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Wandering Win

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Going into Aether Revolt Standard, many players had a feeling that control would be making a comeback. This is partly because the Saheeli Rai combo, in conjunction with Aetherworks Marvel, creates a huge incentive to play with counterspells like Void Shatter and Disallow. It’s also in large part because Emrakul and Smuggler's Copter are no longer in the format. However, the expectation was the Black-based control would thrive because it combines discard spells, countermagic, and Fatal Push. Luke Feeney explored other options:


Wandering Fumarole
There’s a couple of key things to note about this style of deck. The efficiency and density of removal spells is approximately equal, with Shock standing in for Fatal Push and Harnessed Lightning playing like Grasp of Darkness, but with less stringent mana requirements. The upside really shows up when you get to the more expensive removal options like Stasis Snare, Quarantine Field, and Fumigate. The strength of these cards is they don’t care about the size of creatures, which is a huge edge with Green-Black becoming as popular as it is.

The other big advantage to playing White and Red over Black is you can play Wandering Fumarole as both mana fixing and an incidental win condition. This may seem relatively low impact, given that Wandering Fumarole hasn’t been particularly well-utilized in this format, but it cannot be overstated how valuable it is for a control deck to combine mana sources and win conditions.

The last notable card for this deck is an incredible sideboard option: Spell Queller. We haven’t seen a ton of this card since the bannings removed so many of the incentives for playing Blue-White, but this card is very powerful in combo or control matchups. As people prepare to fight against Disallow and Void Shatter, they’ll be bringing Dispels and Negates to win counterspell fights. Spell Queller is an incredible trump that hits just about everything that matters, dodges key counters, and applies pressure to help you create openings to resolve the likes of Glimmer of Genius and Torrential Gearhulk.

If you’re looking for edges in Torrential Gearhulk mirrors or want a control deck that has more edges against the various combo decks in current Standard, Jeskai seems like a perfect place to start.


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