Swans Control - Hsueh Qu

I always hear people bemoaning the lack of innovation in Standard; however, this is simply not the case. There are loads of new, exciting decks being created, as you may have inferred from seeing the recent rise of Dark Bant (and those of you who have been stomped by a 5/6 double-striking life-linking beast on turn 3 when playing Pablo can attest that it is a highly competitive deck). Here is an interesting new 2-colour control deck, Swans Control. It has been posting some good results in Japan, and seems to be rather good, overall.

Creatures
4 Swans of Bryn Argoll
3 Plumeveil

Enchantments
2 Seismic Assault

Spells
4 Pyroclasm
3 Volcanic Fallout
2 Tidings
4 Cryptic Command
2 Broken Ambitions
2 Remove Soul
2 Negate
2 Incinerate

Planeswalkers
3 Jace Beleren

Lands
5 Island
2 Mountain
4 Shivan Reef
4 Cascade Bluffs
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Reflecting Pool
4 Faerie Conclave

Sideboard:
1 Banefire
1 Plumeveil
1 Negate
1 Volcanic Fallout
2 Sower of Temptation
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
3 Flashfreeze
2 Pithing Needle
2 Swerve

How it works

1. Resolve Swans
2. Sweep board with pyroclasm and volcanic fallout, drawing 2 cards each time
3. Resolve Seismic Assault
4. Throw Lands at the Swans, hopefully drawing into more lands
5. ???
6. Profit!

That’s pretty much the gist of it. Swans Control is very much a draw-go deck, depending on card advantage, counters and sweepers to bring the bacon home. The twist is that you can have your sweepers pull a night shift as card-draw, ensuring even more card advantage.

Of course, life never is that simple, and your opponents will likely try and kill your Swans. Swans dies to path, terror, Agony Warp, nameless inversion- just about every non-red removal spell. However, if you can resolve it, you usually can respond with Incinerating the Swans or casting fallout to draw enough to get a full grip of counters and removal, so you’re still pretty good to go. And if you have an Assault on the ground when the try and remove your Swans, you can just aim lands at it, draw into more lands, and end up with a hand full of counters and removal, which should be enough to win anyway. And that is assuming you don’t draw a second Swans!

Obviously you’re going to need loads of land. You need counter-mana, sweeper-mana, card-draw mana, and Swans/Assault mana, not to mention lands to throw at Swans. Hence why the deck plays a whopping total of 27 lands.

Problems

Counter-wars are a problem, because you don’t have as many counters as a traditional 5cc deck.

It can also be hard for the deck to deal with anything with more than 2 toughness (just 2 incinerates), and nearly impossible to deal with anything with more than 3, if you don’t have Swans/Assault out. If something big resolves, your best bet is to chump with Swans, or flash a Plumeveil in for Demigods, 4/4 figures, etc. Note that if you have to chump big critters with Swans you’re unlikely to be winning through Card Advantage. Luckily, the deck has alternate win-conditions.

Win Conditions

Swans: a 4/3 flyer which can’t be killed by direct damage tends to end games.

Manlands: Faerie Conclave’s will grind out a win in the long game (NB some play Mutavault in this slot, but I feel the deck needs the coloured mana more than the CITP un-tapped, especially when you consider that you’re playing Cryptics (1 UUU), Seismic Assault (RRR), Plumeveil (UUU), etc. Plus you won’t be doing much in the early game anyway).

Mill: If they’ve burned your Swans to draw a load of cards already, you can just add loyalty to Jace until he reaches his ultimate and deck them out. Especially relevant if you’re using your Swans to chump against, say, an 8/8 figure, huge Chameleon Colossi, Doran, etc- drawing 8 cards a turn, plus their 1 from their draw, plus 1 from Jace = 10 cards a turn, which means when you do trigger Jace’s ultimate it seems quite likely that you’ll deck them. You just have to survive long enough for this to happen!

Matchups

Good: Boat Brew, R/W Kithkin, B/W Tokens, Straight Kithkin, Fairies… 7 mass removal spells MD is pretty good. Make sure you leave counter-mana open for glorious anthems and Ajani Goldmanes. Also, watch out for forge-tenders. You can still bounce Anthems/Goldmanes/Forge-Tenders with Cryptic so you can counter them later if things get rough, though.

Bad:
-Red Decks (Too fast for your counters, your removal doesn’t hit much that matters, i.e. pumped figures, Ram-Gangs, Demigods). Terrible matchup for you, probably the worst. Almost a scoop.
-5cc (They’ll have more counters than you, so it can be hard to resolve a Swans/Assault. Plus your sweepers are useless. If you do resolve a Swans or Jace, you’re in pretty good shape though),
-Dark Bant (sweepers don’t do much against them. Your best bet is to slow them down by taking out their mana-accel like Birds or Hierarchs while you acquire counter-mana, then counter every big critter they play).

Points to Ponder

-Why 4 pyroclasms, but only 3 fallouts?
Pyroclasm is one of the few ways the deck has to deal with Figure on the draw, other than the 2 incinerates. The deck can’t really deal with anything with 4 toughness.

Also note that some splash green with vivids and play Firespout over pyroclasm, to get the 3-toughness critters like Wren’s Run Vanquisher, or Boggart Ram Gang.

-Seriously, who plays tidings?

Tidings is great for the lategame- drawing 4 cards to get that missing Swans/Assault, or extra land to pitch, or even just mass removal is incredibly relevant. And thanks to the number of sweepers you play, you will reach the lategame.

That being said, you might want to run Flame Javelin over it- with a Swans out, its functionally identical, except its cheaper, and can remove 4/4 figures, Chameleon Colossi, Mistbind Cliques etc. You do run the risk for being 2 for 1-ned if they have instant speed removal and you don’t have a counter.

-Reliquary Tower was not included, but might be worth considering. It allows you to avoid discarding when you go on a card-drawing rampage with Swans. However, it does mean you find it harder to cast Cryptics, Plumeveils, and Assaults. I personally don’t think it’s worth it because if you manage to go off for that many cards that the Tower is needed you’re probably in pretty good shape anyway, so it’s a bit of a win-more condition.

Sideboard
Note that the SB is geared towards 5cc and Red, the deck’s 2 worst matchups. You shouldn’t need to do much sideboarding against Boat Brew, R/W Kithkin, B/W Tokens, and Straight Kithkin, beyond adding the 1 Volcanic fallout, and maybe Pithing Needle for their Ajani Goldmanes/Forge-Tenders.

-Sower: In the sideboard to take care of creatures the deck can’t remove. Side in with caution, though- it gets killed by all the sweepers you play, so it’s only good against decks where your sweeper’s aren’t much use, for example Dark Bant.

-Swerve : In the sideboard for enemy Banefires (usually from red and 5cc). Also decent against Blightning. Alternatively, use a Wild Ricochet for fun and games- it also hits Cryptic Command.

-Banefire, Glen Elendra Archmage: For 5cc. The archmage is especially potent since the 5cc player will likely have sided out most of its removal, since you only had a Swan game 1 worth removing. Plus, it’s almost always a 2-for-1.

-Flashfreeze: Good against red.

-Pithing Needle- Against Planeswalkers, Windbrisk Heights, etc etc.

Conclusion

And that’s the gist of the deck. The deck is a blast to play, but you need to be very patient, and it can be quite challenging to pilot, so get your practice in if you want to sleeve this bad boy up for Nats Qualifiers. If you’re expecting the meta to be loads of small critters, you could do much worse than to play this deck. With Red decks seemingly falling off the Tier-1 radar, this might be a good time to try Swans Control out- do watch out for 5cc though.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this!