My main concern is the manabase, without Hallowed Fountain it is very shaky and slow.
Yeah, it is not the best. In order to cast History of Benalia consistently on turn 3, we need 18 white sources and the deck only has 15. I think the Field of Ruins actually have to go, and we probably need to swap an island for 1 more plains. This means Sinister Sabotage has to go, since we can't have both 18 white sources and 18 blue sources by turn 3 without Hallowed Fountain.
We also need 16 white sources to cast Settle the Wreckage consistently on turn 4 as well, and so adding more plains is the right choice.
So yeah, we need some different 2 and 3-mana cards - not a ton of options yet without the Azorius cards. Besides the angel, maybe a main-deck Negates? We could also think about running Exclusion Mage, but that really helps Golgari decks. Response is a card we can actually play too if we want more removal for green decks. I'm pretty much okay with only 2 Seal Aways - cards are dead sometimes. Besides a Treasure Map, there's no artifacts I really want to play.
I think this could definitely be optimized for sure. It is really nice to have the counters on turn 4/5 for a control's decks sweepers though. Sometimes you get those knight + history draws and then protect it with counters and removal that they are hopeless, and it feels pretty good to do that.
I did lose one game to jeskai control - the list with explosions. I was 1 counterspell short after we both went through most of our decks. I almost decked him though - was super close and down to the wire of 1 card in his library and only 2 cards in hand (which were both counterspells). I had one counter, but not 2
I think there's promise here to work from. I'm hopeful this can be a real deck, especially once the next Ravnica set is released. It feels a lot more proactive and does a good job targeting decks on the rise.
This is a really cool deck that just went 5-0 at a tournament. I played it a bit today, and I'm hooked. You'd think this deck would be obvious - marrying two of the most powerful cards in standard into a strong deck that also has game against other control decks that are gaining the top spots these days in Standard. It also game against aggro decks - just being able to actually play stuff to block creatures and what not is more useful than draw-go. Nobody really thought to try this yet until now - the Guilds of Ravnica color pairs are all the rage. The deck has won a lot of games for me today, and I guess the added surprise is that people are going "wtf" probably. Something to try if you're looking for something new. It's a pretty obvious yet non-obvious deck that I think has some legs.
Seeing as the PTQ winners were announced today, and the Jeskai deck that went 9-0 did not contain Opt, Risk Factor, Shock or Lightning Strike, and it had Cleansing Nova and Settle The Wreckage in the 75 in the same numbers I gave, I'm going to call that I wasn't just blowing smoke up my butt when I was saying what I was saying. Obviously if the Jeskai deck - a deck that had access to do those cards - chose not to run them in favour of superior cards, then that means they were considered to be bad or at least less good than the 75 they actually went with. And if it's not good enough for Jeskai, then it's not good enough for Izzet either, because if the deck could have been Izzet, it would have been. Again, the mostly blue control deck was white as its second core, not the red.
And no, I don't think Risk Factor is bad in control because it's a punishment mechanic - who's care about that - it's just bad because it doesn't do anything to affect the board and effectively removes a card from your hand while are getting beaten down by the various aggro decks in the format. It's not a control card. It belongs in a burn deck, preferably mono-red.
This is actually the point in time with the smallest card pool available to standard. Threats aren't particularly punishing, compared to other standards - not sure what you really mean, here. Cleansing Nova is very medium - it's a million years too slow alone, except maybe against specifically GW, and I guess you just got a bunch of opponents who failed to play around Settle.
Well, you're mis-characterizing what I am saying. Yes, it's slow - but it's also not the only sweeper I would use - and I would only run 2 copies. It's there to clean up boards that Settle isn't clearing up because opponents ARE playing around it. It's mode to deal with enchantments is also useful from time to time, in odd situations.
Yes, of course... I did mention that :/ I'd run 8 Lava Coils if I was allowed to - that would instantly make Izzet a lot better. I get the impression you're not reading what I am saying, responding to a position I did not hold, etc. Obviously you have 4 copies, and you ideally need it for more than 4 threats throughout a game. You can't hit everything with it.
Getting 2-for-1'ed isn't very relevant when there's an Explosion for 4-5 waiting in the wings. UR can spew cards and be completely fine. Beacon Bolt, Ral, and countermagic can handle anything larger than four. Once I killed a Ghalta with one Beacon Bolt, straight up - good times.
Beacon Bolt is fine as a 1-of. I did mention that too.........
Explosion is pretty optimistic in most fast games. It's a decent card, but not necessary.
Benalia hasn't been impactful in any of the ~5 or so matches I've played against the card so far.
Almost every Benalia deck I have played has had astronomically high win rates, so I don't know which opponents you are playing against but the card is very good and it does very well against control if you get it past a counter. I also still play against it a lot. On MTG Goldish, it is the #1 dominating card when averaging 3 rounds of tournament data so far. This can change, but it's seeing a lot of use and the card is winning. 5 games is also nothing. Also, the OP's deck - the deck I was responding to - did not any answer to History in the mainboard - it was in the sideboard - and that's clearly a mistake.
I've lost way more games to Adanto Vanguard. Anecdotal, sure, but again - UR draws so many cards it doesn't matter. Having a pile of crappy 1-mana removal really buys you time to get the draw engines rolling. The crappy things just feed Chemister's later if they're not preventing your from getting run over, or trade down against larger threats.
It really depends on what cards you selected. Most of the Izzet Control lists I see in the forums, on youtube, etc. are bad. If you build it more like Azorius or the Jeskai deck I briefly mentioned, then yes, you can keep pace just fine. But this also means you won't be including about 12-14 cards that most of these decks are including, like 4 ionizes, shocks, risk factors, opts, etc. - all of this stuff is pretty much useless. There are decks Izzet has a hard time dealing with that Azorius will not have problems with as well, and you will also most likely lose to the Azorius matchup too.
Ral is fine. Playing additional colors has a hard cost in standard, in terms of both life total and consistency. Teferi probably isn't enough better to be worth a splash by himself. One could draw up a bunch of edge cases where either -3 is better, where either plus 1 is better, and where each ultimate is better. Ral has the better ult, trades extra mana for selection and graveyard + jumpstart synergy, and has the worse defensive ability. Ral also starts one step closer to ultimate. The comparison isn't as straightforward as you suggest.
Ral is fine, but he's not better. Untapping 2 lands at the end of most turns is simply too good to beat. The -3 is only better later in the game when you have a lot of stuff in the graveyard - may not always be the case. I agree that Ral's ultimate is sweeter and you will win much faster, but both win you the game so... Also, Devious Cover-Up is a REALLY good magic card, and you don't even need a planeswalker to win anymore. I've won many games just draw-going my way to victory and having way too many counters and cards for my opponent to do anything. You eventually create a pretty strong soft-lock with this strategy and you are not vulnerable to playing permanents (which is why Dream Eater was so interesting to me, because it has Flash, and it's a proactive threat that is also interactive... and there's so very few cards like that in Standard these days).
Also, playing Azorius does not have the color problems you're talking about. It's mostly a blue deck with a white splash, and it plays just fine, even without Hallowed Fountain. Even the Jeskai deck I run is over 55% blue cards (and only 12% red, again very minimal red).
1 mana instant speed cantrips are durdling now? What a world we live in. It's a fine card to test, considering the amount of spells-in-graveyard synergies in UR. I could understand if it doesn't make the cut, but it makes the cut in Modern just fine. Red's slew of one-mana removal makes Opt very much playable.
I've tried it in dozens of games. My deck instantly improved when I took it out. I think for Ral's minus ability, it can be beneficial, but if you don't run Ral, Opt is not necessary.
Counter-burn isn't a real thing. That's just a word people use to either mischaracterize the flexibility of direct damage spells, or to describe the bad deck they made because they don't understand the concept of tempo or why Delver of Secrets is good.
I'd hardly control these control lists "tempo" decks....
I'd rather get my value from Find\\Finality because the card is cheaper than findbroker, and I can pull 2 creatures. I don't want to get too into the recursion debate because each deck is going to vary on their recursion.
But... the list I posted had both of the cards in there... I wasn't picking it over Find.
That would be prevent you from getting non-creature permanents, and would also limit the amount of recursion you could do. The 3/4 body is honestly pretty relevant too. I have never been sad or underwhelmed playing this card. It has always did amazing things in my games against every archetype. I think this card is an essential core to the value-based Golgari decks. It's a 3/4 for 4 that tutors for almost anything in your graveyard. That is a powerful constructed rate. Against a red deck, for 5 mana, you get a 3/4 that blanks their shocks and lightning strikes and kills a Goblin Warboss. How is this not good in constructed? It's always a 2-for-1, or worse for your opponent. It's also silly against control you have more threats than they have counters, and you can keep rebuying Findbroker with your Memorial to Follys throughout the game.
I think Vine Mare and Carnage Tyrant should be making some of these decks if electing to use double greens.
If you're going the Green Stompy route, that's an option. Note that these don't add a lot of extra dimensions to your deck - it's just more of what green stompy beatdown decks are already doing. I'm not saying that's wrong - it depends a lot on the meta. It's definitely a different direction than the deck list I posted - wouldn't fit at all in that deck.
I agree, it is really cool there's so many different ways to build, that's that's always been a Golgari strength. The best build will generally change with the meta though.
I was also thinking of giving Find // Finality a shot. It's weird though, I want the first half for control but the second half for aggro. That makes me think it's only good in the mirror matches. Though, I suppose, if you're liberal with blocking to keep a board more manageable before you start dropping bombs it could be really strong.
Bloodfast and Whisperer along with shocks seem pretty sketchy in the current meta. It hasn't came back to bite you much? I imagine if you had Wildgrowth Walker in the main it would be much better in the long term.
Find is just a pure value card - you can often get back so many different value creatures that it ends up being a sort of "creature tutor" that gets 2 cards for 2 mana. Findbroker is also a "permanent tutor", and it can rebuy Dead Weights, Planeswalkers, etc. on top of creatures. You can create incredible value loops with Memorial to Folly with these cards.
As standard gets more toolbox creatures, I can totally see Find // Finality becoming more and more valuable. Imagine if we had a card like Thragtusk? Omg, I wish.
The Finality part is a bit of a free-roll. You cast Finality, you put the 2 counters on a Doom Whisperer, and then win in 2 turns while nuking their entire board. It doesn't happen every game, but if you're a bit flooded or got a lot of lands from Jadelight Rangers, then go for it. Doom Whisperer also lets you put cards in your hard to dig up again while drawing other relevant spells you can't target with Find/Memorial. It's also just a 6/6 that blocks just about everything, and you shouldn't be facing down tons of creatures as you're blocking and killing their stuff.
Bloodfast is there for control decks, which I play a lot of as the meta changes :/ The anti-aggro tools are in the board. You could just as easily put this in the board and maindeck some Wildgrowth Walkers or more removal if you're playing against more aggro. This deck has game against aggro though as it is - you have a lot of effective cheap blockers and Dead Weight kills most of their stuff. You can also rebuy Dead weights with Findbroker, killing their Goblin Warbosses over and over again. A 3/4 body is nothing to sneeze it - it's huge against a lot of different creatures. You have so much value that killing and blocking their stuff isn't that hard. When Bloodfast flips, you can also gain a ton of life and then rebuy your creatures and just play them again.
My win rate with the above deck is pretty high - about 65-70%.
Honestly. I think red control cards are the most overrated in all of standard, and that control decks really need to look to a White core for their removal package. I just see no way to get around not having Settle the Wreckage and Cleansing Nova. This standard format is so diverse and the threats so punishing that Red removal really just doesn't cut it.
Shock/Lightning Strike are blanked so much by Selesnya tokens, that you're going to be 2-for-1'd all of the time unless you're lucky to find a good target (Knight of Grace). They suck against History of Benalia, the best card in Standard. They suck against Rekindling Phoenix. Heck, they even suck against Conclave Cavalier. They are, in general, bad against green decks - they are dead to Steel-Leaf Champion and anything bigger than that. Killing their turn 1 elves just doesn't seem to do much - you're still going to die to 5/4's or 6/6's or worse. The format is just really unkind to Red. Removal spells, if they are doing damage, need to deal 4 damage minimum, and Exiling is rather important.
Ral also doesn't compare to Teferi, and it's just not his time. Maybe in next Standard Rotation, but I don't know why someone would actively avoid Teferi in Standard right now if they wanted to be a control deck since it's one of the best cards for a control deck, not close.
Risk Factor isn't a control card, and many people recommending that. The card does nothing to impact the board, and every time it's in your opening hand, you have stolen 1 additional option that could keep you alive. Draw 2 of them? Well, good luck with red and green decks :/ It's a bad card in control decks, and it will often lose you the game if you draw it in the first 6-7 turns.
Ionize is honestly not ideal since you're denying yourself better counters and cards at a cheaper mana cost. 1 is okay to make it easy to cast when you're light on blue mana, but the 2 damage is irrelevant - you're going to win by decking them or through your other win conditions anyway (usually Teferi, but Dream Eater has been interesting in testing).
I see some lists playing Opt - you can't waste card slots on such weak cards like this, and you won't have the mana for this in most games where you are being pressured. You don't have time to durdle in standard - the cards your opponents are playing are way too powerful.
The most successful control decks I have played have been strict Azorius (a purest form of draw-go with white for board wipes and exile-based removal) which aims to deck the opponent by cycling Devious Cover-Ups over and over again with Mission Briefing, or a light Jeskai deck that is basically Azorius splashing for Beacon Bolt, Lava Coil and Justice Strike with a mixture of Deafening Clarions/Fiery Cannonades in the mainboard and sideboard to reduce the need for cleansing nova. But I don't sacrifice my main white board wipes - they are essentially to winning against a lot of different decks. I do not run Shock or Lightning Strike at all, and the deck is pretty heavy on the blue cards as it's pretty similar to the Azorius deck.
I'm really sad that lots of people wanted counter-burn to work, but Wizards didn't make Izzet into that kind of guild this time around. It just isn't very good. And I think people need to learn that the standards for creatures are so high in Standard that Shock and Lightning Strike are not your default "premium" removal spells anymore. They are just traps now.
Golgari is a really difficult guild to build for constructed. There's just so many options you could go, and many of them could be considered "Midrange". I'm playing a "fair" Golgari deck, which plays a lot like a Jund deck, that focuses on the two best green Explore creatures and utility creatures like Chupacabras, Thrashing Brontodon and Findbrokers and tops out at Doom Whisperers and Vivian Reids. The rest of the deck is just removal and card advantage, such as Dead weights, Arguel's Blood Fast, Assassin's Trophies, Find//Finality, and Memorial to Folly's.
There's also the Turbo Izoni version, which just plays a bunch of cheap value creatures, doesn't care if they die, and tries to cast Izoni for ridiculous amounts of tokens.
Then there's the more "stompy" version like the way you have, that looks a lot like a mono green deck with black splash to add an extra dimension to the green stompy deck.
There's also a sacrifice build, like an aristocrats shell with the new Vraska, Golgari Queen, but I don't think all of the pieces are there yet. Orzhov in the next set is probably going to force this deck into Abzan during the next set.
What is best? I have no idea, and that's pretty cool that it's not obvious.
This card's pretty powerful, and if Izzet is ever actually going to be a deck (and to be honest, I don't even think that's a sure thing... it's the worst guild in Standard by far), then Arclight Phoenix is probably going to be one of the center pieces to that deck working. Remember, you can have 4 of these in your deck, and assume that you have 2 or 3 in your graveyard at the same time, you can bring them all back by just using 1 jump start card and 1 other spell. Essentially, you can recur an army of phoenixes over and over again with your jump start cards. And unlike most phoenixes, this doesn't cost you any mana to bring them back. Don't forget, blue has access to counters that pull your jump start spells back into your deck so you can increase their density as the game goes on too, solving that "I don't have enough spells" problem.
I don't have time to play too many games, but results are really good last 3 days. I'm pretty sure if my control opponents played differently, or were better deck builders, they could have won more games against me. But that's one of the beautiful things with this deck - it's start off like a boros/white knights deck, and so they play like they need shock or counter every early threat. Then you start putting down major bombs, turn after turn on turn 4 and 5, and they are just screwed. Only Azorius could have enough counters with unconditional sweepers to actually play that kind of game against this deck, but I even beat Azorius because I played a lot of Azorius and I know how the deck works and what most of the cards are, giving me good odds to beat it since I know what it's like to be on that side of the table too.
Yeah I like the list but it loses to control and has a huge problem of lacking card advantage.
Card advantage has never been a problem with this deck. The threats are so beefy and so dense that everything is a must kill and must counter. The amount of pressure this deck can create forces people to 2-for-1 themselves some of the time.
And while it's not good against control, the number of control decks vs everything else I am playing is quite small. In fact, of those control decks, most of them are Jeskai playing Risk Factors and wasting card slots on Opt... and they're just getting cleaned up by this deck because they haven't figure it out that Azorius or perhaps Esper are massively better than Jeskai. They keep playing shocks and lightning strikes and clarions hoping to beat green decks. They keep trying to Settle the Wreckage when you can just play around it (making their Wreckage into a 4-mana assassin's trophy) or drop a Shalai to ruin their day. Jeskai is hopeless in this meta, and while I would still run some Settle the Wreckages for redundancy, Cleansing Nova is really where it's at. I dunno why you want to run red... that's all of the bad cards. White even has 2-mana targeted exile removal that deals with most threats in this meta besides the vigilance creatures. And if you're playing Jeskai, they're probably running izzet duals with no white mana. Not a good strategy.
Against a good Azorius deck, I'm pretty sure this deck is hopeless, but nobody is playing it even though I have dabbled with it some. So, until the Azorius meta actually starts to form, this deck is a good deck to play. My win rate is astronomically high still. Played 6 games this morning and only lost 1. If you ask me, red, green, selsnya, boros, etc. are still way too popular not to play this deck. It has good game against golgari too.
I did start playing Legion's Landing over Adanto Vanguards. Deck is performing so good now. Every card I am happy to draw and this even ramps me to Lyra faster. Much better.
Of course it's too early! I'm not calling it or anything, that's for sure - it's just working well right now against decks people are playing. I find that cool since usually decks that work well at the beginning are aggro decks, not mid-range. I'm enjoying the deck for as long as I can because experience tells me this will probably not last for very long!
Having said that, I think this deck has more legs than Boros Mentor-focused decks. Those decks don't seem to curve out as well as you'd like, and they've actually felt a little underwhelming to me, especially when compared to a turn 2 chain whirler or goblin warboss. For me, turn 3 is all about chainwhirler or history of benalia - nothing else in boros seems to deliver that kind of impact, so I think we're looking at a deck that either focuses a lot on white, or a lot on red if we were to sort of predict the future a little.
It has to be said, I don't think I faced many controlish decks in my series of games while playing this. I can easily see them ripping apart specific creatures that create the decks synergy. Hopefully the deck is pretty threat-dense to survive some counters and sweepers. History of Benalia has a lot of good answers in the format too - people aren't running many of them though. At least we have some cards to deal with Settle the Wreckage if we are able to apply enough pressure to cast a Shalai. Banefire in the board could be helpful with those matchups too. But I'm guessing this matchup wouldn't be as good as it is against aggro decks. I'd probably strongly consider swapping Adanto Vanguard with Legion’s Landing/Adanto, The First Fort since that card seems to do very well against control.
Yeah, it is not the best. In order to cast History of Benalia consistently on turn 3, we need 18 white sources and the deck only has 15. I think the Field of Ruins actually have to go, and we probably need to swap an island for 1 more plains. This means Sinister Sabotage has to go, since we can't have both 18 white sources and 18 blue sources by turn 3 without Hallowed Fountain.
We also need 16 white sources to cast Settle the Wreckage consistently on turn 4 as well, and so adding more plains is the right choice.
So yeah, we need some different 2 and 3-mana cards - not a ton of options yet without the Azorius cards. Besides the angel, maybe a main-deck Negates? We could also think about running Exclusion Mage, but that really helps Golgari decks. Response is a card we can actually play too if we want more removal for green decks. I'm pretty much okay with only 2 Seal Aways - cards are dead sometimes. Besides a Treasure Map, there's no artifacts I really want to play.
I did lose one game to jeskai control - the list with explosions. I was 1 counterspell short after we both went through most of our decks. I almost decked him though - was super close and down to the wire of 1 card in his library and only 2 cards in hand (which were both counterspells). I had one counter, but not 2
I think there's promise here to work from. I'm hopeful this can be a real deck, especially once the next Ravnica set is released. It feels a lot more proactive and does a good job targeting decks on the rise.
2 Karn, Scion of Urza (DAR) 1
4 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria (DAR) 207
4 Knight of Grace (DAR) 23
1 Cleansing Nova (M19) 9
3 Chemister's Insight (GRN) 32
1 Disdainful Stroke (GRN) 37
2 Essence Scatter (M19) 54
3 Settle the Wreckage (XLN) 34
4 Sinister Sabotage (GRN) 54
1 Syncopate (DAR) 67
4 History of Benalia (DAR) 21
1 Ixalan's Binding (XLN) 17
2 Seal Away (DAR) 31
2 Search for Azcanta (XLN) 74
1 Arch of Orazca (RIX) 185
2 Field of Ruin (XLN) 254
4 Glacial Fortress (XLN) 255
7 Island (XLN) 265
4 Meandering River (DAR) 274
1 Memorial to Genius (DAR) 243
7 Plains (XLN) 261
1 Chemister's Insight (GRN) 32
2 Seal Away (DAR) 31
2 Lyra Dawnbringer (DAR) 26
1 Mystic Archaeologist (M19) 63
3 Negate (RIX) 44
1 Nezahal, Primal Tide (RIX) 45
2 Shield Mare (M19) 37
3 Tocatli Honor Guard (XLN) 42
And no, I don't think Risk Factor is bad in control because it's a punishment mechanic - who's care about that - it's just bad because it doesn't do anything to affect the board and effectively removes a card from your hand while are getting beaten down by the various aggro decks in the format. It's not a control card. It belongs in a burn deck, preferably mono-red.
Well, you're mis-characterizing what I am saying. Yes, it's slow - but it's also not the only sweeper I would use - and I would only run 2 copies. It's there to clean up boards that Settle isn't clearing up because opponents ARE playing around it. It's mode to deal with enchantments is also useful from time to time, in odd situations.
I like this card just fine... I did mention it as one of the good ones. That and Lava Coil are the two really good pure red removal cards.
Yes, of course... I did mention that :/ I'd run 8 Lava Coils if I was allowed to - that would instantly make Izzet a lot better. I get the impression you're not reading what I am saying, responding to a position I did not hold, etc. Obviously you have 4 copies, and you ideally need it for more than 4 threats throughout a game. You can't hit everything with it.
Beacon Bolt is fine as a 1-of. I did mention that too.........
Explosion is pretty optimistic in most fast games. It's a decent card, but not necessary.
Almost every Benalia deck I have played has had astronomically high win rates, so I don't know which opponents you are playing against but the card is very good and it does very well against control if you get it past a counter. I also still play against it a lot. On MTG Goldish, it is the #1 dominating card when averaging 3 rounds of tournament data so far. This can change, but it's seeing a lot of use and the card is winning. 5 games is also nothing. Also, the OP's deck - the deck I was responding to - did not any answer to History in the mainboard - it was in the sideboard - and that's clearly a mistake.
It really depends on what cards you selected. Most of the Izzet Control lists I see in the forums, on youtube, etc. are bad. If you build it more like Azorius or the Jeskai deck I briefly mentioned, then yes, you can keep pace just fine. But this also means you won't be including about 12-14 cards that most of these decks are including, like 4 ionizes, shocks, risk factors, opts, etc. - all of this stuff is pretty much useless. There are decks Izzet has a hard time dealing with that Azorius will not have problems with as well, and you will also most likely lose to the Azorius matchup too.
Ral is fine, but he's not better. Untapping 2 lands at the end of most turns is simply too good to beat. The -3 is only better later in the game when you have a lot of stuff in the graveyard - may not always be the case. I agree that Ral's ultimate is sweeter and you will win much faster, but both win you the game so... Also, Devious Cover-Up is a REALLY good magic card, and you don't even need a planeswalker to win anymore. I've won many games just draw-going my way to victory and having way too many counters and cards for my opponent to do anything. You eventually create a pretty strong soft-lock with this strategy and you are not vulnerable to playing permanents (which is why Dream Eater was so interesting to me, because it has Flash, and it's a proactive threat that is also interactive... and there's so very few cards like that in Standard these days).
Also, playing Azorius does not have the color problems you're talking about. It's mostly a blue deck with a white splash, and it plays just fine, even without Hallowed Fountain. Even the Jeskai deck I run is over 55% blue cards (and only 12% red, again very minimal red).
I've tried it in dozens of games. My deck instantly improved when I took it out. I think for Ral's minus ability, it can be beneficial, but if you don't run Ral, Opt is not necessary.
I'd hardly control these control lists "tempo" decks....
But... the list I posted had both of the cards in there... I wasn't picking it over Find.
That would be prevent you from getting non-creature permanents, and would also limit the amount of recursion you could do. The 3/4 body is honestly pretty relevant too. I have never been sad or underwhelmed playing this card. It has always did amazing things in my games against every archetype. I think this card is an essential core to the value-based Golgari decks. It's a 3/4 for 4 that tutors for almost anything in your graveyard. That is a powerful constructed rate. Against a red deck, for 5 mana, you get a 3/4 that blanks their shocks and lightning strikes and kills a Goblin Warboss. How is this not good in constructed? It's always a 2-for-1, or worse for your opponent. It's also silly against control you have more threats than they have counters, and you can keep rebuying Findbroker with your Memorial to Follys throughout the game.
If you're going the Green Stompy route, that's an option. Note that these don't add a lot of extra dimensions to your deck - it's just more of what green stompy beatdown decks are already doing. I'm not saying that's wrong - it depends a lot on the meta. It's definitely a different direction than the deck list I posted - wouldn't fit at all in that deck.
Find is just a pure value card - you can often get back so many different value creatures that it ends up being a sort of "creature tutor" that gets 2 cards for 2 mana. Findbroker is also a "permanent tutor", and it can rebuy Dead Weights, Planeswalkers, etc. on top of creatures. You can create incredible value loops with Memorial to Folly with these cards.
As standard gets more toolbox creatures, I can totally see Find // Finality becoming more and more valuable. Imagine if we had a card like Thragtusk? Omg, I wish.
The Finality part is a bit of a free-roll. You cast Finality, you put the 2 counters on a Doom Whisperer, and then win in 2 turns while nuking their entire board. It doesn't happen every game, but if you're a bit flooded or got a lot of lands from Jadelight Rangers, then go for it. Doom Whisperer also lets you put cards in your hard to dig up again while drawing other relevant spells you can't target with Find/Memorial. It's also just a 6/6 that blocks just about everything, and you shouldn't be facing down tons of creatures as you're blocking and killing their stuff.
Bloodfast is there for control decks, which I play a lot of as the meta changes :/ The anti-aggro tools are in the board. You could just as easily put this in the board and maindeck some Wildgrowth Walkers or more removal if you're playing against more aggro. This deck has game against aggro though as it is - you have a lot of effective cheap blockers and Dead Weight kills most of their stuff. You can also rebuy Dead weights with Findbroker, killing their Goblin Warbosses over and over again. A 3/4 body is nothing to sneeze it - it's huge against a lot of different creatures. You have so much value that killing and blocking their stuff isn't that hard. When Bloodfast flips, you can also gain a ton of life and then rebuy your creatures and just play them again.
My win rate with the above deck is pretty high - about 65-70%.
Shock/Lightning Strike are blanked so much by Selesnya tokens, that you're going to be 2-for-1'd all of the time unless you're lucky to find a good target (Knight of Grace). They suck against History of Benalia, the best card in Standard. They suck against Rekindling Phoenix. Heck, they even suck against Conclave Cavalier. They are, in general, bad against green decks - they are dead to Steel-Leaf Champion and anything bigger than that. Killing their turn 1 elves just doesn't seem to do much - you're still going to die to 5/4's or 6/6's or worse. The format is just really unkind to Red. Removal spells, if they are doing damage, need to deal 4 damage minimum, and Exiling is rather important.
Ral also doesn't compare to Teferi, and it's just not his time. Maybe in next Standard Rotation, but I don't know why someone would actively avoid Teferi in Standard right now if they wanted to be a control deck since it's one of the best cards for a control deck, not close.
Risk Factor isn't a control card, and many people recommending that. The card does nothing to impact the board, and every time it's in your opening hand, you have stolen 1 additional option that could keep you alive. Draw 2 of them? Well, good luck with red and green decks :/ It's a bad card in control decks, and it will often lose you the game if you draw it in the first 6-7 turns.
Ionize is honestly not ideal since you're denying yourself better counters and cards at a cheaper mana cost. 1 is okay to make it easy to cast when you're light on blue mana, but the 2 damage is irrelevant - you're going to win by decking them or through your other win conditions anyway (usually Teferi, but Dream Eater has been interesting in testing).
I see some lists playing Opt - you can't waste card slots on such weak cards like this, and you won't have the mana for this in most games where you are being pressured. You don't have time to durdle in standard - the cards your opponents are playing are way too powerful.
The most successful control decks I have played have been strict Azorius (a purest form of draw-go with white for board wipes and exile-based removal) which aims to deck the opponent by cycling Devious Cover-Ups over and over again with Mission Briefing, or a light Jeskai deck that is basically Azorius splashing for Beacon Bolt, Lava Coil and Justice Strike with a mixture of Deafening Clarions/Fiery Cannonades in the mainboard and sideboard to reduce the need for cleansing nova. But I don't sacrifice my main white board wipes - they are essentially to winning against a lot of different decks. I do not run Shock or Lightning Strike at all, and the deck is pretty heavy on the blue cards as it's pretty similar to the Azorius deck.
I'm really sad that lots of people wanted counter-burn to work, but Wizards didn't make Izzet into that kind of guild this time around. It just isn't very good. And I think people need to learn that the standards for creatures are so high in Standard that Shock and Lightning Strike are not your default "premium" removal spells anymore. They are just traps now.
There's also the Turbo Izoni version, which just plays a bunch of cheap value creatures, doesn't care if they die, and tries to cast Izoni for ridiculous amounts of tokens.
Then there's the more "stompy" version like the way you have, that looks a lot like a mono green deck with black splash to add an extra dimension to the green stompy deck.
There's also a sacrifice build, like an aristocrats shell with the new Vraska, Golgari Queen, but I don't think all of the pieces are there yet. Orzhov in the next set is probably going to force this deck into Abzan during the next set.
What is best? I have no idea, and that's pretty cool that it's not obvious.
Really Grindy/Value-Oriented Golgari Midrange
4 Llanowar Elves (DAR) 168
3 Dead Weight (GRN) 67
4 Merfolk Branchwalker (XLN) 197
2 Arguel's Blood Fast (XLN) 90
3 Assassin's Trophy (GRN) 152
2 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148
4 Jadelight Ranger (RIX) 136
3 Ravenous Chupacabra (RIX) 82
3 Golgari Findbroker (GRN) 175
3 Doom Whisperer (GRN) 69
2 Vivien Reid (M19) 208
3 Find // Finality (GRN) 225
8 Forest (RIX) 196
4 Swamp (RIX) 194
4 Memorial to Folly (DAR) 242
4 Overgrown Tomb (GRN) 253
4 Woodland Cemetery (DAR) 248
3 Duress (M19) 94
4 Wildgrowth Walker (XLN) 216
3 The Eldest Reborn (DAR) 90
3 Plague Mare (M19) 114
Just some thoughts....
Card advantage has never been a problem with this deck. The threats are so beefy and so dense that everything is a must kill and must counter. The amount of pressure this deck can create forces people to 2-for-1 themselves some of the time.
And while it's not good against control, the number of control decks vs everything else I am playing is quite small. In fact, of those control decks, most of them are Jeskai playing Risk Factors and wasting card slots on Opt... and they're just getting cleaned up by this deck because they haven't figure it out that Azorius or perhaps Esper are massively better than Jeskai. They keep playing shocks and lightning strikes and clarions hoping to beat green decks. They keep trying to Settle the Wreckage when you can just play around it (making their Wreckage into a 4-mana assassin's trophy) or drop a Shalai to ruin their day. Jeskai is hopeless in this meta, and while I would still run some Settle the Wreckages for redundancy, Cleansing Nova is really where it's at. I dunno why you want to run red... that's all of the bad cards. White even has 2-mana targeted exile removal that deals with most threats in this meta besides the vigilance creatures. And if you're playing Jeskai, they're probably running izzet duals with no white mana. Not a good strategy.
Against a good Azorius deck, I'm pretty sure this deck is hopeless, but nobody is playing it even though I have dabbled with it some. So, until the Azorius meta actually starts to form, this deck is a good deck to play. My win rate is astronomically high still. Played 6 games this morning and only lost 1. If you ask me, red, green, selsnya, boros, etc. are still way too popular not to play this deck. It has good game against golgari too.
I did start playing Legion's Landing over Adanto Vanguards. Deck is performing so good now. Every card I am happy to draw and this even ramps me to Lyra faster. Much better.
Having said that, I think this deck has more legs than Boros Mentor-focused decks. Those decks don't seem to curve out as well as you'd like, and they've actually felt a little underwhelming to me, especially when compared to a turn 2 chain whirler or goblin warboss. For me, turn 3 is all about chainwhirler or history of benalia - nothing else in boros seems to deliver that kind of impact, so I think we're looking at a deck that either focuses a lot on white, or a lot on red if we were to sort of predict the future a little.
It has to be said, I don't think I faced many controlish decks in my series of games while playing this. I can easily see them ripping apart specific creatures that create the decks synergy. Hopefully the deck is pretty threat-dense to survive some counters and sweepers. History of Benalia has a lot of good answers in the format too - people aren't running many of them though. At least we have some cards to deal with Settle the Wreckage if we are able to apply enough pressure to cast a Shalai. Banefire in the board could be helpful with those matchups too. But I'm guessing this matchup wouldn't be as good as it is against aggro decks. I'd probably strongly consider swapping Adanto Vanguard with Legion’s Landing/Adanto, The First Fort since that card seems to do very well against control.