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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / Fish Five-0: Lurrus Control (Standard)

Fish Five-0: Lurrus Control (Standard)


In Modern we've seen a Grixis Lurrus deck so naturally I wanted to see if I can mimic that in Standard. Luckily, Rattleclaw provided me with a list that served as a foundation to build on and I then turned their deck into a Lurrus Control/Tempo deck!

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Gameplan

It's going to be a lot like a typical control deck but our threats are cheap. Sticking a Lazav, the Multifarious on board early will allow us to sit back and throw away as many cards as needed until we eventually hit our Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger. We play a ton of permission spells like Mystical Dispute and Neutralize to try to stop a Teferi, Time Raveler and tempo our opponents out. 

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If it isn't the permission spells, then it's our hand disruption which will eventually run our opponent's out of cards. This deck doesn't do too well if you fall crazy far behind so every play and turn matters, so the deck does require your understanding of what is popular in the meta and what cards are problematic. For example, Grixis has poor ways to deal with enchantments so be mindful about your opponent's Wilderness Reclamation. You'll probably have to work for every win as the deck doesn't "dunk" on any deck, but it does reward tight play and it's easily the most fun deck I've played this standard. 

Why are there so many singletons? We have recursion through Lurrus of the Dream Den. When we surveil cards, we're not too worried about losing permanents like Mire's Grasp as we can bring that back later. Even better, we can reoccur Lazav and Kroxas to close out games and burn out our opponents but Lurrus should only be deployed on a turn where we've run them out of cards or we've got protection. Only in emergency cases would I jam Lurrus outside of those moments. 

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As long as our friendly cat doesn't get exiled, we can also turn Lazav into Lurrus which will give us access to our value engine again. Once we can protect Lurrus or have some copy of it, we can just use Kroxa as a way to Volcanic Hammer our opponents and force a discard every turn. As I had mentioned, we have a ton of cards for all sorts of situations like Soul-Guide Lantern to really lock opponents out of their graveyard. The lantern feels amazing and actually locks opponents out of their Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath or other cards like Elspeth Conquers Death. Outside of Lurrus, we really can ignore Elspeth Conquers Death as our threats are all under three mana. 

Matchups

After all the games, I've found our worst match up has to be Jeskai Cycling and potentially elementals if we allow them to get their engine online. If we're up against Boros cycling, we can usually win that match with all of our removal and Soul-Guide Lantern to shut down Zenith Flare. The reason Jeskai Cycling is brutal is due to Improbable Alliance so that is an instant counter target for us. 

Conclusion

The deck got the five wins in the league only losing to one of our most problematic matchups but the deck is super fun to pilot. Here's an updated list from the video that I've been taking to the ladder with a ton of success! 

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I have run into a few mirror matches on the ladder recently but they run Vantress Gargoyle. That card seems amazing against Cycling as it allows us to race them and maybe it's worth playing them out of the sideboard. I've been tuning the deck on stream so I can see me adding those or Robber of the Rich into the sideboard. Either way, the deck is really fun and probably my favorite deck in standard so I'll probably play a lot more of this until Leyline of the Void becomes a thing as we don't mind Grafdigger's Cage.  

As always, thanks for watching. See ya at the next one! 

If you ever have a deck you want to be made into a video feel free to leave a like, comment, Email, and subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel 

-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger

Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com

 



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