You know it had to be done. The little abominations' tendrils reach even here -- even with the pauper limitations, Clique still walks all over most of the stuff I've ever made.
Because we're missing a few good cards (theft effects, Sunder, O-Naginata), this deck plays less like aggro-control and more like true MUC. You can't usually get away with a quick tempo kill, but you will win the war eventually.
Ponder, Sleight of Hand, and friends -- The cantrips are actually really good. Not only do they smooth out draws and hide otherwise dead cards, but given the choice, what would you do: 1) tap one mana every now and again, or 2) start dipping into suboptimal cards. I'll go with Option 1.
Arcane Denial -- Card disadvantage, yes, but the fact it is a 2 CMC hard counter that replaces itself makes it hard to argue. If you really have to, you can always counter your own irrelevant spell to draw 3 cards, though using it as an answer is correct 99% of the time here.
Capsize -- Six mana to buyback is a lot for this deck, but this is one of our few outs to problematic lands. Just bouncing something for 3 mana is fine.
Merchant Scroll -- Occasionally awkward, but more often than not its flexibility is welcome. Also gives us two more ways (thanks Muddle the Mixture!) to access Capsize.
Ophidian Eye -- Actually really good in this deck. You can easily avoid the 2-for-1, and then Eye just goes nuts and draws 3 or 4 cards.
Divination et. al. -- An optimal Clique build will not have sorcery-speed card draw like this, but in pauper we don't have much choice. It would be possible to replace these slots with more bounce or countermagic, but card draw is super important. These get the job done.
Merfolk Looter/Thought Courier -- Same as Divination, but maybe slightly better. They are cheap to cast, and having one active lets us turn late game Islands and Force Spikes into something more relevant.
Relic of Progenitus -- Graveyard hate is nice to have, but I can't really count on drawing this. When I draw it, I find that most of the time I'd rather it be a counterspell. We're pretty cold to Darkblast and Genesis can give us fits when the game goes long, but oh well.
Trinket Mage -- If hate cards become prevalent and silver bullets become important, I'll add the package. Unfortunately, this guy is rather clunky in that you need to add several cards to make it worthwhile.
Counsel of the Soratami -- Functionally identical to Divination. If we need more sorcery-speed card draw, this will be the first include.
Once, I replaced Clique with Vizzerdrix when I played against my friend. I still won. I dub thee: Vizzerdrix-Go.
This takes the cake for easiest EDH deck to build, but it's deceptively difficult to play and extraordinarily nerve-wracking to play against. Dazzle your friends! Annoy your playgroup! Get Clique banned in your LGS!
You included most of the cards one could think to include in a pauper clique list, but a lot of your list is just filler! If you're willing to play Mulldrifter, Rhystic Study almost certainly makes the cut. Lay Bare seems okay. I might run Oona's Grace. Traumatic Visions has served well in non-pauper Clique lists. Tolarian Winds might have potential, but I've never played with it. Convolute is an okay counter, as is Prohibit. Essence Scatter is a second remove soul. Psychic Barrier is a third. Ixidor's Will might be playable- I think almost all of your creatures are wizards.
MORE THOUGHTS: Mystic Remora might be better than Survivor of the Unseen, I'm not sure. Ophidian Eye is instant speed draw! Call to Heel is interesting if you plan to bounce Clique. Vedalken Æthermage is a creature tutor, but I don't know if you want to tutor up any of your creatures. Maybe Confound? Disrupt is a worse force spike, but you can always just pay 1U to draw the card when casting a spell if its useless in a matchup. I might even play Runeboggle over some of the cards you have here.
I'd play Frantic Search. Sure, it's card disadvantage, but usually you can wait to discard useless card (extra lands)
You included most of the cards one could think to include in a pauper clique list, but a lot of your list is just filler! If you're willing to play Mulldrifter, Rhystic Study almost certainly makes the cut. Lay Bare seems okay. I might run Oona's Grace. Traumatic Visions has served well in non-pauper Clique lists. Tolarian Winds might have potential, but I've never played with it. Convolute is an okay counter, as is Prohibit. Essence Scatter is a second remove soul. Psychic Barrier is a third. Ixidor's Will might be playable- I think almost all of your creatures are wizards.
MORE THOUGHTS: Mystic Remora might be better than Survivor of the Unseen, I'm not sure. Ophidian Eye is instant speed draw! Call to Heel is interesting if you plan to bounce Clique. Vedalken Æthermage is a creature tutor, but I don't know if you want to tutor up any of your creatures. Maybe Confound? Disrupt is a worse force spike, but you can always just pay 1U to draw the card when casting a spell if its useless in a matchup. I might even play Runeboggle over some of the cards you have here.
I'd play Frantic Search. Sure, it's card disadvantage, but usually you can wait to discard useless card (extra lands)
Thanks for your input! I've been tweaking this lot over the last day or so, and this post was very helpful. Here are my thoughts on the cards you mentioned:
Prohibit -- Not sold on this one. Against a developed metagame with consistently low mana curves, this would really shine, but I have no idea what I'm going to be up against. Plus, it really sucks on the draw.
Essence Scatter/Psychic Barrier -- Like I said, I'm going up against unknown opponents. I can't guarantee they'll actually be playing many creatures at all, you know? One is enough until I get more information.
Ixidor's Will -- Pretty sure this isn't good enough with my very low creature count.
Confound -- This was originally in the deck but got cut, like Oona's Grace. I'm finding that it is often correct to just let Clique die to removal, then recast it -- it saves us a counterspell, disrupts our opponent's hand again, and is usually card advantage.
Disrupt -- Maybe? I do love this card. How has it been in non-pauper lists?
Runeboggle -- I'm really not sold on this. I'm relatively certain that Force Void isn't playable, and is this that much better? It's nothing like the Portent-Ponder power gap.
Bounce Spells:
Call to Heel -- Is super cute with Clique. This is on the list of cards to test.
Card Draw Spells:
Rhystic Study -- This card isn't very useful at all in 1v1. It's bonkers in multiplayer, but in my experience, Rhystic Study does very little here.
Mystic Remora -- Better than Study, but still not quite good enough IMO. It's a great metagame choice, but I'll be taking this up against random unknown decks, so I don't know what kind of creature/noncreature ratios to expect.
Oona's Grace -- This was in the very first build, but I quickly cut it when I realized how much this deck likes lands. None of our spells cost very much mana, but it's not unusual to recast Clique 3 or 4 times.
Tolarian Winds -- This is ultimately card disadvantage. It's useful if we have a fist full of Islands, but more often than not I'd rather it was some real form of card draw.
Frantic Search -- A LOT better than Tolarian Winds, so I'll test it. However, it may get the axe for similar reasons. We may be better of with something like Divination, but there is only one way to find out!
Ophidian Eye -- That's cute. I don't like the idea of getting 2-for-1'd, though... I'll try it for a bit.
There is a local 1v1 tournament coming up in July. They are using the multiplayer banlist, which means Clique is legal... I'm not the best Magic player in the world, but hopefully I can show them just how bad that idea is.
Despite my comment in the OP, I'm also trying out Merchant Scroll. Its flexibility may outweigh its clunkiness, and it also gives us access to Capsize, one of our few outs to Maze of Ith.
EDIT: Ophidian Eye is pretty stellar. Clique and all the peek effects make it easy to avoid getting blown out, and when left alone Ophidian Eye just wins the game. I cut Survivor of the Unseen to make room. Thanks a ton for that suggestion! Call to Heel is too narrow, but I'm now using Aether Tradewinds to great effect. Merchant Scroll is also fine -- at worst it's a 4-mana counterspell, but its flexibility is what makes it so great. Lay Bare is fine as it turns out; I'm playing it to help hit that critical mass of counterspells. I'll update the OP with my current list.
Ok, new deck built. Another tutorial please Mr. Wizard. Opening? Middle? Coup de grace?
Mercy buckets
The list in the OP is the one I am currently playing IRL, except for Snap which I forgot to order on the last singles run.
If you've never played a Clique deck before, this is how it works: the deck is nothing but countermagic, bounce, card draw, and lands, typically with some optional oddball utility spells like Vedalkan Shackles or whatever. You play everything at instant speed, almost never main-phasing anything that costs more than one mana. When you get an opening, flash in Clique EOT and start beating down with general damage.
The minimum requirements for an opening hand are some lands and some countermagic, which should be relatively easy to accomplish.
Even though you have tons of countermagic, don't counter everything your opponent plays -- just remember that your overall goal is to hit with Clique 7 times, and you only need to counter things that would prevent that from happening. In fact, the most difficult part of the deck is figuring out exactly what you need to counter. Sometimes, if your opponent points removal at Clique, you just let it happen and recast it for the card advantage (they used up a card and you lost nothing). Other times, you can't afford to give them that much breathing room and you need to counter the removal spell.
What's really problematic is when you run up against Darkblast, Maze of Ith, Desert, or other things you can't effectively counter. In the case of problematic lands, you have Strip Mine and Capsize as more-or-less permanent solutions. Against Darkblast, you've got Faerie Trickery and Syncopate and not much else. If you can't find an answer, you lose. If you do find an answer, your opponent has usually gained an advantage by then, so you have to work extra hard to make up for it. I also think we auto-lose if the opposing general is Thrun, the Last Troll, for which we have literally zero answers. If this is rampant in your meta, maybe pack some tools like Curfew so you can deal with it.
One of the strongest options Clique provides is the ability to tuck opposing generals. If your opponent casts his or her general, you can just let it resolve, bounce it to their hand, then cast Clique and it's more or less gone for good. Sometimes this is more "cute" than good, so don't go out of your way to do this if you don't need to, but if you think you'll have to be using a lot of resources on an opposing general throughout the game, just deal with it completely the first time and save yourself some counterspells.
As you probably know, this deck rolls over and dies in multiplayer. In 1v1, Clique is a monster. It takes practice to play it well (because even a sucky Clique player like me can often win by a decent margin), but once you optimize your deck and play style, it is extremely difficult for most EDH decks to beat. Definitely worth the $20 investment!
I don't have a Boomerang available atm...go figure. Would Consign to Dream be a decent substitute? Again, what's the big deal with Mulldrifter?
Yes, that would definitely be okay. A lot of the cards in this deck are interchangable, so it doesn't make a ton of difference if you play Consign to Dream or Venser's Diffusion or Regress or whatever. Consistency through redundancy is one of the biggest strengths of this deck. Although, as a rule of thumb, the cheaper and more flexible your bounce spell or counterspell is, the better.
Mulldrifter admittedly isn't great here. It's almost always strictly a Divination with some other corner case applications, and the only reason we play Divination is because we don't have enough instant speed card draw to fill those slots. As for Mulldrifter in other decks, I'll address that in the Dreamcrusher thread.
I have not played the deck for about a year now, I think. I sold the Clique for a wad of cash, but I still have all of the other cards sitting around in various places. There may be a few updates from recent sets that have been released, but unless I missed something crucial there aren't any new gamebreakers. This deck is mostly about have a critical mass of similar, instant-speed cards.
1 Vendilion Clique
Creatures (4)
1 Merfolk Looter
1 Thought Courier
1 Fathom Seer
1 Mulldrifter
Countermagic (25)
1 Arcane Denial
1 Broken Ambitions
1 Cancel
1 Condescend
1 Convolute
1 Counterspell
1 Daze
1 Deprive
1 Exclude
1 Faerie Trickery
1 Force Spike
1 Lay Bare
1 Logic Knot
1 Mana Leak
1 Memory Lapse
1 Miscalculation
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Negate
1 Power Sink
1 Remove Soul
1 Rethink
1 Rewind
1 Spell Pierce
1 Stoic Rebuttal
1 Syncopate
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Aether Tradewinds
1 Boomerang
1 Capsize
1 Disperse
1 Echoing Truth
1 Into the Roil
1 Repeal
1 Repulse
1 Rescind
1 Rushing River
1 Snap
1 Withdraw
Card Draw (18)
1 Compulsive Research
1 Deep Analysis
1 Divination
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Gush
1 Impulse
1 Inspiration
1 Lat-Nam's Legacy
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Mysteries of the Deep
1 Ophidian Eye
1 Opt
1 Peek
1 Ponder
1 Preordain
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Think Twice
1 Words of Wisdom
1 Halimar Depths
1 Lonely Sandbar
1 Remote Isle
1 Strip Mine
35 Island
Arcane Denial -- Card disadvantage, yes, but the fact it is a 2 CMC hard counter that replaces itself makes it hard to argue. If you really have to, you can always counter your own irrelevant spell to draw 3 cards, though using it as an answer is correct 99% of the time here.
Capsize -- Six mana to buyback is a lot for this deck, but this is one of our few outs to problematic lands. Just bouncing something for 3 mana is fine.
Merchant Scroll -- Occasionally awkward, but more often than not its flexibility is welcome. Also gives us two more ways (thanks Muddle the Mixture!) to access Capsize.
Ophidian Eye -- Actually really good in this deck. You can easily avoid the 2-for-1, and then Eye just goes nuts and draws 3 or 4 cards.
Divination et. al. -- An optimal Clique build will not have sorcery-speed card draw like this, but in pauper we don't have much choice. It would be possible to replace these slots with more bounce or countermagic, but card draw is super important. These get the job done.
Merfolk Looter/Thought Courier -- Same as Divination, but maybe slightly better. They are cheap to cast, and having one active lets us turn late game Islands and Force Spikes into something more relevant.
Bonesplitter -- Tried it, isn't worth it.
Relic of Progenitus -- Graveyard hate is nice to have, but I can't really count on drawing this. When I draw it, I find that most of the time I'd rather it be a counterspell. We're pretty cold to Darkblast and Genesis can give us fits when the game goes long, but oh well.
Expedition Map -- Can get Strip Mine, cycles via Lonely Sandbar or Remote Isle when it's dead. Is that good enough?
Trinket Mage -- If hate cards become prevalent and silver bullets become important, I'll add the package. Unfortunately, this guy is rather clunky in that you need to add several cards to make it worthwhile.
Counsel of the Soratami -- Functionally identical to Divination. If we need more sorcery-speed card draw, this will be the first include.
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MORE THOUGHTS:
Mystic Remora might be better than Survivor of the Unseen, I'm not sure. Ophidian Eye is instant speed draw! Call to Heel is interesting if you plan to bounce Clique. Vedalken Æthermage is a creature tutor, but I don't know if you want to tutor up any of your creatures. Maybe Confound? Disrupt is a worse force spike, but you can always just pay 1U to draw the card when casting a spell if its useless in a matchup. I might even play Runeboggle over some of the cards you have here.
I'd play Frantic Search. Sure, it's card disadvantage, but usually you can wait to discard useless card (extra lands)
Thanks for your input! I've been tweaking this lot over the last day or so, and this post was very helpful. Here are my thoughts on the cards you mentioned:
Counterspells:
Lay Bare -- Possibly! Hard counters are nice.
Traumatic Visions -- Same. Is this really that good in a mono-color deck?
Convolute -- Solid, this card should be in here.
Prohibit -- Not sold on this one. Against a developed metagame with consistently low mana curves, this would really shine, but I have no idea what I'm going to be up against. Plus, it really sucks on the draw.
Essence Scatter/Psychic Barrier -- Like I said, I'm going up against unknown opponents. I can't guarantee they'll actually be playing many creatures at all, you know? One is enough until I get more information.
Ixidor's Will -- Pretty sure this isn't good enough with my very low creature count.
Confound -- This was originally in the deck but got cut, like Oona's Grace. I'm finding that it is often correct to just let Clique die to removal, then recast it -- it saves us a counterspell, disrupts our opponent's hand again, and is usually card advantage.
Disrupt -- Maybe? I do love this card. How has it been in non-pauper lists?
Runeboggle -- I'm really not sold on this. I'm relatively certain that Force Void isn't playable, and is this that much better? It's nothing like the Portent-Ponder power gap.
Bounce Spells:
Call to Heel -- Is super cute with Clique. This is on the list of cards to test.
Card Draw Spells:
Rhystic Study -- This card isn't very useful at all in 1v1. It's bonkers in multiplayer, but in my experience, Rhystic Study does very little here.
Mystic Remora -- Better than Study, but still not quite good enough IMO. It's a great metagame choice, but I'll be taking this up against random unknown decks, so I don't know what kind of creature/noncreature ratios to expect.
Oona's Grace -- This was in the very first build, but I quickly cut it when I realized how much this deck likes lands. None of our spells cost very much mana, but it's not unusual to recast Clique 3 or 4 times.
Tolarian Winds -- This is ultimately card disadvantage. It's useful if we have a fist full of Islands, but more often than not I'd rather it was some real form of card draw.
Frantic Search -- A LOT better than Tolarian Winds, so I'll test it. However, it may get the axe for similar reasons. We may be better of with something like Divination, but there is only one way to find out!
Ophidian Eye -- That's cute. I don't like the idea of getting 2-for-1'd, though... I'll try it for a bit.
Vedalken Aethermage -- Nope, for the reasons you said.
There is a local 1v1 tournament coming up in July. They are using the multiplayer banlist, which means Clique is legal... I'm not the best Magic player in the world, but hopefully I can show them just how bad that idea is.
Despite my comment in the OP, I'm also trying out Merchant Scroll. Its flexibility may outweigh its clunkiness, and it also gives us access to Capsize, one of our few outs to Maze of Ith.
EDIT: Ophidian Eye is pretty stellar. Clique and all the peek effects make it easy to avoid getting blown out, and when left alone Ophidian Eye just wins the game. I cut Survivor of the Unseen to make room. Thanks a ton for that suggestion! Call to Heel is too narrow, but I'm now using Aether Tradewinds to great effect. Merchant Scroll is also fine -- at worst it's a 4-mana counterspell, but its flexibility is what makes it so great. Lay Bare is fine as it turns out; I'm playing it to help hit that critical mass of counterspells. I'll update the OP with my current list.
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
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Mercy buckets
The list in the OP is the one I am currently playing IRL, except for Snap which I forgot to order on the last singles run.
If you've never played a Clique deck before, this is how it works: the deck is nothing but countermagic, bounce, card draw, and lands, typically with some optional oddball utility spells like Vedalkan Shackles or whatever. You play everything at instant speed, almost never main-phasing anything that costs more than one mana. When you get an opening, flash in Clique EOT and start beating down with general damage.
The minimum requirements for an opening hand are some lands and some countermagic, which should be relatively easy to accomplish.
Even though you have tons of countermagic, don't counter everything your opponent plays -- just remember that your overall goal is to hit with Clique 7 times, and you only need to counter things that would prevent that from happening. In fact, the most difficult part of the deck is figuring out exactly what you need to counter. Sometimes, if your opponent points removal at Clique, you just let it happen and recast it for the card advantage (they used up a card and you lost nothing). Other times, you can't afford to give them that much breathing room and you need to counter the removal spell.
What's really problematic is when you run up against Darkblast, Maze of Ith, Desert, or other things you can't effectively counter. In the case of problematic lands, you have Strip Mine and Capsize as more-or-less permanent solutions. Against Darkblast, you've got Faerie Trickery and Syncopate and not much else. If you can't find an answer, you lose. If you do find an answer, your opponent has usually gained an advantage by then, so you have to work extra hard to make up for it. I also think we auto-lose if the opposing general is Thrun, the Last Troll, for which we have literally zero answers. If this is rampant in your meta, maybe pack some tools like Curfew so you can deal with it.
One of the strongest options Clique provides is the ability to tuck opposing generals. If your opponent casts his or her general, you can just let it resolve, bounce it to their hand, then cast Clique and it's more or less gone for good. Sometimes this is more "cute" than good, so don't go out of your way to do this if you don't need to, but if you think you'll have to be using a lot of resources on an opposing general throughout the game, just deal with it completely the first time and save yourself some counterspells.
As you probably know, this deck rolls over and dies in multiplayer. In 1v1, Clique is a monster. It takes practice to play it well (because even a sucky Clique player like me can often win by a decent margin), but once you optimize your deck and play style, it is extremely difficult for most EDH decks to beat. Definitely worth the $20 investment!
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
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Yes, that would definitely be okay. A lot of the cards in this deck are interchangable, so it doesn't make a ton of difference if you play Consign to Dream or Venser's Diffusion or Regress or whatever. Consistency through redundancy is one of the biggest strengths of this deck. Although, as a rule of thumb, the cheaper and more flexible your bounce spell or counterspell is, the better.
Mulldrifter admittedly isn't great here. It's almost always strictly a Divination with some other corner case applications, and the only reason we play Divination is because we don't have enough instant speed card draw to fill those slots. As for Mulldrifter in other decks, I'll address that in the Dreamcrusher thread.
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
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Ping
I wonder if I should up the land count...
Draft my Mono-Blue Cube!
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