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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Christof's blue mana denial
November 5, 2009

Last time, on BMoor's Deck Garage, I fixed a Standard-legal Soldier deck to get it tweaked enough for competitive play.

Well, from the ridiculous to the sublime-- today I'm fixing a casual deck based on mono-blue land disruption!

Hello,

I've been playing Magic ever since The Dark. I have always enjoyed the articles concerning deck construction as this is what drew me into Magic in those long-gone days before the internet provided common decklists.
Although I have always detested landdestruction in the pure sense of the word. With blue landdestruction I can live as your opponent gets an opportunity to fight back. I have for you here a blue "landdestruction" deck.
It's tactics are actually very simple: you attack your opponent's mana base. 

• In the early game the opponent's game is interrupted by using bounce spells on his mana sources. 
• Mid game: some lands are allowed, but most get enchanted to either further restrict the opponents mana sources or making him bleed for using mana. Any bounce spells are used to restrict the use of mana sources. 
• Late game: Once an active time elemental or a capsize with sufficient mana sources is available, the end game begins, with the deck keeping to stall the opposition until I either draw an Iron Maiden, an energy vortex or kill the opponent under a stomping slab.

Here's the decklist (61 cards): 

Creatures
    2 Glowing Anemone
    2 Time Elemental

Other spells
    3 Brainstorm
    3 Ankh of Mishra
    4 Hoodwink
    3 Psychic Venom
    4 Boomerang
    3 Erosion
    2 Windfall
    3 Slow Motion
    2 Iron Maiden
    3 Capsize
    4 Stomping Slabs
    2 Energy Vortex

Lands
    3 mountains
    14 Islands
    4 Volcanic Islands

Although I initially started this deck as an Ankh of Mishra Deck, I am just not convinced these deserve a place anymore in this deck, mainly because it interferes with either the time elemental, the capsize and the energy vortexes. 

The stomping slabs are in there, just because I'm that kind of nutter. I find it hugely amusing to see my opponents squirming to get something going against this deck to see their surprise at me chucking a huge stomping slab at them. It makes for some really exciting card turning when a slab gets played. If possible I'd like to keep the slabs in. I realise you might need to take them out though. If you want to keep them in I think some kind of stacking mechanism should be put into the deck (Now the only possibilities are a brainstorm if you have 2 slabs in hand).
Another card I really like is the energy vortex. This wasn't originally in the deck. When I realised what an advantage manawise you had after playing the first few games, I put 2 of these in as they change your mana advantage into lightning bolts.

The deck performs pretty solid, but sometimes just doesn't make it because it doesn't draw the oh so necessary bounce. I initially feared it might get swamped by weenies, but it surprisingly seems to be able to deal with those deck in 50% of the cases (or maybe my opponents are bad weenie players).

I currently have no sideboard, but am actually considering taking this (or my pox deck) to a local Legacy tournament (I have no idea about the legality, especially with the windfalls, I thought at one point these were restricted). The majority of uses it will get will be casual games however. I just feel the deck needs some extra "bite" if I'll go into a tourney with it.

With kind regards,

Christof
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love this concept, Christof. Lots of players have scoffed at cards like Psychic Venom, claiming they don't do enough. Well, when your whole deck revolves around denying your opponent mana, well, he'll have to tap those enchanted lands or nothing at all!

That said, I think there are indeed some better card choices you can make.

The first replacement I have in mind: Temporal Adept is widely recognized as the "fixed" Time Elemental. And by "fixed", I mean "had all those useless restrictions relieved and made into a good card". The only advantage Time Elemental has over the Adept is +1 toughness, but with only 2 toughness, they still both die to pretty much anything short of a single pinger. And that's well worth the sacrifice when the Adept costs one less to activate, can target enchanted permanents, and doesn't cost you 5 life to chump block with. You should also bring the numbers up to a full playset for the Adept-- she's your best bet for controlling not only your opponent's land count, but also the board. Chances are the occasional small creature will squeak through, and you don't want to keep your opponent locked down to two lands all game just to lose to a two-drop.

Next, Energy Vortex is just far too slow and mana-intensive for a win condition. I'm going to leave Stomping Slabs in just because I can respect wanting to use a bad but quirky card for the laughs. Energy Vortex, however, isn't even bad in a funny way-- it's just bad. Out it comes. You could use those slots for more copies of Iron Maiden... though I'd rather you play Black Vise instead. The Vise costs less mana, and the only difference is that the Maiden hits more than one opponent.

And there's an unfortunate truth I have to tell you, Christof. This deck will not work in multiplayer. And not just because you haven't built it right-- on the contrary, this deck STRATEGY is not viable when you have multiple opponents. You can't guarantee yourself the ability to supress more than one land each turn, so if you have two or more opponents each playing a land each turn, you will either end up focusing on one opponent while the other gets free reign to develop their land base and crush you at leisure, or you'll have to split your focus and end up not disrupting either opponent enough to keep them from beating you. Do not take this deck into any multiplayer game; it will lose, and I can't do anything to solve that.

Fortunately, you never said anything about multiplayer. You did say something about Legacy tournaments, though, and I don't play Legacy, so I don't know what the metagame looks like. You will, however have to drop the Stomping Slabs if you do go to a Legacy tournament-- they're just not good enough I'm afraid. Just take out the Slabs, Mountains, and dual lands before the tournament, and replace them with Islands and... probably counterspells. I think Force of Will is the good one, if it's not restricted. If not, just go with Counterspell.

Windfall can probably get replaced too. It's at its best in Ichorid or Dredge decks, I think. If they don't play it themselves, they'll benefit from you playing as much if not more than you benefit from it. In their place, the best draw spells I can think of are either Ponder or Foresee. Ponder is the most generally useful. Foresee would work well with Stomping Slabs. Speaking of the Slabs, you could get a lot of extra mileage out of them with Sensei's Divining Top, and while you're running that, you may as well run Counterbalance to further keep your opponent locked out. In fact, you could run the Tops maindeck, and for situations where you don't want the Slabs, swap them out for Counterbalance.

Finally, in addition to Capsize, I think you could get some decent usage out of Mind Games. If you're going to put Psychic Venom on a land, what good is it if they never tap it? In this way, you can buy it back and effectively turn it into a monoblue Glacial Ray. More so, if you can put multiple enchantments on one land (or enchant their City of Brass).

Good luck!

~BMoor