Since the addition of the card to Standard, Sphinx's Tutelage has been garnering a swell amount of success and has ingrained its imposing self in the back of the mind of every Standard player out there. Most typically, by the time you realize what’s going on in your game, it’s too late to fight back. Blue/Red Tutelage certainly made a name for itself with some high-profile wins and roguish takedowns of the strongest decks in Standard, but it wasn’t consistently winning events because everything else in Standard was just too well-oiled and fluid. Good thing the deck literally only loses 1 spell (Anger of the Gods) at rotation and gets a near-carbon copy of it in BFZ.
The premise of the deck, in case you’ve been living under a
Rock Hydra
for the past 3 months, is to drop a Sphinx's Tutelage. From there, you literally tap out to cast as many spells and draw as many cards as you possibly can to win through mill. If it sounds really janky, consider that I’ve both watched it and played it against RDW on the draw, only to win both games on turn-5; hardcore stuff. Some variants were trying to fit Pyromancer's Goggles in for added value, but many decks last Standard season were too quick and had too many efficient answers to choose from for it to be fully viable. With most decks’ card pools shrinking (or drying up entirely), now is the time to put the Goggles on. Tap Goggles, cast Magmatic Insight, discard 1 land, draw 4 cards, and mill at least 8 cards (probably 12-14). Or just have
Radiant Flames
deal 6 damage to everything instead. ... I just checked; that’s pretty good.
Though Anger of the Gods was a godsend (har-har) for Red-based control decks and managed to fight off the Hangarback menace fairly well, I think
Radiant Flames
will get the job done in all the same places. Having many weeks of experience myself with U/R Toots to draw from (har, again), Hangarback was never a problem for the deck with or without Anger. When you’re generally winning the game by the fifth or sixth turn, Hangarback is way too slow to pressure you. Therefore,
Radiant Flames
is essentially going to be the exact same card (and, to boot, one you don’t need double-Red mana for). Note our land-base with its agglomerated Crayola Watercolor Palette of color options to ensure we reach just the right amount of colors for Converge each time (even with matching Tango lands for fixing and Fetches for delving). I know you’re wondering why I included 1 Bivouac and 1 Monastery, and I’ll tell you that the difference between 1 & 1 or 2 & 0 of the other is negligible. Either one you use is a U/R dual-land that turns on Converge. I guess you could boast that you’re really trying to out-meta everyone by playing around Crumble to Dust, when really, you’re just being saucy.
Beyond the most obvious card choices, Roast is poised to become an important piece of tech against the looming Abzan Aggro menace (and its army of big butts). That, and it just kills every first-three-turns creature you’ll play against. Sideboard is pretty straightforward, though I like the addition of Smash to Smithereens to deal with opposing
Orbs of Warding
. Orbs makes you auto-lose and Smash still has the chance to hit an opposing Planeswalker for 3 damage at the same time. Talent of the Telepath and the countermagic come in over the burn spells against control decks and you have a few more toys in the sideboard to help your aggro matchups. Unfortunately, Dromoka's Command is going to become even more popular than it already is, though patience (and Dispel) while firing off everything at once is still a solid strategy.
It’s worth mentioning that, although it’s a nuts card in this deck, I’ve never had a tremendous amount of luck with Jace in U/R Tutelage during the old Standard format. What would typically occur was his death before doing anything since my opponent’s removal spells weren’t being used elsewhere. In the very few times he’d managed to flip, he won me the game, but I’m telling you this because I don’t think you’d really miss having him if it means buying them for $50 apiece. Without the Jaces and if you tweak the land-base a bit, this deck easily falls into budget range at ~$40 total considering most of the cards are commons and uncommons.
