Before Christmas break I gave you all a more refined view of the Rule of Nine. I feel like I'm repeating myself but you can read my previous pieces on the Rule of Nine.

I realize that a few of my students are new to the Classroom this semester so I'll do a quick rehash. The Rule of Nine is a deck building skeleton where we force ourselves to use just nine different cards. Each is played at the full playset with 24 lands. From there we can then refine ourselves into numbers that either fit the mana curve better or minimize issues like having 3 of the same Planeswalker in our hand.

My most recent Rule of Nine lesson looked at refined skeletons for various agro builds with a deck list for each. If you didn't read it already, I strongly suggest you do. That's especially true of students who love the Red Zone. Today I want to cover the rest of the decks with Control and Combo style builds.

But first I need to make sure that we all understand how to evaluate what type of deck we have. First let's look at agro. It's the easiest to pick out of a line up. To make it simple if you have more than 16 creatures in your deck then you're probably agro. You might be agro-control, agro-combo, or even control-agro but you have strong agro tendencies. To decide which type of agro you are you look at the rest of your card selections. If they are more creatures or they are cards dedicated to removing blockers you're full agro. If they are meant to hold the line until your big dogs start to hunt then you are agro control. And finally if they are cards that interact with your creatures abilities in a way to dominate the game by a creature's skill and not just its power then you are agro-combo.

But what if you have less than 16 creatures or what if you never plan on pushing a critter into battle. That's when you have either combo or control builds.

The main idea of Control is just what the name says. I want to exert my control of the game state whenever possible. The Control deck wants to dictate and decide what the battlefield looks like at any given moment. Depending on the meta and format the control deck does this by a mix of permission spells and removal spells. Permission spells are cards that deny our opponent from playing anything by countering them. Removal spells are for those pesky cards that sneak through our permission net. Simply point, click, and pull and their little Goblin Guide is no more.

A Basic Control build would go something like this

• 4 slots for 1cc to 3cc spells
• 2.5 slots for 3cc to 6 cc spells
• 1.5 slots for 6cc plus Bombs
• 1 slot for total free for all – with control builds you often need to add lands or a "silver bullet" so this slot is open for singletons and extra land.

With true control builds it is almost impossible to give a direct list but if I were to build one it would go something like this.

For the cheapies I would look for cards the remove and deny a majority of my early meta game. For my local that would include Lightning Bolt. Very rarely do I see an early drop with more than three toughness. Often the only real debate is weather you should Bolt a Noble Hierarch or let them keep the mana rush. With the assumption that our mana fixing will allow for three colors I would then include a Terminate. With the exclusion of Shroud ability creatures Terminate can eighty-six any potential threat so use it wisely. The next two would be permission spells of Flashfreeze and Essence Scatter. Honestly those two cards can counter about 85% of the cards I see any given Friday.

I feel I need to explain the 2.5 slots for medium sized spells. You see, with Control, you rarely get to see playsets of every card. These decks have to be fine tuned from the beginning. Because of that you need to make the Rule of Nine a little flexible. I notice that I have no card draw in my cheap castings so I'll take care of that right away. Many players use Courier's Capsule and I'm no different. I'm sure that your hovering your mouse over the link just make sure you remember the card right. (I love that function by the way). It is a 2cc spell but I include its activation cost for this curve. The cool part is that I can chose not to activate it right away. Allowing me to sit with two counter mana open and the choice to draw during my opponents End of Turn. The other slot also kinda violates the Mana Cost rule. I'm using 4 Earthquakes in my build. There are a few token making decks in my meta so the need for mass removal is very vital. I do put Earthquake in the 4 plus mana cost slots because spending less than that is really a waste. Earthquake also allows me to let a smaller critter survive a couple of turns and that way I can save my Terminates for Buffy the Walletslayer. In the last half a slot I'll drop Sphinx of Lost Truths. Playing him straight is reasonable in many games but if I can kick him it's even better. He does the one thing that every control deck loves. Generates cards.

Bombs are critical in a Control deck. Without a way to win eventually you just run out of answers. Once again we need to use the half slot category though I do want to point out that some bombs are big enough that you only need 1 slot dedicated to them. I would hope that many of you already know my first bomb because of the colors I've generated in the previous cards. That's right. Cruel Ultimatum is my big full slot bomb. For the half slot I alternate between Sorin Markov and Sphinx of Jwar Isle. Right now I'm playing the Jar-jar.

For the Variable slot I'm putting in two Divination and adding 2 lands. Probably the hardest part of building control is choosing the proper number of lands. You want enough to be able to cast all of your spells when you need them but you also want to have enough answers for your deck and every land card becomes one less sleeve available for those answers.

Next let's look at Combo. The main Idea of Combo is very similar to the Control model above. We want to control the field until we can cast a game winner. The only difference is instead of depending on a "bomb" card we instead try to establish a combo of cards that lead to the win. Basically our deck build will begin with some pieces of a combo puzzle. Then the rest of the slots will be dedicated letting us live long enough to cast the needed parts. Here is where combo decks vary from each other. Some try to rush out the parts, others seek to disrupt their opponents until the parts come to fruitition, and others protect their life points and extend the game until the parts fall into place. Since there are so many options there really isn't a perfect shell.

In general a good shell would fit the following.

• 3 (Max) slots for combo parts
• 3 slots for Draw and/or Tutor spells
• 2 slots for Disruption/Control
• 1 plus slots for added utility

It is important to note that some combo require less than three slots and others require more. A combo that takes more than 3 cards is UNPLAYABLE so should not be considered. A combo that requires less than 3 is preferable since it allows us to add more utility slots.

My favorite deck Combo deck right now has actually no slots for combo pieces. Its core combo comes from the lands it plays. Valakut and Mountains are all it takes to win the day. This deck allows for much greater reach in the tutor and utility portions of the deck.

In the Draw / Tutor spells I will bring in ways to accelerate my land count. Getting to 5 Mountains is a huge part of our game plan. Harrow, Rampant Growth, and Khalni Heart Expedition all serve the job of fetch Mountains but we also need a tutor for Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle. Expedition Map takes care of this issue. Notice I've already violated my original shell but I am able to since this deck has an all land combo. I've only used 4 real slots so far.

I'm also using an extra slot for disruption cards. With Green and Red as my color base disruption in the form of counters or discard is unavailable. So I'll use damage generators to avoid that pesky combat damage. Earthquake, Lightning Bolt, and Volcanic Fallout quickly fill 3 slots instead of the 2 I assigned in the combo shell.

That leaves us with 2 slots for utility purposes. I want cards that would add to either the mana development or add to the burn component of the deck. I'm using one of each. To help generate more lands in the battlefield faster than normal I use the Oracle of Mul Daya. While it's not a guarantee accelerant it has the potential of an every turn bonus. The burn options can also be added to with creatures. I went with Siege Gang Commander for both the extra chump blocks as well as the burn potential. There are many games where just sacing gobos finishes off the game.

That concludes today's class. Realize that each of these examples are some of the harder decks to build and design. Because of their difficulty the skeletal sketches are more flexible.

Next week I'll hopefully be sharing with you a Eureka moment which I had recently. I think I have made a deck that is very ROGUE and actually works. Early testing shows some promise (even the Jund matchup). Of course if it fails I'll still share it with you anyways. There's the bell.