Ever since making the Top 8 in three Grand Prixes with Living Death/Survival decks and making a Pro Tour Top 8 with The Rock, I’ve loved non-Blue control decks. Among the decks I’ve played and loved: MBC, Wildfire, Ponza, Necrodrain, Recur/Survival, Hermit Druid/Living Death, The Rock, The Claw, and even mono-White control.

The current environment is dominated by Blue control decks: Caw-Blade and Splinter Twin. I would love to see a control deck emerge in Standard that doesn’t use Blue. As usual these days, I’ll take a look at Red first:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

4 Kuldotha Phoenix

[/Creatures]

[Planeswalkers]

4 Koth of the Hammer

[/Planeswalkers]

[Spells]

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Volt Charge

4 Contagion Clasp

4 Everflowing Chalice

4 Shrine of Burning Rage

4 Sphere of the Suns

4 Tumble Magnet

[/Spells]

[Lands]

20 Mountain

4 Tectonic Edge

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

Shrine of Burning Rage: The inspiration for the deck. For obvious reasons, it makes me want to play mono-Red. It also makes me want to be able to Proliferate. Given that it’s an artifact and it likes Proliferate, it helped lead me to playing with Metalcraft as well. It can be removal, but in a Red Proliferate deck, it can also just be a great finisher.

Volt Charge: Solid instant burn that goes great with Shrine and will be a good fit in a deck that likes to Proliferate.

Koth of the Hammer: Triggers Shrine and benefits from Volt Charge. Also serves as another good finisher in this environment.

Contagion Clasp: Good by itself, because it kills many commonly used creatures in the environment: Lotus Cobra, Squadron Hawk, and Plated Geopede. Also makes a good cornerstone for a deck that likes to Proliferate, in this case for cards like Koth and Shrine. Now that I’m running both Shrine and Clasp, the chances I’ll make use of Metalcraft increase.

Tumble Magnet: Great in the current metagame, with Titans and equipped creatures just asking to be tapped down instead of delivering devastating attacks. The Magnet also fits nicely with my Proliferate theme and my potential Metalcraft theme.

Kuldotha Phoenix: Mono-Red and lots of artifacts? This seems like a great fit. Koth and the Shrine probably aren’t quite enough finishing pressure just by themselves, and the Phoenix fits the role perfectly. If you’re not going to have many creatures, it’s nice when the one you do have is a big flyer with Haste that can be brought back if it gets killed. Your opponent may have more removal than you have creatures, but the combination of Haste and the ability to recur it gets around that. Now we just need some artifact mana to get it into play more quickly and to give us more artifacts for Metalcraft.

Everflowing Chalice and Sphere of the Suns: This way, you’re pretty much always going to have an artifact to play on turn two—usually a mana artifact, which will allow you to get things like Koth and Kuldotha Phoenix into play quickly. They also both use counters, which will allow them to benefit from Proliferate. Having lots of mana will allow you to use Contagion Clasp and to recur Phoenixes while still being able to play things from your hand.

Lightning Bolt: Hard to justify playing Red without it. It’s great for killing most creatures in an incredibly efficient manner. Also, it’s an excellent way to dispose of opposing planeswalkers.

This deck is a good example of building a deck by finding pieces with the right synergy while keeping the metagame in mind. The important part about building a deck where you’re choosing cards based largely on their synergy with other cards in the deck is that the cards you choose are still good by themselves. You don’t want to play with lots of cards that are weak unless you draw specific other cards. So Koth of the Hammer and Tumble Magnet are good cards even if you never Proliferate; Kuldotha Phoenix is pretty good even without Metalcraft; etc.

Another control deck with some potential right now is Black/Red:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

3 Bloodghast

4 Cunning Sparkmage

4 Gatekeeper of Malakir

4 Goblin Ruinblaster

4 Manic Vandal

4 Vampire Hexmage

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

4 Geth's Verdict

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Sign in Blood

[/Spells]

[Lands]

9 Swamp

4 Akoum Refuge

4 Blackcleave Cliffs

4 Dragonskull Summit

4 Lavaclaw Reaches

[/Lands]

[/cardlist]

Gatekeeper of Malakir: Good for some of the same reasons that Tumble Magnet is good. If you have enough other removal to keep your opponent’s small creatures off the board, it’s great for killing creatures like Titans and Consecrated Sphinx. It’s also great to increase the pressure on your opponent while dealing with his threats.

Geth's Verdict: While it doesn’t have the built-in card advantage of Gatekeeper, it does have the advantage of being an instant. This allows you to react to Haste creatures or to your opponent’s equipping a potential attacker. The loss of life is minor, but combined with all the other ways this deck chips away at a player’s life total, it can definitely matter.

Sign in Blood: Card advantage is extremely important in control decks. In an aggressive deck, tempo is all that matters, because you’re trying to end the game before card advantage matters. Since your goal with a control deck is to get to the late game, you’re definitely going to need card advantage. Since the metagame is currently mostly control, the loss of life isn’t usually an issue. Additionally, the loss of life is often a plus, because it can be used as a finisher against your opponent.

Vampire Hexmage: Against control, it can be early pressure; against aggressive decks, it can be an annoying blocker. It’s also cool for dealing with things like planeswalkers.

Bloodghast: While it doesn’t help you gain control, it can make good early pressure and a good finisher. It may be small, but this deck is good at removing blockers, and it keeps coming back. Thanks to cards like Lightning Bolt and Geth's Verdict, you can also sometimes unexpectedly give it Haste as well.

Cunning Sparkmage: Like Contagion Clasp, it’s good against Lotus Cobra, Squadron Hawk, Plated Geopede, etc. It’s also good for setting up cards like Geth's Verdict to kill bigger creatures. It can also go well with helping Lightning Bolt or your creatures to kill bigger creatures than they would normally be able to.

Manic Vandal: With the number of equipment, artifact mana, and artifact creatures floating around the environment, this card has actually become a strong main-deck card for control. This deck gains much of its card advantage through creatures like Manic Vandal, Cunning Sparkmage, Goblin Ruinblaster, and Gatekeeper of Malakir.

Goblin Ruinblaster: When a metagame becomes as stagnant as the current Standard environment, it’s time to start main-decking the cards you would normally sideboard in against the dominant deck type. I love Ruinblaster against Caw-Blade and it can sometimes be pretty handy for blowing up Valakuts against Ramp.

Lightning Bolt: See above. One of the best cards in Magic.

Most people think that the main advantage of playing Blue in control decks is the fact that you can play with permission, one of most powerful catchalls for a control deck. That’s often true, but currently (and often other times) it’s probably more about deck manipulation and card advantage. Some control decks with Blue aren’t running any permission now, and those that are usually just run Mana Leaks. Cards like Preordain, Jace Beleren, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor help ensure that not only do you get the cards you need when you need them, but you keep getting them. The Mind Sculptor is a mythic rare that sells for more than the cost of some people’s entire deck and sideboard. So, unsurprisingly, control decks that don’t use Blue need to meet high standards. It’s important to have lots of redundancy, synergy, and card advantage to help compensate for no Jaces or other Blue deck manipulation. It also helps to have pressure that you can apply and lots of ways to get rid of opposing Jaces.

Red and Black are obvious colors to consider for non-Blue control decks because they have so many removal options. They can deal with creatures, land, hands, graveyard, planeswalkers, and artifacts. They can’t really do much about enchantments, but the current metagame doesn’t make much use of enchantments. Both of these decks make use of lots of versatile removal like Lightning Bolt. This way, these decks can handle almost any number of creatures just through their sheer quantity of removal, but if they aren’t facing many creatures, that isn’t a crisis, either. Another cool thing about playing a deck like these is the surprise factor. Once you lay your first land, your opponent will usually assume you’re playing an aggressive deck, and this can work to your advantage. If you like playing control decks, just know that you have options besides selling your soul for four copies of the Mind Sculptor. Sure, no Blue control deck is complete without Jace, but you don’t have to play Blue to play control!