t2 Stonehorn Control (tourname..

yeah, the -1 snapcaster for +1 sphinx seems good to me too. and i didn't think about the sunblast, though i'm not sure how i'd fit it into my deck... i do like it though, espeically with venser... i like the idea. :)

and yeah, i posted a stonehorn lockdown deck on here a while ago after stonehorn got released and it made front page, this is just an updated version

i would bump it up to 4 timely reinforcements in the sideboard, with rotation aggro/ creature-based/tribal decks can be really really fast and kill you by turn 4

oh shit, good point. thanks. :)

And there /are/ times you'll want to sac him. Like the turn you case Sun Titan ;)

yeah explaining everything is as much for other people as it is for myself. but thanks. :) it's a blast, but not so fun to play against... ha

haha, smiling is always a good thing! :)

thanks for the feedback, and i'll be sure to give it a look, but yeah, i'm a huge fan of venser. i shove him in almost all of my homebrews. xD
and about sunblast, i think i've decided against it. it's 6 mana, doesn't pass the dismember test, and achieves the same thing that stonehorn + venser does, and he undermines the stonehorn venser combo, which i don't want to get rid of unless i specifically have a gideon on the field. that's just not enough options for me.

on the other hand, ghost quaters is nice, but it really depends on how things play out this weekend for me to decide on how i feel about it for the tournament in nashville on the weekend of the 8th.

Yeah I think Sunblasts are too expensive personally lol but they would be so fun to play with both Gideon and Venser out!

thanks! half of me explaining every card choice in the comments is for me, the other half is for people who want to check out other things and what not...

oh and btw, i play tested 22 matches last night. i won MB every game against tempered steel. :) it stabilizes well enough to beat the best aggro matchup out there. :)

also, glad i could help, if you have any questions, let me know. :)

Yeah reckoning works really well with stonehorn, but I've yet to play test it too much. The problem is that I generally have enough stabalization by the time I have a creature I want to save, and if I haven't stabilized, I definitely don't want them having another creature...
And I agree about snapcaster being awesome, but the werewolves are honestly not a huge problem for me, there's enough control in there to make it so I don't die. I only really ever use snapcaster for leak and sometimes ponder...

Thanks for the feedback though! It's always nice for other opinions. :)

in response to your snapcaster + second spell I play moonmist to transform them all back. haha

This deck is intended for standard gameplay. Counterspell is not legal.

thanks man! the old version i played that had hawks and colonnades in it worked wonders. i probably had a legit 70/30 win percentage. partially i'm sure because of people not expecting it, helping me grab game one, but still. it has enough angles of lockdown that it can be very effective without ever seening a venser or a stonehorn. :)

but really man, thanks, i always love positive feedback! :D

i like the elves, and dark ritual was a definite must have in that deck, though i'm a bit curious. whats up with all the 1 of's in the vamps and elves decks you have? i generally find that you either want 2, 3 or 4 of a card, with a core set of reliable cards that will provide the backbone, then throw in like a FEW 2 and 1 of's... i feel like it makes the deck more consistent, which is always a good thing, and it means you'll get more of the best cards if you run 4of each card that's better. :)

i definitely like think twice and forbidden alchemy, but i'm more inclined to run ponder over forbidden alchemy, just to fit the curve better and i feel like snapcaster works better with ponder than it does with think twice (though if i didn't run ponder i'd run think twice, but i need the 1 drop slot more often than you'd think)

and thanks for the praise man, i feel like very few of the UW decks that have come out recently are real control, and that's probably because there wasn't really a wide array of useful options for UW pure control, but i think i might have found what could be a really cool archetype and that is control heavy enough to beat tempered steel game 1, but also good enough post SB to beat down some other control deck. :)

also, i'll check out your list and comment on it there, i've already posted a long enough comment here. xD

peace shtuffed?
i'm actually kinda curious as to what you meant, it could be kinda cool.
if anyone knows what he could be talking about, let me know. it sounds like it might work well.


although, i'm basically preboarded for aggro / mid range anyways, i'm not sure i'd want more than just like a timely reinforcements or something for the aggro matchup (which is even better with snapcaster) and maybe throw in another day in my SB. idk though, mostly i'm trying to base my SB against control.

Peace Strider, maybe? He has peace in his name, and provides 3 life when he enters the battlefield..

If you needed to run something for life gain I'd say Batterskull. It has some synergistic interaction with Venser -- if the germ is killed or tapped, bounce for another untapped token. Would certainly be better than Peace Strider, but not good enough to make it to a tournament, imo.

Double post?

yeah i agree, life is never really an issue, i thought he was talking about a card from long time ago that could have gotten reprinted (but didn't) i just got a bit overexcited.

if i need to play life gain in my deck, i need a different deck.

yeah i've actually heard a lot about that, but i still believe 2 things.
1. think twice is 2 mana, with a three mana flashback, and although it's still awesome for a card, it isn't as selective and thusly not as good for a deck that wants to combo into sweet finishers like my does.
2. ponder, compared to think twice, is just more selective. sometimes i'll need a stonehorn or a venser or a day or whatever and relying on think twice to get me there just isn't cutting it, or so i feel after the play testing. to give you a good analogy. i play an edh match that looks for a super sweet combo, do i search for it as best i can, or just get a bit more cool stuff from think twice? i'd like to search for it myself... maybe it's that i like to win-moar, but i feel like my deck has a lot of interactions, and digging them up seems more handy than straight draw.

Anyone who thinks that Think Twice is better than Ponder (especially if you're running Snapcaster) is crazy. Just because Think Twice has flashback and instant speed doesn't make it better. Think Twice is alright but it just costs too damn much.

Ponder > Think Twice

I like to set up my next few turns AND draw, thank you very much!

@Majician

whoa now... i never said that ponder was better, just that decks that try to put 2 cards together to create more power than you'd already have... those decks want ponder, where as think twice is for those decks that just want pure CA. or at least that's my opinion. to me, it's like the difference between a tutor and say, 1 mana draw 2. they just have different purposes.

I'll say Ponder is better... for combo. Digging up to 4 cards for 1 is a hell of a lot better than digging 2 for 5, especially when digging is the engine that makes combo run.

Divination also gives you two cards but only for 3, but its only a sorcery, ergo ties up your mana. The extra 2 for Think Twice allows you to pull card advantage when you don't need the mana to answer any threats. I still prefer Visions from Beyond, though.

yeah divination isn't as good for a reason, it means you can't leak, though it is nice on turn 6 when you can save mana open for leak and still use divination. and yeah, i definitely don't think visions of beyond is worth it in a deck that doesn't focus specifically on milling. i mean sure MAYBE on turn like 30 or something it'll help refill your hand, but until then, it's just a cantrip, compared to ponder which reorders your top cards then cantrips.

There's a lot of benefit to self milling in Innistrad, in addition to the normal back-and-forth that normally goes on. Not to mention Trepanation Blade which I think could make its way into aggro control. It's a gamble but pays off most of the time, especially against a well shuffled deck that doesn't have many land pockets -- it can stall an opponent at 3-4 mana for most of the game :)

no i agree, having jace and that card, along with think twice in your deck and you're doing awesomely, and can feed the hell out of a skabb ruinator. these UW aggro control decks though are what i said this deck wasn't at the very beginning of my description. xD
and i'm not sure if 4 ponders and 1 sphinx is enough CA for my taste actually, i miss my jace and baby jace... :/ i might have to throw in 2 think twice in there, i'm just not totally sure where. also, when you read this if it's after 15 minutes after i posted reread the top of the description, i'm looking for a few ideas about potential cards to add.

I know you never said that Ponder was better, I did.

I understand that they are two very different cards, but a_mogs said that Ponder was a thing of the past (it actually never really was a "thing" to begin with) and that Think Twice is the bee's knees now, basically.

They are two VERY different cards. Think Twice is expensive card advantage (only after using it twice, thus the name) and a mana sink (it's best quality.) It pairs extremely well with Mana Leak and the like (any 2 or 3 cost counterspells), even if you don't have one in your hand!

Ponder is the deck manipulation, plain and simple. And if you were choosing between Ponder and Think Twice (which is what the comment was implying), I think that Ponder is a better bet...especially since this deck wants to see both Venser and Stonehorn.

Easy peasy.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=207643

that was the first stonehorn lockdown deck i put together, that also made it to the front page. it was posted a few days after i had created it and tested it on cockatrice and it did very well. my biggest problem was (besides red goblin pingers, which i've actually seen like 5 people play believe it or not) valakut, of course, b/c of harrow and what not still getting in the way, even though he couldn't attack. so i ended up adding 2 leylines to my SB. and they served me well. however, leyline is out of standard now, and i basically have to rely on negate - which helps against the UB control matchup, as well as hits to the face. i mean, luckily, no one is bad enough at the game to play lava axe, even though it would probably hit me pretty damn hard... they do often play goblin grenade, which i can take care of with leak, negate, and spellskite, as well as flashfreeze, and i can exile their lavamancer with celestial purge and o-ring. red is a pretty rough matchup for me, so there's a lot of things for it SB, and the spellskites are preboarded in basically.

thanks! it's nice to know that some people appreciate the work i put into decks like this one. i probably have, since i made the deck right after m12, around 30 hours of playtesting actively to improve, 5 hours theory crafting, then around 30 hours playing it, and since i made this one i've had around 10 hours playtesting actively, 10 hours theory crafting, and around 15 hours playing it.

i feel like this kind of deck is exactly what the format needs to shake it up and show them what real control can do to tempered steel, vamps, and aggro decks in general.

i think the matchup with UB control is kind of a tossup really.
against a core UB build with no tricks that i've actively seen and nothing too weird about it, my plan is this.

-4 stonehorn
-3 venser
-3 day

+2 geist
+2 hero of bladehold
+3 negate
+1 o-ring
+2 celestial purge

any thoughts? and yeah, see, it's even rogue decks like yours that mine is catered to beat. basically anything that attacks to win me the game and isn't full of kill spells & counterspells, i've got in the bag.

yeah, i definitely thought about dropping a frosty for a sun titan, but then i realized that there really isn't shit for me to be ripping out with sun titan unless i go up for 3 images, and i'm not sure if i really want to do that. if anything i think i'd drop a sphinx, because by the time i can comfortably cast sphinx, i really already have the game and don't need it... i mean generally speaking that is, of course there are exceptions, but i tend to focus on having multiple modes of stabilization on each turn before i drop a sphinx, with days, gideons, and stonehorns that's not such a big deal but still, i feel like sphinx has just ended up as a win-moar card for me, and i might like to replace it with a wurmcoil, which would help against the grim lavamancer or other assorted bullshit decks that my only real answer to is o-ring and spellskite

onto your next point though, i am definitely of accord with you on the giving snapcaster more to gobble up, but i really don't know what i want in there besides disperse and MAYBE a negate for control matchups game 1 and against like shrine of burning rage, which can be a very, VERY big problem...

thanks for the feedback though! i appreciate it. :)

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