Duel Deck: Law & Order

No sideboard found.

The owner of this deck hasn't added a sideboard, they probably should...

2nd set of duel decks in my series of Block Constructed Duel Decks, this time featuring Guild-friendly versions of strong RTR Block Constructed decks. This is my take on Azorius Control (Significantly remodelled from American Control decks). This deck only features unguilded and Azorius-watermarked cards. The power level is meant to be significantly higher and more streamlined compared to Wizards' official Duel Decks, but still a step below tuned casual or standard decks.

This deck is a primarily control deck, but can play the tempo or beater game if it is able to stick a Precinct Captain or Lyev Skyknight early on. There's also a small amount of graveyard hate since the opponent deck is Golgari, as well as a lot of bounce to get rid of dudes that were beefed up with Scavenge. Once it lands Aetherling, its very hard for the enemy deck to catch up, and the small lifegain tacked onto Sphinx's Revelation and Dramatic Rescue help provide a cushion in case Jarad gets too out of hand.

The altered card in this deck is Sphinx's Revelation, for generally being an all-star backbone of control decks during its period in Standard.

Here is a link to the other deck:
http://www.mtgvault.com/malzenith/decks/duel-deck-undercity-dreams/

Difficulty: 3/10
Despite being a control deck, it is fairly straightforward - remove most of the things you can while beating their face down. It is very difficult for the Golgari deck to deal with an online AEtherling, so once you land it you should be on the winning side. Difficulty spawns from deciding what to name with Council of the Absolute, bluff games that happen once each player knows the enemy deck, and timing the Cancel and Syncopates.

Your opening hand will give you one of two options: race against the Golgari, or buy time and whittle out their resources. If you have a Precinct Captain and a couple of tempo cards like Dramatic Rescue, Syncopate, or AEtherize, go for the race. The opponent relies heavily on a steady flow of bodies and bodies in their graveyard; Smiting an attacking Dreg Mangler by blocking it with the soldier token that the Precinct Captain made is a pretty strong play, but so is Azorius Charming or Dramatic Rescuing it at the end of their turn. Otherwise, if you've got a couple of Detention Spheres and counterspells, go for the control plan until you can win in resources.

Your opponent has one primary way they can accrue card advantage: Underworld Connections. If your opponent lands this card early on, he's going to drown you out in bodies and there won't be too much you can do about it. Your best bet is landing a creature - AEthering - that can't be dealt with easily. Your opponent also has a lot of scavenging and a lot of +1/+1 counters at his disposal, but they should only be temporary issues as you have a lot of bounce spells to deal with the scavengees. Watch out for Pack Rat as well - it's hard to deal with, but your best bet is probably a Detention Sphere or a Supreme Verdict. A well-timed AEtherize could also be helpful, but only serves to slow down the Pack Rat rather than deal with it permanently.

You have three cards you can use to immediately cripple your opponent: AEtherize, Rest in Peace, and Council of the Absolute. Your opponent can play around the AEtherize, but he will immediately feel the effects of Rest in Peace - losing the ability to scavenge will give you a lot of breathing room to shore up your defenses. Council of the Absolute is a difficult card to use - most likely you're going to want to name something like Sphinx's Revelation so you get a small discount on the draw spells, but if you've just bounced a couple of Dreg Manglers or Deadbridge Goliaths to your opponent's hand, it may be helpful to name those cards.

• Return to Ravnica
• Control
• Bounce
• Azorius