UR CONTROL!!!

Well yelling U R CONTROL!!!!

as a pun. How could I resist =)

For the non initiated to Magic terminology, U is short form for blue and R for red =)

U R

You Are

... 

ok. nvm.

Anyways, nothing innovative here really. I just happened to notice Cyclonic Rift and Mizzium Mortars and I went: Well why not?

Why not build a control deck? Albeit, Cyclonic Rift is not very hard removal, but 2cc for bounce and 7cc for a global bounce is slow, but possibly survivable.

Not to mention that red contains a lot of burn so creature (at least the little ones) should be quite easily dealt with. Its the PHAT like Desecration Demons that worry me.

Still Desecration Demon was partly what piqued me to a UR Control variant. The thing is: sure, there is no way to remove the Demon, but the Demon does have an escape clause: sac a creature to tap it and put a +1/+1 counter on it. Sure it grows bigger, but blue IS the king of bounce no?

I had this experience when I tested with Norman a few days ago (ironically we agreed the U/R aggro variant he was tweaking was'nt quite battle ready yet - But hey Norman won game day with a G/W aggro instead, so that turned out to be a good call ;))

Still, his pyromancers were holding me off for awhile, so it got me interested (I was running Mono Black Devotion against him). 

I was'nt really interested in an aggro variant however. I am pretty much a control player. I like annoying my opponents apparently. Well. Thats another story. Besides my one true aggro deck is Blitz. (Next post I will talk about my fiddlings with a Dega Blitz. Oh yeah baby, DEGA BLITZ. How cool is that =))

Anyways, at least Norman was playing with Aetherize, of which I was an advocate of, back when it was Innistrad block + RTR block. Though not in his deck and definitely not in this deck I am about to talk about.

Why? Well.... I'm not sure...its just a different style. Aetherize has its places. For instance I like it in my Foggy Kiora deck, where it works good! Also in my old NoLanD deck, Aetherize was the perfect foil to an aggressive deck going all alpha on you. Therein lies the problem. Mono Black Devotion (oh look its that bogey man again! =D) does'nt need to alpha strike you. So Aetherize often is a partial solution in this deck. I really like Aetherize and still use it in other decks. But this deck? Not so much.

Instead, I am drawn to Steam Augury and Opportunity

Now opportunity is really a perfectly serviceable card if you are Control. It is not just the poor man's sphinx revelation! I will let you in on a secret. Okay not really a secret. But an often overlooked point is that at 6cc it is STRONGER than an equivalent Sphinx Revelation. So Opportunity is circumstantially better than Sphinx Revelation in some cases. The point to take away is that, if you think Sphinx Revelation is good, Opportunity is really not too shabby too!

And its not just me, if you look at the deck Hanes used to win the tournament using U/W Azorius, he had an Opportunity in the side. It was his "5th" Sphinx Revelation. It is that good.

The reason I harp on it is that people seem so afraid to dump four opportunity in, but it really is not that scary. Especially when you are ramping into card advantage via Steam Augury.

Now Steam Augury is weaker than fact or fiction. No doubts there, with Fact or Fiction, there worst situation you can get is parity if your opponent knows how to split the piles. With Steam Augury, the BEST situation you can get, is card parity of the two piles. Since your opponent is picking the pile for you, he will NEVER pick the better pile. Hence your best bet is to split the piles evenly.

Still. Steam Augury digs 5 cards in. VERY useful =)

[Anyways it is getting late. I'll write more tomorrow..]

Std_ur_control_20140525

Instant
4 x Lightning Strike
1 x Dragonshift
3 x Cyclonic Rift
4 x Opportunity
4 x Steam Augury
4 x Turn // Burn

Planeswalker
1 x Ral Zarek

Sorcery
4 x Mizzium Mortars

Land
8 x Island
4 x Steam Vents
4 x Temple of Epiphany
8 x Mountain

Creature
4 x Young Pyromancer
4 x Nivix Cyclops

Legend
1 x Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 x Keranos, God of Storms
1 x Thassa, God of the Sea