Looking for some good deck to play in November? If you’re a Blue addict, you may find yourself reaching for the Undermines and Absorbs reflexively. Mono-blue’s Draw-Go dreams are dead, right? Maybe. But in the spirit of inquiry, we here at the Shack of Ideas humbly bring you:
November Love Revolution Turbo-Chevy *
(I’m a sucker for goofy names.)
Adrian Sullivan Turbo-Chevy made a few waves last season at APACs, and found some advocates like The Ben Seck and Tobey Tamber. A lot of cards were lost (Foil, Thwart, Accumulated Knowledge). But one Odyssey card excites me like no other: Peek. Be sure to check that this card doesn’t violate any local laws or city ordinances before playing it, folks, as it can make even the most jaded control player nauseous.
“Look at my hand? HOW DARE YOU?… Well, okay, it’s not even a threat and all… Waitaminute…”
There are no wrong questions; there are only wrong answers. And Peek has no particularly good answer.
Anyway, enough evil smirking and onto the deck and analysis, already!
The stupid, glossy vocals that don’t mean jack, but sure make the song sugary:
4 Opt
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Peek
This deck cuts a cantrip from the original deck (Tsabo’s Web) and replaces the sure-to-be missed Accumulated Knowledges with Peek. Why not Predict? Peek helps keep the mana curve smoothed out – and frankly, it scares the living hell out of an opposing counter player. In addition, I’m a bad control player, and I need to see what my opponent is actually doing if I want to play control effectively. And if the other guy counters this… Hey, that’s one less counter he’ll be able to throw at my real threats.
Side note: If you’re a good player, and considering I’ve upped the land count, why not play Predict instead? There’s nothing stopping you. I’m simply at the playing point where I know I’m a poor control player, and haven’t gotten good enough at knowing the opponent’s deck well enough to know what to counter. And I’ll take consistent play ability over luck right now in my playing repertoire.
The actual meat of the track:
4 Thieving Magpie
2 Mahamoti Djinn
2 Temporal Adept
2 Glacial Wall
If you’ve played the original Turbo-Chevy here, you know the score. Magpie keeps your hand full and makes life tough for the opponent. Eventually, you’ll pull a Mahamoti, and send the mass of blue fat and gristle three ways to get the job done. Temporal Adept can absolutely ruin a control deck if it’s dropped early, and is absolutely brutal against flashback green. And Glacial Wall? Isn’t it a holdout against Fires? I mean, it doesn’t even stop Finkel. But against Green and the new Red creature-heavy Sligh decks, you’re going to drool over these big slabs of ice.
The sampled disco beat that takes no creativity to put together:
4 Syncopate
4 Memory Lapse
4 Counterspell
What – only twelve counters? Well, mono-blue is somewhat starved of reliability, and with flashback cropping its ugly head up (repeatedly), counter warfare is not going to be the real key. Instead, you’ve got the following as backup:
The cheap hook:
With green Stompy looking to curb counters with flashback, bounce is at a nearly all-time high premium. Repulse will help keep your opponent from getting the tempo advantage by buying you a card or two, and Wash Out will blow a whole mass of men off the board for a turn or two. That’s time you need to get the ‘Pies rolling. And remember, you’re functionally playing with a forty-eight card deck. So just add an effective 25% to the count of what’s being played… In theory, anyway.
Never underestimate the card-preserving potential of using Repulse to save your men from a messy, agonizing death. You only have ten of them, so lose one at your peril.
Oh yeah, and the land:
20 Island.
Ah, if only Dave Price’s immortal wit was turned towards blue rather than red… Nah. Blue has always gotten the best cards, why does it deserve the best jokes?
But seriously, why twenty instead of eighteen? For a few reasons. For one thing, playing the classic Turbo Chevy was hellishly irritating when I drew a hand of three one-mana cantrips and couldn’t pull a land for the life of me. Meanwhile, bad times targeted directly at Becky were brewing on the other side of the board. For another, Syncopate actually relies on hellish amounts of mana to get reliable later on in the game. And the little bells and whistles in my head are going off ever since I saw cards like Tremble and the Flashback Stone Rain.
A proposed sideboard:
4 Divert (against anything with burn, counters, or land destruction… Gee, maybe they should go in the main deck? But on the other hand, I don’t have any at the moment, am a tad bit poor, and I may not be able to find any before November 1st.)
2 Wash Out
2 Glacial Wall
2 Temporal Adept
2 Mahamoti Djinn
2 Traumatize
1 Gainsay
Divert is so insanely good it’s a better sideboard option than Gainsay in the blue matchups.
The way this deck usually plays out is:
Turn one, play Sleight or Opt. Make sure you have a second land. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Turn two, drop an Island. You should have the ability to use any of your counters effectively here. If you don’t, be sure to use as many cantrips as possible at the end of the other guy’s turn.
Turn three, again hold back. Cantrip if you’d like, as long as you’re at three mana.
Turn four, let everything apparently go to the wind and play a Magpie. Since you’ve drawn about thirteen or fourteen cards by now, you should have seen one. If not, hold back with Repulse.
If you’ve gotten this far and the other guy’s board is relatively clear, you’ll be all right. Just keep drawing cards like mad and be selective about what you let through. And do let creatures through; you’ll be able to Repulse and keep drawing cards, and eventually good things will happen to you. Good things that come out of a bottle.
Good matchups? Well, I made this thing as viable as possible against Green Stompy with Flashback as possible. You’ll probably do pretty well against White Weenie and Green Stompy. R/G Fires will be about seventy percent in your favor in game 1, due to the large amount of bounce and counters. Frankly, I think Black’s going to be the underplayed color right now, since everyone will be in shock after losing Ritual, though I honestly predict Black will be very solid in some sort of deck in a month… Outside of being splashed for Finkel, that is.
So put this in your test gauntlet for States; I figure it’s one of the only viable mono-blue builds that don’t use Opposition. Don’t really expect to play the waiting and mind games of Draw-Go, but if you want to play counters and aren’t willing to play with shaky mana bases, here’s a decent option. For questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line. Special thanks to Adrian Sullivan for creating the deck, and for Tobey Tamber, who gave me some creative criticism on playing the blessed thing.
Eli Kaplan
[email protected]
Gaijineli on efnet
* – Note: I ain’t giving away the musical reference in the deck title unless you email me. And it’s less than a year old.