power to the deck it is just more weaker to artifact destruction and creature elimination. Or if the field is largely Affinity the first deck is better as they don't have answers to either Thought Courier or Vedalken Shackles. If the field is still dominated by R/G, R/G Tooth and Nail, and Big Red, then the second deck is probably best for you. So there is U/G in a nutshell, it's a nice competitive control deck for all you Blue mages out there. As always thanks for reading and I hope you'll give this deck a try at your next tournament. - Mark Herberholz | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
