Welcome Magic lovers!
Standard players rejoice! Finally, the cumbersome yoke of seminal cards like Raffine, Scheming Seer and The Wandering Emperor has been thrown off with the rotation of Standard and the release of Bloomburrow, allowing players to flex their creative deck-building muscles and explore new, heretofore unviable archetypes. Joyous cries of, “Control is dead!”, ring out across the Magic Arena Standard format…
…but is it, really?
When this author gazes out across the current Standard landscape, and sees nothing but swarms of tiny mice and humans, alongside puny lizards and rats, the first thing that springs to mind is: wow, all of these decks get demolished by Temporary Lockdown and, to a lesser extent, Sunfall.
In fact, control may quietly be one of the best decks lurking just below the surface of Standard, waiting for its moment to rise up and crush the myriad aggressive strategies that always proliferate shortly after rotation.
For those wondering, what typically occurs after a major format rotation like the one Standard just experienced, is that many players default to the most aggressive, proactive deck. This is because, in an uncertain meta game, the deck asking the question, “Can you beat this?” is typically the strongest position to play from. Putting one's opponents to the test is a much safer place to be than trying to effectively answer all the wide-ranging threats that may present themselves in a mostly unknown format.
Therefore, for a control deck to be tier 1, it requires a high level of confidence in knowing which decks one is most likely to face in a given tournament or on the ranked ladder, how they play, and what they may be sideboarding in against you. Typically, this means that control decks are very difficult to build and play correctly in the first, fledgling weeks of a new format, as its impossible to predict what range of decks one may face and what sort of weapons they will be bringing to defeat you.
However, if the vast majority of players are likely trending toward playing low-cost, aggressive strategies, which is absolutely what we're seeing in Standard right now, then tuning a control deck to crush them not only becomes reasonable, but may actually be optimal.
Don't join them, beat them.
The Deck
The backbone of any control deck are its sweepers. Temporary Lockdown is an incredible sweeper for only three mana, as it clears not only those pesky woodland creatures, but also any tokens, artifacts or enchantments they may have lying around, and there are plenty. Most games against Boros or Rakdos aggro go like this:
- The aggro deck dumps their hand onto the battlefield in the first couple of turns, and perhaps gets a few points of damage in.
- The control deck casts Temporary Lockdown.
- The aggro deck, now with only two or three cards in hand, struggles to deploy a second wave of threats.
- The control deck casts a couple of removal spells, or another Temporary Lockdown.
- The aggro deck concedes on twenty life.
Its hard to overstate how powerful a sweeper the Lockdown is, even seeing play as a four-of in the Pioneer Azorius Control deck. This three-mana wrath absolutely demolishes the aggressive and go-wide strategies that abound in Standard at the moment. When backed up by its big brother, Sunfall, it makes crushing heavy creature-based decks trivially easy.
The Card Draw
While the sweepers remain excellent even after rotation, there are some holes in the deck that are a bit tricker to fill. Losing Memory Deluge was definitely a blow to the archetype, as it provided a pivotal piece to cinching up the late game and coasting to victory.
The replacement which appears to be most effective has been the newly printed, Spellgyre. Functioning as both card draw and a hard counterspell in the mid-late game has been invaluable, and while it doesn't dig quite as deep as a flashbacked Memory Deluge once did, its still a solid burst of card advantage that often finds the tools its pilot requires in the moment.
The Finisher
The second, large hole in the deck that's been more complicated to fill is that of win condition. Yes, one can simply kill the empty-handed opponent in the very late-game with Restless Anchorage and Mirrex, but this is a glacially slow way to eventually achieve victory, and with all the powerful standalone threats in Standard, giving one's opponent that much time to draw into more action is often deadly.
The solution is twofold: either play some sort of large, resilient and preferably evasive threat that can close out the game in short order, like Stoic Sphinx or Ezrim, Agency Chief, or else play enough stabilizing effects like removal spells and life-gain to buy the deck enough time to kill with its lands. I've landed on Ezrim for now because he fills both of those roles, and while he has felt very strong, he does have his weaknesses. Being very careful about if and when to crack one's clue tokens is paramount. Sometimes swinging with a Restless Anchorage just to get that map token, or activating Mirrex to get a pest, is the optimal line, as having enough food to feed Ezrim is often the difference between winning and losing the game. One Jace, the Perfected Mind also makes an appearance in the main deck, as a nod to the Domain deck that is still alive and kicking.
While new Bloomburrow addition, Beza, the Bounding Spring, is a very potent tool against aggressive decks, its not evasive, its not resilient and it doesn't play very well with Sunfall. Therefore, it belongs in the sideboard.
The Interaction
The rest of the deck is populated with the same, solid spells that cemented Azorius Control as one of the best tier 1 decks in Standard for the last few months. No More Lies and Get Lost, supported by Elspeth's Smite, allow the control player to effectively manage the early game, while Three Steps Ahead and Spellgyre can simultaneously manage the mid-game while also keeping the gas flowing. Elspeth's Smite would typically be a sideboard card, but with the plethora of aggressive decks running around, I've found it earns its keep in the main deck.
The Mana
The mana base is pretty straightforward, continuing to run the full playset of land destruction by swapping Demolition Field in for Field of Ruin, while also utilizing a pair of Mirrex to potentially end the game. A playset of Restless Anchorage is mandatory here, as its not only great mana fixing, but also one of the best creature-lands available in Standard right now. Anchorage plays perfectly with the sweepers, can pressure opposing planeswalkers or life totals, and also helps power up Ezrim. Don't play less than four.
The Sideboard
The sideboard is, naturally, heavily geared toward beating aggro, as we see three Beza, the Bounding Spring and a couple of Dust Animus. Beza really is the best Timely Reinforcements/Sunset Revely we've ever seen, simultaneously gaining a healthy chunk of life while also putting three bodies on the board to help stabilize. Sometimes you even get to draw a card off it! The rest of the board is made up of myriad ways to hose specific decks, with Rest in Peace and Kutzil's Flanker coming in against graveyard-based strategies, or Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines against decks that rely on a lot of enter-the-battlefield triggers, like the Smuggler's Surprise lists. Tishana's Tidebinder is just an all-around incredible answer to just about anything, so it often comes in here and there against decks with a lot of triggered abilities, like Golgari midrange, or hard-to-answer, post-board threats like Urabrask's Forge out of the Gruul decks.
That sums up the current state of Azorius Control, and while this almost certainly isn't the final evolution of the deck, it seems like a great place to start. When one's three-mana sweeper is incredible in 80% or more of the matches one expects to face, it becomes more and more appealing to be the one answering the questions instead of asking them. Perhaps Esper or Jeskai may be a better direction to go, in order to get more life gain, better spot removal, or even a better way to close the game quickly.
Despite aggressive decks running amok in Standard, there is naught to fear, for the woodland pest exterminators are here!
