I think if the idea is to teach them strategy about playing with/against control, you should have win conditions, just slow to buid to kind of wins. a good control deck is'nt just a pile of counter magic with no wincons. counters:4x Cancel 2x Essence Scatter 4x Psychic Strike 1x Dissolve
1x Syncopate hand disruption/bounce2x Thoughtseize 4x Duress 4x Disperse 3x Voyage's End kills2x Doom Blade 2x Hero's Downfall 2x Far / Away card draw:2x Read the Bones creatures1x Wall of Frost 2x Hover Barrier 2x Guardian of the Ages 2x Dinrova Horror

re: "a good control deck is'nt just a pile of counter magic with no wincons." - I know this, that's the point, though. The whole theme of the deck is to counter everything and not try to win in any way.

I'll certainly put Dinrova Horror and Guardian of the Ages in the Sideboard for lesson #2.

It doesn't necessarily need to be exactly 60 cards, but close to it for consistency would make it monotonous and predictable (upping the annoyance factor! >:-) ).

Though I understand you are not trying to make "the best possible" deck but Cancel is in every way just a worse Dissolve . I would recommend pointing things like this out, if you keep the card in the deck, to the newer players as its some times little things that get missed. I gave a kid at FNM a couple Dissolve because he only had Cancel as he didnt understand the difference. In the colours and cheap but useful Dimir Charm . You might also want to consider something like Curse of the Swine as a one or two of. Currently you have lots of spot removal and counters but are lacking any board wipe if they happen to get a few creatures out.

Few things you could like look at cutting to would be things like Annul , Dispel to the sb, same with Negate . Generally those spells are better against control style decks like what this one is. Control decks are generally harder to play and I would say its less likely that a newer player is going to build one to start.

I know Dissolve is better than Cancel, and I point that out to others whenever I play either spell, but alas, I only own one, so . .

Normally, I would keep Annul and Dispel in the SB - and this deck does have one more of each in the SB, but I've always found them useful. It seems no matter what style deck someone is using, they have a couple instants, enchantments, and artifacts in it.They are cheaper versions of Negate, and Negate itself stops planeswalkers too.

Since this was meant to be a counter-magic-heavy deck, I wanted as many options as possible.

I don't own any Dimir Charm. If I did, they would be in the maybeboard. I don't know how I managed to collect so many Dimir cards and not end up with any of the Charms . . .

Curse of the Swine is new to me. It's a cute card. Looks like it would be fun to play. I'll see if I can find any.

Thanks for the suggestions, NeoHazard, any critique not on card selection per se, but rather spell proportions? I can remove the Dispel, Annul, and Negates; and one land to get the card-count down to 60. Should I have more counters, more bounce, more removal, or does the mix seem about right?