I have 8 Clues, I have an Aid. UH! I win in your End Step because reaction time is overrated.
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TL;DR
What is this deck all about? We spawn 7 clues, we play Mechanized Production and use Sigarda's Aid to give it Flash, so we can basically win in our opponents End Step. Control shell for cycle and survivability.
If you're still clue less and want to investigate, head on for details. I'm a fan of huge and extremely detailed descriptions so bear with me.
The "How?"s and "Why?"s
First up the "Why"s.
Why Mechanized Production? Alternate ways of winning are always cool and fun to toy with. This one is much easier to fulfill than the ones we got last blocks, namely Triskaidekaphobia and
Hedron Alignment
, because the enchanted artifact is not limited to nontoken artifacts.
Why Clues instead of Servos? Easy one: Because Servos are much easier to get rid of. Creatures die to everything, and who on earth wants to use a ~3 mana removal on a freaking Clue. Also you can use excess Clues for card advantage/digging for Wincon.
Why Baral? This is probably a bit harder to defend, but personally I love him. The cost reduction means fun stuff like your Disallow is suddenly a better Counterspell, your Insidious Will (more on that later) is a better Standard Counter, and
Confirm Suspicions
is still not great, but playable since it just bonks your Clue Production up a big notch. Also 1 mana Anticipate. On top of all that he serves as a decent blocker against small stuff, and helps you dig for your Wincon. As I said, I love him.
Why Sigarda's Aid? Reaction time. This is a bigger deal than you might think, because most enchantment/artifact removal is actually sorcery speed. So being able to Flash it in the opponents end step is a GIANT advantage.
Those were the big "Why?"s. There is an explanation for every card further down if you still have questions.
So how exactly is this supposed to work?
It plays itself like your everday blue control deck. Drop a land every turn, pass (except for Baral on 2 or
Trail of Evidence
on 3 if you don't face immediate annihilation). Your opponent tries something? Nope, counter it. He didn't try anything? Sweet, let's draw some. You couldn't counter it? We have some backup removal, so no worries.
Amass Clues, lock down your opponent with efficiency and card advantage. When you have a decent hand
(What does that mean?) Show
In a control mirror match a few Counterspells, the best ones being
Dispel or
Turn Aside since you want to deny them their instant speed answers to your Wincon. Against a Beatdown of pretty much any kind (Aggro/Midrange whatever) an instant speed removal and a counter should do it
You play Sigarda's Aid, your opponent breaks out in spontaneous confusion because "What on earth is this guy doing?! I have no Clue!", you pass. Your opponent panics and tries to kill you, or he doesnt because he's scared which is even better, he obviously fails because you're the best play ever and control the best deck type ever, you Flash in Mechanized Production in his end step if you're confident you can protect it against the instant speed answers your opponent has, and win in your upkeep. Easy life.
If you still got no clue why some cards are in here, here's the
Explanation for each and every card:
Landbase:
Island/Plains. Durr.
Prairie Stream because dual mana is awesome, and it's white mana that counts towards
Engulf the Shore
s Island count.
Why not Port Town? Because I'm cheap af, and it doesn't synergize with
Engulf the Shore
. I love that thing, don't judge me.
Draw:
So as a Draw-Land-Go-Control you want a decent amount of instant speed draw to use in your opponents end step.
Comparative Analysis
is the best in Standard right now, because this deck doesn't use energy, and it gets cheaper if you countered/removed something earlier this turn. With Baral it can get as cheap as 2 Mana for 2 cards, which is pretty darn good.
Our (my) beloved Baral, Chief of Compliance helps out aswell, everytime you counter you can loot. And everyone loves loot.
Anticipate is cheaper, so you can use it earlier if you lacked your turn 2 Baral. It's not as powerful overall as
Comparative Analysis
, but it's really strong for it's mana cost. Don't be afraid to put your Mechanized Production or Sigarda's Aid at the bottom of your deck, you are control and have the time to draw into the other ones.
Why not Reverse Engineer if you're running so many Clues? The decklist is pretty tight, there is a lot more I wanted to squeeze into it. The killer for this was the sorcery speed. While it is a bit more powerful than
Comparative Analysis
, instant speed makes the latter so much better.
Counters:
Turn Aside to protect your enchanted clue, and secondarily your Baral. A 1 Mana counter can make such a giant impact if you're going into the control war with a mana deficit because you're the aggressor in playing the wincon.
Disallow is just the best available counter in Standard.
Confirm Suspicions
for a Clue push in the lategame if you didn't get your
Trail of Evidence
fast enough, but you can also afford to use it midgame if you have Baral on the field. It's not optimal but it's good to have an insurance policy.
Insidious Will. I've wanted to play this card for a very long time. This opportunity is as good as it's going to get. Reason? Baral. With Baral it's down to the normal standard counter cost, and it offers so freaking much flexibility. You can do anything with it. You can redirect their removal, you can sometimes even redirect their draw. If you need more removal, you can copy your removal spell. If you copy Blessed Alliance you even keep the escalate mode if you paid it! You can also copy your draw, if you really need it. I like this card a lot, but always shied away from the 4 cmc. No longer!
Sideboard Counters:
Ceremonious Rejection for filthy Vehicles. FU Mardu Vehicle.
Dispel for control matchups, same as
Summary Dismissal
(Dismissal gets around Sphinx, and also counters filthy on-cast abilities)
Negate against Saheeli Twin. Counter that Saheeli and you're good to go. It betters an already good (IMO) matchup, more on that later.
Removal (both single and multi target):
Okay let's talk
Engulf the Shore
. I've seen almost no other deck play it, and that's probably because it's strictly speaking card-disadvantage. It's a huge mana advantage, but control doesnt really care too much about that. Card advantage is way more important. Then why play it?
At first my reaction was the typical control play reaction: Card disadvantage? This card sucks. Then I thought about it. Instant speed board wipe. It hits everything meaningful, or everything against real swarm decks. And also... Tokens don't get bounced. They cease to exist. Saheeli Twin? Goodbye. Thopter/Servo army? No more. The rare Rise from the Tides? Back into the sea please. Your opponent goes for a huge push with haste creatures and buffs? Freaking Vehicles are no creatures during your turn? We have an instant speed answer, and no amount of Hexproof or Indestructible is going to stop it. Aggressive decks have very aggressive stated minions, so you hit everything, and slow them down by potentially 2 turns, depending on how good the player is. Or if they want to push with haste. Also it gives you breathing room and another chance to react to stuff if they played it while you weren't able to react for whatever reason.
But card disadvantage. Isn't control supposed to win indirectly because of card adavantage? Yes they are. That's why there is so much that can generate card advantage.
And can compensate for one or two card disadvantage cards. Yes,
Engulf the Shore
is a gamble. But it's a gamble that pays off REALLY easy. Also if you have
Trail of Evidence
and generate enough Clues, you can get your card back, so it's not disadvantage anymore, but going even. And you stall for potentially 2 turns. Sure it's not quite the caliber of value a boardwipe should normally bring with it, but it's still so good, IMO.
Fumigate as the go-to boardwipe nowadays. We don't need the extra threat from
Planar Outburst
.
Blessed Alliance for versatility, and we needed a single-target removal. Can be used as lifegain aswell if aggressive decks got you low, and circumvents hexproof and indestructible. You'll probably never use the untap thing, but heh, who knows.
Sideboard:
Fragmentize
. Vuck Fehicles. Also useful against
Aetherworks Marvel
or Panharmonicon decks.
Miscellaneous:
Mainly needed a place for Sphinx of the Final Word. Pretty standard sideboard against control mirrors.
Matchups:
Please bear in mind I'm not a competitive player, and I haven't really tested this deck yet. So this is just wild guesses of me using my (hopefully) common sense.
Saheeli Twin is advantageous for us pre-sideboard, since we got
Engulf the Shore
to counter their turn 4 infinite token strat. And generally, Control > Combo. They have two pieces to get through, you only have to stop one. Also they are most likely teched against aggro because 6 out of 8 freaking Mardu Vehicle bullstuff.After sideboarding we should completely annihilate them. Cut the Blessed Alliances, we're going to Negate Saheeli and summarily dismiss her bounce. Goodbye, noone will miss you.
Mardu Vehicle Bullstuff is disadvantageous for us pre-sideboard. Aggressive stuff, if we get a lucky hand we might win, if not its 95% loss. Starting second game we can fight back very well. Get rid of the more expensive stuff (Confirm Suspicions, Insidious Will, 1 Disallow, 1 Analysis, 1 Trail of Evidence or whatever you deem appropriate), we're going to town with Vehicle hate, get the full package Ceremonious Rejection and
Fragmentize
out of your sideboard! Blessed Alliance is also very useful in this matchup. Basically it's outlast their early aggression, if they're down to topdecking you won. Sound good? Fantastic.
G/B Delirium This one took a huge hit with Emrakul being banned. I don't know how popular they are, but if you get your turn 2 Baral to block their Grim Flayer or use Blessed Alliance to kill it you should be good. They have problems procing Delirium after that, and without Delirium they're a joke. Should be a good time.
G/B Counters This might be a problem, depending on how well both of you draw. If you have your insane "I say No to everything" hand you're probably going to win.
Engulf the Shore
is not the best card in this matchup, since they often have few but very strong (and tough) creatures. It still does its purpose in the lategame when you have 10+ Islands, but in the critical midgame it might not be enough.
Your everyday U/X control deck is just down to who wins the control war. Since their Wincon is most likely a 10 Zombie Rise from the Tides you can scratch the Blessed Alliances. Also
Engulf the Shore
>>>Fumigate here, so you might want to switch one Fumigate out aswell. The rest is depending on the finer points of you opponents deck. No Enchantment/Artifact removal? You dont need Turn Aside. They stall forever? Confirm Suspicions can be cut, since you will most likely generate enough tokens with Trail. Use your common sense to go on. You want the 2 Sphinxs here, theyre a must have in control-mirror. Dispels also extremely valuable in control wars, Negates to a lesser degree. If they play artifacts think about Rejection.
That's all the relevant (or not so relevant) matchups I can think of right now.
Why not play X or Y?
So this is some general Ruleset, why I choose not to play cards that you may deem better than other I am running.
First most important point: Speed. Stuff like Reverse Engineer are very very powerful. But sadly, wrong speed tier. Instant speed is unbelievably important for control.
Second: The finality of the effect. I very much dislike stuff like "-X/-0" or "Tap" because its huge card disadvantage. Example:
Jace's Scrutiny
. Instant? Check. Stall? Check. Investigate? Check. Low mana? Check. What does it achieve? 1 creature didnt deal damage for 1 turn. The creature is still lying around. You have to waste another spell on it. Normally the Investigate is there so you can get that card back at some point. That's not what we use the clues for, though. I would like to use them, really. But 1 turn stall for 1 creature is just not good enough.
Third: If it's a creature/artifact/enchantment, I am reluctant to play it because it doesn't generate a clue with
Trail of Evidence
. Also the already mentioned Speed tier. Baral is an exception because that freaking powerlevel is so insane, and most of the time you dont have stuff to do on turn 2. Trail of Evidence because we need a consistent Clue spawner, this is the best compromise.
If you have a card that I missed that passes the 3 criteria be sure to ask, and if I didn't miss it and had other reasons for not playing it I will respond.
Thanks for going through that monster of a description just for a kind of joke-y deck from a inexperienced deckbuilder. If you like it leave a +1, and a comment if you would do something differently! I'm always open to constructive suggestions.
