UB Control, the New Caw-Blade.

A week ago the banning of Jace and Stoneforge Mystic was deemed official on MTGO. Several days prior to this you could likely find me reading every article I could find and picking the brain of every player I knew in search of a new deck. I was not a fan of the format at all pre-banning, to the point that I hadn’t played a game of standard since the Starcity 5k in Indianapolis several months ago (Look for my mention in Drew Levin’s article who lost to me and my UB control list first round because he cast green sun's zenith for 5 to fetch for his 2^nd Thrun, causing both to die from legendary rule). He ended up splitting the top prize in the tournament, not losing a single match after ours, and he even got to watch his friend AJ Sacher beat me in the 7-1 bracket.

The reason I mention this tournament was because it was prior to the format being dominated by caw-blade and therefore a decent reference point for the new format. I piloted UB control because I considered it the most skill-intensive deck in the format, and therefore it gave me more opportunities to outplay my opponents. I assumed this new format would be mostly valakut/splint-twin/RDW and a plethora of home-brews which was similar to the standard format in Indy. Even with the absence of Jace I thought that UB control would have a great matchup against all of these decks, and if you look at the Chinese national’s decklists (5 UB lists in the top 8), I was right.

Most of my articles on here will have an economical theme but I decided to mix it up a bit and show you guys my UB list on top of a bonus video series. The first video explains my card choices, and the rest show my individual games of the 4 round daily, I hope you enjoy.

Lands - 26

4x Creeping Tar Pit

4x Drowned Catacomb

4x Darkslick Shores

4x Tectonic Edge

1x Misty Rainforest

1x Verdant Catacombs

5x Island

3x Swamp

Creatures - 4

2x Wurmcoil Engine

2x Grave Titan

Spells – 30

4x Inquisition of Kozilek

4x Preordain

4x Mana Leak

4x Jace Beleren

3x Go for the Throat

2x Spell Pierce

2x Stoic Rebuttal

2x Dismember

2x Into the Roil

2x Jace’s Ingenuity

1x Black Sun’s Zenith

Sideboard – 15

4x Flashfreeze

4x Disfigure

3x Duress

2x Doomblade

2x Black Sun’s Zenith