[Deck] Mono-Blue Control (MUC)

[Darkenslight]

I disagree entirely. JTMS is the best finisher the deck has ever seen, and TNN is a close second.

To be fair, there aren't that many cards that deal with AEtherling, provided you can leave sufficient mana open - Deluge doesn't, Swords doesn't, even Terminus doesn't. The only cards that might be able to deal with it are the Split Second cards, and it would take two of them, which is mana your opponent isn't spending on harrassing you out of the game.

[trollking21]

To be fair, there aren't that many cards that deal with AEtherling, provided you can leave sufficient mana open - Deluge doesn't, Swords doesn't, even Terminus doesn't. The only cards that might be able to deal with it are the Split Second cards, and it would take two of them, which is mana your opponent isn't spending on harrassing you out of the game.

But 7 mana seems like a lot (he only costs 6 but you'll never cast him for that) and getting to 6-7 mana seems way worse then casting TNN and letting him beat for 3 a turn.

[Tea]

Black (and White) have plenty of removal that can deal with TNN.

Jace is much better in Miracle and BUG control than it is in MUC, because the removal suite is so much better.

Aetherling is just there to win control matchups like Miracle, Punishing Fires, Lilliana, or Pernicious Deed. It is the luxury of blue that a card that is stuck in hand doesn't cause any problems.

[trollking21]

Black (and White) have plenty of removal that can deal with TNN.

Jace is much better in Miracle and BUG control than it is in MUC, because the removal suite is so much better.

Aetherling is just there to win control matchups like Miracle, Punishing Fires, Lilliana, or Pernicious Deed. It is the luxury of blue that a card that is stuck in hand doesn't cause any problems.

The difference is that jace does something along the way, if you need to you can unsummon goyf eat a delver attack and live to see another day. that seems like a reasonable turn 4, where aetherling doesn't do anything til earliest turn 7 but more likely turn 10+ because you most likely wont hit every land drop or you may want to protect him from double swords to plowshares. I don't think a deck can have a card that takes that long to get active, you can test it but i imagine it will just be force fodder.

[Darkenslight]

The difference is that jace does something along the way, if you need to you can unsummon goyf eat a delver attack and live to see another day. that seems like a reasonable turn 4, where aetherling doesn't do anything til earliest turn 7 but more likely turn 10+ because you most likely wont hit every land drop or you may want to protect him from double swords to plowshares. I don't think a deck can have a card that takes that long to get active, you can test it but i imagine it will just be force fodder.

You're assuming that players won't run both.

[Tea]

Maybe yeah 1x Aetherling is probably enough.

Aetherling is force fodder most of the time, but if you're up against control, it is not force fodder, but a very nice silver-bullet. In my opinion we better have too many win-cons than too few.

[trollking21]

You're assuming that players won't run both.

I'm assuming you keep adding jace's every time you want aetherling. So unless you hit 4 jace plus aetherling then yes I'm assuming you don't run both. Are you slamming in 4 copies of jace and some number of aetherling? Do you have a deck list in mind?

[Tea]

I'm assuming you keep adding jace's every time you want aetherling. So unless you hit 4 jace plus aetherling then yes I'm assuming you don't run both. Are you slamming in 4 copies of jace and some number of aetherling? Do you have a deck list in mind?

Yes, my list a page back has 4 Jaces and 2 Aetherling. You can speed the deck up by cutting one Aetherling or BtB, but it is already reasonably well prepared against early aggro rushes.

[Erdvermampfa]

what about splashing white to gain access to better removal cards (terminus)?

[trollking21]

Yes, my list a page back has 4 Jaces and 2 Aetherling. You can speed the deck up by cutting one Aetherling or BtB, but it is already reasonably well prepared against early aggro rushes.

You have 4 counterspell 4 force spike 4 jace 2 aetherling 3 disks.
You take a long long time to get going, and I practiced a few hands with the deck and so many of the hands are like
Force spike, counterspell, nev disk, counterspell, 3 land.
Or jace, aetherling, back to basics force spike 3 land.
You just have a hard time to anything dropping turn 1 threats. Out of the 25 or so hand probably 20 were pretty awkward where you have counterspells and nothing to do. Also what happens if a deck plays turn 1 vial or cavern? Do you just hope to pull disk or get shackles online quickly enough.
TNN seems better then aetherling because if they go delver, into goyf he can save you till other things get online. Also few decks can answer him in the main deck, as well as he kills jace's and the occasional tezz.

Btw what makes running 4 counterspell 4 force spike 4 force better then just running counterbalance top? Keeping force in the deck. Top helps you by letting you find everything and it dodges disk pretty a and hopefully you can dodge blowing up counterbalance with a disk.
Excuse the grammatical errors I'm on my phone

[Tea]

what about splashing white to gain access to better removal cards (terminus)?

You're missing the point of MUC. StP, Terminus, and Supreme Verdict aren't better than EE, Counterspell, and Vedalken Shackles. White is purely anti-creature, whereas MUC is more of a universal control deck, that is supposed to have a better game against combo and control, hence I run Force Spike and not Powder Keg/Repeal.

You have 4 counterspell 4 force spike 4 jace 2 aetherling 3 disks.
You take a long long time to get going, and I practiced a few hands with the deck and so many of the hands are like
Force spike, counterspell, nev disk, counterspell, 3 land.
Or jace, aetherling, back to basics force spike 3 land.
You just have a hard time to anything dropping turn 1 threats. Out of the 25 or so hand probably 20 were pretty awkward where you have counterspells and nothing to do. Also what happens if a deck plays turn 1 vial or cavern? Do you just hope to pull disk or get shackles online quickly enough.
TNN seems better then aetherling because if they go delver, into goyf he can save you till other things get online. Also few decks can answer him in the main deck, as well as he kills jace's and the occasional tezz.

Btw what makes running 4 counterspell 4 force spike 4 force better then just running counterbalance top? Keeping force in the deck. Top helps you by letting you find everything and it dodges disk pretty a and hopefully you can dodge blowing up counterbalance with a disk.
Excuse the grammatical errors I'm on my phone

Maybe you were just unlucky? EE is the card that can deal with Vial and Delver. I've found it very hard to push the early-game even further, without damaging my lategame.

[MGB]

- AEtherling is garbage. Legacy is too fast a format to wait until 7 mana is open before playing a finisher in a control deck. All this deck needs as a finisher is 4 Jace. Why over think it? Jace is the best blue permanent ever printed and the best control finisher ever printed. You don't need to clog up valuable slots in this deck with inefficient 6-7 mana beaters.

- The reason you play this deck at all in Legacy is the ability to profitably play 4 Back to Basics MD. You need to play them MD and if you're worried about Abrupt Decay, I would recommend playing Misdirection and even some Divert MD. These two are good against discard and in counter wars too. And even if they kill B2B with Decay, it's still just a 1-for-1 trade.

- This deck needs 4 draw spells in addition to Jace. Brainstorm is a filter and not a draw spell. This deck needs 4 copies of one of the following, in order of preference: Ancestral Vision, Standstill, Thirst for Knowledge, or Think Twice. This deck doesn't work without card advantage. Trading 1-for-1 with counterspells needs lots of card draw to work.

[Claymore]

What about Noetic Scales? It has been floated as an idea in Pox but they might not run enough mana (considering Smallpox, Wasteland) to consistently get it down. Scales is AD proof and it forces decks to slowly stock their hand so they can build a buffer so they can land one creature...and I think that type of situation definitely favors MUC.

[Jofiel]

I have some different idea for MUC...
What do You think about this?
(it's variation of U/R Delever")

Without Jace it gains more fun, yap :p

Lands:
13 x Island
4 x Polluted Delta
1 x Riptide Laboratory

Creatures:
4 x Delver of Secrets
3 x Drifter il-Dal (Instead of Grim Lavamancer)
3 x Snapcaster Mage
2 x Patron Wizard (eventualy Vendilion Clique)

Enchantments & Artifacts:
4 x Unstable Mutation (Instead of Lightning Bolt)
1 x Feldon's Cane

Draw:
4 x Brainstorm
3 x Ponder

Spellhate:
4 x Force of Will
4 x Daze
3 x Divert
3 x Spell Pierce // Spell Snare

Other:
3 x Rapid Hybridization // Pongify (Instead of Swords)
2 x Devastation Tide (A little suprise)

SB:
3 x Extract // Hydroblast
3 x Alter Reality (good with chill anyway)
3 x Chill
2 x Rushing River // Riptide
3 x Echoing Truth // Mind Bomb
1 x Daze / Hybridization

[Tea]

// lands: 24
12 Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Plain
1 Dust Bowl (could be another Island)
1 Academy Ruins

// card-quality: 4
4 Brainstorm

// early-game: 20
4 Vendilion Clique
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
3 Force Spike
4 Engineered Explosives
1 Repeal

// lategame:
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Nevinyrral's Disk (I like Disk more than O-Stone)
3 Vedalken Shackles
2 Batterskull

SB:
4 Spell Pierce
4 Flusterstorm
3 Repeal
2 Dust Bowl
1 Vedalken Shackles
1 Batterskull


That's my actual list. My former list is just one page back for comparison. I didn't change much radically, technically I've just given it a bit of fine-tuning, but the difference is definitely noticeable:
BtB and Disk shouldn't be run together (at least not in the maindeck)
1-of Academy Ruins is awesome with Batterskull (and 4x EE, Shackles, Disk)
Batterskull is faster/better than Aetherling, especially with Academy Ruins, a card I'm fully convinced of.
-1 Force Spike (or Spell Snare/Spell Pierce), +1 repeal gives the deck a better balance of removal/counterspells
Repeal is better than Ratchet bomb as the secondary removal spell after EE.
Dust Bowl is my prefered non-basic hate against Miracle.

Btw, I've drawn most of my inspiration from the members 4eak and Rancourous, p. 76.

[trino]

Hello everyone. I've been playing MUC casually with some friends for a couple of years now, and I've recently decided to take it to a some small local tournaments.
This is what I'm currently working with:

18 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest

4 True-Name Nemesis

4 Brainstorm
3 Sensei’s Divining Top

4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

4 Propaganda
4 Vedalken Shackles

2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Curse of the Swine
1 Powder Keg

I'd like some outside thoughts on this deck. Be gentle :P

[Lemnear]

Hello everyone. I've been playing MUC casually with some friends for a couple of years now, and I've recently decided to take it to a some small local tournaments.
This is what I'm currently working with:

18 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest

4 True-Name Nemesis

4 Brainstorm
3 Sensei’s Divining Top

4 Counterbalance
4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell

4 Propaganda
4 Vedalken Shackles

2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Curse of the Swine
1 Powder Keg

I'd like some outside thoughts on this deck. Be gentle :P

You might wanna look at Devastation Tide if you are already running SDT (please as a playset and with at least 8 fetchlands to maximize card selection) as removal is the crucial Problem in mono blue and Shackles/Propaganda are much too slow for todays threats. I could see this working with Vapor snag, Riptide Laboratory and Snapcasters to gain time for landdrops and/or Ancestral Visions. You might want to consider playing actual threats like Aetherling too as TNN + Counterbalance is pretty unreliable these days

[Darkenslight]

Jaces are probably better win-conditions than Shackles. In addition, I wouild consider playing Whelming Wave as a pseudo-Wrath effect (for Elves! and D&T, as well as EtW out of Storm).

[ParkerLewis]

Hi all,

sorry to see this thread basically dead.

I have this old list sleeved up from a few years ago (just going back from a ~6+ years break from the game), and was wondering how to update it ?

// Lands
24 [P2] Island (3)

// Creatures
2 [US] Morphling

// Spells
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [IA] Counterspell
3 [DIS] Spell Snare
4 [TE] Propaganda
3 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
4 [TSP] Ancestral Vision
4 [IN] Fact or Fiction
4 [UD] Powder Keg
4 [US] Back to Basics

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [FD] Vedalken Shackles
SB: 4 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 4 [TE] Chill
SB: 2 [LRW] Jace Beleren
SB: 4 [GP] Repeal

Obvious change :
+4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
-4 Fact or Fiction

Other cards to consider : Vendilion Clique, TNN, Talrand, ... ?

I'd rather stay Mono-U, but I guess a little splash is possible.

[dsck]

Abrupt decay/Red elemental Blast/Pyroblast are problematic, which is why nobody plays this deck anymore since those 2 cards are in pretty much every tier 1 deck.