The Deck (AF) - Heavy Control UW

[keepflyin]

Instant (16) 4x Brainstorm 4x Counterspell 2x Force of Will 2x Spell Pierce 4x Swords to Plowshares Sorcery (4) 4x Ancestral Vision

Enchantment (15) 4x As Foretold 1x Aura of Silence 1x Counterbalance 1x Detention Sphere 1x Future Sight 1x Humility 1x Moat 2x Search for Azcanta 2x Sterling Grove 1x Sylvan Library Artifact (2) 1x Crucible of Worlds 1x Scroll Rack Planeswalker (3) 2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor 1x Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

Land (20) 4x Flooded Strand 3x Island 1x Karakas 1x Misty Rainforest 1x Plains 1x Savannah 1x Tropical Island 4x Tundra 4x Wasteland

Sideboard (15) 3x Chill 3x Compost 2x Energy Flux 1x Flusterstorm 1x Gaea's Blessing 2x Force of Will 3x Ray of Revelation

For the more visual people...

Why this deck? History of Control, Philosophy, Brainstorm

So why this deck? Why not Miracles, or some other control variant centered around Delver or Angler?

The long and the short of it is that we want to be more controlling than those decks. Sure, you can miracle your entreat for 5, but them being all 1/1s that get halted on the shores of a moat means you still cannot win.

We are using a building strategy first pioneered by Brian Weissman in the very early years of Magic's history. Back when the only win condition in the deck was a miser's copy of Serra Angel. Or a little bit later when you could only win with the 1-2 copies Kjeldoran Outpost in your entire list.

This deck is built with the spirit of those decks. Our win conditions are 2x Jace & 1x Teferi.

After playing with this deck a good bit, and seeing the work Nate has done with this on his channel, I firmly believe this could be the most skill-intensive brainstorm deck. And the one that might be able to Brainstorm better than any other (with the right pilot).

"Beckett Gem-Mint" Card Selection

There have been figurative mountains written about brainstorm specifically. The usual "legacy" method of utilizing it involves using BSn putting 2 cards you don't want back, and then cracking a fetchland to shuffle away the cards that are not useful for the current moment/matchup.

But the true strength of BS into fetch is options of when you get rid of the extras, and how. Do you want that card on top? Is the second one down pointless or another option? Were you hiding cards in response to a Hymn? The list goes on.

This deck enables what I consider to be the best selection options out of Brainstorming. Our 5 fetchlands are our first set of shuffle effects (and crucible lets us reuse them for quite a long time with the high count of fetchable lands). After that we have both of the Sterling Groves as additional search effects, which combo well with the presence of counterbalance. Not only protecting the backbreaking enchantment, but allowing us to enlightened tutor the proper enchantment to the top of deck to enable our ability to CB counter a spell. Finally, we have the 2 Search for Azcanta. While not necessarily being a 'shuffle' effect post brainstorm, they allow us to clear one of the cards if we so choose. Letting us delay that choice even longer than the opponent's endstep if needed. Once SfA flips, having an impulse-effect to dig for our business, and clear dead cards that we brainstorm-ed or sylvan-ed back to the top is huge.

Our deck is running an 'extra' Brainstorm effect above and beyone the playest of BS and the 2 JtMS. Scroll Rack, while inherently being card disadvantage, allows our selection to be supreme, above and beyond what the 8-10 cantrip decks get to use. Additionally, having rack could arguably be better than top was in the counterbalance world. Allowing us to hide important cards early, and keep interaction in hand for it's uses, or put back on top to flip with Counterbalance. You need only play with the set once to really feel how much more in-control you feel compared to the old Top shenanigans.

The final boon to the card selection power of this deck is Search for Azcanta. We can put a card we want 2 down off the BS, and the situational card on top of it. If we don't need the situational card, we can mill it away with the search. Often it is correct to not flip search for Azcanta as fast as possible. Both of its sides have tremendous value for us, and we want the back side of it to be the nail in the coffin for out opponent in the late game. Either they play a spell and it gets countered, or we get to draw a card from our Azcanta on their endstep.

Throne of the High City has been sidelined for the time being. Having it on the shortlist of cards that we would like to include is probably where it will be fore now. Ideally, it is the card to punish other control decks. But for the time being, Sylvan Library is a much better card to punish them, and we have 2 tutors to help find it in addition to all of our other card selection.

Enjoy the game like a 5 course meal... Slowly.

Alongside Humility + Moat , this deck that focuses around controlling the board through counters and removal. It is plausible that we do need to run 1-2 Supreme Verdicts in the 75. Currently, finding the cut is proving difficult.

We will win a long game. Our card advantage engine is more powerful with the Ancestral Visions and the Future Sight. Our mana advantage is better the longer we go with As Foretolds. We just need to get there.

Conveniently, control provides the answers. Having Moat Humility in G1 can allows us to largely ignore traditional win conditions. Once we resolve them, there are very few main-deck cards in the legacy format that can break that lock up. Which is the current reason to not be running the Supreme Verdicts. We just don't care Anglers, Angels, Elesh Norn, etc.

The density of countermagic, (between 4 og Counterspell, 2 Pierce, 2 Force, & Counterbalance) give us resounding ability to interact on the stack. Coupled with our unique ability (Moat, Humility, Plows, Detention Sphere, Teferi) to not care about a lot of traditional threats, we get the option of deciding to not counter creatures that decks like miracles need to counter. The more often we don't have to counter something, the better a position we are in to leverage our countermagic for the real threats.

Control has been a strategy of magic for almost as long as the game has been around. And as such, there are countless archetypes that incorporate elements of it into another strategy or gameplan. The old control decks of yesteryear had a more focused strategy than modern day control decks: "If you can't do anything, eventually my 1-2 cards will come down and win. So my strategy; is to not let you win."

As for the current sideboard _{Subject to change}

Nate brought an excellent point to mind:

"We want every [opponent's] deck to hate their match against us in game 1. And then [in game 2] feel like our sideboard was designed to beat their specific deck."

A lot of people have looked at Compost in question so far. But with it in play, suddenly every discard spell they hit us with is card disadvantage. Assassin's Trophy is an opponent giving us a 3-1 (and you can bet they siding them in after losing to AF, Moat, Humility). An opponent dredging can ancestral us. Storming off with black rituals if feeding us FoW fuel. Sure, it isn't the BEST answer in everyone of those circumstances, but it is a good card in all of those situations. And that is what we want. Our deck shouldn't change what is is after board. Only get better at enforcing its initial strategy. Our semi-enchant build leans into the use of enchantment answers as tutorable cards in the board for G2. This is what separates a good board from a great board. Compost is an example of this. We will win with card advantage. If we make it so that them interacting with us, or pushing their game plan, is giving us advantage, the main parts of our deck will be able to in out.

How many times have you kept a hand that was terrible at doing what your deck wanted to do, but had a sideboard card that you could not win without finding?

This deck eschews this idea. Yes, all the cards are good. But we want the cards to be good at the matchup, and be furthering our strategy. Taking 'time off' to resolve your SB answer feels bad because it doesn't help you win. Just keeps you from losing. There is a difference. Our SB is designed to get us closer to winning. Not just stop us from losing.

And that is why we have chosen to go with enchantment answers throughout the main and sideboard. Yes Surgical is better against lands and dredge. But it is much worse against Shadow and Sultai. Null Rod is good in the brown matchups, but it isn't tutorable, doesn't remove the artifacts, and doesn't pitch to force.

Yes, there will be better options specifically for the meta of decks. But control style decks like this don't have the luxury of only siding to the best decks. We want to beat all of the decks. Our main gameplan is already good against a wide swath of the field.

1. Control the early game
2. Force the game long
3. Win with superior card advantage engines

Ray of Revelation: Miracles/Lands/Enchantress

Flusterstorm: Storm/Reanimator/SnT/SpanishI/Belcher/Tempo shells(better than force)

Chill: Painter(some)/Burn/Ruby/Wish Storm/Sneak [Also better than white options because it pitches to force. Slowing those decks down is more important than life]

Energy Flux: Affinity/Tezz/Painter(basically all lists)/Storm(LEDs)/DnT/Lands

Force of Will: Combo/Prison/Reanimator

Gaea's Blessing: Dredge/Reanimator/Lands/Painter(Can't be milled out)

Compost: Dredge/Reanimator/SultaiX/DeathsShadow/Pox/Storm(some variants, better than Humility, Sight, and StP)

[thecrav]

Reading this decklist got me like

[Michael Keller]

I ran AF at a Team Constructed (SCG) that basically used planeswalkers, Ancestral Visions, Zuran Orb and Restore Balance. It's a lot of fun, but clunky if you can't get As Foretold online. I tried this out for a long time, actually - it just couldn't break through.

Hoping someone else has success with it.

[morgan_coke]

I strongly dislike the Green splash. You can get the Gaea's Blessing effects in Blue on both Devious Cover-Up and Stream of Consciousness, and from a land on Mistveil Plains.

One other thing you're missing from "the Deck" is a Browse type effect. Fact or Fiction and something like Thirst for Knowledge both work here, but you need a lot more than one of them.

You're also running too many "cute" one-of. Figure out your plan and run more copies of that. If you go a crucible route you can run singleton Depths/Stage and extra Crucibles, or some man-lands and take an approach similar to Landstill. Or with AF you can just wait for it to ramp up to 7 and then win with Approach of the Second Sun.

But ONE Humility and 4x stp? If you want to do that run more Humility and some DoJ or something.

The deck as listed is pretty incoherent, and your selection is a grand total of 4x Brainstorm. That's not going to cut it. At all.

[from Cairo]

One other thing you're missing from "the Deck" is a Browse type effect. Fact or Fiction and something like Thirst for Knowledge both work here, but you need a lot more than one of them.

I'm sure there is room to improve the deck, but Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin reads pretty similar to browse.

[morgan_coke]

I'm sure there is room to improve the deck, but Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin reads pretty similar to browse.

No, it really, really, really doesn't. The good thing about Browse that a lot of people didn't understand was that it got rid of your deck, so you could start recursioning your graveyard directly into your draws. That was how the deck just destroyed people, it powered up so it was basically Demonic Tutoring from the graveyard every turn in the end game.

That's why I said you needed something like multiple FoF's and TfK's. To burn through the deck so the recursion engine kicks into high gear.

[kinda]

After playing with this deck a good bit, and seeing the work Nate has done with this on his youtube channel, I firmly believe this could be the most skill-intensive brainstorm deck. And the one that might be able to leverage it better than any other with the right pilot.

+1. This deck looks excellent!

[Mr. Safety]

I make a motion to officially name this: The Deck As Fuck, because that's the way I interpreted it on first glance.

"How close to 'The Deck' is this?"

"Dude, it's 'The Deck' AS FUCK!"

[Michael Keller]

Enlightened Tutor should find a home in this archetype. You really want to land AF, and with all of the other one-of enchantment and artifacts, it seems like a good idea.

[Mr. Safety]

Enlightened Tutor should find a home in this archetype. You really want to land AF, and with all of the other one-of enchantment and artifacts, it seems like a good idea.

This 100%, and I really feel that green is probably unnecessary. I like the Zuran Orb/Crucible/Library interaction (where you are gaining life, which trades for cards) but I think the Orb + Crucible lifegain is likely enough. Search for Azcanta seems more than reasonable as a 2 mana enchantment. I would straitaway cut the Library for Enlightened Tutor. I would probably also cut the Gaea's Blessings, and play maybe 1x Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. The shuffle effect is what you want, but you also would like something that draws you cards and is reasonable to cast at 10 mana. I mean, going to time in each round is a hoot and all, but I'm pretty sure a tournament would be miserable.

This is what I would do:
-1 Sylvan Library
-2 Gaea's Blessing

+2 Enlightened Tutor
+1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

Then fix the mana-base for added stability. When you cut to only 2 colors you can easily get 1x Ghost Quarter in there as well, which is another engine with Crucible.

EDIT: What does Throne of the High City even do for this deck?

[H]

EDIT: What does Throne of the High City even do for this deck?

Be a one-sided Howling Mine if you have them locked with Humility plus Moat. Which means it's probably just win-more.

[keepflyin]

Nate and I did some pretty dense theory crafting and testing over the weekend, and I will be updating the initial post soon. The biggest change is to increase the Ancestral count to 4, along with shaving the gimmicky cards. Another change to the main board is the inclusion of a 2ed JTMS and a single Teferi,Hod. This sufficiently expands our win conditions for a control deck.

I'll be updating the original post later this evening with the new strategies and list.

[keepflyin]

I make a motion to officially name this: The Deck As Fuck, because that's the way I interpreted it on first glance.

"How close to 'The Deck' is this?"

"Dude, it's 'The Deck' AS FUCK!"

I did consciously choose the title for the thread for that reason. As Foretold helps fill in the "As Fuck" nicely.

Enlightened Tutor should find a home in this archetype. You really want to land AF, and with all of the other one-of enchantment and artifacts, it seems like a good idea.

So enlightened tutor was a test earlier in the list. We ended up shaving it because of how bad the card disadvantage is early on.

And I agree with a browse-style effect. Something that would actually remove the junk from the deck as we sift through everything.

Nate and I were talking last night, and realized we probably want 1 more wincon in the 75, as well as a couple of answers to resolved problematic non-creature permanents. We were thinking 1 Detention Sphere and 1 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

Teferi also serves as an additional wincon, lets us tap out for him with force backup, but hold up countermagic on their turn, and 'answers' a resolved jace or something of that sort.

Detention Sphere Gives us an out main board to monk tokens, elementals, or the storm deck that goes for 8ish goblins on turn 1. Its not the best out in the later case, but is is an out in a situation where moat would be too slow.

What do you guys think?