Classic control style deck. Doesnt want to rush anything, and wins through card advantage. Most important thing: Really use your counters thoughfully, never tap out, if the opponent could still play a threat, most importantly a planeswalker. That also means, you have to let your gearhulk die, if otherwise your opponent had an uncontested next mainphase.
27 Lands:Been running really good with that, and have no mana screws at all, instead of still having had some at 26 lands. You really want to get a land drop every turn until turn 6 100% of the time, so 27 lands does well fore me.Anticipate and Glimmer will help you not to flood out in mid and late game. Unless you really need a land, you should always scry the lands to the bottom with Glimmer. You are gonna draw enough anyway.The composition is optimizable. I settled at 5 manlands for now. Sometimes you are going a little thin on finishers against Bx control decks with lots of creature removal, so you actually need those to close out the game.It might be a bit too heavy on the nonbasic lands, especially since prairie stream and port town need the basics, but ive been running good so far. You want your Disallow, Harnessed lightning and Stasis snare online on turn 3, so you need WWUUR. And so far, i could always plan my landdrops to hit crucial spells like fumigate on turn 5 with a basic or aether hub coming down untapped.
Creatures:Yeah 4 off gearhulk is must, hes just so good. You want to have him flashback glimmer of genius or confirm suspicions if you can, and only flashback a counterspell if you have no other option.
Enchantments:Some lists only play 1 stasis snare, but in the coming slightly slower format with things like yahenni probably running around (and still having scrapheap scrounger for example) that thing is really good.Obligatory 1 off Quarantine field. Good against anything that goes through your counters, most importantly Feverd visions, Dynavolt and planeswalker.
Sorceries:Not sure on this one. Thats a gamble that the format will be slow enough not to play radiant flames, which is really good against token decks, but really bad against anything else. Descend upon the sinfull again, to remove stuff that likes to come back from the graveyard. though 4 expensive sweepers is a commitment, against certain matchups, you really need it on turn 5, so its good to have abundance of it while in other matchups, those sweepers just sit in your hand and are expensive 1 for 1s at best. this is gonna be adjusted according to meta.
Instants:Yeah, Disallow is just awesome. 4 off is self explanatory.Could afford playing 2 negates due to the strong sweepers and they have done a great job, countering early planeswalkers, Transgresses and protecting a gearhulk later.3 anticipate, 4 glimmer is fair. Sometimes you wished, you had a fifth glimmer or another anticipate, but couldnt free up any spot on anticipate yet. Also, its worse than one might think to flood on anticipates in the early game.Harnessed lightning, between the other creature removal, is the best. Youd really play 5, if you could.And then the one off Confirm suspicions, that you find here and there in jeskai and UR control lists. At first i played Jace in that spot, but thats a 5cc sorcery speed spell, that most of the time is actually a liability and lost me some games, because i wanted to get it onto the board or protect it! CS instead, you really play around getting that spell resolved, and when it does, its just game sometimes. With your big mana base building up, its really a "Counter spell, draw 3" and when you can recast it with gearhulk, its essentially an 8 for 2 (2 cards of yours are giving you a creature, taking a card from the opponent and are giving you 6 draws), and just overwhelming card advantage. Its not clear on first site but it really is a centerpiece of the deck in the card advantage game.
Sideboard:Work in progress here as well. 2 shock, 2 Authorities against saheeli combo, but i havent been impressed with Authorities so far and might drop it alltogether. Its not that good after all. Radiant flames against those token decks. And the rest is to make it more suitable against mirrors or combo decks (more counters, giddy) and the other half against aggro (immo, Stasis, flames). Though i am not settled on this. I saw some players have a 1 off flame leash for example (deal 4 dmg to creature or player for 3R), which seems a bit bad, but does a lot of thing you want to have against decks that play creatures and gideons for example.
Unfortunately, the xmage players didnt do me a favor of throwing a lot of strong decks against me so far ( ;) ), so the matchups are not so clear to me. Against the various Black/X control decks it is really strong. Anything combo like should be good as well. Aggro/planeswalker heavy decks (GW tokens) and also the Green/black Counters deck is a big question mark. The first can force you to mainphase Fumigate and then sneak a gideon into play, that makes your life hard and the latter one can just mass up so much power by turn 4 that you might just be too slow If (!) you dont have an early removal. Even radiant flames wont help you there, cause their creatures are bigger than 3 toughness.
To sum it, for me the construction sites on this deck is the landbase, the Sweepers and the Sideboard. the closest change i am at right now is to exchange a sweeper for a spot removal, but i havent played a lot of aggro decks lately, so this feeling might be deceiving.
Any suggestions or playtesting or own play experience is welcome!!
cheersschweiner
