Control in Modern is a fickle thing. There are many powerful, linear strategies in the format which require vastly different answers if you want to interact efficiently. When you’re obligated to play cards like Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt to answer the more vulnerable threats, it’s really difficult to answer Slippery Bogle and Cranial Plating as well. This week, Heibing has an interesting take on control that uses a few new cards to change how the strategy interacts with the format. Let’s take a look:

Four-Color Control ? Modern | Heibing, 5-0 Modern League

• Creatures (6)
• 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
• 4 Snapcaster Mage

• Spells (29)
• 2 Kolaghan's Command
• 2 Logic Knot
• 3 Electrolyze
• 4 Crackling Doom
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Lightning Helix
• 4 Path to Exile
• 4 Remand
• 2 Painful Truths

• Lands (25)
• 1 Island
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Plains
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Creeping Tar Pit
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Polluted Delta
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Watery Grave
• 2 Sulfur Falls
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Celestial Colonnade
• 4 Flooded Strand

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Celestial Purge
• 2 Dispel
• 3 Negate
• 4 Stony Silence
• 2 Thoughtseize
• 2 Thundermaw Hellkite

Buy This Deck

This deck includes three important cards which haven’t seen a ton of play in control shells before. The first is Kolaghan's Command. Kolaghan's Command has already proven to be an enormously powerful and flexible engine in Modern, able to kill small creatures and key artifacts as well as providing attrition in conjunction with Snapcaster Mage. Having already established itself in combo decks like Grixis Twin, Kolaghan’s Command is a perfect inclusion for control decks as well. In this shell, Kolaghan's Command takes on the role of a pseudo-Cryptic Command, a catch-all answer to help you pull ahead on cards.

The second exciting, new card is Crackling Doom. This may not seem like an enormous deal, but this card is shockingly powerful and flexible in Modern. Crackling Doom doesn’t care about Hexproof. It doesn’t care about Vines of Vastwood or Spellskite. It doesn’t care about Protection form White or Red. Crackling Doom is another effective removal spell against the likes of Tarmogoyf and Siege Rhino, but also against a number of the unfair decks in the format. That kind of tool is of the utmost importance in Modern.

Finally, Heibing’s deck eschews traditional counterspells like Cryptic Command, Mana Leak, and Deprive in favor of Logic Knot. This may seem like a strange choice in a deck leaning on Snapcaster Mage and Tasigur, the Golden Fang to close games out, but Logic Knot is a reasonable soft counter early in the game while scaling in effectiveness over the course of a long game. The other option is Deprive, but that’s not really where a deck trying to activate Celestial Colonnade wants to be.

Are these kinds of flexible tools enough to bring control back into the format in time for Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch? There’s only one way to find out!