Beza, the Bounding Spring | Bloomburrow | Art by Martin Wittfooth
21, Jan, 25

Innovative Selesnya MTG Deck May Bring Control Back To Standard

Domain + Tokens = Profit?

For the last few months, MTG Standard has been a pretty hostile place for Control players. The format is dominated largely by Aggro and Midrange, with traditional Control decks really struggling to claim any ground. That, however, may be about to change. This past weekend, an enterprising MTG player came second in a 320-player Standard RCQ with Selesnya Control.

This is a big result for a deck that hasn’t really been on the radar until right now. Combining elements of Mono-White Token Control and Domain, it’s a spicy brew with plenty of play to it. One RCQ performance isn’t enough to shift a metagame in itself, of course. It is an encouraging sign that Control could come back into the fray soon, however.

A Teaspoon Of Token Control

Selesnya Control MTG Standard Token Cards

The Selesnya Control deck in question comes courtesy of Davin Frankosky, who piloted it to a second-place finish in last Saturday’s MTG Standard RCQ at SCG Con Atlanta. It may not resemble a traditional Control deck at first, but dig deeper and the core Control philosophy is alive and well.

Control decks are all about card advantage, and this deck combines two of the very best draw engines in Standard. One of these is token all-star Caretaker’s Talent. With a steady stream of tokens coming in, this can draw you an extra card every single turn. It can do this without ever leveling up, too, which is a major plus.

To make these tokens, Carrot Cake is the best generator in this list. It makes two 1/1s to gum up the board, it smooths out your draws, and it pads your life total. Honestly, it’s hard to think of a more perfect Control card. The fact that the two tokens it makes can be spaced out over multiple turns makes it great with Caretaker’s Talent.

Beza, the Bounding Spring is here as well, and in great form. Control decks like this are often playing from behind early on, and Beza is a brilliant way to catch up. It also makes a lot of tokens, which equates to extra draws with Talent.

These cards hold the ground early, keeping your hand and life total steady while you draw into your board clears and removal to fully stabilize. If you’ve played with or against Mono-White Token Control at all, this plan will be familiar to you. What will be less familiar is what Frankosky did with the rest of this list.

A Dash Of Domain

Selesnya Control MTG Standard Domain Cards

The other major card draw engine in Frankosky’s Selesnya Control deck is the excellent Up the Beanstalk/Overlord package. This rose to popularity in Domain Ramp decks, but it turns out it plays just as well, if not better, in Control.

The idea behind this package is very simple. You drop Up the Beanstalk, then use the Impending abilities on Overlord of the Hauntwoods and Overlord of the Mistmoors to draw extra cards. This works since you are still technically ‘casting a spell with mana value 5 or greater,’ even if you’re not paying full price. Short term this keeps your hand full, and long term it provides you with a win condition. Both Overlords are chunky creatures, and Mistmoors in particular can easily close a game out with its constant stream of 2/1 fliers.

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a Control deck without ways to control the board. Selesnya Control has plenty of these, including spot removal in Get Lost and Seized from Slumber, and board clears in Split Up and Sunfall. These cards let you manage your opponent’s board and draw things out until you can bury them in card advantage. The board clears in particular play well with the Overlords, since they don’t turn into creatures for quite a while.

That’s really the whole deck. Outside of a couple of copies of Authority of the Consuls to slow down Aggro, that is. You land a draw engine early, stall out the board while refilling your hand, then drop a board wipe and turn the corner using Beza and the Overlords. This deck may lack the reactivity of traditional blue-based Control decks, but it’s much more proactive in terms of its threats. This is a Control deck that can reasonably play a Midrange game.

Back In Control?

Standard Meta

Now the big question is whether this deck’s success means that Control is back on the menu in Standard. Looking at its performance in the RCQ, you’d certainly think so. The deck had 2-0 victories against the majority of big decks right now, including Gruul Aggro and Golgari Midrange. Not everything was smooth sailing, however.

Looking at all of Frankosky’s matchups in the RCQ, the worst was Selesnya Tokens. This is a relatively new strategy built around Collector’s Cage and Sandstorm Salvager. It’s quite aggressive but also quite resilient, which likely explains its success here. Frankosky also dropped a few games to Gruul Aggro and Dimir Enchantments, so there are clearly decks in the current meta that can put Selesnya Control in the corner.

With MTG the way it is right now, that’s not hugely surprising. Threats are outpacing reactive cards significantly in terms of power level, which makes it difficult for decks like this to survive. Interestingly, I think this deck’s unorthodox approach to the Control playstyle may actually be to its advantage in this regard. Where most Control decks lean heavily on their reactive spells, this one plays a much more balanced game, with plenty of proactive threats as well. Most Aggro decks can find ways around removal, but they’ll struggle to push through a Beza on board.

Perhaps Frankosky’s deck is a key evolution point for Control decks in general. If Wizards won’t print enough powerful reactive spells, then incorporating solid Midrange threats is likely the answer. There’s a worrying trend here of every archetype slowly converging into Midrange, but for now this is an interesting hybrid deck that can put in work in the current Standard metagame.

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