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The Return of Colorless Control:
A Primer
Introduction
I chose to run no colors for a couple reasons. The first one is for flavor, because I wanted to build a completely colorless control deck that sill worked relatively well. It also completely liberates my landbase, meaning that I can run the best utility lands and the Tron lands without worrying about not having the right colors at the right times.
That said, you can definitely add colors in your versions if you want to. Some good choices would be for Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and more killspells, or for a prison-style deck with Ghostly Prison and others.
- Very good when it comes to attrition and long games
- Removal/other disruption resistant
- Toolbox approach with a large selection of lands and versatile cards
- Usually a big surprise for the opponent game one
- Gets a huge amount of hate post-board
- Has no instant-speed removal or spells
- If the main threats get removed, it can be hard to finish games
- Liliana of the Veil can single-handedly win games against us.
Card Choices
The lands function as a toolbox for me, which provide different uses and solutions to problems.
Urza's Mine , Urza's Power Plant , and Urza's Tower are our Tron lands, which produces enormous amounts of mana. This is essential for things like All Is Dust or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon which require large amounts of mana to be cast. The deck can function without the Tron lands, but becomes much slower.
Mutavault is a realistic win-condition that can beat in for a bunch each turn. The very low activation cost is also great value.
Urza's Factory is a solid way to finish up a game if I have lots of mana but nothing to spend it on. The tokens also survive our board-wipes, which give us a huge advantage late into the game.
Buried Ruin is not as important game one as it is games two and three. Getting back anything that gets hated out is huge in attrition matches, and it can be abused with Crucible of Worlds.
Ghost Quarter is the first half of our land destruction package. Replacing the lands is not great, but it deals a huge blow to Bloom Titan and other decks relying on manlands/utility lands.
Tectonic Edge takes care of anything for very little mana, but unfortunately only becomes relevant later in the game. However, combining this with Crucible of Worlds and Karn Liberated means that we can quickly annihilate our opponent's land bases and shut them out of the game.
Eye of Ugin isn't really a land, as it functions more as a tutor and enabler for our main finisher: Mr. Spaghettis himself, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . It can't produce mana, so instead should be replaced by non-land cards when siding.
The numerous artifacts are the core of this deck. They are meant to have an answer for each situation and create combos that will kill the opponent.
Expedition Map has two duties: assemble the Tron lands as fast as possible to be able to cast big spells, and later in the game, search up the right land at the right time to be able to answer any threat our opponent poses.
Relic of Progenitus is a one-mana cantrip that hurts a surprising amount of decks. Exiling all graveyards can hinder us with our Crucible of Worlds plan, but it proves invaluable against a number of strategies.
Pithing Needle is useful against a number of individual cards, notably manlands, which resist the deck's wipes, and any walkers like Liliana of the Veil.
Darksteel Pendant doesn't do anything particularly remarkable, but filtering our draws can be important, especially in a deck where you always need a different answer. The indestructible is a small perk that comes in handy games two and three.
Sun Droplet is an extremely useful guarantee versus aggro decks, burn specifically. Dropping one of these makes the game slide towards us, two of them end it on the spot.
Crucible of Worlds is a huge card engine that will eventually give you an unsurmountable advantage. It fuels our land destruction/land recovery strategy, renders opposing Ghost Quarter s more or less useless, and makes opposing removal on our manlands look ridiculous. This card does a very subtle job, but it does it extremely well.
Ensnaring Bridge is possibly the single best card in this deck when it comes to stalling. The Bridge's job is essentially to stall for turns and turns until we hit a boardwipe or a win-con. Because of the vast amounts of mana, emptying our hand is fairly easy and gets even easier with Bottled Cloister .
Bottled Cloister is our Bob, drawing us cards while rendering our opponent's discard/sorcery speed messing useless. It also forms a wonderful combo with Ensnaring Bridge , shutting our opponents down while we dig for answers. It should be used with precaution though because we will lose our hand if it gets destroyed during the opponent's turn.
Trading Post has a huge amount of uses, either gaining us life, which helps immensely against aggro decks, giving us goats, getting back important pieces, or nulling spot removal/getting rid of the Bridge when we need Spaghettis to swing.
The non-land, non-artifact colorless spells are here to give us the final push towards winning a game. They are the most expensive spells in the deck and have a massive impact when dropped.
All Is Dust is a one-sided boardwipe in this build. Because we don't have a single colored card, this gives us a huge advantage and many times will single-handedly balance out or win the game.
Karn Liberated is mostly here for his -3, namely land destruction and exiling anything that could cause problems. His ult is, obviously, game-winning, but rarely intervenes as he will more likely +4 for a couple turns then start getting rid of the opponent's lands.
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is our secondary finisher. A repeatable board-wipe is invaluable versus a lot of strategies, he can level out versus burn, and provides an unmovable clock similar to Keranos, God of Storms in control builds. Without him, the deck would be much less threatening.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is the single most powerful creature ever printed in the game, and consists of our main finisher. Dropping this will end the game on the spot 90% of the time, and it can be tutored with Eye of Ugin . The anti-mill can also be very useful when facing very long games, where Bottled Cloister can accidentally draw you too many cards.
Chalice of the Void is used against aggro decks (Affinity, Infect, Merfolk, RDW), where you can set it to or .
Defense Grid is used against any form of control, notably Twin and Grixis.
Pithing Needle will get a third copy against most midrange decks and Merfolk to deal with planeswalkers and manlands.
Platinum Angel can be sided in against decks with little to no removal, such as Infect and Amulet Bloom.
Spellskite can be used against Twin and Infect, but also to protect my stuff from hate games two and three.
Sun Droplet gets a full playset against most midrange and aggro decks.
Torpor Orb is for Twin and Soul Sisters, as well as the occasional Allies or Slivers.
Trinisphere will come in against any storm-type deck, as well as aggro or decks that rely on multiple cheap spells.
Combos and Strategy
Crucible of Worlds can be used to slowly gain huge advantages from our landbase, as well as ignore the large amount of Tron hate. Some notable interactions are with Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge , where you can slowly destroy a land per turn. This might not seem like much, but it's great against 2+ color decks where you can get rid of the most troublesome color. It goes best coupled with Karn Liberated and his -3.
Crucible of Worlds can also retrieve artifacts with Buried Ruin to repeatedly get the right lands with Expedition Map or retrieve things lost because of hate.
Ensnaring Bridge is our best stalling machine, and has extra value here for the effect it has with Bottled Cloister . Since you remove your hand from the game at the beginning of your opponent's turn, they will never be able to attack you unless the remove the bridge (with some exceptions). Another good way to empty your hand is with Karn Liberated +4 on yourself. This possibility is obviously worse, but it can still be used and don't be afraid to exile a Ugin, the Spirit Dragon if you think that you can ult Karn next turn.
Conclusion
I hope that you enjoyed this short primer about Colorless Control!! Please comment and suggest below if needed. Thank you!!
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| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 8 years |
| Last updated | 8 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 11 - 0 Mythic Rares 17 - 13 Rares 24 - 2 Uncommons 8 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 4.03 |
| Tokens | Assembly-Worker 2/2 C, Goat 0/1 W |
| Folders | Untap, Like!, good Modern decks, kickass mootherfuckers, Wishful Thinking, Actual cancer, Modern, $$$, 5. Inspirations, cool decks |
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