[Article] Blue-Free Control in Legacy

[Aggro_zombies]

I think blue control in general is a good bit underplayed. What is wrong with Shackles for defense and stuff like Serendib Efreet and Sea Drake for offense?

The offensive guys you're suggesting are typically used in Faerie Stompy, which is aggro-control. Running Sea Drake in a deck where you want Islands open for countering things is generally not a very good idea. Come to think of it, Drake isn't particularly synergistic with Shackles either.

The problem with blue control, as I said in the article, is that it is primarily a reactive form of control - in other words, it wants to rely on reactive cards to control access to the board. Control in general is reactive, but blue-based control is more so than other types. The problem here is the specific reaction cards (counterspells). Goblins, the most popular deck in the format and also arguably one of the best, runs eight one-drop cards that stop counters dead in their tracks. Shackles comes online too late and even then functions as a much worse Smokestack for men, assuming that you use the guy you capture to suicide block an attacker. By far the biggest problem out of Goblins for mono-blue is Piledriver, as it's usually not the four or five 1-2 power Goblins that kill you, it's the 9/2 or 11/2 Pro: Blue Piledriver that's tagging along with them. All your reset cards can be easily answered with Needle and the plethora of artifact destruction in red, and the best sweepers (Disk and Keg) take a few turns to actually do anything. And those are just the problems in the Goblins matchup. Modern Legacy decks are simply running too many must-answer cards for anything but 24Island36Counterspell.dec to keep up with. Hell, even versus TES or Belcher you need to counter the mana effects or have a Stifle in hand to keep yourself from getting nerfed by the Goblin Hordes that'll be summoned at the end of the Mana Chain.

Thanks for the praise and criticism, guys. Since Tacosnape seems to be gunning for it, methinks my next Legacy project will be about blue-based control before I move on to something else. I'll need to do some research first, of course, and I also wanted to write some articles on Pauper...

And Taco, don't worry about it. Even I occasionally like to have someone disagree with me, since it's useful for improving my next article.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I thought the point of playing something like Truffle Shuffle was that it had a positive matchup against Threshold and other aggro control decks.

Pretty much.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I agree they are fun, especially when you have me constantly berating the judges for picking some complete piecer (I believe there were Ninjas involved) over Faerie Stompy.

You just made the list.

Also, this mentality is why you will never win a CANGD Contest.