General Making Blue Do Things

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
A cousin to it's whiter bretheren thread, I'd like to discuss what makes blue interesting in your cube.

Personally I've got kinda a tempo thing going on, I'm trying out a psudo-aggro package (Basically actually giving the tempo deck things to do before turn 3 VIA Multiple cloudfin raptors and frostburn weirds playing the role of a wall that attacks well-ish)

And without even trying there's usually a blue control deck in a given cube somewhere.

I feel like these are all just kinda variations on attacking or not attacking, nothing particularly interesting like pod or the gravecrawler deck, or hell even tokens has the combo of dudes + anthems. These decks strike me as kinda just "play blue things"

Does anyone have anything more interesting? I've heard whisper of a crazy tinker deck, but I'm not sure how much I'd really want it, but maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe blue is the place to take the blink deck, with cards like ghostly flicker? Maybe there's something out there that's almost a deck, but all the cards suck? (We are talking to me here, you could suggest fuckin' mono blue goblin combo and I could make cards for that to happen)

Give me something to do in blue! :D
 
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Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
anotak said:
do you mean custom cardwise because it sort of sounds like you do?

spells matter
equilibrium (im the only one that likes this right)
master of waves (because this totally isnt supposed to be a white or red or green card instead)
ninja of the deep hours


phantasmal image
Click to expand...

I do, yes. I've got about 35 in my cube at the moment, and that's an all time low.

Equilibrium proved to be too slow for me, and the double blue cost isn't doing it any favors (I hate devotion)
Master of Waves is essentially a white card, and while it's also WAY to swingy (I hate the "have removal or die" paradigm), it wont help to make blue like white if you get this one card and a bunch of shitty hybrid cards.
Ninja of the deep hours is really past his prime, it's almost impossible to keep creatures off the table long enough for him to get value, and the tempo loss of ninjitsu also isn't helping much.

Phantasmal image is okay, but he never really plays like a 2 drop. What are you cloning on turn 2? Dryad Militant?
 
Konge

Konge

Blink decks, when they come together, are commonly UW (because they draft around Venser), Bant, or GW for us. Green is mostly there for great ETB creatures and doesn't contribute anything to the concept in particular. Good cards to consider: Venser, Crystal Shard, Glen Elendra Archmage, Man-O'-War/Aether Adept, Clones, Dungeon Geists, Snapcaster Mage (so much fun with blinks), Seagate Oracle/Omenspeaker, and of course Mulldrifter. Most of these are commonly played, but that just means you have a good foundation to build on.

Less common cards to consider: Momentary Blink, Reality Acid, Curfew, as well as Ghostly Flicker as you mentioned. So yeah, I think blue or UW is a great place for the blink foundation. It also helps that the deck is a ton of fun to play. I'm sure you were aware of most of the cards I listed, but oh well. Helped me think about it.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
It's just a dude but:


Ninja gets significantly better when you can rebuy sweet things like Snapcaster and Spellstutter Sprite. I can see why it works in Modern / Pauper, but I don't know that those things translate.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
If you believe Mistral Charger is a non-bad card, Carnivorous Death-Parrot is slightly more non-bad. I also like Sindbad and Merfolk Looter, although those are less creatures and more enchantments you can bolt.

Blue's role in my cube is generating cards, either in the graveyard, filtering or just raw card draw. It uses these cards to either lock out the opponent once it builds mana (opposition, Capsize, equilibrium) or to protect its tempo and win off that. I think an interesting area for blue to look at is its graveyard dumping potential and how this interacts with other colors. Things you could do include reanimation (not necessarily cheating a fatty, but living death combo, setting up recursion cycles, etc), threshhold, flashback, replenish (probably only I run enough enchantments to do this), genesis, loam, cruicible, something I didn't think of.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
I'm going to ask the question I always ask in these situations: are there any examples of blue doing something in constructed that you find to be interesting?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Hey man, always good to throw out ideas. I wouldn't have tried (and loved) chain of smog unless someone talked to me about what they hated about hymn to tourach.

RE: Blink
-Planeswalker Venser was too slow for me, and he's really a 1 ability walker. For 5 mana in 2 colors, I want a little more. Love Duder Venser though.
-Crystal Shard/Erratic Portal have also proven to be too slow, but I've got a custom card that's essentially 3 cost, 1, t cloudshift. And yet the blink deck doesn't really come together! I'm unsure of why, maybe my aggro cards are too plentiful or the pod cards focus too much on dies effects, I'll have to take a second look.

What worries me is that I'm running basically every card you've mentioned, but all I ever see if UW or esper/american control (though I did cut dungeon geists since he doesn't synergize with blink/pod and I had a glut of 4 drops)
The problem was that the deck basically took forever to set up, since all the good blinkable creature cost 3-5, and you needed the mana to play them, then the blink card of choice (which was also anywhere from 3-5), then untap with both and start grinding from there. Most decks would have you dead or under control by then
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
Jason Waddell said:
I'm going to ask the question I always ask in these situations: are there any examples of blue doing something in constructed that you find to be interesting?
Click to expand...

Travis' Ninja Delver deck would be interesting if it didn't glean 100% of it's wins off the back of chaining 6 cryptic commands together
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Chris Taylor said:
Travis' Ninja Delver deck would be interesting if it didn't glean 100% of it's wins off the back of chaining 6 cryptic commands together
Click to expand...

I feel like we spend too much time trying to make colors attack. Not that it's a bad thing, but, part of say, the Innistrad design is that they intentionally put in more open-ended archetypes. I understand the desire to mix things up, but maybe we could focus on making blue control as compelling as possible?
 
Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor

Contributor
FlowerSunRain said:
If you believe Mistral Charger is a non-bad card, Carnivorous Death Parrot is slightly more non-bad. I also like Sindbad and Merfolk Looter, although those are less creatures and more enchantments you can bolt.

Blue's role in my cube is generating cards, either in the graveyard, filtering or just raw card draw. It uses these cards to either lock out the opponent once it builds mana (opposition, Capsize, equilibrium) or to protect its tempo and win off that. I think an interesting area for blue to look at is its graveyard dumping potential and how this interacts with other colors. Things you could do include reanimation (not necessarily cheating a fatty, but living death combo, setting up recursion cycles, etc), threshhold, flashback, replenish (probably only I run enough enchantments to do this), genesis, loam, cruicible, something I didn't think of.
Click to expand...

I tried the parrot, and he dies way too often for me :p I'd be fine making a good old flying bear, but I don't know what it would add. Even Mistral Charger is uninspiring to me (though I know he's solid)

Also I'm going to apologize now, the vast majority of this thread will be me shitting on your suggustions, and I want to make clear that I really am considering stuff. I've been tinkering with blue for what seems like forever now, and it gets more changes on average than any other color for me, so I've tried a lot of things.

If you make a cube right, you can play anything, especially since I've got custom cards on my sleeve. If you think the scornful egotist theme from scourge would be cool, suggust effects which might go in that sort of thing
 
anotak

anotak

Jason Waddell said:
I run this kind of jank in my Eldrazi cube and even there I think it's pretty borderline. I really can't see the archetype working in a useful way in a normal cube.
Click to expand...
im mostly joking

there's this hilarious DGR draft vid somewhere on cfb with lsv and ben stark and lsv is just taking all the blasts of geniuses and ben stark is getting progressively angrier and and angrier
 
ahadabans

ahadabans

Ux tempo is definitely powerful and fun, plus it's easy to support. I like it a lot and think everyone should consider supporting it as part of blue.

Some cool cards (all enchantments interestingly enough) which provide really unique effects are the following:



Mana breach I have no experience with, but I've been wanting to try it. Tide and Opposition I have used. Tide works well in tempo and it has combo potential. Opposition is broken with tokens and would play very nice with most aggro themes as well. It's a very powerful effect.
 
Konge

Konge

Mana Breach was part of my most recent order, and I'm excited to try it out. I think it's the best out of the blue mana denial cards, though I base that solely on gut and theory, and I'll probably switch it out with Parallax Tide if I'm disappointed with it in testing.
 
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