As the name suggests, this deck is a dimir tempo deck. Meaning that the typical strategy for it is to disrupt your opponent's plays, early to mid-game and clear the ground for your Haughty Djinns to finish off your opponent. While this deck could run perfectly fine on mono-blue, I find that the addition of removal in the form of Gix's Command and some punishing cards like Talion, the Kindly Lord, is a much better way of rounding up some of the matchups that mono-blue tempo would otherwise struggle with.
The deck is mainly built around this simple idea, playing blue spells to disrupt your opponent and generate as much card advantage as you can, generating tempo in the early game and setting up for your Djinns, with a counter option, in the form of Thief of Sanity, a brutal 2/2 flyer that allows you to mill your opponent for three cards and exile one of them/play them from exile.
This card's impact in the deck is minor, it's almost always better to play a Djinn, but the simple fact that it is a flyer that essentially allows you to filter your opponent's deck and go +1 every time you attack with it is enough for people to wanna invest resources into removing it, resources that you wanna divert away from your djinns as much as possible, anyways. Basically, the thieves are only here to force the opponent to make a choice or mislead them into thinking you are playing a slower deck than you actually are, all the while generating value for you if left unchecked for too long. So even though it may seem like a questionable addition, I found through play testing that it actually works really well with the rest of the deck!
It is to be noted that, like in any tempo deck, no creature should be played without having any extra ressources for protecting them. Usually try to keep at least one mana open to bounce one of your creatures and waste your opponent's responses. Do also note that it's usually best to keep a Test of Talents reserved for removal spells, if you are facing a midrange deck, but that it should be kept for big value cards like boardwipes or Commands against control decks and, otherwise, anything that seems to generate card advantage for your opponent, this card is really good for disrupting your opponent but is most effective when, and only when, you know exactly how your opponent's deck runs and what it's trying to achieve.
Mid-game should be mainly trying to keep the advantage and maintaining your creatures on the board for as long as you possibly can until you can either finish the game or, at the very least get to the late-game phase.
Now, where a lot of the time, mono-blue tempo tends to fall appart in late game against any deck that can overwhelm you and manage to build up a board regardless of your counterplays, the black spells are there to help you regain any potentially lost momentum, Gix's Command is one of my favorite ways to get a quick and consequential tempo swing during your turn. Magic Mirror is a very gimmicky card, in and of itself, it is often too slow to have any major impact in a game, but since the deck is built for BO1, having one isn't the worst thing in the world, considering the options the deck has for drawing/sculpting your hand, and it does have the added benefit of helping out against slower decks that would otherwise try to outvalue us during the late game.
Essentially, with this deck, you'll find yourself sometimes able to win by basically playing a mono-blue deck, and any time you can't, you'll have access to black removal spells and cost efficient control options to maintain the pressure on your opponent, generate steady value, salvage creatures from the graveyard or just completely close out the game. I have purposefully not included too many black spells, and none that cost any less than 3 mana for the specific reason that this deck shouldn't rely on getting black mana early on and will realistically only ever need it during the mid to late-game period.
It is to be noted that the deck is leaning a bit more into a control deck than pure tempo, and although there is not enough black spells to justify running a second color, the landbase itself is consistent and the value that these black spells generate make it a very versatile and fun deck that is nothing to laugh at, in the right hands.
