UWR Punishing Fire Control

[Malakai]

The basic premise:
Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows is a powerful and extremely resilient combo against fair decks. Each card does something on its own, even if 1R Shock is mediocre, it's not dead. Traditionally, the combo has only been played in non-blue midrange and decks claiming to be aggressive. It seems to me that the card selection power of blue could be very good at assembling and leveraging the combo, and at protecting it post board.

The shell:
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
3-4 Force of Will
4 Punishing Fire
3 Jace, the Mind-Sculptor


From there, there are two basic approaches.

Aggro-Control
This deck is going to want to leverage some amount of creatures to kill the opponent. Prime candidates are Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, Restoration Angel, Geist of Saint Traft, Delver of Secrets, and so on. It is important to note that while this approach is much faster than the one below, it is not a tempo deck. We are not trying to do a RUG impression.

"Pure control"
This deck is going to want to leverage a lot of countermagic as well as cards like moat and/or humility, very little creatures, and will try to kill the opponent either with Punishing Fire itself, or Jace. While this approach may have merits, it is not what this thread is about.

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Here's my take so far at a possible build:
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Jace, the Mind-Sculptor
3 Ponder
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendlion Clique
2 Restoration Angel
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Counterspell
1 Life from the Loam
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Plains
1 Mountain
3 Island
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island


Delver of Secrets:
This is probably the card I like the least. It does one thing only, but it does it well: kill them.

Ponder:
We don't want to be in a scenario where we only have one half of our combo.

Restoration Angel:
3/4, Flying, Flash. The other ability usually doesn't come up, but every once in a while you'll be able to blank a piece of removal by jumping your guy.

Vendilion Clique:
When you actually get to hit someone with Clique, the card is amazingly good. Punishing Fire lets us do that.

Counterspell:
We don't want Spell Snare as Punishing Fire answers most of the things that cost two. This answers the rest.

Snapcaster Mage;
A flash beater with upside that should be able to get through with the help of our removal suite.

Life from the Loam:
A nice value card that let's us get back our groves. The mana base might have room for a wasteland or two somewhere, making this card much better, but I would advise against it. Could probably be cut.



I'd be interested in seeing what other people come up with.

[Vandalize]

The basic premise:
Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows is a powerful and extremely resilient combo against fair decks. Each card does something on its own, even if 1R Shock is mediocre, it's not dead. Traditionally, the combo has only been played in non-blue midrange and decks claiming to be aggressive. It seems to me that the card selection power of blue could be very good at assembling and leveraging the combo, and at protecting it post board.

The shell:
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
3-4 Force of Will
4 Punishing Fire
3 Jace, the Mind-Sculptor


From there, there are two basic approaches.

Aggro-Control
This deck is going to want to leverage some amount of creatures to kill the opponent. Prime candidates are Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, Restoration Angel, Geist of Saint Traft, Delver of Secrets, and so on. It is important to note that while this approach is much faster than the one below, it is not a tempo deck. We are not trying to do a RUG impression.

"Pure control"
This deck is going to want to leverage a lot of countermagic as well as cards like moat and/or humility, very little creatures, and will try to kill the opponent either with Punishing Fire itself, or Jace. While this approach may have merits, it is not what this thread is about.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my take so far at a possible build:
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Punishing Fire
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Jace, the Mind-Sculptor
3 Ponder
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendlion Clique
2 Restoration Angel
4 Delver of Secrets
2 Counterspell
1 Life from the Loam
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Plains
1 Mountain
3 Island
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island


Delver of Secrets:
This is probably the card I like the least. It does one thing only, but it does it well: kill them.

Ponder:
We don't want to be in a scenario where we only have one half of our combo.

Restoration Angel:
3/4, Flying, Flash. The other ability usually doesn't come up, but every once in a while you'll be able to blank a piece of removal by jumping your guy.

Vendilion Clique:
When you actually get to hit someone with Clique, the card is amazingly good. Punishing Fire lets us do that.

Counterspell:
We don't want Spell Snare as Punishing Fire answers most of the things that cost two. This answers the rest.

Snapcaster Mage;
A flash beater with upside that should be able to get through with the help of our removal suite.

Life from the Loam:
A nice value card that let's us get back our groves. The mana base might have room for a wasteland or two somewhere, making this card much better, but I would advise against it. Could probably be cut.



I'd be interested in seeing what other people come up with.

Groves in this deck are basically mountains. You'll never tap it for G (only for the 1-of loam). This makes your manabase much worse than it should, because you have no way to fetch Grove, and it will crap on your curve (it's even worse because you play Counterspell, that requires UU).

Why don't you just switch PFires to Lightning Bolt and take out those Groves, making your manabase more stable and Snapcaster Mage more valuable?

[Piceli89]

Already tried a deck similar to this one time in tournament, it was shit due to color reasons.
Grove forces you to keep hands that are more susceptible to blue sources being Wastelanded, cutting you off Jace and Clique, and forces you to play a lower count of basic Islands as well, which is ultimately what a control deck doesn't want to do. Basic Plains will shit your entire hand from time to time if drawn together with Grove; Deathrite Shaman paired with Wasteland is going to give you headaches in the first 3 turns if you can't defend your mana well. If you want to consistently gear your deck to support the combo at its finest, you should try at least 24 lands plus Loam. There was a "Rainbow Control" piloted by Jaime Cano (control master) in tournaments in Madrid the last year basing on this very concept, you should scry TC decks for it.

Delver is out of place here, since Pfire aims for the long game, where Delver sucks. If you want to stick with Punishing Fire in a UWr shell, try a Stoneblade-esque approach (mid-range, maybe without the SFMs).

[Malakai]

24 lands is probably correct. And basic plains does seem terrible.

I'd be interesting in seeing what people have in mind. The basic point is you don't want to be a do-nothing control deck, because people are going to have ways of negating your Punishing Fires, plus the obvious going-to-time problem.

[NilsH]

I agree with the above poster.

I think 4 PFire are to many, you only want 1 maybe 2 during a game. I would trim down to 3 copies.
Groves messes up your mana base. You could try Cascade Bluffs to get better use of them.
Intuition seems really good with PFire, Loam and Grove. You could also try add ARuins and EE. Maybe even Crucible + Waste?

[preddi]

Hey guys,

I usually play a UWr Stoneblade list, which I had some success with and I like playing alot.

4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Geist of Saint Traft
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
3 Force of Will
4 Ancestral Vision
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
3 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Plateau
4 Flooded Strand
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Arid Mesa
1 Karakas
1 Academy Ruins
3 Island
2 Plains
1 Mountain


I'm considering removing Bolt for PFire and maybe switch Visions for 1-2 Land and 2-3 other Spells. I'm no sure if this would improve or worsen the deck. What do you think about this?

-preddi