I only own a very select amount of foil cards, whenever I crack a decent one out of a pack it goes into the trade binder. When its a common/uncommon I play in one of my decks, or intend to play, I will usually trade for 2 non-foil versions, if I have no use for them I will just give them away to one of my friends who just loves shiny cardboard.
I only own these foils:
-Ravages of War Judge promo, had to buy it for my Geist of Saint Traft EDH deck, other than very few cards I have all of it modern bordered, I think I only run Miscalculation and Tundra in the good ole border, tundra is the only White bordered card so its super easy to fetch.
-Armageddon and Cataclysm FTV. I just love blowing lands up, figured they'd match up my foil Ravages quite nicely.
-Sword, Shield and Helm of Kaldra Prerelease, I only attended the Darksteel Prerelease, the sword was given to me from one of my friends for my first deck, and the Helm came as a birthday present from my brother, since I couldn't make the prerelease with him.
-Each of the mirrodin Basic lands and artifact lands. They are framed and hang in my studio. I started playing in that block, so I figured i'd get them for the nostalgia factor.
Triggered abilities are generally considered "missed" if at the point they were relevant they weren't visually or verbally annnounced. Basically if your opponent showed you his hand that means he allowed the probe to resolve so the trigger was missed.
U/C Midrange is a deck created for AER gameday, ended up top4ing and winning with it and has since put up great results in FNM, generally placing high in the prize range. Me and a good testing/brewing buddy will be taking it to a big event on saturday and a PPTQ on sunday to see how it plays in a more competitive environment.
-Why play the deck?
You’re looking for something fresh.
You are a blue mage and love people asking you if anything they play resolves.
You like C and find the eldrazi both beautiful and terrifying.
You like snowballing small advantages into game wins.
You don’t wanna spend too much on a decent deck.
-Don’t play this deck if you…
Like turning a lot of creatures sideways.
Don’t like making decisions at every possible turn.
Dislike grindy games.
Want to have access to Boardwipes.
2. Card analysis
2.1 Countermagic
The heart and soul of any Permission based deck. In order to make things easier I’ll sort them by CMC.
Horribly Awry At first I was hesitant, but the ability to catch some problematic creatures for 2 makes it shine sometimes, dead vs some decks, but most decks don’t run many 5 CMC dudes. Catching a Felidar Guardian for just 2 is great. Be aware, as it will not catch a late-game-tap-all-my-lands-for-ballista.
Negate With the heavy vehicle meta, the non-creature clause is almost irrelevant. Doesn’t fall off late and hits planeswalkers which U doesn’t interact well with.
Revolutionary Rebuff The predominance of artifacts renders this almost useless although there are situations where you could take advantage of it, those situations don’t happen often enough to justify its inclusion in the 75.
3CMC-AKA Cancel with an upside
Disallow Your catch Anything spell. Too good to pass up. 4 are a must in any permission based deck.
Scatter to the winds A good hard counter, providing an extra wincon in the late game. 2 Is probably the right number if you’re planning to go to the long game.
CMC>=4-AKA You probably won’t run more than 2 copies of these.
Summary Dismissal Works as a pseudo-Disallow, and in theory could be Disallow 5-8, although I’ve never encountered a situation where having more than 4 was beneficial.
As stated before, the deck isn’t looking to play creatures in the early game, you’re looking to stabilize the board and then keep it stable enough for you to close out the game. And you’re mostly looking for Big 4 drops to chain with Baral's Expertise. The deck also has the option to use Coax from the blind eternities, more on that below.
Thought-Knot Seer Great on his own, devastating on the back of an Expertise. 4 Of.
Niblis of frost Evades, locks creatures on its own and grows. A Very solid choice in this type of build.
Reality Smasher Hits hard and quick. Has built-in protection. Your prime finisher.
Drowner of Hope Creates chump blockers and allows you to lock 2 creatures out. Not quite a smasher, not quite a Niblis, good for consistency with Titan's Presence.
Elder Deep-Fiend Flashes in and taps permanents, It has the potential to timewalk someone if you’re willing to commit a 4-5 drop.
Thing in the ice Its mostly a sideboard card, unless you expect a lot of decks that like to go wide quick, it helps slowing down damage and punishes them big time when/if you get to flip it over. Which can be done comfortably usually by turn 5-6 assuming you slammed it on turn 2.
2.2.1 Coax from the blind eternities
So you like feeling like Nahiri, good… good. Coax gives the deck more flexibility by sacrificing some consistency, you’re looking at having at least 4 Eldrazi as your Coax targets on your sideboard. We’ve had the most success with only having 2 Coax Maindeck. Having a Singleton is a tossup, you can never draw it or it might sit dead in your opening hand for ages. With 3 and 4 you should move a TKS and a Smasher to the wishboard, but this in turn cuts 2 of the 15 for cards that should be in your 60.
Ulamog, the ceaseless hunger If you can afford the mana he finishes the game on 2-3 turns, no matter the amount of chumps he eats. If You’re on a budget: Desolation Twin can be a nice replacement.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion Allows you to refill your hand, good in games that go super long or vs any other deck runnin permission.
Endbringer Your Swiss Army Knife, sadly, he’s too slow to really take advantage of.
Void Winnower The ultimate lockout, again, good vs some decks. Not that great on its own, not your primary Coax Target unless you somehow build towards a game Ulamog and/or Kozilek can't close.
Oblivion Sower Used to ramp and blocks any non-flyier in the format. Not really worth a spot unless you’re going for a late game build paired with 3 in the main.
Off-Color Coax Targets and other choices
Torrential Gearhulk He's good on games that go long, but for the most part he was being cast for glimmer either as a blocker or EOT, and doesn't work with Titan's Presence.
Bearer of Silence It’s “Can’t Block” Clause makes me ache, however its good vs hexproof, so its worth a spot in the wishboard if you expect a lot of that.
Distended Mindbender While good vs control and combo, by the time you get to cast it, you're better off protecting your dudes or coaxing for a game finisher.
Matter Reshaper One of the most debated cards whenever someone asks me about the deck, I won’t write an essay on this, I’ll just say: You don’t really want to tap out on 3 or 4, he can really shine if you go for a more aggro approach especially coming out of the SB to fight control. Personal Choice.
Baral, Chief of Compliance We tried taking advantage of him, but this isn't the right shell for him. Worth giving a shot if you plan to run over 20 cards that read "counter target spell".
Docent of Perfection At one point we tested this, but it’s too slow and has no immediate impact on the turn it’s played. No, his transformed side can’t be fetched with Coax.
Aberrant Researcher No immediate impact, may or may-not flip, as budget choice, however he can be OK.
2.3 Rounding it out.
If one thing is true, is U lacks board swipes and spot removal. The best you can hope for in U is bounces, but that’s not a reason to panic: C is here to help us out.
Baral's Expertise The rails on which the Comeback Train runs. Run 3 or 4, I’ve yet to run any actual math, but Having 3 Expertise and then 6-8 targets for it is probably the right way to go. We’ve consistently pulled it off in turn 6. But I’ll let the math speak for itself once we figure it out. 2 Is too little, and 1 why bother.
Spatial Contortion A decent removal early, and it turns into a pump later in the game. I’ve closed A LOT of games on the back of these.
Titan's Presence It requires you to hold some dudes to cast it, it’s good removal so keep a couple of them handy.
Kozilek's Return It proved to be super good vs some decks, and at the earliest stages it was a 4 of in the MD, sadly getting the 2nd effect on it rarely ever happened in time, so the idea was scrapped and we went with Expertise instead.
Warping Wail Mostly a tech card. It’s modes make it very flexible, It ends up being cat-hate most of the time. Has a nice interaction with Drowner of Hope and can catch some spells. Personal choice, I’m not a fan, does a lot of stuff, but shines at none. I’ve used it as a tech choice vs Mardu vehicles, since it can hit their x/1 crewing dudes, quite specially Toolcraft Exemplar as a response to the trigger.
Engulf the Shore Loses a lot of oomph by only going off of islands, most decks will out-toughness it, Specially Snek. If you can chain 4 islands it can wreck Cat Lady’s day, but there are other tools available to deal with the combo.
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets Feels like a win-more. It won’t pull you out of a losing position on his own, and if you can +1 him into ult you were already ahead.
A quick note on draw Anticipate and Glimmer of genius are for the most part the only draw spells that find a spot in the 75. Back when She was running rampant, we used Scour the laboratory and Catalog In combination with Lunar force as extra delirium enablers and reducing Emi’s cost. But that idea was short-lived, sadly.
2.4 The Manabase.
The deck should run anywhere from 22 to 25 lands, when I started playstesting I ran only 22 and hitting your 7th and 8th land drop became a problem, while flooding or screw rarely ever happened, you want to keep playing a land a turn at least till 7. 24 so far seems to be the sweet spot. While a healthy combination of Islands and Wastes is the obvious approach, there are SEVERAL C producing lands that are better than wastes. I won’t write an essay on each one, no point in wasting your time reading why Crumbling Vestige is sub-par in this type of deck.
Aether Hub The only land that taps for both U and C, Glimmer will keep your energy counters at a healthy level throughout the game.
Shrine of the forsaken gods A wastes the first seven turns, allows you to do some nasty stuff after you hit your 7th land drop. 4 of, especially if you’re running Coax.
The utility lands
Between the Hubs and shrines there’s not that much room left for C producing lands. You probably want the draw, but that’s a personal choice
Geier Reach Sanitarium, Sea Gate Wreckage, Blighted Cataract Choice is a matter of personal preference, I like the sanitarium better than the other 2 since it allows me to sculpt my hand a little bit every time, the downside? It’s legendary, So having 1 copy of it and another of Blighted Cataract is what I’ve been using. There's been very little times where my hand has no cards.
Corrupted Crossroads Again, better than wastes, it helps if you’re planning to use a splash or have tech-y choices on your coaxboard, but worse than the Hub.
Nephalia Academy Haven’t encountered a situation where having this would be helpful.
Ruins of Oran-Rief ETBT and the “this turn” restriction don’t make for a good land, if you’re going for a more aggro approach they might be worth having.
Mirrorpool I was hesitant at first, but in the long run it proved to be useful, ETBT and Sac effect are its biggest downsides, but feel free to explore this idea.
Warped Landscape and Evolving Wilds They were included in earlier builds focused on reducing Emrakul’s Cost, no real room for them right now. Deck thinning plus shuffle effects are great, however If you run them, make sure you’re running at least 2 wastes.
3. Decklists
There are 2 ways you can approach this, the coax list has the advantage of having an overall better game 1, however a list without it allows you to have more wiggle room in games 2 and 3. The sideboard and coaxboard were designed for my local meta, so you should probably adjust accordingly.
The initial version of this deck was focused on going to the late game and winning off the back of any of the titans, and while it wasn't designed as an Eldrazi theme deck it definetly turned out like that. Sadly when she got sent to the blind eternities the deck had to change.
For the sake of information, here's one of the initial decklists.
This is a work in progress, so far, no bad matchups vs most of my local meta (no real predominance of 1 archetype), no autoscoops, and no autowins. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to test enough vs CopyCat and its variants, although it doesn't seem like a crushing matchup, it is definetly tricky. Rather than give you Percentages and a Play-by-Play breakdown vs the most popular archetypes I'll give you general pointers of the strats I've used.
3.1 Matchups
The most crucial thing for this one is denying the early pressure, which is particularly tricky when they're on the play. If you can't catch a heart of kiran you can play the denial game with their Crewers and hope you catch their Gideon later on. You cannnot afford to have these 2 on board, so try to never tap out when they have 4 mana open. This is probably one of the harder matchups and you never really get to turn the corner, you have to close the game while you're ahead
This one depends on the rout they take, the early game is usually slow enough to let you catch up and snowball your advantages. Don't ever let a Ballista unchecked, it will wreck your day.
Try and save counters for their Aetherworks Marvel, you'll probably win the counter-war. Turn 4 TKS is usually a decent play, if you hit someting big all the better
Most of the people decided to get rid of their Saheelis when they spiked, so I haven't been able to thoroughly test here. It seems like they can punish you horribly if you make a mistake, so be extremely careful, you have no real early pressure and your walker interaction is non existant
This is another matchup that could be tough, but I've only played very little against it. You have to counter the right stuff and then win while they're behind or their recurssion will just steal the game from you.
Don't let Bristling hydra resolve. Use your spot removal often and early, probably the only real bad matchup G1 but definetly winnable. Sometimes they'll run Blossoming Defence or Heroic Intervention either from the SB or in the main. Be aware of using your removal when they have mana open.
3.2 Tips
The following are general gameplay tips, that may or may not be ovious to you.
As a general rule, be aware of your Expertise plays, you don't wanna get EoT'd Fatal Pushed. Revolt activates off of it. Also keep in mind that if you target a ballista they can remove all the counters and expertise will be countered on resolution.
TKS doesn't always have to be cast on the back of an Expertise, a turn 4 TKS is generally a good play unless you're expecting a really big turn 4 or 5 from your opponent.
Niblis doesn't immediately die to your own contortion, Prowess and tap both trigger before contortion resolves, keep that in mind if you need to keep something tapped for a turn.
Sometimes you'll have to play a blank expertise to stay in the game, don't be afraid of doing so. Losing is worse than not taking full advantage of a card.
4. Additional Notes
Feel free to post your ideas/concerns, the more people we get playing/testing/discussing ideas the better the deck will become.
Beautification and further notes are a work in progress.
I'll probably expand and add some color splashes as the meta shifts and I test more.
I hope after you read this, you are encouraged to give the deck a go. It's a blast to play if you're into this sort of archetype and has proven to have potential in the local level.
Cheers!
Remember to use the [deck] and [/deck] tags before and after after you paste a deck to make things a bit smoother for those trying to help.
As I expected, he's trying to rush you down with cheap creatures, and that's one tough matchup for mono U, you can't really keep them off the board, he's also using some SOI cards and a lot of rares, compared to you. Basically playing mono U with just commons/Uncommons into that build, you're shooting yourself in the foot. His deck probably scoops to a Turn 5 Fumigate. Have you considered playing white, even if its just a splash for a couple cards? Without knowing your budget, I came up with a deck that should run you about 50 bucks at the very most, assuming you don't have any of the cards, most of them go for less than 1 USD, and probably if you explain your situation to more experienced players they'll be more than happy to give them away for free since they're considered bad.
The Idea is to allow your friend to go Wide (AKA having a lot of dudes on the board) but dictate the amount of damage you take with all the "tap" effects at instant speed. Remember, you can tap a creature during combat before he declares them as attackers, no matter how fast he turns them sideways, he can't declare attackers until both players have passed priority, this is when you are supposed to use your instants to tap the most dangerous creatures and take as little damage as possible, he will probably get desperate and keep playing dudes, when you see enough of his beaters on the board and very little cards in his hand, you Wipe his board and leave him topdecking. Your creatures go upstairs (Fly) so he will have very little blockers outside of ornithopter, and both of them allow you to keep tapping the dudes he plays after a boardwipe, with niblis allowing you to tap 1 and keep it locked for a whole turn no matter the spell you cast, the more spells you cast, the more creatures you tap, and the bigger the niblis grows.
There are some cards from the BFZ and SOI Block aswell, but they should be fairly inexpensive, A fumigate playset (4 of) should cost you less than 10 bucks, and the niblis are probably 1 USD a pop at most.
For the most part Deft dismissal will allow you to 3-for-1 him, so you can increase the count if you feel like it.
Anticipate and Glimmer of genius are there to let you refill your hands, and pull some Combat tricks with Niblis of frost with the upside of Glimmer feeding your Aether hub's so you can keep tapping them for colored mana. You can also use the clues created by Expose evil to accomplish this, card draw, in turn lets you find your more powerful cards sooner, so it's nothing to be laughed at.
You might wanna look into Thraben Inspector, she creates a clue and can block, and kill one of your friends 2/1 or 3/1 dudes as early as turn 1.
Hope that helped, Cheers!
Edit: Forgot to mention, you can't "abuse" the "It doesn't untap during your opponents next untap step", you can't, for example, cast 4 Take into custody on a Kari Zev, Skyship Raider the same turn and lock it out of the game for 4 untap steps, it will just remain tapped for 1 turn.
What you're trying to build is what is -Or was formerly- known as "block constructed" (Is that even a thing nowadays?) And the powerlevel of just 1 block is generally gonna be much smaller compared to a format where there are 4 other expansions. While KLD and AER definetly bring some good U stuff to the table you might wanna add some budget choices from BFZ, OGW, SOI and EMN, assuming he's playing a standard deck, on that note, I hope you guys are both playing on an even field, no amount of Mono U hate from KLD and AER will compete vs legacy goblins, for example.
Mono R aggro Vs Mono U Control is probably one of the harder matchups without the right tools to slow the game to a crawl and allow you to seal the deal late game in a quick manner.
Like Orizohn said, we'd need your deck list, and if you're ONLY playing against that Mono R deck, having his list would be beneficial so we can help you tech-in some good cards vs him. For example, Red hates Enchantments.
Has anyone tried a prison-style deck? I loved the Mono U prison deck before rotation, the one with Jace's Sanctum and Part the waterveil the idea was to stall long enough via Engulf the shore, Prismatic Ring and Door to nothingness via Awakened PTW's. I tried to update the list but never got to actually test it, and I ended up sleeving another home brew entirely.
Anyways, for the sake of coming up with new stuff here's the list I never got to play.
Fragmentize were there due to the abundance of Heart of Kiran. In retrospective I think I would have changed the Terrarions for some Dynavolt Tower just to get a, theoretical, neverending source of energy with the Timepiece.
I just got home after playtesting (thank god for 3 workday weeks :D). I'll probably head back there earlier tomorrow and playtest a bit more and see if I can fine-tune it to play the FNM. Overall the deck plays smooth, but has some flaws, basically scoops to UBx control until you can side in your sphinxes, and the Pummeler builds just scoop to a decently timed Glare.
Your build looks more of a Midrange deck than a Control dck but still looks nice.
Yes, the main idea is to seal the game before you run out of gas by restricting your opponent a little bit, and then making big tempo plays rather than go for the super long games.
Same core as the UW control but no Torrential Gearhulks. I like the Angel pack as a win-con, but the Things in the Ice are really not fitting in there. Looks clucnky in paper, but what can you comments on this?
The idea behind Thing was to have something to slam on turn 2 and help me not get rushed down, not flip it immediately. The thing is great at making attacks akward early and getting removal out of the opponents hand, the B/G/Mardu vehicles lists I got to play against only ran 1 or 2 Fatal Push MD. So the Expertise into Gisela strat worked out most of the time. On that note, Gisela is an Angel Horror, so she doesn't get hit by the Thing transforming, and leads to some monstrous (pun intended) game swings, unanswered, you can swing for 11 on turn 6, a lot of stuff has to happen your way, but the potential is there.
Expertise into Dovin was also a nice play vs most lists, they didn't seem go THAT wide before you can pull it off, and the shrink on dovin made things easier, by the time they can even take a shot at him he's already about to ult, or has given me a lot of card advantage and lifegain it felt riddic. Had a Vehicles guy scoop twice to Expertise into Dovin followed up by a fumigate when he tried to rebuild. Gideon on the other hand didn't feel that great, sure you make a chump blocker every turn, but by the time I got a decent -4 or +1 I was already ahead by a mile. And generally slamming him on turn 4 only helped my life total be 5-6 points higher with no real impact on the game, there were a couple times where he was helpful turn 4, but I'd rather have had other options.
I might cut Gideon and Linvala for 2 Gearhulks tomorrow, between Glares, Fumigates and Expertises and the lifelink from Gis there wasn't really any time I could use her to full benefit, by the time I drew her the game was virtually over or I needed something to chump with, and I think Flashing a hulk into removal/draw would have been way stronger.
The B/G matchup isn't horrible, but It definetly needs improving, I didn't keep track but every game felt super close and If you let a Walking ballista Unchecked it will wreck your day. While negate was there mostly for protecting your stuff I might have to go with Ceremonious Rejection in the main just so I can deal with the Scrapheap Scrounger and the ballistas.
An awful matchup was B/R zombies, with no exile effects other than Horribly Awry in the sideboard and them having an answer in either harnessed lightning, Lightning axe or fatal push to my beaters their recursion slowly won most games. I think the only games I won were on the back of Brisela, voice of nightmares Simply cause he didn't have an answer for the trigger, or I had enough time to hit 9 lands and squeeze a negate in there, the one time I resolved a Linvala with life gain and a token It got EOT Axe'd into Fiery Temper on the token, into scrounger, Triple amalgam. Felt awful, lol.
Didn't play any CopyCat lists, but the matchup is probably horrendous if they go the control approach. Even after SB, it might be an uphill battle.
In retrospective, the deck played the way I anticipated, and I had a lot of fun, the mana base could use some tweaking, while I didn't run into any major problems, an oppening hand of 2 Streams and a Port town isn't the best. And having both fumigate and Expertise in hand felt super akward. Maybe the way to go with my idea is esper or U/B, but I'll keep testing as Azorius - Look at my avatar, for crying out loud!
I'll probably copy stokpile's list and work from there.
I've been brewing a U/W control deck based around Baral's Expertise into a big 4 CMC. Mostly Gisela, The broken Blade, Dovin Baan and Gideon, Ally of zendikar for big tempo swings. 2 of those 3 targets dodge fumigate quite nicely and the other one can be recursed later with her sister to seal the game. I'll be hitting the LGS today and tomorrow to give it a go, is there anything I might be missing? I know there's some B/G in my local meta, and barely any CopyCat decks, with a decent share of the meta being mostly R/G Pummeler/aggro builds and Mardu/Boros vehicles, there will definetly be one U/B control my friend plays and a marvel deck the Store owner has to lend to people that don't have a deck/want to test. Pretty sure I saw a U/W spirits from one of the regulars aswell.
I'm still undecided between Thing in the ice and Baral, Chief of compliance MD. But since I only have 2 Barals I decided I'd give it a go with TiTi at first, especially with the predominance of aggro lists. I don't run that much countermagic to abuse the looting on the Chief so that might be another thing to consider in case Baral turns out better.
So, I resolve any of the Expertises, let's use This one, for example. And chose a legal card (Equal or less CMC to whatever the expertise restricts me to) to cast with the 2nd part of it. My questions are:
-When do I announce the 2nd card I want to cast? I would assume once the Expertise has resolved.
-Let's say I cast a card that somehow interacts with Instat/sorcery as my free spell: Thing in the ice, just an example. According to gatherer, while casting my free spell, Expertise is still on the stack, does this mean Thing in the Ice "sees" the expertise? For the purpose of removing counters?
-If for some reason I could speed up an expertise to instant speed, Brains in a jar for example, do I have to chose an Instant/Flash to cast, or can I just cast anything with 4 CMC or less?
-Let's assume my oponent has a Counterspell in hand, but let the expertise resolve, again according to gatherer I assume he could counter the free spell, right?
My buddy built around him and did pretty good for game day and I kinda wanna take his Idea, just wanna make sure I'm getting everything right.
One of my friends managed to pull a top 4 finish and a win on gameday with a somewhat similar build. Both days had a nice show of about 25ish players, I think saturday had over 40, but I only attended sunday to play EDH during byes and see what standard goodies I could get my hands on.
He ran Baral, Chief of Compliance and Baral's Expertise in a heavy permission/Cheat out strong 4CMC approach, and had pretty much the same wishboard as you did. I don't remember the exact count for each. But I remember one mardu vehicles player complaining about Expertise into Niblis of frost locking him out of the game, and how TKS was devastating with expertise. Last thursday he texted me asking if I could lend him my Drownyard Temple playset for the weekend and If I was interested in selling him my foil Mirrorpool, only got to talk to him for a little bit, I believe the Temples were there to pitch to Baral and get some C later on, I offered him my unsubstantiate but he said they didn't interact well with baral and was gonna use Just the wind instead. I asked him for his decklist yesterday, he sent me a picture.
Disregard.
I see that UN- full arts have been mentioned previously.
To further expand on your purchases, I'd reccomend going for BFZ, OGW, SOI and EMN packs/singles. Origins and Dragons of Tarkir will be rotating out in 2 months, if you're just starting you might not get much juice out of them.
I only own these foils:
-Ravages of War Judge promo, had to buy it for my Geist of Saint Traft EDH deck, other than very few cards I have all of it modern bordered, I think I only run Miscalculation and Tundra in the good ole border, tundra is the only White bordered card so its super easy to fetch.
-Armageddon and Cataclysm FTV. I just love blowing lands up, figured they'd match up my foil Ravages quite nicely.
-Ageless Entity First foil rare I ever cracked open.
-Sword, Shield and Helm of Kaldra Prerelease, I only attended the Darksteel Prerelease, the sword was given to me from one of my friends for my first deck, and the Helm came as a birthday present from my brother, since I couldn't make the prerelease with him.
-Each of the mirrodin Basic lands and artifact lands. They are framed and hang in my studio. I started playing in that block, so I figured i'd get them for the nostalgia factor.
As easy to stop as it is to comprehend
1. Introduction
U/C Midrange is a deck created for AER gameday, ended up top4ing and winning with it and has since put up great results in FNM, generally placing high in the prize range. Me and a good testing/brewing buddy will be taking it to a big event on saturday and a PPTQ on sunday to see how it plays in a more competitive environment.
-Why play the deck?
-Don’t play this deck if you…
2. Card analysis
2.1 Countermagic
The heart and soul of any Permission based deck. In order to make things easier I’ll sort them by CMC.
3-4 Negate
0-3 Horribly Awry
0-2 Ceremonious Rejection
3-4 Disallow
0-2 Scatter to the winds
0-1 Confirm Suspicions
Sideboard
0-4 Ceremonious Rejection
2-3 Dispel
0-1 Summary Dismissal
2CMC-AKA Wish you were Counterspell
3CMC-AKA Cancel with an upside
CMC>=4-AKA You probably won’t run more than 2 copies of these.
2.2 Creature Selection
4 Thought-Knot Seer
2-4 Reality Smasher
0-2 Niblis of Frost
0-2 Drowner of Hope
0-2 Torrential Gearhulk
0-1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
0-1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
2.2.1 Coax from the blind eternities
Off-Color Coax Targets and other choices
2.3 Rounding it out.
If one thing is true, is U lacks board swipes and spot removal. The best you can hope for in U is bounces, but that’s not a reason to panic: C is here to help us out.
A quick note on draw
Anticipate and Glimmer of genius are for the most part the only draw spells that find a spot in the 75. Back when She was running rampant, we used Scour the laboratory and Catalog In combination with Lunar force as extra delirium enablers and reducing Emi’s cost. But that idea was short-lived, sadly.
2.4 The Manabase.
The deck should run anywhere from 22 to 25 lands, when I started playstesting I ran only 22 and hitting your 7th and 8th land drop became a problem, while flooding or screw rarely ever happened, you want to keep playing a land a turn at least till 7. 24 so far seems to be the sweet spot. While a healthy combination of Islands and Wastes is the obvious approach, there are SEVERAL C producing lands that are better than wastes. I won’t write an essay on each one, no point in wasting your time reading why Crumbling Vestige is sub-par in this type of deck.
- Aether Hub
The only land that taps for both U and C, Glimmer will keep your energy counters at a healthy level throughout the game. - Shrine of the forsaken gods
A wastes the first seven turns, allows you to do some nasty stuff after you hit your 7th land drop. 4 of, especially if you’re running Coax.
The utility landsBetween the Hubs and shrines there’s not that much room left for C producing lands. You probably want the draw, but that’s a personal choice
3. Decklists
There are 2 ways you can approach this, the coax list has the advantage of having an overall better game 1, however a list without it allows you to have more wiggle room in games 2 and 3. The sideboard and coaxboard were designed for my local meta, so you should probably adjust accordingly.
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Reality Smasher
2 Niblis of frost
1 Drowner of Hope
Spells (26)
4 Anticipate
3 Glimmer of Genius
3 Baral's Expertise
4 Spatial Contortion
4 Disallow
3 Negate
2 Horribly Awry
1 Confirm Suspicions
2 Coax from the Blind Eternities
2 Titan's Presence
13 Island
4 Aether Hub
4 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
1 Drownyard Temple
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Blighted Cataract
1 Bearer of Silence
1 Elder Deep-Fiend
1 Distended Mindbender
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
4 Thing in the Ice
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
2 Dispel
2 Ceremonious Rejection
This particular list relies on making your threats stick and making attack lines easier for you but it lacks the auto-win potential from a good coax.
4 Thought-Knot Seer
4 Reality Smasher
2 Drowner of Hope
2 Niblis of Frost
Spells (24)
4 Anticipate
2 Glimmer of Genius
4 Disallow
2 Negate
2 Horribly Awry
1 Scatter to the winds
4 Spatial Contortion
2 Titan's Presence
3 Baral's Expertise
14 Island
4 Aether Hub
4 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Blighted Cataract
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
4 Thing in the Ice
4 Matter Reshaper
2 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Dispel
For the sake of information, here's one of the initial decklists.
4 Oblivion Sower
2 Elder Deep-Fiend
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
Spells (27)
4 Anticipate
3 Catalog
4 Kozilek's Return
2 Titan's Presence
4 Disallow
3 Negate
3 Coax from the Blind Eternities
2 Void Shatter
2 Lunar Force
12 Island
4 Aether Hub
2 Spirebluff Canal
4 Shrine of the Forsaken Gods
1 Corrupted Crossroads
2 Blighted Cataract
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
1 Ulamog, the Ceasless Hunger
1 Elder Deep-Fiend
1 Sire of Stagnation
1 Ruin Processor
1 World Breaker
1 Eldrazi Obligator
1 Distended Mindbender
6 ?????
3. Matchups and Tips.
This is a work in progress, so far, no bad matchups vs most of my local meta (no real predominance of 1 archetype), no autoscoops, and no autowins. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to test enough vs CopyCat and its variants, although it doesn't seem like a crushing matchup, it is definetly tricky. Rather than give you Percentages and a Play-by-Play breakdown vs the most popular archetypes I'll give you general pointers of the strats I've used.
3.1 Matchups
3.2 Tips
The following are general gameplay tips, that may or may not be ovious to you.
4. Additional Notes
I hope after you read this, you are encouraged to give the deck a go. It's a blast to play if you're into this sort of archetype and has proven to have potential in the local level.
Cheers!
As I expected, he's trying to rush you down with cheap creatures, and that's one tough matchup for mono U, you can't really keep them off the board, he's also using some SOI cards and a lot of rares, compared to you. Basically playing mono U with just commons/Uncommons into that build, you're shooting yourself in the foot. His deck probably scoops to a Turn 5 Fumigate. Have you considered playing white, even if its just a splash for a couple cards? Without knowing your budget, I came up with a deck that should run you about 50 bucks at the very most, assuming you don't have any of the cards, most of them go for less than 1 USD, and probably if you explain your situation to more experienced players they'll be more than happy to give them away for free since they're considered bad.
4 Niblis of Frost
2 Spire Patrol
Spells 29
4 Take into custody
4 Expose Evil
4 Fumigate
4 Grip of the roil
4 Rush of Ice
4 Anticipate
4 Glimmer of Genius
2 Deft Dismissal
4 Aether Hub
7 Plains
14 Island
The Idea is to allow your friend to go Wide (AKA having a lot of dudes on the board) but dictate the amount of damage you take with all the "tap" effects at instant speed. Remember, you can tap a creature during combat before he declares them as attackers, no matter how fast he turns them sideways, he can't declare attackers until both players have passed priority, this is when you are supposed to use your instants to tap the most dangerous creatures and take as little damage as possible, he will probably get desperate and keep playing dudes, when you see enough of his beaters on the board and very little cards in his hand, you Wipe his board and leave him topdecking. Your creatures go upstairs (Fly) so he will have very little blockers outside of ornithopter, and both of them allow you to keep tapping the dudes he plays after a boardwipe, with niblis allowing you to tap 1 and keep it locked for a whole turn no matter the spell you cast, the more spells you cast, the more creatures you tap, and the bigger the niblis grows.
There are some cards from the BFZ and SOI Block aswell, but they should be fairly inexpensive, A fumigate playset (4 of) should cost you less than 10 bucks, and the niblis are probably 1 USD a pop at most.
For the most part Deft dismissal will allow you to 3-for-1 him, so you can increase the count if you feel like it.
Anticipate and Glimmer of genius are there to let you refill your hands, and pull some Combat tricks with Niblis of frost with the upside of Glimmer feeding your Aether hub's so you can keep tapping them for colored mana. You can also use the clues created by Expose evil to accomplish this, card draw, in turn lets you find your more powerful cards sooner, so it's nothing to be laughed at.
You might wanna look into Thraben Inspector, she creates a clue and can block, and kill one of your friends 2/1 or 3/1 dudes as early as turn 1.
Hope that helped, Cheers!
Edit: Forgot to mention, you can't "abuse" the "It doesn't untap during your opponents next untap step", you can't, for example, cast 4 Take into custody on a Kari Zev, Skyship Raider the same turn and lock it out of the game for 4 untap steps, it will just remain tapped for 1 turn.
I've been brewing A LOT with mono U, If I had to take a wild guess, you're probably playing Baral, chief of compliance and Baral's Expertise in a deck packed with a lot of countermagic, with maybe Metallurgic Summonings as your wincon.
Mono R aggro Vs Mono U Control is probably one of the harder matchups without the right tools to slow the game to a crawl and allow you to seal the deal late game in a quick manner.
Like Orizohn said, we'd need your deck list, and if you're ONLY playing against that Mono R deck, having his list would be beneficial so we can help you tech-in some good cards vs him. For example, Red hates Enchantments.
Cheers!
Anyways, for the sake of coming up with new stuff here's the list I never got to play.
2 Trophy Mage
Permanents 18
4 Deadlock Trap
4 Mechanized Production
3 Perpetual Timepiece
4 Glassblower's Puzzleknot
3 Terrarion
4 Engulf the Shore
2 Baral's Expertise
4 Fumigate
4 Glimmer of genius
3 Fragmentize
4 Prairie Stream
20 Island
Fragmentize were there due to the abundance of Heart of Kiran. In retrospective I think I would have changed the Terrarions for some Dynavolt Tower just to get a, theoretical, neverending source of energy with the Timepiece.
Edit: Typos.
Yes, the main idea is to seal the game before you run out of gas by restricting your opponent a little bit, and then making big tempo plays rather than go for the super long games.
The idea behind Thing was to have something to slam on turn 2 and help me not get rushed down, not flip it immediately. The thing is great at making attacks akward early and getting removal out of the opponents hand, the B/G/Mardu vehicles lists I got to play against only ran 1 or 2 Fatal Push MD. So the Expertise into Gisela strat worked out most of the time. On that note, Gisela is an Angel Horror, so she doesn't get hit by the Thing transforming, and leads to some monstrous (pun intended) game swings, unanswered, you can swing for 11 on turn 6, a lot of stuff has to happen your way, but the potential is there.
Expertise into Dovin was also a nice play vs most lists, they didn't seem go THAT wide before you can pull it off, and the shrink on dovin made things easier, by the time they can even take a shot at him he's already about to ult, or has given me a lot of card advantage and lifegain it felt riddic. Had a Vehicles guy scoop twice to Expertise into Dovin followed up by a fumigate when he tried to rebuild. Gideon on the other hand didn't feel that great, sure you make a chump blocker every turn, but by the time I got a decent -4 or +1 I was already ahead by a mile. And generally slamming him on turn 4 only helped my life total be 5-6 points higher with no real impact on the game, there were a couple times where he was helpful turn 4, but I'd rather have had other options.
I might cut Gideon and Linvala for 2 Gearhulks tomorrow, between Glares, Fumigates and Expertises and the lifelink from Gis there wasn't really any time I could use her to full benefit, by the time I drew her the game was virtually over or I needed something to chump with, and I think Flashing a hulk into removal/draw would have been way stronger.
The B/G matchup isn't horrible, but It definetly needs improving, I didn't keep track but every game felt super close and If you let a Walking ballista Unchecked it will wreck your day. While negate was there mostly for protecting your stuff I might have to go with Ceremonious Rejection in the main just so I can deal with the Scrapheap Scrounger and the ballistas.
An awful matchup was B/R zombies, with no exile effects other than Horribly Awry in the sideboard and them having an answer in either harnessed lightning, Lightning axe or fatal push to my beaters their recursion slowly won most games. I think the only games I won were on the back of Brisela, voice of nightmares Simply cause he didn't have an answer for the trigger, or I had enough time to hit 9 lands and squeeze a negate in there, the one time I resolved a Linvala with life gain and a token It got EOT Axe'd into Fiery Temper on the token, into scrounger, Triple amalgam. Felt awful, lol.
Didn't play any CopyCat lists, but the matchup is probably horrendous if they go the control approach. Even after SB, it might be an uphill battle.
In retrospective, the deck played the way I anticipated, and I had a lot of fun, the mana base could use some tweaking, while I didn't run into any major problems, an oppening hand of 2 Streams and a Port town isn't the best. And having both fumigate and Expertise in hand felt super akward. Maybe the way to go with my idea is esper or U/B, but I'll keep testing as Azorius - Look at my avatar, for crying out loud!
I'll probably copy stokpile's list and work from there.
Cheers!
I'm still undecided between Thing in the ice and Baral, Chief of compliance MD. But since I only have 2 Barals I decided I'd give it a go with TiTi at first, especially with the predominance of aggro lists. I don't run that much countermagic to abuse the looting on the Chief so that might be another thing to consider in case Baral turns out better.
4 Thing in the Ice
3 Gisela, The broken Blade
2 Bruna, the Fading Light
1 Linvala, the Preserver
Instant/Sorcery 23
4 Anticipate
4 Glimmer of Genius
4 Disallow
3 Baral's Expertise
3 Negate
3 Immolating glare
2 Fumigate
2 Dovin Baan
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Lands 24
4 Port Town
4 Prarie Stream
4 Aether Hub
8 Island
4 Plains
3 Fragmentize
3 Horribly Awry
4 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Fumigate
2 Sphinx of the Final Word
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
untap target legendary permanent
Converted mana cost: 2
Pretty sure something like this could have made it through some Kamigawa playtesting.
-When do I announce the 2nd card I want to cast? I would assume once the Expertise has resolved.
-Let's say I cast a card that somehow interacts with Instat/sorcery as my free spell: Thing in the ice, just an example. According to gatherer, while casting my free spell, Expertise is still on the stack, does this mean Thing in the Ice "sees" the expertise? For the purpose of removing counters?
-If for some reason I could speed up an expertise to instant speed, Brains in a jar for example, do I have to chose an Instant/Flash to cast, or can I just cast anything with 4 CMC or less?
-Let's assume my oponent has a Counterspell in hand, but let the expertise resolve, again according to gatherer I assume he could counter the free spell, right?
My buddy built around him and did pretty good for game day and I kinda wanna take his Idea, just wanna make sure I'm getting everything right.
Thanks in advance!
He ran Baral, Chief of Compliance and Baral's Expertise in a heavy permission/Cheat out strong 4CMC approach, and had pretty much the same wishboard as you did. I don't remember the exact count for each. But I remember one mardu vehicles player complaining about Expertise into Niblis of frost locking him out of the game, and how TKS was devastating with expertise. Last thursday he texted me asking if I could lend him my Drownyard Temple playset for the weekend and If I was interested in selling him my foil Mirrorpool, only got to talk to him for a little bit, I believe the Temples were there to pitch to Baral and get some C later on, I offered him my unsubstantiate but he said they didn't interact well with baral and was gonna use Just the wind instead. I asked him for his decklist yesterday, he sent me a picture.
4 Baral, Chief of compliance
3 Niblis of frost
2 Thought-Knot Seer
1 Torrential Gearhulk
Instant/Sorcery 28
4 Disallow
4 Negate
3 Revolutionary rebuff
4 Just the wind
4 Baral's Expertise
2 Void Shatter
2 Glimmer of genius
3 Coax from the blind eternities
2 Catalog
4 Aether hub
3 Drownyard temple
1 Mirrorpool
14 Island
Side/wishboard 15
1 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
1 Oblivion Sower
1 Kozilek, the Great Distortion
1 Thought-knot Seer
1 Endbringer
1 Elder Deep-Fiend
4 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Dispel
2 Engulf the shore
Hope that sparks some ideas I think mono U is actually quite strong atm, and just needs the right deck or meta shift to make a strong performance.
Probably my fav standard deck was good ol' U/G madness.
Sacrifice ~: Target opponent discards a card at random.
1/2
Cheers!
I see that UN- full arts have been mentioned previously.
To further expand on your purchases, I'd reccomend going for BFZ, OGW, SOI and EMN packs/singles. Origins and Dragons of Tarkir will be rotating out in 2 months, if you're just starting you might not get much juice out of them.
Cheers!