Getting Older

I wasn’t playing control for a while since the latest shift in the Standard-Metagame made it impossible to continue with it. Alara Reborn was real bad news for 5cc. I tried to play Cruel Control anyway in a local PTQ for Austin and lost bad. To everything. As expected. But I didn’t drop after loss #3 because I payed to play 7 matches and I honestly don’t care about my DCI-rating.
Congratulation to my wife. She almost made top 8 (4-3-0) with her DarkBant deck at the same PTQ. She was the only female of 72 participants. It was funny to watch her opponents facial expression shift after they realized that playing against a girl does not equal a bye.

Anyway, back to control. Yesterday was a tournament in our local store. Format was Legacy with a restriction to two rares. I will call it Two-Rare-Legacy or 2RL for short. And everybody kept telling, that with this restriction, only burn or affinity is viable. I considered this statements as a challenge to build an old school mono blue control (MUC) deck. Luckily I didn’t sell my Force of Will playset after stopping to play five years ago. And Force of Will is uncommon.

And the backbone of MUC, Fact or Fiction, is also uncommon.

Sadly, every sort of classic MUC-removal like Powder Keg or Nevinyrral’s Disk is rare. So is Morphling aka Superman and I really wanted to play him. So my only real creature solution is Propaganda and four Plumeveil.

So I came up with this:

// Lands
4 Quicksand
21 Island

// Creatures
4 Plumeveil
2 Morphling
4 Mulldrifter

// Spells
4 Force of Will
4 Propaganda
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Counterspell
4 Ponder
3 Mana Leak
2 Tidings

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Chill
SB: 1 Annul
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 4 Energy Flux
SB: 2 Dream Tides

This looks like a crappy pile of 11 incarnations of Counterspell, some walls to stop small creatures and a massive amount of card draw to find a Morphling or die due to self-milling. Ironically this is pretty close to the truth. Here some card discussion:

// Lands
4 Quicksand
21 Island

25 land are there because all business spells are expensive and keeping mana open to counter or pretend to be able to counter is even more so. The Quicksand are a last minute adition mainly to solve Mistmeadow Skulk. I have no other out for it and I have no intention to loose just because one creature hits the battlefield.

// Creatures
4 Plumeveil
2 Morphling
4 Mulldrifter

Plumeveil functions as a Condemn for everything with toughness <=4 except, of course, the small little **** Mistmeadow Skulk.  Mulldrifter is draw-engine and alternate kill. Morphling is just the coolest thing ever. Flies, untaps, can protect itself and is a four turn clock.

// Spells – Draw
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Ponder
2 Tidings

Fact or Fiction used to be the best draw spell. Long time banned in all formats and still restricted in Vintage. “End of turn – Fact or Fiction” is the best thing a control player has to say. Ponder is there to make the early game more reliable. Sometimes land #3 or #4 is just not showing up. Tidings should provide enough steam mid- to lategame to ensure the win.

// Spells – Stack Control
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Mana Leak

Self speaking. The hard part is to guess exactly what to counter. You can’t deny everything. I’m not sure about Mana Leak. I think the situations were I needed a hard counter equal those were Leak was enough.

// Spells – Board Control
4 Propaganda

This it were the fun ends. At least for the opponent. And the effect is cummulative.

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Chill
SB: 1 Annul
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast
SB: 4 Energy Flux
SB: 2 Dream Tides

The sideboard reflects the above mentioned statements that burn and affinity will be big. I didn’t played against either so I can’t tell. The sideboard should be effective against those. The only two sideboard cards that I realy realy needed are Dream Tides. They were a real lucky last second addition. I ordered them after I realised that I will loose to elfs. And I have no intention to loose to the guys with their strange ears. I didn’t the cards to arrive in time but they did -> happy happy joy (as in Ren & Stimpy).

Match 1: Sliver
I lost game 1 to poison counters. How cool is that? This was the first time evere I came in touch with poison counters.
Game two followed the plan. Some cute little slivers nibbling on my life total. And then Morphling for the kill. Game 3 was almost the same, but after time was called Morphling could only attack once.

0-0-1

Match 2: Esper Artifacts
A cute girl playing with cute Artifacts. Game 1 was pretty fast Morphling beatdown. For game 2 I brought in all 4 Energy Flux. I happened to draw three of them. Hopefully she will bring a sideboard next time. White has so many wonderfull solutions for enchantments.

1-0-1

Match 3: Elf combo
The guy was playing some two card elf combos. He managed to sneak a lifegain elf into play. And since I don’t have an out for this, I conceded game 1 a few rounds before decking. The time limit does not like the control player. Games 2 and 3 followed the plan. Dream Tides provides a major problem for little green men. And supermen can fly, hence the name. The only tricky moment was to play aroung an expected Naturalize. I played Propaganda as bait. He played Naturalize. I thanked and played the Tides. He wanted to play it out and Morphling plus two Mulldrifters came for the kill.

2-0-1

Match 3: BW-something
Another cute girl. And she provided the most exciting match. She had disruption in form of Tidehollow Sculler but repeatedly tried to play Path to Exile and friends on Morphling. This is just not happening. Game 2 was scary because she played the **** Mistmeadow Skulk. But as mentioned above I had secret tech against that nasty little Kithkin. I was at ten life but then a Fact or Fiction revealed three Quicksand. Then she somehow managed to get a black and white creature into play and played two auras that made it big enough to stop Morphling. Damn it, why didn’t I play a bounce spell? But Morphling had her at 5 life and an attack with three assistant Mulldrifters sealed the deal.

3-0-1

I finished 2nd. 1st was another control deck that was splashing red. And 3rd was my wife with white weenies.

So we learned something from this tournament:

• With two control and one white weenie on top, it is fair to say that neither affinity nor burn was dominant
• I need to play a second color for removal. Without Powder Keg or Disk it is hard to win with Propaganda and Superman alone. Next time everybody is prepared for this.

I think next time will be real Legacy. Until then…

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