Lately I had been playing UB Control before I moved with moderate success. However, it was nothing to write home about. I was winning more than I was losing but not by a long shot. My local FNM often sees some homebrewing and sometimes you just hit a deck that you have immense difficulty with.
For instance, in the last round of my last FNM at my old town I played against a player running a sort of mono-green beats deck. Normally, a straightforward aggro deck is pretty easy for control to handle. However, he was going for a bit of a tokens strategy and while my Consume the Meeks easily dealt with all his early drops and tokens, it missed his Kozilek's Predators and Wolfbrier Elementals which smashed through my Sea Gate Oracles. This required me to run out Grave Titan without having total board control, which usually gave him room to drop an Eldrazi Monument or Overwhelming Stampede for game. These larger CMC drops also caused me to whiff every single time I played Inquisition of Kozilek.
Now, I probably didn't play it perfectly, but the green deck did what it was supposed to do and it dodged some of the normal strengths of UB control. I mention all of this really because it was this match in particular which prompted me to consider UW instead of UB. I frequently found myself longing for the safety of a Day of Judgement and this match wasn't the only time. So, when I moved and was considering which deck to play, I was looking between UW and UB.
Normally, picking control is not the safest choice for going to a completely blank metagame. Not only that, this is an FNM not a PTQ or GP. That means the likelyhood of random-bad-matchup-homebrew decks is way higher than normal. However, I had cards for control or Valakut, and since I hate Valakut with the white hot passion of a thousand suns, I was sticking with what I had. Since I was going with control and the metagame was completely unknown, I spent a lot of time trying to make sure my deck was prepared for everything. This is the list I ended up with:
3 Condemn
2 Journey to Nowhere
3 Day of Judgment
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Jace Beleren
4 Mana Leak
2 Negate
3 Wall of Omens
4 Spreading Seas
4 Preordain
3 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Tectonic Edge
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Seachrome Coast
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Marsh Flats
5 Island
3 Plains
Sideboard
3 Ratchet Bomb
4 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Revoke Existence
1 Day of Judgment
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
3 Spell Pierce
The idea in this build was to try to be ready for anything. Condemn covered my cheap, instant removal while Journey covered removal for things that either wouldn't or I could afford to let attack. Negate maindeck gave me a bit of a control edge and is never completely dead. Wall of Omens, Spreading Seas, and Preordain all smooth draws and provide some value. (And by value, I of course mean Spreading Seas is ridiculous and sometimes you just win with it) Of course, cards like Jace, Day, and Mana Leak need no explanation.
The biggest dilemma I had was over the finisher. I had the sort of "normal" options of Frost and Sun Titans, the "old school" option of Baneslayer Angel, and the more rogue option of Wurmcoil Engine. Sun Titan went out pretty quickly. While very good in a meta where incremental card advantage is king (see: Jund), Sun Titan is vulnerable to removal, has no evasion, no lifelink, and the value you get out of him if he dies is pretty minimal. This meta is not friendly to Sun Titan. Frost Titan got the boot too. I didn't know if UB was going to be popular, but a lot of decks deal with Frost Titan without too much trouble. Frosty was great when then meta was 80% Primeval Titans. Now, he's just barely harder to kill than Sun Titan, has no evasion or lifelink, and you get basically nothing from him if he dies.
So it came down to Baneslayer and Wurmcoil Engine. I love Baneslayer and nearly put her in here. However, when I compared the two Wurmcoil seemed just better. It trades with Titans, you get some value when it dies (in the form of having to kill it twice, basically), it also has lifelink (on a bigger body), and it's colorless, which very occasionally matters. Baneslayer's only real advantage was that it flies. Evasion seemed less important when I'd be bashing for 6 lifelinking, deathtouching damage a turn. Especially when I'd lose all the other above benefits of Wurmcoil Engine just to get flying. Wurmcoil seemed like a more universal answer than Baneslayer, who gives aggro nightmares.
The sideboard was pretty typical. Spell Pierce for ramp/control, Leyline for Valakut/Vampires/random stuff, An extra Day to buff up the aggro matches, Revokes and Ratchet Bombs as a sort of catch-all. Kozilek, while seeming sort of random was for any mill decks I might come across. I just couldn't lose to mill that'd be awful.
So far I've taken this deck to my first two FNMs and won first place both times. The flexibility of all these answers has allowed me to deal with many different strategies. I've played UW Allies, RDW, Infect, Elves, GW Quest, Eldrazi Green, and BR Vamps. There's possibly one other deck but I can't recall it. Nevertheless, the deck has preformed well for me. While I expect the meta to change drastically with the upcoming release of MBS, I would recommend the list for people looking to play UW at their FNM.
As a side note: a massive thanks to everyone at the new shop. Everyone has been so welcoming and friendly to me I really appreciate everyone! (Not to diminish all my old friends back in OK, I miss all of you!)
