Revisiting a Poor Old Friend

Matteo Orsini Jones

About Matteo Orsini Jones

Matteo is a Magic player from the UK who has a number of high-profile finishes under his belt:

• Top 8 Pro Tour Kyoto 2009
• Top 4 Grand Prix Bangkok 2009
• 49 Lifetime Pro Points
• Top 8 Great Britain Nationals 2008

Revisiting a Poor Old Friend

This is another of those “can’t write about this and don’t want to write about that” weeks, as I’d like to talk about the block deck I’ve been testing for the Pro Tour but can’t, and I don’t feel I’m familiar enough with the draft format to give solid advice. I thought therefore that I’d go with something that raised a reasonable amount of interest last time I included it in an article – pauper. The format has slowly been gaining more and more popularity recently, and has even begun to be covered by some of the biggest (and longest) names on the Tour. However, because of the fact that said big-named-player-on-that-other-website has started putting out videos with Cloudpost decks (the deck I was “playing” before), it seems that every man and his dog has decided to now start playing Cloudpost decks, making the format not entirely dissimilar to Standard (in terms of deck popularity if nothing else). Being one who doesn’t like to follow the crowd, I therefore decided to go back to the deck that initially got me into pauper – mono blue control.

mono-blue pauper

Deck by Matteo Orsini Jones on Tue, 06/07/2011 - 19:39

• 
  Blue

This deck forms part of my feature article:

Revisiting a Poor Old Friend

Article by Matteo Orsini Jones on Wed, 06/08/2011 - 14:59

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4.857145

I’d like to talk about the block deck I’ve been testing for the Pro Tour but can’t, and I don’t feel I’m familiar enough with the draft format to give solid advice. I thought therefore that I’d go with something that raised a reasonable amount of interest last time I included it in an article – pauper!

Main Deck (60 cards)		Sideboard (15 cards)
4	Counterspell	3	Echoing Truth
4	Exclude	3	Relic of Progenitus
4	Think Twice	3	Curse of Chains
3	Prohibit	4	Hydroblast
3	Faerie Trickery	2	Annul
3	Piracy Charm
2	Oona's Grace
2	Into the Roil
4	Spire Golem
4	Sentinels of Glen Elendra
3	Fathom Seer
24	Island

Colors
Artifact	4
Blue	32
Land	24

Converted Mana Cost
1	3
2	16
3	9
4	4
6	4

Type
Artifact Creature	4
Basic Land	24
Creature	7
Instant	25

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Versions:
Darksteel (Foil)
Duel Decks: Jace Vs. Chandra

Mono blue always has and always will be one of the most enjoyable decks to play, regardless of format; that feeling of always being against the ropes, your opponent always being one turn away from killing you, but at the same time knowing that as long as you’re on 1 life you can’t lose. These new-fangled control decks with their 2-drops and their soft counters don’t know what it’s like to play real control; to never tap out during your own turn; to know that whatever your opponent draws, you’re just going to neuter it for 2 mana; to play a deck with 24 Islands. When I first heard about the format online I decided to check out some decks, but didn’t really expect to take up the format. Then I saw the mono-blue deck and within 10 minutes had bought up the deck and was entering my first online tournament. I played the deck a LOT, almost exclusively for around a year, but eventually it became hard to keep winning with the huge popularity of the goblins deck. It’s by no means a terrible matchup, but because of the goblins’ speed you just had to counter and kill everything you could and cross your fingers that they were out of gas, which just took away the fun I was having playing the deck and replaced skill with coinflips. Recently though, goblins has fallen off the radar a little, and the “two big decks” are Cloudpost and land combo (I have no idea what this deck’s “actual” name is, but it wins by untapping lands with Cloud of Faeries, Frantic Search etc. and then Temporal Fissure-ing you out), which made me think that perhaps it was time for a permission-based control deck to make its comeback.

The idea of the deck is fairly simple: counter everything relevant, never leave yourself exposed, and leave Spire Golems to play cleanup. Because of the fact that Cloudpost decks play very few “actual” spells and very few “actual” counters, filling up instead on removal, card draw and inevitability (Capsize, which is easily counterable), I felt that by having a deck chock full of hard-counters you’d be favored by simply countering only the spells that mattered. The combo deck might not be so easy because their relevant spells are quite cheap and they run their own counterspells, but I figured it couldn’t be *that* bad, and certainly not particularly worse than the Cloudpost-combo matchup which is 50/50 at best for the ‘posts with some tight play and good sideboarding.

Other than the top decks, the beauty of the mono-blue deck is that it beats any “random” deck and any non-red aggro deck. By random I mean stuff that isn’t Tier 1 and so will just fold to counterspells (because it’s most likely a highly synergistic critical mass deck), and by non-red I mean decks without reach – against mono-white you just go to 5 life and then stabilize with Sentinels and Spire Golems to the point that they literally can’t ever beat you (although for some reason my mono white opponents in the past have had a much higher chance of whining then rage-quitting, not sure why they think it’s a good matchup).

The list itself is a little rough and completely unchanged from what I used to run before I stopped playing the deck, as I haven’t played the format enough recently to be able to make any metagame-based changes. If anything were to come out at a glance it would be the Piracy Charms, which were simply a relic of the goblin-dominance days, but not particularly good against Cloudpost (though getting a Nightscape Familiar must be nice). The board, again, is unchanged, but the Annuls could easily be straight-switched for Steel Sabotage, as their purpose was as an anti-affinity card and hence the enchantment countering is mostly irrelevant. Hydroblasts are a pretty standard 4-of in any blue deck and come in against any red deck or storm deck running rituals (try and get their Manamorphose!), while the Curse of Chains are a nice way of locking down creatures that slipped through the net and can’t be blocked by Spire Golems (Myr Enforcers, Ulamog's Crushers, Shade of Trokair).

Because of the fact that the list is a little old and needs updating, instead of giving extensive sideboard guides and play-by-play advice, I thought I’d instead just record some matches and give you an idea of how the deck plays out. This way I can get you hooked on the deck, and then next time be able to give a more “technical” article in which the list and sideboard are closer to what I’d play in a Pauper Pro Tour. Enjoy!