Blue Moon

[Borg]

Time to post a deck using the most impactful card in Legacy at the moment : Vexing Bauble

For those unfamiliar with this recently released card :

For just 1 mana Vexing Bauble counters Legacy staples like :
- Force of Will, Force of Negation, Daze
- 0-cost cards like Mox Opal, Lotus Petal, Lion's Eye Diamond, Ornithopter
- Evoke cards like Grief, Endurance, Fury, Solitude
- and stops mechanics like Cascade, Plot, Suspend etc...


//CC1
4 Vexing Bauble
4 Vedalken Certarch
4 Moonsnare Prototype
4 Aether Spellbomb
3 Haywire Mite
3 Case of the Filched Falcon
1 The Ozolith
1 The Blackstaff of Waterdeep
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Shadowspear
1 Pithing Needle
1 Gingerbrute

//CC2
4 Rise and Shine
4 Howling Mine
4 Ensoul Artifact

//Lands
5 Island
4 Urza's Saga
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island

Card Choices :

Moonsnare Prototype
Most of the time your best opening play.
Consider this opening :
T1 Moonsnare Prototype
T2 Howling Mine, tap HM for 1 mana and play Vexing Bauble
Tapping the Mine prevents your opponent from drawing a card from it and at the same time it gives you the mana to play another 1cc artifact.
The mine untaps during your untap phase and you draw an extra card.
Tap the mine again next turn OR ...

Follow up with
Rise and Shine, Ensoul Artifact or The Blackstaff of Waterdeep on the Howling Mine.
This allows you to tap the animated mine simply by attacking with it as a 4/4 or 5/5, thus preventing your opponent from drawing cards off of it, and freeing your Moonsnare Prototype to tap another artifact for mana later on ( possibly another Mine ).


Vedalken Certarch
The Certarch can play a multitude of roles and can be active as soon as T2
Consider : T1 Seat of the Synod, Vedalken Certarch T2 Two more 1cc artifacts and he's live.
or T1 Island Vedalken Certarch, T2 Moonsnare Prototype + 2 more 1cc artifacts and he's live again.

What can he do ?
- Tap Howling Mine to give it a one-sided effect
- Tap an opposing land and stunt opponent's development
- tap an opposing creature to prevent it from attacking, especially effective against decks who run a few big ones.
- tap potential blockers to get our own damage through
- tap Winter Orb ( Sideboard ) to get a one sided effect.


Case of the Filched Falcon
This was a surprise find but blends perfectly into this deck.
It can create an artifact (Clue) token on T1 to be animated on T2.
In the meantime the case sticks around to animate another artifact later on.
The animating cost is 1cc higher (3cc) but has the advantage that it creates a Flyer and generates +1/+1 counters which can be recuperated with ...


The Ozolith
- Can be found with Urza's Saga
- Possible T1 drop to be animated on T2
- Can make Rise and Shine and Case of the Filched Falcon extra valuable by keeping the +1/+1 counters in play.


Aether Spellbomb
Its abilities are obvious but I'd like to mention here that this artifact can be animated, tapped to attack and still keep its abilities active since they require no tapping.
When your opponent uses a (creature) removal spell on it you can still bounce one of his creatures or sacrifice it to draw a card.


Haywire Mite
This artifact forces us to dip into Green but may well be worth it. Cfr Chalice of the Void


The addition of Soul-Guide Lantern, Pithing Needle, Shadowspear and Gingerbrute needs no explanation, I presume.

Overall, this deck can cripple an opposing deck from T1 on and follow that up immediately with big beatdown.
It also has control elements of its own to play a longer game and has a potential big finisher ( Gingerbrute )

As always, comments and feedback are appreciated.

[FTW]

+4 Darksteel Citadel.

You don't have greedy blue mana requirements. On the other hand, it helps Metalcraft, Constructs, Affinity, etc.

T1 Darksteel Citadel Vexing Bauble
Then Ensoul Artifact the Citadel (5/5 indestructible) is probably your best start.

Vexing Bauble is a lot better on turn 1 than turn 2 (stops Force, Grief, Daze, mana rocks), so you may want to play Bauble first instead of T1 Moonsnare T2 Bauble.

[Borg]

Darksteel Citadel has been in-and-out of the deck several times.
A T2 animated Citadel sounds nice but it has some shortcomings :
- the Citadel needs to be tapped on T2 and cannot attack
- it puts you like a land drop behind when you start using the Citadel as an attacker and it may not look like it because of all the cheap spells but this deck is actually rather mana hungry because you like to keep mana open for all its sacrifice abilities.

I like the citadel too though and think I can add three of them by replacing 1 Island and two of the less-needed artifacts : Gingerbrute and The Ozolith
Which brings us to

//CC1 - 26
4 Vexing Bauble
4 Vedalken Certarch
4 Moonsnare Prototype
4 Aether Spellbomb
3 Haywire Mite
3 Case of the Filched Falcon
1 The Blackstaff of Waterdeep
1 Soul-Guide Lantern
1 Shadowspear
1 Pithing Needle

//CC2 - 12
4 Rise and Shine
4 Howling Mine
4 Ensoul Artifact

//Lands - 22
4 Island
4 Urza's Saga
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tropical Island
3 Darksteel Citadel