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ok, after some testing I droped the darkdepths package




60 cards, 15 sideboard

1 Bayou
1 Forest
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland

4 Delver of Secrets
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Tombstalker

4 Brainstorm
1 Ghastly Demise
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Spell Pierce
2 Thoughtseize
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Life from the Loam
4 Force of Will


Sideboard
1 Engineered Plague
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Perish
2 Flusterstorm
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Tormod's Crypt
2 Extirpate
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Darkblast
15 sideboard cards

very nice seth, i liked the depths combo but i can see how that can be janky. the second reformed deck is looking nasty though. i wish i had something relative i could suggest but those numbers all look pretty tight. i was playing a BUGthresh list for a little while and i ran mongoose over dark confidant, but i like how this has a more control feel to it.

im not normally a big fan of top, but i imagine you use that to get maximum effect outa dark confidant.
20 lands and only 3 wastes?

The tops are a necessity, although unsynergetic with delver they keep Dark Confidant from running blind into Force of Will or even worse, Tombstalker (for 8 life loss). Confidant with Tombstalkers is rather crazy but the numbers seem to work well so far and the stalkers are a really good clock.

The wastelands are mostly there to get rid of something like maze of ith that can potentially slow me down a lot. With the life from the loam 1 off they can also start to turn around the game. The life from the loam has been great and I even want a second but I don't have room for it and decks like merfolk and miracles that are probably the more difficult matchups are more or less immune.
That said Life from the Loam in the yard with Sensei's divining Top in play and reccuring fetchland is nuts, you can really control your draws and dredge away what you don't need. Life from the loam also turns my brainstorms in ancestral recalls and it boosts goyfs. It really does a lot for the deck.

I could just go for a tempo Team America style build with full wasteland daze and stifle but in my opinion RUG Tempo is just the better deck that fills that archetype. My build is like you say, more controlish while still having a pretty good clock.

I woould love some Mishra's Factory in the deck to have a better matchup against miracles but My manabase just can't handle it.

20 lands is like you pointed out not a lot but with 1 ponder, 4 brainstorm, 1 loam and 3 top I feel like the deck can handle it. Everything is either a 1 or a 2 drop.

very nice. life from the loam is definitely a super tech card. i like the fact that your running 2 tombstalkers though. just the right number to not run into more than you need.

i originally thought you should squeeze that fourth waste in, but after thinking about it, and reading your reply, i realized your not not playing the tempo deck, your playing the aggro control deck. and like you said its mostly for stopping maze or random problem lands.

iv been seeing alot of similar BUG control type lists playing baleful strix.
what do you think of that guy?

Its pricy for an uncommon but I'm in the process of aquiring my own set because they are really good for control decks. a deadtouch flyer for 2 that lets you draw a card is just value. They also work well with Tezzeret agent of bolas as they are arifacts and tezzeret is a really good underplayed walker.
As most of the meta plays force and spell pierce as counters its also great to advance your board, draw a card in the process unaffected by countermagic. They are also blue and can be pitched to force if have to.

Now that said, I do not have a plan for playing them. My believe is that you should either play a deck with tons of creatures like goblins or maverick so that you can overwhelm your opponent with redundancy or play no creatures at all so that your opponent has a lot of dead cards (like miracles or landstill back when it was popular). Both strategies are proven to be successful.
Playing an inbetween is where things get tricky. Take RUG as a popular succesful example, it plays only a handful of creatures and makes up for it by trying to protect them for as long as possible by means of counterspells and land disruption. Their plan is play a very aggresive creature and protect it hopefully for long enough to finish the opponent.
Thats not a bad plan. Now it does raise the question of how good a 1/1 flyer is in a control deck that probably doesn't play a lot of creatures. Playing only 4 parasidic strix seems bad since they will get removed for sure. Playing them next to goyfs and stalkers seems weak as well as they don't support an aggro strategy. currently they only seem good paired with tezzeret.

bottom line it's a good ceature but finding a home for it is tricky.

seems like good reasons not to play him. besides your playing confidant, so chances are, youll be drawing the control cards you need anyway//

and i agree that that inbetween number can be tricky. i had been playing alot of tempo decks recently, New Horizons for a lil bit, BUG thresh, Dreadstalker, and nothing is worse than drawing all counterspells and cantrips all game >:[ except maybe getting land flooded in a deck that runs 17 lands. that will get me ragin too haha.

i love this build though seth. your a damn good deck builder.
gotta keep us posted on how this guy holds up in play.

I tested my deck against RUG Delver yesterday and it performed beautifully (The tombstalkers where gold and abrubt decay ruled)

here's my latest update:

BUG Decay

1 Bayou
1 Forest
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Polluted Delta
3 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Wasteland
1 Volrath's Stronghold

4 Delver of Secrets
3 Dark Confidant
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Tombstalker
4 Brainstorm
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Ponder
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Spell Pierce
1 Thoughtseize
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Life from the Loam
4 Force of Will

//Sideboard
SB: 1 Engineered Plague
SB: 1 Engineered Explosives
SB: 1 Go for the Throat
SB: 3 Counterbalance
SB: 1 Ghastly Demise
SB: 1 Scavenging Ooze
SB: 1 Grafdigger's Cage
SB: 1 Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 Extirpate
SB: 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
SB: 1 Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 1 Darkblast

abrupt decay single-handedly destroys all tempo strategies

that's overstating it a bit, but yes it's strong. If you build a list with both Chalice of the Void and Abrubt Decay main then you're talking tempo hate.

Talking about tempo, a friend of mine is playing UB Death's Shadow with great success, he has won at least one tournament and T8 the rest with the same list. He's playing Gitaxian Probe, Thoughtseize, Snuff Out, Confidant, Dismember, Ravnica Shock lands... everything to get his life down fast and then just beat down with Death's Shadow. Crazy stuff.

yeah, death's shadow is sweet. i tried him in my dreadstalker build for a lil bit but he wasnt that great there. however a dedicated build with him seems brutal.
ive seen a couple online before.

and yeah im probably exaggerating a bit, but seriously decay crushes me all the time. when im playing online, everyone is alllll about bug control and bg control lists right now. its driving me crazy.