Type 1 Control
 
         This next deck that I'm tuning was sent by a player who has a lot of resources at their disposal, and would like to focus on forcing their opponent to discard cards and basically limit their options by hurting their mana, their hand, or countering spells, using the best of blue, white, and black.  Here's how it looked when it was sent to me:

3 undermine
3 absorb
4 counterspell
1 memory jar
1 mox sapphire
1 mox jet
1 mox pearl
2 parallax tide
4 orims chant
3 capsize
1 black lotus
2 denying wind
2 sunken hope
2 rising vaters
2 moat
2 force spike      
4 mana drain
2 ertai the corrupted
1 alexi, zephyr mage   
4 savannah lions
3 morphling
3 avatar of woe
3 tradewind rider
4 meddling mage

1 maze of ith
3 island of wak-wak
2 the tabernacle at pendrel vale
4 coastal tower
4 salt marsh   
4 tundra
4 scrubland
4 underground sea
6 island
4 swamp  
3 plains

side board:
2 ertais trickery       
2 glacial chasm
1 null brooch
3 foil   
2 douse
2 abjure
2 tidal control.


         The first thing that I see with this deck is this:  the deck tries to do too much.  This goes a long with the cluster theory of magic:  put cards in a deck that all work together, and whenever any two of them come up, you'll have a combo that will give you an advantage.  When I say the deck tries to do too much, I mean that it wants to use hand destruction, counterspells, fast mana, fast creatures, AND bounce, and now it wants to add discard.  When a deck tries to do this many things, it will usually run into the problem that it does none of them well enough to win the game or reliably enough to count on them.  What I'm going to do, then, is take the white out of this deck altogether and focus on making it a blue/black type 1 discard deck.
         Another thing that's probably a good idea is to cut the deck down to 60 cards.  This allows the deck to draw reliably, so you can predict the way it will play, and so you draw your better cards more often.  We'll also fix the land, as there are plenty of land available to the type 1 black/blue mage.  We can play the ice age pain land, underground river, the revised dual land, underground sea, and 9 swamps, and 1 maze of ith.  Only one maze of ith because I assume that's all that is in this player's posession.  If not, they could drop 2 swamp to add 2 more mazes.
         So, now that this player has established themselves as not being short of high quality cards, lets list all of the type 1 cards that we can safely assume they have for this deck:
1 Mind twist
1 Mox sapphire
1 Mox jet
1 Black lotus
1 memory jar(mainly for megrim, but not bad by itself, to find a needed contagion, recoil, or hyppie or two)
1 yawgmoth's agenda(not a type 1 card, but fairly incredible in type 1, I would think)
         Now lets add some of the obvious choices for black/blue discard in type 1:
4 dark ritual
4 Hypnotic specter
4 duress
4 Hymn to tourach
4 Recoil
4 megrim
         So, now we've got the obious 48(including land)cards out of the way, onto the tough last 12.  I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach with the last 9 cards, and I'm going to make them look like this:
4 Oppression
4 The Rack
4 Contagion
         Now, for the explanation.  If you have either a rack or a megrim out, oppression will severely punish your opponent.  With megrim and hypnotic specter being your only real ways to win, the rack not only fit well, but was a very needed third threat for this deck.  Last but not least, contagion.  Contagion serves to control early creatures that might just sneak through the hand destruction.  We REALLY don't want them to live, becuae the way the deck is designed, they could easily go the whole way against us.  So contagion helps take care of everything, it makes ernham djinns 0/3, and also kills jackal pups and svannah lions fairly easy.  So, here's our finished product:

Lands/Mana Sources:
4 Underground River
4 Underground Sea
9 Swamp
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus

Creatures:
4 Hypnotic Specter

Spells:
1 Mind twist
1 memory jar
1 yawgmoth's agenda
4 Dark ritual
4 duress
4 Hymn to tourach
4 Recoil
4 megrim
4 Oppression
4 The Rack
4 Contagion

Now, while blue seems to be just about useless in this deck, not only does recoil play an impotant part as a desert twister type of card, but the sideboard also gets help from blue.

Here's our new sideboard:
4 Ensnaring Bridge(should be easy to empty your hand, once you do, no one can attack you unless they attack with 0 power creatures and then pump them, side hyppies out for these, and watch as oppression and megrims wreck your opponent complimented by the other discard)
4 Chill(not quite as dominating as douse, but with less blue sources in the deck and the fact that chill doesn't require you to leave mana open, i'll take it, side this in and megrims out against burn)
4 Gainsay(counters blue spells, which I hear are pretty popular in type 1, what with  the remaining three of the power nine being blue, side this in and 3 contagions out against combo)
3 Annul(this is always good, but I'm thinking of specifically cards like necropotence, cursed scroll, tranquil grove, etc, etc.)

Well, Good luck, I hope I helped you do what you wanted,
-Wally West

 


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