Hello, and welcome to Curse of the God-Pharaoh, my answer to the "control is not competitive in Standard" argument. All feedback is welcome, and please +1 if you like what you see.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Aggro is king right now. Ramunap Red dominated the last Pro Tour, Zombies gives it a great run for its money, and all the other decks have adjusted to reflect this. This shift has left Control out in the cold; no appearances in the top 8 of Pro Tour in the last three tournaments. Most Control brewers are still leaning on the UR builds based around Torrential Gearhulk, but with the printing of Abrade has given Red a huge advantage over the big blue robot. Unless Control can come up with a build that can affect the board in the first three turns, it just gets run over before it can stabilize. But with the exception of the 3-damage sweepers in Red they don't have many options.
But BW does. Thus this build.
Part 1: Slow Down, You Move Too Fast
Aggro builds have a heck of a time dealing with two things: enchantments and life gain, and BW has two great cards that do both in Authority of the Consuls and Trespasser's Curse. The former is the perfect antidote to Haste, since everything they have comes in tapped. The latter trades the tapping for lifedrain, which is reasonable. Ideally, we can get both in play within the first three turns and basically make our opponents hate life.
Part 2: You've Got To Make the Moment Last
Now it's just a matter of keeping the opponent's side of the board as unusable as possible. In Blue we have counters, card draw to find more gas, and Cycling to filter through our deck. In Red we have focussed removal and a sweeper in Sweltering Suns, Black also gives us Yahenni's Expertise and White gives us a hard board wipe in Fumigate. But the key card in our deck at the midrange point is Niblis of Frost. This card is just bonkers against any kind of aggro deck, because we can freeze anything that we can't kill or counter, plus it nearly always has Prowess triggered. We also have Fevered Visions to give us card advantage and deal some incremental damage to the opponent.
Part 3: It's Tough To Be A God
So what are we drawing the game out for? Our namesake card, of course, Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, as well as our other PWs, Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Sorin, Grim Nemesis. By the time we get any of these on the battlefield we should have multiple of our enchantments in play, so any creatures they play will be deeply painful. Sorin is mostly used for his -X ability to get rid of large, annoying creatures, but his card advantage is excellent as well. Chandra initially is used as a ramp card, but her other +1 is useful on an empty board, and in a pinch she can remove as well. Bolas is awesome all around. Steal a creature to use as a blocker, wipe their hand out, or just deal 7, they all are useful. Ideally we +2 him first, then -4 him twice to finish the game. We also have a single copy of Cut//Ribbons as early removal and then a late game knockout punch.
Part 4: Sideboard, or How to Fool Friends and Influence Opponents.
The SB of this deck is something I'm rather proud of, since it can significantly change the entire theme of the deck. Enigma Drake comes in against aggro, since a 4 toughness flier is hard for Red to beat. Magma Spray and Incendiary Flow come in to deal with recursive threats like zombies. Cast Out and To the Slaughter deal well with both Gods and PWs. Finally, against other control decks we switch out situational counters for harder stuff in Disallow and Negate.
Well, hopefully you've enjoyed my answer to the Aggro problem in Standard. As before, all comments and suggestions are highly valued, and please upvote if you like what you see.
