“We’ll show them. We will show them all.”
Art:Dovin, Hand of Control
by Kieran Yanner
Table of Contents
Today’s Featured Commander Is:
It’s Tax Time! Dovin, Hand of Contro,l is a really cool planeswalker who feels like the quintessential control commander; they are just truly the whole package, they are decently cheap and make our opponents gameplan much harder by taxing them for one mana on all Artifacts Instants and Sorceries and Dovin’s Minus ability allows us to invalidate the best attacker an opponent has, since we can target anything it can also be a strong political piece to bargain with at the table. We are primarily a control deck, but since we are in Azorius, we have access to a ton of amazing enchantments like All that Glitters and Ethereal Armor, which are typically our primary win-cons. This deck is a blast to play and truly feels like an Azorius Deck, I’m very excited to showcase this one today! Without further adieu, let’s get it!
The Deck:
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Dovin, Hand of Control Taxing Control!
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Why Dovin, Hand of Control?
Dovin is a huge part of our deck and a huge part of our control package. The tax that Dovin provides hurts pretty much all decks, even in a deck that doesn’t run a ton of artifacts, sorceries, or instants having an additional tax on certain spells can be hugely beneficial for us. In decks that do focus on these card types, we absolutely ruin their overall gameplan; dovins minus ability is great as well, a great political bargaining chip to get deals and game states that we want, as well as a decent form of protection for ourselves. Dovin is truly the whole package for this deck and a card we want to keep on the field as often as we can.
Deck Matchups:
Since this is Pauper EDH, there are an absolute ton of things that can tip a game in your favor or out of it. While an archetype may seem favorable, there are absolutely good and bad commanders for our deck to go up against; I have included both these, which were all played among my testing groups using various decks, and I have included the sample size for clarity purposes. This is just meant to be a guide after testing a bunch of games with this deck!
The information below is notes about specific decks that were featured in our testing pods and how we fared against them. Naturally, Pauper EDH is a multiplayer game, so these are just a summary of my notes against different commanders and strategies. When we test these decks we try to test to its strengths and weaknesses to give a full spectrum of what the deck has to offer. Various commanders and archetypes/strategies are used to get the most accurate information.
Commanders, we have a good matchup against:
Losheel, Clockwork Scholar
Record against Losheel 3-0
Losheel is a very good matchup for us; they are affected quite a bit by the Dovin tax and don’t have much recourse against our counterspells and overall control package; once we ruin their creatures, we can easily clean up with our finisher cards.
Khenra Spellspear // Gitaxian Spellstalker
Record against Khenra Spellspear 4-1
This is a good matchup for us, but we absolutely need to aggressively mulligan for a good hand with cheap counters, there are a ton of counters in this deck, and if we have a good hand there isn’t much they can do against this, this deck gets a lot worse when we have Dovin out so keeping them out as often as possible is quite strong. I find this matchup to be favorable for us, it is still loseable, so aggressively mulligan’ing is absolutely worth it.
Zada, Hedron Grinder
Record against Zada, Hedron Grinder 5-2
This is a favorable matchup for us. We can almost always get Dovin out before Zada, and their spells get a lot worse for them when they have to pay the tax, while we don’t stop their overall gameplan with just Dovin slowing them down, and allows us and other opponents to get a leg-up on them and remove some of the explosiveness that they have. I like this matchup a lot and find it to be favorable.
Commanders, we have a tough matchup against:
Alpine Houndmaster
Record against Alpine Houndmaster 0-3
This is a tough matchup for our deck; they are quite aggressive and have a very strong board set up even before we can begin to start controlling the game; if we don’t have a counter-heavy and control-heavy hand, this can be a very rough matchup.
Arabella, Abandoned Doll
Record against Arabella, Abandoned Doll 0-4
We really struggle with the gain and drain that Arabella presents, and since they can get their commander out super quickly, we can struggle to remove it; while we would like to turn it into a frog or witness token, it can be tough if we don’t have them readily available. This is a hard matchup for the deck.
General Kreat, the Boltbringer
Record against General Kreat, the Boltbringer 3-5
Goblins are just far too aggressive for us. We can survive for considerably longer if we are able to counter their commander, but this deck is super aggressive and can be quite tough for us to deal with; they end the game so quickly. If we can take this game to the late-game, it is quite favorable for us, but overall, I would say this matchup is quite rough.
Strategy Overview:
Dovin as early and as often as we can:
With the prevalence of artifacts, instants, and sorceries throughout pretty much every deck in the format, Dovin is quite good against a wide range of decks, even decks that aren’t directly focused on any of these card types can still have a tough time getting their support and utility pieces resolved. Keeping Dovin on the field is key and should pretty much always be cast on turn three.
Remove the biggest and baddest threat:
We have a ton of ways to invalidate creatures like Reprobation
, Witness Protection
, and Frogify
being able to use these cards to remove the most present threats on the board is a key way to survive our opponents.
Finish Strong:
While we spend much of the mid-game focusing on controlling on what our opponents do, we finish strong with both Ethereal Armor
and All That Glitters
on pretty much any creatures by the time we play these out we should have quite a bit of enchantments and artifacts on the field and be able to end the game pretty quickly.
Deck Overview:
This section contains information about cards in the deck and how they function within the deck! I also highlighted some of my favorite cards in the deck!
Creatures:
We have a pretty high creature count for our deck, but for the most part, they help us to further the overall gameplan like Thraben Inspector
and Novice Inspector
, which provide some nice early-game card draw or if we draw this in the late-game we can also use it to help increase our artifact count for All That Glitters. Since we have such a high focus on enchantments, we are also running Heliod's Pilgrim
this is typically used to tutor for All That Glitters or Ethereal Armor but grabbing pretty much any achievement is quite strong, and it’s entirely situation dependent. I also love Judge's Familiar
, which is a great way to disrupt an opponent’s early-game, and having a flying attacker/blocker is always nice. Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration
is another awesome early-game card that provides some strong early-game pressure; with over twenty spells in the deck, it’s also extremely easy to flip. We have some bigger creatures that can come out shockingly early, like Cryptic Serpent
and Tolarian Terror
, which are both huge attackers/blockers for the deck and since we have a really high spell count, we can easily get these out a few turns early and absolutely shift the momentum of the game for us. I’m also in love with both Naiad of Hidden Coves
and Geyser Drake
. The discount on our opponent’s turn allows us to interact on our opponent’s turn with ease and ensure they don’t get too out of hand.
Instants:
We have a ton of counterspells, but I would say the most important in the deck is Muddle the Mixture
while we rarely use this as an actual counterspell, it is a cheap way to tutor for All That Glitters at pretty much anytime and with cards like Archaeomancer
in the deck we can get it back and transmute it if we’ve already used it, this card is awesome and provides a lot of utility for the deck. Afterlife
and Generous Gift
are also super sweet for the deck, being able to take your opponent’s best creature and reduce them to a lowly token is great and spot removal like this is pretty uncommon within Azorius so you also get the benefit of the element of surprise as well which is always nice. Since spot removal is so uncommon, we have a couple of different ways to blink our best creatures like Momentary Blink
and Turn to Mist
we can use these offensively or defensively as we do have some impactful ETB’s and protecting ourselves from spot removal while we don’t have a counter in hand is quite strong as well.
Sorceries:
A good majority of our sorcery package is card draw, we cast a ton of spells in this deck so being able to refill our hand with ease is absolutely key to being successful with this deck, beyond our card draw we have some very strong cards like Fade Away
which can be absolutely devastating against creature decks that love to tap out and swing out, against a goblin deck in testing I was able to wipe out their entire board when they tapped out for a Beetleback Chief
. I also love Settle Beyond Reality
. While it is a little expensive, you get to flicker one of your creatures and exile opponents, the perfect way to get an extra enchantment with Heliod's Pilgrim.
Artifacts:
We have a lot of mana rocks in our artifact package, mostly for ramp and allowing us to have some additional counters or protection up on an opponent’s turn, but we do have some cool utility artifacts like Spare Supplies
which is a strong and cheap source of extra card draw which can also be activated at instant speed to dig for a counter as needed. I also love Greatsword of Tyr
while this isn’t the typical deck, you would find it in the counter, and tap down can be a great way to present some extra damage, I especially like putting Greatsword on an early game creature like Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration as it can get out of hand very quickly.
Enchantments:
Enchantments are a huge focus in our deck, and we have a ton of awesome ones, we have a bunch that focus on exiling and removing opponent’s permanents like Chains of Custody
, Journey to Nowhere
and Oblivion Ring
all of these are great ways to remove opponents threats, even if they get destroyed and they are only removed for a couple turns that is often enough time to find a more permanent solution to deal with them. We also have some cards that are perfect for our opponent’s commanders or their best creatures, like Frogify, Reprobation, and Witness Protection these can really change games and make opponents who were pretty strong and make their board state pretty weak. Last but certainly not least, we have All That Glitters and Ethereal Armor, which are absolutely the two most important cards in our deck, these combined with our creatures, are the finishers for our deck and can allow us to end the game pretty quickly. These often get a lot of looks, so I always like to make sure I have at least a couple of counters before playing these out, as opponents will try to stop them.
Strengths of the Deck:
- We have a very good matchup against Voltron strategies as we have a ton of cards and effects like Frogify
and Witness Protection, allowing us to continuously invalidate their Voltron targets. - We are packed to the brim with protection for us, so against decks heavy against removal, we can often protect them from harm.
- Even though we are a control deck because of our finishers in Ethereal Armor and All That Glitters, we are able to output a ton of damage, and our time to kill can be pretty quick. While we aren’t aggressively killing people when opponents start getting low, we can easily one-shot them.
Weaknesses of the Deck:
- We don’t have a ton of creatures so aggressive decks can take advantage of us in the early game.
- Control vs Control matchups can be tough because it can be hard to get Dovin to resolve and keep them on the field.
- Weak to enchantment hate, we don’t have much recursion if our big enchantments get hit.
Deck Stats:
Sample Hands:
Conclusion:
Thanks for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this deck as much as I did, this deck is super fun to play and is a great political deck and a great control deck, I think Dovin is going to be one of the decks that I rule zero after January as I have just been loving it, it feels very different than a traditional control deck and is just awesome to play. Stay tuned and Tap In!