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ZUR CONTROL

Commander / EDH Control Counterspell Flying Island Stax Voltron WUB (Esper)

nivvius

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Land (34)

Protection (4)

Ramp (13)

Draw (9)

Stax (8)

Goodstuff (4)

Voltron (2)

Commander (1)

Commander: Zur the Enchanter

Countermagic (10)

Removal (8)

Tutor (7)

Maybeboard

Goodstuff (4)

Countermagic (2)

Stax (2)

This is an 80%ish power Zur control deck. Consider a meta with cards like Ad Nauseam, Thassa's Oracle and Thrasios, Triton Hero + Tymna the Weaver shitpiles effectively soft-banned and you might get a good idea what the meta looks like. The main wincon is to slowly control out the board and set up your pillow fort of enchantments that make it really hard for your opponents to play, and you can just knock them out with Zur.

I started with a cedh-styled zur control list, but a lot of the elements of that kind of deck don't work well in lower powered metas because most 80%ish lists run way more spot removal and durdle a lot more, so we get the chance to (slightly) up the curve and play more fun cards. There are a couple 'classes' of cards in this deck.

Playing the deck

Most games can be separated into the early-, mid-, and late-game. Here are the general strategies this deck plays towards at this stage.

The deck wants some interaction and ramp in its opener. Hands that contain too many utility pieces meant to be fetched up by Zur are easy to toss back. A hand that can cast Zur and protect him on turn 3 is very good; depending on the table, slower hands are certainly fine, as it can be hard to recover from Zur getting removed if your hand has no other plays. Additionally, hands with Dark Confidant/Rhystic Study/Mystic Remora are nearly always keepable, since you can vault quite far ahead off of the value from having these cards sit in play for a few turns. Once you get to attack with Zur, you near always want to get Necropotence or Vanishing, so from that point your hand matters a lot less.
Setup to cast Zur as safely as possible, or set up another card advantage engine and start grinding it out. Your main goal for this part of the game is to sneak Zur on to the table and safely untap with him. Try not to be too aggressive with counters or removal at this stage of the game: you can quickly run out of gas without any sort of card advantage engine, which can leave you vulnerable much earlier than you can likely handle. If your opponents are slow-rolling in to the mid-game, take your time. This deck can have a lot of inevitability, so there is no rush to slam an unprotected Zur in to an opponent with up.
Once you resolve Zur and get to actually attack with him, you've likely entered the mid-game whether your opponents like it or not. Generally, your first trigger has two options: a protection enchantment for Zur (here, Vanishing) or Necropotence. Use your best discretion. If your life total is high and you have a comfortable amount of available mana, Necro is almost always the right call, as you can dig for 15 life or so and attempt to start sculpting your hand. In tight spots where you are behind, some sort of disruption (such as Grasp of Fate) might be enough to swing the game in your favor. When you are rather stabilized, begin transitioning to the late-game, where you are looking to win.
At this point, start either trying to deal lethal damage with Zur while locking out the board from being able to kill you, or start nuking libraries with RIP + Helm.

//TODO: elaborate

The mana base is pretty straightforward: as many rainbow lands as possible, and then the best lands EDH has to offer. The deck is currently extremely color heavy, so utility lands are kept to a minimum. Rainbow lands are great here: I need to squeeze in Forbidden Orchard somewhere. Blue is the most-desired color to have by far, so there are no W/B duals outside of Godless Shrine and Scrubland. They both might not even be worth running.

Utility Lands:

Hall of Heliod's Generosity: The Volrath's Stronghold pseudo-cycle is a really neat; I hoped for a long time that we'd get a white one, and MH1 delivered. On-point when it comes to flavor, and can recur some very powerful enchantments in a pinch.

Strip Mine: Sniping strong utility lands is great. Possibly not optimal, but we have Crucible and playing an EDH deck without Strip Mine doesn't feel quite right.

Urza's Saga: An interesting addition. Usually, in a control deck you don't want your lands destroying themselves, but the ability to replace itself with a rainbow source (Mox Opal) or ramp (e.g. Sol Ring) ends up making it worth it. The constructs are also surprisingly relevant, at least in my meta. It's also searchable with Zur: I do (albeit rarely) find myself wanting to search a source of mana with Zur, so this is a nice plus in addition to the other reasons to include it. I think it gets much worse without any good targets, though, and in slower metas the ability to search it up with Zur is probably completely irrelevant.

Again, the best EDH has to offer. I don't run anything that only produces W/B here, for the same reason as the lands. Mox Opal Is probably the worst piece here; we barely have enough fast plays to turn it on T2 reliably. But I like running it. I think the worst card here is Mana Vault, as the deck really doesn't have a use for that much colorless mana outside of casting more ramp (which is a little awkward) or paying general tax. Note that it gets better if you add Helm of Obedience + Rest in Peace , along with Transmute Artifact to find it.
Removal slots are stretched pretty thin; this slot also includes wraths.

Cyclonic Rift is still one of the best wraths in edh, and doubles as temporary spot-removal in a pinch.

Damn is also great, being a wrath and doubling as real spot removal in a single slot feels extremely powerful.

Grasp of Fate is the best o-ring effect in the format, and can be nabbed off a Zur trigger when needed.

Snuff Out is free. The nonblack clause can be relevant, but removal that costs no mana is hard to pass up due to how many hungry the deck is. I wouldn't play this if my playgroup leaned heavily into black decks, but that currently isn't the case.

Swords to Plowshares is simply the best single-target creature removal ever printed. It's hard to find a reason to not include it.

Supreme Verdict: Uncounterability on a 4-mana wrath is very nice. This is the 3rd best wrath in in my opinion, and gets us to a good amount of wrath spells.

Vindicate: Universal problem solver. Heavy on the mana and sorcery speed, but solves any permanent-based problem and the art is cool :)

Gilded Drake: Not removal in the typical sense, but stealing a general or a ramped-out fatty feels even better. Having your opponents waste resources on their own/others' cards to clean your board is nice, and the person you steal from getting a 3/3 flyer is practically irrelevant.

These cards are fun for you, but not so much your opponents. Best used to lock down the game in your favor to finish off your opponents via Zur beats.

Maze of Ith is a pet favorite. Randomly quite good, but consuming a land drop is very rough in this deck (lots and lots of different colored pips), so it is probably an easy cut for anything else, if you want. It's also much more likely for decks in this power bracket to go wide, so it looses a lot of appeal.

Chains of Mephistopheles can be really hit or miss. Almost all the cantrip/card advantage cards in the deck are 'put in to your hand' and not 'draw cards' effects solely because of the inclusion of this card (it feels great to skirt around it when the boys are sweating staring this card down). Being searchable by Zur is great fun when you know everyone is holding filtering spells or you're facing down Gavi, Nest Warden, but it really doesn't come up that often where I want to tutor for it. Also a bit of a nonbo with Narset, Parter of Veils, and sometimes actually helps decks that want to play out of the graveyard.

Arcane Laboratory is extremely powerful, but is hard to play around because it applies to you too. It is the best card to get when you feel you are rather ahead on resources, because it can be almost impossible for your opponents to break out of it a lot of the time. It's horrendous played out early, so consider not doing that.

Moat is fun; locking down all non-fliers from attacking in this power bracket is insanely powerful. The only real downside is it can't be searched by Zur. Stuff like Propaganda is probably just as good, if not better in some situations (Along with being searchable by Zur and blue for Forces).

I run Steel of the Godhead and Empyrial Armor. There's a few good choices for Voltron pieces here (another reasonable choice over Steel of the Godhead is Staggering Insight if draw is more important than evasion). I run these two because I also run Necropotence, which can make Zur kill reasonably quickly. I would consider lifelink available on a Zur-tutorable aura to be mandatory for near any Zur list.
Reliquary Tower: Makes Empyrial Armor + Necropotence backbreaking. Probably a little win-more, and colorless lands are very high-cost in this deck. Probably better in a more casual build with more cards like Phyrexian Arena to make it more worthwile.

Crucible of Worlds: I found Urza's Saga to play a similar role. Crucible is a little out of place here, and it seems like it would get better with Saga in the deck, but it's just too slow and clunky, sadly. I was never really all that happy to see it, even when I could recur fetchlands with it, because by the time I stopped playing lands from hand, I usually didn't need the mana anymore.

Counterbalance: Ended up being unnecessary. Gets better as you approach pure cEDH status (where there is a huge glut of spells at the 0-1 CMC slot), but in my meta it just wasn't that good.

Sensei's Divining Top: A lot worse without counterbalance, and really unnecessary on its own. I tried it for a little while, and it just wasn't really pulling its weight.

Propaganda: I play Moat. I've not found a need to be able to search it up with Zur, yet. However, Propaganda is likely the next best version of this effect (and may be better sometimes, aside from being able to be exiled to forces).

  • card:Mana Valult (4ED) -> Thought Vessel
    • Mana Vault has been on the chopping block for quite some time. The colorless mana is not terribly useful, and there's not any artifact synergy to break the card. The 1 life per turn can actually be very relevant when needing to dig deep with Necropotence, and it feels far too much like Jeweled Lotus much of the time for that downside. I think having at least one source of 'no max handsize' is probably good enough simply to make Empyrial Armor much more lethal.
  • Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth -> Vindicate
    • I wanted to cut a land, and this currently seems like the weakest land slot. Its best use is making hardcasting Necropotence easy, but otherwise it was really just a swamp: I never really felt pressured for black mana outside of this one case, and I felt the removal count was worth increasing.
  • Sensei's Divining Top -> Arcane Denial
    • Much less useful without Counterbalance, and just doesn't provide all that much value. I'd rather have another counter, especially one at .
  • Crucible of Worlds -> Urza's Saga
    • Interestingly, these cards almost play similar roles. Urza's Saga has no problem at least replacing itself in this deck; being ramp tutorable by Zur (that doesn't require anything on the field) is notable sometimes, and it's at least worth trying out. I think Crucible is simply the weakest slot at this point. The land count might need a trim though, it's looking somewhat high (35 mana-producing lands at the time of writing).
I actually ended up playtesting these changes same-day. Removing any method of getting lifelink is perilous; I don't recommend it.
  • Ethereal Armor -> Empyrial Armor
    • Ethereal Armor is much too slow and too board state dependent. It was fun to try out, but I missed Empyrial Armor, even without a way to remove the hand size restriction.
  • Mystical Tutor -> Rest in Peace
    • I never find myself wanting to cast this card, ever. Getting removal or a counterspell with this is borderline rancid; the card disadvantage is terrible. I don't think I'll miss it.
  • Nimble Obstructionist -> Helm of Obedience
    • This is a somewhat easy cut for the helm combo. An uncounterable stifle that draws a card is situationally insanely good, but at 3 mana it's hard to justify sometimes.
  • Counterbalance -> Steel of the Godhead
    • I considered putting back in Daybreak Coronet, but I want to try this out. It's much more hardcastable since is very difficult in the deck (since I really want to prioritize multiple and pips available early) and unblockable could be very good. I've been wanting to cut Counterbalance for a bit anyway, since it gets considerably worse a) without SDT and b) When your meta isn't 100% competitive, because the CMC of cards varies so much more.
  • Mental Misstep -> Transmute Artifact
    • I've wanted to find a spot for this, and Mental Misstep simply seems like the weakest slot in the deck currently. Since games I play tend to go a little long, it's a lot less useful overall. I think MM is only good in 100% competitive for similar reasons as counterbalance.
    • Transmute Artifact itself has a few interesting targets, like Crucible, Spellskite, Lightning Greaves, and Helm of Obedience (and maybe Sensei's top in some situations, even without Counterbalance). The biggest reason I want to try it is to have (effectively) multiple copies of Helm when I need to dig for it.
  • Empyrial Armor -> Ethereal Armor
    • Without a 'no hand size' effect and Necro, Empyrial armor tends to add about +2/+2 to +4/+4 on its own. Etheral Armor is much the same, and lets me remove Reliquary Tower.
  • Reliquary Tower -> Forbidden Orchard
    • More colored sources, and Reliquary Tower is rather useless without Empyrial Armor. Late game I'm fine with a grip of counterspells anyway.
  • Trinket Mage -> Mission Briefing
    • Trinket Mage is really slow. Mission Briefing being both an instant cantrip and allowing recasting of tutors/alternate costs on stuff in the grave is great. It's a shame its mana cost is more rough than Snapcaster Mage, but allowing for alternate costs is worth it since there are no creature synergies in this deck.
  • Daybreak Coronet -> Counterspell
    • I've been wanting to squeeze counterspell in here proper, and Daybreak Coronet seems extraneous when Ethereal Armor can do much of the heavy lifting on its own. We'll see how this plays out.

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Casual

100% Competitive

Date added 2 years
Last updated 5 months
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

2 - 0 Mythic Rares

58 - 0 Rares

19 - 0 Uncommons

15 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.98
Tokens Bird 2/2 U, Construct 0/0 C, Spirit 1/1 C
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