Have you considered Silumgar's Scorn ? Its good even If you dont have a dragon.

Also, you may want to run Crux of Fate over end hostilities because the crux wont hit your dragons.

BoardFire

I did a lot of play-testing with Silumgar's Scorn, and I'm really on the fence about it. An early-game Force Spike is alright, but the either wasn't on the field when I needed it early on, or it was tapped (a la Dismal Backwater, for example), so I swapped it out for Dissolve, filled out the playset of Silkwrap, and started seeing much greater consistency in the counterspells as well as the deck's ability to stabilize early on.

I agree on the Crux of Fate call; I just haven't been able to find the two copies I would need to replace End Hostilities yet.

Ironically, Silumgar's Scorn is the reason I wanted to make this deck.

Dragonlord Silumgar get creatures which somehow make it to the opponent's field, and Dragonlord Ojutai has hexproof when untapped. Narset Transcendent has a good +1 with an amazing ulti. Although they're overpriced, they will go down and be the new meta.

buttergolem - Aye, the reason they aren't on there is price, and I doubt Narset Transcendent will go down much until she rotates; even then she will be a "collectors' item" (frowny face), but even then, that is way too late considering I want this ready for DTK game day.

I wouldn't mind Dragonlord Silumgar as a one-of for the sideboard, but running Dragonlord Ojutai pushes this deck closer to the really-not-so-budget mark.

Have you considered using Utter-End? It's also known as the Poor-man's Downfall. But it handles Planeswalkers, opposing dragon threat recursion from Haven of the Spirit Dragon (except the hexproof guys) and well, literally everything. I suppose it doesn't handle Nissa Worldwaker's Land Creatures. It is a solid card though. They are reasonably cheap as well.

The 4 Mana cost may be a bit unappealing for a removal card. I can understand that. One way to off-set the drawback of such a large mana investment for a 1-1 trade, is to rely a bit more on Delve. This will allow you to cast more things in the earlier game while being slightly less mana hungry.

Some of your cards do not support Delve very well. Things such as your white, enchantment based removal cards. That's fine though. It isn't necessary to force the deck run things that promote Delve. Supporting it, however, will increase speed and efficiency for doing so. I have seen decks run a Tasigur, 3 Murderous Cut, 4 Dig through time and 2 Treasure Cruise, all in a Blue/Black control deck. You could handle a bit more delve.

I feel Murderous Cut is a better removal spell then some of the options you have main boarded. It surprises me see the enchantment based removal in your deck. This is something you typically see in the U/W or U/W/R control builds due to Red's lack of ability to handle large creatures. White this format got a bit shafted on efficient, low Mana cost removal. Running Black fixes that. So there isn't much need to run such a heavy white spread, or use White's removal over Black's. However, if this suits your local Meta-game, it is perfectly understandable.

I think I see why you are having such a tough time with aggro/token based decks. You are attempting to play a Dragon/Control deck, right? However, most of the removal is 1-1 trades. While this is good in theory and efficient in the late game, it does little against some decks. Some decks can deploy multiple threats per turn at equal or lower Mana investment. RDW, Token variants, Black Aggro etc must be a nightmare for you.

I propose running higher utility removal, more cards with the option to trade 2-1 (especially in the early game) and promoting Delve as a higher priority.

As you mentioned, you lack Hero's Downfall. While you can substitute creature removal with other spells, you are at a loss for instant speed Planes-walker removal. This means you have to wait until you can Banishing Light. The same problem is true for facing Ascendency combo builds, or anything that uses artifacts or enchantments. Remember the recap you gave on Match 4, where you lost to Back to Nature? That is because Enchantment based removal is weak to these types of effects (as well as Ugin and Perilous Vault, which are everywhere).

Crux of Fate is AMAZING. I don't think anyone will deny that. However, it is also 5 Mana. The reason this is inconvenient is due to it not costing 4 Mana. Most Aggro decks intend to win by turn 4...

To make it to turn 5, you may need additional support. Cards like Bile Blight can really make a difference. It can sponge damage when you are being attacked, make a nice combat trick, be 1-1 removal spell, or mop up a bunch of tokens at instant speed. It is pretty amazing.

My personal favorite, however, is Drown in Sorrow. I love this card. Not only can it white the board of many aggressive creatures in early turns, it doesn't target. White counter-magic cannot protect their creatures (God's Willing etc). Killing creatures with "protection" and "indestructible" is nice. Boosting toughness usually means they trade a pump spell on your turn for Drown in Sorrow, so it won't increase damage you take on the following turn. Finally, it lets you Scry.

I also noticed the lack of hand control. White I understand that Thought-seize is disgustingly over-priced, there are some good alternatives. Duress, Despise, and Mind Rot. They are all proactive plays (which is nice in mirror match ups) and manually feed Delve without waiting to react to an opponent's actions. Duress and Despise are also nice due to the low Mana investment for playing them, leaving counter/removal Mana open. Individually, they may not do much in bad matchups (Duress vs aggro/monsters, Despise vs control), they are REALLY good against the match ups they help in. I personally prefer Duress because you have field sweepers for creatures that hit the board. Pre-Emptively hitting removal/Walker/Counter magic is really good.

I'll post a mock-up build with cards I've suggested (as well as some other reasonable/affordable cards) and with what you already have showing in your list.

Lands (25)

x4 Temple of Deceit

x2 Dismal Backwater

x2 Tranquil Cove

x4 Evolving Wilds

x2 Caves of Kolios

x4 Island

x4 Swamp

x1 Plains

x1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon

x1 Crucible of the Spirit Dragon

Instant (21)

x4 Anticipate

x2 Dig Through Time

x4 Dissolve

x3 Silumgar's Scorn

x1 Disdainful Stroke

x2 Ultimate Price

x1 Bile Blight

x2 Foul-Tongue Invocation

x2 Utter End

x2 Murderous Cut

Sorcery (7)

x2 Treasure Cruise

x2 Crux of Fate

x2 Drown in Sorrow

x1 Duress

Planeswalker (1)

x1 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Creature (4)

x2 Belltoll Dragon

x2 Silumgar, the Drifting Death

Sideboard (?)

Utter End

Radiant Purge

Liliana Vess

Negate

Ultimate Price

Virulent Plague

Resolute Archangel

Pristine Skywise

Ojutai's Command

Monastery Siege

Duress

Despise

Prerogative

Swansong

• other stuff?

The ideas behind the edits are to give a more rounded match up against aggressive decks, while trying to maintain the deck's main concept.

Lands: The edits are done to further support color fixing in the early game. B/U are heavy in this build, so there is more Mana sources for those colors. The Terramorphics count as CIP tapped lands, but can search any color. It also supports Delve. The double B/U should be easier to cast. The Crucible is an interesting choice. I don't know if your deck's low dragon count and lack of Ugin would make a 2nd Haven a better choice or not. It was left at 1-1 Crucible/Haven. From personal preference, I like Haven at 2, and more targets to get with it.

Instants: Small adjustment to counter magic. Disdainful Stroke does stink against aggro decks. However, 2 drop counters are really nice. While Scorn is amazing, you may not always have a Dragon handy. Disdainful Stroke is the most efficient way to handle opponent's big draw spells (Ingenuity, Cruise, Dig) as well as Green fatties, Planes walkers (-Ashiok) and all Dragons. The removal package has been flexed a bit, being less redundant, but more flexible. Additional copies of your favorite removal spells can always be sided in if you enjoy having 4 of's (like Ultimate price) vs certain match ups. Prerogative was dropped for Treasure Cruise for efficiency. Prerogative is nice, drawing 4 cards, nigh uncounterable and instant speed. However, Utter Ends are slightly mana hungry, and this suits the curve well. The choice is yours to make though.

Sorcery: I feel Drowns/Cruises are a must in decks like these. Well, Cruise can always be Dig, depending on budget/preference. Drowns keep the early game clear and keep you alive to reach your late game state. Only a splash of hand control here, though with some playtesting you may find additional room. I couldn't think what else to drop for a second option. Perhaps a Scorn? But it's fine at 1.

Walker: I'm torn between Lily and Ashiok in the mainboard. I almost prefer to run both, or only Ashiok. Not that Lily isn't amazing. Again, it simply reflects the curve of the deck. Most B/U or Esper control variants seek to go big or go home. They top out at Ugins/Silumgars for hefty mana consumption and late game power. But with your budget not allowing you to play the power house cards at the top of the curve, there is no reason your deck should play as long of a game as theirs. There isn't anything in the list that rewards you for a game running that long.

Creatures: I think they are fine "as is." I do like Pristine Skywise though. It is an interesting card and falls into your color scheme. It's superior size at the same Mana cost as your other win conditions convinced me to promote this card. Without having Ojutai, you can't put someone on a 4 turn clock. With Silumgar and Belltoll, they are on a 7 turn clock. This is twice the time Pristine takes to end the game. Also, smaller hitting creatures for win conditions means that your opponent's small/incremental life gain has a greater influence on the game.

While Prestine is no Ojutai, and lacks hexproof, it's not beyond protecting itself. it is a 6/4 flyer at 6 Mana. It still hits like a truck. It gain's it's "hexproof" off of it's soft Prowess trigger. This also makes opponents reluctant to attack since they know any draw/removal spell can turn Pristine into a blocker again by untapping it. 6/4 Flying blocker with protection from the color of your choice... For a budget card, I'd say he sounds pretty good to me. Give it some thought.

Sideboard: Eh, play around with it after you get the main deck functioning where you would like it to be. Personally, I would grind out as much hand control/removal into the sideboard as I could to deal with combo/burn/control matchups, and put the heavy creature removal into the mainboard to deal with aggressive/mid range decks.

Wow, I wish these suggestions came sooner! The 2:2:2:2 Bile Blight/Ultimate Price/Drown in Sorrow/Murderous Cut really balance out, and don't break the budget with relatively expensive playsets (Blight and Sorrow).

Also, looking back, how the hell did I overlook Pristine Skywise? Hindsight truly is 20/20, and yes, the long clock from the current build is awful. I do have 3 Dig Through Time, so in this build I would probably run all of those and no Treasure Cruises at all.

The only points I would disagree on are Ashiok/Liliana. Liliana won me games. Tutoring for whatever I need in a pinch is great. Game-changing, even. I wouldn't want to lose that utility in the mainboard.

I will also point out that waiting a turn for Banishing Light over Utter End isn't as disruptive as you might think. The only downside, and sadly a weakness of white removal, is that it can be removed. A Jeskai Ascendancy or some kind of planeswalker aren't cards that need to be dealt with immediately after their resolution. Planeswalkers get at least one activated ability to go off before I can interact with them anyway, and tapping out (or nearly tapping out) to remove something was crippling when I ran it. Being relatively low-cost, coupled with running other white removal, made Banishing Light very consistent while sadly reducing the decks ability to respond to a hoard of creatures (black is the only reliable way to respond such a strategy).

Due to the ~drastic~ meta change in Game Day 2, which revolved around creatures/'walkers that trade nicely 1-1, the deck performed much better. Sadly, Magic will become somewhat inaccessible to me in the coming months, so this deck will likely be shelved.

I see. I apologize if I was unhelpful. I stand by what I said about Utter End. I've played the enchantment based removal before. In my experience, the enchantment removal is so-so at best in game 1. In games 2/3 when they can side in enchantment removal, it's absolute garbage. I didn't mean to be biased on my suggestions, please forgive me on that.

Liliana is a great card. There is nothing wrong with mainboarding it.

Not at all; your suggestions were quite helpful! I included many of them in the revised deck list.

This list was originally made using cards I happened to have with me as I'm not at home right now. I wanted to see what I could build without rebuying some particularly valuable cards like Bile Blight and Drown in Sorrow. It turned into a raging mess that I could have some fun with at Game Day. That is to say yes, I agree, white's removal is kinda' meh to begin with, and total garbage game 2.

Pristine Skywise is pure gold, by the way. It's by far the best thing to happen to this deck since Island.

I kinda figured he would be. He is a great card. Unfortunately, he is no Ojutai. Ojutai is a +1 for using him, where as Skywise is a -1. You can mitigate the -1 in resources by timing them as a combat trick. So, at his best, he is Ojutai's average state without the free Anticipate each turn. Which is incredibly good lol.

They both keep a 4-turn clock on the opponent. I'm glad we have a budget version of him though. From pre-release pricing at 5$ to a jump to 25-30 in such a short time... It's frightening how expensive this card has become.

I have to say though, I like this build 100x better than the previous build. It shows a lot more flexibility and resilience. The removal package is infinitely superior, and you have a stronger win condition than before (Skywise). It should do better against aggro with mainboard Drowns/Blights.

Question, how well does the deck do with 4 Silumgar's Scorn with only 4 targets for Dragons to reveal?

I was really on the fence with the 4 Scorns. For a while I swapped them with 4 Dissipate, and found that they were very similar in this deck with two key differences:

Scorn comes up a turn earlier than the other hard counters out there, at which point it is, in itself, a pseudo-hard counter until about turn 5. Anything that it missed would get picked off by removal, and by turn 5 we probably have a dragon in our hand. This often left up that one extra mana needed to put a counter on the Crucible or, after siding, to have a Negate handy.

On the other hand, there is a weird corner case where Dissipate is a hard counter when your dragon is on the stack, and Scorn is not. It happened where my dragon (Silumgar, the Drifting Death) was Dissolved with a Silumgar's Scorn in hand and no other dragon to reveal for the hard counter (serious flavour fail, in my opinion).

Of these two differences, the slightly reduced mana cost was relevant more often, so I kept the 4 Scorns in.

I finally got to playtesting veeonix's suggestions.

Wow. I'm of the opinion Dragon control is a serious contender this standard. After picking wrong three times in a row, it feels good to have hopped onto the right band wagon for a change!

Dragon control owns standard format.

veeonix (and anyone else listening), I want to double-check my interpretation of the rules for a combat trick with Pristine Skywise.

702.16b. A permanent or player with protection can't be targeted by spells with the stated quality and can't be targeted by abilities from a source with the stated quality.

I cast, say, Murderous Cut on my own Pristine Skywise in response to a Hero's Downfall. It's ability triggers, goes onto the stack, resolves, and I give the Skywise protection from black. My Murderous Cut and my opponent's Hero's Downfall fizzle due to protection, right?

I have to do a sanity check on this one just to be sure; I'm really digging the shenanigans possible with this card.

I think so, though I'm not certain. I think the stack resolves something like this...

You have Pristine SkywiseI cast Hero's Downfall to targetYou cast Murderous Cut in responseFor playing a non-creature spell, Pristine goes onto the stack with 2 linked effectsIf both players pass priority, a game state is checked. If Pristine is tapped, it untapsThen, you choose which color it gains protection from, you choose BlackBoth players pass Priority. No further spells or effects go on the stackMurderous Cut cannot resolve due to an illegal target and is countered by game mechanicsBoth players pass Priority. No further spells or effects go on the stackHero's Downfall cannot resolve due to an illegal target and is counter by game mechanics

If nothing else interacts with the stack, I believe it resolves something like what's written above

Oh, forgot to mention...

I did some playtesting with Pristine Skywise. It truly is an amazing card. I had it right alongside Ojutai. The nice thing is, due to him being 'like' Ojutai, I can have a second flying hexproof dragon thing. He isn't a legendary with the same name.

I have 2 Ojutai in my mainboard, and 1 Skywise in my sideboard.

veeonix, how would you go about speeding this deck up against other control decks? As-is, I have ended up winning (more than once) against Abzan, U/B, and other Esper control decks because my opponent decks himself, then we go to time. This has even happened -after- siding.

Against said decks, there is generally enough dead removal sitting in their hand to easily take 3 shots at Pristine Skywise the turn it comes down, and another on their own turn (an issue Dragonlord Ojutai doesn't have). I'm throwing a hail mary, undercosted bid on Ebay for a pair of Dragonlord Ojutai, but I'm not holding my breath on it.

Anti Control cards in your colors that work pretty well:

Pearl Lake AncientRisen ExecutionerShorecrasher ElementalMastery of the Unseen

And if you want something silly (and immune to Ugin)Grind Clock

Now I know the last one seems ridiculous, but I'm not kidding. If this thing isn't countered, it is impossible for Dimir Control to get rid of it outside of Perilous Vault. And if they have to Vault this thing, it's doing it's job. It can come down as early as turn 2, and basically does it's job. You just have to pace the game and let it run it's course. It is a dreadfully slow/boring way to win, but it gives a low input, high resilience win option against them. But this is certainly not the first card I would suggest.

Another option I suppose is to pile up on Delve spells, and chuck Gurmag Anglers and Tasigurs until the cows come home? But they are still prone to removal. They are cheap/big though.

It is hard on a budget. Look for things with Dash, Durability (things that keep coming back) or hexproof/can't be countered? It's not an easy thing to do. Most of these mirror matches do go to time. Ugins and Ojutai's dictate the winner. Whoever can't answer them loses.

Oh god. Grindclock is just hilarious but true.

I'll test some more against aggro, and if I can consistently win against it without siding, I might make a transformational sideboard and turn this into a fog deck for the mirror. Otherwise, all those others sound awesome for the mirror.