How to Play Chant Control vs Every Matchup

10/14/2025

I've been in a writing slump for the past 6 months or so, lacking the motivation to write articles even though I've had some ideas, so I wasn't really planning on writing anything post-PT EOE. But I recently committed to not going to any of the upcoming Modern RCs, and so my love of Chant Control as a deck no longer has a convenient outlet - which is where this article comes in.

Because of the weird timing of this article (right before the first US RC in Houston), I'm not going to focus overly much on trying to convince you of the power of the Chant deck. Instead, the focus of this article will be entirely on the play patterns of chant in various matchups in modern - what your gameplan is, what matters, and how best to assemble your lock.

Be warned that this article might be rough around the edges in various ways. Again, I'm writing this entirely because I want to put my thoughts to paper (in fact, this will be almost entirely a stream-of-thought-no-editing piece), rather than as a curated piece of content.

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Overview

First, let's go over some of the basics of how this deck works.

Fundamnetally, Chant Control is a prison control deck. That means that it is trying to win the game by eventually assembling a game state where the opponent no longer has any relevant moves, rather than trying to win like a "normal control deck" would through card advantage.

Your main tools for doing so are through three different combos:

Orim's Chant + Isochron Scepter (possibly also with Teferi, Time Raveler); Narset, Parter of Veils + Day's Undoing; and Narset + Geier Reach Sanitarium.

Scepter + Chant lets you pay 2 mana every turn to prevent your opponent from casting spells, or 3 mana to prevent them from attacking either. This completely prevents sorcery spells and combat from being relevant, respectively. Adding Teferi to the mix also removes instant speed spells - thus preventing the opponent from casting any spells whatsoever - and is a hard lock on the game barring activated abilities like

Boseiju, Who Endures or a Haywire Mite fetched off of an Urza's Saga.

Narset + Days is a hand wrath combined with a draw 7. If the board is under control (which is what

Supreme Verdict and Wrath of the Skies are for!), it helps shut the door, removing the opponent's access to additional resources. And even if the board isn't under control, it can draw into Solitude or Chant in order to progress in that direction.

By itself Narset + Days isn't perfect, as the opponent still gets to draw 1 card off of the Days on your turn and 1 card for turn on their own draw step. But adding Teferi to the mix allows you to cast Days on your opponent's draw step, which shuffles all their cards back and leaves them with 0 cards instead of 2.

Finally, the last kind of lock is with Narset + Geier Reach. While this doesn't do that much if the opponent has many cards in hand, activating Geier Reach on each of your opponent's turns with a Narset out essentially prevents them from ever going up on card quantity. If they have any cards in hand, they can still filter through cards to try to find an answer; but if they are out of cards then no more will enter their hand ever again. As such, this lock is most useful after a longer game of trading resources; or as a way to completely shut the door after Days resolves.

On top of these hard locks, occasionally the deck can play a more normal card-advantage-focused controlling plan, leveraging Solitude to close the game once you have run your opponent out of resources. Orim's Chant and Days Undoing can help augment these kinds of plans too - sometimes you can assemble enough resources that you can just chant or Narset+Days through enough turns to finish off your opponent with 1-2 Solitudes plus

Kaheera, the Orphanguard.

A Brief Note on Mulliganing

This deck tends to mulligan very little, specifically because it really needs to hit all of its land drops on time (especially the first 4), and doesn't really have that much card advantage that helps with doing so.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't mulligan at all - various matchups will have various dead cards in game 1; sometimes you draw 0 or 7 lands; and some matchups require more mulliganing than others. But as long as your hand has a reasonable set of lands and spells, you should generally be relying on your surveil lands for opening hand selection rather than your mulligan.

Finally, here's the sideboard mapping I used at the PT. I'll transcribe the mapping for each matchup section as well, for convenience.

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Goryos

In: 2 Dispute, 2 Surgical, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Galv, 2 Wrath, 1 PEnding

Goryos is an interesting matchup. There are several of their draws that feel unbeatable, but their deck is inconsistent enough that I think it all adds up to being even-to-slightly-favored.

The key realization of this matchup is that none of Goryos' cards matter except in how they convert to tempo and damage. It can feel scary because the Goryos deck can manage to draw a lot of cards off of a resolved Atraxa or Riddler, but fundamentally their deck can be a little bad at converting those cards to damage through your Verdicts, Chants, and Teferis. You're not trying to win an attrition war as a normal control deck; you're trying to assemble your lock pieces while not dying to their threats and preventing them from interacting with your lock pieces.

For example, if Goryos goes for casting a Goryos on Atraxa on their turn, a Chant in response can be surprisingly effective at "answering" it. Yes, they get to draw 4 cards and hit you for 7 if you didn't kick Chant - but they can't Ephemerate Atraxa, and can't commit the cards they just drew to the board.

In general I would recommend focusing on their actual threats (creatures in play), rather than their card draw. Of course you still should try to prevent Goryos from resolving; but it isn't that bad if they can't Ephemerate, due to a Solitude or Chant. As part of this, I like jamming planeswalkers fairly aggressively, especially Teferi. Force of Negation will get you, but it is one of their scariest cards for a reason - it's always going to get you.

One of their most powerful plays is to Goryos on your turn - that way you can't use your own Force of Negations. Keep this in mind when planning out when to jam. And especially remember that FoN is not perfect.

So given all of this, in my opening hand and first few surveils I'm generally looking to find a way to interact with Frog, a way to interact with Goryos, and a planeswalker to jam as a threat. Solitude is thus one of the most important reactive cards you can draw, as it covers both of the first two.

That said, you can't mulligan too aggressively in this matchup, especially if they're playing Thoughtseize. So, generally a decent setup of lands plus 2 of the 3 above properties is pretty reasonable; as stated above, you can rely on your surveil lands to help patch the holes in your hand.

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Boros Energy

In: 2 Phlage, 2 Purge, 1 Wrath, 1 Surgical, 1 Consult

Out: 3 Teferi, 1 Narset, 2 FoN, 1 Counterspell

Boros is one of the matchups where you play most like a normal control deck - you are mostly trying to answer all of their threats by playing card advantage and wraths. However, you have two notable tools that step outside these bounds:

First of all, Boros generally has no outs to Scepter Chant preboard, even without Teferi. If you kick Chant every turn, the only way they can win is if they already have Ajani in play (plus a red permanent, or they can sometimes discard Seasoned Pyromancer to hand size to obtain one, but you can generally find an answer before they can do that); or if they have Bombardment in play and can get enough creatures through Pyromancers (again, sometimes through discarding to handsize). Either way, you can generally find a way to deal with the problem permanent and fully lock up the game.

As such, Scepter is one of your best cards. Postboard they can side in some answers like Wear/Tear or their own Chants; but those are all costly as they tend to be somewhat blank when you're not Scepter-Chanting.

The second weird tool you have is Days Undoing. Now, it might look weird to keep in Days Undoing against a deck that has haste and direct damage and can pressure your Narsets very well; but actually in my experience casting "fair" Days Undoings can actually be quite powerful.

The fact of the matter is that Chant benefits disproportionately from having additional lands in play compared to Boros, so restarting the game except with three lands in play on both sides is quite positive for Chant, and can still be positive even if Boros also starts with a threat in play! Of course, you shouldn't always fire off Days on turn 3 - especially if you have any chant of setting up Narset Days - but there's some nice play patterns that let you have pretty safe early fair Days.

For example, if you have Solitude, Chant, white card, and Days in hand, you can Solitude the first threat, Chant to pass their turn 2, and then Days on turn 3 on an empty board. In general the play pattern of "clear the board, then Chant to buy an untap step, then Days" can be quite nice in this matchup.

The other reason why Days works decently well even when cast fairly is that it functions as "graveyard hate" for Phlage. It's extremely hard for Boros to escape a Phlage quickly from a completely empty graveyard, even after redrawing a full grip. In fact, between Days and Solitude, I've found that the pressure from Phlage is low enough that Surgical isn't even worth siding in postboard.

Plus, postboard we get access to one of our most powerful tools in this matchup: our own Phlages. An escaped Phlage is pretty hard for Boros to beat, even with minimal other support.

However, they also get an important tool postboard: Blood Moon. I say "important" instead of "strong" because, well, the effect that Moon has is very inconsistent. I think it's probably correct for Boros to side it in, but at least with the way my deck is currently built I can usually play around it to some extent - the most important thing is to just be very aware of it. Generally prioritizing fetching white is good, as your ways of killing Moon (Purge and Wrath) are both white. And even still, sometimes it will just get you.

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Belcher

In: 2 Consign, 3 Dispute, 2 Surgical, 1 Consult

Out: 1 Solitude, 3 PEnding, 2 Verdict, 2 Wrath

The most important card by far in this matchup is Teferi. It just does everything: it prevents suspended Lotus Blooms from resolving and bounces already resolved Blooms (usually they are sacrificed in response); it shuts down all of their interaction and protection; and it even bounces resolved Belchers! In fact, the only card it doesn't really answer is Tameshi - but that's what your Solitude are for.

Teferi is so powerful that a very common play pattern in this matchup that is legitimately challenging for Belcher to defeat is to, on turn 4, cast Orim's Chant and then Teferi. Of course, sometimes you would rather just jam the Teferi on turn 3 - it somewhat depends on how much interaction you think your opponent has in hand, and how many threats you have in yours. Jamming Narset on turn 3 can also be nice, as a card that either clears the way for Teferi or threatens to draw you more Teferis and Chants.

An important part of both stumbling your opponent, both slowing down their development and making it more likely that your own threats resolve, is countering their 2 drops at every opportunity. Preboard this mostly is the job of Snare, but postboard you get access to three more Disputes on top of that. One key thing about the Belcher deck is that roughly their only way of interacting that doesn't trade down in some way is to cast Flare sacrificing a creature; otherwise they generally will have to either pay a very expensive 3 mana or 2 cards in hand to counter any of your planeswalkers. So, keeping their 2 drops off the board helps ensure they never can have these favorable trades.

Postboard, you should be very mindful of which counterspells you're using in which situations. Specifically, Consign is very narrow - it is basically entirely for the purposes of being the best card at countering the card Belcher. Also be sure to time your Chants well - they can be very potent as a preemptive Veil of Summer effect in a counter war that forces your opponent to counter the Chant; but they don't really function in counter wars at all without another counterspell to pair with them.

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Affinity

In: 1 Consign, 3 Dispute, 1 Wrath, 1 Consult

Out: 2 PEnding, 2 Snare, 2 FoN (Counterspell instead of FoN on the draw)

Affinity can have very scary early burst turns, and does have some amount of longevity, but we have a lot of tools to deal with everything it does.

Wrath of the Skies is probably the most important card in the matchup, as it is your best way of managing their Urza's Sagas and fully resetting all the resources they accrue. However, it can be countered, so be mindful of when they might be holding up a counterspell, and whether you can maybe play around that with Chant.

Speaking of Chant, there are quite a few neat ways of using it here. Of course it does pretty well just as a fog; but also it can be used as basically a counterspell against a warped Emissary - and so is extremely good to have access to turn 1 on the play especially! There are also some trickier usages that require you to pay close attention to your opponent's available resources - for example, there are often times where a Kappa Cannoneer will be decently telegraphed, as the Affinity player will just start casting 0 mana artifacts for little value just to get to 6. And if you Chant in response to the artifact that gives them 6 Kappa mana (or 5 if they have a land drop available), that can delay them a full turn, which then gives you more time to draw an answer (or in the best case - time to untap and Wrath them so the Kappa becomes stuck in hand!)

In general, this is a matchup where you need to keep an opening hand that does something to interact very early, especially something that can interact with Pinnacle Emissary - Wrath, Solitude, Chant, Galv, and postboard Disputes are the cards you're generally looking for. This is important enough to warrant actively mulliganing for something like that, which leads this being probably the most mulligan-heavy matchups there is.

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Tron

In: 3 Consign, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Wrath, 1 Snare, 1 Solitude

The cards that matter in this matchup are primarily Karn, Ugin, and Thought-Knot Seer. The other creatures just don't matter that much, as they aren't that hard to ignore or incidentally clean up with Verdicts and Solitudes.

However, those three cards are plenty scary on their own, Karn especially. Most of the game is about preventing one of the planeswalkers from resolving while fighting through Thought-Knot Seers in one way or another. Thankfully, both Scepter+Chant and Narset+Days are generally pretty clean kills as long as they don't have Karn in play (postboard they can flash in Flutes for Scepter and dig to them with Kozilek's Command, but you also can find answers to those).

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Zoo

In: 2 Purge, 1 Consult, maybe Phlage

Out: Unclear, probably some combination of Wrath, Snare, FoN, Days, depends on their build

This is the only matchup I don't have enough thoughts about to write much here. I'm pretty sure it's quite close to 50/50, but I haven't played it enough to have super developed thoughts on it.

The most I'll say is that this definitely feels like a matchup where you want to play a more normal controlling game, similar to Boros but with a much different and much weirder spread of threats that tend to be less explosive but more resilient.

Oh, and Ragavan is very important. Don't let turn 1 Ragavan run away with the game.

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Amulet

In: 3 Consign, 2 Surgical, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Galv, 2 Verdict, 2 Snare

This is a good time to bring up the fact that you really have to play quickly with this deck to not lose equity to unintentional draws. Getting familiar enough with the actions the deck takes to be able to speedrun turns in garbage time (i.e. turns where you have mostly locked up the game but need to take actions to actually end it) is an essential skill.

Nowhere is this more important than the Titan matchup. I like to joke that, if neither player is actively trying to play quickly, then the favored player in this matchup is the round clock. Of course, some games can definitely end quickly (generally these games look like Titan just comboing off early when the Chant player just doesn't have interaction, or Chant having an early devastating Wrath against a Saga-heavy draw); but the majority of games are very grindy where Chant can interact a lot but none of its interaction is perfect.

Fundamentally, the reason why this matchup can be so slow is because the goal of the Chant player is kind of to run the Titan deck out of threats. Not their hand, their deck.

The reason this is your goal, instead of something more sane, is because your usual best lock piece doesn't work very easily here - no form of Scepter Chant will lock out your opponent channeling Boseiju. That isn't to say Scepter is bad in the matchup - in fact, I think it is still quite strong, as just buying a few turns with Chant or drawing some cards with Consult until you force them to Boseiju and give you a land is quite valuable. But unlike in most matchups, it is not a perfect lock (barring Surgicaling Boseiju in postboard games - which is actually a decently common line because of how it gives you a much cleaner lock!)

Instead, your only lock is in the form of Narset Days, which can take quite a while to assemble - and that isn't even perfect if your opponent holds up Otawara. Granted, if it resolves it is almost always gamewinning. But since it's decently slow, you will often have to work through a couple Titans and Sagas before you get the chance to.

Your answers, then, are primarily Solitude for Titan/Icetill and Wrath for Saga. Postboard you also get Consign to help more cleanly answer both - but a decent amount of the time you will be answering these threats imperfectly, leaving behind resources or windows that the Titan player can take advantage of. But that's still fine! You just have to navigate around those imperfections.

Keep in mind that, at least preboard, the scariest thing your opponent can do is assemble an Analyst loop. Without Surgical, you don't actually have any way of fighting that - so if your opponent ever gets to that point, you will die. This puts you on somewhat of a clock, as it is difficult to keep your opponent off of that forever. Postboard though, Surgicals help a lot with fighting that (as well as with removing Titans or Sagas or Boseijus from their deck), and this becomes much less of an issue.

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Prowess

In: 2 Phlage, 2 Purge, 1 Wrath, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Verdict, 1 Counterspell, 2 Days

The scariest threat out of Prowess by far is Cutter. Everything else can be pretty easily managed with 1-for-1 removal, and especially Solitude. As such, while Wrath is quite good, Verdict tends to be fairly mediocre, especially since usually when Prowess puts two creatures in play you need to interact at instant speed anyways.

In the end though, this is a pretty normal control kind of matchup. Just answer all of their threats, and you will naturally draw more cards than them, and eventually kill them with Solitude, or Phlage postboard. Leveraging Chant can be pretty important - it has a lot of interesting incidental spots, like in response to Expressive Iteration so they can't get two spells off of it; or in response to Cutter so they don't get a monk from it.

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Eldrazi Ramp

In: 3 Consign, 2 Surgical, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Galv, 2 Wrath, 2 FoN

Amusingly, Emrakul is not all that scary in this matchup, all considered. As long as you get rid of the 13/13 somehow (generally with Solitude the turn they play it), the most they usually can do to you is strip mine you and discard 1-2 cards. Given how much effot they need to cast Emrakul - not to mention the fact that you can delay in quite relevant ways with Chant - this really isn't that bad.

Instead, the threats that most matter are the ones that attack your mana - Icetill Explorers getting back Ghost Quarters and kicked Mycospawns. Everything else can be dealt with at a much more leisurely pace, where the land destruction will bury you if you let it get out of hand.

Overall though, this is a pretty good matchup, simply because your own proactive plan is very strong (and the postboard Consigns certainly help too). These decks generally don't have good answers to either of your locks, Scepter Chant or Narset Days; so, generally it's a good idea to look for nice proactive plays, as well as PEndings to stall their early development and Solitudes to deal with Icetills and Emrakuls.

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Neoform

In: 3 Dispute, 2 Surgical, 1 Consult, 1 Consign

Out: 3 PEnding (unless they have Hexdrinkers), 2 Galv, 2 Wrath

This matchup is decently straightforward, as you have a lot of answers for their combo. You can Chant in response to Allosaurus Rider so they can't immediately sac it, then bounce it with Teferi or Solitude it to set them back a lot of resources. You can simply counter their Neoforms and Evolutions. You can even win through a resolved 8 drop, by either Chanting/Verdicting Ureni or just having Narset in play to make Griselbrand bad.

Oh also, fun fact: if you have Teferi in play, they can't Consign their Pact triggers. Funny way to kill them if they happen to misstep in that way.

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Esper Blink

In: 2 Purge, 1 Consult, 1 Consign

Out: 2 Wrath, 2 FoN

This is one of the easiest matchups in the format, because none of their cards really matter. Fundamentally, the only thing their deck really does is draw creatures without haste and play creatures without haste.

Now, they're quite good at doing those things - they can draw quite a lot of cards, and put a lot of power on board decently quickly. But since none of their creatures have haste, it's very very easy to just ensure that this doesn't translate to them killing you.

For example, kicked Scepter Chant is generally a hard lock even without Teferi (their only ways out are Phelia, which doesn't work under kicked Chant, or Ephemerating a Flickerwisp or Witch Enchanter, which needs them to have one of those in play and for you not to have a Teferi in play). Even more damningly, even just a Verdict can feel like a time walk.

Their scariest card is definitely Emperor of Bones, as it is the only card they have with haste (Phelia's flash matters a little, but not with Teferi in play). But even that you have many answers to, between Solitude and Galv.

Basically, as long as you just focus on not letting your planeswalkers be attacked, there is surprisingly little your opponent can do to win.

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Broodscale

In: Always 1 Consult; 3 Consign (if Eldrazi version), 2 Surgical 1 Wrath (if Golgari version)

Out: 2 Verdict, 2 FoN

I've grouped a couple decks here together under "Broodscale" - the Eldrazi version I've historically seen, and the Golgari version I played against at the PT.

The Eldrazi version should have similar notes as "Eldrazi Ramp" above... except instead of the much scarier angle of mana denial, they have a combo that is very easy to break up with your spot removal, and Urza's Sagas that die to Wrath of the Skies.

The Golgari version is a little more interesting, as Grist can be a problem; but it is very soft to Wrath of the Skies, and PEndings can eventually take care of Grist, and that's usually good enough.

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Mirror

In: 3 Dispute, 1 Consult

Out: 2 Verdict, 2 Wrath

Control mirrors are fun, just hit your land drops and win ;)