"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
-Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
In KTK the control decks were weak against any kind of aggression and had to hope for midrange opponents.This deck pretty much picks up the strength of the best KTK control decks and adds
Crux of Fate
,
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
and ofcause Ugin, the Spirit Dragon to overcome the weaknesses against aggression. This will be a really good season for control. Feel free to +1 if you like the deck. It followes 3 simple steps.
Step one Knowlege
To get control over the game we need to know what's up. Or more precisely we need to know about all of our opponents fears. That concernes both our opponents hand and our upcomming cards.
Thoughtseize to get knowlege over our opponents hand and to remove his biggest threads or keep him from building pressure early on. Unfortunately 2 life is quite a lot. Thus only 2 copies whit an optional copy to board in against control.
Despise
to take away what Thoughtseize didnt get. It gives us information for only 1 mana. Often really useless in the lategame therefor only 2 copies.
Now that we know what our opponent is up to we need to find the right answers.
Dig Through Time for sure the best spell in this position. Gives us the 2 cards we need most. Can be casted for 2 mana at the end of opponents turn or even to find a counterspell or a removal whenever I need it. To fuel its delve ability we play 4 Polluted Delta, one Evolving Wilds and even one Bloodstained Mire and one Flooded Strand.
Jace's Ingenuity Draw 3 cards. I prefere this over Treasure Cruise in this deck. The reason is its instant speed. I can still react to anything my opponent does until he is done doing things and then I can draw cards. Nice! The other reason is that I need my graveyard to delve for Dig Through Time. 2 Copies because I still need place in the deck for the answers.
Btw its a nice combo to draw 3 cards and than dig another 2 of your choise to make a solid 5 cards draw that gives you a variety of cards every time.
Additionaly we have 4 Temple of Deceit, one Temple of Malice and one Temple of Mystery to choose our own fate and find the right cards to draw next turn.
Step two Answers
Now that we now what our opponent is up to and how to find the right answers we take a look at our answers.
Crux of Fate
seems to be the best card right now in any u/b control deck. It destoyes entire armys, changes games and make U/B Control effecient even against aggro decks, while leaving
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
on the board. Nonetheless 5 mana is expensive and sometimes it's too late. haven 2 or more copies in your starting hand makes a bad start most of the time. Thus I reduced to 3 copies.
Bile Blight 2 mana removal at instant speed. As a benefit it is the solution to tokens and some kinds of spam. Works well together with
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
. Since it is a nice and fast answer I went form 3 to 4 copies.
Hero's Downfall to remove any creature or planeswalker. Mainly to remove Playnswalkers, since they survive
Crux of Fate
. Best removal in this format => 4 copies.
Perilous Vault is only in my sideboard. Itremoves everything no matter what. hexproof and indestructable? Don't matter, it get's everything that
Crux of Fate
missed. It's kind of expensive though and removes my own stuff wich I can't bounce. Against planeswalker heavy and any slow deck I can board in 2 copies.
Drown in Sorrow is a pure sideboard card. It delivers boardwipes agains aggro deck with a lack of toughness. 4 copies against RDW and tokens of any kind.
Dissolve the best counterspell right now. Counters everything and gives a valuable scry to stay in control of my own hand. 4 copies.
Negate is a cheap way to deal with planeswalkers, stuff like Gods Willing and burnspells, as much as with countrespells and card draws in mirror-match-ups. 2 copies since a total of 6 counterspells seems nice to me. Against other control or burnheavy decks I can board in another 2 copies.
Disdainful Stroke is only on my sideboard. It gets in against planeswalker heavy and midrange decks as against other control decks. Up to 3 copies.
To answer the damage our opponent and Thoughtseize deal to us, we have 2 copies of Radiant Fountain and 4 copies of Dismal Backwater which fit our colours pretty well. If we board in the Pearl Lake Ancient we can even pick these up and play them again just to heal us.
Step three Destruction and Mayhem
Now that we found our answers and answered all of our opponents threats, it is time to kick some ass. Regarding to that we have.
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
is the wincondition that FRF delievers along side with
Crux of Fate
, since it doesn't get destroyed. The -1/-1 ability is pretty strong and works well together with Bile Blight. Most tokens die straight away and we can Bile Blight things like Courser of Kruphix or Stormbreath Dragon if we attack the same turn. Since
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
has hexproof we can play him as the only creature without fearing removals. In a Control matchup we might switch to Pear Lake Ancient, since he can't get countered. Unfortunately this beast is legendary and 3 damage each turn is not that much. we play 2 copies of him with only one in the main board and the other ready to hit the field against everything that plays tokens.
Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver can be dropped on turn 3 and starts making trouble. Making scry useless for my opponent and stealing his stuff to send it agains him. Especially in control matchups it shines most. In aggro matchups it can take some of the damage early buying time to stabilize and gain control of the game. It's also legendary and we play 2 copies of it.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is all you can ask for in a control deck. He is the card you are working towards in the first 7 turns. Try to survive untill you can drop him and clear the board. His +2 is finishing as fast as
Silumgar, the Drifting Death
, his -X is just awesome and him entering the board with 7 loyalty counters makes this card insane. Unfortunately it's at 8 mana and costs a shit load of money, but since magic is my only hobby I bought a second copy and play 2 of them now.
Now that we gained Knowlege, found Answers and brought Destruction alongsides Mayhem, I feel pretty comfortable about the next FNM.
