Standard Magic (KTK-OGW) — Ojutai Awaken Control vs. Izzet Blitz
Channel: T1GlistenerElf
Date: 2016-02-27

This match more than any other so far taught me the need for instant speed spin cards. Anchor to the Æther just doesn't get the job done against a fair number of cards, particularly anything that has haste typed on it.

My mission was to make a budget deck in Standard, or at least one with zero copies of Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. Originally, that meant four copies of Displacement Wave, since that card and Jace don't play well with one another, thus making tem as close to mutually exclusive as I could find in this format. Unfortunately, due to not having the cards to borrow, I was unable to build a Displacement Wave deck, but much of the deck that I had built around it still could stand.

Essentially, I wanted to make a "creatureless" control deck.I do like old school barely-any-creatures decks, but the current advantage to this is having better than a coin's toss to hit an applicable card with each use of her +1, hence her being a four-of in the deck. Of course, the actual wins themselves still come from "creatures" in the form of awakened lands, Gideon, Gideon's tokens, or the octopus from Crush of Tentacles.

Some instant improvements that I would make to the deck include changing out Anchor to the Aether for Whisk Away and/or Sweep Away, since being instant speed helps against haste creatures and land creatures (weaknesses of the deck otherwise) enough that the scry 1 is unimportant by comparison. Otherwise, the landbase could use some work, of course, but the other Flooded Strands were being used by the store owner in his deck, and the event being sanctioned meant that I could not run any proxies. Lastly, Scatter to the Winds is supposed to be a four-of, but the LGS owner was using them in his deck as well.

P.S. In this format, do you think that it's right for the control deck to elect to be on the draw against an aggro/combo deck such as his? Personally, I don't know. I did not take him to be fast enough for an extra turn to be that consequential, and the combo side of it made me want to deny him a card. I could have been very wrong, though. What do you all think?

This is the decklist as I had been running it.
Enchantment (1)
1 Oath of Jace
Instants (11)
4 Anticipate
1 Celestial Flare
4 Dig Through Time
2 Ojutai's Command
1 Scatter to the Winds
Planeswalkers (6)
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Narset Transcendant
Sorceries (15)
4 Anchor to the Æther
4 Crush of Tentacles
1 Displacement Wave
2 Part the Waterveil
4 Planar Outburst
Lands (26)
4 Evolving Wilds
1 Flooded Strand
9 Island
4 Plains
4 Prairie Stream
4 Tranquil Cove
Sideboard (15)
1 Celestial Flare
4 Disdainful Stroke
2 Linvala, the Preserver
1 Negate
3 Overwhelming Denial
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

However, if I could have built my ideal list for this archtype, then this is what I would have built.
Instants (17)
4 Anticipate
4 Dig Through Time
4 Scatter to the Winds
4 Sweep Away
1 Whisk Away
Planeswalkers (6)
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
4 Narset Transcendant
Sorceries (11)
4 Crush of Tentacles
3 Part the Waterveil
4 Planar Outburst
Lands (26)
4 Flooded Strand
7 Island
3 Plains
4 Prairie Stream
4 Polluted Delta
4 Tranquil Cove
Sideboard (15)
1 Disdainful Stroke
2 Dispel
2 Linvala, the Preserver
2 Negate
4 Ojutai's Command
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
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