A minor success and a dismal failure.

Last week, I finished my first Magic Online league. I did pretty well, finishing 26th of 256, and I picked up 3 packs for my trouble. I think my play skills improved tremendously, but I’m not so sure about my deck building skills. Although I may play or build better in the future, I don’t plan on placing much higher. I only lost 6 “real” games, which isn’t far from the T8 who all lost between 2 and 3 games, not counting tiebreakers. (And they all played a ton of tiebrakers, probably more than real games, and certainly more than I would have time & patience for.)

So I’ve been trying to decide what I want to do with all these shiny new cards I bought to play with in the league. Now that packs are opened, I can’t use them again in any limited games, which was my primary reason for signing up to Magic Online.

The simple solution is just to sell the cards and use the cash to buy more fresh packs for Limited games. That seems like a good idea, but I’m a bit of a packrat. It’s frustrating enough to have paper cards which I don’t have online, I don’t want to compound that by finding myself one day saying “Oh, I had four [card in neat deck idea]s, but not anymore!”

Collecting tons of cards and piecing them into decks is a little outside my budget right now. Furthermore, with all this online competition, my inner Spike has been growing a lot. Collecting enough cards to build a Competitive deck is waaaaay outside my budget (in fact, it’s outside of most peoples budgets.) So, in order to feed my inner Spike and manage my cards online, I’ve decided to start trading down to two specific colors and a specific archetype.

I decided to play two colors because it's both competitive and flexible. Three color decks would spread my resources thin and they're only workable right now because of all the color fixing in Ravnica. Mono is certainly a less expensive route, but right now in Standard mono basically isn't viable. Sometimes, a specific deck will come to the fore, like black rack right now, but that puts me on the course of collecting for a specific deck, which decreases my card collection's flexibility.

Eventually, I'd like to have four-ofs of all the tier-one cards in my chosen colors, but to give myself some kind of direction, I've decided to pick an archetype. I'd like to play control because sealed is primarily an aggro format, and so I feel that those skills will be improving as I play Limited. In constructed there is the card pool to be able to play control, and that's something I'm eager to learn. I currently only have the vaguest ideas of how to play that archetype. Combo isn’t really an archetype I want to pursue. If I play in Standard, playing combo means collecting towards a specific deck list instead of collecting cards that fit a general strategy. Again, that decreases flexibility. As an added bonus, if there's no R/U storm combo after Time Spiral rotates out, most of the cards in my hard-won Dragonstorm deck would be useless.

So it's decided: I’m gonna play control. Now let's move on to choosing colors. First, I want to play Black. I like the flavor, and it usually works well with my strategy. My guess in PC Standard is that the best black control deck will be B/w. (Although W/U might still be better. Hi, Blink-Bounce decks!) Don’t ask too much about this guess; my meta-gaming leaves much to be desired. If I want to go into white, I know some of the basic cards I’ll want in my collection. And they cost a million dollars. Damnation, WoG, Bob, Godless Shrine, just to name the top 4. But I’ll want Damnation and Bob in black either way, and I’m sure that any other color I’d pick will have its pricy duals and other must-haves.

The trouble is, I can't think up the B/W control deck that will be so great. I can think up a pretty good mono-G (or G/R) aggro. Mono'd be cheaper than 2 colors, but 1) it's not black and 2) I'm not sure it's competitive. What I *did* think up was a U/B control deck that I think might be pretty okay. I don't know enough about control though, so I'm not sure it's worth pursuing. Here's a decklist, lemmie know what you think.

Dismal Failure
(Parenthesis means that I wish I could fit it in/test it out.)

Instants:
4 Funeral Charm
4 Piracy charm
2 Venarian Glimmer
4 Rune Snag
4 Spell Snare
4 Boomerang or Wipe Away
4 Clutch of the Undercity
4 Dismal Failure
(2 Haunting Hymn)
(4 Remand)
(4 Snapback or Repeal)

Sorcery:
4 Smallpox
2 Damnation
(3 Stupor)

Creature:
2 Petrahydrox or Mindslicer or Plague Sliver

Other:
2 The Rack
(4 Phyrexian Arena or Dark Confidant)

Land:
Duals, duals, islands, swamps, etc.



Here's my thoughts on card choices:

Discard: 10 instant-speed spells. The charms can double as removal. Only 2 Venerian Glimmer because they only have the one use. Smallpox and Dismal Failure are discard++.

As a quick aside: I’ve read several set reviews now, and no one is mentioning Venarain Glimmer. Did I miss something? Why isn’t this being mentioned? It’s not super-exciting, but I think it can wreck a ton of decks, esp. combo. In Vintage it's practically a blue Duress. Just sayin’. Also: its name has just been officially changed to Venereal Glimmer. Because I like dirty words.

Counterspells: They, um, counter spells. 12 was all I could fit.

Unsummon: helps with early control, and late game can be used as removal or LD when como'd with discard.

Creature: I just want a good finisher. The Petrahydrox is good against an empty hand, because with all that instant discard, any removal will have to be instant i.e. targeted. If he had Flash he’d be golden. Mindslicer kills a little faster and is better against cards-in-hand because he sets up The Rack on removal. Plague Sliver just gets the job done faster, and he stands up against most removal. Any of these can be fetched with Clutch of the Undercity.

Core:
Smallpox: everything it does works well with this deck. No creatures. Low mana costs. The self-discard is the only drawback.

Dismal Failure represents the essential strategy of the deck: counterspell and discard. Here, I think it really is better than Rewind, because it's the exact kind of 2-for-1 this deck is looking for. In fact, I'm calling this deck 'Dismal Failure,' because it's the heart of the strategy (although not the winning card.) It's also a funny name for a janky rogue deck.

Damnation is really what gets the ball rolling. I don't think I have to say much about WoG in a control deck.

The Rack: The main source of damage is the Creature, but this can make a handy alt. win.

To walk you through it: you basically sit on your hands until you drop Damnation, then draw-go to counter/discard. Eventually the Creature or Rack kills 'em. I'm not gonna bother about the sideboard until I've made the deck and tested a bit. It'll take me a long time to gather up all those cards (although the base number of rares is pretty small, just Damnation and Duals. Maybe I can start testing earlier expected.) I'm not sure that this deck is playable without a draw engine, but those spells cost a lot of money.

I guess you've read the whole post by now, but if somehow you haven't, here's the short version: I want to start collecting cards towards a serious deck, but I feel a like I’m stabbing in the dark. I’m thinking about going B/U control. What do you think its chances are in PC Standard? Do you think I should go in a different direction? I like this deck, but I know it needs a lot of work. What changes do you think I should make?