Modern

Building Blue Control Decks in Unified Modern

In preparing for Grand Prix San Antonio and the Unified Modern format, I’ve been locked out of playing with certain cards that I’m used to having access to. The rule that “decks can’t share cards” raises interesting restrictions on deckbuilding that, in a cool way, forces you to consider how to build decks differently than their stock versions. You might even have to shift color combinations to accommodate your teammates’ decks,.

For example, [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] is the leading archetype going into this tournament, and one that many teams will want to be using in their lineup. [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] is greedy in the sense that it needs a lot of different fetchlands and shocklands – but, thankfully, there are many different viable color combinations for a [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] deck.

If you have a blue control specialist on your team and also want to field a [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] deck, what are your options? I’m working under the assumptions that:

– The viable blue control archetypes are Blue-White, Jeskai, Grixis, and Esper
– The viable [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] archetypes are Jund, Grixis, Sultai, Esper, and Abzan
– All of these decks need a fetchland + shockland manabase
– The control decks cannot play [card]Thoughtseize[/card], since the [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] deck needs it

What this means is that, as an example, Jund [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] and Grixis Control don’t work together because they both need [card]Blood Crypt[/card]. With the above restrictions in mind, these are the combinations that work together, from the blue control player’s perspective:

– Jund [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – U/W, Jeskai, Esper Control
– Grixis [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – U/W Control
– Sultai [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – U/W, Jeskai Control
– Esper [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – none
– Abzan [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – Grixis Control

And from the [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] player’s perspective:

– U/W Control – Jund, Grixis, Sultai [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]
– Jeskai Control – Jund, Sultai [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]
– Grixis Control – Abzan [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]
– Esper Control – Jund [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]

When you dig deeper into some of these team compositions, you realize that some sacrifices need to be made. If your teammate really wants to play Grixis or Sultai [card]Death’s Shadow[/card], you might have to get creative when splitting up the [card]Serum Visions[/card] and [card]Thought Scour[/card]s. A blue control deck can be built without using either of these cantrips, but keep in mind that it makes your [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]s a lot worse.

Jund [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] lists might have to forego the white splash for sideboard cards such as [card]Ranger of Eos[/card] and [card]Lingering Souls[/card], if you have a teammate on Esper Control who needs [card]Godless Shrine[/card].

An Abzan [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] player definitely needs [card]Path to Exile[/card], but you could make a Blue-White or Jeskai Control deck work by playing Condemn instead of [card]Path to Exile[/card].

Blue-White Control as your deck of choice will definitely give your team the most flexibility and has basically no overlap with Jund [card]Death’s Shadow[/card], the most popular of the [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] decks. Blue-White Control generally plays less copies of [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] than the other blue control variants, so [card]Serum Visions[/card] and [card]Thought Scour[/card] are not as necessary. If you’re looking for a version of Blue-White Control with maximum team flexibility, here’s a maindeck that I would recommend as a starting point:

Unified Modern Blue-White Control

[deck]
[Lands]
1 Calciform Pools
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
6 Island
1 Mystic Gate
2 Plains
1 Prairie Stream
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Blessed Alliance
4 Condemn
3 Cryptic Command
1 Detention Sphere
1 Dismember
1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
1 Gideon Jura
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
3 Mana Leak
1 Negate
1 Secure the Wastes
2 Spell Snare
1 Sphinx’s Revelation
4 Spreading Seas
3 Supreme Verdict
4 Think Twice
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

Condemn has some extra utility in Modern right now because it can be used to shrink or even kill [card]Death’s Shadow[/card]s. It also makes [card]Mana Leak[/card] more attractive since you aren’t casting [card]Path to Exile[/card] and giving your opponent extra mana sources. [card]Spreading Seas[/card] and [card]Ghost Quarter[/card] are an effective way to cripple a [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] player’s access to specific colors of mana in a prolonged game, and are also great against Tron. You can always add cards like [card]Path to Exile[/card], [card]Serum Visions[/card], or additional fetchlands to the list to fit your preferences, if not being used by a teammate.

Enough talk about [card]Death’s Shadow[/card] – now let’s say that you have a combo specialist on your team who is an expert at Storm, Ad Nauseum, or Amulet Bloom. It is crucial that these decks play [card]Serum Visions[/card] to help dig for their combo pieces. The key to making a [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] deck work in harmony with one of these combo decks? [card]Thought Scour[/card].

[card]Thought Scour[/card] is worse than [card]Serum Visions[/card] at making sure you hit your early land drops or digging for a specific answer. But it has a lot of upside, too. First of all, it’s an instant. While spending a single mana to cast [card]Serum Visions[/card] on your turn is often trivial, there will be times when you’ll need to have all of your mana available on your opponent’s turn. [card]Thought Scour[/card] gives you that flexibility. The ability to mill yourself also gives you more targets for [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card], fuels delve cards like [card]Logic Knot[/card], and works well with [card]Think Twice[/card].

Here’s an example of a “no Serum Visions” Jeskai Flash list, assuming that I had a teammate who was locked into a deck like Amulet Bloom or Ad Nauseum:

Unified Modern Jeskai Flash

[deck]
[Lands]
1 Arid Mesa
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
[/Lands]
[Spells]
3 Cryptic Command
1 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Lightning Helix
3 Logic Knot
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
4 Think Twice
4 Thought Scour
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
2 Restoration Angel
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

I love how this deck doesn’t have a single spell in the maindeck that can’t be cast at instant-speed, which really facilitates the draw-go gameplan. This is a deck that I would feel comfortable piloting in a tournament, and could end up being better positioned, even though one might consider it a downgraded version of a Jeskai Flash list.

Whether you’re looking to make a blue control deck work with your teammates for Unified Modern or not, thinking about different ways to build decks can be an eye-opening process. As Mark Rosewater says: “Restriction breeds creativity.”

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments