UWR Midrange in Standard

So the intent of this deck is to cast the removal on any early game presence (Chained for creatures, DSphere for Pwalkers / Anything else), while putting out little guys that can by themselves dominate the board state. [This is turns 1-5] Precinct captain is one of those things right now that will add to my board state and make it increasingly difficult for my opponent to race me. Honestly, the only real reason that I put the Firemane avengers in initially was because I had 2 of the promo ones, and i've been looking for an excuse to use them... However, in the Rakdos Aggro match up last night, they did save me with the lightning helix ability. That combined with the increasing numbers from precinct captain give me a very good early presence and take some of the reliance away from Elspeth and AtLegion. The spear is in here as well to play in that transitional period between turns 5-8 to act in both modes. It acts as a threat to stop the opponent's big guys from attacking, and can beef up my tokens for a kill.
Its really only after turn 7-8 that I flip the switch to control, hence my calling it midrange (It's really an aggro control list, but I digress).
When I played this last night, there were 2 things that really got me. Blood Baron in the White Weenie match up, and Supreme verdict in the esper match up. In my area, there's really only 1 person who plays Esper Rich Kid, so I'm really not worried about that match up.

The problem that I have with running Supreme verdict is that I rely on things like Boros Reckoner and Tokens to support myself. I'm trying to keep this list as close to White Devotion as possible, as well, and I feel that adding Verdict will bring me into the range of Control. I am only looking to give the impression that I'm running UWR Control while not actually running much / any of what it runs. If I wanted to play UW Control, I have the means to do it, but I am trying to mix it up here and stay away from that as much as possible.

On that note, I am not really sure how I feel about adding more enchantment removal. Sure, It'd be nice to have more, but that means that i'm taking away from other aspects of the deck. Right now, I feel that there is a pretty solid balance of all of the effects that I want to have.

For the Sideboard, I'm thinking pithing needle, and possibly some burn spells like Warleader's helix?

I actually had another AtLegion in the sideboard. Do you think that 3 is too many? And yeah, I do suppose that moving them out for Azorius charm is a solid move. I could use the lifelink as a stabilizer, and the tempo would help with the big red matchup (Something I struggled with in the first few turns last night).

I'm running 28 lands because I need to get the proper colors as early as possible. Having chained to the rocks into precinct captain into dsphere pretty much demands that I have one of every shock land in the first 3 turns. Granted, I don't even dare attempt to do this in 99% of my games, but it still helps to get things out when I want them. As for flooding, I don't really see this as an issue because of Heliod and Sphinx's Rev. I have about an 80% chance to have either of these when I would be at the point of being flooded, and i'm pretty ok with that. At least in testing 27-28 seems to be where I want to be.

To fit in the Charms though, I do figure that if I take out the Firemane Avengers and move the AtLegions all i'll have to do is swap a land or two out and i'll be where I'd like to be color distribution wise.

My only dilemma that I forsee would be adding to my reliance of blue. It's not too easy to cast a Boros Reckoner with an Island. Do you think that this should be something that I should be worried about?

Obviously the mana fixing will get better when Born of the Gods gives you the other Scry lands, but for the time being, you might want to slide in a guildgate or two rather than just relying on the basics.  Whether you like it or not, you're far more control at this point than midrange and, as such, won't really suffer too much if you have to drop one of your first few lands tapped.  But, to that end, if you're worried about RDW, that's an easy fix in the SB, where you slide in 2x Electrickery to ping all the x/1 creatures they run and, in a pinch, you could easily slide in Riot Control to totally screw over the aggro plan.

As far as hitting everything on curve, obviously it would be ideal, but I can see where playing Reckoner is going to be tough from time to time - although the R/W hybrid will work for you as Steam Vents, Temple of Triumph, Hallowed Fountain, Izzet Guildgate, or Azorius Guildgate will work just fine.

Given that you're playing the tempo game, I would also suggest taking a look at Judge's Familiar as it offers a white devotion, an early 1/1 with evasion, and can easily disrupt the opponent's plays (as most people don't remember it can only counter instants or sorceries).

As for the flooding, I get the major need to hit your land drops and cover your bases with all three colors, BUT, I can still see where having that high of a count will be detrimental.  You aren't sitting on much card draw outside of Sphinx, meaning hitting a sizable land clump is still a problem.  Perhaps sliding a keyrune or two in would be better?  Then at least you wouldn't be totally blanking with top-deck land draws... then again, maybe it's never a problem given your setup... only testing will tell.

Without actually playing with the deck, yes, I can understand where you're coming from. But coincidentally, in my testing at least, this deck turns out to be very well off against what I expect to be playing. My local Meta is very scrub-heavy. The people that know what they're doing are 200% johnny and are usually playing something like BW Festering Newt control. Then there's a group of newbies that have all the best decks but don't know how to use them (I saw someone in the esper mirror DSphere an AEtherling when A: He had his own AEtherling and B: The other guy had 3 blue mana up). Then there's 3-4 guys that are actual competitors. I'm looking for a deck that can beat a kid (73 card GR 'Things I had' decks) in a very fair manner (The aggro portion of the deck does this quite well, especially when I have to wait a couple of turns to get my draw), something that I can play cautiously against the mega johnnies, and something with enough end game to beat out the spikes.

I feel that this deck is capable of all of that. Between the reckoners, the enchantment based removal, and the Sphinx's Revelation, I can turn Heliod on around turn 5-6 and he will typically stay on for as long as I need him to. While he is a part of it, the deck doesn't revolve around him being a creature either. I feel that, yes, under normal circumstances, smashing two decks together won't really get you anywhere (Jund Reanimator is unfortunately something that I tried last season...), but I don't feel that that's what i've done here. This is still the WR devotion deck, I've just added blue to help keep it stable. I've been testing this for the last week, and without any changes it has about a 70% win ratio. I'm looking to up that by eliminating weaknesses. In my testing, I've found that Esper Control (really, just Ashiok control) and Mutavault give me a hard time. This pretty much means that I need to add a couple of burn spells, perhaps Turn//Burn, to get it sorted. Devotion decks are a cake walk, as this deck pretty much stops all cases of 5+ devotion. Master of Waves, while he will usually hit the field and bring his army, is also not a threat because he's very vulnerable to chained to the rocks, detention sphere, and Azorius charm.

Initially I was using the spear's second ability to get rid of creatures that I couldn't exile, but quickly stopped as soon as I tested against Stormbreath dragon. That and Blood Baron are the main reasons that i'm leaning to turn//burn now.

With nykthos, i'm able to ramp into more clerics from Heliod, as well as a massive revelation. Its not being used in the GR stompy method to bring out more guys, but being used to haul my butt over the finish line. I'm running three because I want to get one every game, and when I do pull it off I will typically win.

So anyway, I'm still in the iron out the kinks phase, but I believe that with more testing and the addition of a couple of answers, this deck will be all set to go.

Last edited by DarrenM (2013-11-25 16:46:04)

Alright, so here's the problem that I have with your suggestions.

You're essentially disregarding the things that I want to accomplish with this deck based strictly on the colors that i'm playing. I know how to make a UWR control deck, and if that is what I wanted to do, I wouldn't be here asking for assistance. It's not that hard to slap a warleader's helix and an assemble the legion into the UW control shell.

If you read the previous posts, you'll see that I want this deck to stick to White Devotion. I realized that white devotion isn't a thing right now, and I wanted to take advantage of that. If no one knows that it's possible, they won't be expecting it. Everyone knows about UWR control. The entire reason that I stopped playing mono black was because it became too heavily popular. I love playing decks that aren't popular. I want this deck to be the underdog. By eliminating everything that is slightly individual from this deck and putting in things that are already popular, I'm going to go from having my opponent on edge every play to having them essentially predict my next move every turn.

So I will say this again, this is a White devotion build. I don't want a strict control build. If anything, white devotion means aggro control with what's available to me.

I realize that I'm sounding stubborn, but I made this deck so that I wouldn't have to go down the control route. I don't want to only have the one option. I'm making something new here.

Also, a small rant on nykthos.

Nykthos is a ramp card pure and simple.  You put in 3 mana, 2 and itself and get out more.  Which means you need to be able to consistently provide 4+ devotion to make nykthos worth anything at all. 

Right now nykthos goes in 2 decks.  Gx devotion and Blue devotion.  They are the only 2 colors that can effectively make use of nykthos.  You'll see it as a one of in black or red occasionally, but it's usually a one trick pony allowing "oops i win plays" it's not a consistent strategy in the decks.

Gx devotion uses nykthos to make sick plays with big dumb creatures, Blue devotion uses it to dump their hand consistently after thassa/bident comes online, as well as a mana sink for unblockable wierds and the like. Black kind of can use it to whip/gary win sometimes, but not as well as blue or green.  With white however you don't have enough of a consistent mana sink to make it worth while.  You might be able to sphinx for a couple more cards or maybe make an extra cleric, but you're not doing the game winning/changing plays that the other decks are. Making an extra cleric won't win you the game and sphinxing more usually just means an extra point or two. 

All of this to potentially hurt your chances of playing your WW or WWW cards consistently, and you might/maybe get an extra mana or 2 occasionally.

It strikes me that, while nowhere near as flashy, this most recent version will be a LOT more consistent and likely more successful.

Remember, it can seem like people are piling on, but when you put a deck idea out here on the forums, it's our job to offer criticisms... which can often seem like someone trying to argue (and, at the end of the day, it's up to you which of the suggestions you take or not).

Good luck!

As for your deck the way it's constructed....

purphous strikes me as an unusual choice.  You've got very few creatures to come in and activate him and his mana sink isn't useful the following few turns after he comes down. He's only valid late game with elspeth or assemble, and in the case of assemble it's very late game.  I feel it's "win more" assemble and elspeth are must answer cards that become inevitable win conditions the longer they're on the board.  Deal with them or die.  Purphous accelerates that, but doesn't really add anything. 

Go down a land or 2 and get you some more "stuff", you're topping out at 6 with no X spells to dump mana into, 25 land should be more than enough to get there.  Control decks usually only run 26 maybe 27 lands, if you're worried about flooding or being mana starved get some more scry in the deck with magmajet or temples of silence.

Frostburn weird is also a no go for me in this list, while it stone walls aggro you're already doing that with a removal suite and cards like reckoner.  You don't need a 1/4 wall that "might" trade with an attacker/blocker.  The reason it works in mono blue is because thassa can make him unblockable and pump him at the same time with nykthos.

I really want to see something like fiendslayer paladin along with an anthem affect like the spear.  a 4/4 reckoner and a 3/3 first strike liflink jedi is pretty good.  That turns on heliod when he comes down and also gets you some more cushion so you don't get burnt/aggroed out early game.  The burn deck is a real thing man it top 16'd the GP this weekend.

Anger kills all your dudes...  and invalidates your whole strategy, move those to the side at least if not outright cutting them, you're already setup pretty good against aggro. 

My final opinion... i can't endorse the deck as constructed...

The deck has good cards in it, but if you go this route then the RBW midrange has a better cards available to it (blood baron, obzedat) as well as a better emoval suite.   Or it seemed like you had the cards for the UWR control deck which is a good deck and has the ability to shut off lots of stuff.  If you have sphinx's, spheres, and verdicts aren't hard to get a hold of, i don't understand the aversion to trying something more proven and go with a UW or UWR build.

You've got conflicting ideas here, midrange, devotion, white... white devotion is an aggro deck because that's the way wizards constructed it.  The white devotion plan really needs to be an aggro one.  Soldier of the Pantheon plus something like dryad militant, precinct captain on turn 2, or possibly a wojek halberdiers, skyjaks or something, turn 3  ajani, reckoner or spear and you're talking some serious damage on the board. THen heliod to top it off.  It can go "big" with stuff like archangel of thune and gideon, but you need to be beating things down with creatures, gaining life to survive.  A midrange deck typically runs the best removal available and frankly right now that's in black. 

These midrange boros decks were all theorized and tested early in theros release and they really went no where.  They ended up evolving into WR aggro, White weenie decks and just RDW/red devotion.  The Dega midrange is all but gone and that basically evolved into the RWb burn deck that's floating around or a BW midrange,  and if  you're not completely married to the devotion plan, the RWb burn deck works.  It can beat mono black and all the other contenders out there right now.

I realize like you said that your store isn't hyper competitive, but i think you can build a solid tier 1 deck with what you have represented and there's no real reason you shouldn't go for it.

Would I get any benefit out of putting the Reckoner into the UWR control list?

I recently traded for the reckoners, and i'd like to get the most out of them, that's partially why i'm pushing devotion so much.

I really only play fnm right now, but I also want to branch out into the bigger world, and I can see that I really won't get anywhere by playing a deck that isn't ready for the competition.

I'm thinking about it now, and going through what I have, I think that UWR will just be a better option for now. I've got the steam augurys, a couple of Jaces, and I may as well use the revelations while ive got em.

Thanks for all of the insight, by the way. I'll be drawing up that new list now.

And Jace can do it more than once...