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Turning Blue: Ignore the SmokeBy Xenphire on February 15th, 2005 · Filed in Standard (Type 2) · 48 Comments
  . Only 4CC!!! You know who else didn't get much respect? Scooby Doo.But that's all about to change. Slap on these Vedalken Shackles and let me borrow your person for a bit while we take a look at a deck that proves why blue can still bring the beatdown in Standard, with or without Affinity rampaging about. I'm a rogue decker, and I personally despise netdecks. The reason is the lack of creativity and fun it brings to the game. The problem in today's Magic community is that too many ignore and shove decks aside if they aren't a netdeck. That's something I don't think anyone should do to any deck unless they've played against it or played it to prove how competetive it is. The deck I'm going to introduce is a mono blue deck that some have said is too casual to be competetive. Well, if this isn't competetive enough, then I guess Death Cloud, T&N, and White Weenie are all non-competetive as well, because this has and can beat them all. Since Champions has come out, there have been a few notable blue cards, such as Keiga, the Tide Star and Meloku, the Clouded Mirror, added to the mix. There's no denying that blue is underpowered compared to its previous years, but we're severely underestimating what blue can truly do. That's when I set out on a mission to build the best possible blue deck I could muster. Now, considering I live in a town in the middle of nowhere, and the only place to buy Magic is the local Walmart Supercenter (overpriced, even), it took a while. But ah! Christmas money! Finally, it was time to put the deck together. Without further ado, here is the first version of this deck:
Serum Visions, Thirst for Knowledge: What we have here is what's more than likely the best choices for card draw in the current T2 environment. Mirrodin seemed to want to push card draw towards us in the form of overcosted and conditional blue spells or creatures such as Vedalken Archmage and Thoughtcast, both dependant on playing artifacts to obtain the speed blue needs in its card draw. Thirst for Knowledge wants you to discard an artifact, but that's where having 25 land isn't that bad. Serum Visions is as close to Brainstorm as we've got, and is the cheapest card draw available, although unfortunately at sorcery speed.  Echoing Truth, Keiga, Oblivion Stone, Grafted Wargear, Vedalken Shackles, Chrome Mox, Mindslaver: The idea of a permission deck is to make your opponents have to ask permission to do anything at all. Well, occasionally you get those juvenile delinquents who don't know when to quit and love breaking rules. So what do we do when someone brings something into our house when we tell them not to? Confiscate or Annihilate. That's what the other half of this deck does. But there's a difference. This deck does it in style. Blue loves to just bounce stuff around and send it back from whence it came. Now, remind me again why you want to do that just to spend more mana to counter it or bounce it again later? We dont want that. We want an advantage. Echoing Truth is self-explanatory. It works well against TAN getting rid of those larger creatures if they slip by. Against Affinity? Well, assuming your opponent doesn't know how to play Affinity, you can delay the inevitable. Against MBC or G/B, it'll take care of that Kokusho if they lay one down and then pull that nice little trick where they play another, netting 10 life and more than likely killing you.  That's where Grafted Wargear comes in. Let's say you're playing against that aforementioned Kokusho. Having five Islands in play is no problem. What is a problem is if they get more creatures than you have. What do you get when you attach Grafted Wargear to it for free? You get a 8/7 flier, and if you unequip it, they aren't getting it back, and they pay the price. The same works with your own Keiga . An 8/7 flier is nothing to laugh at, especially when you can move that equipment onto an animated Blinkmoth Nexus, Stalking Stones, or one of Meloku's spirit tokens and take control of one of their creatures. You can eliminate any threat in the form of a creature that gets past your counterspells, and if you untap those Shackles, they won't be getting it back. Chrome Mox is easily the only card worthy in the deck to be used for extra mana production early on. As many blue spells as there are in the deck it usually doesn't hurt to imprint something. Mindslaver is in this deck, simply because not everytime you play can you rely on what your opponent does. The deck is meant to win using it's own sweet time, but sometimes it can't win doing that. If your opponent realizes "Hey! If I don't play creatures, he doesn't have anything to steal!" then that's when this comes in handy. Sometimes you have to give a little push and shove and give your opponent a kick in the rear and say "get with the freaking program!" Meloku, Blinkmoth Nexus: One thing that you can't do whether you're playing permission or not is have to depend on what your opponent does. You have to be able to take control at times and be aggressive. That's what these cards do. Meloku can be a massive beater when you start laying down all those tokens. Blinkmoth Nexus is a flier that gets you past most creatures that are used in this format. SB: March of the Machines: I think everyone knows why this is here. Affinity is still around, and as long as it's around, March of the Machines is blue's best tool against it. Affinity players have no soul. SB: Confiscate: Vedalken Shackles is obviously better than this, so why is it on sideboard? Because if your opponent is playing Boseiju, Who Shelters All, you're going to find very fast how annoying it is play against. You'll find out when they play Cranial Extraction on you, or use one of those other spells that you should be countering. The cards change depending on the color they're playing. SB: Evacuation: You don't want to be ran over by a bunch of 2/2 animated Forests. I know I don't. Or any weenies for that matter.  SB: Bribery: If you're playing against TAN, there's a very good chance you will want to get one of the creatures in the deck before they do. This can even come in against MBC regarding Kokusho . SB: Deflection: When it comes down to it, blue doens't have much against a ton of red burn spells. The best you can do is try to merely redirect a high damaging spell such as Shrapnel Blast back at them. Of course, this can also be useful against Cranial Extraction or any other dangerous card that can target you. SB: Oblivion Stone: Is pretty self-explanatory. It clears the board, and most of the creatures it clears probably won't be yours. Outside of Meloku and the lands, you've only got three other creatures. Say you're playing against TAN. If you have that Keiga in play and they have a Darksteel Colossus, it's game over because it's yours at that point. And there's the deck. Permission. I've playtested this against a few different decks. Affinity: Affinity is always the major pain in the side to anything, it seems. March of the Machines helps quite a bit, as does Mindslaver. The biggest problem is, of course, speed. Vedalken Shackles helped take care of the Disciple of the Vaults, while following up with a March of the Machines most generally sealed any games. The main problem was none other than Arcbound Ravager, as trying to gain control of the Disciple of the Vault after it comes into play is most generally useless. WW: The Evacuation in this case helps alot. The key to most victories against WW was to keep Echoing Truth in hand and try to wait it out for Evacuation. Usually a good idea was delaying time and taking creatures to block with with the Vedalken Shackles while waiting to get [card=Meloku the Clouded Mirror]Meloku[/cards] in play so to produce enough spirit tokens to kill. B/G & MBC: Everytime I've played MBC or B/G I've had it in a position of defeat and won, unless a Death Cloud slipped by. Death Cloud is almost always the key problem when facing MBC. Other than that the Vedalken Shackles, Keiga the Tide Star, Grafted Wargear, and all the counterspells plus the Mindslaver take care of any business nicely. MRC: This was generally the deck I had the most problems facing. Most red decks run as few creatures as possible (Arc-Slogger or Slith Firewalker usually, and sometimes [card=Kumano, Master Yamabushi]Kumano[/cards]), so the Vedalken Shackles don't do much good. When they do play a creature though, if I've got a Vedalken Shackles in play and have a Grafted Wargear that has quickly sealed games because the creatures become a nice size. There are far too many cheap burn spells to effectively counter them all while awaiting a chance to get Meloku or Keiga. The sideboarded Deflection works very well against more damaging cards such as Shrapnel Blast. TAN: The TAN match-ups were a breeze. Several times I was able to use Mindslaver to waste a Tooth and Nail pulling out for them a Platinum Angel and Darksteel Colossus , only to take the Platinum Angel next turn (or in some cases on that same turn as an instant) with Vedalken Shackles , or Confiscate the Darksteel Colossus. Having as much counterspells as this has and then some bounce does a good job of stalling them until you get to the point that you can do whatever the hell you want with them. Past that I mostly waited for them to play creatures so I could just steal them. A deck like TAN is a dream come true opponent for this deck. They're just waiting to get their stuff taken. Join me next time as I talk about why sometimes you have to give up being passive and be just plain aggressive in your approach, and add Betrayers to the mix. There's alot of help for this deck to be found in Betrayers, from Disrupting Shoal to Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. Genju of the Falls could also prove to be a great replacement for Blinkmont Nexus's measly 1/1 flier. But that is for another time. -Xenphire (Chris Wolfe) (If you wish to discuss this article or mono blue, You can contact me at carnivorous.death.parrot at gmail.com) By Xenphire on February 15th, 2005 · Filed in Standard (Type 2) · 48 Comments |
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