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A few weeks ago, upon beloved Roman Fusco's recent Standard RCQ win, I told y'all that if I had any updates on Standard Azorius Control, I'd share them.
And last week, upon my own Legacy Finals finish, I told you the most vital lesson in recent Magic, for any format: "Stock Up is even better than we thought; and you should be jamming as many in your Standard decks as you can if it's good enough to be dominating Vintage."
So here it goes:
Azorius Control | DFT Standard | Michael Flores
- Creatures (4)
- 4 Horned Loch-Whale
- Planeswalkers (2)
- 2 Jace, the Perfected Mind
- Instants (16)
- 2 Deduce
- 2 Get Lost
- 4 Three Steps Ahead
- 4 No More Lies
- 4 Ride's End
- Sorceries (8)
- 2 Day of Judgment
- 2 Sunfall
- 4 Stock Up
- Enchantments (4)
- 4 Temporary Lockdown
Export Arena
This deck borrows from a number of different builds (not the least of which are some of my own older ones), so you'll see a lot of themes and tech interwoven into especially the starting list. I've been crushing on Magic: The Gathering Arena with it the last few weeks... Or at least winning more - far more - than with any other deck.
I'm sure that the control freaks among you will get something out of this.
First, what it's not:
This is not, at least in main deck, a life gain deck.
One of the things that is most gratifying is not caring how hard a Mono-Red opponent will play, what twists and turns they will navigate, for cards that aren't even in your deck. What I mean by that is sending a Lightning Strike or even a Witchstalker Frenzy at a Screaming Nemesis in order to get around a Beza, the Bounding Spring that isn't even in your deck.
The other failing (if you can call it that) of the deck is playing only two copies of Jace.
Jace is a card that Roman and I have gone back and forth on, numbers-wise, for over a year. Originally Roman was super clever playing it main deck, because it let him steal games from Domain opponents who had drawn 100 more cards than he had. Later, we both won RCQs with Jace-less main decks because our Planeswalker slots were too busy sweeping opponents or synergizing with Ezrim, Agency Chief. Today I'm not really happy with Jace, also don't hate Jace, and am a little behind in Jace mirrors.
On the one hand the mirror (including Blue-Black "Jace" decks) aren't that bad because you usually have them covered many times over on Counterspells. But the mid-game will generally come down to a positional back-and-forth, meaning that one or two big turns can go to a player who just has more Jaces. This is not super intuitive that a deck with four Jaces but no really good counter-Control elements can win heads up... But even molasses-slow threats can beat hyper-efficicint answers if you're not careful.
The last gap in the deck (which is corrected, maybe even over-corrected in the sideboard) is Get Lost. The absolute worst card for this deck is Kaito, Bane of Nightmares. You have all of two good answers to probably three or four Kaitos. Kaito is so bad you kind of have to Lagoon Breach or Ride's End anything that is attacking you in the first few turns, even if it will double up later, for fear of being buried under a Planeswalker Ninja. You're good once you can Counterspell Kaito (he is just a four-mana sorcery speed threat if he's not doing martial arts to get onto the battlefield), but that Ninjutsu clause is a killer, especially if you're on the draw.
Those two copies of Get Lost are your narrow answers to a resolved Jace and sometimes a resolved Omniscience. It can feel bad! But it's not the worst, just because you get so much back from Horned Loch-Whale.
First and foremost, it's mostly tuned to fight fast aggressive Red decks. Mice and mice-adjacent Boros decks, the occasional Innkeeper's Talent. That means maximizing the number of Temporary Lockdowns that gobble up all the little permanents, and - here is my big unlock - going from four Sunfalls to two Sunfalls and two copies of Day of Judgment. I'm not in the Day of Judgment / Stock Up camp generally (especially since I have four Horned Loch-Whale doing double duty for me early on), but at some point I just realized I was losing to aggressive Red starts with Sunfall in my hand and had to make a change. I still lose to aggressive Red starts, but not as often.
The thing that surprised me about the Pro Tour version was how few Counterspells they played. I love both No More Lies, which has taken me beyond the local game store to the greater competitive universe, and Three Steps Ahead (which is a pretty good answer card, even against Mice). If you're approaching an informed metagame where other people also kill with Jace, but also do wilder stuff like hard-cast Omniscience or animate six mana enchantments, you want a little flex on your answer cards; and nobody has more flex than Three Steps Ahead.
The genius of this deck - can I say "genius"? - is that, unlike most other decks in the format, it can literally play at instant speed. The opponent will play into your mana, which gives you great flexibility in catching them two-for-one. The obvious stuff is just using two mana to stop a 3 mana Screaming Nemesis; or one Ride's End to stop both a Cacophony Scamp (including its death trigger) and the Monstrous Rage that was going to make that death trigger so juicy.
Playing at instant speed extends even to the deck's threats, which is why I am claiming "genius" on this one.
Extending from that I asked myself when I would rather have a Beza or Overlord than a Horned Loch-Whale against Red Aggro variants. On the one hand you can get caught by a Shardmage's Rescue (which sucks three different ways); but the answer is that Horned Loch-Whale is mostly just better. Beza kind of needs you to get beat up first so you can tap out main phase to catch up. That's great sometimes and really doesn't work out an annoying amount of the time. Hello Sheltered by Ghosts and any way to Trample! They play Screaming Nemesis for a reason!
In my deck Red aggro decks look at the same 1/1 for one that they have to cast for the third time without advancing their mana and just pack it in before I get a threat on board half the time. The double anti-death triggers instants really go a long way here.
And then of course there's the mirror. Overlord of the Mistmoors and Beza suck; in part because they just give the opponent something to do with their mana. Who wants to tap out so they can bite a No More Lies (from a deck with four No More Lies)? You're going to get Jaced that way. Horned Loch-Whale isn't "great" exactly, but it's probably two-for-one and also super annoying for the opponent to deal with. Do you think they stay up all night lusting for the opportunity to pay four mana to exile a 6/6 instant? They're re-thinking all their life decisions but at least they didn't have to discard Ride's End to hand size.
Did I mention "genius"?
Anyway, that's my deck. I'll be playing it for... I guess the next week?
Sometimes you tap out on turn three for Stock Up or Jace; on the play, you're rarely going to get punished (and that's all I have to say about that).
LOVE
MIKE
