Ever since the printing of Forbidden Alchemy, I’ve been battling with some form of U/B control deck in Standard. After Jeremy Neeman won Grand Prix: Brisbane with the deck, it fell under the radar for some time as the format adjusted. Ben Stark was among the players responsible for bringing it back with his 9–0 start at GP: Orlando, and he no doubt influenced Lukas Jaklovsky and Robert Jurkovic. They finished ninth and tenth at Pro Tour: Honolulu respectively, and they combined for a 16–4 record in Standard with nearly identical lists of U/B control. Finally, U/B control’s popularity recently exploded at Grand Prix: Baltimore, placing three players in the Top 8.

This is what I’ve been battling with on Magic Online:

”U/B Control”

• Land (27)
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Drowned Catacomb
• 8 Island
• 6 Swamp
• 2 Ghost Quarter
• 3 Nephalia Drownyard

• Creatures (5)
• 2 Consecrated Sphinx
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

• Spells (28)
• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 2 Curse of Death's Hold
• 2 Dissipate
• 3 Forbidden Alchemy
• 2 Go for the Throat
• 2 Liliana of the Veil
• 4 Mana Leak
• 1 Ratchet Bomb
• 4 Think Twice
• 4 Tragic Slip

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Batterskull
• 2 Bloodline Keeper
• 1 Dissipate
• 2 Flashfreeze
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 2 Negate
• 1 Nephalia Drownyard
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 2 Phantasmal Image
• 1 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck

It’s very close to Dave Shiels’s list from Baltimore, but with a couple small changes. I wasn’t a fan of the maindeck Nihil Spellbomb, so I moved it to the sideboard in favour of the fourth Tragic Slip, which by the way, is awesome. The sideboard changes were due to card availability. I posted a recording of me playing an eight-man queue with the above list on my YouTube channel. If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

For paper events, I’m probably going to go with an amalgamation of Shiels’s and Paulo’s lists. Before I get into that, I’m going to go over all of the card choices so that you can build the best U/B deck for your metagame. If you don’t care about any of that, CTRL-F “Captain Sisko is the best Captain” to jump to the list I recommend playing—along with a sideboarding guide.

Lands

Hitting your land drops every turn is crucial for this deck, hence the high land count. Twenty-seven is an appropriate number, and you want access to another two lands in your sideboard for the mirror match. I would never start with fewer than twenty-seven, but there are situations in which you want to sideboard into fewer lands. I’ll get into that once I go over matchups. Here’s the mana base:

• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Drowned Catacomb
• 8 Island
• 7 Swamp
• 2 Nephalia Drownyard
• 2 other lands

Two Nephalia Drownyards is the bare minimum I would play. You definitely want access to four of them between the maindeck and sideboard. I wouldn’t fault you for playing all four maindeck since games often come down to casting a lethal Blue Sun's Zenith—even in matchups you wouldn’t expect. The other lands can be additional Drownyards or Ghost Quarters. The only lands you care about destroying are Nephalia Drownyard, Inkmoth Nexus, and Moorland Haunt, so it’s nice to have access to a couple Ghost Quarters. Even then, you only need to care about the latter two when you don’t have a Curse of Death's Hold in play, so I wouldn’t overdo it on Ghost Quarters. Two seems to be the right number, but feel free to cut them if you don’t expect many decks playing the aforementioned cards. Finally, it’s fine to cut a Swamp if you want to play an additional utility land, but I wouldn’t mess with any of the other numbers.

Creatures

• 2 6-drops
• 2-3 Snapcaster Mage

You have a few options for your choice of what 6-drop to play, but the best ones are Grave Titan and Consecrated Sphinx. I’ve been running the Sphinx for a while now, but I’m starting to come around to Grave Titan. It really depends on what decks you think you’re going to play against. Grave Titan has a huge impact to the board and can kill your opponent very quickly. It’s also quite good at stabilizing when you’re behind and gives you value even if it’s removed right away. The fact that Consecrated Sphinx flies is really important—it allows you to block the vast array of evasive creatures in the format, and it more effectively deals with pesky planeswalkers such as Garruk that are otherwise difficult to remove.

Doing a one-and-one split isn’t the worst, but for the sake of consistency, you should really think about which one is better for you and just go with that one. If you don’t have access to either card, you can try Wurmcoil Engine, Geth, or Frost Titan, but they are considerably worse than Grave Titan or Consecrated Sphinx.

Spells

These are the numbers I wouldn’t mess with:

• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 2 Dissipate
• 3 Forbidden Alchemy
• 4 Mana Leak
• 4 Think Twice

The other spells you can change somewhat, but you should follow these guidelines:

• Play at least two Curse of Death's Hold—they’re awesome, and they’re one of the main reasons to play this deck. A lot of decks in Standard don’t do very much with a Curse in play, so you’re very favored to win if you manage to resolve one. I would caution you, though, as people are starting to catch on to this fact and are starting to pack maindeck answers. Don’t run out a Curse unless you can protect it or you’re getting value even if the opponent removes it. For that reason, running a third in order to increase your chances of having a backup Curse isn’t a bad idea.
• Run some number of removal spells beyond the Black Sun's Zeniths. You have a few options here: Doom Blade, Ratchet Bomb, Tragic Slip, Go for the Throat, Tribute to Hunger, and Geth's Verdict. Doom Blade and Go for the Throat are quite similar to each other, so I would only play one of them. Tempered Steel decks are becoming less popular while Zombie decks are on the rise, so it makes sense to switch to Go for the Throat. Similarly, Tribute to Hunger and Geth's Verdict both fulfill the same function—giving you a way to get rid of a hexproof creature. The life-gain from Tribute is actually very relevant, so I would definitely recommend it over Geth's Verdict. Ratchet Bomb isn’t the greatest, but it is the only way you can get rid of noncreature, nonland permanents, so it’s necessary. They’re also pretty handy against token decks, so if those are popular in your area, go ahead and play a couple. Finally, Tragic Slip has been awesome for me, and I wholeheartedly endorse running a full set of them.
• You can run some planeswalkers if you like. I’ve played with and without Liliana, and I’m neutral on whether she’s worth including. Karn Liberated is another option, but as awesome as he is, his ridiculously high mana cost prevents me from wanting to maindeck him.

Sideboard

This is where you have quite a bit of freedom. I would definitely have two extra lands for the mirror in addition to some way of exiling cards from the graveyard; but other than that, you can build a sideboard however you like. I would suggest that you think about how many cards you want to take out for your expected matchups and build your sideboard accordingly. For example, there’s no use having ten cards to bring in against Delver if there are only six cards you want to take out.

Captain Sisko Is the Best Captain

So, given what I’ve said above, this is a list I would play if I had to play a Standard PTQ right now:

”U/B Control Now”

• Lands (27)
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Drowned Catacomb
• 8 Island
• 3 Nephalia Drownyard
• 2 Ghost Quarter
• 6 Swamp

• Creatures (5)
• 2 Grave Titan
• 3 Snapcaster Mage

• Spells (28)
• 3 Black Sun's Zenith
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 3 Curse of Death's Hold
• 2 Dissipate
• 3 Forbidden Alchemy
• 2 Go for the Throat
• 4 Mana Leak
• 2 Ratchet Bomb
• 4 Think Twice
• 3 Tragic Slip
• 1 Tribute to Hunger

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Batterskull
• 2 Bloodline Keeper
• 1 Curse of Death’s Hold
• 1 Dissipate
• 1 Flashfreeze
• 1 Negate
• 1 Nephalia Drownyard
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 2 Nihil Spellbomb
• 1 Surgical Extraction
• 2 Phantasmal Image

Buy This Deck

I’ve tried to combine what I feel are the best ideas from the Baltimore lists. This isn’t groundbreaking or anything, and it’s only a few cards different from most other U/B lists. Here’s how I would sideboard for the more popular matchups:

Delver

?1 Blue Sun's Zenith

?2 Dissipate

?2 Go for The Throat

?2 Mana Leak

+2 Bloodline Keeper

+1 Curse of Death's Hold

+2 Phantasmal Image

+2 Nihil Spellbomb

If your opponent always plays around Mana Leak, I would board all of them out and replace them with Dissipates.

Mirror

?3 Black Sun's Zenith

?3 Curse of Death's Hold

?2 Ratchet Bomb

?3 Tragic Slip

+2 Batterskull

+2 Bloodline Keeper

+1 Dissipate

+1 Negate

+1 Ghost Quarter

+1 Nephalia Drownyard

+2 Nihil Spellbomb

+1 Surgical Extraction

You can leave in Ratchet Bomb if the opponent has Lilianas. Also, leave them in against Solar Flare decks since they presumably have Oblivion Rings.

Frites

?1 Blue Sun's Zenith

?3 Black Sun's Zenith

?3 Tragic Slip

+1 Dissipate

+1 Negate

+2 Nihil Spellbomb

+1 Surgical Extraction

+2 Phantasmal Image

I’ve never actually played against this deck, so this sideboarding plan is the one I’m the least sure of, but it seems like a pretty good matchup.

U/B Zombies

?1 Blue Sun's Zenith

?2 Dissipate

+1 Curse of Death's Hold

+1 Surgical Extraction

+1 Nihil Spellbomb

The only cards you really care about are Diregraf Captain and Geralf's Messenger. The opponent can’t remove a Curse once it’s in play, and your removal should be more than enough to clean up whatever sneaks through. Zombie players do bring in discard, so never keep a hand solely because it has a Curse in it. Remember that you can exile a Geralf's Messenger in response to an undying trigger.

B/R Zombies

?1 Blue Sun's Zenith

?2 Dissipate

+2 Batterskull

+1 Negate

This is similar to the U/B Zombies matchup except that these creatures are worse, and the opponent has burn spells. Preserve your life total as much as possible in the early game until you can play a Curse of Death's Hold or a Batterskull. Unless your life total is really low, you should win the game when that happens.

Wolf Run Ramp

?2 Black Sun's Zenith

?2 Ratchet Bomb

?3 Tragic Slip

+1 Dissipate

+1 Flashfreeze

+1 Negate

+1 Ghost Quarter

+2 Phantasmal Image

+1 Curse of Death's Hold

This is one of your better matchups. You can trump everything Wolf Run does, so just play your lands, deal with the threats, and kill your opponent at your convenience.

Humans and White Weenie

?1 Blue Sun's Zenith

?2 Dissipate

?1 Tribute to Hunger

+2 Batterskull

+1 Curse of Death's Hold

+1 Negate

If the opponent has Geist of Saint Traft, take out an Island and a Mana Leak for two Phantasmal Images.

Curse him early and often. The only cards of his you care about are Honor of the Pure and any answers he might have for your Curses. Mirran Crusader can be annoying, so try not to let him resolve one before you can get your Curse on.

W/B or Esper Tokens

Board exactly as you would against Humans but replace Batterskull with Bloodline Keeper. If he’s mono-tokens (as in: He doesn’t have any actual creature cards), you may wish to board out your targeted removal instead. The matchup plays out very similarly, so as long as you can win the +/? war, you should do fine.

Hope you guys found that information useful. I’ll post up videos of me playing this deck whenever I can, so subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to be notified when they’re uploaded.

Until next time, may you always hit your land drops.

Nassim Ketita

arcticninja on Magic Online