:( Not the funnest way to start a night of testing a new deck, I wound up having a bit of fun by spending the round watching my girlfriend play through her matches.

In a showdown between two non-standard control decks I wound up winning out as the flexibility of my mainboarded cards lead to less dead draws than my opponent. Due to the lack of counter magic I was unafraid to slam a Torment of Scarabs on turn four. The combination of it and Angrath on the next turn was enough to force a desperation Mastermind's Acquisition for a copy of Cast Out from my opponent's maindeck. While the initial lack of any pressure outside of Torment of Scarabs hurt (many removal spells were discarded), I was able to bury my opponent under the card advantage generated by chaining Dark Bargain at their end step. This ensured I had both a second Torment of Scarabs on the battlefield and a Cut / Ribbons in the graveyard to seal Game One, even after Approach of the Second Sun's first cast.

Game Two started with a bang when an early Duress found what turned out to be the only copy of Lich's Mastery in the deck. Removing it from possible play ensured that my opponent would gain no extra card advantage from their multiple life gain spells. I was hamstrung a little by a Lost Legacy naming Torment of Hailfire (which a Doomfall had revealed in Game One) but ultimately the combination of Torment of Scarabs and a severe misplay by my opponent (they forced me to discard a Cut / Ribbons, likely due to a lack of fully understanding aftermath cards) wound up sealing the match.

Overall the games were fun to play through and my opponent was a good guy (I can appreciate someone who loves a wonky enchantment like Lich's Mastery), and we had a nice chat about preferences and optimal builds of Control.

ADDITIONS

• +2 Treasure Map  ^Flip

• +2 Duress

• +2 Lost Legacy

• +1 Arguel's Blood Fast  ^Flip

REMOVED

• -3 Abrade

• -2 Fatal Push

• -2 Cast Down

Moving on to Round Three, I was matched up against a deck that I really wanted to get some reps in against: one of the Goblin Chainwhirler decks that have been causing a kerfuffle. In Game One I was able to line up my removal pretty well on his creatures (the highlight being a well timed Cast Down on a Glorybringer) and found room to stick a Torment of Scarabs to being the process of draining out my opponent. However, I still found myself getting slowly bled out by a Chandra, Torch of Defiance. In the end, with my opponent down to a fairly low life total and nothing but a Chandra and Scrapheap Scrounger I was able to find a Torment of Hailfire that was just big enough to be lethal.

Given how close Game One wound up being, I geared myself up for a slugfest involving a whole lot of Duress' being pointed at me in Game Two. Unfortunately for my opponent they had to mulligan down to five cards on the play while I kept my opening seven. While one of those five included a Bomat Courier, it was quickly shot down before it could gain any card advantage. Things got worse for my opponent when, on turn five, they found themselves staring at an Angrath, the Flame-Chained with a single card in hand. This caused an immediate scoop and a round win for me.

While Game Two was an unfortunate way to close out the round, I was really happy with the power level of my deck in Game One. It really felt like I was able to keep pace with the creatures in one of the "Best" decks in Standard and give it a good challenge. Hopefully I can continue to stress test the list against more of these aggressive decks in the future.

ADDITIONS

• +3 Magma Spray

• +2 Moment of Craving

REMOVED

• -2 Duress

• -3 Doomfall

In the finals I was matched against an interesting list that looked to leverage individually powerful cards like Gonti, Lord of Luxury rather than rely on synergy with Winding Constrictor. In Game One, I was once again able to leverage my removal to great effect against my opponent's creature base. This helped protect an early Angrath, the Flame-Chained which continued to do work alongside Torment of Scarabs when it came to restricting my opponent's hand size.

For Game Two, my opponent was able to put me on notice early by using Lost Legacy to clear away my Angraths. I continued to focus on removing threats from the board, utilizing two Cut / Ribbonss in the process, hoping to see more win conditions as the game went on. My hopes of sticking a Torment of Scarabs were dashed when two of which were destroyed via Naturalize and Vraska, Relic Seeker. Due to Vraska's low loyalty following the use of her minus ability the game was eventually decided by the two copies of Cut / Ribbons in my graveyard, helped along by a sideboard inclusion Treasure Map  ^Flip.

ADDITIONS

• +2 Treasure Map  ^Flip

REMOVED

• -2 Duress

Results aside, the deck was super fun to play, I had a blast slowly draining my opponents of both life and cards. While this strategy may not be for everyone and really isn't most supported strategy, I feel like the surprise factor alone can be enough to carry the deck few a wins at FNM. It never felt like the deck was underpowered or underprepared for any of the matchups I came up against. That being said, I was unfortunately unable to test against any-based decks, hopefully that will change in the near future. So far as possible changes, the deck could definitely use another source of card advantage. While Dark Bargain was great for me all night, I would say that at least one additional source of card draw may be needed to help keep pace with some of the other control decks around. Which brings me to the changes I've gone ahead and made for testing:

ADDED:

• 2x Jaya Ballard

REMOVED

• 2x Cut / Ribbons

While going down a few Cut / Ribbons is something I'm fairly reluctant to do since it has the potential to be the absolute nuts, I also found myself in a few situations where the spell felt pretty clunky. Against other Control decks with low creature counts I'd often have at least one sitting in hand with nothing to target. In at least one occasion I had to purposely get above maximum handsize to get to the Cut / Ribbons portion of the card. Against aggressive strategies, meanwhile, the card being Sorcery speed can definitely be a pain. While being able to kill Glorybringer is a point in the card's favor, the damage the dragon was able to cause is likely to be a huge pain to come back from.

Jaya Ballard represents just about everything I'd like to add to the deck. She can ramp us by THREE mana to make our big burn spells more effective. She is great at dumping dead cards while digging towards key combo pieces. Finally, her ultimate is absolute gravy in a deck that is constantly looking to sling removal across the table. It's for these reasons that I'm okay with testing her in the main deck.