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Fish Five-0: Controlling Standard


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Gameplan

Thats right! I've taken a step away from standard to play a ton of Historic but of course my first foray into Standard after some time away would be Dimir control. Whenever I'm in doubt about what to play when it comes to getting back into a format, I start with Dimir and I have to say the list I'm playing is sweet!

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We're your typical control deck that is loaded to the brim with removal and counterspells. We're hoping to slow the games down and control the board long enough to slam any of our win conditions and ride it to victory! 

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I of course went back to my favorite win conditions in standard for a pure control deck. Crawling Barrens is such a solid threat that forces our opponents to have instant speed removal. Barrens getting around Heartless Act drives its stock up! Outside of Barrens, we have your usual suspects with Shark Typhoon and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Thats right, we are FAIRLY casting Ugin in 2021 but Ugin is just too good not to play.

Conclusion

The deck feels amazing against non rogue decks right now. I'm not sure what we can do to keep rogues at bay other than hope to dodge them or hit all of our Cling to Dust early. Right now, the big non-rogue concerns I have is Roiling Vortex and Klothys, God of Destiny. We need better answers to them outside of just bouncing them with something like Brazen Borrower. Ugin is great for this but Ugin is eight mana so I'll need to go back to the drawing board. I didn't really run into a ton of mono-white so Kaervek doesn't seem great. Even with those fixes in mind, I feel the deck is certainly still viable so I do believe pure control can exist with some more tweaking. Back to the drawing board I go! Thanks for watching the content and I'll see you at the next video!

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-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger

Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com



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