(Control Magic | Art by Dameon Willich)

Do As I Think, Not As I Do

Hello, and welcome back to Singleton Shmingleton, where I bend the singleton rules of Commander by building decks with as many functional reprints of a certain card as possible. Up this week is the original way for blue to interact with the board, the card that has caused hundreds of sibling fights, the card that first said: "You don't get to play with your cards. I get to play with your cards." It is, of course, Control Magic.

This card was one of the original win conditions for control decks (and may even have influenced the name of the archetype "control").

Control Magic let decks play minimal creatures, using every deck space for card advantage and answers to opposing threats, until they could steal one measly creature and use it to win the game.

Since then, Control Magic and its offspring have consistently been among the best cards in their Limited formats, and have found their way into the constructed limelight as well from time to time.

Sower of Temptation found a home in the oppressive Faeries deck of Lorwyn-era Standard, and Threads of Disloyalty made its way into Modern sideboards in olden times as a way to steal Tarmogoyfs and Dark Confidants.

Control Magic and friends have consistently captured the minds of kitchen table players, and, later, the Commander community, and have proliferated as a result.

By my count, there are forty-one Auras that gain control of permanents, and that narrowing down is solely to avoid being overwhelmed by the amount of variants.

Some of Control Magic's most successful progeny don't even appear here, such as Vedalken Shackles and Agent of Treachery, but this list is a good starting point.

The most played of these cards is Corrupted Conscience, with 22,344 decks.

Giving a creature infect can lead to some powerful interactions, and dedicated infect decks are almost forced to run the card simply because of how few infect cards there actually are.

The next most played is Control Magic itself, in 12,526 decks. This is a cool case of the first version of the card being powerful enough that almost all variants have added different drawbacks, while still not being so good that it feels ridiculous and ban-worthy.

The least played of these cards is Krovikan Whispers, which sees play in only 72 decks. The twin drawbacks of Cumulative Upkeep and losing a ton of life if you ever can't pay for it make this one of the worst cards I've seen in a while.

Let's Get Thefty

The first place I looked when building this deck was EDHREC's Theft theme page. The top commanders for this kind of strategy are Don Andres, the Renegade, The Beast, Deathless Prince (tragically non-blue!), and Marchesa, the Black Rose.

The first two directly reward you for gaining control of creatures, while Marchesa, the Black Rose's second ability returns cards from your graveyard to the battlefield under your control, regardless of who owned the creature to begin with. This ability works better with cards like Threaten than Control Magic because it turns a temporary effect into a permanent one, where Mind Control is semi-permanent already.

Don Andres, the Renegade is certainly powerful, but I find his second ability to be more interesting than the simple stat boost of his first ability. But further down the list, Braids, Conjurer Adept caught my eye.

She can let our opponents cheat out the biggest creatures in their hand, only for us to steal it. How better to balance the rudeness of stealing the cards our opponents have been most excited to play with than with a good old dose of group hug?

We could run Braids, Conjurer Adept as our commander, but there are several more cards that let our opponents accelerate out creatures if we dip into green as well.

Hunted Wumpus, Wumpus Aberration, and Tempting Wurm all let our opponents drop cards on the table for free, while Hypergenesis and (if you can get your hands on one) Eureka basically let everyone dump their hands all at once.

And, while it's not in green, Show and Tell is a classic that fits perfectly in the deck.

If we're going to be playing a green deck full of enchantments, we might as well add an Enchantress package.

There are a ton of cards that let us draw a card for each enchantment we cast, digging us deeper into our deck and letting us find the right Steal Artifact or Mind Harness for the situation.

We'll naturally play Eidolon of Blossoms and Setessan Champion, but this deck is also in the market for Elvish Archivist, whose "once per turn" effect is fine when many of our enchantments are expensive, and Tanglespan Lookout, since almost everything we play is an Aura.

And blue recently got its own Enchantress in Entity Tracker!

This deck desperately needs ramp to be able to cast our Lay Claims and Volition Reinses, and there's a nice little genre of ramp spells that work great with our secondary Enchantress engine.

Cards like Utopia Sprawl and Overgrowth make our lands tap for extra mana, and also draw us cards when we have an Enchantress or two out. It negates the disappointment of topdecking ramp in the late game, and feeds into our best draws.

Plus, once we have enough lands out, this ramp often rebates much of its cost immediately. Rampant Growth will always put us down two mana for the current turn, but Fertile Ground played on an untapped land effectively only costs one mana.

And in the last step of this deductive deckbuilding, we can play a small core of creatures that interact really well with lands that can tap for more than one mana.

Voyaging Satyr, Portent Tracker, and Arbor Elf can untap a land loaded up with enchantments, and blue gets us Kiora's Follower and Vizier of Tumbling Sands.

All of these mana dorks have the potential to accelerate us by several mana, and to increase their potential we are also playing Simic Growth Chamber, Lotus Field, and Arid Archway.

With all this ramp, our plan of stealing creatures can keep up with our opponents' development, and with the card draw from our Enchantresses, we can realistically overcome the downside of single-target disruption in multiplayer.

The Decklist

I love this deck's play patterns. Enchantress as a strategy has always intrigued me, but it seems to easy to build a deck that just takes a lot of time drawing cards by playing cheap enchantments that don't do anything themselves.

Control Magic fixes that problem by making our engine interact with our opponents and play to the board. The small but explosive package that lets our opponents cheat out creatures makes for big board states and really shakes up the texture of a game, and this deck does a pretty good job of coming out on top in the chaos that follows.

But the best thing about this deck is that our win condition is different every game. We are almost fully reliant on our opponents' creatures to win the game ("almost" because Hunted Wumpus can do a surprising amount of damage on its own), and so even though our deck is build to be incredibly redundant and consistent, it's almost like we're also piloting our opponents' decks.

Sometimes we'll get to play easy mode if someone slams an Eldrazi off of our Show and Tell, but sometimes we have to combine someone's Blood Artist with someone else's Tendershoot Dryad to pull through.

It rewards quick thinking, and can give the excitement of deckbuilding during the game itself, which is not something I've felt very much before.

Until Next Time

This type of card satisfies the part of my brain that wants to keep track of tons of triggered abilities all the time, while also promising a good dose of simple, fast aggro.

Once a Pauper staple in Burn decks, and a perennial Limited role-player, does Firebrand Archer have what it takes to compete in the 40-life format? Find out next time on Singleton Shmingleton!

Read More:

Singleton Shmingleton - Fling

From the Brim to the Trim - Submerging Opponents with Buoyant Budget

Jesse Barker Plotkin

Jesse Barker Plotkin started playing Magic with Innistrad. He was disqualified from his first Commander game after he played his second copy of Goblins of the Flarg, and it's all been uphill from there. Outside of Magic, he enjoys writing and running.