Welcome Magic lovers!
As the arms race in the Standard format continues to devolve into who has the cheapest, most efficient threats, it seems like there is less and less space for late-game decks to thrive.
We’ve seen a decline in popularity (and win rates) of Domain Zur, Mono-white Control, and other decks trying to stabilize and control the early game against the aggro and tempo strategies flooding the Magic Online Challenges and the Magic Arena ranked ladder. However, all hope is not lost, as there are still die-hard control mages out there brewing and testing to try and land on a list that can not only stave off the early rush, but also lock up the game in the later turns.
Today, we ask the question, can counterspell-control compete in this aggressive Standard metagame?
The Plan
Here, finally, is a quintessential control shell. Its goal is to survive the early-game rush in order to take over in the mid-to-late game with its more powerful, difficult-to-interact-with threats. The main way to go over the top of the opponent and slam the door shut on the game is to get an Overlord of the Mistmoors into play, copy it with the second mode of Three Steps Ahead in order to create a lethal board state on the opponent's end step, then untap and kill them. Jace, the Perfected Mind is still a perfectly fine way to win as well, and if the pilot does find multiple copies of the blue planeswalker in a timely fashion, milling out the opponent can often be the most direct route to victory. While winning the game once the board is under control is usually a trivial matter, it's the first few turns of the game that can be rather dicey. This is why the deck is running a full complement of Elspeth's Smite, which may as well be Lightning Bolt in this deck, as it takes out any small creatures that may attempt to overwhelm one in the early game, and the fact that it exiles makes it ideal at negating the death triggers from cards like Heartfire Hero, Cacophony Scamp, Enduring Curiosity, or Enduring Innocence.
In addition to the one-mana removal, there are a couple of Get Lost in addition to playsets of both No More Lies and Three Steps Ahead. “Wait, what?” I hear you cry, “How can countermagic be good against all the one and two-mana creatures running around?”
As it turns out, having a two-mana counterspell in the early game is often perfectly fine, as many of the cheap creatures that are being deployed on the first turn (which can sneak in under counters), can easily be swept away on turn three with one of the four copies of Split Up that are lurking in the deck. This allows the control pilot to use No More Lies to pick off the more serious threats that cost three and four mana. Despite the low mana curves of many of the top decks in Standard, there are always good targets for No More Lies, and simply leaving up a white and blue mana is enough to throw many opponents off their game plans, forcing them to play off-curve or else risk losing their most powerful play.
The single Soul Partition works nicely here as a way to force the opponent to pick up a problematic permanent that may have come down before a counterspell could be drawn or cast, in order to simply counter it when they try to resolve it again. To a lesser extent, Horned Loch-Whale also performs the same trick, forcing them to draw their problematic creature again next turn, only to see it get countered on the way back down.
For the critters that may get in under the countermagic, there is the playset of the aforementioned Split Up, in addition to a Day of Judgment and a Sunfall. This ensures a sweeper is never far off, and with Split Up being so cheap to cast, it often allows the control mage to sweep the board and leave up a counterspell for the opponent's follow-up play.
Speaking of counterspells, Three Steps Ahead is incredible here, as it often is in these shells. Not only does it provide a hard counter in the mid-late game, it can also help dig through the deck to find more lands or spells in the early game, or copy a Beza, Bounding Spring or Overlord of the Mistmoors later on. An instant-speed copy of one of those two creatures is often game over for the opponent, as it can either ambush them before blockers and eat or trade for their entire army of creatures, or simply allow the pilot to untap and swing for lethal damage the following turn. If one ever gets to cast Three Steps Ahead and pay the spree cost for two or more modes, that’s often too much for the opponent to come back from.
Beza, the Bounding Spring has been an invaluable tool against the aggressive decks since its printing, and it's no different here. It comes down and stonewalls any small creature deck, while the life gain and card draw are obviously a fantastic bit of icing on the cake. Copying it with Three Steps Ahead (even if the pilot is forced to lose one legendary body) is incredible, and is often game, set, and match against aggro.
Overlord of the Mistmoors is another powerhouse creature that can easily stabilize a board in the mid-game with its pair of 2/1 flying bodies, then take over the game completely once it comes in off of impending. In other decks that play the white Overlord, such as Mono-white Control, an opponent can simply sandbag their removal spell and pick off the giant avatar creature once it hits the battlefield on its pilot's end step. However, in this shell, we have the tools to not only protect it, but to copy it at instant speed with Three Steps Ahead. This puts the opponent in a deadly situation, as there is no guarantee their Go for the Throat will be enough to stop the Overlord from steamrolling them. This makes Overlord of the Mistmoors a very potent win condition in the deck, winning games out of nowhere in the same style as Zur, the Enchanter does in the Domain decks.
Jace, the Perfected Mind is the other win condition in the deck, and it's still a very solid way to close out games. Many decks simply can't survive being milled down to ten or less cards, so even when Jace fails to eradicate their library completely, it's usually a simple matter to mop up the board and watch as the opponent draws their last few lands or utility spells and dies. Jace obviously shines against the late-game decks like Mono-white Control and Domain, but even on turn three it can be a large thorn in the side of low-curve decks. It forces them to commit more resources to the board to get around the Jace +1 ability, which plays perfectly into a timely Split Up or Day of Judgment. If they choose to ignore it, Jace continues to sit there generating value until it pulls you ahead in the game. This dynamic often puts the opponent in an awkward position, which is exactly where the control pilot wants them. Even if they opt to kill it, Jace has at least gained some much-needed time and life by redirecting the opponent's attacks or burn spells to him and not the pilot's face.
The Lands
Control decks are always very mana-hungry, which is why one will often find them running twenty-six or more lands, and this list is no exception.
However, with the strict, early-game mana requirements of cards like No More Lies, Three Steps Ahead, and Split Up, this means there isn't a lot of room for colorless sources. This is why one will only find a pair of Fountainport, backed up by three Demolition Field. The Field is actually the more important land of the two, as it provides a much-needed answer to opposing creature-lands, which are a thorn in this deck's side. This is due to the lack of instant-speed removal in the deck, with only a couple of Get Lost to really interact. That makes Demolition Field a priority here, thus it gets the third copy over an extra Fountainport.
Only two Restless Anchorage may seem odd, when one can easily run the full playset, but remember that having too many lands come into play tapped in the first few turns is a death sentence in a deck like this. The pilot must be able to interact early and often, with Elspeth's Smite plus No More Lies being a common turn three line of play. To achieve this with any sort of consistency means running no more than seven or eight come-into-play-tapped lands, resulting in Restless Anchorage having to be pared down to only two copies. It's one of the reasons why there also isn't additional copies of Sunken Citadel in the deck, despite running seven utility lands with activation costs.
Floodfarm Verge and Meticulous Archive are fantastic in this deck, with the former often doing an excellent Tundra impression, while the latter provides much-needed card filtering. Control decks often live or die based on which answers they find at which points in the game, and having even some small modicum of control over one's draws is crucial. Getting it for 'free' off of one's lands is incredible, thus the full four copies of Meticulous Archive are a must, despite it coming into play tapped.
The Sideboard
The sideboard has plenty of what one may expect from a control deck, with additional cards to shore up the aggro matchup in Authority of the Consuls, an extra copy of Beza, the Bounding Spring, as well as a single Joust Through, doing its best impression of Elspeth's Smite number five.
Change the Equation is an interesting one here, as it works nicely against the red aggressive decks, in addition to having utility against green decks, such as Golgari midrange and Domain Overlords.
A fourth Jace, the Perfected Mind comes in against the slower decks like Mono-white and Domain, while Get Lost and Exorcise also do excellent work against those archetypes.
A trio of Wilt-Leaf Liege are there to surprise the Esper and Dimir decks running Hopeless Nightmare, while Rest in Peace is obviously an anti-combo card against decks trying to leverage their graveyard to win the game. This includes archetypes like the reanimator strategies, namely Azorius Oculus, Azorius Omniscience, or Squirming Emergence, in addition to spells-based graveyard decks like Simic Crabs.
Conclusion
While playing a deck with a full eight counterspells may seem…counterintuitive in the current Standard metagame, there are a lot of truly excellent ways in which the cards in this control list line up against the strategies one expects to face. This deck definitely has the tools to stop aggro in its tracks early, and the countermagic and sweepers end up being rather potent once the game has progressed to turns four through eight, and beyond. This makes the Azorius Control deck a powerful, unorthodox choice for any given tournament, with many opponents not having sideboards prepared to beat a plan like the one the control deck presents, including dealing with up to four Jace, the Perfected Mind while simultaneously managing four Overlord of the Mistmoors.
I recommend taking the true blue (no pun intended), draw-go control deck for a spin to see how it lines up against your local metagame!