I just realised that I missed a deck, so with apologies to yellowjacket this is in response to the CounterPhoenix-esque T2 deck he posted.
Firstly I think you should read something, those of you who remember Aspect Of Control will probably remember this - I cut out some of the best bits I had written on Art and Aspect and out them up on the team website.
(nothing like a good bit of ego-masturbation).
How Control Beats Agression
http://members.tripod.co.uk/candiman/strategy3.htm
Go on - go and read it, and don`t come back until you`ve finished. And don`t just skip past it thinking it won`t matter because I`ll be asking questions later.
***
All finished? Good, I hope it makes sense and you should have been paying particular attention to sections 2 and 3.
So let`s analyse the CounterPhoenix deck:
1. Time Advantage (27)
4 Counterspell
4 Miscalculation
4 Rewind
4 Power Sink
4 Shock
4 Parch
3 Powder Keg
2. Board Stability (2)
2 Masticore
3. Card Drawing (0)
4. Kill (0)
5. Anything else (6)
4 Brainstorm
2 Squee
Okay, the obvious problem areas are card advantage and stability. That is where we need to address the deck`s weaknesses.
Card advantage is THE most important thing in control design and it is the element that is ENTIRELY missing from your decklist. The only way your deck can conceivably gain card advantage is by Masticore, and then you probably need to have Squee in conjunction.
As I said in the article there are two ways to attack the card advantage problem - mass removal and card drawing.
+3 Earthquake
+3 Dominate/Treachery
+3 Stroke Of Genius
+1 Masticore
(otherwise known as +10 hard to get rare cards)
-2 Squee
-4 Brainstorm
-4 Power Sink
That alone should make the deck significantly better, but now I want to address a few individual choices. Firstly I took one look at the deck and thought "Albino Troll is a win", and it still is although I have just put another 7 cards in that can potentially contain it. I really like Hammer, and Hammer really likes me:
+2 Hammer Of Bogardan
and there was a good point about Seal Of Fire as this deck has almost nothing to do on the first turn but plenty on the second
+2 Seal Of Fire
-4 Parch
For starters that`ll do. The new decklist is:
Blue (1 8)
4 Miscalculate
4 Counterspell
3 Stroke Of Genius
3 Dominate (better than Treachery here IMHO)
4 Rewind
Red (11)
4 Shock
2 Seal Of Fire
3 Earthquake
2 Hammer Of Bogardan
Artifact (6)
3 Powder Keg
3 Masticore
Land (25)
Okay, now we work on land mix. I usually break the deck down into Spells/Mana Symbols for each colour.
Blue: 18/29
Red: 11/13
So although the deck is split 60/40 to blue in terms of cards in terms of mana requirements it is closer to 70/30. But compounding that is the fact we probably need to get UUR in our first four lands EVERY TIME.
Straight down the middle:
17 Islands, 8 Mountains
City Of Brass/Multilands:
16 Islands, 7 Mountains, 2 City Of Brass
Faerie Conclaves:
13 Islands, 3 Faerie Conclave, 2 City Of Brass, 7 Mountains
Dust Bowls, because Villages would kick our ass (why Dominate is good):
3 Dust Bowl, 11 Island, 3 Faerie Conclave, 2 City Of Brass, 6 Mountains
Hmm, 16 blue sources, 8 red sources. Let`s swing that one point to the red for good measure:
Land (25)
3 Dust Bowl
2 City Of Brass
2 Faerie Conclave
7 Mountain
11 Island
It`s scrappy mana, but then U/R has never had good mana since Thawing Glaciers went out - it`s always the weak point of the deck. We can`t run more Cities as the pain will kill us, and there are no other vaible multilands.
Thoughts?
[Edited by Gizmo (03-17-2000 at 07:39 AM).]
