Welcome back to this week in Casual Competitive. I told you at the end of the last article that I wanted to take a look at some of the decks that didn’t make the top 8, but I still thought were very interesting. This time I’d like to look at a take on the old time classic archetype: / control.





Coming from the innovative team of Pros who brought us decks such as Knoll-Storm (the revival of Dragonstorm at Worlds 2008), Five Color Blood, and every type of deck featuring Gifts Ungiven in Extended, we get this monster of a list. The first thing that I want to look at in this deck is: How does it win? In a format so defined by the aggro and rock decks, you immediately look to the creature lineup to see what you can find. One single Iona sits their all by her lonesome. Further inspection of the deck reveals, however, a pair of Martial Coups, a set of Celestial Colonnade, and the final ability of the four Jace, the Mind Sculptor as other possible win conditions. However, this deck is certainly not looking to kill anyone fast, and it’s going to have to really set up before it’s ready to end the game on its own terms.


The deck is certainly geared to the long game, however. Packing five sweepers with the three Day of Judgments and the two Coups. Along with the sweepers, it has a nice suite of flexible point removal with the Oblivion Rings as well as the miser’s Path to Exile and Celestial Purge. Combine that with that the four Cancel and the pair each of Flashfreeze and Essence Scatter, and you have a deck that is essentially a pile of answers, card draw to find them, and a lone Iona.

Another interesting point of this deck is its use of Everflowing Chalice. In the style of some of the old UW Control decks, this deck isn’t looking to sit back and counter every spell. What it is instead going to do is simple deal with every threat that comes at it. If it’s a creature, they will usually let it resolve, then pick it off with some removal when they are ready. In order to comfortably sit back and fire off some powerful X spells, they need to have lots of mana available to them. Since they can comfortably tap out against most decks and just untap an sweep, they are able to get huge mana advantage out of the Chalice, setting it to two, three, or even four or more counters if they already have a chalice out. It’s also important to note that you can use that mana from the chalice the turn it comes into play, so you can just leave a couple of Blue lands untapped and you still have access to your counterspells even as you play the Chalice.



Finally, I’d like to take a look at the sideboard. As with any decklist, the sideboard is metagame dependant, so looking at their exact choices isn’t that useful. We see the two additional Flashfreeze and Kor Firewalker to combat Red, and the three Bankslayer Angels that seems to now be the standard number to run in any deck playing White. The interesting thing to note, however, is that aside from the cards I just mentioned, every card in the sideboard is a one of. With a deck that has no way to directly for its cards, it really speaks for the deck’s ability to draw and manipulate itself that it can run so many silver bullets as options. With the Depths and Jace’s second ability combined with a couple of Fetch Lands, the deck is able to see so many cards every single game that it can afford to just play the one in the sideboard and just find it.

So that’s it for this week. If you have the cards (or the software, for you Magic: the Gathering Online players out there) for this deck, I highly recommend you sleeve it up and give it a try. The deck is packed with power and really a lot of fun to play with my opinion the biggest drawback being the rather sizable price tag attached to putting it together.

One last thing to note: Magic: the Gathering coverage is exploding onto the site here at Eye of the Vortex as more Rise of the Eldrazi spoilers become available. Keep it locked here to get your latest spoiler news and reviews!

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