This deck is my favorite control deck. It is designed to keep the opponent from keeping anything on the battlefield. At its best, the opponent has nothing in play, nothing in hand and you're killing them with their own creatures.
Essentially, it's a discard deck built around Warped Devotion. I have evolved the deck through the years, and have come to realize that it needed some classic discard spells in addition to the bounce spells in order to be at its most effective level. So I added in Hymn to Tourach and Mind Twist. Also, Ostracize as an early-game heartbreaker. And, for good measure, a couple Hypnotic Specter in a deck that is extremely light on creatures.
The bounce spells cover what I consider to be a broad stroke of the best and/or most useful bounce spells in the game. With that said, low mana cost is a large consideration for me here. You may notice, though, that Boomerang is absent. While I do agree that it is the most versatile 2-mana bounce spell, I also believe that the 2-mana bouncers that I did include were more useful specifically in this deck. Echoing Truth should be obvious, for its ability to catch multiple targets, but then so is Withdraw for the same reason. First of all, creatures are likely to be my main targets with this deck, and secondly, a player can only keep up with this deck if they're casting spells at a decent quip; they're very likely to be tapped out at any point in which Withdraw would have two potential targets. Snap is good for its quasi-free cost, and one Unsummon, as a straightforward 1-mana bouncer. In the higher cost category, I'm running 4x Recoil, for its obvious connection to the theme, and a couple Wash Out in case of token decks that can go wide fast.
As a control deck, the question is always "but how does it win?" Liliana's Caress certainly helps chip away at the opponent's life total. However, the main damage dealing source is Chainer, Dementia Master, with whom I take any/all creatures that are in the opponent's graveyard (presumably because I made them discard those creatures), and attack. To this end, I've tried including a third copy of Chainer, or a couple Animate Dead, but I would have to subtract from the control in order to do that. As of yet, I haven't often not drawn Chainer when I need him.
The final 3 cards in the deck are helpers and accelerators. Nightscape Familiar is great for a lot of the bouncers (especially Snap). Isochron Scepter, because there are enough 2-mana instants in the deck, and having a redundancy engine for any of them is always helpful in any match. And finally, Diabolic Vision is an oft-immitated, never duplicated search tool that has always been a good friend to me ever since I pulled the first one out of a pack more than two decades ago.
Now, like I said at the beginning, this deck has evolved a lot over the many years it has existed. One of the elements I have deleted is counterspelling. The obvious card I might include would be Force of Will. Other counterspell cards that have been in this deck in the past are Arcane Denial, Last Word and Rewind. I honestly don't know if it worked better with or without this element. I'm open to arguments. Just, please, tell me what to take out for them. Also, though, I have 3x Mindbreak Trap in the sideboard, because of my cousin's Brain Freeze deck. Seriously.
As always, comments and critiques are welcome and encouraged. I really do wish for these decks I post to be competitive, even though I almost exclusively play Casual.
Enjoy! Cheers!
