Introduction
Many years ago, Brian Weissman came up with a deck idea. He created a deck that slowly generated an overwhelming card and board advantage, at which point he could drop whatever he wanted and win with it. In the years since,"The Deck" - as it came to be called - has gone through its ups and downs. Beginning with the advent of Tog in Type 1, The Deck entered a year-long period of degradation, as first GAT and then Hulk Smash overshadowed it.

However, a few months ago Steve O'Connell (a.k.a. Zherbus), Matthieu Durand (Toad), Carl Winter, Kim Kluck, Carsten Kötter (Mon, Goblin Chief), and Stefan Iwasienko (Womprax) gave this venerable deck a serious overhaul and a brand new name: 4-Color Control. In the time since, 4CC has quietly made its way into Top 8's around the globe, most recently sweeping the Top 4 of Eindhoven on July 25^th and winning the StarCityGames.com Inaugural Power Nine Tournament. Now that 4CC is starting to be widely regarded as one of the best decks in Type 1, it's about time someone told you how to play it.

The List
Though several months have passed and a new set has rotated into the format, 4CC's main deck has changed very little and still looks almost exactly like it did when it was introduced on The Mana Drain by Steve O'Connell back in April. A very current list can be found in SCG's Type 1 Decks to Beat, and looks like the following:

4C Control
Steve O'Connell a.k.a. Zherbus
2nd place, 2004-07-17 Myriad Games, NH
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 City of Brass
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl

4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Skeletal Scrying
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor

1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Time Walk
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Fire / Ice
1 Balance
1 Gorilla Shaman
2 Exalted Angel
1 Decree of Justice

This list is very representative of the average 4CC. The most common variations of this list include playing three Angels instead of two, three Scryings instead of four, two Gorilla Shamans instead of one, and a basic Island over one of the dual lands.

Strengths...
4-Color Control has a number of strengths which make it an attractive deck choice. First, it has a strong draw engine that is both non-Blue and untargeted. Second, it has a kill condition that provides a matchup against aggro decks that is far better than those of control decks past, while allowing the 4CC player to operate as either a control deck or an aggro control deck. Last, thanks to using four of the game's five colors, 4CC has access to a wide range of tools for dealing with its opponents, giving it quite a potent sideboard.

... and Weaknesses
4-Color Control is not invulnerable though, and does have its weak points. With the flexibility and strength four colors provide comes a vulnerable manabase. It is quite possible for an opposing deck to cut off access to one of 4CC's colors, or just manascrew it entirely. The draw engine, though powerful, is also painful and can cause serious trouble if the 4CC player cannot resolve an Angel to regain some life. 4CC also has a relatively low Blue card count for a control deck, meaning that on occasion it will be stuck with a Force of Will in hand and no other Blue cards - never an enviable position. Finally, 4CC is not a fast deck. Odds are it will not win until turn 7 or 8, possibly even later. This gives the opponent a fair amount of time to recover from an early deficit, or even to just win first.

How to Play
The most important thing to remember when picking up 4-Color Control is that it is not a pure control deck the way Keeper and The Deck were. No longer are you forced to react to everything your opponent does, and hoping to eventually gain control over the board. In fact, it was that very inflexibility that led Keeper to fall from the top of the metagame in the first place. Instead, 4-Color Control has two potential game plans, and which you choose to employ is largely based on the matchup and your opening hand.

The first option available to you is the standard control game. This is the game plan that will be most familiar to people who spent years playing Keeper or other pure control decks like Mono-U and Urphidian. In this game plan, you are reactive, countering or otherwise answering key threats and drawing cards off of Skeletal Scrying until you have established enough control that you can drop your Angel and go to town. Though more difficult and complicated, the familiarity of the format with this style of play makes this game plan the less interesting of the two. As I implied earlier, it is also frequently not the optimal way to play out a game, and there are several decks that can just overwhelm your ability to control the game. Fortunately, pure control is not the only way for you to play.

Thanks to the selection of Exalted Angel as the primary kill mechanism, 4CC is also granted the option to play an aggro-control game. Against many decks, a turn 1 or 2 face-down Angel that creates an eight-point life swing on the next turn spells big trouble. When playing 4CC as an aggro-control deck, you will be very aggressive, dropping an Angel in the first couple of turns and trying to get it face up as soon as possible. Once this is accomplished, you just need to focus your efforts on keeping her in play and unblocked until your opponent is dead. Given the wide array of tools available to 4CC, this will not likely be a very difficult task. Indeed, a face-up Angel against decks such as Food Chain Goblins and U/R Fish (and most other aggro as well) is really all you need to win, as these decks simply cannot deal with her effectively.

There are a couple more items for you to keep in mind as you're playing 4-Color Control. The first is that the old axiom of the only life point that matters is the last one has never been more true than with this deck. Skeletal Scrying and City of Brass can definitely give you a bit of pain, but it is not something to be concerned about. Do not ever be afraid to use a City of Brass or cast a large Scrying. The advantage you will gain is always worth it, and as soon as you drop an Angel you will be recouping that life anyway.

The other thing to remember is that the lands you get with your fetches are extremely important. Be very careful when fetching a land, because that decision will affect you for the rest of the game. There is no solid rule about what you fetch first, as this decision is highly dependent on the matchup and the contents of your hand. I will cover this in greater detail when I get to the manabase discussion.

Card Discussion
The Counterbase - Blue
4 Force of Will
4 Mana Drain

Like most every control deck, 4CC runs 4 Force of Will and 4 Mana Drain. What is more important to cover here is what not to include. No matter how you may be tempted, Duress is not a good card for a deck that is so highly focused on reactive control. While you will frequently follow an aggro-control game plan, the addition of Duress would simply weaken other aspects of the deck, and put a very high strain on the delicately tuned manabase. If you wanted to precede an Angel with a Duress, you would need to have access to one black and two white mana, which can be quite difficult for this deck to acquire in the first couple of turns.

The Draw Engine - Black
4 Skeletal Scrying
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm

The discovery of Skeletal Scrying is a large part of what has made this deck as powerful as it is. The ability to trade life and mana for cards at instant speed in this way is simply amazing. In addition, Scrying is non-Misdirectable and cannot be hit by Red Elemental Blast.

The key to using the engine effectively, however, is to be aggressive. Spend your life like water, and do not be afraid to harm a potential Yawgmoth's Will by removing powerful restricted cards like Ancestral Recall, Black Lotus, and Time Walk. Though getting to use them again on a Will turn would undoubtedly be very good, the immediate advantage of drawing more cards outweighs that. This does not mean you can be careless about what cards you remove - you are running three Cunning Wishes. You therefore need to be aware of the fact that you can remove instants such as Swords to Plowshares and Ancestral Recall in order to Wish for them and use them again.

The Kill - White
2 Exalted Angel
1 Decree of Justice

Exalted Angel is the other major innovation made to this deck. It is what enables the draw engine, allows you to play aggro-control if desired, and is a huge headache for aggro decks. Nevertheless, a lone Decree of Justice is wise to keep around for those occasions when a weenie horde is attacking you, when you need to win under a Standstill, or when you simply need an uncounterable win condition.

The only trouble with Exalted Angel is that she requires you to have two White mana available to function properly. Remember this as you are playing, and guard your White sources carefully.

Other Spells
3 Cunning Wish
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Time Walk
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Fire/Ice
1 Balance
1 Gorilla Shaman

The remainder of the deck is the tutors and assorted utility cards. Like the counterbase, I list them here more for the sake of completion than anything else, because the reasons for their inclusion should be fairly obvious. Balance, Will, Twist, and Time Walk are all just broken. The tutors tutor. Cunning Wish is your game one path to your sideboard cards, and the removal rarely sits dead in hand in the current metagame.

The Manabase
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
2 City of Brass
2 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Sol Ring
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl

You may be wondering why I listed a color next to the first three sections of the card discussion. The reason for that was that I wanted to impress upon you how color hungry 4CC is. The counterbase is Blue, the draw engine is Black, and the kill is White. The answers in the sideboard, which I have not yet covered, are largely Red. 4CC is extremely dependent on its colors, which is why I stressed earlier the need to be careful when popping a fetchland. It is also why the deck has returned to running City of Brass. City of Brass goes a long ways towards smoothing your colors, and has a bonus of being immune to Sundering Titan. Aside from the fetchlands, it is the most important land in the deck.

It is also worth noting that 4CC runs a full set of five strip effects. Combined with the Gorilla Shaman(s), they allow the deck to employ a strong mana-denial option. Nevertheless, be wary about keeping hands with multiple wastes, because you still need to watch your color balance.

• Against control, Black is extremely important. The more Scryings you can cast, the better.
• Against most everything else, you want to drop an Angel: get White.
• If you have a Shaman in hand, it is usually to your benefit to get Red at some point in order to cast it, particularly if you are facing a Workshop deck. Shaman can be a beating against Workshops and Welders, so having red is critical.
• After sideboarding, Red usually becomes much more important due to common sideboard cards like Flametongue Kavu, Fire/Ice, Rack and Ruin, and Red Elemental Blast. Change your color priorities accordingly.
• Hold off on popping your fetches until you actually need to. The cards you draw between now and when you want to cast something may change the land you want to get.

Matchups and the Sideboard
4-Color Control's sideboard is one of its greatest strengths. Since the deck plays four of the game's five colors, it has access to most of the best answers in the format. The result of this is that there is no matchup that gets worse for 4CC post-board. This also means that the sideboard you choose will have a tremendous impact on how well you do in tournament play.

I did not list Zherbus's sideboard with the main deck, because it is a terrible idea to just copy someone's sideboard with no consideration for your own metagame. Instead, I have decided to give a brief overview of common matchups, and list sideboard options that are good for each. The only sideboard card that is really independent of any matchup is Vampiric Tutor. You should always have one in the board, as it effectively turns all of your Cunning Wishes into tutors.

7/10 Split
Against 7/10 Split, you have a number of threats to deal with, including Goblin Welder, Trinisphere, and of course Sundering Titan. Generally you are going to want to play the control game in this matchup, but again this is a situational call. Exalted Angel vs. Sundering Titan is a race that you can usually win, as long as there is only one Titan on the board. City of Brass is a key card, as it cannot be destroyed by the Titan's triggered abilities. Swords to Plowshares is very good in this matchup, as it permanently removes your problems with a Sundering Titan where other methods put him in the graveyard to be welded back in.

Less useful in this matchup is Mind Twist. Instead of being a game-breaking spell for you, Mind Twist can actually help your opponent, who is often looking for a way to get artifacts into the graveyard. Do not be afraid to cast it game one, just be careful. You will likely take it out for games two and three for more effective and focused cards. Decree of Justice is also something to consider boarding out, as it will do little in this matchup but provide chump blockers for Sundering Titan.

Hulk Smash
Though Tog is starting to fade from the metagame due to its problems with Fish, it is still common enough that I have decided to cover it here. Despite the hype around this deck, it is actually not that difficult to defeat, particularly post-board. Thanks to the lack of strip effects in Tog, your manabase is mostly safe from assault, and your draw engine can be as effective as your opponent's. In addition, Exalted Angel can really mess up your opponent's math, buying you an extra turn or two to deal with a Psychatog.

For similar reasons as with 7/10 Split, Decree of Justice is less useful in this matchup, but counter-intuitively, Swords to Plowshares is as well. The reason for Swords weakness here is that unless you are able to put a stop to Tog's drawing power, Psychatog will not hit the table without counter backup. Your Swords targeting the Tog will most likely run into a Force of Will or Mana Drain. Instead, for this matchup you will want to turn to Red Elemental Blast.

GAT
Though at first the GAT matchup may seem similar to the Tog one, they are in fact significantly different. The first major difference is obviously in the kill condition. The other major difference is that GAT tends to not use the Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge engine preferred by Tog, opting instead to use Night's Whisper. The end result of these differences is that GAT is far more aggressive than its counterpart, and Red Elemental Blast is no longer as useful against it. Swords to Plowshares has an increased importance in this matchup as well, due to Quirion Dryad's immunity to Red Elemental Blast.

If you can match an early Dryad with an early Angel, you are probably set. Try to color screw your opponent if possible. Black and Green are both of paramount importance to GAT, and if you can cut the GAT player off from one of those colors, his game plan will be seriously hampered. This matchup is significantly more difficult than normal Hulk Smash.

Note: Not all GAT players are using Night's Whisper yet, and instead are clinging to the AK engine. If this is the case, Red Elemental Blast becomes a much stronger card.

U/R Fish
Fish is one of the hardest common matchups for this deck. It has a full set of five strips in addition to Null Rod, which can go a long way to messing up your mana. In addition, Fish can generate enough tempo early on to just lock you out of the game. Your aim when playing against Fish should be to get a face-up Angel in play as fast as possible. Watch out for Daze, and if you feel confident enough in your mana stability, try to cut the Fish player off from his manlands or his Red sources. Post-board, your chances will again get better, but it will still be rough going.

Food Chain Goblins
FCG is one of the easiest common matchups for this deck. Thanks to Exalted Angel, most aggro such as this will simply roll over and die to you. All you have to do is keep the FCG player from comboing off. There are three cards in FCG that you really have to worry about: Goblin Lackey, Goblin Ringleader, and Food Chain. If you can manage to stop those three, you are pretty much guaranteed the win.

Post-board you should be even better-equipped to fend off your opponent's combo and creatures, thanks to the myriad tools available to 4CC. One thing to watch out for in games two and three is Price of Progress. This can steal games if you don't have an Angel down, so watch out.

4-Color Control
The mirror, of course, is always a difficult match. The key, as in all control matchups, is to outdraw your opponent. Your Black mana will be very important so you can cast Scryings when you wish. As against Fish, you are facing five strip effects, but color-screwing your opponent is definitely a play you want to make if you can afford it.

Post-board you should have a few weapons available to you to help you out. Red Blasts can force your spells to resolve, Plagiarize can turn a Scrying into a huge waste of resources, and Crucible of Worlds can help protect your mana. Your opponent will likely have many of the same options available to him, however, so don't get cocky.

Conclusion
4-Color Control is a deck with a long and venerable history in Type 1. Over the years, whether it was called"The Deck,""Keeper," or some other name, it has always gone through cycles of quality. Last year saw it at an ebb, but this overhaul has brought it back to the top tables. My hope is that with this primer I have exposed you to the inner workings of one of the most popular and powerful decks in the history of the format. With that said, this article ends, and may Angels watch over you as you swing for the win.

-David Kleppinger
Klep on The Mana Drain
dr dot klep @ gmail dot com