Understanding the role of each and every card in your deck is absolutely critical to deck construction and modification. Every card selected has a purpose, and you should keep that in mind when evaluating the effectiveness of a card. If you are cutting a card are you cutting it because it fulfills an unnecessary function or because it is less effective at fulfilling a necessary function than you would like? If the former, you should probably use that slot for something else (a card that serves a different function, or role). If the latter, you need to find a card that fulfills the same role more efficiently. These are two very different things.

A similar thought process should go through your mind when you decide to add a card to a deck. You should ask yourself “what role does this card fulfill?” or “why do I need this card in my deck?” Remember, the most common number you will select for a deck is ZERO. Every card you put in your deck, either main or sideboard, MUST justify itself within the larger framework of your deck’s overall strategy.

Having said that, we come to Mana Leak.

Mana Leak fundamentally re-defines UW Control, and thus changes the entire metagame.

Why? This is because Mana Leak is the piece that classic-style UW Control has been missing, a piece which enables it to return to a more traditional build.

Many of you have probably forgotten that that is where modern UW control started. For reference, this is Chapin’s San Diego the decklist:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

1 Iona, Shield of Emeria

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

1 Path to Exile

1 Celestial Purge

2 Essence Scatter

2 Flashfreeze

1 Negate

4 Treasure Hunt

4 Everflowing Chalice

3 Oblivion Ring

4 Cancel

4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor

3 Day Of Judgment

2 Martial Coup

2 Mind Spring

[/Spells]

[Lands]

3 Island

4 Plains

4 Celestial Colonnade

4 Glacial Fortress

4 Halimar Depths

1 Scalding Tarn

2 Arid Mesa

4 Tectonic Edge

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Baneslayer Angel

3 Kor Firewalker

1 Perimeter Captain

1 Mind Control

1 Essence Scatter

2 Flashfreeze

2 Negate

1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

1 Plains

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

Why did this style of UW fall out of favor so quickly, rapidly yielding to the tap-out style? The answer is simple - this deck’s early game is extremely weak. With only 1 Path, 1 Purge, 2 Essence Scatter, 2 Flashfreeze to defend itself early (Cancel can be awkward on turn 3, and is therefore not consistently available until turn 4 or 5), the deck is very vulnerable during the first three turns of the game. This is problematic due to the deck’s reliance on countermagic to control the flow of the game. If you fall behind early, countermagic does little to save the game. It simply prevents you from falling further behind.

Because of this fact, this style of control fell out of favor, replaced by a UW tap-out style that had Knight of the White Orchid in addition to Paths and O-Rings to defend itself early, while maintaining the Martial Coup/Mind Spring endgame. Many of these versions also added Baneslayer Angel as a powerful stage 3 threat, giving UW great, powerful options later in the game. Wall of Omens only further pushed UW into the tap-out mold, as it provided an excellent two-drop defensive creature that not only held off many attackers, but replaced itself.

How does Mana Leak fit into the puzzle then? Mana Leak is exactly what a Weissman-style build, like Chapin’s initial build, was missing. It is the bridge counter that will get you to the later countermagic, sweepers, and planeswalkers. It is because it fulfills this critical role that Mana Leak re-defines what UW control is capable of doing. Not only do you now have to be prepared for tap-out builds that run lots of planeswalkers, sweepers, and angels, you will also have to be prepared for something like this:

[cardlist]4 Mana Leak

4 Cancel

2 Deprive

3 Negate

3 Condemn

2 Path to Exile

2 Oblivion Ring

3 Jace's Ingenuity

4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

2 Gideon Jura

4 Day of Judgment

4 Tectonic Edge

4 Celestial Colonnade

4 Glacial Fortress

2 Sejiri Refuge

1 Marsh Flats

1 Arid Mesa

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Misty Rainforest

5 Island

4 Plains[/cardlist]

This list is by no means perfect, but it is a reasonable place to start when testing this sort of strategy. This deck plays completely differently than even an updated tap-out list that might feature either Mana Leak, Jace’s Ingenuity, or both. It remains to be seen whether this type of strategy is stronger than the accepted tap-out strategy, but the fact that Mana Leak has been printed makes this worth trying again.

This change has implications beyond UW control though. It affects every deck in the metagame because defeating a more classic style UW control deck requires a very different approach than defeating tap-out UW control.

For illustration, let’s take a deck that has a favorable match-up against UW tap-out - Vampires. Those of you who have played the match-up understand that Vampires wins largely on the back of two cards - Malakir Bloodwitch and Mind Sludge (Vampire Nocturnus is also relevant, but far less so than the aforementioned). Mind Sludge in particular is bad, since it will always empty the UW player’s hand, making it very difficult for them to deal with whatever creatures the Vampires player has assembled, especially if some of those creatures are Bloodghasts. Bloodwitch has protection from white, which means that very few, if any, creatures in the UW deck are capable of blocking it. In addition to this, it is immune to all UW’s spot removal, making it a potent threat indeed.

What happens when we switch the opponent from UW tap-out to classic UW? Vampires gets a lot worse. Mind Sludge is still Vampire’s strongest card in the match-up, but it becomes a non-issue. With 4x Mana Leak, 4x Cancel, 2x Deprive, and 3x Negate to handle it, Mind Sludge should basically never resolve.

Malakir Bloodwitch also gets significantly worse, as the deck has 10 counters that stop it, making Jace 2.0 a viable answer to Bloodwitch (bounce it, then counter it on the way back down) in addition to Day of Judgment. Post side-board, Sphinx of Jwar Isle enters the equation as well, providing bonus assurance against the 4/4 flyer.

In addition, any removal Vampires runs is nearly completely dead (there’s an off-chance you can kill an Elspeth token or Colonnade), thus giving Vampires dead cards against the classic UW deck where it had none against tap-out. Sure, Bloodghast gets a little stronger without Wall of Omens to get in its way, but that nowhere near compensates for the other cards getting far weaker.

You could easily do a similar analysis for most decks in the field, and you would find that the match-up dynamics are quite different against the two versions of UW. What works against one frequently does not work against the other. There are exceptions, of course (T1 Goblin Guide is good against both), but on the whole you need to approach the decks differently.

As a final illustration, consider this thought experiment:

You are playing a very typical, controlling Jund list. Your opponent opened by playing Celestial Colonnade, then a basic. You untap for your third turn (Savage Lands and Raging Ravine in play), draw your card, and see the following hand: Savage Lands, Verdant Catacomb, Blightning, Bloodbraid Elf, Sprouting Thrinax, Putrid Leech. What do you do?

Against UW tap-out you probably just want to run the Blightning or Thrinax out there, as it matters less if your BBE is a turn late. However, against a counter-based version, it is very likely that Blighting or Thrinax will be countered, and thus you should probably play for a T4 BBE by dropping your Savage Lands and Putrid Leech this turn.

The presence of a counter-based version of UW, due to Mana Leak, generates large ripple effects that will be felt throughout the metagame. You would be wise to prepare for it.