Dimir Control remains a powerful and popular archetype in Pioneer, known for its ability to grind out opponents through card advantage, disruption, and efficient removal. This guide breaks down the most played cards in Dimir Control Pioneer decks, offering insights into why these cards are format staples and how they contribute to the deck’s overall strategy. Whether you’re a seasoned control player or new to the archetype, understanding these key cards is crucial for piloting and playing against Dimir Control in Pioneer.
Core Creatures of Dimir Control
Creatures in Dimir Control aren’t about aggression; they are strategic threats that provide card advantage, utility, or late-game power.
Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy // Jace, Telepath Unbound: Appearing in a significant portion of Dimir Control decks, Jace is a lynchpin for card selection and graveyard synergy. As a looter in its initial form, Jace helps filter through your draw, discarding less relevant cards to find crucial answers or threats. Once transformed into Jace, Telepath Unbound, it becomes a powerful planeswalker capable of flashing back key spells, further extending the reach and resilience of Dimir Control in Pioneer. Its presence is a hallmark of a controlling game plan, aiming for long-term advantage and inevitability.
Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor
Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor: Valki offers early-game disruption and late-game explosiveness. While primarily played for its Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor side, casting Valki early can disrupt an opponent’s hand, stealing key creatures. Tibalt himself is a powerful planeswalker that generates card advantage and can quickly close out games once the opponent’s resources are depleted. This modal card provides versatility, acting as both disruption and a potent threat in Dimir Control Pioneer.
Chrome Host Seedshark: This creature is a relatively newer addition but has quickly become a valuable asset. Chrome Host Seedshark turns your noncreature spells into evasive Shark tokens, providing a consistent source of threats that can pressure opponents and provide a win condition. In a deck loaded with instants and sorceries like Dimir Control, Seedshark offers a proactive element, allowing you to generate an army of tokens while controlling the board.
Arcane Proxy: A powerful tool for spell recursion and efficiency, Arcane Proxy allows you to cast instants and sorceries from your graveyard at a reduced cost. This creature effectively doubles the value of your spells, providing card advantage and enabling powerful plays. In Dimir Control, Arcane Proxy can replay crucial removal spells, countermagic, or card draw, making it a potent threat that demands an answer.
Planeswalker Power in Dimir Control
Planeswalkers are central to Dimir Control’s strategy, providing repeatable card advantage and control elements.
Narset, Parter of Veils: A format-defining planeswalker, Narset severely restricts the opponent’s card draw while providing card selection for you. Her static ability shuts down many card advantage engines, while her -2 ability digs for crucial spells. Narset is a must-answer threat that can cripple opposing strategies reliant on drawing extra cards, making her a staple in Dimir Control Pioneer.
Sorin the Mirthless: Sorin offers a versatile package of card draw and board presence. His +1 ability provides consistent card advantage, while his -2 ability creates flying tokens that can defend him or apply pressure. Sorin is a resilient planeswalker that generates value over time and contributes to both the control and offensive aspects of Dimir Control.
Jace Reawakened: This iteration of Jace provides immediate card advantage and tempo. Jace Reawakened enters the battlefield with high loyalty and offers both card draw and the ability to bounce opposing threats. His zero-mana cost when cast from exile through its adventure side makes him incredibly efficient, providing a burst of card advantage and disruption at a minimal cost.
Essential Spells for Dimir Control
Spells in Dimir Control are the workhorses of the deck, handling threats, disrupting opponents, and ensuring you maintain control of the game.
Cling to Dust: A highly versatile and efficient spell, Cling to Dust provides graveyard hate and card draw in one package. In Pioneer, where graveyard strategies are prevalent, Cling to Dust is invaluable for disrupting opposing plans while replacing itself. Its flexibility and low mana cost make it a staple in Dimir Control sideboards and mainboards.
Fatal Push: One of the most efficient removal spells in Pioneer, Fatal Push handles a vast majority of early to mid-game threats for just one mana. Its revolt trigger is easily enabled in Dimir Control through fetch lands and various card interactions, ensuring it consistently removes key creatures and maintains board control in the early game.
Thoughtseize: Premier hand disruption, Thoughtseize allows you to proactively strip away key cards from your opponent’s hand before they can impact the board. In a format like Pioneer, where specific cards are crucial to many strategies, Thoughtseize is invaluable for ensuring your opponent’s game plan is disrupted from the outset, paving the way for your control strategy to take over.
Three Steps Ahead: A new and powerful counterspell, Three Steps Ahead provides both disruption and card advantage. Countering a spell while drawing two cards for just two mana is incredibly efficient, allowing Dimir Control to maintain card parity or even pull ahead while negating opposing threats. This card enhances the deck’s ability to control the stack and generate card advantage simultaneously.
Drown in the Loch: This flexible spell acts as both removal and countermagic, scaling in effectiveness as the game progresses and graveyards fill. Drown in the Loch efficiently handles early threats and counters late-game spells, providing crucial versatility in a control shell. Its dual nature makes it a valuable and efficient inclusion in Dimir Control.
Sheoldred’s Edict: A crucial removal spell in the current Pioneer meta, Sheoldred’s Edict bypasses protection and indestructible, forcing opponents to sacrifice a creature or planeswalker. This is particularly effective against resilient threats and planeswalkers that are otherwise difficult to remove, ensuring Dimir Control has answers to a broad spectrum of threats.
Deadly Cover-Up: This spell provides both graveyard hate and card advantage, exiling all graveyards and drawing you cards equal to the number of cards exiled this way. Deadly Cover-Up offers a more impactful form of graveyard disruption than Cling to Dust in certain matchups, while also replenishing your hand. It’s a powerful tool against graveyard-centric strategies and in longer games where graveyards become substantial resources.
Cut Down: Another efficient removal spell, Cut Down handles a wide range of creatures in Pioneer, particularly in the early to mid-game. While it has limitations against larger threats, its one-mana cost and instant speed make it a valuable tool for controlling the board and answering aggressive strategies.
Spell Pierce: An early-game counterspell, Spell Pierce is crucial for protecting your early plays or disrupting your opponent’s crucial spells in the first few turns. It’s incredibly mana-efficient and can often catch opponents off guard, forcing them to play around it or risk losing tempo.
Change the Equation: A more specialized counterspell, Change the Equation excels at countering multicolored spells, which are prevalent in Pioneer. It offers a cost-effective answer to many powerful threats and planeswalkers in the format, providing a valuable tool for controlling specific matchups.
Deduce: This card provides card selection and card draw at instant speed. Surveilling allows you to filter your draws, setting up future turns, while drawing a card replaces itself. Deduce is a flexible and efficient way to smooth out your draws and find the right answers or threats at the right time.
Feed the Swarm: Essential enchantment removal in Dimir colors, Feed the Swarm provides a crucial answer to problematic enchantments that black and blue traditionally struggle to deal with. While the life loss is a drawback, the ability to remove key enchantments makes it a necessary inclusion in Dimir Control sideboards and sometimes mainboards.
Mission Briefing: Similar to Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy and Arcane Proxy, Mission Briefing offers spell recursion and card selection. It allows you to surveil and then cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard, providing card advantage and extending the reach of your spell suite. Mission Briefing is a powerful tool for grinding out opponents and ensuring you have access to your most important spells repeatedly.
Dig Through Time: A powerful card draw spell, Dig Through Time allows you to delve away cards from your graveyard to find the perfect two cards you need. In the late game, with a filled graveyard, Dig Through Time becomes incredibly efficient, allowing you to find game-winning threats or crucial answers. It’s a card advantage engine that rewards playing a longer, controlling game.
Commit // Memory: This split card offers both immediate disruption and a potent late-game reset. Commit bounces a nonland permanent, providing tempo advantage and answering threats temporarily. Memory, while more situational, can completely reset the game, refilling your hand and library while potentially disrupting your opponent. This card provides flexibility and powerful options at different stages of the game.
Consider: A one-mana cantrip, Consider efficiently cycles through your deck and fills your graveyard, enabling graveyard synergies and improving your draws. It’s a low-cost way to smooth out your draws and find key spells or land drops in the early game.
Duress: Similar to Thoughtseize, Duress provides hand disruption, targeting noncreature, nonland cards. It’s a valuable tool for stripping away counterspells, planeswalkers, and other problematic noncreature spells, particularly in matchups where life loss from Thoughtseize is more relevant.
Go for the Throat: Another efficient removal spell, Go for the Throat handles most nonartifact creatures in Pioneer. Its two-mana cost is slightly higher than Fatal Push, but it removes a broader range of threats, making it a solid inclusion in Dimir Control’s removal suite.
See the Truth: A conditional but powerful card draw spell, See the Truth draws three cards if you have no cards in hand. While situational, in a control deck that aims to empty its hand to deploy threats and answers efficiently, See the Truth can provide a significant burst of card advantage in the mid to late game.
Path of Peril: A versatile board wipe, Path of Peril can be cast for two mana to destroy creatures with mana value 2 or less, or for five mana to destroy all creatures. This flexibility makes it effective against both aggressive and midrange strategies, providing scalable board control options.
Extinction Event: A powerful board wipe that exiles creatures with either even or odd mana values, chosen by you. Extinction Event is particularly effective against decks that rely on creatures with similar mana values, allowing you to selectively clear the board while potentially sparing your own threats. Its exile effect also circumvents graveyard recursion, adding to its utility.
Key Enchantments
Enchantments are less common in mainboard Dimir Control but Shark Typhoon provides a significant and versatile threat.
Shark Typhoon: A resilient threat and mana sink, Shark Typhoon provides a consistent source of evasive Shark tokens. It can be cycled for instant-speed token generation, or cast as an enchantment to generate tokens whenever you cast noncreature spells. Shark Typhoon is a valuable win condition and source of pressure that is difficult for opponents to interact with directly.
Lands: Building the Dimir Manabase
The manabase of Dimir Control is crucial for ensuring mana consistency and access to both blue and black mana for its diverse spell suite.
Clearwater Pathway // Murkwater Pathway
Clearwater Pathway // Murkwater Pathway: These modal dual lands provide flexible mana fixing, entering untapped and allowing you to choose between blue or black mana. They are essential for ensuring Dimir Control can consistently cast its spells on curve and have access to both colors of mana throughout the game.
Darkslick Shores: A fast land that enters untapped in the early game, Darkslick Shores provides crucial untapped black or blue mana in the opening turns. This is important for casting early interaction spells and setting up your control game plan.
Gloomlake Verge: This land enters tapped unless you reveal an Island or Swamp, which is easily achievable in a Dimir deck. It provides another source of dual mana with a minimal drawback in Dimir Control, contributing to mana consistency.
Island: Basic Islands are fundamental for any blue-based deck, providing reliable blue mana and enabling fetch lands and other mana fixing. They are a stable and essential part of the manabase.
Otawara, Soaring City: A utility land that provides blue mana and a channel ability to bounce nonland permanents. Otawara offers an additional layer of interaction and tempo advantage, allowing you to answer threats that are difficult to remove through traditional means.
Swamp: Basic Swamps are equally crucial for black-based decks, providing reliable black mana and supporting fetch lands and mana fixing. They are a core component of the Dimir Control manabase.
Takenuma, Abandoned Mire: Another utility land with a channel ability, Takenuma allows you to discard cards to return a creature or planeswalker card from your graveyard to your hand. This provides recursion and card advantage, allowing you to bring back key threats or planeswalkers in longer games.
Watery Grave: A shock land, Watery Grave enters untapped for the cost of two life, providing crucial untapped blue and black mana. Shock lands are essential for fast and consistent mana in multicolor decks, and Watery Grave is a cornerstone of the Dimir manabase.
Field of Ruin: A utility land that destroys nonbasic lands and allows both players to search for basic lands. Field of Ruin provides land disruption and can be used to target problematic nonbasic lands or mana-fixing lands from opponents, while ensuring you maintain your own mana consistency.
Geier Reach Sanitarium: A utility land with an ability to make each player discard and draw a card. Geier Reach Sanitarium can be used to filter your draws or disrupt your opponent’s hand in a pinch, providing a minor but sometimes relevant advantage.
Hive of the Eye Tyrant: A utility land that enters tapped and has an ability to make an opponent discard a card. Hive of the Eye Tyrant offers additional hand disruption, although it enters tapped, making it more suitable for slower matchups or as a one-of in the manabase.
Shipwreck Marsh: A slow land that enters tapped unless you control two or more Islands or Swamps. Shipwreck Marsh provides additional dual mana and is generally reliable in the mid to late game when you are likely to meet its condition.
Undercity Sewers: This land enters tapped unless you reveal a Gate, which is not typically a relevant land type in Dimir Control. It’s a slower dual land option, generally less optimal than other dual lands available.
Fabled Passage: A fetch land variant, Fabled Passage enters tapped but allows you to fetch a basic land, fixing your mana and thinning your deck. It provides mana fixing and helps ensure you hit your land drops consistently in the mid to late game.
Hall of Storm Giants: A utility land that enters tapped and can become a creature. Hall of Storm Giants provides a late-game threat and mana sink, offering a resilient win condition in longer games.
Haunted Ridge: A slow land that enters untapped if you control two or fewer other lands. Haunted Ridge is more geared towards faster starts, but its condition can become a drawback in the mid to late game.
Mirrex: A utility land that enters tapped and can create Phyrexian Mite tokens. Mirrex provides a source of creature tokens and a mana sink, offering a minor but potentially relevant threat in longer games.
Steam Vents: While primarily a red/blue shock land, Steam Vents may appear in some Dimir lists for mana flexibility, particularly in three-color variants or sideboards that splash red.
Stormcarved Coast: Another slow land that enters untapped if you control two or fewer other lands, similar to Haunted Ridge. It provides early untapped dual mana but can become tapped in the mid to late game.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: A utility land that makes all lands Swamps in addition to their other types. Urborg primarily benefits black-heavy strategies and can interact with certain land-based synergies, though its direct impact in Dimir Control is less pronounced than in mono-black or black-red decks.
Sideboard Staples for Dimir Control
The sideboard of Dimir Control is highly reactive, tailored to address specific matchups and strategies in the Pioneer meta.
Cling to Dust: As mentioned before, Cling to Dust is a crucial sideboard card for graveyard hate and card draw against graveyard-centric strategies and decks that rely on recursion.
Aether Gust: A powerful tempo play against red and green decks, Aether Gust bounces red or green permanents, disrupting aggressive strategies and buying time. It’s highly effective against creature-heavy decks in those colors.
Negate: A staple counterspell for control sideboards, Negate efficiently counters noncreature spells, protecting against planeswalkers, removal, and other disruptive spells from opposing control or midrange decks.
Chrome Host Seedshark: While sometimes in the mainboard, additional copies of Chrome Host Seedshark can be sided in to increase proactive threats and apply more pressure in matchups where a resilient threat is needed.
Path of Peril: Additional copies of Path of Peril can be sided in against creature-heavy strategies to provide more board wipe effects and control aggressive board states.
Extinction Event: Similar to Path of Peril, extra copies of Extinction Event can be brought in against creature-heavy decks, especially those with mana value patterns that Extinction Event can exploit effectively.
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet: A powerful sideboard creature against creature-based strategies, Kalitas provides graveyard hate and generates Zombie tokens whenever opposing creatures die. It’s effective against decks that rely on creature recursion or swarm strategies.
Annul: A cheap counterspell specifically for artifacts and enchantments, Annul is crucial for dealing with problematic artifacts or enchantments that can disrupt Dimir Control’s game plan.
Heartless Act: A versatile removal spell that can handle a wide range of creatures, especially those without +1/+1 counters. Heartless Act is a solid sideboard removal spell for matchups where Fatal Push and Cut Down are less effective.
The Meathook Massacre: A powerful board wipe that also drains life, The Meathook Massacre is effective against creature swarms and aggressive strategies. It provides both board control and a lifegain element, which can be crucial in racing situations.
Mystical Dispute: A highly efficient counterspell against blue decks, Mystical Dispute is incredibly cost-effective in blue mirrors, allowing you to counter key spells for minimal mana investment.
Thought Distortion: A powerful sideboard card against control and combo decks, Thought Distortion exiles the opponent’s hand and graveyard of noncreature, nonland cards. It can cripple opposing control strategies and disrupt combo decks reliant on specific noncreature spells.
Cut Down: Additional copies of Cut Down can be sided in against creature-heavy aggressive decks to ensure you have enough early removal to control the board.
Duress: Extra copies of Duress can be sided in against control, combo, and midrange decks to increase hand disruption and proactively strip away key noncreature spells.
Unlicensed Hearse: Another form of graveyard hate, Unlicensed Hearse is a creature that can exile graveyards and grow in size. It provides both graveyard disruption and a potential threat, making it a versatile sideboard option.
Narset, Parter of Veils: While often in the mainboard, additional copies of Narset can be sided in against decks reliant on drawing extra cards or in matchups where her static ability is particularly impactful.
Conclusion
Dimir Control in Pioneer is a deck that thrives on careful resource management, card advantage, and precise answers. Understanding the roles and synergies of these key cards is essential for mastering the archetype. By leveraging efficient removal, disruptive hand disruption, powerful planeswalkers, and card advantage engines, Dimir Control can effectively navigate the diverse Pioneer meta and grind opponents into submission. This card breakdown provides a solid foundation for both piloting Dimir Control and understanding its strengths and weaknesses when facing it in competition.
