The idea of using trinket mage for basilisk collar is neat, especially with walking ballista. However, this is also incredibly mana intensive. And perhaps too unreliable without a clock. So without a clock, does the discard actually matter that much? That's been my biggest hesitation for discard in "standard" control decks. But having cards that are useful at all stages of the game is a good idea for sure. That's definitely a trap control decks can run into otherwise.
Your style of deck is something I like, although it is quite off from what I'm trying to do here. I understand that the creature focus of my deck is perhaps a bit too much. But control decks do have an issue with the fact that Modern is very diverse. It's probably okay to forgo certain matchups as long as your win percentage is high enough against other decks.
I really appreciate the discussion of different types of control decks. I will consider what elements might synthesize well with the deathtouch style deck. You'd be surprised at the relevant of 1 mana deathtouch creatures.
I've been thinking about other options the deathtouch deck may have, in particular ways to beat faster combo decks. I also have been trying to think about maximizing Steelshaper's Gift. There is the infinite combo of Crackdown Construct and Lightning Greaves and/or Shuko. You can equip infinite times to pump the construct indefinitely. Greaves is definitely more powerful, as construct gets haste, although it requires another creature. (Pesky shroud preventing requips...) It is a non-combo with bridge, but the matchups where we want a combo, we don't really want bridge much.
Greaves is very reasonable as well, since we can setup a viridian longbow + greaves making our creature invulnerable. I might try running 1 greaves + 3 crackdown construct in the main. I expect it's bad, but I think it's worth trying. Have to make those steelshaper's gifts do work!
The biggest addition has been Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry combo. The biggest issue I was finding with this deck was its anemic clock. There's lots of control elements, but this deck really needs a way to close out the game. Plus, I already was running Steelshaper's Gift to find Viridian Longbow, so thopter combo seemed like a natural fit. This gives the deck a new avenue of attack. The life gain is also very relevant, since it's still possible to be burned out with this deck.
Ensnaring Bridge has been a huge boon. This is the definition of a must answer card! The low CMC curve of this deck works well here, since it's easy to dump your hand and have bridge online relatively quickly.
To support the new powerhouse cards, I have replaced Trinket Mage with Fabricate. Flexible tutors like this are always slow, but it's necessary for this deck.
Many of the utility artifacts have been trimmed back. They just didn't add enough. Sorcerous Spyglass is still pretty important in a lot of places though, which is why it stays.
I've refined the manabase a bit. Inventors' Fair is a nice fit for this deck, even if it doesn't come online super quickly.
Proclamation of Rebirth has underperformed. Even with 15 1 cmc creatures, it often takes awhile for this card to get value. Especially with all the other 3 cmc cards in the deck, 4 was far too many. It's still a powerful effect (and one you definitely want against control!), so I'm keeping 2 for now. But, it may be worth dropping and playing "better" creatures. Although the tempo of all 1 cmc creatures is pretty important too. The 2 cmc deathtouch green creatures are honestly unexciting: Thornweald Archer or Deadly Recluse are the best of the bunch.
Since this deck is slow and designed to control the board, we struggle against any decks which can play around this plan. The sideboard is being used to address this, but I still need to figure out what type of cards are needed here. The idea right now is to turn into a more aggressive deck with disruption like Meddling Mage and Vendillion Clique. But we'll have to see.
I've also been considering swapping green for black. We can make a swap for the 1cmc creature slots: Pharika's Chosen, Ruthless Ripper, Typhoid Rats. These cards are all weaker than their green counterparts, but honestly the extra stats on the green creatures are usually irrelevant anyway.
There are actually some good 2 cmc black deathtouch creatures too:
--Fathom Feeder: which gives more value in long games and can deal with Etched Champion
--Tidehollow Strix: which has more value with flying. Being an artifact is actually nice as it can be recurred with academy ruins or, in rare cases, searched for.
--Gifted Aetherborn: Which helps in more aggressive matchups and decks with lots of burn.
Black has the benefit of sideboard options. Getting access to discard can be very powerful for our bad matchups, or in just protecting our high value artifacts. It also has value in making Thopter Foundry easier to cast too, since usually you'll want to fetch a basic on your first turn to cast a 1 cmc creature.
Anyway, that's what I got for now. I'm going to put the green version together in paper soon and start getting more "real" tests in.
Black mana isn't all that important. It's not ever worth risking lands coming into play tapped. And the condition is easy enough to trigger. When you open with a hand of River of tears + tron land + expedition map, you'll suddenly understand why Drowned Catacombs can never replace river of tears.
Also, congrats on the results guys! I think I'll be playing again this week too.
Gifts is already pretty slow for the decks that build around it. But we don't have anything that's backbreaking enough to make it worthwhile. There's also a limit to the amount of "clunky" cards you can play. It also seems silly to make deck choices simply to satisfy a 1x Gifts.
Been thinking about other options for this deck. The GW versions were fun, but spent too much time digging and not enough time impacting the board. Looking at other splashes, I've been thinking about black a lot because of Beseech the Queen. Landing a Phyrexian Unlife almost always guarantees your next turn, which can mitigate some slowness of tutors. So if you can survive until turn 4 to cast phyrexian unlife, it's likely you can setup your combo. Having more tutors makes you more resilient in the face of discard too. Anyway, here's an idea for a list:
The goal in this deck is to go hard prison. Play some 1-2cmc spells to delay the game, then setting up unlife + solemnity by turn 5, with tutoring if necessary. Then from there work to get 2 Greater Auramancy in play to completely lock the opponent out of the game. Black has some nice additions.
Bitterblossom is a great win-con, and synergies with unlife perfectly. Unlike other win-cons, it can also come down early and be a great creature stall as well.
Collective Brutality is a great multi-purpose card. In fact, black gives us options to lots of discard post-board, which can help us immensely against control decks.
The downsides to black, particularly to support Beseech the Queen, is the manabase. For it to work, you really need almost all of your lands to produce black. Not sure if the listed manabase is appropriate, but it's a start.
Orzhova, the Church of Deals is likely bad, but I like the idea of 1 land as a super plan B win-con. Probably not worth it though.
How do you guys feel about a black splash? It's along the lines of the green version I had been working on, but I think it might be better because it's deterministic. You can plan around what your tutors will get you. Perhaps it's wrong to focus on the combo so much though. I mean, it doesn't actually win the game right away. The only advantage is that there are nice tutors for both pieces of the combo.
I’ll remind you that there are tricks to play black mana also in the opponent’s turn, like using Field of Ruin while River of Tears in on the play, or when the opponent is forced to Path your Wurmcoil to attack through it.
This is actually untrue. River of Tears making black mana only happens if you've played a land.
List looks pretty good Bloody Rabbit, more along the lines of what I like to run too. I notice you don't have mindslaver at all either, which I'm a fan of. Although you mention control is problematic, so perhaps running it in the sideboard is still worthwhile. I've been thinking of doing the same, or some other anti-control card that there are many options for. Most control is running a lot of field of ruin which is honestly the thing which has made control matchups the most difficult. We're forced to play fairly too much.
This is probably too deep, but I was wondering if it would be possible to support Commandeer in the sideboard. The cost is enormous, but I can't help of think of the upside in several matchups. Stealing walkers would be backbreaking.
Negate looks like a good addition to the maindeck. It's a card I bring in quite frequently actually, so finding maindeck space for it is pretty reasonable. Swapping out a remand for it is an easy switch, although I really do love my remands...
I think 4 dismembers is a bit extreme, though I understand why you run it.
Do you like Snapcaster Mage all that much? I haven't run him in my versions yet. He just feels a bit slow (both in total mana and getting double U).
I don't like only 3 expedition maps. Getting tron online early can just give us free wins, and I think it's important to maximize that. Multiples aren't really an issue because you always want more lands with this deck. I also run a single Tolaria West so that I can turn maps into a threat as well (Walking Balista).
I think 4 supreme will/3 thirst for knowledge is a little high. I know these are good cards, but drawing several of them early can be problematic, especially on the draw.
Ugin is a great card. Hard to interact with, gives outs against a wide spectrum of decks, and also closes out the game. I've been very happy with 2 of them as well.
How necessary do you find the surgical extractions in the sideboard?
Spell Snare is a great sideboard card. In fact, I've actually been considering 1-2 in the maindeck. Almost everything has 2 cmc we care about. Perhaps it's too unreliable though.
Did some testing to get to this list below. Overall the deck is quite fun, although not amazing (to be expected). The deathtouch combo can be crippling for a lot of decks. While the deathtouch creatures are nice as normal blockers, this deck can have weak draws if it doesn't get both pieces of the combo. The addition of Ensnaring Bridge has helped a lot as a lockdown piece, but ultimately this deck is slow to kill.
Added Ensnaring Bridge. This card is great in this deck since you can easily dump your hand (mostly 1cmc cards), and your small creatures can get under bridge. Also it's another artifact which is good, because it stresses our opponent's artifact removal. To make room I cut Ranger of Eos which just wasn't what the deck wanted.
Pathway Arrows looks awkward, but is a way to deal with Pithing Needle, or some other effect which shuts longbow off. This might be more appropriate in the sideboard, but I didn't really want to use up a sideboard slot for it. (Even though right now my sideboard is still a work in progress.)
The manabase had too many colorless sources that didn't do enough. We really want to green to play creatures on curve. Horizon Canopy is a nice addition to help this, but to draw into more useful things later. Also, Academy Ruins has a fair amount of value, but I'm still not quite convinced about it yet.
Welding Jar is a nice trinket mage target to protect Ensnaring Bridge. It's almost always boarded in as a way to deal with artifact destruction.
Cabal Stronghold is awful You need 5 basic swamps + cabal stronghold before you even make 1 extra mana relative to basic lands. And you need to waste a card "color" shifting it to islands instead of swamps to play this deck. Seems like if you want to play those "insane" control cards you should just play some other flavor of blue control.
I do understand the decklist being discussed. Sweepers were being discussed, and I'm merely pointing out that more Oblivion Stones is a way to add more sweepers without splashing. Of course it requires retooling the deck in another way (no/less talismans), but I think it's worth considering for anybody wanting more sweeper effects.
Also, as for dismembers and wanting more black... I kind of want to try running 4x River of Tears alongside 1x Oboro (to retrigger them) while running a full set of dismembers. At this point, you start to actually become relatively weak to blood moon though.
You can always play more Oblivion Stones for sweepers. No need to splash to another color. Of course, you have to ditch talismans to commit to it. (I personally don't run any.) Especially combined with 3-4 removal, 3 repeals, 3-4 remands, it's not hard resolve and activate an oblivion stone even if you don't have tron.
I don't really find several OStones to be too clunky. If I do have tron, Ostone is an easy play, and likely one of my best options. But if I don't have tron, it's not like I'd have a lot of better options anyway if I really need to influence the board.
Blue Tron is a pretty interesting control deck. You get more explosiveness compared to a regular control deck, and Mindslaver is a very fun card. Here's a sample list:
The idea of using trinket mage for basilisk collar is neat, especially with walking ballista. However, this is also incredibly mana intensive. And perhaps too unreliable without a clock. So without a clock, does the discard actually matter that much? That's been my biggest hesitation for discard in "standard" control decks. But having cards that are useful at all stages of the game is a good idea for sure. That's definitely a trap control decks can run into otherwise.
Your style of deck is something I like, although it is quite off from what I'm trying to do here. I understand that the creature focus of my deck is perhaps a bit too much. But control decks do have an issue with the fact that Modern is very diverse. It's probably okay to forgo certain matchups as long as your win percentage is high enough against other decks.
I really appreciate the discussion of different types of control decks. I will consider what elements might synthesize well with the deathtouch style deck. You'd be surprised at the relevant of 1 mana deathtouch creatures.
I've been thinking about other options the deathtouch deck may have, in particular ways to beat faster combo decks. I also have been trying to think about maximizing Steelshaper's Gift. There is the infinite combo of Crackdown Construct and Lightning Greaves and/or Shuko. You can equip infinite times to pump the construct indefinitely. Greaves is definitely more powerful, as construct gets haste, although it requires another creature. (Pesky shroud preventing requips...) It is a non-combo with bridge, but the matchups where we want a combo, we don't really want bridge much.
Greaves is very reasonable as well, since we can setup a viridian longbow + greaves making our creature invulnerable. I might try running 1 greaves + 3 crackdown construct in the main. I expect it's bad, but I think it's worth trying. Have to make those steelshaper's gifts do work!
2 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
1 Temple Garden
2 Razorverge Thicket
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
1 Horizon Canopy
3 Botanical Sanctum
1 Academy Ruins
1 Inventors' Fair
1 Seachrome Coast
3 Viridian Longbow
4 Ensnaring Bridge
2 Sword of the Meek
4 Thopter Foundry
1 Pithing Needle
// 14 Creature
4 Gnarlwood Dryad
4 Narnam Renegade
4 Wasteland Viper
2 Sedge Scorpion
// 9 Sorcery
2 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Steelshaper's Gift
3 Fabricate
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Nature's Claim
4 Damping Sphere
2 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
3 Vendilion Clique
The biggest addition has been Sword of the Meek + Thopter Foundry combo. The biggest issue I was finding with this deck was its anemic clock. There's lots of control elements, but this deck really needs a way to close out the game. Plus, I already was running Steelshaper's Gift to find Viridian Longbow, so thopter combo seemed like a natural fit. This gives the deck a new avenue of attack. The life gain is also very relevant, since it's still possible to be burned out with this deck.
Ensnaring Bridge has been a huge boon. This is the definition of a must answer card! The low CMC curve of this deck works well here, since it's easy to dump your hand and have bridge online relatively quickly.
To support the new powerhouse cards, I have replaced Trinket Mage with Fabricate. Flexible tutors like this are always slow, but it's necessary for this deck.
Many of the utility artifacts have been trimmed back. They just didn't add enough. Sorcerous Spyglass is still pretty important in a lot of places though, which is why it stays.
I've refined the manabase a bit. Inventors' Fair is a nice fit for this deck, even if it doesn't come online super quickly.
Proclamation of Rebirth has underperformed. Even with 15 1 cmc creatures, it often takes awhile for this card to get value. Especially with all the other 3 cmc cards in the deck, 4 was far too many. It's still a powerful effect (and one you definitely want against control!), so I'm keeping 2 for now. But, it may be worth dropping and playing "better" creatures. Although the tempo of all 1 cmc creatures is pretty important too. The 2 cmc deathtouch green creatures are honestly unexciting: Thornweald Archer or Deadly Recluse are the best of the bunch.
Since this deck is slow and designed to control the board, we struggle against any decks which can play around this plan. The sideboard is being used to address this, but I still need to figure out what type of cards are needed here. The idea right now is to turn into a more aggressive deck with disruption like Meddling Mage and Vendillion Clique. But we'll have to see.
I've also been considering swapping green for black. We can make a swap for the 1cmc creature slots: Pharika's Chosen, Ruthless Ripper, Typhoid Rats. These cards are all weaker than their green counterparts, but honestly the extra stats on the green creatures are usually irrelevant anyway.
There are actually some good 2 cmc black deathtouch creatures too:
--Fathom Feeder: which gives more value in long games and can deal with Etched Champion
--Tidehollow Strix: which has more value with flying. Being an artifact is actually nice as it can be recurred with academy ruins or, in rare cases, searched for.
--Gifted Aetherborn: Which helps in more aggressive matchups and decks with lots of burn.
Black has the benefit of sideboard options. Getting access to discard can be very powerful for our bad matchups, or in just protecting our high value artifacts. It also has value in making Thopter Foundry easier to cast too, since usually you'll want to fetch a basic on your first turn to cast a 1 cmc creature.
Anyway, that's what I got for now. I'm going to put the green version together in paper soon and start getting more "real" tests in.
Also, congrats on the results guys! I think I'll be playing again this week too.
// 17 Enchantment
4 Solemnity
4 Phyrexian Unlife
3 Greater Auramancy
2 Runed Halo
1 Cast Out
3 Bitterblossom
// 8 Instant
4 Fatal Push
4 Path to Exile
4 Marsh Flats
1 Plains
4 Swamp
4 Isolated Chapel
4 Concealed Courtyard
2 Godless Shrine
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Fetid Heath
1 Orzhova, the Church of Deals
4 Beseech the Queen
4 Idyllic Tutor
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
3 Collective Brutality
The goal in this deck is to go hard prison. Play some 1-2cmc spells to delay the game, then setting up unlife + solemnity by turn 5, with tutoring if necessary. Then from there work to get 2 Greater Auramancy in play to completely lock the opponent out of the game. Black has some nice additions.
Bitterblossom is a great win-con, and synergies with unlife perfectly. Unlike other win-cons, it can also come down early and be a great creature stall as well.
Collective Brutality is a great multi-purpose card. In fact, black gives us options to lots of discard post-board, which can help us immensely against control decks.
The downsides to black, particularly to support Beseech the Queen, is the manabase. For it to work, you really need almost all of your lands to produce black. Not sure if the listed manabase is appropriate, but it's a start.
Orzhova, the Church of Deals is likely bad, but I like the idea of 1 land as a super plan B win-con. Probably not worth it though.
How do you guys feel about a black splash? It's along the lines of the green version I had been working on, but I think it might be better because it's deterministic. You can plan around what your tutors will get you. Perhaps it's wrong to focus on the combo so much though. I mean, it doesn't actually win the game right away. The only advantage is that there are nice tutors for both pieces of the combo.
This is true of any Magic card. The thing is, if another card is significantly more useful most of the time, why not just play that card?
The value is usually small, so the question is always is if it outweighs the potential damage from a bloodmoon or Fulminator Mage.
This is actually untrue. River of Tears making black mana only happens if you've played a land.
This is probably too deep, but I was wondering if it would be possible to support Commandeer in the sideboard. The cost is enormous, but I can't help of think of the upside in several matchups. Stealing walkers would be backbreaking.
Negate looks like a good addition to the maindeck. It's a card I bring in quite frequently actually, so finding maindeck space for it is pretty reasonable. Swapping out a remand for it is an easy switch, although I really do love my remands...
I think 4 dismembers is a bit extreme, though I understand why you run it.
Do you like Snapcaster Mage all that much? I haven't run him in my versions yet. He just feels a bit slow (both in total mana and getting double U).
I don't like only 3 expedition maps. Getting tron online early can just give us free wins, and I think it's important to maximize that. Multiples aren't really an issue because you always want more lands with this deck. I also run a single Tolaria West so that I can turn maps into a threat as well (Walking Balista).
I think 4 supreme will/3 thirst for knowledge is a little high. I know these are good cards, but drawing several of them early can be problematic, especially on the draw.
Ugin is a great card. Hard to interact with, gives outs against a wide spectrum of decks, and also closes out the game. I've been very happy with 2 of them as well.
How necessary do you find the surgical extractions in the sideboard?
Spell Snare is a great sideboard card. In fact, I've actually been considering 1-2 in the maindeck. Almost everything has 2 cmc we care about. Perhaps it's too unreliable though.
// 12 Artifact
3 Viridian Longbow
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Pithing Needle
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Pathway Arrows
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Relic of Progenitus
// 19 Creature
4 Gnarlwood Dryad
4 Narnam Renegade
4 Wasteland Viper
3 Sedge Scorpion
4 Trinket Mage
// 22 Land
2 Forest
4 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
2 Temple Garden
3 Razorverge Thicket
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Island
2 Horizon Canopy
1 Academy Ruins
1 Botanical Sanctum
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
3 Steelshaper's Gift
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Welding Jar
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
2 Caustic Caterpillar
2 Meddling Mage
3 Obstinate Baloth
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Padeem, Consul of Innovation
Added Ensnaring Bridge. This card is great in this deck since you can easily dump your hand (mostly 1cmc cards), and your small creatures can get under bridge. Also it's another artifact which is good, because it stresses our opponent's artifact removal. To make room I cut Ranger of Eos which just wasn't what the deck wanted.
Pathway Arrows looks awkward, but is a way to deal with Pithing Needle, or some other effect which shuts longbow off. This might be more appropriate in the sideboard, but I didn't really want to use up a sideboard slot for it. (Even though right now my sideboard is still a work in progress.)
The manabase had too many colorless sources that didn't do enough. We really want to green to play creatures on curve. Horizon Canopy is a nice addition to help this, but to draw into more useful things later. Also, Academy Ruins has a fair amount of value, but I'm still not quite convinced about it yet.
Welding Jar is a nice trinket mage target to protect Ensnaring Bridge. It's almost always boarded in as a way to deal with artifact destruction.
Also, as for dismembers and wanting more black... I kind of want to try running 4x River of Tears alongside 1x Oboro (to retrigger them) while running a full set of dismembers. At this point, you start to actually become relatively weak to blood moon though.
I don't really find several OStones to be too clunky. If I do have tron, Ostone is an easy play, and likely one of my best options. But if I don't have tron, it's not like I'd have a lot of better options anyway if I really need to influence the board.
4x Urza’s Mine
4x Urza’s Tower
7x Island
3x River of Tears
2x Field of Ruin
1x Academy Ruins
2x Snapcaster Mage
1x Treasure Mage
2x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Mindslaver
3x Walking Ballista
2x Oblivion Stone
3x Expedition Map
4x Condescend
4x Remand
4x Supreme Will
2x Thirst for Knowledge
3x Dismember
3x Repeal
1x Spell Snare
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Wurmcoil Engine
4x Spatial Contortion
4x Chalice of the Void
1x Field of Ruin
But check out the Blue Tron forum for more information: https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/established-modern/control/220176-monou-tron-the-well-oiled-machine?page=706