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Main » Articles » Riffing on U/B in Standard

Riffing on U/B in Standard

Adrian Sullivan
Posted on October 25, 2019
 Reddit

Last week, prior to the Standard banning of Field of the Dead, I shared the three Red-based archetypes that one could play on a Team Unified Standard event - apparently to popular acclaim on this site. Since then, my team for that event won our Team Unified Standard tournament, and I've been playing all three archetypes I mentioned in that artcile on my stream. Since the banning, the online metagame has been quickly developing, and one of the decks that I've started playing a great deal is an entirely new deck I found from the top decks on Magic Online.

Here is a build of a very intriguing ub Control deck that caught my eye, piloted by KelMasterP to a 5-0 finish almost two weeks ago.

Dimir Control | Eldraine Standard | KelMasterP, 5-0 Standard League

Looking on this deck 'on paper' is a very different experience from playing it. Vantress Gargoyle is a strange card, practically acting like a brick wall for several turns before only really being able to attack. Getting seven cards into a graveyard proved to be fairly easy, overall, making Vantress Gargoyle a monster on the battlefield.

One of the cards that helped accomplish this task was Overwhelmed Apprentice, a card which went a long way - two cards! - toward not only making Vantress Gargoyle an attacker, but also which could generally be counted on to beginning turning the other 'graveyard matters' cards on as well. Scry was valuable, but more important was making sure that Drown in the Loch was getting to accomplish what it needed.

Of course, one of the problems with Overwhelmed Apprentice is that the body it provides to the battlefield is very nearly nonexistent. While it is capable of stopping a Scorch Spitter or other 1/1 from a Red deck, for the most part, the card is otherwise just a speed bump. The closer a card is to looking like Sage Owl rather than Impulse, the more likely that the card should be replaced, even if it can be sacked to Rankle, Master of Pranks.

Playing the deck, I found myself hunting for a replacement, and I found it in a strange place, one reminiscent of Funeral Charm, but giving the two cards of fuel to the graveyard that Overwhelmed Apprentice did. I found it in Vicious Rumors.

Vicious Rumors

Since this card was printed, it had looked far too ineffectual to me. I've played Funeral Charm in the past and been glad for it, but the instant speed of Funeral Charm could make the discard meaningful, and the other modes were powerful as well. Vicious Rumors was only ever going to be the sorcery speed discard spell, and a way to perhaps stymie a Temple of Mystery.

Intriguingly, though, that seemed to end up being enough, and the card found itself also playing quite well with Rankle, Master of Pranks. While it didn't give the body that Overwhelmed Apprentice did, it did match with Rankle, by doing things like allowing me to give a card draw to both players, and then using the Vicious Rumors to clear out the hand immediately. Not having the scry mattered for the land count, but the actual spell practically always traded with a card from the opponent rather than usually being a lost investment.

After a few more tweaks, I ended up with this variant, which I used to good effect on Arena:

"BU AC" | Eldraine Standard | Adrian Sullivan

One person on my stream asked why this deck was titled "BU AC", and I told them because it was a ub deck that was just "very cool".

Since I'm not running eight single mana Blue spells that scry, I'm running more land than KelMasterP, and less Islands. The combination of mana screw and mana flood is something that needs more managing, and so I'm running Fabled Passage and a single Temple of Silence instead of a Swamp to attempt to manage that aspect of the deck. This difference in mana is still something I'm experimenting with, and I could discover that just sticking with Opt is the way to go, though I'm not interested in returning to Overwhelmed Apprentice at this time.

Because of the way that the Vicious Rumors can tax the hand, I've put in a pair of Legion's End into the deck as well, for those moments that it tears the opponent up a bit. As I've played the deck, that combination of Vicious Rumors, Legion's End, Thought Erasure, and Rankle, Master of Pranks has led to opponent's being empty-handed far more often than I would have imagined, which is particularly amazing feeling if you're holding on to a Drown in the Loch or two to feel like everything is sealed up.

Drown in the Loch ended up completely shocking me with just how incredible it felt, even without opponent's graveyards filling up rapidly like they do in Modern. Some games I felt like drawing more of the card was all I wanted to do.

Drown in the Loch

Of course, I couldn't help but find myself interested in being able to cast Drown in the Loch far, far more times than I was doing so already. As I started tinkering around, I thought to myself, "Perhaps there are enough cards in Standard to be able to make a recursive engine," and I built a version that had that element, in the vein of my old "Baron" control deck engine that I'd qualified for the Pro Tour with a few times.

Here is that build:

Dimir Baron Control | Eldraine Standard | Adrian Sullivan

This build is the most wild of the builds, and it adds in a recursive element with Devious Cover-Up, Clear the Mind, and Mystic Sanctuary. On top of that, losing Vantress Gargoyle meant I wanted a little more in the air, so I am trying out God-Eternal Kefnet, which can add to this recursive element, and Lotus Field, which can sacrifice a Mystic Sanctuary to get it back later via Clear the Mind or Devious Cover-Up.

This is all a little more convoluted, and not as pure a recursion engine as most Baron decks I've worked on, but it also felt powerful, nonetheless.

God-Eternal Kefnet has been fantastic, enough so that I find myself wanting a second copy. However, I can definitely tell that the higher mana curve is having a meaningful impact on how the deck is performing; a part of what was so excellent about the Vantress Gargoyle build was that you came in so low to the ground, you felt like a much more aggressive game was possible, almost like you were an aggro-control deck in some games. This deck completely gives up that angle, so there is good reason to believe that it may just be an interested, but less powerful approach.

Right now, I'm tinkering with version after version of this deck, as I watch Standard being slowly more and more discovered and stabilized after the Field of the Dead bans. All of these Dimir decks feel incredibly fun, and I'm excited to take a break now and again from the Red decks I've been playing, and shuffle up something completely different.

I bet you will too.

- Adrian Sullivan

Follow me on Twitter! @AdrianLSullivan

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TAGS articles, standard, metagame, constructed, analysis, decklist, adrian sullivan, dimir, u/b, eldraine standard, 10252019

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