Winning the MTGO Vintage Challenge: UB Lurrus Control Guide By Mogged

How It all started

Last week, I secured a spot in the top four during the Vintage Challenge and achieved a flawless 5-0 league standing using a straightforward but potent strategy for Vintage Control. Fast forward to this week, I emerged victorious in the Challenge using the same deck: UB Lurrus Control.

The deck

https://mtgdecks.net/Vintage/dimir-bowmasters-decklist-by-mogged-1736450

Lord of the Rings has changed Vintage

This deck features the Orcish Bowmaster and Lórien Revealed, two cards from LOTR that have made a huge impact in eternal formats. Vintage is no different.

What I am trying to do is play some of the most powerful vintage cards, including the companion. But this time, I want to do it in a control deck with a smooth mana base that ALSO runs Urza’s Saga. Yes, I am basically trying to fit everything in here.

It's a very greedy approach, but I think it somehow ends up being a very consistent deck.

Orcish Bowmaster Is a Vintage Staple Now

Orcish Bowmasters is a special case in Vintage. This format lacks removal but is loaded with card draw. So, even if it is a relatively weak card in the context of the format, the effect is very valuable. This is similar to cards like Narset and Hullbreacher, which are Vintage staples.

Lorien Revealed Should Be a Staple

Lorien Revealed is good enough to see play in Vintage due to its incredible versatility. You can acquire a land by tapping a colorless Mox, pitch it to Force of Will and Force of Negation, and hardcast it using excess mana to refill. I believe the card should be played much more than it currently is. Lorien Revealed plays a significant role as it can serve as either a land or a blue spell, with the latter being particularly crucial.

Deck choices that tie those cards together

The Moxen

Usually control decks in vintage are unable to play off color moxen because they are filled with cheap spells needing specific colors to cast, some examples of these spells are Preordain, Lavinia, Swords to plowshares, so they use a very tight manabase with duals and only moxen that can cast their spells.

My idea with this deck is that you can minimize color requirements by sticking to two colors and efficiently utilize the off-color mana. Lorien Reveal and Bowmaster are the two new cards that commonly benefit from using Moxen, thus providing a good excuse to play more 'free land drops'.

Urza’s saga

This is another card that works very well with this package. It can use the off-color moxen and it ramps into Sol Ring, which can be used to draw three cards with Lorien on its final turn. It's also important to mention that it's your main win condition. As Bowmaster and Lurrus are slow and push the game into a stall rather than a race, Urza’s Saga provides an uncounterable threat that can end the game very quickly while disrupting your opponent's plan with counters.

Lurrus

I really think all blue control decks should take extra steps to play this card. Its synergy with Black Lotus is apparent, and having one extra card that slowly wins the game is a huge deal. Plus, it's another way to use Moxen efficiently. Lurrus is really effective, and control decks have the issue of running out of gas, especially when you try to play a lot of lands or effects that turn into lands like this deck, to avoid having to mulligan.

Force of will and Force of negation

Needless to say in vintage you can die to 2 card combos very often, so you need to have strong defenses as you are building your card advantage. The  only way you can afford to have a slow clock like Bowmaster and steady card advantage is by having those 0 mana counters.

I have tried building control decks with the 3 off color moxen, but it never seemed to work up until now and this is the main incentive to play this deck , it’s a faster and very consistent control deck and the only drawback is not playing some okayish vintage cards like Swords, Narset, Hullbreacher etc, so you sacrifice versatility in card choices by only playing blue black and only allowed to have permanents with 2cmc or less.

Versatile card choices

This deck is very new, and it doesn't account for every answer a control strategy should use. There are a lot of options to consider, like Preordain, Vampiric Tutor, Treasure Cruise, and Thoughtseize, so don't be afraid to try these cards. My build isn't perfect.

For instance, I believe I made a mistake while playing with Leylines. Having Lurrus and Urza's Saga probably means that artifacts like Tormod's Crypt, Graffdigger's Cage, and more Soul Guide Lantern are likely better choices.

Therefore, in the sideboard section, you can simply replace Leylines with them. Indeed, this is the only modification I made to the deck and I won the following week's MTGO Challenge.

Mulligans tips

Your mulligans change a lot depending on your opponent's deck

TIP #1. Assuming you are against combo you should be looking to keep hands with interaction or hands that can get it very fast.

TIP #2. Being a control deck leaves you weak preboard to something like a graveyard strategy, but postboard you are very favored, so play defensively and mulligan if you have to, after all, the more likely you are to win, the more you should be mulliganing.

TIP #3. If you are against a graveyard strategy, a fast hand is better than a hand with interaction as most of your interaction that is not graveyard hate doesn’t matter.

TIP #4. If you are against a control deck your keep range is very big, it will very likely come down to a war of attrition so every card matters, and I would even keep some problematic 7s.

TIP #5. In the less common case of aggro for example Monowhite, you should be either looking for an interactive hand or a fast hand, but even a deep slow hand might not be good enough, bonus points for urza’s saga though as it is very effective as blockers.

TIP #6. When you are against blind, a mixture of the above is probably wisest but it’s very hard to take a gamble when your hand is already functional as you don’t really know what you are looking for so you can be a little greedy with your keeps.

Additional tips and tricks

Turn 1 Basics

In most turn 1 cases Lead with Urza’s Saga if you have a Mox, and lead with a blue land if you don’t, if you have info or need to keep a counter up that changes things

The Right Land

Start with an Island if possible against a Wasteland deck, you can always hold the fetch up for Underground Sea as Bowmaster is the most castable black spell and it has flash speed

Information Wars

Use Mishra’s Bauble to get info about your topdeck and then shuffle away the card if needed, Lórien revealed can do the shuffling too, also be wary of opponents bowmasters when you do such a thing

The Mindset

You are the control deck, and your deck is very equipped to beat control mirrors, being in a defensive mindset when navigating those control mirrors as you are most likely the better late game deck in a blue matchup

Be Patient

If you are playing against a Bowmasters deck, try to hold your bowmaster until the first bowmaster resolves which will probably targets life points, but every Bowmaster after that can get rid of an existing Bowmaster, so ideally you shouldn’t be the first person who casts a Bowmaster, so be patient

Sideboard guide

Blue tinker

Their deck is based on combo , but it can pretend to be a blue control mirror with a few creatures, these are the decks we are trying to prey upon by being the heavier control deck

Monowhite

Very tough matchup taxing our mana , our spell count and our life total, that’s why we have so much sideboard for it

Play

Draw

Doomsday

Very good matchup, we have so many counters and bowmaster and saga are excellent clocks.

Paradoxical outcome

This should be under the positive matchups but unfortunately we can’t run enough artifact hate since we are running a lot of them ourselves.

Sultai Control

Probably a tougher matchup, deathrite tarmogoyf and oko are pretty good against us and the rest of our decks are very similar.

Jeskai control

Bowmaster is excellent in this matchup so I think we are really good against them.

Blue Bazar

They are very ahead preboard but you can steal some games with bowmaster and your sideboard is excellent vs them.

Green Bazar

They are very ahead preboard but you can steal some games with bowmaster and your sideboard is excellent vs them.

Shops

Tough matchup, we don’t have match hate and our new inclusions aren’t very good vs them.

Oath of druids

Even matchup.

Final words

Vintage matches are all about mulls and planning your early turns,it can end in an instant but sometimes the match goes to libraries with less than 10 cards when playing a control deck, anything can happen in this format.

If you liked this article maybe you will also find interesting on of the following ones Pioneer Monowhite Humans deck guide, WOE Domain Cascade Guide

Published: 2023-08-28 00:00:00