Greetings and welcome to my first of what I hope to be many posts here at GeeksPodcast. While posting here aboard this wonderful website, I hope to help everyone who reads these in the ways of standard and limited as best I can. For my starting off week, I plan to delve into my personal favorite deck in standard right now: U/W control; But first a little about myself!

I am 19 years old, live in Columbus, Ohio, and have been playing magic since Mirrodin block (2003). I have loved magic since the first moment I started playing, but have only gotten competitive recently. I have been to 2 PTQ’s (Pro Tour Qualifiers), doing fairly well in both. Standard and Limited are the only formats I play currently, not because I don’t like the other formats, but because time and money are major issues.

I work full time 3rd shift at a warehouse fixing and recycling computers. I enjoy my job greatly, and it gives me time to think. A lot of that time is spent thinking about Magic the Gathering and League of Legends, which is a great, free online game for the PC that I highly suggest you check out! And if you do, be sure to send a referral to helidead09 (my in-game name) so I can get some cool rewards. Anyways, since I have so much free time to think about magic, the overflow of ideas will no doubt creep into these posts. Now that you know a little about me, onward!

I have always been a huge fan of blue, and these following decks are no exception. For standard U/W Control, lets take a look at a couple of different variations. First up is a deck piloted by Jay Elarar to 1st place in the Canadian Nationals:

As we take a look through the decklist, we can see that he is running a very solid set of 60 cards. He is running 8 counters main deck in the form of 3 Essence Scatters, 1 Negate, and a playset of Mana Leaks. I feel that 8 is about the perfect number of counters that you should run maindeck to be considered a good control deck. The deck is running 6 planeswalkers, 2 of each Jace, and 2 Elspeths. I’m not to certain about the 2 Jace Beleren without Sun Titan, but we shall get to that later. On to the next deck, piloted by Jani Lindroos to 1st place in the Finnish Nationals.

I’m not sure how I like this deck. While Jace has been cut for Gideon Jura and one of the Day of Judgments has been cut for a Martial Coup, there are only 2 counters in the deck; the 2 Deprives. While I enjoy Deprive, and it’s a fine counter card, a control deck- a blue control deck, must have more counters, so I’ll pass on this one. Let’s take a look at one last deck, piloted by one of my favorite players, Guillaume Wafo-tapa to 4th place in the French Nationals.

Now this is my kind of deck. Sun Titan may be my favorite card from the M11 set. It fits in perfectly with the U/W control aspect. One of my favorite parts of this deck that I feel is superior over the other decks (Besides the Sun Titan that is) is the Jace’s Ingenuity. I love the instant speed. It also runs 9 counters, which is fine. I actually like Cancel, as it can be a fine draw late game, unlike mana leak, whose potential is completely for the early game. So here is the deck list that I have come up with that I feel has the best chance to succeed.

JB’s U/W Control

This is what I believe to be the best chance U/W Control has. Sun Titan can work well with Wall of Omens, Oblivion Ring, Jace Beleren, and my personal favorite, recurring Tectonic Edge to kill manlands. This deck is also running 8 counters, 4 Mana Leaks for the early game, 2 Deprives and 2 Cancels for the late game. I have greatly debated on whether to use Condemns over Path to Exiles and I finally decided that giving them lands weakens my Mana Leaks too much. Playtesting this deck, it seems to work really well. This deck performs very well against most of the top decks in standard nowadays. It has something for every deck included somewhere in the 75. The only deck that this deck has trouble with is U/R Pyromancers Ascension. If they can keep a Pyromancers Ascension on the field, its almost impossible to win. It is very worth it to aggressively mulligan for an Oblivion Ring to take care of it. As for the Gather Specimens, that’s for both the green ramp or Valakut ramp decks. Nothing better than your opponent attempting to cast a Primeval Titan with 9 mana up (to pay for your Mana Leak), only for you to Gather Specimen their Titan and getting to search up 2 manlands, or a manland and a Tectonic Edge, or whatever need be.

Well that’s all for today, and I’ll inform you on how I do after this upcoming friday as I pilot this deck to (hopeful) success. Tune in again later this week as I give you a few budget deck ideas for standard that should be both fun and competitive. Till next time!