Hi I have a RWB aggro deck and I wanted to tune the sideboard to be effective or atleast give a better fighting chance vs UW chapin control, seeing as three of the best players at my LGS play it.
I was thinking Duress, Luminarch Ascension and Manabarbs might help somewhat but is there any other cards in these colors that are effective?
What is the kind of strategy that causes UW the most trouble?
that's true, but also to activate colonade also or play jace you need to hurt yourself unless barbs gets o-ringed-also you don't always get big chalices.
UW control can deal with any situation and all these cards, any good control deck can, but the thing you have to think about is what if the card survives how will it hurt the deck
Cards that are not actually that effective against u/w (but most people think are):
Blightning, Manabarbs, Tidehollow Sculler, Goblin Ruinblaster, Mind Rot, Thought Hemorrhage, Hypnotic Specter, Emeria Angel, Random Burn Spells (Bolt, Burst, etc), Pithing Needle, Honor the Pure, Ajani Goldmane, Malakir Bloodwitch, Siege-Gang Commander, Baneslayer Angel, etc
This is not to say that those cards are bad in this match-up, they are just not nearly as good as people think they are here. If you notice, the best cards against u/w are cheap or have resisitence to countermagic.
There are three primary ways to defeat u/w decks on a strategic level.
1) Be very fast. Boros and Mono-R can be tough and any really fast aggro deck can duck under enough countermagic to defeat u/w. For instance, people who play Vampires and think Malakir Bloodwitch is the solution are likely to be disappointed. Lacerators and Pulse Trackers are actually much more effective against u/w. That said, a Lacerator Pulse Tracker deck might be much worse against the rest of the field, I am just saying that speed is far more effective against u/w than pro:white. Duress is better than Mindsludge against us, and even Mire Toll might be superior.
2) Run us out of cards. Our strategy requires us to draw a ton of cards to play our game. In addition, we dedicate a huge percentage of our deck to fighting attacking creatures and beating cards of Jund's colors. Ranger/Crab, Howling Mine/Jacerator, Halimar Excavator/Join the Ranks, these are all bad for us. Obviously this plan is not for everyone.
3) Attack us from a variety of angles with powerful cards. If an opponent is not a hyper aggro deck or a mill-deck, the best way to gain edge over us is to have a variety of ways of threatening us and have cards we do not expect so that we can't play around them properly. If we know your list, we can gain at LEAST 3-5% right out of the gate versus if we don't.
We have edge over Jund primarily because we have a lot of presideboarded cards, a ton of counter-magic (which is good against them), they have a ton of dead cards, and we generally know their list. That said, Jund is still a challenging match-up and one or two minor slip-ups can be fatal. In addition, if the Jund player's deck is unorthodox, we can start falling behind until we figure out their list.
The reason for this is that Jund puts early pressure on us (Thrinax, Leech, Stag), has natural ways to fight counter magic (Stag, Manlands, Bloodbraid), Discard (Duress, Blightning), Burn (Haste creatures, Bolt), Planeswalkers (Garruk), fatties (Malakir Bloodwitch), creatures that need to be wrathed (Stag, Siege Gang), creatures that can't be wrathed (Thrinax, Manlands), removal for Baneslayers that is not dead otherwise (Maelstrom Pusle), Land Destruction (Ruinblaster), and so on. The point is, our cards match-up great against theirs in general (by design), however if they can hit us from enough angles we can end up with the wrong answers at the wrong times. This is particularly true at levels below the Pro Tour because if u/w and Jund are played at 95% U/W has a nice edge, but if both are played at 80%, Jund starts really pulling ahead as the proficiency curve is nowhere near as sharp. The most common manifestation of this is when the Jund player just follows the script of his curve and it works out fine, whereas the U/W player is continually giving themself fewer and less ideal options with Halimar Depths, Treasure Hunt, and Jace than they would, as well as playing the wrong answer in a given moment. The result is that the u/w player can think they are following the script and actually never even see the options they are losing. For instance, sometimes Halimar Depths setting up a wrong order causes one to Hunt on the wrong turn, leaving only Flash Freeze instead of Cancel the turn that a Mind Rot gets played that leads to discarding a card that makes the u/w player have to Day of Judgement a turn earlier than they wanted instead of O-Ringing, which leads to a Siege Gang hitting with only an O-Ring in hand to deal with it, which leads to taking 9 extra damage from tokens over turns until they are wrathed, but now life total is so low that they have to use a counterspell on Lightning Bolt to the Face, when if they had more life opponent would have targeted Jace (which would have made the Jace in hand live). After using the last counterspell to stay alive from Bolt, the Jund player sticks a Bloodbraid Elf that attacks with Haste to kill (dodging O-Ring).
As you can imagine, most people are nowhere near experienced enough to realize that the reason they lost was not because the opponent had "one too many threats" or "They were one life point short." The real reason they lost is that they made a choice early on that was suboptimal and created a chain reaction that eventually lead to them losing. These suboptimal choices are usually library manipulation spells used wrong or answering a card with the wrong card or at the wrong time. You can't count on u/w opponents making these mistakes, but I assure you, not even Gabriel Nassif can make it through a game of u/w with out making mistakes, so while you can't count on any one mistake, you can count on your opponent making some mistakes throughout the game. The best way to increase the number and severity of these mistakes is to attack from a variety of angles, as every angle you attack from with multiply the potential impact of tiny errors they make early as well as make the game more and more difficult to play on their part (since there are so many variables going into decision tree).
This is not only true with Jund, but with any deck you might imagine that is full of quality cards (as opposed to hate decks, strange combo decks, etc). If your deck has high card quality (like Boss Naya, Mythic, Grixis, u/w/r) than attacking from a variety of angles is generally an effective way to combat u/w.
Some other notes: To fight u/w you MUST not cheat on mana. If your manabase is your weak point, u/w will exploit this, and not just with Tectonic Edge (also Jace- bouncing or fatesealing, permission, Chalice, Treasure Hunt, O-Ring, and more). In addition, attacking u/w's mana is generally not effective. It is not bad per say, but it is generally nowhere near as effective as it is to attack Grixis or u/w/r or Jund's mana. Goblin Ruinblaster, Edge, Spreading Seas, these are not scary at all for us. In fact, I dread the day that people realize just how effective Anathemancer is against us. It hits hard, kills Jace, can't be bounced well, fights countermagic, provides "virtual card advantage," and punishes us for doing what we want to do (where as Goblin Ruinblaster just makes our Treasure Hunts and Everflowing Chalices MUCH better). U/W is half mana and full of cheap spells and card draw, plus has the best manabase of any non-mono color deck in the format. It is not even close to realistic to beat it that way.
One final note, playing cards they don't expect is awesome, since if they don't have experience with u/w you can often outplay them anyway and if you hit them with stuff they have never seen (at least not with u/w) you can create a situation that they have no experience with. If your deck is one color, you are not going to beat them on card quality. If your deck is three or more colors, you are not going to beat them on consistency. What you can do is make it so difficult for them to figure out how to take control that they lose an inch here and there, as it generally doesn't even take a foot to crush them.
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Patrick Chapin "The Innovator"
Author of "Next Level Deckbuilding" and "Next Level Magic"
Well said, Patrick. A thousand thank you's, I have a feeling this post in particular will be an enormous help to the U/W community here.
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Sig by ChibiSwan~!
"Well, well, if it isn't the most diabolical haters this side of the Mississippi." Alters and Commissions at [URL="noodlesndoodlesalters.tumblr.com/"]Noodles & Doodles Alters[/URL]!
Have a helicopter drop you off out front. Light your cigar with a small Indonesian boy holding a black lotus. Then bust out a craw wurm deck with no sleeves. Raw dog shuffle, loose terribly, flip the table, leave in a hovercraft.
Well, interesting article, and I appreciate the contribution....
But I'm not sure I'm happy the designer of the deck just spelled out how to beat it for the noobs that couldn't figure it out by themselves though... almost wished I hadn't started playing blue white now....., oh well, guess it's time to tweak the original list more aggressively to nullify some of the good info they got from this thread... or to move to other forms of UW like Soorani control and such... although many of those points really apply to all builds
dang, I was relly looking forward to playing against stuff that other threads described as the best answers to our deck like Mind Sludge and Manabarbs (which is awesome against grixis btw, just useless, or anyways very weak, against our builds)
peace, gl
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Niteowl the blue mage....
Originally posted by thepchapin
too many people are relying far too heavily on netdecking instead of actually pushing themselves to find ways to advance the format.
Originally Posted by badjuju
As the Last of the Control Players, we are all part of a sacred brotherhood; a band of brothers who would rather die on their knees tapping islands and giving permission than live on our feet cascading into Blightning
One final note, playing cards they don't expect is awesome, since if they don't have experience with u/w you can often outplay them anyway and if you hit them with stuff they have never seen (at least not with u/w) you can create a situation that they have no experience with. If your deck is one color, you are not going to beat them on card quality. If your deck is three or more colors, you are not going to beat them on consistency. What you can do is make it so difficult for them to figure out how to take control that they lose an inch here and there, as it generally doesn't even take a foot to crush them.
Are you asking us to think outside of the box?
Recently someone brought up Aether Tradewind's compatibility with a Chalice played for 0. I might give it a try.
I'm currently MB'ing 2 each of Ajani G and Hindering light to deal with Jacerator and fast aggro. I feel Hindering Light is the perfect answer to Duress. Duress hurts bad. Real bad.
The point you made about Jund getting you down to Lightning Bolt range just so you waste a counterspell on the Lightning Bolt is very relevant and should be considered more closely with different cards not out of a stock list.
For the record, I believe his post was far more useful to those trying to play his deck than those looking for a way to defeat it.
One would be wise to take a look at everything he said, identify where he believes problems, threats, and weaknesses with the deck lie, then shore up its defenses against those particular issues and tune it to their specific meta... just as he and Nassif did.
Knowing your enemy and the tools that he employs is as important to victory as knowing yourself and your own tactics. Musashi once said:
Quote from Miyamoto Musashi »
"Flustering opponents means acting in such a way as to prevent them from having a steady mind. You try various maneuvers according to the opportunity of the moment, until you find the opponent starting to get flustered. And thus, you win at all.
Chapin just essentially said this (though in more words and somewhat less eloquently). Frankly, I am impressed both by his wisdom and the fact that he took the time to place it here on these boards.
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Sig by ChibiSwan~!
"Well, well, if it isn't the most diabolical haters this side of the Mississippi." Alters and Commissions at [URL="noodlesndoodlesalters.tumblr.com/"]Noodles & Doodles Alters[/URL]!
Have a helicopter drop you off out front. Light your cigar with a small Indonesian boy holding a black lotus. Then bust out a craw wurm deck with no sleeves. Raw dog shuffle, loose terribly, flip the table, leave in a hovercraft.
(where as Goblin Ruinblaster just makes our Treasure Hunts and Everflowing Chalices MUCH better). U/W is half mana and full of cheap spells and card draw, plus has the best manabase of any non-mono color deck in the format. It is not even close to realistic to beat it that way.
I fail to see how riun blaster makes chalice better. The blaster doesn't even interact with the chalice, ever.
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Modern (I collect the format):
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron WDeath and Taxes WSoul Sisters RWG Pod Combo URSplinter Twin URStorm RBurn
Cards that are not actually that effective against u/w (but most people think are):
Blightning, Manabarbs, Tidehollow Sculler, Goblin Ruinblaster, Mind Rot, Thought Hemorrhage, Hypnotic Specter, Emeria Angel, Random Burn Spells (Bolt, Burst, etc), Pithing Needle, Honor the Pure, Ajani Goldmane, Malakir Bloodwitch, Siege-Gang Commander, Baneslayer Angel, etc
This is not to say that those cards are bad in this match-up, they are just not nearly as good as people think they are here. If you notice, the best cards against u/w are cheap or have resisitence to countermagic.
There are three primary ways to defeat u/w decks on a strategic level.
1) Be very fast. Boros and Mono-R can be tough and any really fast aggro deck can duck under enough countermagic to defeat u/w. For instance, people who play Vampires and think Malakir Bloodwitch is the solution are likely to be disappointed. Lacerators and Pulse Trackers are actually much more effective against u/w. That said, a Lacerator Pulse Tracker deck might be much worse against the rest of the field, I am just saying that speed is far more effective against u/w than pro:white. Duress is better than Mindsludge against us, and even Mire Toll might be superior.
2) Run us out of cards. Our strategy requires us to draw a ton of cards to play our game. In addition, we dedicate a huge percentage of our deck to fighting attacking creatures and beating cards of Jund's colors. Ranger/Crab, Howling Mine/Jacerator, Halimar Excavator/Join the Ranks, these are all bad for us. Obviously this plan is not for everyone.
3) Attack us from a variety of angles with powerful cards. If an opponent is not a hyper aggro deck or a mill-deck, the best way to gain edge over us is to have a variety of ways of threatening us and have cards we do not expect so that we can't play around them properly. If we know your list, we can gain at LEAST 3-5% right out of the gate versus if we don't.
We have edge over Jund primarily because we have a lot of presideboarded cards, a ton of counter-magic (which is good against them), they have a ton of dead cards, and we generally know their list. That said, Jund is still a challenging match-up and one or two minor slip-ups can be fatal. In addition, if the Jund player's deck is unorthodox, we can start falling behind until we figure out their list.
The reason for this is that Jund puts early pressure on us (Thrinax, Leech, Stag), has natural ways to fight counter magic (Stag, Manlands, Bloodbraid), Discard (Duress, Blightning), Burn (Haste creatures, Bolt), Planeswalkers (Garruk), fatties (Malakir Bloodwitch), creatures that need to be wrathed (Stag, Siege Gang), creatures that can't be wrathed (Thrinax, Manlands), removal for Baneslayers that is not dead otherwise (Maelstrom Pusle), Land Destruction (Ruinblaster), and so on. The point is, our cards match-up great against theirs in general (by design), however if they can hit us from enough angles we can end up with the wrong answers at the wrong times. This is particularly true at levels below the Pro Tour because if u/w and Jund are played at 95% U/W has a nice edge, but if both are played at 80%, Jund starts really pulling ahead as the proficiency curve is nowhere near as sharp. The most common manifestation of this is when the Jund player just follows the script of his curve and it works out fine, whereas the U/W player is continually giving themself fewer and less ideal options with Halimar Depths, Treasure Hunt, and Jace than they would, as well as playing the wrong answer in a given moment. The result is that the u/w player can think they are following the script and actually never even see the options they are losing. For instance, sometimes Halimar Depths setting up a wrong order causes one to Hunt on the wrong turn, leaving only Flash Freeze instead of Cancel the turn that a Mind Rot gets played that leads to discarding a card that makes the u/w player have to Day of Judgement a turn earlier than they wanted instead of O-Ringing, which leads to a Siege Gang hitting with only an O-Ring in hand to deal with it, which leads to taking 9 extra damage from tokens over turns until they are wrathed, but now life total is so low that they have to use a counterspell on Lightning Bolt to the Face, when if they had more life opponent would have targeted Jace (which would have made the Jace in hand live). After using the last counterspell to stay alive from Bolt, the Jund player sticks a Bloodbraid Elf that attacks with Haste to kill (dodging O-Ring).
As you can imagine, most people are nowhere near experienced enough to realize that the reason they lost was not because the opponent had "one too many threats" or "They were one life point short." The real reason they lost is that they made a choice early on that was suboptimal and created a chain reaction that eventually lead to them losing. These suboptimal choices are usually library manipulation spells used wrong or answering a card with the wrong card or at the wrong time. You can't count on u/w opponents making these mistakes, but I assure you, not even Gabriel Nassif can make it through a game of u/w with out making mistakes, so while you can't count on any one mistake, you can count on your opponent making some mistakes throughout the game. The best way to increase the number and severity of these mistakes is to attack from a variety of angles, as every angle you attack from with multiply the potential impact of tiny errors they make early as well as make the game more and more difficult to play on their part (since there are so many variables going into decision tree).
This is not only true with Jund, but with any deck you might imagine that is full of quality cards (as opposed to hate decks, strange combo decks, etc). If your deck has high card quality (like Boss Naya, Mythic, Grixis, u/w/r) than attacking from a variety of angles is generally an effective way to combat u/w.
Some other notes: To fight u/w you MUST not cheat on mana. If your manabase is your weak point, u/w will exploit this, and not just with Tectonic Edge (also Jace- bouncing or fatesealing, permission, Chalice, Treasure Hunt, O-Ring, and more). In addition, attacking u/w's mana is generally not effective. It is not bad per say, but it is generally nowhere near as effective as it is to attack Grixis or u/w/r or Jund's mana. Goblin Ruinblaster, Edge, Spreading Seas, these are not scary at all for us. In fact, I dread the day that people realize just how effective Anathemancer is against us. It hits hard, kills Jace, can't be bounced well, fights countermagic, provides "virtual card advantage," and punishes us for doing what we want to do (where as Goblin Ruinblaster just makes our Treasure Hunts and Everflowing Chalices MUCH better). U/W is half mana and full of cheap spells and card draw, plus has the best manabase of any non-mono color deck in the format. It is not even close to realistic to beat it that way.
One final note, playing cards they don't expect is awesome, since if they don't have experience with u/w you can often outplay them anyway and if you hit them with stuff they have never seen (at least not with u/w) you can create a situation that they have no experience with. If your deck is one color, you are not going to beat them on card quality. If your deck is three or more colors, you are not going to beat them on consistency. What you can do is make it so difficult for them to figure out how to take control that they lose an inch here and there, as it generally doesn't even take a foot to crush them.
Wow!!!
Strategies to beat the deck from the master deck creator himself!
So the secret tech against UW is anathemancer eh? Thank you so much, as obvious as it is, I never would have though have using this guy
Well, interesting article, and I appreciate the contribution....
But I'm not sure I'm happy the designer of the deck just spelled out how to beat it for the noobs that couldn't figure it out by themselves though... almost wished I hadn't started playing blue white now....., oh well, guess it's time to tweak the original list more aggressively to nullify some of the good info they got from this thread... or to move to other forms of UW like Soorani control and such... although many of those points really apply to all builds
dang, I was relly looking forward to playing against stuff that other threads described as the best answers to our deck like Mind Sludge and Manabarbs (which is awesome against grixis btw, just useless, or anyways very weak, against our builds)
peace, gl
If you rely on pros to build decks for you, don't go around calling other magic players noobs.
I fail to see how riun blaster makes chalice better. The blaster doesn't even interact with the chalice, ever.
That's exactly the point. Ruinblaster is there to deny us mana. Normally Chalice is just a good accelerant, but if they're casting Ruinblaster our Chalice becomes untouchable mana and causes Ruinblaster to be used in vain.
Same holds true with Treasure Hunt, we normally don't necessarily care about the 4 land off a Treasure Hunt, but if they're trying to hit us with Ruinblaster then our Treasure Hunts are akin to punching them in the face.
I play Grixis control, and this is one of the decks I used to not think was a problem, but with the rise of T. Edge and, as you stated earlier, the fragility of the grixis manabase, U/W really has become one of the decks I don't like to see if I am trying to 4-0.
One question I have: I have four cards in my sb dedicated specifically to this deck: 2 Thought Hemorrhage and 2 Telemin Performance. Why is thought hem not one of the more effective cards when I name negate or DoJ? And if I win the counter war that telemin will likely generate, I mill half your deck and get control of Iona.
I can see how anathemancer would be a problem for you, but it just doesn't seem like a back breaking card to me; please explain.
I play Grixis control, and this is one of the decks I used to not think was a problem, but with the rise of T. Edge and, as you stated earlier, the fragility of the grixis manabase, U/W really has become one of the decks I don't like to see if I am trying to 4-0.
One question I have: I have four cards in my sb dedicated specifically to this deck: 2 Thought Hemorrhage and 2 Telemin Performance. Why is thought hem not one of the more effective cards when I name negate or DoJ? And if I win the counter war that telemin will likely generate, I mill half your deck and get control of Iona.
I can see how anathemancer would be a problem for you, but it just doesn't seem like a back breaking card to me; please explain.
Why would you name Negate or DoJ? Name Jace or Mind Spring, take away our card advantage engines. Either way though, Thought Hemorrhage doesn't stop us from winning, we aren't a combo deck or a deck that only has 1 or 2 ways to win. Jace, Elspeth, Martial Coup, Iona, Colonnade all exhibit easy ways to win.
Telemin Performance is alright, but you won't ever hit Iona postboard. You'll either hit Baneslayer or Kor Firewalker (hitting Baneslayer isn't bad). The problem is that you almost cannot win the counter war with us using Tectonic Edge on you and having Chalices on our side.
If you name jace, the only win cons become either iona, coup tokens or the man lands; which can be dealt with by the use of removal (maybe not easily but still easier than a jace fatesealing your ass.)
I can see how anathemancer would be a problem for you, but it just doesn't seem like a back breaking card to me; please explain.
The same reason it was good against 5CC. UW doesn't want to counter it the first time it comes out, because it has unearth, so then you end up losing a Jace, or taking damage. Once they can unearth him, you don't want to play your Jace because the damage is uncounterable. Plus you can't counter uncounterable things such as unearth....
So basically, it's a 2 for 1 that's uncounterable. The combination of the two most annoying types of cards for U/W.
I was thinking Duress, Luminarch Ascension and Manabarbs might help somewhat but is there any other cards in these colors that are effective?
What is the kind of strategy that causes UW the most trouble?
i'll take two to wipe the board. have fun playing more spells.
UW control can deal with any situation and all these cards, any good control deck can, but the thing you have to think about is what if the card survives how will it hurt the deck
Standard.
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron
WDeath and Taxes
WSoul Sisters
RWG Pod Combo
URSplinter Twin
URStorm
RBurn
Type 2: UBControlBW
Extended: UWBGControlGBWU
Legacy:UWRGContolUWRG
Vintage: UWG Poorman Aggro UWG
Steppe Lynx, Elspeth, Ranger of Eos, Luminarch Ascension
Goblin Guide, Hellspark, Hell's Thunder, Banefire
Bloodghast, Underworld Dreams, Duress, Pulse Tracker/Lacerator
Anathemancer, Ajani Vengeant, Lodestone Golem
Cards that are not actually that effective against u/w (but most people think are):
Blightning, Manabarbs, Tidehollow Sculler, Goblin Ruinblaster, Mind Rot, Thought Hemorrhage, Hypnotic Specter, Emeria Angel, Random Burn Spells (Bolt, Burst, etc), Pithing Needle, Honor the Pure, Ajani Goldmane, Malakir Bloodwitch, Siege-Gang Commander, Baneslayer Angel, etc
This is not to say that those cards are bad in this match-up, they are just not nearly as good as people think they are here. If you notice, the best cards against u/w are cheap or have resisitence to countermagic.
There are three primary ways to defeat u/w decks on a strategic level.
1) Be very fast. Boros and Mono-R can be tough and any really fast aggro deck can duck under enough countermagic to defeat u/w. For instance, people who play Vampires and think Malakir Bloodwitch is the solution are likely to be disappointed. Lacerators and Pulse Trackers are actually much more effective against u/w. That said, a Lacerator Pulse Tracker deck might be much worse against the rest of the field, I am just saying that speed is far more effective against u/w than pro:white. Duress is better than Mindsludge against us, and even Mire Toll might be superior.
2) Run us out of cards. Our strategy requires us to draw a ton of cards to play our game. In addition, we dedicate a huge percentage of our deck to fighting attacking creatures and beating cards of Jund's colors. Ranger/Crab, Howling Mine/Jacerator, Halimar Excavator/Join the Ranks, these are all bad for us. Obviously this plan is not for everyone.
3) Attack us from a variety of angles with powerful cards. If an opponent is not a hyper aggro deck or a mill-deck, the best way to gain edge over us is to have a variety of ways of threatening us and have cards we do not expect so that we can't play around them properly. If we know your list, we can gain at LEAST 3-5% right out of the gate versus if we don't.
We have edge over Jund primarily because we have a lot of presideboarded cards, a ton of counter-magic (which is good against them), they have a ton of dead cards, and we generally know their list. That said, Jund is still a challenging match-up and one or two minor slip-ups can be fatal. In addition, if the Jund player's deck is unorthodox, we can start falling behind until we figure out their list.
The reason for this is that Jund puts early pressure on us (Thrinax, Leech, Stag), has natural ways to fight counter magic (Stag, Manlands, Bloodbraid), Discard (Duress, Blightning), Burn (Haste creatures, Bolt), Planeswalkers (Garruk), fatties (Malakir Bloodwitch), creatures that need to be wrathed (Stag, Siege Gang), creatures that can't be wrathed (Thrinax, Manlands), removal for Baneslayers that is not dead otherwise (Maelstrom Pusle), Land Destruction (Ruinblaster), and so on. The point is, our cards match-up great against theirs in general (by design), however if they can hit us from enough angles we can end up with the wrong answers at the wrong times. This is particularly true at levels below the Pro Tour because if u/w and Jund are played at 95% U/W has a nice edge, but if both are played at 80%, Jund starts really pulling ahead as the proficiency curve is nowhere near as sharp. The most common manifestation of this is when the Jund player just follows the script of his curve and it works out fine, whereas the U/W player is continually giving themself fewer and less ideal options with Halimar Depths, Treasure Hunt, and Jace than they would, as well as playing the wrong answer in a given moment. The result is that the u/w player can think they are following the script and actually never even see the options they are losing. For instance, sometimes Halimar Depths setting up a wrong order causes one to Hunt on the wrong turn, leaving only Flash Freeze instead of Cancel the turn that a Mind Rot gets played that leads to discarding a card that makes the u/w player have to Day of Judgement a turn earlier than they wanted instead of O-Ringing, which leads to a Siege Gang hitting with only an O-Ring in hand to deal with it, which leads to taking 9 extra damage from tokens over turns until they are wrathed, but now life total is so low that they have to use a counterspell on Lightning Bolt to the Face, when if they had more life opponent would have targeted Jace (which would have made the Jace in hand live). After using the last counterspell to stay alive from Bolt, the Jund player sticks a Bloodbraid Elf that attacks with Haste to kill (dodging O-Ring).
As you can imagine, most people are nowhere near experienced enough to realize that the reason they lost was not because the opponent had "one too many threats" or "They were one life point short." The real reason they lost is that they made a choice early on that was suboptimal and created a chain reaction that eventually lead to them losing. These suboptimal choices are usually library manipulation spells used wrong or answering a card with the wrong card or at the wrong time. You can't count on u/w opponents making these mistakes, but I assure you, not even Gabriel Nassif can make it through a game of u/w with out making mistakes, so while you can't count on any one mistake, you can count on your opponent making some mistakes throughout the game. The best way to increase the number and severity of these mistakes is to attack from a variety of angles, as every angle you attack from with multiply the potential impact of tiny errors they make early as well as make the game more and more difficult to play on their part (since there are so many variables going into decision tree).
This is not only true with Jund, but with any deck you might imagine that is full of quality cards (as opposed to hate decks, strange combo decks, etc). If your deck has high card quality (like Boss Naya, Mythic, Grixis, u/w/r) than attacking from a variety of angles is generally an effective way to combat u/w.
Some other notes: To fight u/w you MUST not cheat on mana. If your manabase is your weak point, u/w will exploit this, and not just with Tectonic Edge (also Jace- bouncing or fatesealing, permission, Chalice, Treasure Hunt, O-Ring, and more). In addition, attacking u/w's mana is generally not effective. It is not bad per say, but it is generally nowhere near as effective as it is to attack Grixis or u/w/r or Jund's mana. Goblin Ruinblaster, Edge, Spreading Seas, these are not scary at all for us. In fact, I dread the day that people realize just how effective Anathemancer is against us. It hits hard, kills Jace, can't be bounced well, fights countermagic, provides "virtual card advantage," and punishes us for doing what we want to do (where as Goblin Ruinblaster just makes our Treasure Hunts and Everflowing Chalices MUCH better). U/W is half mana and full of cheap spells and card draw, plus has the best manabase of any non-mono color deck in the format. It is not even close to realistic to beat it that way.
One final note, playing cards they don't expect is awesome, since if they don't have experience with u/w you can often outplay them anyway and if you hit them with stuff they have never seen (at least not with u/w) you can create a situation that they have no experience with. If your deck is one color, you are not going to beat them on card quality. If your deck is three or more colors, you are not going to beat them on consistency. What you can do is make it so difficult for them to figure out how to take control that they lose an inch here and there, as it generally doesn't even take a foot to crush them.
"The Innovator"
Author of "Next Level Deckbuilding" and "Next Level Magic"
Well said, Patrick. A thousand thank you's, I have a feeling this post in particular will be an enormous help to the U/W community here.
Sig by ChibiSwan~!
"Well, well, if it isn't the most diabolical haters this side of the Mississippi."
Alters and Commissions at [URL="noodlesndoodlesalters.tumblr.com/"]Noodles & Doodles Alters[/URL]!
Currently playing:
T2
BW Aggro-Midrange BW
But I'm not sure I'm happy the designer of the deck just spelled out how to beat it for the noobs that couldn't figure it out by themselves though... almost wished I hadn't started playing blue white now....., oh well, guess it's time to tweak the original list more aggressively to nullify some of the good info they got from this thread... or to move to other forms of UW like Soorani control and such... although many of those points really apply to all builds
dang, I was relly looking forward to playing against stuff that other threads described as the best answers to our deck like Mind Sludge and Manabarbs (which is awesome against grixis btw, just useless, or anyways very weak, against our builds)
peace, gl
Originally posted by thepchapin
too many people are relying far too heavily on netdecking instead of actually pushing themselves to find ways to advance the format.
Originally Posted by badjuju
As the Last of the Control Players, we are all part of a sacred brotherhood; a band of brothers who would rather die on their knees tapping islands and giving permission than live on our feet cascading into Blightning
Are you asking us to think outside of the box?
Recently someone brought up Aether Tradewind's compatibility with a Chalice played for 0. I might give it a try.
I'm currently MB'ing 2 each of Ajani G and Hindering light to deal with Jacerator and fast aggro. I feel Hindering Light is the perfect answer to Duress. Duress hurts bad. Real bad.
The point you made about Jund getting you down to Lightning Bolt range just so you waste a counterspell on the Lightning Bolt is very relevant and should be considered more closely with different cards not out of a stock list.
One would be wise to take a look at everything he said, identify where he believes problems, threats, and weaknesses with the deck lie, then shore up its defenses against those particular issues and tune it to their specific meta... just as he and Nassif did.
Knowing your enemy and the tools that he employs is as important to victory as knowing yourself and your own tactics. Musashi once said:
Chapin just essentially said this (though in more words and somewhat less eloquently). Frankly, I am impressed both by his wisdom and the fact that he took the time to place it here on these boards.
Sig by ChibiSwan~!
"Well, well, if it isn't the most diabolical haters this side of the Mississippi."
Alters and Commissions at [URL="noodlesndoodlesalters.tumblr.com/"]Noodles & Doodles Alters[/URL]!
WURDelver
[/MANA]MANA]R[/MANA]GTron
WDeath and Taxes
WSoul Sisters
RWG Pod Combo
URSplinter Twin
URStorm
RBurn
Wow!!!
Strategies to beat the deck from the master deck creator himself!
So the secret tech against UW is anathemancer eh? Thank you so much, as obvious as it is, I never would have though have using this guy
If you rely on pros to build decks for you, don't go around calling other magic players noobs.
That's exactly the point. Ruinblaster is there to deny us mana. Normally Chalice is just a good accelerant, but if they're casting Ruinblaster our Chalice becomes untouchable mana and causes Ruinblaster to be used in vain.
Same holds true with Treasure Hunt, we normally don't necessarily care about the 4 land off a Treasure Hunt, but if they're trying to hit us with Ruinblaster then our Treasure Hunts are akin to punching them in the face.
One question I have: I have four cards in my sb dedicated specifically to this deck: 2 Thought Hemorrhage and 2 Telemin Performance. Why is thought hem not one of the more effective cards when I name negate or DoJ? And if I win the counter war that telemin will likely generate, I mill half your deck and get control of Iona.
I can see how anathemancer would be a problem for you, but it just doesn't seem like a back breaking card to me; please explain.
Type 2:
RBU Grixis Control UBR
Why would you name Negate or DoJ? Name Jace or Mind Spring, take away our card advantage engines. Either way though, Thought Hemorrhage doesn't stop us from winning, we aren't a combo deck or a deck that only has 1 or 2 ways to win. Jace, Elspeth, Martial Coup, Iona, Colonnade all exhibit easy ways to win.
Telemin Performance is alright, but you won't ever hit Iona postboard. You'll either hit Baneslayer or Kor Firewalker (hitting Baneslayer isn't bad). The problem is that you almost cannot win the counter war with us using Tectonic Edge on you and having Chalices on our side.
The same reason it was good against 5CC. UW doesn't want to counter it the first time it comes out, because it has unearth, so then you end up losing a Jace, or taking damage. Once they can unearth him, you don't want to play your Jace because the damage is uncounterable. Plus you can't counter uncounterable things such as unearth....
So basically, it's a 2 for 1 that's uncounterable. The combination of the two most annoying types of cards for U/W.