Mardu Control – Alchemy Bo3 Deck Guide

Hey all. Alchemy has been in a tough spot for the past month or two. Cori-Steel Cutter was a powerful addition to the format, but Alchemy: Tarkir really blew the gates off the format with the addition of Waystone's Guidance and Swiftspear's Teachings, sending us into what I’ve started to call Aggro Summer.

This has polarized the meta in a unique way, where you are either playing aggro, like Izzet Prowess or Boros Mobilize, or you are putting hate cards like Authority of the Consulsand High Noon into your main deck to try to stop those decks.

So while I was playing around with different builds to best utilize these cards, I ended up on an Orzhov deck, splashing red just to activate High Noon from time to time. As time went on though, I found myself lacking life gain and more answers to any type of permanent.

That is how this Mardu Control deck was born, and after a few dozen matches, I think I’ve got it pretty well tuned to take on the top decks in the meta.

Main Deck

First of all, this deck is able to make use of Authority of the Consuls great against the tokens from Cori-Steel Cutter, and the negating some of the pain from mobilize tokens, and High Noon, which is great against Izzet decks that need to cast two spells each turn, and okay against decks like Orzhov Naktamun, which is frequently double or triple spelling in a turn.

I haven’t overloaded on these effects, because while they are good in the match ups their good in, they aren’t great if you face another slow deck, although High Noon can become a 5 damage to the face burn spell in those games.

But I didn’t stop there. I didn’t just want to slow down the top decks in the meta, I wanted to be able to answer the problems permanently.

Our first way of doing this is attacking those cards when they are still in our opponent’s hand. To do this, we have four copies of Duress and Deep-Cavern Bat to snag copies of Cori-Steel Cutter, Waystone's Guidance, and Naktamun Shines Again.

Duress is also good if you do run into other decks trying to go the control route, as it can take out counterspells, Stock Up, etc.

Now the games that our opponent’s are able to slip in those key cards under our discard, maybe because they were on the play, or we had a tapped land or two, all is not lost. We have two cards that can take out any of those problematic threats.

Darkstar Banisher is great at cleaning up any of those early permanents and giving us a flying attacker to start putting on the pressure, and a blocker in a pinch. While the opponent does get to seek a permanent card that matches the type when Darkstar Banisher leaves the battlefield, the tempo is usually enough to buy us time to set up our late game.

Inevitable Defeat is another great catch all, exiling whatever permanent is bother us, draining our opponent for three, helping us end the game and giving us some life back, and it can’t be countered, which means it gets around ward, like the ward 2 from Sheltered by Ghosts, etc.

We have a variety of removal that helps us stay alive until we can deploy our late game threats.

Lightning Helix picks off most threats in the format, and gains us a very valuable three life. It can also go upstairs, on the rare occasion when you need to finish the opponent off that way.

Porcine Portent is also great removal, but the enchantment side gives us either another way to remove problematic artifacts and enchantments with the First Little Pig, or a game ending threat with the Second Little Pig.

Lastly, we have a couple of main deck copies of Split Up, which works great with Authority of the Consulsto take out tapped creatures, or in the games where we have creatures in play, they all have flying so we can easily get in for an attack and then kill all untapped creatures.

Our main threats come to us from these two permanents. First we have Unholy Annex, which gives us a source of card advantage, although at the cost of life, and a big flyer later on. Part of why Lightning Helix, Inevitable Defeat, and Deep-Cavern Bat are so great in the deck, is they keep our life total topped up, so that we don’t die to our own Unholy Annex as we try to build to unlocking our 6/6 flying demon, or in the games where our demon is removed.

Elspeth, Storm Slayer is such a powerful finisher in the current format. If we are able to curve out with removal, Elspeth can frequently come down on a semi-empty board, and just start pumping out tokens.

Elspeth also achieves lethal very quickly, making a few tokens and then sending them to the sky to knock the opponent down to zero.

There are also games where Elspeth can serve as a much need removal spell, or even take some heat to buy some time.

A nice synergy with these two cards is unlocking/casting the Ritual Chamber side while having Elspeth in play to get two demon tokens.

Our mana is pretty straight forward, nice mix of surveil lands and verge lands, with fabled passage and some basics to help fix our colors. We have a few non-basic lands in there that do some extra lifting though.

Soulstone Sanctuary gives us another threat to pressure our opponent with, but also happens to be a demon, turning our Unholy Annex from pain into drain.

Cori Monastery gives us an extra card to play with every turn, so on games that go long or when we flood out, we are able to stay relevant.

Finally, one copy of Restless Fortress is hanging out to give us even more drain and gain tucked into the mana base.

Gameplan

While I went over this above while talking about individual cards, this deck plays like a slow control deck that turns the corner quickly.

Take time to evaluate what is the most important threat your opponent has, and evaluate what options to have to remove it. We want to spend our first few turns matching what our opponent is doing, so we are in a position to turn the corner once we find a copy of Elspeth, Storm Slayer or Unholy Annex.

Think about which of your cards are the best answer in the current situation. Sometimes it may be better to be mana inefficient and use a Porcine Portent on turn four to remove a creature instead of an Inevitable Defeat, because you know that your opponent has an enchantment to deploy thanks to a previous Duress.

Do math when using Elspeth, Storm Slayer. It can be easy to get into a rhythm with just making two tokens each turn, but thanks to Inevitable Defeat, Lightning Helix, High Noon, Unholy Annex, and beats from our flyers, you can easily put your opponent on a two turn clock by choosing to zero Elspeth instead and get in for four or six damage.

Sideboarding

We have a lot of good sideboard options in this deck, they are mostly to help us against the top decks in the meta, but I’ve also included a couple of nice options to have against some of the more niche decks you may come across.

VS Izzet Prowess

IN: 1x Authority of the Consuls 2x Requisition Raid, 1x Split Up
OUT: 3x Unholy Annex, 1x Elspeth, Storm Slayer

This is a pretty straight sideboard plan. Our main deck is already built to be good against them so we don’t need much help.

The extra copy of Authority of the Consulshelps against Cori-Steel Cutter and Swiftspear's Teachings, while Requisition Raid can help answer copies of Cori-Steel Cutter and Stormchaser's Talent and buff up whatever creatures we have. One more copy of Split Up can help us stabilize when they do build a big board.

Unholy Annex comes out just because it is risky. We usually don’t have time to get it down and take four damage from it before they are threatening lethal, so its best to just take it out. We trim one copy of Elspeth, Storm Slayer just because she is expensive.

VS Mobilize

IN: 1x Authority of the Consuls 2x Split Up, 2x Requisition Raid
OUT: 3x Unholy Annex, 1x Elspeth, Storm Slayer, 1x High Noon

Similar to our game plan against Izzet, we want more sweepers in Split Up, ways to answer enchantments in Requisition Raid, and an extra Authority of the Consulsto slow them down.

We cut Unholy Annex and the copy of Elspeth, Storm Slayer for the same reason, and also trim a High Noon, because stopping them from double spelling is much less important than against Izzet.

VS Orzhov Naktamun

IN: 2x Torpor Orb, 2x Split Up
OUT: 4x Duress

Against Orzhov Naktamun we need to go after their creature loops. Torpor Orb is the perfect card at shutting them down. It can be a bit awkward, because it also shuts down our copies of Deep-Cavern Bat and Darkstar Banisher, but at least they are still flying blockers that can trade with their flying attackers.

Split Up is also key as it helps us answer wide boards that they can create.

I usually take out my copies of Duress against them, as while it can snipe out a copy of Naktamun Shines Again or Sheltered by Ghosts, it can just as easily miss.

VS Heist

IN: 3x Crystal Barricade
Out: 2x Authority of the Consuls 1x Split Up

Okay, I know that Grixis Heist has fallen out of favor because of the meta shift and nerf to Ribald Shanty, but you may still run into someone who didn’t get the memo every know and then.

Heist is a tough matchup for us because we are slow and if they still our good threats or removal then it can be hard for us to get a way to end the game.

Crystal Barricade can help slow down that aspect of their game plan while we try to attack their hand and get a board presence going.

Authority of the Consulsand Split Up aren’t usually doing much against them (unless they are on a build that has Cori-Steel Cutter or something weird like that) so they are pretty safe to cut.

VS Other Control Decks

IN: 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General, 1x Tajic, Legion's Valor, 1x Requisition Raid
OUT: 2x Authority of the Consuls 1x Split Up

There aren’t many other control decks out there, but you will play against Jeskai Dragons every now and then.

Liliana, Dreadhorde General and Tajic, Legion's Valor are good threats that are hard to directly answer for those decks, and Requisition Raid can take out any problematic artifacts or enchantments they happen to have.

Authority of the Consulsand Split Up aren’t usually doing much, but I like to leave one copy of Split Up in just in case we need to take out a dragon or two.

VS Other Decks

While not very popular in Best of Three, you may face against the Omniscience deck, in which case you can bring in Rest in Peace and Cease//Desist to help fight against the graveyard.

Other aggro decks, like Selesnya Rabbits, follow the same formula as VS Mobilize and Izzet, but you may not need the copies of Requisition Raid.

No Final Fantasy Cards?

Sadly, I didn’t feel like any of the Final Fantasy cards really fit into the deck. There were two cards that I considered but ultimatly didn’t try out.

First is Demon Wall, just to give us a nice defensive demon to curve into Unholy Annex to start the draining early. I decided against it just because a 3/3 isn’t the best blocker in this current format, and there wasn’t any two drop that I wanted to cut for it.

Second, I lightly considered Joshua, Phoenix's Dominant because I do think he blocks quite well, can help smooth your draw, and can flip to gain some life. The last chapter isn’t even bad in the deck because it can return our various bats to play.

I decided against Joshua because there just isn’t anything I wanted to cut for him, but it could be worth sneaking in a copy to try it out.

Wrapping Up

This deck has been a blast to play and it can really go toe-to-toe with the top decks in the meta. While a lot of folks have been leaving Alchemy behind until some nerfs hopefully happen in a couple weeks, I have been having a ton of fun playing the format, for the first time in a long time.

The Grixis Heist dominant meta was boring to me because when that deck was the best deck you couldn’t reasonable play other midrange or control decks because they had the best removal and card advantage engine in the format with the chorus cards, and then could just steal your best cards, making it impossible to keep up.

While this Aggro Summer meta can be frustrating to play against, as dying on turn three-four is never fun, I think the tools are there to meta game and come out on top.

I hope this deck guide was interesting to you, and gives you some ideas of how you can attack the current Alchemy meta. Whether you try it out, or brew something in a similar vein, best of luck in all of your matches!