This is the sequel to Didn't Say Please (seen here), a truly oppressive control deck I made because I'm a terrible person. Now I was clearly happy enough with that deck to do a full write-up for it, so why this change? Well as I kept playing the deck, I became less and less satisfied with two key matchups: Simic Ramp and Witch's Oven decks.

Simic Ramp is a matchup I assumed would be extremely favourable. Because all their impactfull spells cost 5 or more mana, I figured counterspells would match up well against them. The problem is that because Hydroid Krasis' card draw effect is essentially uncounterable, they can just slowly build up a mana advantage, refill their hand with Krasis, and then next turn cast more game ending threats than we have mana to counter.

Witch's Oven presents the same problem to us that it does to all counter based decks: they have hugely impactful plays at just 1 mana. This allows them to either sneak an oven past us turn 1, when we can't possibly counter it, or set up something like Mayhem Devil + Witch's Oven on turn 4 when it's unlikely we'll have the mana to counter both. The original deck did have something of an answer for this in Turn into a Pumpkin which could answer the oven in the late game while also giving us some extra health to endure Cauldron Familiar ETB effects a bit longer, but it wasn't nearly enough. If the opponent got more than one oven on the board, or drew enough cards off Trail of Crumbs to re-play the oven alongside another threat in the late game, we were just dead.

So I set off looking for an answer to these match-ups, and my solution is Rule of Law. With Rule of Law on the board, we can counter the one spell our opponent can play on each of their turns, and use the one spell we're allowed on our turn to answer something they already have on the board.

And just in case the oppenent tries to get cheeky and play a spell on our turn, we also have Teferi, Time Raveler just to completely lock them out of the game.

Deck Composition

The core of the deck remains intact. We have 4 each of Thought Collapse and Didn't Say Please to fuel Into the Story and Drown in the Loch. And we have Fae of Wishes to grab our key proactive pieces when we're ready for them, though I did replace one of them with a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in the mainboard to make us more resistant to Unmoored Ego.

Added to this is the combo of Rule of Law and Teferi, Time Raveler to help us establish a much stronger lock in the late game. Note that Rule of Law, despite being a big part of our late game lock, is only a one-of in the main board. This is because Rule of Law isn't always an advantage for us.

If you play it before Teferi, Time Raveler against a deck with counterspells, for example, it can make it harder for us to resolve our key proactive plays. In general, you'll want to either have Teferi, Time Raveler, Jayce, Wielder of Mysteries, or The Magic Mirror down before it, and be in a relatively stable position already. This makes Rule of Law a very late game play in our deck, so we want to minimize our chances of drawing it to early, and eliminate the terrible possibility of drawing a duplicate in the early game.

Even with this caveat, having Rule of Law makes bounce effects become much more appealing, so we've replaced Quench with Brazen Borrower, and added 2 Turn into a Pumpkin to the mainboard.

We've also added in Despark in exchange for one Murderous Rider and one Tyrant's Scorn because it's slightly less painful, and more flexible respectively. And like Murderous Rider's Swift End, Despark also hits all the big uncounterable cards this deck otherwise finds very scary (Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Shifting Ceratops, and Chandra, Awakened Inferno).

The Wishboard

With only two Fae of Wishes in the deck, our wishboard is necessarily pretty minimal. We've got one extra copy of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, The Magic Mirror, and Rule of Law to make it easier to set up our lock, and make it more resiliant. Other than that, we have Unmoored Ego, to hopefully just remove all our opponent's uncounterable cards before they can cast them, and that's it.

That said, our sideboard is still exclusively non-creature spells, so we can grab other things if we need them. Despark in particular is a nice cheap and versatile answer to almost any problem you're facing.

A quick note about casting Granted with this deck though: it can be tempting to grab a card and play it on the same turn, but it's usually better to save that mana for counterspells and wait one turn to play whatever key card you wished for.

Tips & Tricks

Teferi, Time Raveler can bounce Rule of Law if you want to play more than one spell on your turn in the late game.

Similarly, both Teferi, Time Raveler and Tyrant's Scorn can allow you to bounce and re-use Murderous Rider.

Remember, you want to avoid tapping out with this deck as much as possible.

The key to playing this deck well is lining up your answers with your opponent's threats. This is mostly a matter of practice, but the best advice I can give you to start out is to pause each time you're about to counter something and ask yourself a few key questions:

• If I ignore this, how fast will it kill me?
  • If the answer on the order of 10 turns, that's often reason enough to let it resolve. In the late game we will have more resources than our opponent, and we can answer small threats then. In the early game though, we're even with our opponent, so we have to carefully marshal our resources in order to come out on top.
• Can my opponent play any more spells this turn, and how do I plan to answer those?
  • Don't get baited into countering the Heart's Desire half of Lovestruck Beast only to have your opponent slam down a Questing Beast. It's a bad time.
• What's the most narrowly applicable card I have that can answer this?
  • Once you've decided you need to answer a card, you have to pick the right answer. If your opponent casts Rotting Regisaur, and you can either counter it or kill it with Tyrant's Scorn, preserve your counter and go for the scorn.
  • Note that which cards count as most "narrowly applicable" will change based on your opponent's deck. Most of the time Murderous Rider's Swift End is more narrowly applicable than a counterspell. But if they have any uncounterable cards, then the counterspells are more narrow.
     

Sideboarding

Our wishboard takes up 4 slots here for Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, The Magic Mirror, Rule of Law, and Unmoored Ego. For the rest of the sideboard we have:

2 extra Despark mostly for uncounterable cards (Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Chandra, Awakened Inferno, and Shifting Ceratops), but it also hits a bunch of relevant threats in general. Nissa, Who Shakes the World, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King, Embercleave, Fires of Invention. Lots of good targets.

2 Time Wipe because it's a strong option against aggro decks, and also a backup answer to Shifting Ceratops.

2 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper because she's a really good repeatable answer to Witch's Oven. She can also give us a bit of life gain every turn, which helps us survive pings from Cauldron Familiar or leftover emblems from Chandra, Awakened Inferno.

1 extra Tyrant's Scorn for aggro match-ups.

And finally, 4 Mystical Disputes because they are indispensable against flash decks, and a strong answer to Teferi, Time Raveler and Thought Erasure.

As a final note, it is sometimes a good idea to bring in the second copy of Rule of Law. Against very low curve decks like Cavalcade of Calamity it can be an advantage for us much earlier in the game than would normally be the case.

Final Thoughts

This deck feels much stronger than its predecessor. Rule of Law is a very efficient way to cement our advantage in the late game, and Teferi, Time Raveler gives us a huge advantage against enemy counter magic.

This deck is of course still an evil pile of counterspells fit to be played only by the most degenerate of souls, but if that's you then give this deck a shot.