Sol Control

[Rationalist]

Took a rough new brew concept to Card Kingdom Seattle Monday Night Legacy. Went 3-1, beating D&T, Cephalid Breakfast, and Sneak and Show. Lost to Elves, but I actually felt more favored in that matchup than the 3 I actually won - felt like I lost to a combination of both strong play and excellently aligned hands. Idea is still loose but thought I'd share it here for potential feedback; I'll include general thesis, list, and match specifics below.

General Thesis: People have been noting for a while that most of the good proactive cards in UWx control decks are at the 3+ mana slot. Rather than trying to play Staff of the Storyteller or Faerie Mastermind, etc, I decided to play essentially mono 3/4 drops and use the "space below" for a cascade package. Preboard, you're cascading into Wheel of Fate so that it's an effective 8x Day's Undoing 7x Narset-Effect Turbo-Wheels deck that wheels into the control cards necessary to mop-up what's left over. Post-board, you can replace the Wheel of Fates to play a UW control deck that cascades into the appropriate hosers for the matchup Turn 2 (be it Containment Priest, Null Rod, etc).

With the potential exception of Alms Collector, the eyebrow-raising element isn't the spells as they're pretty much all "bangers" doing largely established powerful stuff (and yeah I'm slightly cheating by categorizing "Ardent Plea" in that way, but it's being used here as a 2-land Wheel of Fortune with a post-board transformational ability so I'll go ahead and call that 'established legacy power-level'). The real trick is here the dependability of the manabase supporting them in these numbers. I believe the combinatorics work here though, and so far even playing against D&T-level mana-disruption has felt reasonable.

If Brainstorm and Ancient Tomb are the two biggest largely independent pillars of the format, this is me attempting to power a control deck off Ancient Tomb instead of Brainstorm, and working a manabase and spell-suite around that conceit.

Moxfield (may be altered from list below as I toy around with idea): https://www.moxfield.com/decks/ccUPYg5a50eV2zUDRNKtJw

Planeswalkers(10)
1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3x Narset, Parter of Veils
4x Teferi, Time Raveler
2x The Wandering Emperor

Creatures(8)
4x Alms Collector
4x Solitude

Sorceries(10)
4x Day's Undoing
4x Supreme Verdict
2x Wheel of Fate

Instants(4)
4x Force of Will

Enchantments(4)
4x Ardent Plea

Lands(24)
4x Ancient Tomb
2x Karakas
4x Mystic Gate
1x Otawara, Soaring City
4x Remote Farm
4x Saprazzan Skerry
4x Skycloud Expanse
1x Tundra

Sideboard(15)
Companion: 1x Kaheera, the Orphanguard
1x Ashiok, Dream Render
1x Chill
1x Containment Priest
1x Ethersworn Canonist
2x Force of Vigor
1x Gideon of the Trials
1x Inevitable Betrayal
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1x Nezahal, Primal Tide
1x Null Rod
1x Rest in Peace
1x Sorcerous Spyglass
1x Torpor Orb

Report From Monday:

You'll have to afford me a few liberties here as I played these games on Monday night and I'm typing this up on Wednesday so I may hand-wave over elements I don't remember intimately or make some small mischaracterizations if my memory is off.

Match 1: D&T

Game 1 - I reveal a Kaheera Companion, and my opponent and I banter about why I would have a Kaheera Companion and if I was playing Cat Tribal. I flash in an Alms Collector Turn 2 and my opponent says that he's excited that it actually is Cat Tribal. I untap Turn 3, Solitude his Thalia, and Days Undoing. Game becomes a laugher.

Game 2 - I remember there being a game 2 that I lost. I could be wrong because part of me also remembers winning in 2, but it feels more courteous to err on the side of humility and regardless I'm still at least ... 75% sure there was a game 2 that I lost. Again, it's been a couple days.

Game 3 (2?) - I cascade into a Torpor Orb and Supreme Verdict his board once or twice. He eventually answers Orb and Imperial Recruiters for Spirit of the Labyrinth and plays Spirit alongside Aether Vial on an empty board. I Companion Tax Kaheera to hand, Force of Vigor both Vial and Spirit and eventually Undoing him down to an 8-1 'cards-in-hand-advantage'.

Match 2: Cephalid Breakfast

Game 1 - I remember him combo-killing me on either Turn 2 or Turn 3. I also remember thinking that if I had sequenced it better on my turn I could have potentially survived his combo turn, but I don't remember the details or why I thought that.

Game 2 - He laughs when I play Llawan, Cephalid Empress (Turn 2 I believe). I eventually Ardent Plea Cascade into both Rest in Peace and Torpor Orb, and he moves onto the Urza's Saga Plan. I start bashing in with Double-Exalted Cephalid Empress. He comes close to stablizing but I play a 3rd Ardent Plea to force him to Chump with his last Construct and win the game against Cephalid Breakfast with Cephalid Beatdowns. He then reveals his end-of-game hand complete with 6 Blue Creatures he was unable to cast.

Game 3 - I quickly establish Rest in Peace and Torpor Orb again via Cascades, and we end up playing a long and complicated fair-game. He eventually bounces the Rest in Peace, mills himself sufficiently to produce several combat-ready Narcomoebas, and we play some grindy Control + Beaters (some with Lifelink) vs. Beaters + Equipment (some with Lifelink). I believe I navigate game into a position where I won't end up losing and he only has somewhere around 9 to 12 cards left in deck but - likely my fault - we end up going to time with him at 42 life. I attack with Solitude to make sure I gain the life on my turn vs. attacking Narcomoebas, but I miss the exalted trigger on the board. My opponent declares a block, and the judge who is one of the handful directly watching our game (since we are one of the two tables that went to time) points out the missed trigger. An issue then arises with the ruling where, since (and I'm not a judge so you'll have to forgive me), since it's a mandatory trigger the gamestate is simply "updated" to include the +1/+1, and my opponent is not afforded the ability to reselect blockers as I never "had to" announce the trigger for it to apply. I don't think this changes the outcome of the game in any way but it's certainly discouraging to my opponent as he blocked with a 2/1 Narcomoeba under the assumption that the attacker was a 3/2, and now he's effectively being punished because I was too lazy to remember there was a Exalted trigger, which I did explicitly declare over and over again in the previous game. I understand the "onus was on him" nature of the ruling, but it's a feelbad and I don't like feelbads, you know, and assuming the ruling was accurate it does seem to me like it creates a bit of an ethical hazard? Like, if my interest was purely competitive, under this set of rules, why wouldn't I intentionally make great pains to declare the trigger again and again and neglect to declare it when I thought it would benefit me for my opponent to assume the trigger rulings worked the way they did before that update some years back? Anyways, I end this game both feeling good about the deck, great about the fun gamestates it generated, and kind of bad about the aftertaste of the ruling confusion at the end.

Match 3: Elves

Game 1 - I completely fail to register the fact I've played against this opponent before, he was on Elves the last time, and is still playing with a Craterhoof Playmat, so I keep a hand that's suboptimal vs. Elves and he gets a quick combo-win. I go to game 2 pretty happy though, as I feel my 4x Sol-Land Powered Supreme Verdict control deck with Cascade Access to Hate Pieces is pretty favored in the matchup.

Game 2 - Turns out control deck feels pretty good in the matchup. I eventually start pressuring him with Solitude and a few Samurai Tokens and he scoops.

Game 3 - I keep a hand with 2x FoW, Turn 2 Cascader for Hatepiece followed up by Turn 3 Supreme Verdict, all with exactly the cards in my opener. I feel fantastic, and I keep. My opponent plays a Turn 1 Dryad Arbor and passes the turn. None of the cards I kept are Solitude so I can't punish that, but that's fine, so I just play a Sol-Land and pass the turn back. My opponent starts his T2 with Allosaurus Shepard, turning off my FoW package, but that still seems okay to me even without Solitude, follows up with a Gaea's Cradle and spills out his hand of little green men. On my turn I Ardent Plea with both Torpor Orb and Containment Priest in my deck, and I hit Containment Priest. I then pass the turn back, still ready to wipe the board on my Turn 3. On his Turn 3 he plays Craterhoof from Hand and I take 21.

I lost this round, but I left it feeling like it was still a positive

Match 4: Show and Tell

Game 1 - He plays Show and Tell. I bring in Alms Collector. He brings in Griselbrand. I solitude Griselbrand on his turn like a dope and he dazes it. On my turn I just solitude Griselbrand again and start beating down with Alms Collector. He scoops after a turn or 2.

Game (2?/3?) - Plus or minus some fighting on the stack, I remember it going Containment Priest, Wheel-Combo, Scoop.

Deck seemed sufficiently powerful and fun. Was accidentally pretty budget as you really don't need the 1x Tundra. The combination of spells was obviously reasonable in a casting-cost-agnostic way, the only question was how the manabase fared when actually under pressure from an opponent, or when the game went long, etc, etc, and I never seemed to really stumble over the mana save for maybe being Ported off-white for a turn lategame vs. D&T before just getting yet another whitesource. Playing 4x Supreme Verdict when you can cast it pretty consistently off 3 lands is just a nice feeling, and cascading into various silver-bullets is quite satisfying.

Will probably run it back at some point. All critical feedback welcome.