GGoober
10-05-2010, 02:15 PM
Introduction and Control in Legacy
I'm a control player, and walking the roads of control in Legacy has taught me much about the format. I am not the best control player since I still make play mistakes that have more serious repercussion for a control player than a non-control player in the format. However, due to this experience, I have slowly learned the importance on how control elements in a control deck works. It will be a few more years playing control until I have fully grasped its challenges and strategies, yet it won't be a few more years as I test out new variants of control decks and explore viable strategies.
Within a short period of half a year, I've been exposed to testing various forms of control decks:
- UWb Wishstill (and all kinds of UWx Landstill)
- UWr Knappstill (UWr Landstill with Scepter-Chant)
- CAB Jace TM (Control deck running Maze of Ith)
- Countertop.
Unlike decks like New Horizons, Canadian Thresh, and Team America, a control deck is mostly focused on reactively interacting with opponents, and answering critical spells before dropping a victory card. Most would now know that Jace, the Mindsculptor is one of the strongest victory card in 'slow-controllish' cards in Legacy. However, there still exists a number of other viable candidates as victory cards e.g. Elspeth, Knight Errant, Decree of Justice, Mishra's Factory, Tarmogoyf, Thopter Foundry.
Why would you play a control deck that has a victory card that pales in comparison when weighed against stronger victory cards in Legacy? (e.g. Natural Order, Survival of the Fittest, Show and Tell, Tendrils of Agony, Counterbalance). Why would you want to play a deck that risks losing to other decks in the early game? It seems that control decks in Legacy are all about stabilizing before they do anything, is it worth risking to fail to stabilize early game and potentially lose after, or even if you stabilized, run into time and draw instead of winning?
My answer: I play control decks because I enjoy the challenge of stabilizing and playing the reactive role, and I enjoy the comeback and taking the victory by Thwarting your gameplan. I believe that most control players share the same feeling. They enjoy the options the deck gives, granted that the price to pay for this flexibility is a tougher early game. They enjoy watching opposing strategies crumble and win while their opponents have no answers against them.
Elements of a Control Deck
Needless to say, mastering a control-deck is indeed a tough skill, and I can say I'm only 30% on my way to becoming a good control player. I have learned a lot so far in deck design and implementation so I'll share my thoughts on the following elements of a control deck:
Pro-active gameplay
Most decks in Legacy fall under this category. The non-control decks seek to play out threats and put pressure on opposing decks. When two pro-active-based decks play against each other, the aggressor (more aggressive deck) will play pro-actively since that strategy works best for them. A good example is to think of two very aggressive Legacy decks: Goblins v.s. Zoo. In my opinion, the Goblin player is clearly the re-active player while the Zoo player is the pro-active player although the role switches depending on the die roll/board position.
Combo decks are another example of extremum of pro-active decks. Cards like Duress, Orim's Chant while being protection/defensive cards are still being used pro-actively.
Re-active gameplay
Tempo, control decks typically fall under this spectrum. The benefits of the re-active gameplay is to leave yourselves with the best option after deciding what your opponents have played. Tempo decks play re-actively mainly to gain and advantage/tempo and win with that advantage/tempo. Control decks like Landstill play re-actively because they have no other choice by the nature of their deck design where they build their victory cards towards later fundamental turns.
Re-active decks have a big peril: you pay a big price for your decisions. E.g. If you chose to not play a spell X and instead pass the turn hoping to react to your opponent's spell Y and he ends up playing spell Z, you have lost some interaction advantage and therefore limiting your turns and gameplay while your opponent has squeezed spell Z into the game. The biggest challenge for control decks especially is the lack of strong re-active spells such as Daze, Spell Pierce, Stifle. Tempo decks enjoy this rich plethora of re-active spells but a pure control deck usually does not play these spells (maybe they play some Spell Pierces). However, the strategy of the control deck is to make up for the lack of Daze, Stifle and play some pro-active answers to accomodate for this loss e.g. Engineered Explosives.
During the course of a game, a control player will pre-dominantly play the reactive role early game, Counterspelling important threats, Swords to Plowshares EOT on opponent's threats. A tap-out Engineered Explosives can be a reactive play as well in answer to Aether Vial. A distinction between reactive and pro-active use of EE can be made in this example:
Reactive: Dropping EE@1 after opponent resolves a Vial.
Proactive: On the play, drop EE@1 on turn 1 in anticipation of Vial/Lackey.
How would the above benefit the control player and how would it be different? The reactive use of EE signals the threat of a resolved EE, and emphasizes the fact that Vial is a deadly threat to the deck. Why would Vial be deadly against control? It limits interactions for the control player by killing any Counterspells in hand, not to mention having the surprise element of vialing a creature at any time to put unexpected pressure on a control player. Proactively using EE signals the recognition that Vial is indeed a threat for the deck, and that it is the BIGGEST threat against the control deck since setting EE@1 locks my choice for EE to Vial and :1:-permanents. But the act of doing so tells you something about the control players' deck design, and future plans where perhaps he want to keep two-mana open next turn to either Counterspell or blow up the EE. In this scenario, pro-actively resolving EE also affects the opponent's gameplay, and if the opponent is less experienced and does not know how to deal with a proactively resolved EE, it would shift a little advantage to the control player.
In summary, playing a control deck involves weighing the cost of choosing between pro-actively and re-actively strategies, specifically whether you should tap out to play spells like EE, Jace TMS, Standstill, or if you should still keep mana open to react to your opponents or at least hold onto your options before playing them. A good example is the debate on Brainstorming in the early games or saving it for later. In a control deck, I feel the right play is to always conserve Brainstorms unless your hand at that point is irrelevant (a good hand may still be irrelevant depending on what your opponent plays). For a control deck, Brainstorm should always be saved whenever possible since it expands the re-active strategy. For tempo/non-control decks, a pro-active use of Brainstorm strengthens your pro-active gameplays and is more advantageous.
Resources and 20 Life
From experience, a control deck is usually under a lot of resource constraints in the early game. An StP deals with a Goyf, but you only play 4 StPs in a deck while your opponent plays 16+ creatures. You have EE to help, but sometimes you'll draw into a Counterspell and not have any removal. Depending on your hand and opponent's deck, you will sometimes have to choose whether it's worth playing certain cards or to hold back and using your 20 life as a resource to trade for a better play later.
An example include playing against Zoo. They resolve a Wild Nacatl that beats for 3 on turn 2. Do you StP it or hold the StP to save two mana to counter a Goyf? If he ends up playing the Goyf, you could StP the Goyf anyway, so what's the big deal here? The deal is if you are willing to take 3 damage from the cat, you have the option to counter a spell, while using that StP against anything that resolves later on your next turn. If you StPed the cat, you can't counter the next threat and it's probably worse facing a Goyf than a cat. This is a simple example, but many times a control player will be faced with similar, but more complicated examples on resource management and using life as a buffer to stabilize in the early game.
Try to x-1 your opponents as often as you can, and this is the sole reason why Engineered Explosives and Pernicious Deed are very powerful in control decks. However, to achieve these x-1, you sometimes have to be patient and trade a couple of lifepoints to force them to over-extend while taking out other threats not within the range of EE/Deeds with StP/Counterspells.
A control player's options are much more limited than the aggressor. Re-active gameplay punishes more than pro-active gameplay, so having to re-act and choosing resource wisely breaks the game into a win/loss situation. Thankfully Legacy is a much more forgiving format than Vintage, but even then, I can say that most games I have lost are due to very small wrong decisions made in my reactive strategies.
Interaction advantage
We are coming to the heart of the discussion. There are many categories of advantage e.g. card advantage, board advantage, resource advantage, tempo advantage. However, I feel the most crucial of these is interaction advantage. None of the above advantages are relevant if you cannot interact with your opponent and his cards. E.g. Turn 1 Trinisphere shuts down all interactions from an opponent for at least three turns, and because of this interaction advantage, you are allowed to set up either of card/board/resource advantage in that time-frame to gain a big advantage in the game.
A Dredge playing fighting against Leyline of the Void is another example of limited interaction advantage. Pithing Needle naming Survival of the Fittest shuts down Vengevine Survival's main engine, providing limitation to their interaction advantage. Blood Moon, Back to Basics are all powerful cards that limit interaction advantage. Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top is a very classic example of interaction advantage.
For a more relevant topic, Planeswalkers in control is the control player's choice of interaction advantage. Unlike the above examples mentioned, a Planeswalker does not really shut down any decks per se, but due to the difficulty of dealing with Planeswalkers in Legacy, the Planeswalker will be able to sit there and interact with your opponent's board pieces (creatures usually) and force them to interact with the planeswalker rather than with you. Planeswalkers do what they are supposed to do by WotC's design, forcing the opponent to interact with them just as they are interacting with a 'player from a different plane'). Part of the control deck's strategy is to keep this interaction for as long as possible, since the initial startup costs of resolving a planeswalker is costly (e.g. :2::U::U: for Jace, the Mindsculptor). However the costs for the Planeswalker are usually much worth it for what they do. This is perhaps the heart of the discussion because by diverting your opponent's resources/cards/board to answering both yourself and the newly added Planeswalker, you have created more interaction advantage for yourself on how you choose to strategize with the cards in your hand. Your opponents however have a more limited interaction advantage since they have to divert their interactions to answering the Planeswalker.
And this is where Jace, TMS has found a way into control decks. He has a game-winning ability that HAS to be answered. However, he is very hard to remove since he has an inbuilt defensive ability when coupled with removal/counterspell in a control deck, creates a lot of problems for the opposing deck. Control-decks, IMO, therefore have a pretty boring and indirect way of wining that can be summarized in the following statement:
A control-deck seeks to stabilize in the early game, balancing pro-active/re-active strategies against the aggressor, while seeking to maintain as much interaction advantage as he can. The goal of a control-deck is to eventually reach the point where he can maintain enough interaction advantage (via a Planeswalker or with Scepter etc) such that he is able to pro-actively start winning the game while re-actively control the game state.
Keeping ALL these in mind, I present you
Decklist: The Punisher
Lands: 24
2 Groves of the Burnwillows
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Plateau
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Karakas
2 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
Board-control: 13
2 Maze of Ith
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Punishing Fire
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Elspeth Tiriel/Knight Errant (still testing, KE favored)
Permission: 8
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
Card-advantage/tutors: 16
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Isochron Scepter
1 Life from the Loam
2 Intuition
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sideboard: 15
3 Negate
3 Tormod Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Peacekeeper
3 Pithing Needle
SIDEBOARD NOTES:
- Negates/REBs can be imprinted on Scepter.
- 3 Crypt since Intuition adds to finding some crypts. You should be fine against Dredge but Reanimator is a problem, but Negates + Peacekeeper support that matchup
- Peacekeeper: Latest tech from Atog Lord. Surprisingly strong against Merfolks/Vengevine Survival/Emrakul/Progenitus decks. CANNOT BE GRIPPED > can be StPed since you cannot deal with Grip with counterspells
- Pithing Needle: Flex slots but meta-game answer for popularity of Merfolks (Coralhelm, Vial, Mutavault) and Vengevine Survival (Survival), still decent against many other matchups. Could be Meddling Mages instead but he's a creature.
The Punisher was developed after a culmination of thoughts gathered from strategies from UWx Landstill, CAB Jace, and recently an inspiration from the discussion of Punishing Fire from an experimental decklist by Anusien. His deck is an aggro-control deck utilizing the strong synergy of Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows. At first instinct, I felt that the engine belonged more to a control deck rather than an aggro-control beatdown-gro deck. The lifegain for an opponent is irrelevant when you are netting a recurring removal/burn card every time you activate Grove of the Burnwillows. The lifegain is even more irrelevant for a control deck where you concerns are stabilizing the board and game state in the early games.
Anusien made the comment that Punishing Fire beats Merfolks/Gobs and Zoo to some extent. I initially was skeptical, but after further testing, one can see how powerful the card is against such decks. With access to :1::R:, you can take out a single-lord and other 2/2s. Against 3/3 Folks and Zoo creatures, once you have access to :2::R::R: (one of the :R: must come from Grove of the Burnwillows), you can burn out any 4-toughness creatures in the format. That is pretty huge to have a recurring burn that does 1 damage per mana spent at instant speed, and being able to put out 3/4 Goyfs, 3/4 Warmonks, 3/3 Zoo creatures, 3/3 Merfolks and if you couple with some Mishra's Factory that can block, you can potentially take out 5/6 Goyfs without losing too much card disadvantage.
The main strength of Punishing Fire, however, arises from its easy accessibility via Intuition. Intuition fetches Punishing Fire with/without Life from the Loam and Grove of the Burnwillows to set up an engine that has the capability on stabilizing board position by itself.
All in all, the deck should not be viewed as a Punishing Fire control deck. It plays more like a Landstill deck than anything, and the Punishing Fires themselves are added creature removal with/without Grove of the Burnwillows. Take note the heart of the deck is in the above elements of control-decks that I mentioned and a big pillar the deck focuses on is: interaction-advantage. How does the deck achieve big interaction-advantage?
1) Jace, the Mindsculptor and Elspeth, Knight Errant:
These are fairly obvious examples of interaction-advantage as described earlier, but one must note that the interaction is further improved with early-late game inclusions of Maze of Ith supporting the defense of the Planeswalkers. Maze of Ith adds another tool that protects the Planeswalkers, and in fact does the best job by stopping the most powerful attacker swinging into Jace/Elspeth. Elspeth Tiriel is a good choice for the deck but some tweaks have to be made i.e. cut the Scepters because you don't want to lose them in her ultimate but if you can ever Disk with Elspeth Tiriel, you probably already have won the game.
2) Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire:
The synergy is very powerful, and can be viewed as a 'creatureless' approach of using Grim Lavamancer. Combined with Maze, soldier tokens, Mishra's Factory, Punishing Fire can kill relevant 3-4 toughness targets by itself, kill 5-6 toughness targets with the help of Goyf and Maze can buy time until you either get 2 Punishing Fire or 2 Groves of the Burnwillows out. The additional removal helps greatly against Goblins/Merfolks early game and despite the fact that Folks grow fast putting it out of PFire reach, you still have StP and EE to deal with the lords and potentially surprise them.
PFire + Groves engine is also very solid against control-decks, and PFire itself is not dead in the combo matchup.
3) Isochron Scepter + instants:
I have fallen in love with John Knapp's approach on adding Scepters in Landstill. This is a card that I feel is a viable component to control decks. With the slowing down of the post-Mystical tutor format, and blaming Jace, TMS to becoming over-played in aggro-control which also slows down the format, an unanswered turn 2 scepter presents a lot of problem for many decks. I did an analysis on why Scepter is a great card in control and I'll present it here again.
If you're worried that Scepter is a 2-1 when answered, then think of the following possible scenarios:
- You cast Scepter and your opponent Force of Wills it. Then you have reaped 2-1.
- You cast Scepter and your opponent Counterspells/Spell Pierces/Spell Pierces it. Then it's a 1-1. Although note the importance of pro-actively playing scepter and potentially losing some reactive plays (as mentioned in the above sections) may be a little more than a 1-1 since you lost some tempo but the reactive decks will always gain tempo when they counter anything so this is unavoidable for any situation (goyfs/Natural Order etc) and is not a valid argument when analyzing Scepter.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves, you imprint something and it dies before you can activate it (they Krosan Grip or Qasali Pridemage it). Then you are at a 1-2.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves, and you used it once before it's been removed, then you are at a 2-2 at some tempo loss with the initial start up cost of :2: resolving Scepter.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves and you used it more than once before it's been removed, then you reap x-1.
Now, from experience and you can test it yourself and analyze the metagame, there are hardly any decks aside from Bant/Zoo with maindeck Pridemage and Survival deck with Trygon/Pridemage that can pro-actively answer a Scepter. Scepter usually dies to Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse, Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deeds, which are not commonly played except EE/Deeds but the latter two are slow, giving you enough time to counterspell/FoW them. Even if they EE/Deeds Scepter, due to the fact that it's slow, you would have at least been in the 2-2 scenario. But from experience, Scepter has always stuck in play and provided up to 3 to x activations before it's been dealt with. And I would always wish my opponents to FoW my Scepter and 2-1 themselves since I can always bring it back later with Academy Ruins.
From an interaction advantage standpoint, Scepter acts as a mini-planeswalker when resolved, providing its benefits and forcing your opponents to deal with it while you diversify your strategies. So I hope you see my philosophy on why it's good in a control deck.
4) Intuition + engine pieces:
Intuition is a very strong card in the Punisher. You can go with a typical EE/Loam/Academy Ruins pile but you have the option to grab 2 Punishing Fire + Loam if you've drawn a Grove of the Burnwillows, or fetch up whatever combination depending if you have Punishing Fire/Loam/Grove/EE/Wasteland/Academy Ruins/Wasteland in your hand.
Originall I was testing Crucible of Worlds over Life from the Loam in the Punisher since up to this point I'm still convinced that Crucible > Loam in control decks since you don't require mana to recur lands (no tapping-out) and you don't lose a card/resource via dredging. A main reason was the concern that UWgr would destabilize the manabase to a large extent. However, realizing that most of the :G: is cast off Groves of the Burnwillows achieved from Intuition piles, it makes no sense that UWgr would be any more unstable than UWr since Groves provides both :G: and :R: mana. If they waste your Groves, you would have lost that engine anyway so deal with it. Intuition Loam piles are in general much faster to grab than Crucible piles.
Over the course of the game, I don't ever think you would need to use Loam more than 2-3 times. You are not an aggro-loam waste/loam deck although you have the option to do so. You are mainly using loam to setup your engines (Groves + PFires, Ruins + EE) and that's it. You can also grab Karakas/Maze of Ith piles when necessary, giving an out to Emrakul/Teeg when needed.
5) Standstill
This is a card that has a lot of myths attached to it. I've tried my best to defend the card and I'll link my post to the topic for more reference, but in the right deck, Standstill is the BEST unconditional draw 3 in the format for just :1::U:. You can argue Predict is less conditional, but it is as much conditional requiring you to design a deck for it and it draws at most 2 cards, perhaps scrying a junk card in the yard.
As far as I'm concerned, when I design a control deck to utilize my draw engine and minimize its conditionality, I expect my draw engine to guarantee me my 3 cards unconditionally. Up to today, I am still playing a strong 4 set of Standstills and my meta has Merfolks/Gobs. I do run into the issue of resolving it, but my deck deals with the board and game state, and when I drop the Standstill I'm recovering back much faster than any other cards.
Aside from the debate on standstill being viable in control decks (I'll link you to my post when I find it), it is interesting to note how Standstill itself provides an interaction advantage in the deck. By dropping a Standstill, you are limiting your opponent's interaction advantage i.e. he can no longer play spells the way he wants to without considering that you are drawing 3 cards. If you played a Standstill while he has a Lord of Atlantis in play, he will probably want to consider not cracking the Standstill at all since he Islandwalks you. Until you draw the Maze of Ith and start amassing resource advantage by making land drops.
The beauty of Standstill in Landstill-control decks is this very principle: it fundamentally slows the game state down, and allows you to sneak lands into play if your opponents do not crack the Standstill. This is what the control deck wants and it highlights my article above on how sometimes you should always be willing to trade life to establish a more solid mid/end-game strategy. For aggro-decks that are happy that they are swinging with a Kird Ape under a Standstill, they will be surprised that you make 3-5 land drops and start freezing the board up with a Factory and more Factories while you start taking the aggression and forcing them to crack the Standstill open. By then you already have 4-6 lands in play with a plethora of answers in your hand and an extra 3 cards. What people fail to realize when dismissing Standstill is that it is not just a card-draw, it does more than that. It shapes the board/interaction advantage to the control player who has built his deck around to best utilize the card.
It does suck when you CANNOT play Standstill but note that you will always have dead cards in given matchups. Vial-decks aren't the best aggro decks to play against, but once you've dealt with Vial, you should have no problems with drawing cards off Standstills. In this deck, the PFire + Groves + Intuition all adds to the fast tutoring/answers to vial-decks. PFires + Groves stalls and holds aggro a little, with the help from StP/Maze/EE. Once you resolve an EE, you are in a much better shape since Vial is no longer limiting your interaction advantage.
2 Maze of Ith has been inspired by CAB Jace TM on the Source N&D. It's a really strong inclusion IMO to control decks. You do not count it towards your land drop, so every time you drew it, it's basically a non-land slot. Granted that it takes a land-drop and slows you down a turn, but the effect of Maze is very powerful by itself and even more powerful with Standstill. I can cast a Standstill under a Goyf with Maze protection following up provided he does not play Wastelands. Paired up with Planeswalker, Maze gives an added boost to the deck, and the fast tutoring with Intuition/Loam makes it a strong inclusion.
You can always board out Maze in the non-aggro (Enchantress/Stax/combo/control) matchups since it does not take a landdrop.
Matchup up analysis will be added later today. I just designed the deck but will be bringing it this weekend, and testing it this week.
I'm a control player, and walking the roads of control in Legacy has taught me much about the format. I am not the best control player since I still make play mistakes that have more serious repercussion for a control player than a non-control player in the format. However, due to this experience, I have slowly learned the importance on how control elements in a control deck works. It will be a few more years playing control until I have fully grasped its challenges and strategies, yet it won't be a few more years as I test out new variants of control decks and explore viable strategies.
Within a short period of half a year, I've been exposed to testing various forms of control decks:
- UWb Wishstill (and all kinds of UWx Landstill)
- UWr Knappstill (UWr Landstill with Scepter-Chant)
- CAB Jace TM (Control deck running Maze of Ith)
- Countertop.
Unlike decks like New Horizons, Canadian Thresh, and Team America, a control deck is mostly focused on reactively interacting with opponents, and answering critical spells before dropping a victory card. Most would now know that Jace, the Mindsculptor is one of the strongest victory card in 'slow-controllish' cards in Legacy. However, there still exists a number of other viable candidates as victory cards e.g. Elspeth, Knight Errant, Decree of Justice, Mishra's Factory, Tarmogoyf, Thopter Foundry.
Why would you play a control deck that has a victory card that pales in comparison when weighed against stronger victory cards in Legacy? (e.g. Natural Order, Survival of the Fittest, Show and Tell, Tendrils of Agony, Counterbalance). Why would you want to play a deck that risks losing to other decks in the early game? It seems that control decks in Legacy are all about stabilizing before they do anything, is it worth risking to fail to stabilize early game and potentially lose after, or even if you stabilized, run into time and draw instead of winning?
My answer: I play control decks because I enjoy the challenge of stabilizing and playing the reactive role, and I enjoy the comeback and taking the victory by Thwarting your gameplan. I believe that most control players share the same feeling. They enjoy the options the deck gives, granted that the price to pay for this flexibility is a tougher early game. They enjoy watching opposing strategies crumble and win while their opponents have no answers against them.
Elements of a Control Deck
Needless to say, mastering a control-deck is indeed a tough skill, and I can say I'm only 30% on my way to becoming a good control player. I have learned a lot so far in deck design and implementation so I'll share my thoughts on the following elements of a control deck:
Pro-active gameplay
Most decks in Legacy fall under this category. The non-control decks seek to play out threats and put pressure on opposing decks. When two pro-active-based decks play against each other, the aggressor (more aggressive deck) will play pro-actively since that strategy works best for them. A good example is to think of two very aggressive Legacy decks: Goblins v.s. Zoo. In my opinion, the Goblin player is clearly the re-active player while the Zoo player is the pro-active player although the role switches depending on the die roll/board position.
Combo decks are another example of extremum of pro-active decks. Cards like Duress, Orim's Chant while being protection/defensive cards are still being used pro-actively.
Re-active gameplay
Tempo, control decks typically fall under this spectrum. The benefits of the re-active gameplay is to leave yourselves with the best option after deciding what your opponents have played. Tempo decks play re-actively mainly to gain and advantage/tempo and win with that advantage/tempo. Control decks like Landstill play re-actively because they have no other choice by the nature of their deck design where they build their victory cards towards later fundamental turns.
Re-active decks have a big peril: you pay a big price for your decisions. E.g. If you chose to not play a spell X and instead pass the turn hoping to react to your opponent's spell Y and he ends up playing spell Z, you have lost some interaction advantage and therefore limiting your turns and gameplay while your opponent has squeezed spell Z into the game. The biggest challenge for control decks especially is the lack of strong re-active spells such as Daze, Spell Pierce, Stifle. Tempo decks enjoy this rich plethora of re-active spells but a pure control deck usually does not play these spells (maybe they play some Spell Pierces). However, the strategy of the control deck is to make up for the lack of Daze, Stifle and play some pro-active answers to accomodate for this loss e.g. Engineered Explosives.
During the course of a game, a control player will pre-dominantly play the reactive role early game, Counterspelling important threats, Swords to Plowshares EOT on opponent's threats. A tap-out Engineered Explosives can be a reactive play as well in answer to Aether Vial. A distinction between reactive and pro-active use of EE can be made in this example:
Reactive: Dropping EE@1 after opponent resolves a Vial.
Proactive: On the play, drop EE@1 on turn 1 in anticipation of Vial/Lackey.
How would the above benefit the control player and how would it be different? The reactive use of EE signals the threat of a resolved EE, and emphasizes the fact that Vial is a deadly threat to the deck. Why would Vial be deadly against control? It limits interactions for the control player by killing any Counterspells in hand, not to mention having the surprise element of vialing a creature at any time to put unexpected pressure on a control player. Proactively using EE signals the recognition that Vial is indeed a threat for the deck, and that it is the BIGGEST threat against the control deck since setting EE@1 locks my choice for EE to Vial and :1:-permanents. But the act of doing so tells you something about the control players' deck design, and future plans where perhaps he want to keep two-mana open next turn to either Counterspell or blow up the EE. In this scenario, pro-actively resolving EE also affects the opponent's gameplay, and if the opponent is less experienced and does not know how to deal with a proactively resolved EE, it would shift a little advantage to the control player.
In summary, playing a control deck involves weighing the cost of choosing between pro-actively and re-actively strategies, specifically whether you should tap out to play spells like EE, Jace TMS, Standstill, or if you should still keep mana open to react to your opponents or at least hold onto your options before playing them. A good example is the debate on Brainstorming in the early games or saving it for later. In a control deck, I feel the right play is to always conserve Brainstorms unless your hand at that point is irrelevant (a good hand may still be irrelevant depending on what your opponent plays). For a control deck, Brainstorm should always be saved whenever possible since it expands the re-active strategy. For tempo/non-control decks, a pro-active use of Brainstorm strengthens your pro-active gameplays and is more advantageous.
Resources and 20 Life
From experience, a control deck is usually under a lot of resource constraints in the early game. An StP deals with a Goyf, but you only play 4 StPs in a deck while your opponent plays 16+ creatures. You have EE to help, but sometimes you'll draw into a Counterspell and not have any removal. Depending on your hand and opponent's deck, you will sometimes have to choose whether it's worth playing certain cards or to hold back and using your 20 life as a resource to trade for a better play later.
An example include playing against Zoo. They resolve a Wild Nacatl that beats for 3 on turn 2. Do you StP it or hold the StP to save two mana to counter a Goyf? If he ends up playing the Goyf, you could StP the Goyf anyway, so what's the big deal here? The deal is if you are willing to take 3 damage from the cat, you have the option to counter a spell, while using that StP against anything that resolves later on your next turn. If you StPed the cat, you can't counter the next threat and it's probably worse facing a Goyf than a cat. This is a simple example, but many times a control player will be faced with similar, but more complicated examples on resource management and using life as a buffer to stabilize in the early game.
Try to x-1 your opponents as often as you can, and this is the sole reason why Engineered Explosives and Pernicious Deed are very powerful in control decks. However, to achieve these x-1, you sometimes have to be patient and trade a couple of lifepoints to force them to over-extend while taking out other threats not within the range of EE/Deeds with StP/Counterspells.
A control player's options are much more limited than the aggressor. Re-active gameplay punishes more than pro-active gameplay, so having to re-act and choosing resource wisely breaks the game into a win/loss situation. Thankfully Legacy is a much more forgiving format than Vintage, but even then, I can say that most games I have lost are due to very small wrong decisions made in my reactive strategies.
Interaction advantage
We are coming to the heart of the discussion. There are many categories of advantage e.g. card advantage, board advantage, resource advantage, tempo advantage. However, I feel the most crucial of these is interaction advantage. None of the above advantages are relevant if you cannot interact with your opponent and his cards. E.g. Turn 1 Trinisphere shuts down all interactions from an opponent for at least three turns, and because of this interaction advantage, you are allowed to set up either of card/board/resource advantage in that time-frame to gain a big advantage in the game.
A Dredge playing fighting against Leyline of the Void is another example of limited interaction advantage. Pithing Needle naming Survival of the Fittest shuts down Vengevine Survival's main engine, providing limitation to their interaction advantage. Blood Moon, Back to Basics are all powerful cards that limit interaction advantage. Counterbalance + Sensei's Divining Top is a very classic example of interaction advantage.
For a more relevant topic, Planeswalkers in control is the control player's choice of interaction advantage. Unlike the above examples mentioned, a Planeswalker does not really shut down any decks per se, but due to the difficulty of dealing with Planeswalkers in Legacy, the Planeswalker will be able to sit there and interact with your opponent's board pieces (creatures usually) and force them to interact with the planeswalker rather than with you. Planeswalkers do what they are supposed to do by WotC's design, forcing the opponent to interact with them just as they are interacting with a 'player from a different plane'). Part of the control deck's strategy is to keep this interaction for as long as possible, since the initial startup costs of resolving a planeswalker is costly (e.g. :2::U::U: for Jace, the Mindsculptor). However the costs for the Planeswalker are usually much worth it for what they do. This is perhaps the heart of the discussion because by diverting your opponent's resources/cards/board to answering both yourself and the newly added Planeswalker, you have created more interaction advantage for yourself on how you choose to strategize with the cards in your hand. Your opponents however have a more limited interaction advantage since they have to divert their interactions to answering the Planeswalker.
And this is where Jace, TMS has found a way into control decks. He has a game-winning ability that HAS to be answered. However, he is very hard to remove since he has an inbuilt defensive ability when coupled with removal/counterspell in a control deck, creates a lot of problems for the opposing deck. Control-decks, IMO, therefore have a pretty boring and indirect way of wining that can be summarized in the following statement:
A control-deck seeks to stabilize in the early game, balancing pro-active/re-active strategies against the aggressor, while seeking to maintain as much interaction advantage as he can. The goal of a control-deck is to eventually reach the point where he can maintain enough interaction advantage (via a Planeswalker or with Scepter etc) such that he is able to pro-actively start winning the game while re-actively control the game state.
Keeping ALL these in mind, I present you
Decklist: The Punisher
Lands: 24
2 Groves of the Burnwillows
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tundra
1 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 Plateau
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Karakas
2 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Academy Ruins
Board-control: 13
2 Maze of Ith
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Punishing Fire
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Elspeth Tiriel/Knight Errant (still testing, KE favored)
Permission: 8
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
Card-advantage/tutors: 16
4 Brainstorm
4 Standstill
2 Isochron Scepter
1 Life from the Loam
2 Intuition
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sideboard: 15
3 Negate
3 Tormod Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Peacekeeper
3 Pithing Needle
SIDEBOARD NOTES:
- Negates/REBs can be imprinted on Scepter.
- 3 Crypt since Intuition adds to finding some crypts. You should be fine against Dredge but Reanimator is a problem, but Negates + Peacekeeper support that matchup
- Peacekeeper: Latest tech from Atog Lord. Surprisingly strong against Merfolks/Vengevine Survival/Emrakul/Progenitus decks. CANNOT BE GRIPPED > can be StPed since you cannot deal with Grip with counterspells
- Pithing Needle: Flex slots but meta-game answer for popularity of Merfolks (Coralhelm, Vial, Mutavault) and Vengevine Survival (Survival), still decent against many other matchups. Could be Meddling Mages instead but he's a creature.
The Punisher was developed after a culmination of thoughts gathered from strategies from UWx Landstill, CAB Jace, and recently an inspiration from the discussion of Punishing Fire from an experimental decklist by Anusien. His deck is an aggro-control deck utilizing the strong synergy of Punishing Fire and Grove of the Burnwillows. At first instinct, I felt that the engine belonged more to a control deck rather than an aggro-control beatdown-gro deck. The lifegain for an opponent is irrelevant when you are netting a recurring removal/burn card every time you activate Grove of the Burnwillows. The lifegain is even more irrelevant for a control deck where you concerns are stabilizing the board and game state in the early games.
Anusien made the comment that Punishing Fire beats Merfolks/Gobs and Zoo to some extent. I initially was skeptical, but after further testing, one can see how powerful the card is against such decks. With access to :1::R:, you can take out a single-lord and other 2/2s. Against 3/3 Folks and Zoo creatures, once you have access to :2::R::R: (one of the :R: must come from Grove of the Burnwillows), you can burn out any 4-toughness creatures in the format. That is pretty huge to have a recurring burn that does 1 damage per mana spent at instant speed, and being able to put out 3/4 Goyfs, 3/4 Warmonks, 3/3 Zoo creatures, 3/3 Merfolks and if you couple with some Mishra's Factory that can block, you can potentially take out 5/6 Goyfs without losing too much card disadvantage.
The main strength of Punishing Fire, however, arises from its easy accessibility via Intuition. Intuition fetches Punishing Fire with/without Life from the Loam and Grove of the Burnwillows to set up an engine that has the capability on stabilizing board position by itself.
All in all, the deck should not be viewed as a Punishing Fire control deck. It plays more like a Landstill deck than anything, and the Punishing Fires themselves are added creature removal with/without Grove of the Burnwillows. Take note the heart of the deck is in the above elements of control-decks that I mentioned and a big pillar the deck focuses on is: interaction-advantage. How does the deck achieve big interaction-advantage?
1) Jace, the Mindsculptor and Elspeth, Knight Errant:
These are fairly obvious examples of interaction-advantage as described earlier, but one must note that the interaction is further improved with early-late game inclusions of Maze of Ith supporting the defense of the Planeswalkers. Maze of Ith adds another tool that protects the Planeswalkers, and in fact does the best job by stopping the most powerful attacker swinging into Jace/Elspeth. Elspeth Tiriel is a good choice for the deck but some tweaks have to be made i.e. cut the Scepters because you don't want to lose them in her ultimate but if you can ever Disk with Elspeth Tiriel, you probably already have won the game.
2) Grove of the Burnwillows and Punishing Fire:
The synergy is very powerful, and can be viewed as a 'creatureless' approach of using Grim Lavamancer. Combined with Maze, soldier tokens, Mishra's Factory, Punishing Fire can kill relevant 3-4 toughness targets by itself, kill 5-6 toughness targets with the help of Goyf and Maze can buy time until you either get 2 Punishing Fire or 2 Groves of the Burnwillows out. The additional removal helps greatly against Goblins/Merfolks early game and despite the fact that Folks grow fast putting it out of PFire reach, you still have StP and EE to deal with the lords and potentially surprise them.
PFire + Groves engine is also very solid against control-decks, and PFire itself is not dead in the combo matchup.
3) Isochron Scepter + instants:
I have fallen in love with John Knapp's approach on adding Scepters in Landstill. This is a card that I feel is a viable component to control decks. With the slowing down of the post-Mystical tutor format, and blaming Jace, TMS to becoming over-played in aggro-control which also slows down the format, an unanswered turn 2 scepter presents a lot of problem for many decks. I did an analysis on why Scepter is a great card in control and I'll present it here again.
If you're worried that Scepter is a 2-1 when answered, then think of the following possible scenarios:
- You cast Scepter and your opponent Force of Wills it. Then you have reaped 2-1.
- You cast Scepter and your opponent Counterspells/Spell Pierces/Spell Pierces it. Then it's a 1-1. Although note the importance of pro-actively playing scepter and potentially losing some reactive plays (as mentioned in the above sections) may be a little more than a 1-1 since you lost some tempo but the reactive decks will always gain tempo when they counter anything so this is unavoidable for any situation (goyfs/Natural Order etc) and is not a valid argument when analyzing Scepter.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves, you imprint something and it dies before you can activate it (they Krosan Grip or Qasali Pridemage it). Then you are at a 1-2.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves, and you used it once before it's been removed, then you are at a 2-2 at some tempo loss with the initial start up cost of :2: resolving Scepter.
- You cast Scepter and it resolves and you used it more than once before it's been removed, then you reap x-1.
Now, from experience and you can test it yourself and analyze the metagame, there are hardly any decks aside from Bant/Zoo with maindeck Pridemage and Survival deck with Trygon/Pridemage that can pro-actively answer a Scepter. Scepter usually dies to Vindicate, Maelstrom Pulse, Engineered Explosives, Pernicious Deeds, which are not commonly played except EE/Deeds but the latter two are slow, giving you enough time to counterspell/FoW them. Even if they EE/Deeds Scepter, due to the fact that it's slow, you would have at least been in the 2-2 scenario. But from experience, Scepter has always stuck in play and provided up to 3 to x activations before it's been dealt with. And I would always wish my opponents to FoW my Scepter and 2-1 themselves since I can always bring it back later with Academy Ruins.
From an interaction advantage standpoint, Scepter acts as a mini-planeswalker when resolved, providing its benefits and forcing your opponents to deal with it while you diversify your strategies. So I hope you see my philosophy on why it's good in a control deck.
4) Intuition + engine pieces:
Intuition is a very strong card in the Punisher. You can go with a typical EE/Loam/Academy Ruins pile but you have the option to grab 2 Punishing Fire + Loam if you've drawn a Grove of the Burnwillows, or fetch up whatever combination depending if you have Punishing Fire/Loam/Grove/EE/Wasteland/Academy Ruins/Wasteland in your hand.
Originall I was testing Crucible of Worlds over Life from the Loam in the Punisher since up to this point I'm still convinced that Crucible > Loam in control decks since you don't require mana to recur lands (no tapping-out) and you don't lose a card/resource via dredging. A main reason was the concern that UWgr would destabilize the manabase to a large extent. However, realizing that most of the :G: is cast off Groves of the Burnwillows achieved from Intuition piles, it makes no sense that UWgr would be any more unstable than UWr since Groves provides both :G: and :R: mana. If they waste your Groves, you would have lost that engine anyway so deal with it. Intuition Loam piles are in general much faster to grab than Crucible piles.
Over the course of the game, I don't ever think you would need to use Loam more than 2-3 times. You are not an aggro-loam waste/loam deck although you have the option to do so. You are mainly using loam to setup your engines (Groves + PFires, Ruins + EE) and that's it. You can also grab Karakas/Maze of Ith piles when necessary, giving an out to Emrakul/Teeg when needed.
5) Standstill
This is a card that has a lot of myths attached to it. I've tried my best to defend the card and I'll link my post to the topic for more reference, but in the right deck, Standstill is the BEST unconditional draw 3 in the format for just :1::U:. You can argue Predict is less conditional, but it is as much conditional requiring you to design a deck for it and it draws at most 2 cards, perhaps scrying a junk card in the yard.
As far as I'm concerned, when I design a control deck to utilize my draw engine and minimize its conditionality, I expect my draw engine to guarantee me my 3 cards unconditionally. Up to today, I am still playing a strong 4 set of Standstills and my meta has Merfolks/Gobs. I do run into the issue of resolving it, but my deck deals with the board and game state, and when I drop the Standstill I'm recovering back much faster than any other cards.
Aside from the debate on standstill being viable in control decks (I'll link you to my post when I find it), it is interesting to note how Standstill itself provides an interaction advantage in the deck. By dropping a Standstill, you are limiting your opponent's interaction advantage i.e. he can no longer play spells the way he wants to without considering that you are drawing 3 cards. If you played a Standstill while he has a Lord of Atlantis in play, he will probably want to consider not cracking the Standstill at all since he Islandwalks you. Until you draw the Maze of Ith and start amassing resource advantage by making land drops.
The beauty of Standstill in Landstill-control decks is this very principle: it fundamentally slows the game state down, and allows you to sneak lands into play if your opponents do not crack the Standstill. This is what the control deck wants and it highlights my article above on how sometimes you should always be willing to trade life to establish a more solid mid/end-game strategy. For aggro-decks that are happy that they are swinging with a Kird Ape under a Standstill, they will be surprised that you make 3-5 land drops and start freezing the board up with a Factory and more Factories while you start taking the aggression and forcing them to crack the Standstill open. By then you already have 4-6 lands in play with a plethora of answers in your hand and an extra 3 cards. What people fail to realize when dismissing Standstill is that it is not just a card-draw, it does more than that. It shapes the board/interaction advantage to the control player who has built his deck around to best utilize the card.
It does suck when you CANNOT play Standstill but note that you will always have dead cards in given matchups. Vial-decks aren't the best aggro decks to play against, but once you've dealt with Vial, you should have no problems with drawing cards off Standstills. In this deck, the PFire + Groves + Intuition all adds to the fast tutoring/answers to vial-decks. PFires + Groves stalls and holds aggro a little, with the help from StP/Maze/EE. Once you resolve an EE, you are in a much better shape since Vial is no longer limiting your interaction advantage.
2 Maze of Ith has been inspired by CAB Jace TM on the Source N&D. It's a really strong inclusion IMO to control decks. You do not count it towards your land drop, so every time you drew it, it's basically a non-land slot. Granted that it takes a land-drop and slows you down a turn, but the effect of Maze is very powerful by itself and even more powerful with Standstill. I can cast a Standstill under a Goyf with Maze protection following up provided he does not play Wastelands. Paired up with Planeswalker, Maze gives an added boost to the deck, and the fast tutoring with Intuition/Loam makes it a strong inclusion.
You can always board out Maze in the non-aggro (Enchantress/Stax/combo/control) matchups since it does not take a landdrop.
Matchup up analysis will be added later today. I just designed the deck but will be bringing it this weekend, and testing it this week.