[Deck] ICBE Countertop-Control

[Citrus-God]

I got very bored with Threshold recently. But Counter-Top will always be fun. I hate Goyf though.... of course, that will force me to play pure control. The skeleton of the deck was originally Wastedlife's Angel Control skeleton, but since CB is much better at gaining card advantage, I cut Skeletal Scryings from the deck. And after much testing, I cut the Angels as well for a better win condition; Decree of Justice.


// Lands 23
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
2 Plains
5 Island


// Spells 38
4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize
3 Cunning Wish
2 Moat
1 Humility
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Chainer's Edict
3 Decree of Justice


// Sideboard 15
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Enlighten Tutor
1 Disenchant
1 Return to Dust/Dominate
1 Extirpate
1 Counterspell
1 Pulse of the Fields
3 Tombstalker
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Haunting Echoes


The deck looks like some odd Landstill/CB deck that Zvi used. It kinda is. The deck, however, is designed to be better than Landstill, beat the mirror, and make the most out of information thanks to Thoughtseize. Your game plan with the deck are simple;

1. Resolve Thoughtseize
2. Resolve Countertop
3. Control the board
4. C-Wish for Mystical Tutor which turns into DoJ.


Odd card choices:

2 Chainer's Edict: 2cc spell, amazing thanks to Flashback, and kills Geese and Enforcers.

2 Haunting Echoes: Post-board against Control and Threshold. You can fetch the singleton off C-Wish for MTutor.

1 E-Tutor and 1 MTutor: Adds awesomeness to Counterbalance. Shuffles and finds threats. Cunning Wish to essential, and so are the Tutors.



Goblins:
Havent been tested yet. My teammate and I assumed it would be 50/50. We'll get back to this later. But the game plan against Goblins should be

1. Keep yourself alive by snatching cards like Warcheif and Piledriver from hand with Thoughtseize.

2. WoG, Swords, stall until you get your mana together.

3. Use Cunning Wish and FoF to dig for Moat.

4. Win

Threshold:
Very favorable. Even Mr. Nightmare claimed that Threshold has trouble against dedicated control decks. I'm inclined to agree. With Moat, Cunning Wish (which is amazing here), and other goodies, we have lost very few games to Threshold.

Thoughtseize is amazing. snatching Goyfs early, and taking down CB pieces. Keep Goyf off the board, and pressure will be very likely be off your back.

Side out 4 FoF for 3 EE and 1 Haunting Echoes.


BHWW Landstill (Wastelandd version):
Very good match-up. You have Thoughtseize and DoJ which help a lot. It's very straight forward if they play Standstill. If they're aware that you're immune to Standstill, find ways to get Deed in the yard so you can Cunning Wish for Extirpate. From there, you control the game. The same applies to EE. Also, you have Cunning Wish, you could try and get that on Top to counter Deeds. Game 2, side out a WoG for a Haunting Echoes which can be fetched by Cunning Wish -> Mystical Tutor -> Echoes.


Survival:
An awkward match-up. The version we tested has 8 maindeck discard spells. It seemed kind of in their favor because they obviously apply lots of pressure towards us. The most we can do is take out Rofellos when we have the chance. Cunning Wish for E-Tutor for Humility is probably the best you've got.



I'll add more on to this later.

[Waikiki]

The only 2cc cards are counterbalances, isn't this much of a problem?

[Citrus-God]

We thought it was... We didnt care after awhile.... Cunning Wish for E-Tutor could've done it.

Of course, we were also thinking of cutting the 3 WoG. They were really pointless to tell the truth.


Thinking

-3 Wrath of God

+2 Chainer's Edict
+1 Humility

[Mister Agent]

I saw this deck screaming eternal dragon especially with moat and wrath of god. Also why no meddling mages and at least one slaugher pact? I think both of them are good sideboard additions. But other then that this deck does looks sexy mainly because I am a big fan of control.

[Lego]

Regardless of matchups, how does this deck ever finish 50 minute rounds?

[galeng]

Looks like landstill, except much worse.

[Citrus-God]

Looks like landstill, except much worse.

.... except Landstill cant beat Wombat and the mirror itself. How bout' dem apples?


@LAM:
Like how Wombat finishes within the 50 minutes, you win game 1 and you stall the hell out of game 2. Winning quickly in Game 1 is also easier because you can just eot Cunning Wish for Mystical Tutor for DoJ or your opponent can concede due to sheer boredom.

[Mister Agent]

I was wondering if vedalken shackles would fit in here? They can give your deck even more flexibility by providing a role of stealing a large contrast of creatures in the metagame. Just in case your moat/humility are removed from enchantment hate like Krosan grips. Anyway, shackles was just an utility card I wanted to point out that could actually fit in this deck.

[Citrus-God]

I was wondering if vedalken shackles would fit in here? They can give your deck even more flexibility by providing a role of stealing a large contrast of creatures in the metagame. Just in case your moat/humility are removed from enchantment hate like Krosan grips. Anyway, shackles was just an utility card I wanted to point out that could actually fit in this deck.

It was originally in Angel Control. I could try it, since it makes infinite blockers (not really, but just saying).

[Lego]

@LAM:
Like how Wombat finishes within the 50 minutes, you win game 1 and you stall the hell out of game 2. Winning quickly in Game 1 is also easier because you can just eot Cunning Wish for Mystical Tutor for DoJ or your opponent can concede due to sheer boredom.

A) So a game 1 loss is a round loss. Sucks to be you.
B) Intentionally stalling the game to take advantage of the time limit is Cheating, and results in a DQ.

[Citrus-God]

A) So a game 1 loss is a round loss. Sucks to be you.

Well... yes... the deck is very 50/50-ish. You have to win game 1 or you dont win at all... unless of course you're amazing at making decisions very quickly.

B) Intentionally stalling the game to take advantage of the time limit is Cheating, and results in a DQ.

So designing a deck to stall the game like Wombat and Stax is cheating? It's nature is just slow because of the way it is designed.

[JDunkin00]

Well... yes... the deck is very 50/50-ish. You have to win game 1 or you dont win at all... unless of course you're amazing at making decisions very quickly.



So designing a deck to stall the game like Wombat and Stax is cheating? It's nature is just slow because of the way it is designed.

Designing a slow control deck is completely different from "winning game 1 and stall the hell out of game 2". Slow play is the key word to look for here. Taking an abnormal amount of time to decide is stalling. Having a slow deck while making swift plays is not.

[Mister Agent]

I still think you should consider running eternal dragon and maybe tombstalkers if you take out the wrath of gods and just run moats and other creature control spells.

Also Zvi's UW landstill was very much the same it had a good chance of winning games 1 and you could have the option of stalling out the 2nd game just the way it was built.

[Citrus-God]

Designing a slow control deck is completely different from "winning game 1 and stall the hell out of game 2". Slow play is the key word to look for here. Taking an abnormal amount of time to decide is stalling. Having a slow deck while making swift plays is not.

You should also consider the fact I run Cunning Wish to fetch my win conditions as well. I actually have 6 win conditions to finish the game. It's not hard to see that the deck is slow in nature, but it is suggested that you make swift plays. Besides, it really shouldnt be hard to find your win conditions with 8 fetchlands and 4 FoF.

[Ch@os]

Maot & Humility is a great hardlock, i would play Enlightened Tutor so search: CB, Top, Humility or Moat. E. Tutor is also a hardcounter under Counterbalance. This synergie has been proven in some Moalitily Lists.

DoJ is also extremly bad in this list, sure under Moat -> Angels under Humility -> Soldier, but with both on the table DoJ is pretty useless.

Just 2x Faerie Conclave would be nice.

The Wish seems to expensive with cc3, whats about some Artifacts like Shackles or Crucible

[Nightmare]

A few comments on the deck from my experiences from designing my own CounterTop control list.

0CC// 23
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Swamp
2 Plains
5 Island

1CC// 15
4 Brainstorm
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Thoughtseize
4 Swords to Plowshares

2CC// 4
4 Counterbalance

3CC// 3
3 Cunning Wish

4CC// 12
4 Fact or Fiction
3 Wrath of God
1 Moat
1 Humility
3 Decree of Justice

5CC// 4
4 Force of Will

That's how you have to look at a deck running CounterTop. There's really no other way to do it. Now, cost by cost comparisons can show you a lot - specifically that you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually countering anything with Counterbalance. You'd find yourself better off with Counterspell in that slot. The second and third most important slots (2 and 3, respectively) are completely devoid of spells. You will not be able to counter Tarmogoyf, or Survival, or Krosan Grip, or Harmonic Sliver, or Warchief, etc. Now, Cunning Wish may mitigate this to some extent, but you're still going to be missing more than hitting with Counterbalance. If you do as you said, and Wish for Enlightened to counter a spell, well, you now have an extra Counterbalance in hand that doesn't do anything.

One of the biggest mistakes I see people making with decks like this is to focus too much on the individual power level of specific cards in the deck, and losing sight of the big picture. For example, TEC's curve looks like this after our most recent changes:

0CC// 24 (can't be helped)
1CC// 11
2CC// 10
3CC// 8
4CC// 3
5CC// 4

See how it smoothly curves down to the higher mana costs? This focus is intentional, and while you lose some of the more powerful spells such as FoF, you gain a ton of consistancy in your plan A, CounterTop. People are amazed at my luck at blind Counterbalance, but it's by design that I can do it at all.

Next, I don't think you need as much "removal" as you're running. Moat+Wrath+Humility is a ton, especially with StP and Thoughtsieze in addition. If you do plan to run Humility+Moat, focus some attention on how you plan to win the game through it yourself. Decree can't really do the job, and you don't want to blow your own lock up. You will be drawing way more cards than your opponent, so I don't know if Brain Freeze from the board would even do it. I play Jace for this reason, but you know, people have mixed feelings on him. Regardless, its something to think about.

I'll try to chime in on this more while I continue the development on TEC, because I think non-Landstill control has a ton of game these days. Good luck!

[Citrus-God]

Thanks for the advice, Nightmare. My teammates and I were talking about cutting a Moat and a Humility. Only thing 4c would counter are big fliers, and those are answered by Humility and the singleton removal spells. besides, CB protects the Enchantments anyway. If we cast DoJ in the control mirror, DoJs and the Enchantments should be used to counter WoG effects. and stall for a certain amount of turns before we win. And if the first soldeirs/angels die, we simply cast another one. A diff win should definitely help.

We didnt seem to like Counterspell in the deck, but Chainer's Edict was amazing.

We were also thinking of cutting the FoFs. If we cut the FoFs, we could run cards that serve the purpose of running FoF in the first place. Impulse should be the answer; it's a 2c spell and it digs. We never used FoF for quantity and always quality. Impulse is more cost efficient and digs better.

So changes might be:

-1 Humility
-1 Moat
-3 FoF

+4 Impulse
+1 Eternal Dragon


Now I have ten 2cc spells. I'll test this more and get back with some results.

[Nightmare]

I actually like Moat, and I've been running it in my SB for a week or so. It's amazing at protecting Planeswalkers. On the other hand, if you cut Moat and Humility, how do you beat Goblins game 1? I dunno, it's a fine line.

I'm not sure Impulse is the card you're looking for, but test it out. I also HATE Eternal Dragon, but you'll figure that one out on your own. He's so shitty, I can't ever justify running him. Here, I'll pay 7 mana at sorcery speed. Have fun doing whatever the hell you want this turn. Oh, a two mana Tombstalker, huh? Guess that sucks for me. (BtW, run Tombstalker in that slot if you're just looking for beats - you don't need them though).

[zulander]

F. Conclave gets around moat+humility correct? If so I think that could do the trick.

[Nightmare]

Yeah, it does, but it also comes into play tapped, costs three mana to make a man and get in for 2, and sucks.