Trump enemy spells with countermagic and burn through their library for a potent alternative wincon that carries a lot of explosive potential.
Built around a typical control shell with the full suite of counterspells, 4x Snapcaster Mage, abundant land, and versatile hate cards in the sideboard, this control deck aims to do many of the things that a more typical U/W/R or Esper control deck would like to do. The key difference between this deck and one of the ones you can expect to see more often is that rather than win by stopping your opponents from doing anything and accumulating damage with utility creatures and manlands, this deck aims to win by milling out your opponent.
So why pick this over a typical control deck?
I started proxying this deck as a combination of the two styles of play I loved the most; Control and Mill. It turned out to be quite potent, as while you can still occasionally steal a game one with damage, the milling aspect of the deck is prevalent more often, and can win a game much quicker and limit your opponent's options more than counterspells in some cases.
How does it limit options more than countermagic, the ultimate "nope"?
When building up damage against an opponent, their plan is relatively unaffected; Sure, they won't shock themselves from 5 to 3 and risk a lightning bolt against red, but the pressure of damage is often irrelevant to decks that just want to proceed with their plan and eschew interaction of any kind. When you mill someone, however, cards are being physically removed from their deck; they can no longer be drawn. Obviously this won't provide the same amount of benefit every time, but it panics your opponent very well. This leads me into my next point.
Ok, so they'll get scared because they lose some options. Makes sense, I guess, but wouldn't they fear quad Lightning Bolt potential more?
Heh. Very few decks are prepared to deal with mill. It is a wincon that is fundamentally very different from the typical damage wincon. You can't block a mill spell. And besides, while quad bolt is not bad (12 damage is quite respectable) it requires 4 red mana for only slightly more than half of a life total. Quad Archive Trap, on the other hand, is much more potent. Let me give you an example:
Let's say you keep 4 Archive Trap in your starting hand. Your opponent draws seven cards to start, leaving 53 in the deck. If they crack a fetch land, they filter through their library and put a land into play. That leaves them with 52 in the library. You can then cast all four archive traps for free and mill them for 52 cards. They begin turn 2 with no cards in the library and lose the game.
That's a potential blow-out win that control decks do not see very often. This deck can still do a very good job of slugging it out till late game and decking the opponent as well, especially with Jace, Memory Adept and a flurry of Archive Traps after they've thinned out most of their lands. Early Archive Traps will consistently prove to be a problem for the opponent as well, and can create a sense of unpredictability and force them to doubt their decisions regarding fetch lands, and causes people to question grabbing lands from Path to Exile as well.
Oh... I rather like this.
Good. I do too.
*Combos include:
Archive Trap + Opponent's Fetch Lands/Pod searches, etc.
Archive Trap
+
Path to Exile
So, any suggestions? I will happily respond to any and all questions about this deck in due time, and make sure to credit whoever inspired certain updates when they come about. I'll take a look at your decks as well, if you like.
Thank you for your time.
~~LittleLeaf
