Filibuster

Casual Casual Control Theme/Gimmick WU (Azorius)

Squee_Spirit_Guide

Creature (2)

• 1x Azor's Elocutors
• 1x Laboratory Maniac

Land (20)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 2x Halimar Depths
• 15x Snow-Covered Island
• 2x Tolarian Academy

Artifact (8)

• 4x Howling Mine
• 4x Sol Ring

Instant (19)

• 4x Arcane Denial
• 4x Brainstorm
• 4x Counterspell
• 4x Mystical Tutor
• 3x Twincast

Sorcery (12)

• 4x Ponder
• 1x Savor the Moment
• 4x Temporal Mastery
• 1x Time Spiral
• 2x Walk the Aeons

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I figured it was time to give this deck a proper description. Several years ago, my friend pulled Azor's Elocutors out of a pack, declared it junk, gave it to me, and challenged me to make a deck with it. So here we are...

What are we trying to do here?

Well, we're trying to get Azor's Elocutors in play long enough to get 5 filibuster counters and win the game. Since you lose a filibuster counter every time you take damage, I decided the best way to do this is take 5 turns in a row and have a bunch of counterspells in hand.

The deck wins by following these 3 easy steps: Draw cards, play Azor's Elocutors, take 5 turns. Simple.

Ok, but how?

The trickiest part is buying time to get Azor's Elocutors onto the battlefield. This is where the counters and Howling Mines (and the draw from Arcane Denial) are very helpful.

Once the Elocutors are out, use Mystical Tutor, Brainstorm and (if you're lucky) Ponder to shift Temporal Mastery to the top so you can cast it for its miracle cost. the extra turns will help us get the filibuster counters we need without having to worry too much about our opponent getting in the way. The dream is to miracle Temporal Mastery and Twincast it. That'll get us 2/5 of the way to winning for just 4 mana!

The additional card draw from the Howling Mines makes it much more likely you'll hit another extra turn spell, or at least a way to dig further to find one. They also make the Laboratory Maniac win much faster (...well, relatively much faster; it's still very slow).

Once the deck gets going and you've hopefully used a Temporal Mastery or two, you should be in good shape to pay the buyback cost for Walk the Aeons a few times. Savor the Moment is really only for if you need an extra turn to win the game or if you're desperate.

All of the counters are to make sure your extra turns don't get countered and you don't take direct damage and lose your hard-earned filibuster counters.

It doesn't work, does it?

Yes! It actually does! I won a handful of games before retiring the deck. People always thought it was fun the first time it won, but it isn't the kind of deck you want to play against often (or more than once).

It could be a little slow to start and assembling everything you need isn't a given, but once you're set up it's surprisingly consistent.

I even won one game with Laboratory Maniac because Azor's Elocutors didn't show up until the end and my opponent was very patient.

Things to ignore

The deck has 4 Sol Ring and 2 Tolarian Academy: I know this stretches 'Casual' a bit far, but we're trying to win with Filibuster counters! We need all the help we can get!

All the counterspells: A necessary evil, otherwise the Elocutors would never finish their speech.

The deck has 61 cards: I miscounted and didn't feel like taking one out. (The extra card is Academy Ruins. I added it because I had it and why not?)

Upgrades & Variations

I built this deck for the challenge and played it a few times over a couple of years. I've disassembled it (and sold some of the pieces), so I'm not looking to update the list. However, I've gotten some really good suggestions that I feel are worth noting for anyone looking to build their own filibuster deck!

Proliferate: A few people mentioned using proliferate to get the counters quickly and I think this is a much better way of doing it, it's just not the flavour of this deck. I really like the look of Flux Channeler for being able to quickly trigger proliferate since most of the spells in the deck are noncreatures.

Energy Field: I overlooked this little gem when I originally built the deck, but it fits perfectly. If you pay the buyback cost for Walk the Aeons you can even take extra turns without having to sacrifice the Energy Field.

Icbrgr mentioned a turbo fog version that I think sounded really strong. It used cards like Holy Day, Dawn Charm, Ethereal Haze, Kami of False Hope, and Batwing Brume to stall the game and prevent damage, along with Paradox Haze to get the requisite filibuster counters.

Top Ranked	Achieved #18 position overall 2 years ago Achieved #1 position in Casual 2 years ago
Date added	9 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Casual legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 19 - 0 Rares 9 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	61
Avg. CMC	2.51
Folders	Random Stuff, Build Future