So we are towards the end of the season, and as an avid control player I would like to hear your thoughts on what you think is the best control deck of the season.

For me it has been izzet control (energy sub theme). It has answers for everything and I've beaten every archetype with this deck.
I've played 50 games with it total and I've won 40/50 of those. So that's an 80% win rate.
I honestly wish I had played this in the tournament.

Of the control decks I have played with so far this season, Grixis with Dynavolt has been the most consistently performing for me.

Grixis Control has been doing pretty good for me; from a Aggro perspective.

For me it was Esper. Fatal Push, Grasp of Darkness and Anguished Unmaking are still the best removal spells, and I wanted Blue for the counterspells and cardddraw (Also T-Hulk).
Grixis was number 2, but no enchant removal hurt it.
I also tried Jeskai and 4-colour. 4-colour (no Green) performed similar to the Grixis list, but was a tad less consistent due to the greedy manabase. Jeskai giving up Black seemed too much to handle as well.

Depends on what part. At the start of the season, Grixis dealt with most of what I was seeing. Then PWs became more common as Vehicle decks went midrange, so I switched to Orzhov instead with more success since I didn't lose to my own mana going Esper. Dynavolt was weird for me. I either stabilised and never needed it or had the game fly wildly beyond where it helped me in any way.

I Started with Izzet Dynavolt control (splashing black for 2 Disintegrations) from last season, but it was not the best one i think.
My last build is Grixis control, with lot of threats (pws, tower, visions), mostly because i wanted to use Dark Intimations so i must add some other pws, like little Chandra, Liliana and Ob. Since black was not a splash color anymore, i could add cards like Fatal Push and Yahenni's Expertise. No idea about the winrate, but it's good.
I built it after i helped Light in his matchup against thekryan, so i got inspiration by his deck even thought i changed lot of stuff.

If my tourney deck counts as control, then I'll Stan for my current list of that. It often leans almost towards combo, though.

Besides that, I'll vote for Esper. It still can deal with everything and Vehicles aren't as fast we had feared. Fatal Push and Unsub really slow down Copters.

Interesting how it's so varied.

In terms of overall power, obviously Grixis/Esper is the best. But I found them to be inconsistent ( more so with Grixis) and slow at times. So when I shaved the Grixis down to an izzet deck suddenly it become really consistent. It also became more synergistic because instead of the fatal pushes and such I added cards like aether meltdown, and aether thief. Both of which not only go great with the towers/energy theme but are also answers for scrounger ( a card grixis was struggling with). This izzet can also afford to run both copies of brutal expulsion - also another answer for scrounger. The izzet can(needs to) run more counters as well due to the better mana.
There is the problem of big creatures which need hard removal and resolved PW. Easily solved by running some bounce.

Perhaps I'll post a list later.

Don't forget about Fiery Impulse in UR Control. It's something we've got that standard doesn't. Joly played it in the past tournament with his Jeskai Control and made it fairly far (3rd place). Also, Kozilek's Return is a nice instant option and I always find it to be the blow out play.

_The only thing this variant is missing is artifact/enchantment removal in the form of Frag & Nahiri. Mainly there only to deal with Tutelage and not vehicles. Vehicles are just above average sized creatures.

_Anguished Unmaking is the card I feel that defines Esper. It's a nice immidiate answer to PW's but you can sort of replace that with Tower and more counters.

_ gives you Fatal Push but Grasp isn't better than Harnessed because it doesn't deal with 5 toughness guys like Flagship. Languish is still a solid option, Liliana is the best walker in the game and Dark Intimation feels more like a 2HG card.

_On the last note, the 3-mana spot removal in Murder and Unlicensed is mainly only there to answer 5 toughness + guys. I find it to be too slow vs. the faster decks like vehicles.

I have build another Grixis control this season and had good results with it. I just love to pay in this colors and Dark Intimation is just an awesome card.
I love Esper as well but I haven't had a chance to build one this time, but I guess it has more solutions than Grixis.
Either way, I don't think you can go wrong with these two.

Yeah, I think right now the biggest weakness of Grixis is lack of good enchantment/artifact removal. Things like Tutelage, Visions, and Dynavolt are the bane of the deck.

Dynavolt and Burn do a pretty good job of answering PWs, and Intimations can and does hit PWs. Grixis can run counterspells too (although they generally tend to devote less room to them than Esper).

Intimations has actually been pretty good to me, being able to freely -X your PWs (or cast them into a situation where you know they will be removed in short order) knowing we can always grab them back up later from the yard has won me a lot of games. Doing stuff like playing Ob, killing a creature, and letting the opponent kill Ob with combat damage the following turn (effectively Fogging the turn) just to follow up with Intimations to remove another creature/PW and grab Ob to slam down again the following turn.

Yeah, Esper's defining card for me is Scatter to the Winds. Grixis has several very strong sorceries and tapout plays, so I feel like Grixis often plays much more as tapout control, whereas the real strength of Esper is its uncanny ability to essentially NEVER need to tapout. Sure, if forced, it can tapout for Sorin or a sweeper, but it never really wants to. Esper wants to wait and wait and wait until it can do all of it's stuff AND answer your stuff at the same time.

I call my deck White Grixis. It's basically Grixis with Anguished Unmaking and Sorin. It's my favorite and has the highest win rate among my decks.

I was thinking along the lines of the exact same thing except I had Nahiri over Sorin.

Also, if we get any of the new black hate cards in AMN, we no longer need W. Fingers crossed.

I did this too, with Nahiri as well for more anti-enchantment. No Gideon. Probably my favorite and most consistent deck of the season. I run 25 lands, 2 Renegade Map, no manlands or Aether Hubs, and mana has been surprisingly good to me.

These are the 1st 28 cards I'd instantly consider and I believe most Grixis-W builds are running with.


This leaves 5-7 spots open for big win conditions and additional disruption.

My Abzan control lead me top rank40, and keept me there all season! I love abzan