"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity."
- Edvard Munch
- Edvard Munch
For years I struggled in vain to build a deck that ticked a few very specific boxes. They are as follows:
a) is a blue-based control deck
b) has no creatures other than the commander
c) utilizes the graveyard but isn't reliant on it
d) doesn't use combos to win
e) the commander isn't overplayed
f) the commander has an aesthetic I like
This was an incredibly difficult cluster of criteria to wrangle with. I could get most of them fulfilled, but never all of them, and I resigned myself to feverishly refreshing Twitter during spoiler season in the hopes that something would pique my interest. @DirkGently's Phelddagrif deck came very close, but I could never vibe with the hippo. It always felt like someone else's deck, and that stopped me from fully enjoying it. However, one thing I did respect about the hippo is just how sticky it is. Phelddagrif's self-bounce means that removal is all but wasted on it. See, one of the key characteristics of a control deck win condition is resilience. The fewer resources you have to devote to protecting your chosen win con, the more you can use to contain your opponents, which is a form of virtual card advantage.
This is where Brokkos, Apex of Forever comes in.
There's a role in control decks I like to refer to as the janitor. A good janitor is a win condition that is compact, resilient, and efficient at closing out games. Think Morphling in days past, or Aetherling when RTR was in Standard, or Celestial Colonnade in Modern control decks. Instead of having built-in protection like hexproof or indestructible, Brokkos brings self-recursion to the table. For the low cost of five mana, you have constant access to a respectable body with an excellent form of evasion, provided you already have a creature in play. How do we get creatures in a deck without creature cards? Well, either through the creation of tokens or the activation of manlands. The great thing about lands is, besides taking up effectively no deck slots, that they're extremely easy to recur with cards I already want to run, like Life from the Loam and Crucible of Worlds. By being able to easily recur Brokkos turn after turn, the deck has a very inevitable win condition that is incredibly difficult to meaningfully interact with. You can only delay Brokkos, not stop him.
The rest of the deck, then, is built around surviving long enough to capitalize on that inevitability. It's chock full of removal, countermagic, and a few key cards as well as the tutors to find them. You know what a control deck does.
There Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
Approximate Total Cost:
Here's a brief analysis.
Lands
Forty-three seems like a lot, but that's about how many you need to hit your first five land drops consistently. As the average mana cost of the deck is about 2.6, the critical turn is around 5.2, and this rounds down to five most efficiently. Indeed, the expected value for lands with this count is 5.2. Thus, I want to make my first five land drops almost every time. Mostly balanced by fetchlands and their normal targets, I run a total of five lands relevant lands to Brokkos, Apex of Forever: Blinkmoth Nexus, Inkmoth Nexus, Mishra's Factory, Field of the Dead, and Volrath's Stronghold. I originally ran Haunted Fengraf and Khalni Garden, but they're too terrible to play, even here.
Countermagic
Twelve could be the way. The expected value from a hypergeometric calculation is just under 1 after your first draw step, giving you a 66% chance on average to have one early on for interaction, if necessary. I run the best, most efficient, and most versatile counters I can.
Spot Removal
Same as countermagic, twelve is the magic number. I tried to diversify things enough to hit as many targets as possible at no more than 3mv. You miss white's instant speed removal suite here as opposed to being in Bant colors, but it's not as bad as you think.
Board Wipe
This is where things get a little desperate. If our removal suite is slightly weaker because of losing Swords to Plowshares, then our wipe selection is severely lacking in comparison. Toxic Deluge maybe the most efficient creature wipe in the format, but it's not enough to make up for losing Hour of Revelation, let alone Farewell. As a result, we have to play Oblivion Stone and Consuming Tide. Tide is actually pretty solid; since we only have one relevant permanent, keeping it in play while opponents scoop their board up and typically cantripping at worst is a great value play. This is the area of the deck I'm least happy with, but when they print another solid black sweeper I think things will be better.
Draw
There's a mix of cantrips and substantial draw spells here. I can't speak highly enough of cantrips. I sometimes cut them but they always make their way back into most of my blue decks. The other draw spells are mid to late game spells that help replenish your hand after interacting with stuff. And then there's Top. Top is included as a recurring cantrip with fetchlands.
Tutor
The best reason to be in black, they turn the rest of the deck into a toolbox of disruption by enabling us to find the precise answer we need to a particular problem. Gotta love 'em. Obviously, tutors are threatening to seasoned players, so judicious and last-minute use of them is recommended. However, the best reason to use tutors is to fuel my favorite card and interaction in the game:
Recursion
Seasons Past. What an absolute beauty of a card. Elegantly designed to both avoid abuse via limiting what you can recur and encourage it by being tutorable, It's not always needed, but being able to pull this combo out and say to the table, "This is my final form," is always satisfying. It's like reloading the shotgun in Doom. A visceral, primal tingle runs through my body every time. It's a good feel.
Fog
Sometimes, you just need to Time Walk someone who is trying to kill you in combat. I feel a little bad for running Constant Mists and Crucible of Worlds, but I wouldn't play this deck at a low-tier table since it would be pubstomping.
Time
Well, gotta win somehow. Part of an infinite time loop with Seasons Past, either Mystical Tutor, Demonic Tutor, Solve the Equation, or Dark Petition, and 12-14 mana.
Sol Ring
It's Sol Ring.
