Big mana, blue permanents, and beatdown combine to make this EDH deck unlike any other I know. In my primer, I'll tell you how the deck works, why I chose the cards I did, and try to explain what I learned while building it. Please +1 if you enjoy.
How does this deck win?
The primary gameplan is to kill each opponent with Thassa. I know that's not the most efficient path to victory, but it's also not the point. If winning was the only thing I wanted, would I even play Thassa? Probably not. Sometimes it's more fun to try.
So, that's the idea (attacking with Thassa), and this deck does it very well. Thassa "turns on" early and represents an unblockable five-turn clock on any individual player. In a vacuum, Thassa is very difficult to interact with, and, supported by a variety of must-answer threats, is able to keep opponents off balance long enough to finish them.
Building for Devotion
Among fair things to do in EDH, devotion is excellent. The snowballing power it offers can overwhelm opponents if not interrupted, and this deck's best draws typically involve untapping with Nythos, Shrine to Nyx and either
Future Sight
or
Magus of the Future
on the battlefield. This combination provides a near endless amount of mana as well as cards to play and strongly correlates to winning the game. Devotion, however, isn't without drawbacks.
To maximize the effects of devotion we are forced to play permanents. This exposes the deck to blow outs in the form of sweepers a la Wrath of God. Working to offset this, however, the deck deliberately divides it's threats across a variety of permanent types. This way, opponents are forced to attack from multiple angles if they want to meaningfully stop our devotion.
Finding ways to disrupt opponents while advancing devotion is also a challenge. A few planeswalkers and creatures can interact with opponents, but most of the deck's enchantments want to interfere with opponents in some way.
Icy Prison
tells you that we're not exactly operating on a normal axis.
Uniquely, planeswalkers are very good here. Few spells can remove them and that's great with Thassa being a 5/5 indestructible blocker. Planeswalkers give us excellent devotion, are flexible, force opponents to act, swallow damage that might otherwise be directed at us, and, oh yeah, they can sometimes win the game too. I know the common understanding is that planeswalkers are weak in multiplayer formats, but every time I add one to this deck it over-performs. Trust.
What's up with all the Wizards?
Thassa only has access to one colour, so it's important to use every advantage contained within it. Every creature in this deck is a wizard, so each one we play from our deck powers up payoffs like
Patron Wizard
and
Azami, Lady of Scrolls
, two cards that also provide excellent devotion. The wizard subtheme adds a powerful dimension to this deck, allowing it to create another kind of snowballing advantage alongside devotion.
As a general rule, I don't like to play mana-intensive creatures in EDH unless they contribute to some greater purpose besides beatdown. Here's why: the right beater never comes up at the right time. It's a problem shared by hatebear decks in EDH; even though the perfect foil to an opponent exists somewhere in the deck, without a reliable way to find it, luck decides if it appears. In this format, the window for creatures to have a meaningful impact closes quickly, if it even opens at all. This is not to say that costly creatures are unplayable, but hoping to curve into random big dudes isn't consistent or particularly effective. Maybe when things line up right it looks great, but I would contend that scenario is relatively rare.
I bring this up specifically because I see so many Thassa decks loaded with mana-hungry octopuses and krakens. I know you're just trying to make
Quest for Ula's Temple
playable, but forcing that garbage results in clunky, top-heavy decks that rarely reward their pilots with the card they want when they need it.
Consider again our gameplan (reminder: it's attacking with Thassa), and suddenly attacking with anything else starts to look very bad. Commander damage is like poison, the opponent's life totals are cut almost in half, but no matter what cards we play, Thassa is the only source capable of dealing commander damage. Attacking with another creature is akin to attacking another resource entirely. We're already paying two mana per turn to make Thassa unblockable,
Having access to such a powerful, hard-to-remove beater in the command zone frees up deckbuilding space to play creatures that benefit us in other ways. Enter Wizards.
Wizards are probably the best tribe available in mono-blue EDH decks. They have powerful effects, exist at many points along the curve, and provide excellent devotion. It doesn't matter the order they appear or what our opponents are doing, each creature threatens to be the one that puts the deck over the top, and our opponents are forced to interact or they risk falling behind. Every wizard in the deck propels it forward in some capacity and thus is greater than the sum of its parts.
Wizards also play into blue's strengths.
If this sounds similar to the devotion section above, that's by design. While these strategies operate on a similar axis (playing permanents), they each support each other. If trying to stop one snowball falling down a mountain is hard, trying to stop two at the same time is next to impossible.
The Importance of Scry and Topdeck Manipulation
Thassa's scry ability provides excellent card selection over the course of a game by "fixing" draws (typically in favour of lands or not) and it adds consistency to the curve. It's advisable to play Thassa on turn three 100% of the time, so that from there you can hope to work your way into a serviceable hand for the mid-game.
Interestingly antithetical to the battlecruiser-style of EDH deckbuilding, but the lack of consistency makes it so that making every card contribute to a larger goal, rather than being individually strong, tends to win in longer games.
This section allows you to customize the decklist to fit your playstyle and budget. Obviously, not everyone has access to
Invoke Prejudice
or
Field of Dreams
, so these suggestions can help fill in any gaps. This section can also be used to modify the deck and focus the strategy in any of several directions. I have separated the cards into loose themes and rated them based on my recommendation, more *s are better.
