I am having so much fun with this deck. I'm a control player at heart but Teferi was SO BORING.
Thankfully, GRN came with this gem:
A choir of angels sings to the heavens, as The Card That Was Promised blesses those who are worthy
So naturally, a control/burn hybrid deck had to be made in honor of our new control overlord. The deck is actually not all that special, and follows the old principle of "let the first thing through, counter everything else". Only here, we're not working preparing for some win condition (although Inescapable Blaze will usually be the finisher), we're killing our opponent while doing the counter/card-advantage dance.
tl;dr: stop your opponent from doing anything while punching him in the face repeatedely, and sometimes even make him punch himself in the face (see Risk Factor i.e. "stop hitting yourself", the card). End with a spectacular uppercut in (a Guttersniped) Inescapable Blaze.
Let's go over the cards:
Creatures:
Goblin Electromancer: a great little card in this deck. At two mana, your control isn't really online yet, so he's not so hard to cast. If your opponent has red or black mana ready, you would prefarably have a Negate in your hand, so you'd wait until turn three, cast him, and now you have the one mana left you now need for Negate. However, remember that Negates primary purpose is protecting your Guttersnipe. On that note...
Guttersnipe: at three mana, this guy is a lot harder to cast in this deck. You pretty much never want to cast him if you only have three mana available. If you have a Goblin Electromancer out and a Negate in your hand, you can cast him at four mana, but five is safer still. This guy is the closes this deck has to what could be called a win condition. If you "survive" (i.e. manage to keep control) your opponents turn after the turn you cast him, things are looking very good. If your opponent manages to take advantage of your tapped mana, kills the Guttersnipe and/or gets a nasty thing out, things are looking very bad. This deck has next to no removal.
Don't forget that these are still also 2 power creatures. If you can safely attack with them, do so. Whittle your opponent down, get him nice and ready for The Blaze.
Counterspells:
Ionize: Obviously. Stop your opponent doing his thing, then punch him in the face for good measure. Doing this with a Guttersnipe neatly communicates to your opponent how exactly they will lose.
Sinister Sabotage: because we needed another 4 counterspells annndd this is it. Don't underestimate the Surveil. While it doesn't combo with anything in this deck, hand shaping is as important here as in any control deck.
Essence Scatter: because sometimes you want to do a thing but then you'd only have two mana left (or one, with Goblin Electromancer out) to counter whatever nastiness your opponent has lined up.
Negate: see Essence Scatter, but also consider that this cards primary purpose is to protect your Guttersnipe after you just cast him (allowing you to get him out at 4/5 mana instead of at 5/6).
Card Draw:
Chemister's Insight: draw to cards, usually for 3 mana (see Goblin Electromancer), at the end of your opponent's turn. Standard fare. So let me use this space to note how AMAZEBALLS Jump-Start is. It's simple really: this deck needs 5 lands, 6 tops (general scenario obv, be especially critical of this rule in control mirrors), to do whatever it wants. Every other land you draw is ofter a semi dead draw. And while two Goblin Electromancers are usefull, a third is basically a dead card. With a Chemister's Insight in your graveyard, all your cards have "Cycling 2B. When you cycle this card, draw a card."
Burn:
Risk Factor: this card is amazing and a strong contender for my favourite card in GRN. I put this under burn since, apparently, opponents take the damage 90% of the time. CAST THIS EARLY. If your opponent ends a turn and you've still got three mana open (or two with a Goblin Electromancer), don't hesitate. 4 damage is a TON, and after it's cast it's ready in your graveyard for another Jump-Start cast.
Inescapable Blaze: Banefire 2.0. With an Electromancer this is 6 damage for 5 mana at Instant speed. If you have two in your hand and a Guttersnipe out, casting one at the end of your opponent's turn and then one at the start of yours is a 16 damage one-two punch. Nice and crispy.
Board control:
Blink of an Eye: 1/3 mana with an Electromancer out, this helps if a nasty thing like Ajani's Pridemate or Steel Leaf Champion get through early. This is rare though. There used to be 4 of these in the deck, they've made room for more counterspells and so far that seems to be more consistent. Now at two they seem too unreliable, so I might still just throw the remaining ones out as well...
Cards that I've tried but didn't like:
Hypothesizzle: even discounted by Electromancer this is just a bad card. It has two effects that have way different priorities. You want the card draw ASAP, but you want the damage when/if it matters. So while the card looks like it's card draw and removal, in practice it turns out to be more either card draw or removal, both costing 4/5 mana. Makes it borderline unplayable, at least in this deck. I imagine it could work a bit better in a pure burn deck.
Ral, Izzet Viceroy: it's a good card, but too hard to cast in this deck. It's like making a Teferi deck but not having enough control and especially removal to get him out safely and protect him.
Niv-Mizzet, Parun: similarly, this card was super great the couple of times I actually managed to get him out. The other couple of dozen times, he was a dead card, or got immediatly removed after I cast him. He might still be worth considering, maybe to replace the two Blink of an Eyes, but so far the deck seems to work better without him in it.
Creature (8) | |||
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$0.20€0.090.03 | |||
$0.25€0.180.03 | |||
Instant, Sorcery, Enchantment, Artifact (28) | |||
$0.19€0.060.03 | |||
3
Negate
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$0.25€0.140.03 | ||
4
Ionize
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$0.49€0.300.02 | ||
$0.78€0.600.02 | |||
$0.25€0.150.03 | |||
$0.25€0.110.03 | |||
$0.20€0.180.03 | |||
$0.20€0.070.03 | |||
Land (24) | |||
$1.00€0.740.02 | |||
$12.96€11.940.96 | |||
$0.16€0.030.03 | |||
7
Island
|
$0.50€0.050.03 | ||
7
Mountain
|
$0.97€0.070.04 |
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