hello Milkaholic, I received your request for help on this deck... By all means, continue asking for help, it is not only allowed it is encouraged here on tappedout....

all right, lets start with the basics, your land base. for your deck 18-20 lands is plenty. so you are good there.... but in order to speed up your deck, Halimar Depths is too slow. I do understand the setting up your draws, so if you want to keep it thats fine, you just sacrifice speed for card advantage. if you drop it, just go straight basic Islands.

Now on to creatures... I suggest 3x Phantasmal Bear, 3x Jace's Phantasm, 4x Lord of the Unreal, and 4x Krovikan Mists, drop all the mill cards (Thought Scour and Dream Twist- the +4/+4 boost from Jace's Phantasm is nice, but not needed with the lords) that will allow you to add in Phantasmal Images x4, the images copy your lords, giving themselves +2/+2 and permanent hexproof to itself and your illusions. and you basically have 8x Lord of the Unreal if you chose to add them in (they are kinda expensive atm though).

Next up noncreature spells, my illusion deck does not use counterspells, as it is an aggro build... the counterspells I tried slowed the deck down... i went instead with a few enchantments ( Ice Cage and Halcyon Glaze ). Ice Cage locks down creatures, and Halcyon Glaze becomes a 4/4 ILLUSION creature, so it benefits from the Lords as well ( but only when you play a creature). I also went for bouce spells Unsummon and Vapor Snag... for removal of blockers, attackers, or other creature threats. I went 3x of all of these, just to keep the numbers consistent. drop some of the counters and give these a try, but make the deck yours, you dont have to straight up copy my deck, do what YOU want.

Overall yur deck is not bad at all, i can see the strategy, and I actually like it.... the deck just needs some tweaking. I think you have a great start with this one, and if you need more help. don't hesitate to ask!

your fellow walker,

Kcin

Thank you so much for your feedback! It really helped me narrow down the focus of the deck.

Budget doesn't allow for Phantasmal Images, so I'm making do with what I have. As I acquire them, I'll drop things as I see fit, but until I do, the +4/+4 boost on Jace's Phantasm is really useful. That's why I'm going to keep the thought scours. They are primarily draw-go, and are really important for helping get that necessary boost out of the Phantasm.

Your comment about counterspells was very useful. I'm used to playing control, so counterspells have always been my go-to for blue. But as you pointed out, this deck is tempo, not control. Hinder is a tempo card, so it will stay in. But I've replaced the mana leaks and the dream twist with 3 Echoing Truth and a third Spell Pierce.

Thank you so much for the feedback, and I will incorporate it as best I can.

And while Halcyon Glaze is a very good card, I'm not running enough creatures to make it worthwhile.

And I also removed the Depths because, as you pointed out, they are too slow

I like the way deck looks! well done incorporating the advice i gave... I do understand budget being tight, so I am all for using what you can. I did think of something if you wanted to be able to set up your draws as well as keep counterspells..... Condescend, Dissolve, and Stymied Hopes are all viable for this purpose. As for the inclusion of Echoing Truth, I had not even known that card exists.... I may have to look into it for my deck (so i learned something from helping you!)...

I also am a Blue mage, if you looked at ALL of the decks in my collection 60- 70% of them have blue in them, so breaking from counterspells was really tough for me, but as this is a tempo deck, I think you have the right balance of them....

Land count is fine for the deck, especially with such a low average CMC, kudos on that.

Yea, I can see with only 16 creatures Halcyon Glaze not being reliable... but if you chane your mind, youmay find it can be a real beast of a card.

I think this deck, though not what i would call complete, it is YOURS. It seems strong, stable, and reliable. which is what a tempo deck needs to be fun (IMO),

Will definitely be keeping an eye on this deck.

I agree that reliable stability is necessary for a fun tempo deck.

Condescend was actually in my first list. It's one of my favorites. That, and it's strictly better than Stymied Hopes. Actually, it's even more than strictly better. When you take it out of a vacuum, Condescend can't be countered by Spell Snare.

But I took it off the list for the same reason that I removed mana leak. I need my counterspells to do something. I can't afford a spell I countered to resolve. I cannot reliably keep enough mana open for condescend to be a counter, and U for Scry 2 just isn't good enough. Mana Leak won't always counter, which is why I removed it. The spell pierces exist because I need a one mana counter to a lot of dangerous threats. The Hinder is there because they WILL ALWAYS gain me tempo, or counter a spell permanently if I need it to.

On a different note, I actually managed to trade for 3 Phantasmal Images, so those are now in the deck.

The scry counters were just a thought, scry can be pretty weak (on the other hand, if theros has shown us anything, scry can be powerful as well), so can definitely get behind not using them, especially if it is a counter spell, unless player pays x... I hate those kind of counters, sometimes that drawback is too easy for the opponent to overcome, say if x is around 1,2,or 3 mana....

I am glad you were able to trade for the Images, they are beasts in this deck.... I also like that you are a player who is not afraid to say no to a suggestion... some players out there, just add to the maybeboard, or just add it in blindly... some cards may seem like a good fit in theory, but in reality they just don't fit at all.

I still love this deck and it just keeps getting better and better. Good luck with it.

Thanks Kcin. It really matters that someone took an interest in this deck and gave constructive, well thought out feedback, and positive reinforcement. I really appreciate it.

The deck has become substantially better because of you, and hopefully it will continue to improve.

no problem, I've been playing since the original Ravnica block... so I do have a fair amount of experience, and I like hepling out players... what good is experience, if I can't share it... I have a friend that I got hooked on magic, at first he SUCKED, like bad... now he consistently makes me work for my victories against him... he even forces my Illusion deck to work harder to win... instead of T5 wins, I normally get T10-T15 wins, depending on what he is using... he just keeps getting better... we don't necessarily keep records, but we are pretty even...

I do wish you the best of luck and like I said, if you need help with anything, just ask, and I will keep checking this deck to see it evolve.

A card that you could consider is Remand, which works almost like Time Walk and kind of fits what you are trying to do in this deck. It helps a lot with your tempo strategy in this deck.

Thanks for the feedback. Remand is an amazing tempo card, and I would love to have some for the deck. Unfortunately, a card that is 10 dollars a piece is outside of my budget at this time.

Right, I forgot Remand was a 10 dollar card.

If they do reprint it (fingers crossed for another Modern Masters), I'll definitely pick up a playset. Remand has always been the card that I envy but that I can't justify budget wise.

I juat read in your description, that if you copy a Dark Confidant you have no way to kill it before it kills you.... actually you do....

Use Phantasmal Image copying Dark Confidant, use the confidant for a few turns, then Vapor Snag the image, when it is targeted sacrifice it, lose a life... not always good to 2-for-1 yourself, but the card advantage the confidant gives should help you out in the long run, and with such low costed creatures in the deck, the life loss is in small increments.

That's actually a good point. I'll make note of that. Thanks Kcin!

Really liking the look of this deck, and the description was fun to read. I've tried my hand at illusion tribal but have been more focused on flooding the board with then and using Coat of Arms or Obelisk of Urd like classical tribals. I like your approach.

My adjustments:

-Spell Pierce, +Stubborn Denial

Spell pierce is strong, especially in fast decks. However, I feel that Denial is a more consistent counter. As you said yourself pierce is sometimes a dead draw and useless, while Stubborn Denial late game could deal with any board wipe more reliably. Either Jace's Phantasm will be big, LotU will pump, Mist will have enough illusion buddies to guarantee a 4-power creature. If that isn't enough, Phantasmal Image can help reach the goal by copying LotU or something high-power from an opponent. Early-game it's weaker, but there mana is more precious and 1 mana cost increase could have a similar effect as 2 mana increase.

-1 Krovikan Mist, +1 Phantasmal Image

The main problem I've had playing illusions is the Lord of the Unreal being a very high value target, often eliminated within 2 turns since it's cast by enemy control. I'd say running 4 Phantasmal Images is mandatory because it increases the chance to hexproof your guy / pump your guys more (twice for krovikan mists even because then it also counts as illusion). Krovikan mists are amazing, but they're heavily reliant on you having more creatures on the field, so it isn't that bad to cast them less/later. And if you need them, you can copy them with your 4th Phantasmal Image and it's like little has changed.

-Flashfreeze, +Counterspell

Probably done because of budget/inventory reasons, but as you're mono-blue this seems like a no-brainer for someone if they have it lying around.

Nevermind, forgot Counterspell was not modern-legal >.<

Thanks Subject134127, I really appreciate the feedback.

It really is a pity that Counterspell isn't modern legal. I don't see why it isn't. The double blue cost will deter many decks, and the others don't want a plain counter. They want the tempo or versatility or color flexibility of Remand, Cryptic Command, or Mana Leak.

In terms of the Stubborn Denial, I think I will stick with the Spell Pierce. The extra tax of the Spell Pierce makes sure that it will stay relevant for a longer time, and I'm not confident that I could reliably reach the 4 power needed to make it a hard counter before the extra mana wasn't an issue for my opponent. That being said, it is very much on my radar.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, shoutout to user Kcin for telling my a while ago that I didn't need the Thought Scour, as it was only netting a card, since the pump to my phantasms was coming from the Lord of the Unreal. Thanks for the tip, and sorry it took so long for me to agree with it and finally realize I needed something more useful in its space. Any thoughts on where it stands now?

With the pump from LotU, 4 power is not hard to reach, Krovikan Mist hits that easily.... so Stubborn Denial would actually work in this deck... maybe put it in the slots freed up from removing Thought Scour?