Parallax Tide seems kinda fun with PW Venser
General Making Blue Do Things
- Thread starter Chris Taylor
- Start date
The blue thread closes in on the month-old white thread's post count within a few hours... HMMMMM
Blue is pretty similar to black in my cube. Its curve sucks but its cards are pretty much all powerful. I just realized the other day just how many versions of cryptic command I run.
How many counterspells do you guys run? I have seven (including remand) in a 70-card section. Eight if you count Commandeer
Blue is pretty similar to black in my cube. Its curve sucks but its cards are pretty much all powerful. I just realized the other day just how many versions of cryptic command I run.
How many counterspells do you guys run? I have seven (including remand) in a 70-card section. Eight if you count Commandeer
Chris Taylor
Contributor
I've recently upped my count after noticing a distinct lack of non-tempo 2 mana counters, but I've got:
Force Spike/Daze
Triple Mana Leak (Convince me of an alternative)/Miscalculation/Counterspell
Memory Lapse/Remand
Hinder (Used to run Forbid)
and Cryptic Command
Edit: 74 card section, 11 counters
Force Spike/Daze
Triple Mana Leak (Convince me of an alternative)/Miscalculation/Counterspell
Memory Lapse/Remand
Hinder (Used to run Forbid)
and Cryptic Command
Edit: 74 card section, 11 counters
Dom Harvey
Contributor
If it helps, here's what I had in the Mono-Blue Cube with a few hallmark cards of each:
- Storm (High Tide, Snap/Frantic Search, Brain Freeze/Temporal Fissure, suspend cards; kinda viable in Cube but not distinctively 'blue' and blue's main contribution to it is card draw)
- Mill (Drowner Initiate, Jace's Erasure, Sanity Grinding; obviously not for normal Cube)
- Tribal:
-- Faeries (Spellstutter Sprite, Mistbind Clique; probably fine actually if you have multiple Cloud of Faeries/Vendilion Clique/Mutavault)
-- Merfolk (Lord of Atlantis, Coralhelm Commander; requires a more narrow card type and a greater colour commitment for a less unique payoff)
-- Wizards (Riptide Laboratory, Voidmage Prodigy, Patron Wizard; branches into multiple colours as there are lots of good Wizards to go around, and is pretty fun)
- generic blue aggro (covered at length in the Delver thread)
- Artifacts (Etherium Sculptor, Tinker; I like this one a lot as, although you need some focused support in blue, most of the cards you would want here are artifacts which are obviously more widely playable)
I'd suggest looking for overlap between various themes e.g. Bident of Thassa goes in artifacts/aggro, Cloud of Faeries goes in storm/Faeries/aggro. As for more specific suggestions, doubling up on Mulldrifter instead of adding another card draw spell worked wonders for me.
- Storm (High Tide, Snap/Frantic Search, Brain Freeze/Temporal Fissure, suspend cards; kinda viable in Cube but not distinctively 'blue' and blue's main contribution to it is card draw)
- Mill (Drowner Initiate, Jace's Erasure, Sanity Grinding; obviously not for normal Cube)
- Tribal:
-- Faeries (Spellstutter Sprite, Mistbind Clique; probably fine actually if you have multiple Cloud of Faeries/Vendilion Clique/Mutavault)
-- Merfolk (Lord of Atlantis, Coralhelm Commander; requires a more narrow card type and a greater colour commitment for a less unique payoff)
-- Wizards (Riptide Laboratory, Voidmage Prodigy, Patron Wizard; branches into multiple colours as there are lots of good Wizards to go around, and is pretty fun)
- generic blue aggro (covered at length in the Delver thread)
- Artifacts (Etherium Sculptor, Tinker; I like this one a lot as, although you need some focused support in blue, most of the cards you would want here are artifacts which are obviously more widely playable)
I'd suggest looking for overlap between various themes e.g. Bident of Thassa goes in artifacts/aggro, Cloud of Faeries goes in storm/Faeries/aggro. As for more specific suggestions, doubling up on Mulldrifter instead of adding another card draw spell worked wonders for me.
Did you make a post on the cube subreddit about a year ago regarding that mono-blue cube? I seem to recall reading and replying to that.
Regarding counters, I've got: Force Spike, Counterspell, Mana Leak, Memory Lapse, Miscalculation, Forbid, Cryptic Command, and Condescend. So 8/48 (16.6% so pretty close to Chris' 14.9%). I'd love to include remand, but can't bring myself to justify the price tag for a relatively replaceable effect.
I suppose you've considered blue Devotion, considering that was very much talked about right around the time I joined the forum, but seems to have died down a bit.
Regarding counters, I've got: Force Spike, Counterspell, Mana Leak, Memory Lapse, Miscalculation, Forbid, Cryptic Command, and Condescend. So 8/48 (16.6% so pretty close to Chris' 14.9%). I'd love to include remand, but can't bring myself to justify the price tag for a relatively replaceable effect.
I suppose you've considered blue Devotion, considering that was very much talked about right around the time I joined the forum, but seems to have died down a bit.
I hovered over all of those and none of them were Cryptic Command!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
I have some almost paper-texture Remands that I've played since 2006. I'd like to get some new ones, but they have a lot of nostalgia value and that price tag is... jesus.
I have never regretted buying a format staple. They just never come down. Even banned cards. Like, how is Jace more expensive than when he is in Standard? Who the fuck is keeping Survival of the Fittest at $25?
Dom Harvey
Contributor
On the other hand, I'm sure glad I waited to pick up a Bonfire at $5 recently rather than when they were $50.
Do Standard cards classify as "staples"?
I generally don't buy standard cards > $5 if I can avoid it.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Remand has a price tag?
When did this happen???
Yeah this card is the best card from ravnica block bar none and they aren't reprinting it.
I was actually fairly surprised it wasn't in modern masters. They tried to cut the price on so many cards (and failed miserably with a lot of them) but didn't cut us some new remands? I felt ripped off trading for a foil valued at 16 or so a while ago, but them prices...
You sure? That last one has like six modes!
Tell me about it, unfortunately Ravnica was smack-dab in the middle of the substantial hiatus we took between primary school and university. Survival of the Fittest was in the order I placed for gold-bordered cards after they were mentioned here (which has yet to get here... It's a pain ordering from the US, I think I ordered that late November).
Speaking of absurd price tags; a gold-bordered Gaea's Cradle will run you 20€.
MKM is useful but super tedious. I've been surprised, my orders from CFB have both had inexpensive shipping (~$5) and gotten here within a week each time. Ordering from a real site is far more convenient than MKM when hunting down loads of cheap cards.
I actually enjoy hunting down the best deals on MKM, looking through what people have that is on my wants, and where I get the best deals for it. I sell my other cards on there too, so I'm kinda forced to use my money there if I don't want to lose money in the conversion to paypal or whatever.
CML
Contributor
roughly half the people here who play are software engineers, who are not known for their penury, and half of those people spend a ton of time looking for deals on cards because they also find it fun. i think magic finance is OK so long as you realize it's not a means of making a living and just an interesting metaphor
lucas' claim on the 3-slot is germane as you can see in my latest winner. as much as i like dissolve and absorb i should probably cut a few.
the problem, wadds, is that U in constructed does the following (nb: i used http://www.mtggoldfish.com/ for these, which is a terrific resource -- my favorite tool on there is the Theros draft format analysis)
-- standard, U devotion (impossible to support) and UW / esper control (already in)
-- modern, Twin (?), Storm (can't), Merfolk (can't), URx Delver (can't as a conscious theme), UWR control (already in), Kiki-Pod (already in)
-- legacy, Miracles (can't and won't), Delver variants (can't), pretty much all combo including Show and Tell variants, reanimator etc (can't), BUG midrange (?)
-- pauper, delver (can't), MUC (?), Izzet blitz (?)
i'm sure if we looked at historical data a few extra options would come up, but the short list of "fun stuff blue can do" is
-- modern URx Twin, this is a fun and skill-testing deck to play with and against in Modern being both a combo deck that interacts and can be interacted with, the games often go long because they always have the t3 guy and never have the t4 twin. while I don't agree that Cube should have multiple copies, looking into a way to add a combo finish as a win-con for control decks in Cube is something that interests me. the biggest block is that kiki-jiki, mirror breaker is pretty much it
-- legacy BUG midrange, these legacy decks are very low-margin and a tremendous challenge to play well enough to win (shardless BUG is IMO just a bad Punishing Jund) ... at any rate, this is the most promising idea, as "U/x value with cantrips" is fun. also i must dissent re. "blink decks" not existing, but i do agree they don't exist enough to run something like Crystal Shard or Momentary Blink
-- pauper Izzet blitz (this is the Nivix Cyclops / Kiln Fiend / Delver of Secrets deck), "spells matter" is sweet but one difficulty here, per the discussion on the other thread about "bringing blue aggro up to the point that it beats other aggro," is that the deck is a bunch of 4-ofs. some of these 4-ofs no other deck will ever want, some of these 4-ofs every other deck will want, but in any event the typical blue deck is strong because it runs well off singleton (or something approaching singleton).
lucas' claim on the 3-slot is germane as you can see in my latest winner. as much as i like dissolve and absorb i should probably cut a few.
the problem, wadds, is that U in constructed does the following (nb: i used http://www.mtggoldfish.com/ for these, which is a terrific resource -- my favorite tool on there is the Theros draft format analysis)
-- standard, U devotion (impossible to support) and UW / esper control (already in)
-- modern, Twin (?), Storm (can't), Merfolk (can't), URx Delver (can't as a conscious theme), UWR control (already in), Kiki-Pod (already in)
-- legacy, Miracles (can't and won't), Delver variants (can't), pretty much all combo including Show and Tell variants, reanimator etc (can't), BUG midrange (?)
-- pauper, delver (can't), MUC (?), Izzet blitz (?)
i'm sure if we looked at historical data a few extra options would come up, but the short list of "fun stuff blue can do" is
-- modern URx Twin, this is a fun and skill-testing deck to play with and against in Modern being both a combo deck that interacts and can be interacted with, the games often go long because they always have the t3 guy and never have the t4 twin. while I don't agree that Cube should have multiple copies, looking into a way to add a combo finish as a win-con for control decks in Cube is something that interests me. the biggest block is that kiki-jiki, mirror breaker is pretty much it
-- legacy BUG midrange, these legacy decks are very low-margin and a tremendous challenge to play well enough to win (shardless BUG is IMO just a bad Punishing Jund) ... at any rate, this is the most promising idea, as "U/x value with cantrips" is fun. also i must dissent re. "blink decks" not existing, but i do agree they don't exist enough to run something like Crystal Shard or Momentary Blink
-- pauper Izzet blitz (this is the Nivix Cyclops / Kiln Fiend / Delver of Secrets deck), "spells matter" is sweet but one difficulty here, per the discussion on the other thread about "bringing blue aggro up to the point that it beats other aggro," is that the deck is a bunch of 4-ofs. some of these 4-ofs no other deck will ever want, some of these 4-ofs every other deck will want, but in any event the typical blue deck is strong because it runs well off singleton (or something approaching singleton).
Is that the goal? Isn't it aggro < midrange < control < disruptive aggro < aggro ?
Um, are there any like, blue prison decks we can build? How many tops and brainstorms does one need to pull off Counterbalance? That's a stupid idea, right?
What are ways that blue control has been interesting over the years?
Part of my problem with blue is that, many of the themes I design don't have much design space into blue. Blue is the least important color in the Zombie / Birthing Pod suite, and doesn't really have any connection to the lifegain package. How can we connect it to other colors in interesting ways? 5x brainstorm and miracles of various colors?