Banging my head against the wall trying to get this archetype to have SOMETHING in the way of progress, when I came across this list on Channel Fireball today.



Firstly, the curve is lowered massively to deal with aggro. Secondly, we can get pretty damn close to this in Duels. Outside of Beefslab Supreme, the PWs for U/W are nothing to call home about as wincons in our format. Switching over to mostly creatures, along with swapping for some cycle spells that boost them looks promising IMO. Here's what I've got so far.

U/W Control

Creature(4)
2 x Curator of Mysteries
1 x Disciple of the Ring
1 x Torrential Gearhulk


Instant(17)
2 x Gideon's Reproach
3 x Blessed Alliance
3 x Censor
2 x Essence Scatter
2 x Pull From Tomorrow
2 x Scatter to the Winds
3 x Hieroglyphic Illumination


Sorcery(6)
2 x Fragmentize
2 x Declaration in Stone
2 x Planar Outburst


Split(1)
1x Commit // Memory

Enchantment(6)
3 x Spontaneous Mutation
3 x Cast Out


Land(26)
2 x Prairie Stream
6 x Plains
7 x Island
2 x Glacial Fortress
3 x Aether Hub
2 x Westvale Abbey
4 x Evolving Wilds


Mutation has great synergy with Wilds and cycling, with its cheap cost and flexible ability making it dangerous for your opponent to say...tap out T5 into an open for Glorybringer. Something that crops up with Glimmer often is those bad hands where you get stuck on 3 mana forever, or your opponent's threats just not allowing you breathing room to cast it. Illumination helps here, cantripping in the really dire situations (what doesn't help cycles, what cycles helps the Mutation). Commit is here as removal and panic button in one. Having to reset your Mutation sucks, but this card has proven great in every deck I've run it in, plus the EoT Gearhulk flashback for drawing 7 is pure gas! Disciple and Gearhulk are the auto-include wincons, but I'm still not set on the Sphinxes. Sure they cycle too, even have synergy with other cycle cards, but no they're not as resilient as some other options. I don't think Kefnet or Glyph Keepers will be fast enough, whereas the Curators could sneak in T4 on the play against an unlucky non-control opponent. Favorably blocking 3 power dudes is also a plus in my books. Abbey rounds out the wincons for more grueling games. With the addition of Censor, Cast Out and the classic Fragmentize, we have 8 answers to an early Sphinx's Tutelage. Memory also helps in dire straits, but Fragmentize can still see off all relevant artifacts outside of Skyship.

The deck has more issues vs control mirrors, but that's just not what I'm facing atm. At least not hardcore Esper anyway (a few W/B and Izzet variants). Give this a shot if you're into this archetype, I want to see if this is capable of handling aggro consistently enough.

Spontaneous Mutation VS Aether Meltdown

AM's con is it's extra mana.
AM gives you a guaranteed -4 power early that SM doesn't.
AM will stick to vehicles.
AM generates - useful for hubs. Very minor advantage in this build but it's worth mentioning.

SM's con is it may be worthless early game and after using memory.
SM can potentially give more bang for the buck err mana giving a bigger power drop later in the game.

I used to run both in my bant enchant deck but eventually cut out SM for better options. Being able to answer vehicles helped me to decide AM gets the nod.

One problem I have with these enchants is they don't play well with Blessed Alliance. The opponent can still attack with a powerless creature and use it to shield another attacking creature. I think you have to decide to go with Blessed or the auras but probably not both.

I will be running this deck this week if I have the cards unlocked. I think I'm at 84%.

Meltdown may be the way to go since it still hits the haymakers of late (Glorybringer, Brawler, HoK, Glory-Bound). However, dropping Alliance is out of the question, its too useful with its sac effect and lifegain. These colours don't have the luxury to choose in early removal options, so I can put up with a non-bo to get through it.

I agree that Blessed is too good to pass up. Maybe the real question should be is AM better than +2x Gideon's Reproachand a broken concentration or additional essence scatter.

I really like AM for how it deals with scrounger and other recursive threats. It also shuts down vehicles or near shut down on big ones (Sky sov isn't as scary with 2 power). I will have to do some testing.

Where's Glyphbae?

There's only room in this build for two 5+ mana wincons, and Glyphbae ain't treatin' me right.

How about Dusk // Dawn? You can still use the enchantments on pesky creatures you dont want them to embalm. Or better yet that other white destroy all creatures.

Tragic Arrogance (if that's what you mean) ain't worth it IMO. Dusk doesn't hit the majority of what sweepers should hit, and it's aftermath side is useless to me.

Planar Outburst keep forgetting the name of the card. Would work as an early board control. Destroy all before you drop your win con. You can use AM and Mutation to deal with early aggression and vehicles.

Blessed Alliance would have to go though.

I agree that sorting out the answer package is the priority of the deck, and I'm not sure what I would recommend either ^^, gideon's reproach is quite well positioned, and I dislike the dissynergy of mutation and BA ALOT. This is easily the kind of nonbo that loses games.

The CFB list is an attempt to revive the idea behind the standard deck that Ivan Floch won a protour with 5 years back or so. 4 pull over sphinx's revelation, and commit to replace the singleton estus flask (or whatever, artifact , t, sac: gain 5 life, shuffle graveyard into library).

I personally think it's a pipedream, because:

_ Power creep and vehicles have made aggression just as nasty if not more than the fleecemane lion, loxodon smiter fueled aggro builds that flourished back then.
_ In this type of deck, seeing +1 card over gaining a ton of life is a HUUUUGE downgrade.



All that said, in all my control adventures so far, if the plan is to go really, truly, long, I've been liking Kefnet alot as a wincon. Way more than I should probably, but he has won a fair share of games, including vs top tier archetypes such as mardu.

Kefnet is great, but he doesn't reliably win quick. In my more grueling control builds I like him though.

Maybe this needs to be a U/R list instead, the wincons are all Blue anyway and it just needs better early removal options than White allows.

How many early removal cards is ideal? Would you count censor as early removal?

From T3 onwards, no. I just did a write-up for Elk on an encounter vs a very similar deck to his Gruul beatdown, Censor wasn't saving me on the draw vs a T2 Brawler and a T3 Brawler lol. I'm talking about answers to resolved cards early on, although I'm starting to hate having Spell Shrivels in opening hands and might swap them for Essence Scatter, which would be more akin to an early "answer".

Cards I haven't found the luxury to cast atm in Control builds:
- Basically any PWs unless I've entered "clearly won" territory.
- Confirm Suspicions

I'm thinking of just straight cutting them and going with 3-4 creature based wincons with some resilience. Control matchups are rare atm.

Disagree on that you can't cast Walkers; even if Azorius can't run Chandra or Nahiri, big Jace has been really good to me in Jeskai. Either bounces a thing or filters and draws at an amazing rate. There have been many games that weren't "clearly won" on turn 5 where slamming Jace was the decisive swing for me. Maybe Azorius wants him less due to having less removal, though.
I completely see your point about the Gideons though; especially Trials.

Confirm has been good for me as a 1-of, the refill is good even and specifically against Aggro. That being said, the card is clunky and you don't want to draw it together with many other expensive spells, which is why it's not a 2-of anymore.

Essence Scatter or Horribly Awry is probably necessary for Azorius, since White doesn't have much in terms of great early removal. I'm not generally a fan of these cards, but I see why you'd want them. Wouldn't want to cut too many Shrivels though.

Could Unsub still be worth running in a shell?

I know with Essence Scatter, Censor, and Horribly Awry around running a counterspell that isn't actually a counterspell seems silly.

That said Unsub still has value as bounce alongside the pseudo-counter aspect, so it still has potential value against things that have been resolved. If you are running a bunch of other relatively cheap counterspells (Censor, Scatter) both the bounce and pseudo-Remand seem like they could actually be useful.

Early on (like T2-T3) you could use it to pseudo-Remand something to buy you an extra turn to try and draw into a hard counter the following turn. Later on it could be used to bounce stuff that manages to get resolved through your counterspells, preferably to get played into more counterspells or generally just to tempo/CA out your opponent (Unsub on that 4/3 discard Minotaur seems kind of mean). Unsub is still a hella tempo hit against vehicles as well. I could see it helping to make Censor more flexible later on too, since that extra may be a little harder to pay if they have to play the spell twice in the same turn because of Unsub.

The bounce has synergy with Gearhulk also, and allows for some silly EoT shenanigans once you get a decent amount of mana on the table (EoT Gearhulk+free Glimmer followed by Unsub to be able to use Gearhulk again the following EoT). I also feel like it works well with Blessed Alliance, helping to snipe annoying targets.

It put in a good deal of work for me in my Esper lists in the previous seasons, and while I can definitely see it being less attractive now with Scatter and Censor around I could still see it being worthwhile in builds who lack access to better removal.

I tried getting U/W to work and gave up; losing black is too much of a loss.

Both Modulo and myself have commented that Esper mana is actually quite good. You have 18U/17W sources. I'm running Esper with 18U/18B/16W. Turn 1 Wilds or tap land and I can usually sequence my mana to stay on curve. But I have Push and Grasp and my Sweeper comes online a turn earlier. And there's nothing to say you have to go big on the curve; Vert tuned his deck to take on aggro.

It's often the case in Duels that adding a third colour is bad idea, but I honestly think 3 colour is way to go for control. The other option is Izzet which I haven't had much chance to delve into, but that seems like it may be better going more aggressive with drakes etc as it doesn't have as many options if games go long.

I agree. If you run 26 lands, splashing a third colour is done pretty easily seeing how you already have Hubs/Wilds/rare Duals.
My Jeskai list runs 19U/16R/15W easily (and I could go 19/17/14 if I really wanted), while 20B/18W is a stretch for Orzhov (to be fair, the Orzhov list didn't run Aether Hub, but it did run Forsaken Sanctuary).

Started with BBB's deck but I made some changes as I want to run less vulnerable win cons.
U/W Control aka The Fun Police

Creature(3)
1 x Kefnet the Mindful
1 x Disciple of the Ring
1 x Torrential Gearhulk


Planeswalkers (3)
1 x Gideon of the Trials
1 x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets


Instant(19)
4 x Gideon's Reproach
3 x Blessed Alliance
2 x Censor
2 x Essence Scatter
2 x Pull From Tomorrow
2 x Scatter to the Winds
2 x Glimmer of Genius
2 x Confirm Suspisions


Sorcery(4)
2 x Declaration in Stone
2 x Planar Outburst


Split(2)
2x Commit // Memory

Enchantment(3)
3 x Cast Out


Land(26)
2 x Prairie Stream
7 x Plains
7 x Island
2 x Glacial Fortress
2 x Aether Hub
2 x Westvale Abbey
4 x Evolving Wilds


So this is the list I have come up with that I have been running with some success. Lost to some of my own miss plays vs mill and had a land screw game that I only drew 2 mana over 10 draws. Didn’t keep track of the wins, most vs what I call low quality decks. I did face an interesting token deck that was slow at first but really tried to jump out with mythic after mythic played. In that game I got to catch sorin on opp’s turn 6 with a censor, and yes I giggled a bit.

I’m unsure if I am running enough early removal, the card draw feels good but vs say RDW or Vehicles it’s untested. I will report more as I get the chance to play. Any tips are welcome as I am not the typical draw go player and I am learning a bit too. This has been a lot of fun. I have completely taken over most games by turn 6.

Unorthadox thoughts I've had...
Oketra as a cheaper token generator alongside westvale abbey.
A more conservative approach, run 1 copy of Renewed faith that can be cycled when not needed but there vs Red decks that i stabilize with little life left. Being able to play memory that life gain could add up if I need it in a match that my opponent finds ways to answer my options or is burning me with something I can't answer right away.

^Has anyone tried this out? Is the consensus that U/W isn't worth it? Any thoughts BBB on this list vs yours?

I haven't played much over the past few days as I've been chasing students to hand in their damn coursework (did 4 games with Gruul Beatdown on Saturday).

I'm still not sold on the early game in these colours. I'm still torn on Jeskai vs Esper as a ladder deck TBH, although I know Esper would be the better tournament option for those who are interested.