Welcome back to our Tuesday installment of decking. Yesterday, I looked at the ever popular Mirage rare Jungle Patrol and built a deck around it. Not only was it a fun deck, but it also had a bit of the “bad rare” syndrome going with it.
Today I want to take a look at another Mirage card. I was in a Mirage draft in Magic: The Electronic and I was drafting a Blue/White deck (which, despite the paucity of good cards in the colors and a decided rare drafting strategy, still took me to the finals), when the tenth pick came around to me and Tidal Wave was still there.
Let me repeat this for those in the back. Tidal Wave was still there. At pick ten. Tidal. Wave. Now, I know that Blue isn’t the most popular color at the table, but I also know that there was at least one other heavy Blue drafter there (I played him in the finals). How does Tidal Wave make it that late? Blue has so little in the way of removal that I was staggered to see good Blue removal just sitting there, waiting to be picked. Tidal Wave is arguably better than just about any other Blue removal spell legal in Magic: The Electronic.
Tidal Wave rocks.
Yesterday, I built a deck around walls, so today I wanted to play a spell which is quite good, actually, while also making a wall. It was a nice little bit of symmetry. Let’s see what I can do with Tidal Wave.
Waving for the Last Call
4 Tidal Wave
4 Floodgate
2 Ovinomancer
4 Prodigal Sorcerer
2 Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Helm of Possession
4 Frozen Solid
4 Counterspell
4 Dissipate
24 Islands
I decided to play funky Blue removal. From Frozen Solid to good old fashioned Prodigal Sorcerer, this hopefully reads like a who’s who of Blue removal (barring Psionic Blast and such of course. Obviously, if you have that sort of stuff, then play it.)
If you remember Ovinomancer as fondly as I, then you’ll love trying to play this card. This is hardly the first time I’ve tossed Ovinomacer into a deck, so you’ll note that I wax longingly for the days of sheep tokens as well. It fits nicely into this deck since it is not nearly as big a target when played next to some of these other cards.
Another classic trick revolves around Floodgate. There have been many ways to try and kill off a Floodgate in order to send out the flood waters. From Chaos Charm to Flight of Fancy, there are all sorts of ways to get your Gate killed. I would normally toss in Blasting Station at this point, and rightfully so since it would work well with the Tims and Frozen Solids. However, I feel like I’ve been using Goblin Bombardments and Blasting Stations too much recently, so I instead tossed in a full slate of Helm of Possessions. The Helms are a great card with a nice Blue feel that fits well in the deck. You can sack a Gate or a Wall token to the Helm in order to acquire a nice creature while also offing tons of creatures if you sacked a Gate.
Aboshan fits in as a nice Blue control mechanism that can be reused as well as serving to swing for damage after locking down a table.
After that, it’s a simple matter to round out the deck by adding card drawing and countermagic. You may want to try and get some different sorts of cards – from Keiga, the Tide Star to Compulsion. Feel free to try out whatever fits your style, card collection and budget.
I really like the old school feel of this deck. Tidal Wave, Floodgate, Dissipate and Ovinomancer are all Mirage/Visions cards. Meanwhile, the Helm of Possession and Counterspell are Tempest cards. Prodigal Sorcerer is obviously old school as well.
You might want to try and emphasize the classic-ness of this deck by taking out the more recent parts – Fact or Fiction, Frozen Solid, and Aboshan. Man-o’-War, Impulse, Three Wishes, Knight of the Mists, Ether Well, Rainbow Efreet, and more could easily find their way into this deck instead.
Another way to modify this deck is to remove some of the fun elements and add more controllish. Prodigal Sorcerer is nice and all, but it hardly packs a punch these days. You could easily strip them out for something more powerful – like Morphling, Rainbow Efreet, Masticore, or whatever.
In fact, Masticore in lieu of Sorcerers, Forbids in lieu of Frozen Solid, and Morphling in lieu of Ovinomancer would create a very powerful control deck. You’d want a bit more card drawing, so maybe a pair of Helms would make way for Braingeysers. The result would be a quirky, yet potent control deck.
On the other hand, strip out the Tidal Waves and Floodgates for, say, a quartet each of Mana Leak and Impulse and you’d end up with a quite different deck altogether. Take out the remaining Helms for Disks. It would look like this:
Powerful Blue Control Deck
4 Masticore
2 Morphling
2 Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor
4 Impulse
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Braingeyser
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
4 Forbid
4 Dissipate
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
24 Island
That’s a much different deck, but I suppose you could say it began as a fun eccentric Blue control deck and then just grew. Of course, I’d rather not build decks like these, thank you very much. I much prefer the original version.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent