Hey all. Duskmourn is right around the corner, and while I’ve been mostly brewing for Standard, I’m still a big fan of Alchemy. While Alchemy is certainly also going to be shaken up by the addition of Duskmourn, I expect most of the spotlight to be on Standard until Alchemy: Duskmourn is released sometime in October. So to tide us over until then I wanted to talk about the deck that I’ve been playing to good success on the Alchemy Bo3 ladder.

While I’m not a control player at heart, all of my normal midrange brews were getting destroyed by the good aggro decks in the meta, and struggling against Heist decks as well. Forced to innovate, I decided the best way to tackle the meta was to go over the top of it, utilizing good removal and sweepers to slow down aggro decks, good counterspells and heist spells of our own to fight against Heist decks, and solid card advantage to tie it all together.

So let’s dive right in and break down Dimir Control!

Key Cards and Gameplan

Let’s break down the deck list by spell category. First is our creatures:

Creatures

Thundertrap Trainer is the type of flexible card that a control deck loves. It can come down on turn two when we don’t have a counterspell to hold up or need to remove something, find us a spell for later, and then block to gain us some life. 

If we do need our mana on turn two, we can hold onto the trainer until we have six mana, paying for the offspring cost, giving us two cards, and two blockers. Sometimes, even when we have six mana, we want to cast it without offspring, trying to find a removal spell or counterspell that we can utilize right away.

Tishana’s Tidebinder is kind of the flex slot of this deck. It is frequently quite good though, as most decks have powerful permanents that have triggered abilities. Tidebinder can cover for you when you don’t have a counterspell and your opponent cast something like Triumphant Getaway, or Grenzo, Crooked Jailer, or when you don’t have a removal spell and your opponent attacks and triggers their Recruit Instructor, or at end of turn triggers their Buxton, Decorated Host.

Horned Loch-Whale serves as removal early and a great threat to close out the game. Flash is great because it lets us hold up removal or counterspells and then if we don’t need to use them, flash in our threat, untap, and start attacking. The adventure feels good against a lot of the threats in the meta. A big Heartfire Hero will be dealt with without triggering its dies text, for example.

Lastly, while not technically a creature, we have Case of the Lost Witness, shuffling four copies of Fblthp, the Lost into our deck and then drawing a card. If we ever end a turn with a Fblthp in play, we solve the case and can play cards from the top of our deck, giving us an almost insurmountable card advantage to close out the game. Fblthp is also another great chump blocker, as it draws a card and then jumps in front of a scary creature to gain us some life.

Removal Spells

Let’s move onto our dedicated removal spells.

Bitter Triumph is kind of as good as it gets right now, even though it is painful at times. Choosing to pay three life or to discard a card depends on the matchup, the board state, how many cards you have in hand, and what your current life total is. In general, if the deck is very aggressive, and you have extra cards in hand, discard a card, and if the deck is slower, and your life total is high, pay life.

Shoot the Sheriff gives us another decent piece of removal. I only have one because it does miss a decent number of popular creatures in the format, like Impetuous Lootmonger and Aven Interrupter.

Deadly Cover-Up is our main deck sweeper, cleaning up the board and letting us collect evidence 6 to exile problematic cards from our opponent’s deck. There is no hard and fast rule about what to exile against what deck, but when I don’t know the contents of my opponent’s hand, I tend to target haste threats, like Emberheart Challenger, or powerful spells like Triumphant Getaway or Emmara, Voice of the Conclave.

Heist Spells

Let’s talk about our heist spells, ironically our best tool against heist decks. Grave Expectations fits into our curve nicely, filling out a turn where we don’t spend all of our mana to find a threat from our opponent or more removal etc. In a pinch it can gain us three life against aggro decks.

Weave the Nightmare is just a great flexible spell. It will frequently be used as removal against aggro decks, a Negate against Heist decks or other slow decks, and rarely as a heist. Of course, if we have a permanent that we heisted with Grave Expectations in play, then we get to use two modes, which means we are usually going to be heisting in addition to removing or countering.

Counterspells

Weave the Nightmare segues nicely into our section on our counterspells. Phantom Interference gives us a counterspell on turn two, and can be used later when an opponent casts an expensive spell or on their second spell of the turn. When we have extra mana, we get to make a 2/2 flier, which is great at attacking and chump blocking.

Three Steps Ahead is so flexible. Our most common uses are going to be counterspell on turn three, counterspell plus draw on turn five, or counterspell plus copy our Thundertrap Trainer or even draw plus copy our Tishana’s Tidebinder on turn six. In a pinch, it can just be used to draw two, discard one, on turn three if we are desperate for land drops or for finding a sweeper or removal spell.

Lastly, we have Spellgyre, another great flexible card. It is often going to be used as a counterspell, but when we can we want to use it to surveil two and draw two, to keep our hand full. 

Assessing when to use which mode depends a lot on what else you already have in your hand. If your opponent casts a scary threat, and you have a removal spell in hand, it is likely correct to not counter that creature, and instead draw two, looking for another counterspell, and then on your next turn killing that creature and holding up that counterspell.

Most of these flexible cards have no hard and fast rules, and you have to assess the situation on a case-by-case basis, but I’ve tried to outline a lot of common cases that come up when discussing the role of that card in this deck.

Mana Base

Moving on to the mana base, the only notable cards are Restless Reef, an actual win condition later in the game, and honestly a great blocker. When we have six or seven mana we can easily animate it, block, and then cast a removal spell or counterspell.

We also have Fountainport, which is mostly used to create chump blockers, but can take over a game by making a token every turn. If you just want to use it to draw a card, there are two common ways to do it. The first is to make a treasure on the end of your opponent’s turn, and then untap and use it to draw a card with Fountainport. This saves you the one life from making a fish token. The other most common use is to make a fish token on the end of your opponent’s turn, pass through your turn, and then block and sacrifice that token before it dies to damage.

When using Fabled Passage or Captivating Crossroads early, you should favor blue mana. Not only do we have more blue spells, but we need double blue on turn three for Three Steps Ahead, and double blue on turn four for Spellgyre. We don’t need double black until turn five for Deadly Cover-Up, so focus on more blue sources early and more black sources later.

Sideboarding

The sideboarding with this deck is pretty straightforward, so instead of going matchup by matchup, I’m going to divide it into more general categories.

Against Heist Decks

On the Play:

In – 2x Disdainful Stroke, 1x Talion’s Throneguard

Out – 2x Case of the Lost Witness, 1x Shoot the Sheriff

On the Draw:

In – 2x Disdainful Stroke, 1x Talion’s Throneguard, 4x Phantasmal Extraction

Out – 2x Case of the Lost Witness, 1x Shoot the Sheriff, 1x Phantom Interference, 3x Thundertrap Trainer

Against Heist, Disdainful Stroke is good against the cards that matter, such as Triumphant Getaway, Grenzo, Crooked Jailer, Virtue of Persistence, or our heisted spells like Spellgyre or Horned Loch-Whale.

Talion’s Throneguard will return a heisted spell to our hand, making it a great anti-heist card. On the draw we want Phantasmal Extraction to try to break up their curve, but I don’t think it is worth it on the play.

We cut Case of the Lost Witness because it is such a pain if they heist it and get it going, and we honestly have enough resources to take over the late game. I also cut Shoot the Sheriff since it won’t kill any of their creatures, and on the draw Thundertrap Trainer is quite slow and also a pain if they are able to heist it away.

Our general strategy against Heist decks should be to slow down and counter their important spells, while removing their creatures. They are likely going to heist a lot of counterspells from us, so we can try to bait those out with our own heist spells. Our heist spells are our best tools against them, as they let us take more heist spells. Heisting a Triumphant Getaway gives us two more heists, which will frequently give us more heists, all while draining two over and over.

Against Aggro Decks

On the Play:

In- 4x Malicious Eclipse, 2x Into the Flood Maw

Out – 4x Spellgyre, 2x Case of the Lost Witness

On the Draw:

In- 4x Malicious Eclipse, 2x Into the Flood Maw, 4x Phantasmal Extraction

Out – 2x Tishana’s Tidebinder, 4x Spellgyre, 2x Case of the Lost Witness, 1x Weave the Nightmare, 1x Three Steps Ahead

Our main goal is to stay alive. Malicious Eclipse can frequently take out the whole board against Boros Mice or Selesnya Rabbits, and Into the Flood Maw is just good at buying time. Bouncing a big Heartfire Hero can save us a lot of pain, and even though it isn’t a permanent removal spell, at one mana it fits nicely into our curve when we have an extra mana on turn three or four.

We do want Phantasmal Extraction on the draw, as it can help slow them down and lets us know what we need to play around.

We take out Case of the Lost Witness because we usually don’t have time to just draw a card on turn two, and Spellgyre just because it is frequently too slow and clunky. On the draw, we trim around the edges, and cut our Tishana’s Tidebinders because they can be difficult to deploy on curve when on the draw.

Other Cards

I have Soul-Guide Lantern in the sideboard just because I am afraid of graveyard decks, but I honestly play against them so infrequently that it could be worth changing that to more removal to slow down aggro decks.

Wrapping Up

Despite what a lot of players might think about control decks being boring and sucking the fun out of the game, this deck has a lot of interesting lines of play thanks to all of its flexible cards. While its main goal is to stop the opponent from executing their game plan, the format is very powerful, making every game skill testing and honestly a bit stressful as you try to navigate your way through it to come out on top.

I hope this deck guide was interesting and helpful and shows that there is plenty of room to brew and innovate in Alchemy. If you are bored of Standard waiting for Duskmourn to come out, give Alchemy a try, on top of this deck I recently updated the Alchemy tier lists, giving you a lot of options to copy a deck and play some games!

I’ll be back next week to cover the release of Duskmourn and its impact on Standard, so until then best of luck in all of your matches!