Control decks in Arena Explorer

Arena Explorer Control Decks

During Winota’s absence from the format, tap out control decks have gained new life. Control players no longer have to cling to their instant speed removals or counter spells to solve the card problem. Less explosive format means more room for power lvl – and this is where fires of invention decks come into play:

To my surprise Agent of Treachery didn’t leave the format together with Winota. This fact means that Agent of Treachery is the final element of the endgame for most of the midrange and control decks. Together with Transmogrify, the explosiveness of our two-card combo allows you to take control of an enemy land or pernament as early as turn 4. Fires of invention with Yorion in the next turn again targeting Agent and taking over more pernaments puts our opponent literally and suddenly against the wall. Even when opponent has removal on Agent, Fires of invention still gives us very explosive turns allowing us to play around counter spells like “pay X”. Selecting point removals also gives us a lot of options due to the lack of Winota in the format. Rip Apart can be the best example of this. In the current format it solves most of the important problems for every deck. Deck is a kind of token control so it is worth taking care of our tokens and playing them sparingly to ensure our Transmogrify has the right target for it. The deck also loves playing shark as an enchantment especially with Fires of invention on the table – so don’t be afraid to do it in the right situation.

Traditionally Fires of Invention decks have had trouble with counter spell/instant speed decks so UW control may be the natural choice in this matchup when Fires of Invention and agent are too powerful:

The deck almost closely resembles its version from pioneer – which means it’s in the absolute top tier of decks for a format aspiring to become the equal of eternal from paper magick. Lots of counter spells and instant play is perfect vs control decks focused more on beating aggro decks. A lot of enchantment removals will also work well against other decks trying to win us over in the late game such as jund sacrifice

What do we get from combining fires and being greedy when we also want to have a lot of anti control cards? Then we have to reach for Grixis:

At the sight of Fae of wishes and Fires of Invention an expression of emotion is painted on my face. The combination of these cards was one of my favorite decks in Standard history and it’s nice to be back. The increased power lvl thanks to the powerful package of Sinister Bolas along with discard will give us a lot of options for control decks and the package of excellent removals and mass removals will allow us to survive versus aggro decks.

There are a lot of options for building control decks in the format now, and there will be even more when the format becomes a real Pioneer format 🙂 I encourage you to test your control skills, because next month we have a lot of explorer games.

NeefTheProg