I've been refining a mono blue deck that's been successful now in terms of win rate % and wanted to post out the build.



As with basically every deck I play, it's aggro focused. From reading the latest postings here, it's pretty similar to some recently posted builds so I'll just highlight some key differences that I found worked well in my own testing.

1 - I never got much use with things like dissolve, negate, etc. since they are spell specific and require a lot of mana to be kept open which may or may not be useful on the opponents next turn. Rather the biggest interference benefits was clearly from vapor snag (with -1 life to opponent) and voyages end (with scry 1) Note that casting a snag on a triton has saved a key player from the occasional board sweep. Two frost lynx provide an extra body and a nice lockdown for those creatures with entry bonus that you don't want them to replay.

2 - Having max hall of triumph and paragons resulted in faster power ramp for the otherwise low power creatures. Having Military intelligence + bident + triton's and even Kraken hatchlings (as the second attacker even with 0 power) results in steady draw.

3 - Having most everything based around flying ensured steady attack ability. And even tossing a pumped up kraken as a surprise flyer via paragon has won some games.

4 - Pestermite turned out to be a very good disruptor. I often cast at the start of the turn and tap a key land against multi-color decks (i.e. when they are playing dual and have multiple of one color but only one of the other). Alternatively, simply casting at regular turn to tap a potential blocker unexpectedly works well also.

5 - **Updated from Sat night** -Continued play showed a weakness when I hit lumpy draws against heavier creature/aura decks. Lack of Krakens and weak creatures meant losing a defensive game rather than the designed for steady offense. Thus, after experimenting, a winning combination turned out to be removing the quicklings, reducing a land and the spare vapor snare, and +2 Guard Gomazoa and +3 Phantasmal Dragon.

While I know the argument against Phantasmal dragon is that it can be popped by any instant applied to it...however, it worked out better than expected as it has the ability to take the Cloudfin raptors another notch higher as it is +5 (vs Hatchling +4). In addition, it's relatively cheap at 4 mana for a 5/5 flyer and not everyone has an instant ready..so I've found they can often survive two or three turns before being hit and that's a lot of damage potential.
Finally, the combo of Guard Gomazoa (which basically requires a spell to be vanquished) and a 5/5 flyer that largely requires a spell to be vanquished means it dilutes out what spells they have that might be useful against these two creatures.

The combo of both of these being added in has worked out really nicely.

I'm continuing to play around with different varitions to try and boost the consistency and win rate. Feedback is certainly welcome.

After looking at most of the lists in the last two pages, I become more and more convinced that people don't understand what Time warp does.

I have seen that card in decks that have very few creatures or have little to gain from attacking with their creatures, in other words decks where it does absolutely nothing aside from cantripping when you have 5 mana. Maybe in combo with archaeomancer - how is that a combo? If it did nothing the first time you played the card what do you gain from getting it back from the graveyard and playing it again?

But here I'm seeing decks with bident of thassa, military intellligence and many evasive creatures, that don't include time warp. Which is certainly wrong, in this kind of deck the card is absurdly powerful, allowing you to deal massive damage, draw multiple cards, get an additional land drop, and untap all your lands so that you can play all the stuff that you just drew. It can turn completely unwinnable situations into crushing victories, and I promise you it's going to be the best card in your deck.

Firstly, it is an infinite loop with archaeomancer if you have a way to bounce archaeomancer.

Second of all I do agree with your statement though. Time warp can be absolutely brutal there.

Considering Time Warp, my mono-Blue deck posted upthread is one of my very best ones in terms of results, and it in no way is missing it. At heart, these decks are aggressive tempo decks, and Time Warp, while a card that can often be a brutal finisher here, is also a 5 mana card in a deck that Bident of Thassa apart, curves out at 3, and has very low margins of error.

It's the reason I use Negate and Nullify over Dissolve as 3 mana is too expensive for a counterspell in this deck, in the same way you'd use Shock over Incinerate in a Goblin deck, trading power for speed. Making an analogy with Time Warp, would you put a singleton 5 mana Relentless Assault (as it's only the extra attack phase we care about here) in a Goblin deck? Very unlikely.

If you draw Time Warp at any point before you have 5 mana, it could as a result prove to be a fatal loss of momentum. With counters, bounce and flash creatures, I want to play, or have the option to play, every card in my hand as soon as possible, and win games if needed at 3-4 mana if my draw doesn't come off.

For the most part, Time Warp will lose me as many games as it wins me by being a dead draw when I needed something else. It'll only come out in mana-rich games where either my draw has come off, and Time Warp is simply a win-more card as I'm dominating, or flooded games where it does nothing other than act as a cantrip as I have barely any board, and only stalls defeat by a turn.

A much better card if your plan is to add a singleton to push through an extra turn's worth of damage is Hall of Triumph as It's cheaper, sticks around, and has a defensive benefit. Sure, you'll only get on average 2/3rds of the damage a Time Warp would offer assuming all creatures get through, but that's acceptable for 2 mana less and often enough. There's also the fact you can also play a bounce spell in addition at 4 mana, or hold for a counter or Quickling too at 5 mana which makes it a much better card for me.

Lastly, there's also the issue of space. I wouldn't feel comfortable cutting a land for a 5 mana spell, I'm at what I consider the absolute minimum for creatures (there's no decent options or I'd add more), you can't cut the draw element and I wouldn't want to cut the 12 control spells either.

So no. Time Warp is not a missed trick at all in my book, and would in no way be the best card in the deck in the faster Blue decks. It's arguably marginal, but for some would likely result in a net loss of consistency if anything.

Well, playing the full amount of military inteligence and bident of thassa I noticed the following things:
1) I draw a lot of cards, which means that it's very unlikely that I'll have problems reaching 5 lands
2) I easily fall way behind both in board presence and in life total, since I spent turns playing enchantments while my opponent was playing creatures, and I attacked (even with kraken hatchling) instead of leaving blockers because I wanted to draw.

I can find myself in a situation where I drew 15 cards more than my opponent, but I'm still losing badly because all those extra cards I drew were 1/1 or 0/1 or 0/4 creatures, each one worth about 1/10 of a random card from my opponent's deck in terms of board impact. In other words even when the deck is gloriously operating at full power, time warp is not a "win more" card, but rather the card that turns a defeat into a victory.
Of course in situations where the opponent has lots of cheap removal I'd rather have another maritime guard, but the number of 25 creatures in my current build feels about right to me.

Trying to build a deck around Chasm Skulker. Quicken is only added for the extra card draw for one U, I'm currently considering replacing it with Artful Dodge, for that final blow with Skulker.
Probably needs more control.

You don't have enough cheap creatures to make military intelligence or bident of thassa work; ior ruin expedition is a miserable card and even more so in a deck with only 20 lands (yes, it is full of cantrips, but if you spend turn after turn casting think twice and quicken just to find your next land, and you are also paying 2 to play an early expedition, when are you ever going to start putting things on the board?). In general I wouldn't bother building a deck around chasm skulker, most opponents will have plenty of blockers for it anyways.

You need to work on your mana base, 20 lands. You have 12 spells at 3 cmc, 4 at 4cmc and even 2 at 7cmc, you are asking for trouble here. You also do not have enough small creatures to trigger Military Intelligence. The later may work better in an Azorius build with Triplicate Spirits, Raise the Alarm and Brimaz, King of Oreskos. Or may be Izzet with Krenko's Command, Goblin Rabblemaster etc.

Trying to make some sort of Mono Devotion deck and I am not sure where to take it.

I feel like a lot of the best cards for getting our Devotion up are cards that want us to be running a lot of non-permanents, which tend to go against the whole Devotion idea. Talrand and Archaeomancer are good examples of this.

Not sure if this is even worth trying really, but meh. It is something to do.

This is what you need to ask yourself; is making a deck for one single card worth it? Is that card going to outright win you the game if it hits?

IMO, there is very little to gain from making a devotion deck since only one single card benefits from it. You can play a deck with a lot of good stuff that uses Master of Waves as supplementary card rather then the main theme.

I found master of waves complimented izzet tokens nicely and I shifted the deck from a counter draw deck and wait to get your token generators to a more creature deck for more devotion. even getting 1 or 2 tokens from master of waves is awesome and combos with young pyromancer nicely. I'm still testing what I have going but I can give you some insight for ideas of your own that I have noticed through the small testing I have done thus far.

phantasmal dragon is a great 4 drop. yes its a glass cannon but if it sticks for at least one hit to me that's value. not to mention that I would rather have this eat an opponents spell over the other creatures that are running such as talrand and young mancer. and it adds 2 devotion. I wanted to use this in the past but stayed away and I feel like now that I invested into izzet tokens and required devotion this allowed me to justify enjoying the glass cannon without feeling like its a wasted play.

peel from reality so far in testing has been awesome in conjunction with archaeomancer it allows my token generators to trigger and allow me to lock down an opponents problem creature while returning my archaeo to constantly cycle it over and over. this works extremely well as it causes your opponent to invest mana on a creature over and over while building your board more and more. I love the inclusion of this spell and I think it is very top notch.

kiln fiend was added as not only is it a 2cmc bomb but its an elemental. not an amazing thing but hey it synergizes with master of waves and allows me to have more ways to beat down and win.

so to wrap it up, I feel that you can obtain more value moving out of mono blue and not stress over devotion so much and allow yourself more win cons. talrand, archeo and phantasmal each offer 2 devotion on their own aswell and are top notch spells. try them out with master of waves and you will be happy.

No need to stress over devotion, mono blue aggro is a good deck and provides it naturally. You'll typically get 5 or more tokens from Master of Waves when casting it in the deck and from that point winning is trivial.

You are most certainly right, trying to build around a singleton isn't worth it.

That said, I am bored, and already have an Izzet deck that makes good use of Master of Waves. This was mostly just an excuse to try and build something different. I will take any chance I can get to try and brew something up.



Edit: something like this maybe??

I thought about going Master of Waves with Mercurial Pretender for more lord effects + fliers: Warden of Evos Isle, Roil Elemental, Pestermite, Phantasmal Dragon.

Hi to all!
I'd like to inquire on some help here.
Essentially, i wanted to have a build of "blue artifacts" and tried going into quite a few things from agro to control, but all of them turned out completely... just meh. This is the one i got in the end and it does show some stability and wins, but still in "meh..." kinda way. Though, considering i'm not that god in all this i might be trying to take it the wrong directions from the start.
So, help is much appreciated.



P.S. As a side note, what does the red color of card quantity indicator mean on some cards in this deck-tool?

Premium cards.

So it looks like everyone keeps getting to ideas before me (Eon!).

I wanted to have a blue devotion deck for the Master of Waves (yes....total build around 1 card) and came up with this tempo/aggro idea. I had Chasm Skulker in the list due to all the draw (cause we have to draw Master!) but at a certain point it's just chump/bounce bait and wasn't as effective as I had hoped (if I could find a way to crack it, that would be better). It would be nice if blue had some more 2 mana creature options that were worth considering/including but it is what it is.





elk

Elk. Great minds think alike eh?

I predict Barney and/or Beast are going to have a field day with that comment. I think Eon that this is just one of those times you should pre-lube and prepare for the worst.


elk

You totally just made it worse....you know that right.....just saying.

Hahaha