[Deck] UW Control

Okay I have looked around online and have not found a just straight UW Control deck or discussion on one, probably because control as a strategy is something people seem to have been avoiding in Modern but I think I may have found a solid list. I have tested this vs a variety of things via Cockatrice, sadly the only way I can test at the moment, but the results have been pretty eye opening. So far the deck does not have an unwinnable matchup, but has some hard ones. Here is the list before I get too far in.

Creatures:

4x Delver of Secrets
4x Snapcaster Mage
3x Geist of Saint Traft

Instants:

4x Mana Leak
4x Path to Exile
2x Cryptic Command
2x Spell Snare

Sorcery:

4x Serum Visions
4x Sleight of Hand
4x Wrath of God

Planeswalkers:

2x Elspeth, Knight-Errant

Lands:

4x Glacial Fortress
4x Hallowed Fountain
3x Marsh Flats
2x Scalding Tarn
2x Academy Ruins
2x Tolaria West
2x Island
2x Plains
1x Seachrome Coast
1x Celestial Colonnade

Sideboard:

3x AEther Spellbomb
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Trinket Mage
4x Echoing Truth
2x Hurkyl's Recall

This deck is obviously not very complex, but it does have a lot of decisions you have to make but what you need completely depends on the opponent. I went with 8 cantrips to make sure I could find the answers or threats I need to finish a game off. The maindeck wraths seem to be surprising everyone I play, which really concerns me about who I have been able to test against. In a format full of primarily creature decks, why shouldn't my deck run 4 Wrath of God, I seriously don't understand the logic of some Modern players. This card has just blown out so many games. Affinity, UG decks, and various things that people build in Modern all seem to really hinge on this not being played, it even kills Thrun which is always good.

The Delvers give the deck the ability to randomly blow out a game because Delver can be very good even on a blind flip, with 24 maindeck instants and sorceries obviously. Snapcasters give the removal and cantrips some serious firepower that we all understand because recasting paths and counterspells and even wraths can just blow people out and Geist is just a solid beater that is hard to remove.

Elspeth naturally just fits right in here and does exactly what we all expect of her, clutter up the ground with blockers then jump into the air and make my wraths really good.

The deck is not without its problems though, for instance a really fast start from Affinity can make my life very sad if I do not have the path-snapcaster-path-wrath hand. They can build up a board really fast and do a lot of damage extremely fast. But with Delver around and Snapcaster I can usually get enough chump blockers to make Wrath work and clear the board leaving decks like that without a hand and stuck in topdeck mode. This is usually helped even further after sideboarding when I bring in Trinket Mages with Engineered Explosives to gain some recurring removal.

Speaking of the sideboard it is in its third iteration, originally I did not have the ruins in the main to board into the explosives plan, and after beating Emrakul off of an Urzatron deck a few time I fit in some AEther spellbombs that I can also use Trinket to get to help shore up that game as well.

Some of the things I did not include but certainly considered:
Vendilion Clique:
The clique is a very powerful creature, but really seemed to me to be unnecessary. She eats up too much mana early on, or simply doesn't do enough later on. There are niche scenarios for her, say against an activated Quicksilver Amulet to cheat in Emrakul, but for the most part, I can handle things thrown my way. That particular use would make her more of a sideboard card anyways.

Swords of X and Y:
I really did not want to use equipment for some reason when I built this and that decision has not really hurt me. I have run into decks running the swords and other toys but i can usually get rid of the beater before it can do anything of value. I really did not want to take up precious slots, and there are oh so few available, to put something in that may or may not even affect the game, considering how creature oriented this format is and how much removal is around. True it can also be a random blowout, but more often than not, that will not be the case and it will either set me back in tempo, or give my opponents complete blowouts.

Gideon Jura:
I actually did not test him yet but I am not sure where I would put him, but he seems very solid for the long game. Suggestions on what to cut and where would be appreciated.

Overall this deck has a lot of angles it can both attack and defend from and seems to be well positioned, at least online. I am not sure if its my being able to outplay some of the people online, or if it really is that strong. Let me know what you guys think, and if a Mod sees this and there is already a thread that I could not find on this particular deck please let me know and move it over.

How does Aether spellbomb stop Tron? They get bonuses when they cast their fatties, and bouncing it back to their hand will most likely not stop anything. Even "locked" with AR will just let them blow your shit up or keep taking extra turns forever.

Your manabase seems weird, 2 Tolaria Academys? You don't have any lands important enough for that, and if EE is that important just run them main or have 4 in the sideboard.

2 Academy ruins main seems bad, especially since it's for the sideboard exclusively. You're playing Cryptics, I can't imagine you can that easily stretch your manabase.

Thanks for the look! So far the manabase doesn't have a lot of issues. In the first iteration I had the Ruins etc in the board, but I found I needed more slots for the cards I wanted, sure game 1 it is terrible, but I am never ever color screwed, only going 2 colors really helps that.

The spellbombs help specifically against Emrakul, I can handle the others. Yes they can hard cast him, take their extra turn, then I bounce him etc. That matchup is not really about getting rid of him permanently since those lists are generally light on the board until they drop a bomb, normally by the time I would be going through those motions they are low on life and I have a threat on the board. This gives me that extra turn or two to finish the game.

EDIT: On this point I see your case with a less tired brain. Though honestly This deck does not give me a lot of problems, I just need an answer to the early Quicksilver Amulet cheating in Emmy, where I can abuse the Spellbomb, unlike when they can hardcast him and just make my life, and everyone elses life, sad.

But yeah the manabase is rock solid, after a few hundred games I got screwed once, and it was by an opening hand of Glacial Fortress after a double mulligan. The same goes for the Tolaria Wests, they find the explosives post board, I didn't want to commit a bunch of SB slots to lands that may or may not come in, simply putting them in as the 22nd and 23rd lands hasn't hurt yet but I am keeping an eye on their usefulness in general in my testing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by edgarps22

The spellbombs help specifically against Emrakul, I can handle the others. Yes they can hard cast him, take their extra turn, then I bounce him etc.

---

I think you missed the point...
They cast, on extra turn you bounce, they cast again... and take another turn...
They cast, on extra turn you don't bounce, they swing and Annihilate you.

Quote:

---

But yeah the manabase is rock solid, after a few hundred games I got screwed once, and it was by an opening hand of Glacial Fortress after a double mulligan.

---

This statement leads me to believe you're not accurate in your reporting. If you really took the time and effort to play a "few hundred" games, and actually recorded only 1 instance of mana screw, then you would have a more accurate idea of the number of games played than "a few hundred". Perhaps, "over 350 games". Additionally, it's statistically improbable you only got mana screwed once after a double mull in hundreds of games.

This, alone, leaves me to not be able to put trust in your analysis of the deck any further.

FYI:
For some quick math, a 23 land 60 card deck that mulligans with fewer than 2 lands or more than 4, and 2nd mulligans with fewer than 1 lands more than 4, will see fewer than 3 lands by turn 4 approximately 7%-11% of games (draw vs play).
In a few hundred games, you're talking at least 20-30 instances of mana screw... unless you're goldfishing and considering you never cast your Wraths/Elspeths/Geists/Snaps w- Flashbacks.


I apologize for coming off antagonistically on this, but as someone who wants U/W control to be a good Modern deck, I'd prefer proponents actually do their homework instead of just throwing fake information out there and calling it fact. This saves the rest of us from having to shift through b.s. to find the real meat and potatoes.

No offense taken, honestly I don't get mana screwed primarily due to the cantrip effects. Those statistics, while very accurate do not take into account being able to dig 3 cards a turn the first few turns with either Serum or Sleight. Those have really shored up any mana issues and color as a result has not been a problem.

On the spellbomb thing, yeah I put in an edit, I like to keep my idiocy known when I am being dumb, and tired. Though I have yet to really run into a problem with that deck. Like I stated I usually beat them down before the spaghetti monster is making my life sad. I have dropped them and have been using Ensnaring Bridge now that this has been pointed out to me. Works much better.

That said I am trying a few different builds currently, and Yes I really have played in about 100 games with that setup. That is very easy to do when you play online and you are not trying to find a real life testing partner all the time who happens to have the cards etc. I have been mana screwed by flooding certainly a few times, but it is rare to be stuck on off color lands due to Ruins. I can say I am working with a few different manabases and builds and really tweaking with the sideboard, and a bit with the main deck, experimenting with a small black splash for Lingering Souls, and also to get a 3rd color for explosives, as well as sticking to UW.

Statistics do help, but please don't forget that numbers alone don't constitute what happens during a game. Cantrip effects affect things like mana screw/flood and being 2 colors does not make for a hard or greedy mana base.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by edgarps22

Statistics do help, but please don't forget that numbers alone don't constitute what happens during a game. Cantrip effects affect things like mana screw/flood and being 2 colors does not make for a hard or greedy mana base.

---

Um, I disagree. Hypergeometric distributions can be very accurate at describing exactly how many mana screwed hands you'll get. They're also very simple to do, as there are many online calculators that do them for you. The only slight trouble is in agreeing what a mana screwed hand looks like.

I'm going to say that a mana screwed hand is any hand in which you don't find a blue-producing mana in the top 7 (or top 6 after the first mulligan, top 5 after the second, etc.). This accounts for the cantrips you have fairly easily (as not having blue land makes them useless), and is being very generous toward your 7 come into play tapped lands by treating them as normal blue producers. I think we can agree that keeping a hand without a blue producing land is not doable for this deck, as you could only play Path to Exile, Wrath of God, and Elspeth.

For your 19 lands that make blue, the chance that you draw one or more in the top 7 is 94%. For the top 6 (so after one mulligan) it's 91%. That's about 5.2 games in every thousand that you get mana screwed from not having blue, or in your 300 games, 1.5. That's being generous with saying CitPT lands being equal to regular islands. I'm also being extremely generous by saying 1 blue land = you're okay for the game.

If you replaced the Academy Ruins with blue lands those percentages would change to being 96%, 93%, and as a result, 2.5 in every 1000 games losing from singleton blue mana screw. That's a 100% better improvement! Just from 2 lands that don't help at all in game 1 and arguably do in games 2 or 3.

Now these games I'm talking about are auto-loss games. You don't even get a shot because you can't play any of your spells. Having them in your main deck means you can at least double this number, since you'll be playing 2-3 games per match with them just floating around in there, seemingly innocuous. That's going to account for 1 game in about 75 matches that you auto-lose compared to 1 in 150.

This does not take into the account that your Cryptic is going to be slowed down by a turn for every additional colorless/white producing land after the first (of which your deck has 4), nor does it take into account the need for at least 1 blue land for every spell you intend on playing (snapcaster -> Spell Snare on turn 3?).

For just running 3 sideboard EE's this seems like a very unnecessary risk, especially considering I can't think of a matchup that they blow out completely that would give you 4+ turns to make this happen.

I don't see many "big payoff" cards in this list that balance out cantrips. There's really no card advantage, which is unfortunate. My guess is that you spend a lot of early turns just rebuffing an opponent's moves, then hope that your cantrips mean you draw into slightly more gas than they do. That's fine but it becomes a problem when you face down actual card advantage monsters. Against Jund, you could go Sleight and they'd Inquisition you. You'd hold up mana for Mana Leak and take out their Tarmogoyf. You'd do nothing on the third turn and Path their Eternal Witness. Then on the fourth turn, They'd cast Bloodbraid Elf and flip Kitchen Finks and you'll be unable to stop that array.

Delver is a pretty fine man because it lets you do something while you're waiting for the lategame, but I don't know that this deck actually has a good grip on the lategame. Gifts decks must resolve their namesake card only once to make sure you're Raven's Crimed out of a hand forever. Teachings has much better draw and advantage.

I'd wager that you really want more Spell Pierces in this.