Control decks
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I think Grafdiggers Cage and (maybe) Sylvan Library play a large hand in this.
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What I’ve found is that true control decks are inferior.
In old school era, control is extremely good because Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell are often so much more efficient than the threats available to play.
However for modern times, the “answers” aren’t better than the “threats”, so there is not much motivation to play true control
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@lienielsen I'm not sure that is true. Legacy has strong control decks and Vintage has Control Combo hybrids. Are the combo finishes essential to win the game now?
If the answers are that good, then I would expect to see more of them in the format. I do not see Delver of Secrets and I rarely see Uro or Oko in Vintage. The Vintage meta appears to be mostly about low curve efficiency.
Could a "fish" style deck like the old Noble Fish compete in today's meta? Brian Kelly did really well in a league with Standstill. Are the Vintage Challenges and Showcase events attracting enough players?
I do think that there have not been enough answers printed to deal with questions from 2019 - 2020. But, I'm not sure if that is what is keeping people from playing more control decks.
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Here is an Esper list posted on Discord for Sedgemoor Witch looks like a path forward for Control to me. The general idea of the deck is not new, it is like the Mentor decks from 2016-2018 before it was restricted.
3 Sedgemoor Witch
1 Monastary Mentor
2 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Peek
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dig Through Time
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Gush
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Ponder
1 Time Walk
1 Treasure Cruise4 Preordain
2 Night's Whisper
2 Elimate4 Flusterstorm
2 Force of Negation
1 Daze
1 Mental Misstep
4 Force of Will1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring2 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Island
1 Mystic Sanctuary
1 Tundra
4 Underground SeaSideboard
2 Steel Sabotage
2 Fatal Push
3 Energy Flux
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Grafdigger's Cage -
I took the Esper deck that I posted above for a spin this weekend and I like the way the deck plays and has a lot of what I think is missing from the Vintage meta.
The issue with the deck is that the deck does not do a good job at attacking any particular arch-type or strategy in the format. The current strategies in Vintage are tempo/prison and A+B combo. There are still graveyard decks but the to be successful the deck needs to actually be good against either tempo/prison or A+B combo.
The larger issue here is that Vintage is dominated by deck specialists. I have been reading the discord and looking at various tournament results, and I do think that Vintage needs more control options.
There are control deck specialists, I can read their names on mtg goldfish but what feels like it is missing is the evolution of the control deck to meet the current meta.
When I look at the Vintage Champs decks I see control deck masters like Kevin Cron and Brian Coval and some others pop up. I do see players coming in and out of Vintage and doing well with these decks but I cannot pick up their decks and do well without becoming a master.
This kind of leads into a bigger discussion with the format in general about fun and mastery that is not what this thread is about. Coming back to the point of this thread is there a control deck to meet the meta where it is now.
I know there are super friends lists and some cantrip control lists (otherwise known as Xerox) that win but those look like decks piloted by deck specialists deck not meta game oriented control decks. And I know that does not read well on a thread but think about it.
If I just built a gauntlet of the top 10 decks in Vintage, which I actually do, and played them against each other - how would I know which deck was a control outside of looking at the wincons?
Could I pick up a control and play the control role without being a specialist and do well? This may not matter to most of you but it matters that there needs to be "modern" school of magic for control.
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As a friend of mine once said "there are no wrong threats, only wrong answers." Control needs to be so dense with answers (counter/removal) and have the right piece at the right time that it runs so few threats itself. They are also usually "hard to answer" threats, but those also need to be played in the exact window where you've controlled enough and still have enough control to stop a recovery AND protect your win long enough to close the game. Control has a smaller margin for error because of this. Aggro is redundant enough to try to just overrun you. Aggro/lock is the same as every lock piece is basically a tempo-time-walk for them. Combo can be dogged all game and just "oops I win" once you draw the wrong control piece or open a window when you cast your threat. Control is probably the hardest archetype to play - though it can be smotheringly dominant when played well. But as new sets come out and cheaper/stronger/tougher-to-remove options get printed, aggro is gaining an edge I feel.
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I played this in MTG Melee yesterday with some solid results. The Demonic Consultation was left in by mistake but I ended up winning a game with looking for Monastery Mentor. I actually think a solid control deck like this one is well placed in the meta right now. I Young Pyromancer style go wide deck can win a games, and that's where Sedgemoor Witch really shines.
Deck
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Bolas's Citadel1 Monastery Mentor
4 Sedgemoor Witch1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Time Walk
1 Narset, Parter of Veils
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Tinker
1 Gush
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Preordain
1 Dig Through Time1 Force of Negation
1 Mental Misstep
1 Mystical Dispute
4 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will4 Island
2 Polluted Delta
1 Mystic Sanctuary
2 Flooded Strand
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
2 Underground SeaSideboard
2 Fragmentize
4 Steel Sabotage
2 Fracture
4 Leyline of the Void
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Mindbreak Trap -
My Legacy-playing friends used to describe "The RUG Delver" problem in that format. I think playing control in Vintage has a similar problem.
The RUG Delver problem was that the "stock" deck was about 65/75 locked down with the remaining 10 cards being metagame choices. (Years later, I can still tell you the 54 card set-in-stone main deck with 2 of the remaining 6 being "either play X or Y") Every time you'd start talking about playing a deck in RUG colors or playing a deck that wanted to do similar things to RUG Delver, you'd end up either building something that was worse, or you'd accidentally build RUG Delver.
For me, the Vintage equivalent is the PO Mentor Problem. When I picture a Vintage Blue control deck, I picture Big Blue from The Good Old Days
.I'm going to want a fair bit of artifact mana and a lot of card selection. When I start to narrow down my options, I think, why not play a few extra artifacts and have PO be part of my card draw? And while I'm doing that, what finisher rewards playing lots of artifact mana and low-cost card draw? Mentor!
When I look at that last deck moorebrother1 posted, I can't help but think that with a few more artifacts, it could be drawing a lot more cards with PO!
So maybe I've arrived at a PO Control deck. I definitely think such a thing would be fun to play. But I'm gonna look at PO combo decks and wonder to myself if that's just the better option.
Anyway, this is also the reason I wish Mentor was never printed. It's so clearly the best finisher in so many decks that there's little reason to play anything else. I started building a Belcher deck the other day. Then I realized that it'd want POs and that the bog standard PO list was a better option.
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@moorebrother1 I love this observation. I have been messing around with Esper a lot lately and I really like the Esper PO base as a place to start brewing. I also have an Esper Helm deck that I am brewing and I run into the issue you just described all of the time.
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@moorebrother1 said in Control decks:
@moorebrother1 The issue with the deck is that the deck does not do a good job at attacking any particular arch-type or strategy in the format.
As far back as M10 I remember hearing this from guys like Rakso, Menendian, Zherbus et al. and so if you feel this way, it's just the usual sentiment for control; ironically, that was at a time when control was still at its peak especially for skilled players. Just looking at some of these new decks drops my jaw. Who remember's Tan's builds from 20 years ago? Abyss, Moat, and Morphling. And then we moved on to some other crazy crap and routine use of balance to address oath/fittest, somewhere in the mix of all that people started running kaerevek's torch as a secondary win against FoW. Somewhere along that line workshop hit with Chalice and we went back to more traditional wins with colossus and added REB/Pyroblasts, some guys went full tilt with 4 in the maindeck and another 4 in the sideboard and welders. I left right around the time painters was a thing and that was the beginning of the re-emergence of control-combo. Pivoting to agressive combo to quickly win the game vs. Control lock like the "Good ole days."
That's when everyone was crying Vintage hit "Critical Mass." Hah! Far from it!
I did see a few posts above it was mentioned about "having the right play" at the right time and that will always hold true for control. It's rarely a proactive deck; it's a constant reactive chain that requires intuitive solutions and meticulous setups for the win.
Consider the draw engines in the evolution: Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, Divining Top, Brainstorm, Gush.They were all effective for their time period albeit a bit slow sometimes. I think we're about as streamlined as it gets on that in the current era.
If you're looking for the next Moderately stable evolution of control, you'll need to get the timeline and progression down like the back of your hand and build from scratch. That's how the "Masters" have always edged it out. I have not yet set out to see the new builds yet in action from a decade of walking away from the game.
I hope that's helpful to your quest. God Bless.
