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Constructed
Examining Mono-Blue in Standard
Just last week, Tom laPille posted an article ‘Singing the Blues‘ for the mothership about the current state of blue cards. The article prompted a lot of discussion on the forums and on twitter. One of the comments I saw pointed out that in Standard, you can currently competitively play a mono-coloured deck of any colour except blue – Eldrazi Green, White (Weenie or Control), Red Deck Wins or mono-black Vampires. I decided to see what was available to the dedicated blue mage, build a deck featuring plenty of Islands and take it for a spin in the tournament practice room.
My initial search through the mono-blue cards available showed cards with wildly divergent purpose – categories in my ‘notable blue cards’ file ranged from mill to fatties, defensive creatures to mana denial. There were the old blue standbys of counters, card draw and bounce but largely not of the same quality of years past. Each category was fairly shallow also, as I had to leave out the many multicoloured cards from the Alara block. I’m impressed that the other colours have focused-enough themes to produce mono-coloured decks even while Alara block is contributing the most cards in the format! I did not have a lot of confidence in being able to build a winning deck on any of the themes I’d isolated, so I decided to build three instead on the theory that if you throw enough mud at a wall, some of it will stick. The three archetypes chosen were Mill, Aggro and Draw-go Control.
Mill
It is mere coincidence that I write this during Milling Week over on the mothership. Blue’s most powerful cards – that aren’t vulnerable to the common tools of other metagame decks appeared to be concentrated in milling. I started out with the Traps, the artifacts and the Hedron Crabs and filled out the list with a few less impressive mill cards, Wall of Frost and Call to Heel to hold off the bad guys, with Flashfreeze to stop Cruel Ultimatums and Broodmate Dragons. The sideboard is essentially other cards I wanted to try out – Telemin against low-creature count decks, Roil Elemental and Whiplash Trap against creatures and Negate to replace Flashfreeze in matches where it’s a dead card.
Match 1: vs Diamond Dog, Grixis
In game one I am on the play and keep 2 Islands, a fetch, Hedron Crab, Traumatize, Flashfreeze and Call to Heel. In the early game I play Crabs and land but don’t draw a fourth until turn seven, after two turns of Jace double-drawing and one turn of Howling Mine. The Crabs and Memory Erosion have taken their toll and with the opponent drawing a ton of cards himself through Divination and Courier’s Capsule, I counter his turn 8 Cruel Ultimatum and then Archive Trap his last 13 cards on turn 9.
I sideboard in Telemin Performance and Negate for game 2 and mulligan to 3 Island, Howling Mine, Telemin Performance and Negate. He leads with lands and I drop my Mine on turn 2, and on turn 3 he plays Divination which greatly surprises me. After Terminating my Hedron Crab on turn 4 he plays nothing until turn 8, in which time I’ve resolved 2 more Mines, Memory Erosion and Jace. Turn 8 I force Telemin Performance through his Double Negative and get a Sphinx of Lost Truths. The next turn he drops Sorin Markov and I shrug, casting Telemin Performance again for the other big Sphinx in his deck and attack his planeswalker. When his turn 9 Cruel Ultimatum is countered he scoops it up, and this match goes 2-0 to mono-blue!
1-0
Match 2: vs Pazku, Vampires
Feeling good about the last match I keep Island, 2 fetches, Wall of Frost, Memory Erosion, Flashfreeze and Call to Heel. I play first and we both drop lands until turn 3, where my Memory Erosion is joined by his Vampire Nighthawk. This play mills a Bloodghast into his graveyard and I groan. He pounds me with his black weenies and Duresses away my Archive Trap, and I concede facing a board of 4 ugly vampires.
Game 2, and I side out the useless Flashfreeze for Whiplash Trap. I’m on the play again and keep Island, fetch, 2 Crabs, Mine, Archive Trap and Memory Erosion. I lead with Island, Crab, turn 2 Crab fetch milling 12. He Disfigures one and takes my Archive Trap with Duress, then stalls on two land while I drop Howling Mines and think things are going well – until I draw 5 lands in my next 6 draws while he stabilizes and charges up a Bloodchief Ascension with Gatekeeper and Bloodghast attacks. I die on turn 7.
1-1
Match 3: vs Bon816, RG Valakut
Onto the deciding game – I keep 2 Island, Call to Heel, Crab, Mine, Wall and Traumatize on the play once again. I lead with Island, Crab, and it gets Bolted on the opponent’s turn. My turn 2 Howling Mine draws me out of my manascrew – and with the turn 4 Font of Mythos draws my opponent into a ton of ramp and his turn 4 involves a Khalni Heart Expedition sacrifice and two Harrows, with a charged Expedition on the board and Valakut in play. On turn 5 I Traumatize him, milling 19 cards, then on his turn I follow up his Khalni Heart search with an Archive Trap. With not enough mountains left in his deck to win the game, he scoops it up.
Game 2 I side out the anti-creature cards for the anti-control/combo pairing of Telemin Performance and Negate. I am on the draw and do nothing but play lands on my first 4 turns, aside from the backbreaking Negate on his Harrow. I Telemin Performance him for a ton getting a Goblin Ruinblaster – why do people keep these cards in? Perhaps he sided it in against me, expecting Telemin. My follow up is Traumatize, and between being manascrewed and milled of over half his deck he concedes – another 2-0 to the blue team!
2-1
Post-testing Thoughts
This deck was surprisingly strong in the few test matches I played. Roil Elemental was a mistake – the decks I would want to bring it in against kept their Bolts and Disfigures in to take out Hedron Crabs and they make Roil Elemental look stupid. There is way too much targeted removal in the format for such an expensive, vulnerable creature to be viable. I was intrigued to find that mill is naturally powerful against Valakut decks, as they rely on searching mountains out of their deck to deal you 20 damage and if you mill away enough mountains they have to hope that Goblin Ruinblaster beatdown can get there. I think this Mill deck will have a lot of trouble against aggro strategies as evidenced by the Vampire match – which is why Jacerator went for the fogs, Day of Judgments, Walls and lifegain available in white. Still, for a mono-blue deck I was very impressed by this performance and I would not be embarrassed to sleeve this up at FNM. I think it has a lot of inherent strength against the slow, grinding control decks that are gaining popularity and especially against Valakut combo.
Mono U Aggro
Featuring a bunch of limited all-stars, I had very low expectations for this deck. I noted the minor unearth theme which I hoped would help against discard and give the deck some sorely-needed reach. Sleep is a spell I think could be very powerful against the current control decks, as they rely heavily on Sphinx of Jwar Isle and Wall of Denial to protect themselves and Sleep takes them out of the equation for two turns. Unfortunately the creatures you are attacking with are far inferior to those any other competitive deck puts on the field, so my hopes were not high.
Without going into detail on the two matches I played with this deck – in which I won just 1 game – I would like to discuss how it performed. Essentially the control decks in the format are primed to destroy opponents that play one creature a turn and attack, and the aggro decks just play far superior (ie. Actually good) creatures and are prepared to deal with the very minor disruption this deck presents. Sleep is still a spell I think has potential but this definitely is not the deck that will fulfil it.
Draw-Go
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Tom’s article singled out Randy Buehler’s Draw-Go deck as an example of what made strong blue unfun. As a fan of this style of deck I decided to have a go with the current crop of blue, and see if I could find “26 land, 21 counters, 8 card drawers, 4 disks, and a Rainbow.” I picked a mixture of 17 counters plus two Gather Specimens, which is a really fun card. There are 7 pure card drawers – sorcery speed, unfortunately – plus 8 cantripping disruptive spells, Eternity Vessel as a pseudo disk reset effect, and the closest thing to a Rainbow Efreet – Sphinx of Jwar Isle. The sideboard is a variety of targeted hate cards plus a couple more counters if I want to adjust the mixture, and Platinum Angel which some decks have a lot of trouble beating, especially through counters.
In the first match I played I got wiped out by mono-red in unspectacular fashion – counters are not so helpful against Hellspark Elementals, and Divination can’t match Ball Lightning. Match two is deserving of some description though, as I did plenty of drawing and passing the turn in an overly long game one.
I kept 4 Islands, Scalding Tarn, Spreading Seas and Spell Pierce on the draw against my opponent, HornyToad69. He lead with a pair of Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and I turned one into an Island. While I was tapped out he plopped down a plains and Behemoth Sledge but could not find a creature to equip it to, so I kept dropping lands and passing the turn. I Spell Pierced his turn 5 Garruk, then Spreading Seas-ed his second Oran-Rief. Turn 7 he still had no threats and I dropped an Eternity Vessel on 18 life, but like a trooper HornyToad69 soldiered on. I kicked Into the Roil and bounced his Sledge then Negated it the second time around, then let him resolve Woolly Thoctar before repeating the exercise with Flashfreeze.
He tried Ant Queen the next turn which I tried to gather as a specimen, and he used his otherwise useless Path to Exile on it. Next turn his Thoctar met a Flashfreeze, then another Ant Queen got gathered and pathed. On turn 14 now and I had resolved enough cantrips and Divinations to have a hand full of ounterspells, which I exploited by Spell Piercing his Garruk 3 times. This elicits the comment “Wow ur deck is really boring,” which is presumably the sort of talk that prompted Wizards to hose this kind of strategy. I respond with Mind Spring for 4 and a Sphinx of Jwar Isle, and despite resolving a Mycoid Shepherd he can’t make a dent on my Eternity Vessel-secured life total and when I Flashfreeze his third Garruk he suddenly loses connection from the game.
I can see the complaint against this style of deck though I myself enjoy playing with and against counterspell strategies. I definitely don’t think with the cards available it is a viable strategy for standard, and I think you’re much better off playing the efficient answer cards of Grixis control or the proactive pressure of UWR control. Why Terminate is ‘more fun’ than Counterspell to some people I have difficulty understanding – at least the counterspell player might tap out and let you sneak through, your creatures are never safe from Terminate.
Et tu, blue-te?
I’ve tried to avoid the larger debate and focus on experimenting with blue in standard. While I think there are obvious better aggro strategies in other colours and there is very little reason for a control deck to eschew the efficient answers offered by red, white or black, I think the mill deck is worth experimenting with further – it certainly has potential, though Jacerator might just be better. Further testing will show whether this mono-blue deck can stand up and be counted alongside the other colours, but even if it can it will likely be swallowed in the hype surrounding Worldwake spoilers, beginning next week!
Russell is a history student, avid gamer and MTG blogger from Perth, Western Australia who takes every chance he can get to sling some magical cards. Here he shares his occasional insights into the competitive and financial realms of Magic: the Gathering.
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Well that was interesting! Haha.
Thanks for that.
It’s making me think more about the blue cards in Standard right now.
Great article, I really enjoyed reading this as a longtime Blue player coming back to the game after an absence of many years.
Nice article. Since some weeks i’m working on a blue/green Mill deck based on Hedron Crab’s and Life from the Loam, and i really see some nice inspirations like “Memory Erosions” in this deck. But i don’t think that the Mine’s make sense here. More think about replacing them with Rite of Replication, especially when you have some > 9 round games. What i also liked in combination with the Crab so far was Terramorphic Expanse.
Cheers for reading and sharing your thoughts, everyone :)
@Lauren – interesting, thought provoking and got a laugh? Excellent!
@Saint Mahone – welcome back to the game :) Blue is not doing so great right now, but you can certainly still play blue cards and have fun doing it.
@Benjamin – Glad you got some ideas for your deck Ben! I found in my testing that the Crabs are fairly vulnerable as a lot of people are playing Lightning Bolt and Disfigure these days – the Mine serves the dual purposes of helping empty the opponent’s library and drawing me more mill cards, I really like it in this deck. In a more landfall focused deck like yours the Mines are probably unnecessary – Rite of Replication sounds like a lot of fun, I’ll have to try and find a deck for it!
telemine has rocked my grixis deck time and time again! i don’t know why this is the first time i’m hearing and seeing it, post-zendikar of course. Why wasn’t this card used against the old 5 color control decks that ran only broodmates and mulldrifters? good job on the blue though, cuz brg is just so cliche right now
I did enjoy reading the article, but I found a few of your card choices a bit odd.
I can confidently say that in your milling deck, Into the Roil will serve you better than Call to Heel, since it has the same mana cost, can bounce more kinds of permanents, and doesn’t net the opponent a card, occasionally stealing a card for you when it is kicked. Another worthy replacement for Call to Heel (since, for heaven’s sake, you don’t have any creatures and can’t get the benefit of card draw from it anyways) would be the old favorite, Unsummon which is strictly better when you have no creatures, which you don’t.
I agree with most of your other card choices in that deck, with the possible exception of Flashfreeze, as it is becoming increasingly less relevant as Blue takes a hold in the Standard metagame. I would replace those with the more expensive Cancel, and the Walls with Sphinx of Lost Truths, as you don’t have to start preventing damage until later, the Sphinx has a wide rear end to absorb damage, enough power to kill many other creatures, and the ability to, if played later gain card advantage, and if played earlier act as an excellent Looter. Sphinx of Jwar Isle, if testing proves six drops to be safe, it, mixed with the other Sphinx can provide a very worthy defense indeed. The wall, while romantic in its conception, does usually not work as fluidly as asked often, and besides, it takes up your Jace mana when you play it on turn three, and if played on turn five, it would be better to have a higher quality creature, yes?
I would also recommend a full set of Jaces, not running 62 cards, and cutting the Traumatizes, as they vary enough in power level to be worse than Archive Trap most of the time, and don’t have a powerful alternate way to cast them, as the Trap does.
All in all, I believe that multicolored mill decks are superior, as they offer more card choice, better ways of dealing with unwanted damage, and therefore higher win percentages, but if you’re looking for a mono-blue Standard milling deck, I would recommend for you, this updated version of the one above.
Artifacts and Planeswalkers:
4 Jace Beleren
4 Howling Mine
4 Font of Mythos
Creatures:
4 Hedron Crab 2 Sphinx of Lost Truths
2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Enchantments:
4 Memory Erosion
Instants and Sorceries:
4 Archive Trap 4 Cancel
4 Into the Roil
I believe that this list, with whatever sideboard you choose, and that depends on the metagame that you are facing, is a better option than yours.
Please don’t take offense to my comments. I just have strong opinions as far as what the best cards are to play in a deck are.
Now that I’ve seen the “Aggro” deck that you’ve put together, and I know you had low expectations, most of those cards have no business being anywhere near Constructed play.
Also, the deck is trying to do way too many things. Spreading Seas, if you want to make the engine work, has to be a multicolored cascade deck whose sole purpose is making your opponent’s lands Islands and then swinging for the win with big flyers. As far as Gather Specimens goes, it is never good enough to reliably be good, and for six mana, it’s mostly a waste. To be honest with you, the only viable blue aggro is Esper Aggro, and that’s not even strictly Blue.
I feel that there is no point in hindering yourself by restricting play to one color, and choosing cards that are not optimal. At least I assume that you have whatever cards you want at your disposal by the eight fetch-lands in the mill deck, but some of those cards, just aren’t good enough.
However, to put a velvet glove on, I appreciate the experimentation that you chose to undertake.
I’ve actually been messing around with mono blue trying to get a deck together that could hold it’s own in standard. After a great deal of trials with many different decks the one I ended up with is a mono blue mill deck thats done really well. It’s been doing great after many tests against Vamps, White weenies, Jund and many others. It took a lot of fine tunning and tweaking and it’s far from a garunteed win, a lot of times it’s come down to not wasting a twin cast or getting nervous and making a silly block.
Deck is
Creatures
4 Hedron Crab
Artifacts
4 Howling Mines
Instants and Sorceries
2 Trap maker snares
4 Twin cast
4 Archive Trap
4 Divination
2 Ponder
2 Rite of Replication
4 Tome Scour
2 Traumatize
4 Treasure Hunt
Enchantments
2 Memory erosions
Land
16 Islands
4 Bant Panorama
4 Esper Panaorama
Sideboard
3 Clone
4 Kraken Hatchling
4 Sleep
4 Wall of Frost
Some Notes:
The rite of replication hasn’t come in handy to often. Twincast is best used with either Traumatize, Archive trap or Tome scour.
Against RDW’s, Jund and Vamps the Sideboard gets used a lot. For anything else not really. Still tweaking it to try and make it even better. So far so good though, at least it seems viable.