Completely updated primer as of 5/6
Hello! Welcome to the primer for the thing that no one thought could exist in modern - Mono Blue Control. Yes, that's right, no bolts, no blood moons, no Tasigurs, and WAY more Cryptic Commands than most decks are ready for. This deck was inspired by a list that a few weeks ago went 5-0 in a league and featured among other cards - Plumeveil, Guile, and... Warmonger's Chariot. Laughs were had, but at the same time many people took pause with just how strong tons of counters and Vedalken Shackles felt in the current meta. Well, turns out that completely overloading an opponent with a wall of counter, bounce, and mind-control effects is pretty sweet. Let's break down the deck.
Is this deck for me?
Do you like chaining Cryptic Commands with Snapcaster Mages? Do you like incremental card advantage? Do you like saying 'no' literally every single turn? Do you get giddy when watching an opponent have their board evacuated and they're tapped out? Do you look at magic like a skill testing puzzle that puts the more skillful player on top? This deck is for you. SUPER decision heavy and incredibly interactive - youre going to have a ton of fun feeling like youre in the drivers seat.
Why mono blue?
We're in mono-blue for a few reasons-
100% painless manabase. I can't stress just how incredible it is to take absolutely no damage from your lands. MANY games played against this deck have the opponent dealing themselves 7/8 damage from fetching and shocking to try and get around the counters and you won't have budged an inch. It cannot be overstated just how different it feels to run perfect and painless mana and how uniquely powerful that is in the self-damaging modern format.
We're leaning into quite a few cards that REQUIRE us to use specifically islands - Vedalken Shackles and Engulf the Shore. Both of these cards are 100% essential to playing in mono blue in modern as they shore up many of our ground weaknesses and allow us to buy mana back from our opponents at a discount (this will make sense later). Having the subtype 'Island' has never been more important than it is here, and as such we can't even afford to run things like Oboro or Minamo. Yes, you WILL lose to boil, but you also have more protection against something like that than any other blue deck in modern. Don't want to lose to Choke/Boil? Don't let them play them. Ever. Be vigilant, you'll be ok.
Card Choices
Manabase
19 Islands - We've discussed this. You need Islands for your blue sources. Not filterlands, not scrylands, not minamo and oboro. Islands. You'll need a lot of them as hitting your land drops is EXTREMELY important.
3 Tectonic Edge - This deck is weak to creature lands and being able to stop an opponents incremental late game card advantage engines (Lighthouse) can be key as well. Tec Edge is preferred here over Ghost Quarter because you NEED to maintain land parity with your opponent and you're forcing the game late anyway.
1 Blighted Cataract - A SPICY inclusion for sure, but one that pulls it's weight. In a deck with so many blue sources we have about 5 spots for utility lands... having one that draws you two cards at the end of a game is pretty sweet.
1 Academy Ruins - We lean on 6 key artifacts to win our games. Being able to infinitely recur them is our inevitability and key to our late game card advantage. With all of your counter magic it's going to be hard getting rid of all of these artifacts and this assures you're going to get them back anyway. Huge.
Non-Creature /non-artifact Spells
The meat and potatoes of the deck, your non-creature spell selection HAS to be tuned well or you're not going to have the tools you need to get through most matchups. I've tweaked this section A LOT but am always open to discussion and further innovation.
Cryptic Command - this is non-negotiable. Cryptic is the best reason to be in mono blue, and it is the single strongest card in the deck. Your ability to use ALL of the modes of CC in conjunction with one another is going to determine your ability to win with this deck. If you only think about this card as Counter/Draw then you are using only 50% of your most versatile card. Fogging/bouncing your opponent out of a game while you make land drops WILL win you games but you have to be able to see those lines!! (Run 4.)
Remand is a time walk. People dont think about it as a time walk, but thats exactly what it is. Your opponent forfeits their early turns, has difficulty with your card velocity in later turns, and players trying to resolve big spells simply cant. This deck thrives on its controlling inevitability so just remember that you arent just stalling for nothing. Slamming a Wurmcoil on your opponents empty board will reinforce exactly why you wanted to remand on turns 2-3-4. VERY powerful. (Run 4)
Serum Visions Great early and great late. Sets up your early draws, smooths out bad hands, and draws you into gas late. SV is indispensable and until we get Ponder or Preordain back I cant imagine using anything else for our cantrip of choice. (Run 4)
Spell Snare hits major relevant targets against every single modern deck. Allows you to completely decimate other blue decks (many rely only on snap/remand/leak for counters or to win wars). INCREDIBLY powerful when you bounce a board on end step and hold up snare-snap-snare. One mana counters like this allow you to keep mana parity with an opponent even if youre behind which cannot be underestimated. Snare scares the crap out of a whole lot of decks and drawing 2 early feels like a god-send. (Run 2-4)
Mana Leak Remands little brother I run mana leak because I need to, not because I want to. Almost completely dead late in the game (where we want to be) but fairly valuable early for catching wayward creatures, lilianas, collected companys, etc. Sometimes leak is incredible, and sometimes youll want to tear them up at the end of the game because of how useless they were. So it goes. (Run 1-3)
Condescend Condescend is INCREDIBLE on the play and downright awful on the draw if your opponent hits land drops despite this its nice to be able to set up draws (you will condescend your own spells for 0 to get scry 2s) and its great against bigger spells. Late game its a toss-up. Always good almost never great. (Run 1-3)
Confirm Suspicions NOW were getting spicy! Confirm Suspicions is this decks Spinxs Revelation and you pretty much only want to see it in the late game but I cannot begin to describe how giddy you feel when you counter an opponents top deck and then draw three more cards. 4 for 1 anyone? Bueller? (Run 1 two of these in your hand early will lose you the game)
Engulf the Shore Another one that may look puzzling but in practice makes SO much sense basically with your Island count youre getting a 4 mana evacuation. Boom. Allow your opponents to overextend into combat or in their second mana and sweep their board in response. Erases combat tricks, expensive creatures, tokens, all of it. Sweeping an opposing board and playing ANY haymaker onto that board state WILL induce groans and will win you games. Engulf is INSANE and is my favorite new card from SOI, and I think its the only thing that actually makes this deck viable. (Run 2-3 with 3-4 total in the 75)Logic Knot We dont use our graveyard for much, so most of the time this functions almost identically to Counterspell. Hope you dont draw it too early though. If we ran fetches for thinning/a second color then this card would be much better as it is its fine as a 1-of though. With that said, this is definitely the flex counter spot and a number of different options could go here, which will be discussed later. (Run 1-2)
Negate Negate is great in certain metas and completely dead in others but against most decks you want access to at least one. Almost no one will ever play around a negate in game 1, so use that to your advantage. Tron almost cant win through Negate Snap Negate. (Run 1-2)
Vapor Snag In tandem with remand, mana leak, engulf, and spell snare this is a key card that will allow you to establish control early in the game. Great against affinity, infect, goyfs, birds/hierarchs, and REALLY good later against bigger haymaker creatures or scavenging oozes that have gotten out of control. This card is VERY underestimated as a control card and youll see it shine here (dont be scared to snag your own threats!!). (Run 2-4 based on your meta and how much you love vapor snagging things)
Artifacts
These are the win conditions and what youre looking to either windmill slam late or use to control the board early. All of these individually can win you the game, and in tandem with counter/bounce effects are incredibly difficult to overcome for ANY deck in modern (stony silence or not!).
Wurmcoil Engine The big one. I had gone back and forth on SO many blue creatures for this spot, but ultimately the giant lifelinking/deathtouching resilient wurm got the nod. Lifelink is HUGE, being able to eat terminates is HUGE, and being able to be recurred with Academy Ruins is HUGE. Some decks can never beat this, and almost no deck can beat an endless stream of them. If you suspect path DO NOT play this when youre at 6 mana. Be smart. (Run 2)
Vedalken Shackles Absolutely hoses creature strategies and can completely lock down some boards. You will run into MANY opponents who have no idea how to play around this (watch how bad decision making can get) and with your island count you shouldnt have much trouble stealing pretty much anything (Ive stopped Griselbrand opponents from comboing really). With all of that said, this card is VERY skill testing and you need to wield it like a scalpel, NOT like a broadsword. Dont open yourself up to needless artifact removal, and be PATIENT with your activations. (Run 3)
Batterskull A batterskull main is a concession to 2 things we need additional lifegain for hyper agro and Burn, and Shackles is COMPLETELY dead against a number of popular decks in game 1 (Scapeshift, Control decks, Ad Naus). With that said, BSkull in conjunction with ruins and counter magic is INCREDIBLY powerful and can definitely help you stabilize against a huge number of opponents. If youre feeling spicy, put a hat on that snapcaster and go to work! (Run 1-2)
Creatures
Snapcaster Mage. Im not sure what I need to say about this card, but it is ABSOLUTELY the best blue creature ever printed, probably the most powerful creature in modern, and will win you WAY more games than any other card has business doing. Turns out that having Snapcaster as your only real creature in conjunction with Evacuation effects is REALLY REALLY good! The card advantage gained from Snap is one of the key things that makes blue as a COLOR viable in this format. (Run 4 ALWAYS)
Sideboard Options
The sideboard for this deck is ESSENTIAL as youre going to come upon many things that your main 60 are not equipped to adequately handle. The goal is to have AS MUCH utility as possible in every single spell here, so choose wisely. Below are what Im currently running as of writing, but there are MANY other options possible.
Bribery Bring this in against Tron and RG Scapeshift. Watch your opponent concede. Watch as people go wide eyed and say I had no idea this card was legal! Well, guess what, it is. Thanks for the Ulamog.
Dispel Great against burn, infect, and any snapcaster deck. Its dispel. You know what it does.
Displacement Wave I was running Hibernation in this spot but this does something similar but against a MUCH wider range of decks. Being able to COMPLETELY wipe a board with pesky enchantments, planeswalkers, artifacts, etc. is something unique. GREAT in conjunction with Wurmcoil and Batterskull as you can bounce everything cmc 4 or below without touching your stuff. Very experimental spot.
Echoing Truth I was running this because tokens are a thing, but I like Wipe Away more for spot removal and any of the evacuates more for pesky creatures this might change.
Hurkyls Recall Losing to Affinity sucks this makes it much harder to lose to affinity. Snap with Hurkyls will lead to all of the blowouts.
Jace, Memory Adept I like having a 5 mana planeswalker somewhere in the 75, and its changed now three times (Im sorry Tamiyo!!!) Jace though gives you an important out to infinite life and ridiculously stalled board states. Jace by himself is a 4 turn clock against any board and if you dont need to mill them then its repeatable one sided card advantage. Sounds good to me.
Sphinx of the Final Word Control decks cannot beat this card. At all. They HAVE to have a sweeper to do anything about it and if they dont then theyre done in a hurry. This was a Teferi but I think Sphinx fits the bill a bit better.
Surgical Extraction Free outs to persist combos and other pesky cards that you might have a hard time dealing with more than once. Great in combination with Tec edge against tron, and great against scapeshift once youve dealt with the first one (which you should absolutely be able to do).
Vendilion Clique For when you need a much faster clock OR against combo decks. Clique is always great.
Wipe Away God I love this card. Blow out ravagers, blow out infect creatures, deal with pesky permanents of all kinds. Wipe Away is REALLY useful.
Matchups and testing
This section is under construction as I continue to rigorously test the deck against the full modern gauntlet (a daunting task!).
In a nutshell though lets go over the good matchups and the bad matchups.
Good
Combo decks, other control decks, Tron. Combo decks have a HELL of a hard time breaking through the counter wall, you go way way way over the top of current modern control decks (cute Colonnade it would be a shame if it had to go back to your hand again), and tron simply cant resolve large spells and you dont care about the Ulamog cast triggers.
Even
Midrange decks Weve got good game against all of the midrange decks but prepare for a slugfest and some tricky maneuvering. Jund feels slightly better than 50/50 and Abzan feels slightly worse (lingering souls) your ability to use and protect shackles in these matchups is key.
Aggro decks that arent warp speed fast things like Zoo (anything but the BTE variants), hatebears decks, etc. Shackles is great. Bounce is great. None of these can beat BSkull or Wurmcoil.
Affinity and Infect youve got more than enough tools to lock them down, but these are still very skill testing matchups.
Burn VERY skill testing but they have a HELL of a time slogging through counters. If you land a lifelink creature the game is over.
Bad
Blue based tempo decks they will give you absolute hell. Small creatures backed up by light disruption are VERY difficult to deal with because you cant ever reclaim mana investments from bouncing things like Grim Lavamancer or Snapcasters.
Night Unwinnable
Merfolk is a joke. Vial, cavern, islandwalk, cursecatcher. This deck is built to beat you and its going to take everything youve got to put up a fight.
Taking Turns You have a very slow clock, and you can do literally nothing about Gigadrowse. GG.
Closing Thoughts
This deck is sweet and your opponents will hate you. If there is anything else youd like me to expound on please mention it. Further testing and refinement might one day lead to some tournament results. Viva mono blue!
