Control Woes

[SomeRandomDude]

Every single time I try to make a control deck, it stinks! BAD! I made the Spiteful Visions deck, but it usually ends up with Spiteful Visions O-ringed. My mill decks get overrun before I can mill, and my decks that can actually stay alive for a while usually lack a good finisher. My Pickles deck was way too slow, and the Rune Snags never came at the right time, then they rotated. My UB Faerie deck was the only one that did decent, but that was half aggro. My extended blink deck died miserably to a superior control deck, and I could never get Erayo to go off. Mono-black discard worked tolerably well, but again, lacked a suitable finisher once Megrim outlived its usefulness, and just eating away with Leechridden Swamps was kinda unreliable.

So I stick with heavy aggro and combo decks to have the board swept via Wrath, Hollowed Burial, etc. Any tips? What's a good finisher for control decks? So far, the techniques that I've got working are Sower of Temptation and Pupeteer Clique in Faerie decks, and nothing else.

[Elf_Lvr]

Guile. If you're going mono-blue, really, but hey. O-ring won't hurt him as much, because if you can counter one O-Ring, you can o-ring their o-rings!

I've never tried running a mill deck competitively, so I don't really know what to say there. There IS that kraken that gets +4/+8 when a library is below 20 cards, but that's not the best, I'm sure...

Spiteful visions + burn. Maybe go R/B and get them to waste their rings on Maralen of Mournsong - while they lose life in the process - before you drop visions.

[FM]

Ok, general tips for "true" control decks:

-Needs disruption to survive the early game (coutners, discard, etc) against key spells;
-Needs some board sweepers to survive against aggro:
-Usually goes for card advantage, be it via draw spells, 2-for-1 cards (or X-for-1 to be precise) and recursion;
-Are usually mana-intensive, thus needing a lot of lands since it can't afford to miss a land drop during the first 4-5 turns (and most of them also played Storage Lands, in Standard, in order to accumulate mana faster);
- Needs a finisher that is either ABSURDLY hard to deal with, closes the match REALLY fast and/or has some sort of recursion itself.
Since blue is the "control color", per say, with black following closely behind, I'll post the finishers I played in my UB Teachings deck:
-Teferi (isn't a "finisher" of sorts, but sertainly can pack a punch, not to mention it makes it ABSURDLY hard for the opponent to fight back;
-Guile (punches hard, is nigh-unstoppable, has a CRAZY built-in ability AND "dodges" removal);
-Aeon Chronicler (it's card advantage AND a LARGE beater to boot);
-Tombstalker (beats hard, has evasion and can come down for dirty cheap);
-Urza's Factory (great in attrition wars that go to long, AMAZINGLY good in the Control VS. Control match-up).

[SomeRandomDude]

Okay, so Shards is coming out and half the stuff rotates. Guile is good, but how is control going to do post-Shards?

[FM]

That depends entirely on what the next sets bring us, right? I believe an aggro-control Faeries deck can still do fairly well if the format slows down a little, and I think so far it has. Also, Reveillark control (not combo) is still pretty viable.

[SomeRandomDude]

Well...I took a whack at a mono-blue control deck that utilizes Sowers, Guiles and Overbeings as finishers with counters and a set of Curse of Chains to help.

Here it is.

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
    22 [ALA] Island (4)
    4 [10E] Faerie Conclave

// Creatures
    2 [LRW] Jace Beleren
    4 [EVE] Overbeing of Myth
    4 [LRW] Sower of Temptation
    3 [LRW] Guile

// Spells
    4 [SHM] Curse of Chains
    3 [10E] Evacuation
    2 [SHM] Counterbore
    4 [10E] Cancel
    4 [LRW] Cryptic Command
    4 [LRW] Broken Ambitions

14 counters and 4 creature lockers, I like it. It got beat by aggro red (turn 5 evacuation was too slow and he finished me with a Flame Javelin when I pulled that), and then I trashed Naya pretty bad. (Curse of Chains + Thoctar = fun). But the problem was that though I stabilized at 6 and didn't lose a life point for the next...uh...7 turns, he was able to beat me down to 6 within the first 4 turns.

So the deck takes a while to establish control. Anything I could do to speed it up?

[SomeRandomDude]

w00t it smashed the control on control game 2/3. Lost first game, then I got into my sideboard and ripped him up both games. Guile smashed face. Remove Souls ripped up his Reveillark deck.

[FM]

Faerie Macabre also helps.

[SomeRandomDude]

yeah, I'm sideboarding Relic of Progenitus AND Faerie Macabre.