[Deck] Mono-Blue Control (MUC)

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Originally Posted by Shimster

IMO, there is a major difference between Back to Basics and Blood Moon:

Back to Basics allows you to manascrew your opponent, while Blood Moon is only capable of colourscrew him. As most decks run a card to deal with Blood Moon, you've to be able to abuse tempo gained by playing it. B2B on the other hand is control, as it denies your opponent to play spells.

This isn't the deck that's capable of abusing tempo in any way. Therefore I don't like Blood Moon in MUC.

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Hmm, I don't disagre with you but I would like to discuss it a bit further. Do really most deck run a card to deal with Blood Moon? I'm not counting SB because most cards that deal with Blood Moon deal with B2B, except BEB/REB.

I will consider some matchups:

Team America:
Blood Moon vs B2B:
Well, while both cards are good, the moon is definetly better because it completly shuts down there mana base. They usually don't play basics and even if they did, it wouldn't help much.

Answers:
Blood Moon: BEB, (Grip) (Grip is a not a real answer because the deck most float 2G in respons to Moon).
B2B: Grip.


Dreadstill:
Moon vs B2B:
The deck plays alot of basics with is good for them against both cards. The B2B lets each Mishra attack at least once while Blood Moon does let it tap for Sensei' Top every turn. The top effect is however significantly weak with Blood Moon in play because fetches are Mountains. The deck has no real use of extra mountains, the deck however, have use for fetches.

Answers:
Blood Moon: BEB, Echoing Truth, (Grip)
B2B: Echoing Truth, Grip, (EE (Only if 3 coloured))


Landstill:
M vs B:
Well, Moon shuts down all wincons except Decree of Justice/Planeswalkers. The deck doesn't use extra mountains for anything other than DoJ. B2B shuts down alot of the cards but with a Crucible of Worlds in play, the deck can waste it's own lands and replay them, slow but not game over.

Answers:
Depends alot on the build, I would say that they are similar but Moon is better against Grip and EE and B2B is better against BEB.

Stax:
It's even. Moon does keep Tomb from generating alot of mana but in the same way City of Traitors doesn't die. Tight race.

Answers:
Even?

Thres:
Can use extra mountains. If they have basiclands in play, it's the same for both cards except that B2B is better when opponent has Forest+Island and Moon is better when opponent has (Island).

Answers: Same as before, BEB vs Grip.

ANT/Combo in any form:
Moon is usually the better one since they don't have many basic lands and all their fetch are Mountains. It's even better against Solidarity altough you probebly shouldn't play it :P

Aggro:
Both cards are pretty bad I suppose, but if they play red, then B2B is better.

Other matchups?



I think that what it comes down to is, whould you rather play against BEB or Grip? But I might be wrong in my analysis?

If BEB was the problem, why not get in 4 Chalice in main?


Also, B2B mana screws and Blood Moon colourscrews, but ain't it better colourscrewing somebody than just buying time?

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Aggro:
Both cards are pretty bad I suppose, but if they play red, then B2B is better.

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That really depends on your opponents deck. I won a lot of games against Zoo because they were stuck on 1 or 2 basic lands and I had a propaganda in play. If you can survive some turns and play Propaganda + B2B then you will most likely win the game. It's weaker against decks with more burn, but it's often quite useful against aggro.

I recently tested Vendilion Clique in the SB and it was good. Against Combo it can take a key card and set up a clock without having to tap out. In the control mirror it does basically the same because your opponent will have no more or less StoPs in his deck.

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I don't think Blood Moon is better than B2B in this deck and I particularly don't see a reason to splash a color for a color hoser when we already have one in our colors. There may be situations in which Moon is better but there are also many situations in which B2B is way better. For example against Goblins with Port/Waste, against Chalice-Stompy and in all situations in which your opponent has a basic land of each color and the rest non-basics.

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Originally Posted by mans0011

With having Back to Basics in the sideboard, you really should consider using Academy Ruins. Recursive destruction is delicious. Not to mention it makes Thirst for Knowledge much less painful.

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The reasons against Academy Ruins are the same like the reasons against Scrying Sheets or any other nonbasic land. Being vulnerable to Wasteland. I don't know any other deck that hates losing land drops as much as MUC. Furthermore I play Relic of Progenitus main and it would be non-synergetic.

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Originally Posted by idraleo

move B2B to sb = epic fail

If you' re leaving them from mainboard because you think they' ll be useless, try to change deck and go to Landstill instead.

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Moving B2B to the SB was discussed a lot in this thread and I see no reason to repeat the old arguments. If you have new arguments for playing B2B main then you are welcome to participate in the discussion. But if unsubstantial one-liners are all you have to say then please say them somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by Tao

The reasons against Academy Ruins are the same like the reasons against Scrying Sheets or any other nonbasic land. Being vulnerable to Wasteland. I don't know any other deck that hates losing land drops as much as MUC. Furthermore I play Relic of Progenitus main and it would be non-synergetic.

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I disagree with your reasons for not running Academy Ruins. Running 1x Academy Ruins is not a bad idea at all, even with Back to Basics in play. The card is awesome and even recurring a broken artifact even once can be game-breaking. The difference with this card versus Scrying Sheets is you need to use it over and over again. With Academy Ruins, you don't need to play it until you have to, so Wasteland has never been an issue. The fact it does not have synergy with Relic does not mean it is terrible. It does have synergy with Fact or Fiction and Nevinyrral's Disk / Powder Keg. The games where you are cracking Relic are the games where Academy Ruins will not be useful most of the time anyway. The games where you use Academy Ruins even once are going to be games where Relic is going to be meh. And in those games it can come as a huge advantage for you. I believe the two cards can work together, even if they are being played for different reasons.

So why doesn't anyone play Cunning Wish?

I think the versatility of the card more than makes up for the expensive cost (2U + x), and it lets you play specific answers in your board without having to dilute your main deck.

For example, my wishboard looks like:
BEB (Goblins, Moons, ect.)
Echoing Truth
Extirpate (Ichorid, Loam, other recursion engines)
Stifle (Combo, miscellaneous)
StP (any "Oh shit..." situations)

I mean, what more could you really want? Answers to every deck in the DtB section, and it's all basically main decked.

Then, because of the W and B in the board, I get to play 6 fetches which make Brainstorm actually usable, and 1 Plains + 1 Swamp which make EE actually usable (way better than Disk/Keg).

Am I off my rocker or what?

Anyway I don't really understand why this deck doesn't abuse of Cunning Wish. We need a late game removal? go for Capsize, we need a free counter? Go for Pact of Negation, we really need to cut out a fattie? get Pongify/Ovinize and so on. Snakeform is also great in that slot.

has Cunning wish already been discussed?

So I can pay 8 mana to counter a spell, or 4 mana to destroy a creature and give my opponent a 3/3? Sign me up!

Three mana is a lot. And blue doesn't have very much worthwhile utility. The main reason you would want to play Wish, as far as I can tell, is so that you have access to bounce for random permanents, and to Extirpate so Loam doesn't rape you in game one, without having potentially dead/crappy cards maindeck. The better solution to this is to run noncrappy bounce (Repeal, Cryptic Command) and/or Relic of Progenitus maindeck, all of which suck less than Cunning Wish does.

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So why doesn't anyone play Cunning Wish?

I think the versatility of the card more than makes up for the expensive cost (2U + x), and it lets you play specific answers in your board without having to dilute your main deck.

I mean, what more could you really want? Answers to every deck in the DtB section, and it's all basically main decked.

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has Cunning wish already been discussed?

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The idea of adding Cunning Wish in MUC has been brought up nigh COUNTLESS times in this thread.

I think the general consensus is that it is not worth it in MUC because the toolbox versatility you gain is outweighed by Cunning Wish being slow. Also, I don't even think you're in desperate need of that toolbox versatility. But, mainly it's because Cunning Wish is way too slow.

I'm a naysayer of Cunning Wish, however, I actually understand why people bring up the card. What I don't understand is how people bringing up the card haven't tested the card enough to come up to their own conclusions. If you feel people should be playing Cunning Wish, then you should probably back your opinion with testing results. Everyone knows what Cunning Wish does and what it can do. It might be just me, but I think people don't use it because the gains of CUnning Wish aren't worth it. If you want to prove otherwise, then you'll need more than just saying "I think the versatility of the card more than makes up for the expensive cost (2U + x), and it lets you play specific answers in your board without having to dilute your main deck."

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Originally Posted by Shawon

If you want to prove otherwise, then you'll need more than just saying "I think the versatility of the card more than makes up for the expensive cost (2U + x), and it lets you play specific answers in your board without having to dilute your main deck."

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Wow, that's funny, I'm pretty sure my post included relevant explanations after that, which you conveniently left out just so you could act like a douche bag.

@Illissius: Obviously you can run cards that are better than Wish in certain scenarios in place of Wish, but then those cards are going to be dead in other situations. My decklist is already very tight (as I assume most are), so Wish is a way to make sure I have answers to a wider variety of situations, condensed into only a couple of slots. For sure Relic is good, as is Command, but I just don't have to space, and I feel 2x Wish is better than 2x of anything else, especially when I already run 14 counters and multiple board control elements. Because of this I'm looking more for versatility than redundancy, for the "oh shit" moments.

Well that's something you didn't mention in your last post. If you only have two slots to deal with everything, then yes, you'd be hard pressed to find another way to handle all of it besides Wish. However, the wisdom of leaving only two slots in the first place seems questionable. Furthermore, your last post also suggests you're running Explosives, which means you've already got permanents handled, so if all you still need is a way to deal with the graveyard, Relic looks like it fits the bill. If you need graveyard hate it's graveyard hate, if you don't it turns into another general purpose business spell. Cantrips are rarely dead. Am I missing something?

Hmm...I'm going to try -1 B2B (I was running 4) and -2 Wish for the +3 Relics, and test it specifically in matches where I was using Wish->Extirpate to see if there's a huge advantage, as I must admit, the Extirpate was really more for the days of Breakfast (when I was playing this deck).

I'm guessing you play it main too. Does that prompt you to run TfK? I'd be weary to drop FoF for that just because it's such an extreme bomb, but if you did then let me know why.

Also, sorry if this has been brought up, but has anyone tested out Oona and Jace in the same deck, specifically for the decking win?

I don't have it main, but if I were worried about Loam decks, Survival, and such, I likely would.

I don't really like Thirst for Knowledge, because while it's technically a two for one (three for two), to achieve this it requires you to discard something specific - an artifact - which is very often a card you'd like to keep. So it only gives you card quantity at the expense of quality. It also makes me want to use Chrome Mox, and that never ends well.

Small tournament report is going to follow:
Note that i didnt found the missing B2B in time, so i played this suboptimal list:

1 Morphling
1 Rainbow Efreet
1 Call the Skybreaker

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Spell Snare
3 Repeal

3 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction

1 Back to Basics
4 Vedalken Shackles
4 Powder Keg
3 Relic of Progenitus

1 Academy Ruins
23 Island

SB:
3 BEB
3 Stifle
2 Echoing Truth
2 Jace
2 Sower
2 Pithing Needle
1 Relic of Progenitus

6 Rounds no Top8:

1st round: Armageddon Stax:
Game one i kept a bad hand with 1 Island and 1 Relic on the draw, my logic was that i will see a land in the top three cards of my library. He plays a first turn Chalice and i conceded after a couple of missed landrops and an Armageddon.
Game two i beat him with huge card advantage i think, i brought in Echoing Truth and Jace with gave me the edge.
Game three was weired, i kept drawing land for around ten turns and he kept casting Smokestacks, but didnt have the Crucible so he couldnt fully exploit it. Time got short i casted a Morphling, but forgot about his Suppression Field and it got stolen by Oblivion Ring - stupid mistake which leads to a draw. Judge was watching so i got a warning for this too.

0-0-1

2nd round: UGw Threshold:
Dont remember much here, fact was that i had far too many relevant cards against him. Even with only one B2B, which i tried to cast and got countered by his Counterbalance, which flipped a his only cmc 3 card over -.-
I brought in Needle and the last Relic i think.

1-0-1

3rd round: (suboptimal) UW Landstill:
This nice guy bought all the cards, but was missing three Force of Will's and so the games went like this: He resolved 1 Standstill in the whole round and i kept drawing cards of FoF and Thirst. I used Cts as finisher in the last game, but cant say that it was better than Morphling, i casted him out of the graveyard via Retrace though.

2-0-1

4rd round: (suboptimal) TA:
Jerky dude who was sitting next to me last game and kept insisting that i was playing the lamest deck ever and that i cant be good because the manabase is so cheap. It goes on with him calling the judge, because my sleeves werent the same, i had no clue how to see the difference, but he was right - i mixed to packs together. So another warning and i had to change the sleeves after the match.
Anyway the first game was over fast, a Thoughtseize followed by two Sinkhole's and a Tombstalker - not much i could have done about it.

Game two i bring in Sowers, Echoing Truth's and maybe the last Relic.
I had 4 lands on my starthand so i allowed him to Sinkhole on of my lands, the other one gets countered by my Spell Snare. Relic was annoying him here too, but he manages to land a Tombstalker, which got stolen by Sower.
He couldnt answer the Sower and i was staring down on a hand with like 2 FoW and other business.
Game three went in a very similiar way, he tried to Ghastly Demise my Sower after a Relic cleaned our graveyards, by wasting one of his own lands. How bad is this, were is Snuff Out?
He was annoyed, but i couldnt help myself and was quite happy with the result.

3-0-1

5th round: UW Painter
Game one i kept another bad hand with like 3 draw spells and 3 lands knowing that he was playing Painter.
So he went first turn Grindstone, second turn Painter, third turn win.
So i brought in Needles, Echoing Truths, Jace and Stifle cutting Shackles and Relics i think.
This one was good, but went very long. At one point i countered an Intuition fearing some nasty Academy Ruins recursion, which was stupid because he had no Loam to recur it. He scooped somewhere in the late game to save us time for game three.
Another drawn out game, were he put much thought in his moves. In the end after the announcement of the extra turns it was clear that he couldnt win, but i couldnt either, considering the time frame.

3-0-2

6th round: Imperial Painter
So the rain of red blasts was going to commence, luckily this guy was quite nice, but made clear that i am a bye... we will see.
Game one he casted a Magus of the Moon, which i didnt counter fearing the Painter combo. We traded counter and Magus was slowly eating my life away. I was holding two FoW's and was at 5 life, where he tried to Bolt me, i FoW and he REBs. I play the second FoW and continued to lose the game. I felt bad for FoWing a Bolt and remined myself to counter this first turn Magus next time.
I brought in BEB, ET, Needle and cut Shackles + Relics.
I dont remeber much, but somehow i managed to advance to the late game, were i crushed him with superior draw and countermagic, this shouldnt sound like it was easy, he played with Jaya, which could become quite annoying.
Game three was very tense, after a drawn out attrition war i landed an Efreet, which he blasts - i respond with FoF??? - and couldnt phase it afterwards, omg. So the game went on were it should had ended, in the end i manage to win with a CtS in the last extra turns - he couldnt believe it!

Final result (no top8):
4-0-2

I was suprissed to face two Painter decks (the UW finished 1st) and there werent any Goblins at the whole tournament (how lucky).

Both draws werent unwninable and i made quite some mistakes, but was quite annoyed by the fact that this deck cant win fast.
I may add some notes later on, but this was already more work to type down than i expected.

There are still some slots in this deck I'm not sure about.

On another note, you'll laugh, but I've been having a lot of success testing 26 lands with 2 CtS and 2 Oona's Grace. It means never being land screwed and seldom being truly land flooded. And both cards have massive synergy with Fact or Fiction. I'm not currently testing any draw beyond that, although I'm trying to test out some alternate kill conditions that also serve a utilitarian function, mainly Venser.

Vendilion Clique has been brought up a couple of times in this thread. Now, I'm biased since I have an unhealthy love of this card especially in control decks, but it's worth noting that it's probably the best tool currently available to MUC against eternally annoying Grip and Life from the Loam.

What has happened to Propaganda / Disk / B2B main or not - discussions now?
The last pages we're talking about bounce, flexible slots, finishers and new utility choices but miss to clarify in what kind of build we want to try and use them and what's the general opinion about MUC's staples.
I don't mean that in an offending way, but everyone is throwing in a new tech here and is doing a little bit different there with "good results".
So imho I think it's more than necessary to come up with a little core of MUC with what we can compare new suggestions and the like unless the poster adds his / her specific list or at least says in what kind of MUC he wants to run the card (stack / perm / Sower / Disk etc.).


I just post a core from top off my head because I got to go:

22-26 Lands

3 Finishers (may be replaced by some utility creatures when you use additional board control slots up for them)
10-16 countermagic
8-14 carddraw / quality
6-12 board control / other disruption (Shackles, bounce, B2B, Keg, EE, Disk ...)

With common card choices:

24 Lands (with Fetchlands if you run BS / EE, some utility Lands like Mishra / Ruins if you don't run B2B)

3 Morphling / Call the Skybreaker / Efreet / whatever

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare / Force Spike / Mana Leak

4 Impulse / Brainstorm / Think Twice / Accumulated Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Thirst for Knowledge / Meditate / Intuition / SDT

3 Back to Basics
3 Vedalken Shackles
3 Engineered Explosives / Keg / Disk
2 Repeal / Cryptic Command / Echoing Truth


Any additions?

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Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin

On another note, you'll laugh, but I've been having a lot of success testing 26 lands with 2 CtS and 2 Oona's Grace. It means never being land screwed and seldom being truly land flooded. And both cards have massive synergy with Fact or Fiction. I'm not currently testing any draw beyond that, although I'm trying to test out some alternate kill conditions that also serve a utilitarian function, mainly Venser.

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Oona's Grace doesn't seem like a good card to run with CtS, no? You might need the lands you pitch for Grace for CtS. Furthermore, no matter what, Oona's Grace is always going to be a 1-for-1. It seems there are better alternatives than Oona's Grace (Think Twice, Scrying Sheets, AK, etc.).

Yeah I'd really like to see a developement towards a set list but it seems like all people can agree on up until now is:

23+ lands

4 Force
4 Counter
3 Spell Snare

2+ Fact or Fiction
2+ Vedalken Shakels

3 Finishers usually 2 morphlings plus x

B2B MD or SB

These are really the only cards you can call the core since they are present in more than 90 per cent of all lists posted here but other than that there seems to be a lot of fluctuation. My main problem has been that I'm not really satisfied wit any of the card draw options. Maybe we could try and discuss the merits of the different card draw suits and we might possibly come to a consensus as to which is best suited?

FoF: The most powerful Card draw available albeit very slow and sometimes unreliable. Sometimes GG. Especially strong on an empty board, poorest when under pressure since opponents can afford to split 4:1. Shouldn't be run with less than 24 lands.

Brainstorm: No real CA but really good if your running fetches.

Impulse: Imho very meeh. No CA for the cost of 2 mana.

Thirst for Knowledge: Requires 10+ artifacts and even then oftentimes only card parity. I think you only want to run this with relic MD which isn't that bad a choice.

Ancestral Visions: +2 Cards for 1 mana is nothing short of awesome. Waiting 4 turns is kind of lame. Bad synergie with force spike, Spell snare. Turns on opposing stifles. If you run 4 of these you can run less FoFs which alows you to play more other expensive spells. Have not really tested it myself but will have to do so in the future.

Think Twice: Nice since it provides real CA but at a steep cost. Awesome synergie with FoF. I like it but it lacks a bit of punch.

Jace: Really powerful versus control where he can win games single handedly. Disadvantage is that he needs to be layed down mainphase. Against aggro he's usually a cantrippin healing salve. Can theoretically function as a Kill condition. Awesome synergie with disk.

Meditate: Honestly I think this is the most horirble option brought up. It seems so win more and I've been having the problem that I want Card draw that is also good in Aggro MU cause all card draw spells are awesome versus control.

Accumulated Knowledge: In combination with FoF or on it's own I really prefer think twice. With Intuition it's real good. Poor synergie with Relic.

I'm currently running 4 AV, 4 FoF, and 2 Jace as my 10 card draw suite. I do play in a slower meta, so waiting 4 turns for AV or plopping down a Jace (and seeing him not die) hasn't been too much of an issue.

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Originally Posted by Arsenal

I'm currently running 4 AV, 4 FoF, and 2 Jace as my 10 card draw suite. I do play in a slower meta, so waiting 4 turns for AV or plopping down a Jace (and seeing him not die) hasn't been too much of an issue.

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Out of curiosity how many lands are you running? That does sound like the most powerful card draw suite possible in terms of raw drawing power.