Land (22)
- 2x Academy Ruins
- 3x Flagstones of Trokair
- 4x Glacial Fortress
-
4x
Hallowed Fountain
- 7x Island
- 2x Plains
Enchantment (7)
Sideboard
Creature (6)
Enchantment (3)
Sorcery (3)
Maybeboard
Creature (1)
Enchantment (4)
After having won a scepter, few are so generous as to disdain the pleasures of ruling.~Pierre Corneille
Dark side of the Scepter
Modern
SCORE: 16 | 15 COMMENTS | 4852 VIEWS | IN 3 FOLDERS
A Dimir version of this deck, resulting more efficient and fun
Basic Description
This is a modern format hardcore control deck focusing on 1on1 matches.
It's based on the use of Isochron Scepter with some nasty control instant as Silence,
Psychic Barrier
, Negate and/or Path to Exile.
The idea is basically keep the board clean and prevent your opponent to play at all.
As an example imagine Isochron Scepter imprinted with
Psychic Barrier
and Curse of Exhaustion on the battlefield.This basically means your opponent won't be able to cast any creature for the rest of the game!
The George Baxter Analysis of this deck leads to the conclusion that it needs 16 blue and 11 white 15 "mana slots" to be balanced. I currently run 15 blue and 13 white. I know that playing against this deck may not be fun but it's designed to win, not to be funny. Ask Second Breakfast - Stanislav Cifka 
Win Conditions:
There are two win conditions in this deck, the first is using Jace, Memory Adept to mill your opponent to victory.
The second one is the Blind Obedience's extort ability forcing your opponent to loose life quite fast while also offering a good control factor.
Cards Breakdown:
(in alphabetic order)
- Academy Ruins: Perfect response if you happen to lose Isochron Scepter for removals or discards and even better against mill decks since it allows you to dig right for the card you need.
- Blind Obedience: control card that make hit and run creatures like Spark Elemental totally useless and also slows fast haste-based decks while also providing a solid life leech ability.
- Boomerang: flexible bouncer that works basically as a removal for all kind of permanents and, if imprinted, allows to stall the land count of your opponent. It also allows to bounce your Detention Sphere when another of the permanents you removed hit the battlefield to remove both of them.
- Curse of Exhaustion: lethal after you established a solid control of spells casted by your opponent but useful also to slow horde decks like elves or goblins.
- Detention Sphere: invaluable to remove any nasty trick your opponent may put on the battlefield
- Dissipate: basic 3 mana counter with the advantage of exiling instead of sending to graveyard
- Fabricate: This sorcery hugely facilitates bringing Isochron Scepter out.
- Flagstones of Trokair: a plain that, being legendary, lets you, when you put two of them on the battlefield, trim your library of lands. it can also be used to go get Hallowed Fountains
- Isochron Scepter: this deck weapon of mass destruction. it allows you to have unlimited counters or removals and ruining your opponent's day.
- Jace, Memory Adept: intended to be used in late game, after you gained complete control over the battlefield, to win the game by emptying your opponent's library.
- Negate: two drops counter that keeps you out of the reach of nasty instants, sorceries, artifact or enchantments.
- Path to Exile: the main removal in this deck. Cheap and powerful.
- Psychic Barrier : 2 mana creature counter that also force your opponent to lose life.
- Silence: cheap and deadly when imprinted on the Isochron Scepter
- Snapcaster Mage: Versatile, cheap and game changer. It also work divinely as chump-blocker
- Wall of Denial: probably the best wall in town, useful to keep the few creatures your opponent will cast at bay.
Sideboard
- Augur of Bolas : Solid blocker and lets you dig for the instant you were looking for. Intended to be used against fast beatdown decks.
- Elixir of Immortality: Great response against mill decks, especially if you have an Academy Ruins on the battlefield.
- Grand Abolisher: very useful when you are facing another control deck.
- Nevermore: if your opponent has some nasty trick that ruin your strategy this is card that will save you.
- Silence: If your opponent is playing a no-creatures deck leaving Path to Exile in the board is useless, better to use one more Silence and, maybe, two Grand Abolishers or Teferi, Mage of Zhalfirs.
- Supreme Verdict: mass removal used against horde or tokens decks
- Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir: Finisher if you are using Isochron Scepter + Silence, gives a big degree of control also. To be used against "no creatures" decks.
Maybeboard
- Azorius Charm: very flexible instant used either to gain card advantage or bouncing your opponent creatures. It was removed from the mainboard to make room for Fabricate.
- Izzet Guildmage : allows you to copy instants paying 3 mana but I don't think it fits too much in this deck.
- Leyline of Sanctity: The only true response this deck would have to fast discard decks. Seriously thinking of swapping this for two in the sideboard. The only thing that's keeping me from doing it is that I already rely heavily on an opening hand combo and adding this may be really too much.
- Pact of Negation: useful in desperate situations but paying 5 mana for a counter is a bit too much for me.
- Voltaic Key: May be useful to untap Isochron Scepter. for example: Isochron Scepter imprinted with Silence + Voltaic Key and 5 mana means winning. It's also quite cheap in terms of mana but I don't feel like removing something to make room for a couple of these.
For Geeks
In this deck, having Isochron Scepter or Fabricate with a control instant such as Path to Exile, Silence, Psychic Barrier and/or Negate and at least two (or three, in the Fabricate Case) lands, from now on referred as "control combination", in your opening hand means a lot. In this section I analyze the probability of such a case. The code I used to run the computation can be found here
The first plot shows the probability of obtaining a control combination after, at most, a certain number of mulligans
As you can see, 1 out of 5 times, you'll run into a control combination with Isochron Scepter in your opening hand and, slightly less than 1 out of 3 you'll have Fabricate instead of Isochron Scepter. This probabilities climb to 1 out of 3 and 1 out of slightly more than 2, respectively, using just one mulligan.
The second plot shows what's the probability of having a particular control instant given that you have a control combination in the opening hand. They sum to more than 100% since you can have more than one of these instants in your control combo hand
The third plot shows the probability distribution function of the turns required to get a control combination using at most one mulligan.
As you can see in half the times you'll get the combo after just one draw and in 2 out of 3 of the times you'll get it by turn 4
Known Issues
There are some cards that can be very nasty to face with this deck. I decided to list them here so that you know what to be afraid of when using this grimoire.
- Thoughtseize, Duress, Inquisition of Kozilek or any other one drop discard since they can force you to discard the Scepter without any response to it. If this threat is too much for you consider swapping Negate for Spell Pierce or Outwit but even them can't do much if your opponent play first. I'm considering Leyline of Sanctity, watch the "maybeboard" section of "Cards Breakdown" for more infos.
- High Priest of Penance, Qasali Pridemage or any other "destroy artifact or permanent" activated or triggered ability since they can get rid of your Isochron Scepter leaving you with no response. If your opponent is using one of these consider adding Nevermore from the sideboard.
- Deathrite Shaman as in this deck you'll be using a lot of instants if you don't remove this popular card fast it may sneak in a lot of damage.
- Thalia, Guardian of Thraben cost increasers are usually quite expensive in terms of mana, this card is a clear exception. Not really a game changer but it can be annoying since it increases the cost of practically all spells in this deck, even those casted using the scepter.
- Abrupt Decay that is this deck worst nightmare. It can ruin your entire strategy. Consider Nevermore or keep a Boomerang ready for the rescue.
If you find out other nasty cards to look out for just post a comment
Thanks to
Users who contributed to this deck build with their comments or suggestions
Want More?!
Here is a list of other decks I built
Modern
- Aim for the Heart:
burn deck that wins by trowing huge damage to your opponent's face - Smash, don't think:
fast aggro deck - A pariah will save us:
combo deck that aims to making you invulnerable to damage. - Realm of Illusion:
budget illusions deck. - One Damage is Enough:
deck based on tap-to-damage creatures like
Vulshok Sorcerer
Legacy
- Ping of Death:
control deck that aims to deal a small but steady ammount of damage each turn
As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
Have Fun!
Suggestions
Updates Add
After I found out about Fabricate
I couldn't leave it out of this deck.
The improvements in terms of speed of control can be seen in the "for geeks" section.
Deck Changes:
- -4 Azorius Charm +4 Fabricate
After some extensive playtest, with the new setup, the win ratio of this deck is at 50%
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| Date added | 11 years |
| Last updated | 11 years |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 4 - 2 Mythic Rares 25 - 9 Rares 14 - 4 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 2.37 |
| Folders | Favorites, Modern, Proxy Decks, Control, cool decks |
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