Outside Information – Looking forward

The current state of the metagame is one that is dominated by aggro. For combo/control players like myself, we find it rather boring. Sure, sending guys into the red zone over and over is fun, watching your bloodbraid elf cascade into win far more often than it should never gets old, right? Time Sieve/Open the Vaults is a deck I champion every chance I get to, but honestly the metagame has shifted out of its favorable slice of the pie. This forces us to either play a subpar deck for the format, adapt, or move to aggro. Personally, I choose to adapt, and with that I present today’s Outside Information

Mono Black Control
A Standard Magic deck, by Paul Beemer
4th place at a Nationals Qualifier tournament in California, United States on 2010-05-16
As reported at http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/natqual10/california
Creatures
4 Abyssal Persecutor 
4 Gatekeeper Of Malakir
3 Hypnotic Specter
3 Vampire Hexmage

Instants
3 Consume The Meek
3 Smother
4 Tendrils Of Corruption

Planeswalkers
1 Liliana Vess
1 Sorin Markov

Sorceries
3 Consuming Vapors
3 Mind Sludge
3 Sign In Blood

Basic Lands
23 Swamp
Lands
2 Dread Statuary


Sideboard:
3 Pithing Needle
3 Scepter Of Fugue
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Vampire Hexmage
3 Doom Blade
1 Smother
1 Haunting Echoes
1 All Is Dust

Ahhhh good ol MBC. I’m partial to the deck myself; I stated competitive magic with MBC in Odyssey/Onslaught standard. Enough nostalgia though, let’s look at why I believe this is the control deck to play.

The creature package is impressive. 2/1 first strikers that deal with planeswalkers and provide a solid defense against most of the creatures currently played. Gatekeepers give you the 2 for 1 removal you need, more often than not taking something out with it on the block. Hypnotic specter is a vastly underrated card, and is a must answer card. It may be a slow clock, but it’s still a clock, still flies, and discards at random. Persecutors are a much better wincon than most people give credit. Its often left on the field a turn or two too long, and ends up winning the game from advantage since the deck doesn’t lack ways to kill it off when its time.

The removal package does its job well, consume, smother, and tendrils are the three best black removal spells around, since they aren’t restricted in the same way doom blade is (non black is bad right now I hear) and consuming vapors paired with tendrils gives you the life resources to outlast and take control of the board situation.

Mind sludge paired with specter provide six sources of quality hand disruption, the sign in blood gives you the much needed card draw, and the planeswalkers should speak for themselves. 25 lands may seem light at first, but seeing the overall curve feels correct. The deck wants to draw black sources, so I agree with the lack of fetchlands. Dread statuary is often forgotten about until it kills an attacking creature, or an unaware opponent.

Where I find the deck lacking is the sideboard. It’s rather chaotic. Black has trouble with planeswalkers as a whole outside of hexmage, so I agree with the 4th one in the board, but I think pithing needle should go to a 4 of. It never lacks targets in an environment of walkers, manlands, fetchlands, and multiple creatures and other cards with an activated ability (like time sieve!). A single Bloodwitch makes me cry, since it should be interchangeable straight across for persecutor in most situations. Heres the board I would take to a PTQ tomorrow.

4 Pithing Needle
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
2 Haunting Echoes
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Smother
1 Vampire Hexmage

Ya know whats scary? Vengevine. Ravenous trap and echos stops it dead, as well as providing side hate against any graveyard shenanigans, and echos wrecks midrange and control. The singletons here provide the fine tuning against whatever matchup your playing against, and they should all be self explanatory. The most important thing here is that all of the board cards cover a wide range of decks that they provide value against. Depending on your metagame you can go without some cards, and some other cards like Duress or Deathmark may better suit your needs. Give the deck a thought if you’re looking for something off radar to play, it takes a lot of people by surprise. Till next time,

Stephen Moss