[Standard] Any advice for a Dimir Control?

what do you plan on doing with your deck?  Casual, FNM, competitive?

I'm not much of a control deck player, but I'll point out what I've seen from my friends perspective.  He's a major control player. 

Counter spells are institutionally useful and more-so against the midrange decks. Against aggro decks you'll need to have a better plan and that's the real threat in the meta right now.  You really need a board sweeper.  In your colors Mutilate is decent.  Cut some of your counters for more removal, something like 2 dissipates, 1 rewind and 1 syncopate.

However, if you can get access to the lands for mana grixxis (RUB), esper (UWB) or BUG would be better.  Esper gets you supreme verdict and cards like azorious charm as well as resto angel.  Grixxis will let you cast mizzium mortars and things like dreadboar, and BUG gives you gaze of granite and deadbridge change as well as abrupt decay, thragtusk and putrefy.

Talrands a little slow, he's got low body for the format and doesn't come online until the turn after you cast him. If you want tokens lingering souls is better and can help you chump while setting up your board/hand. More draw card underworld connections isn't as good as another thinktwice, azorious charm, or forbidden alchemy.

I honestly like your esper control deck better, doing that with a stronger creature package is what my friend does and he was 4-1 in our last FNM, Ætherling, resto angels, obzedat, blood barron, snaps, augars, he's running more of an esper midrange with a splash of counter magic.

There's nothing wrong with a 2 color deck.  It just limits your cards selection some.  Talrand and the drake tokens can go for things like mutilate and more removal, ultimate price, murder, sever the bloodline. Ætherling is really your win condition, and another one of those is good too. To enable delver you want to run a lot of spells. Watchout for running too many ultimate price.  It's a dead card against some decks, better to diversify your removal.  Far//away is fantastic. dead weigh is cheap and effective. just make sure if you're running tragic slip you have enough removal to enable the morbid side of it.  I run 3 in my jund and find that it's still a dead card occasionally with 11 other removal spells and creatures.

To your specific questions.  The watery graves say both swamp and island, the drowned catacombs are just non-basic lands and don't count as swamps.  most control decks want more mana than 22, to be consistent.  try shooting for 25 and see how that feels.  A couple nephalia drownyards wouldn't hurt as an alternate win con or mana dump at the end of turn. More swamps probably for mutilate.

If you could get your hands on some of the plains walkers that'd be good too.  liliana of the veil is probably too expensive, but you might be able to get a jace or two perhaps a tamiyo. evil twin is good too, you can copy things your opponent creatures and/or use it as removal against legendary creatures.  Consuming apperation is kind of a poor mans jace. It can be a decent threat though. obviously more snaps would be great but they are $$.

you're also gonna need some graveyard hate on the side at least.  against reanmiator if you go to FNM.  You really have no plainswalker killer other than a counter spell so watch for those against midrange and control decks.  Aggro can still blow you out, even with delver and auger to chump.  You'll have to get a sweeper off against them to stabalize or a lot of removal since you dont' have any life gain,  I'd run 4 mutilates if you can get them and snap basically gives you a 5th if you need it.

edit: 4 think twice... trust me on that one drawing cards is your key to winning.  can't play your Ætherling or mutilate if you don't draw it.

Last edited by elpablo (2013-05-16 16:46:58)

I've updated yet again, and I've got rid of the Talrands. I sideboarded a couple Duskmantle Seers because i figure they'd be particularly good against people playing higher cost creatures (in my local meta I can think of a few decks it'd be used against).
I'll try and get hold of some plainswalkers but they are incredibly expensive. Evil Twin seems a bit too expensive I think; especially considering the Lazav, Dimir Mastermind in the sideboard.
I put in the one Nephalia Drownyard; I couldn't think what else to take out. I think this deck is starting to shape up okay. What do you think of the mana curve?