UW control that won the Canadian regional last weekend with over 440 players

[u/Newez]

Link to list
https://melee.gg/Decklist/View/34961b8c-b05a-42e3-9ee2-b4d60108c432

[u/Haymir]

Deck looks designed to take on broodscale which was smart. Think they started out going 9-0 which is wild.

[u/LetsBringIt → u/Haymir]

Not just Broodscale. This thing rains on the entire Eldrazi line of decks from Tron to Trudge. Sure Karn shuts off Scepter, but everything else just soft (and eventually hard) locks the archetype out of anything relevant.

[u/PartyPay → u/Haymir]

They apparently only dropped 3 games the whole tournament. Which I think is insane for a control deck.

[u/21stcenturynekorobo]

This honestly reminds me of yugioh deck building. Where every deck has such explosive turns you have to use “hand traps” to skip their turn so you can have your explosive turn and easily make up for the card disadvantage your turn skip card had.

[u/Junior-Goose-6785]

List was perfect, as was her play:

https://www.youtube.com/live/ULZocShb5Dg?is=hsaU8PnKubcPe9kz

https://www.youtube.com/live/4Wntd2vHFic?is=0Q5RBv_Lz2qDA1fl

An absolute joy to watch. 🙌

[u/dotcaIm → u/Junior-Goose-6785]

Appreciate you sharing links, but it's an 11 hour and 9 hour video. Any time stamps of the deck being played?

[u/gottohaveausername]

7 silence effects maindeck is kinda nuts, or at least stands out to me as unusual. How often is that better than just running more counters I wonder. Plays better with Narset/Days Undoing I guess.

Would love to hear some UW players thoughts on this list.

[u/CatatonicWalrus → u/gottohaveausername]

Counters suck right now. The silences are much better into all the eldrazi decks. There's also something flying under the radar here in these conversations, which is that when you get emrakul'd your opponent taking your turn often isn't that bad because you just have a bunch of silences and solitudes that don't really interact with your own board all that much.

[u/pistonman94 → u/gottohaveausername]

Counter magic is nearly unplayable at the moment. Trying to one for one your opponents is a losing battle. You're better off silencing them, unfortunately.

[u/gottohaveausername → u/pistonman94]

I mean Silence effects are card disadvantage though, so that can't really be the reason right?

Though Narset/Days is a huge CA swing so I guess the winning the tempo battle with the silence effects bridges the game to that moment better than counterspells do.

Wonder what the matchups they faced were?

[u/CatatonicWalrus → u/gottohaveausername]

It's not about CA versus disadvantage. The deck is no longer a true control deck. It's a prison deck with the trappings of a control deck. It can sometimes fall into that place but it's not currently a true control deck. You have to divorce your thoughts about the deck construction from the idea of this being a traditional control deck.

[u/gottohaveausername → u/CatatonicWalrus]

Right, which is kinda what I was responding to. The other person commented that Counters are bad because they trade 1 for 1, but that doesn't line up with replacing them with cards that 0 for 1.

So I figured it must be the tempo aspect. But yeah UW evolving into more of a prison deck makes more sense for the change.

[u/Tractatus10 → u/gottohaveausername]

The person you were replying to wasn't framing it in terms of card advantage though. They're just saying that trading 1-for-1 (and not even always that, what with cast triggers) is a losing battle; telling your opponent they get to cast no spells and/or make no attacks, on the other hand, can be a winning play, and is a much better lock under Isochron than tucking a counterspell would be.

[u/Jevonar → u/gottohaveausername]

The entire strategy of trading 1-for-1 is bad, so counters are bad.

Silence is a 0-for-1, but it behaves like a time walk a lot of the time. And there are situations where it genuinely wrecks the opponent (in response to cascade triggering for example, or in response to past in flames, etc).

[u/VerdantChief]

Rumors of control's death have been greatly exaggerated

[u/EarthtoGeoff]

Just to be clear, does the deck primarily win by beating down with Solitude and/or Kaheera? Seems pretty slow even for a control deck.

[u/CatatonicWalrus → u/EarthtoGeoff]

It's pretty fast once you lock them out of the game.

[u/LetsBringIt → u/EarthtoGeoff]

Its actually quite fast. Solitude beatdown is a 6 turn clock in Modern. With the way it locks out the opponent out of anything, its all but guaranteed.

[u/Looooooooo]

Cant we just call it UW prison?

[u/No-Bet7157]

Yeah :) it is an archivment to be able pilot heavy control/prison deck trought such a long event. Impresive

[u/maru_at_sierra]

Good stuff, great to see a copy of jtms sneaking into UW lists of late

[u/L_V_R_A → u/maru_at_sierra]

I was gonna say, lol, is Jace just tagging along for vibes?

[u/Vomiting_Winter]

That is not a lot of lands. Even with the DMFCs

[u/Maple_Ceres → u/Vomiting_Winter]

I disagree. 24 lands is a reasonable number in a control deck, though I think I'd prefer access to at least 1 Lorien Revealed. But she put up fantastic results with that list, so I can't argue there.

With a full playset of Solitude, there needs to be some amount of concessions in the manabase to whiff less often off of Narset's -2. By running 2 MDFCs, you can increase the hit rate while also using Narset to hit land drops to make it to 4 or 5 lands in a pinch. Historically, decks that had a higher density of Narset would run a fewer number of Solitude so I fully suspect the 2 MDFCs directly correlate to the higher creature count to offset.

[u/FlashoftheDead]

Seems like they just got lucky

[u/No_Scientist2822 → u/FlashoftheDead]

Ain't no way you go 12-1-1, 1st into the top 8, and win the entire thing, by getting lucky. Some luck is absolutely required to do well at these kinda events, but the pilot clearly new their list, what the deck wanted to do, and executed it well. 

[u/IHateTomatoes → u/No_Scientist2822]

Not to mention a game record of 29-3-3 is absurd...she basically 2-0'd every opponent so you can't even say its play/draw luck

[u/Zerosturm → u/No_Scientist2822]

It was simply a good call for the meta. That list is nothing new or special and it isn't hard to navigate.

[u/murdocka → u/Zerosturm]

I will not call this deck easy to navigate to be honest. Control has really specific play patterns that you need to know.

[u/Zerosturm → u/murdocka]

Easy deck been around forever. Can't change my opinion I play control decks

[u/murdocka → u/Zerosturm]

Wouldn't try to change your opinion, we're saying the same thing. It's easy because you play control

[u/EnvironmentalLog9417 → u/FlashoftheDead]

They're a good player with consistent high level results. They may have gotten a bit lucky with certain pairings but not with their overall play. They won by selecting a well positioned deck and playing smart tight mtg.

[u/PartyPay → u/EnvironmentalLog9417]

Anytime you win event you need some level of luck on your side, but you cant win a big tournament like this without being an excellent player. Especially with a control deck.

[u/GREG88HG → u/FlashoftheDead]

Hell no, the deck is real. My country control expert plays the jeskai version and it works like a charm when well played.

[u/ExplodingLab → u/FlashoftheDead]

I see her at locals and she’s always at top tables, she’s been playing the deck for a long time definitely not luck imo