Patron of the moon, mono blue lands.
A lot of people look at
Patron of the Moon
and they see a weird, gimmicky commander with no real potential for competitive play. While he is definitely a weird choice, he has a lot of potential to be really powerful in the right hands. I've been playing with this deck for some time now, and have spent a lot of time tuning it to my meta. When I see other Patron of the Moon decks, I see almost everyone making the same few mistakes, and then no one is surprised when they lose every game by playing nothing but pure jank. Hopefully I can demonstrate the potential he has.
At its core, this is a combo deck that aims to make infinite mana very quickly. Listing every infinite combo would be an impossible task, there are so many ways to go infinite that I find new combos every few games. Although I call it a lands deck, it plays more like a combo deck. It just so happens that lands are a necessary combo piece, we aren't really that focused on doing things with lands. This deck does a lot of things differently compared to other land decks, mostly as a result of the limited number of cards blue has that care about lands.
Not Falling for Gimmicks
A lot of people may be surprised to see that I'm missing a lot of the most common cards people play with Patron of the Moon. After a lot of play testing and experimenting I've come to the conclusion that most of these cards are just bad and not worth playing.
Overburden
,
Mana Breach
,
Storm Cauldron
, and basically every moonfolk, to name a few. These cards are just gimmicky, and although they seem to synergize well with Patron, they really don't help our end goal at all.
We want to combo into an infinite
Stroke of Genius
with
Laboratory Maniac
in play, or find an infinite land loop with
Adventuring Gear
equipped on Patron. A well-timed
Sunder
can easily win the game as well, especially considering how easily we can put lands back on the field. Cards like
Overburden
and
Mana Breach
take all of the control out of your hands. Its a smarter idea in general to selectively target cards we don't like, rather then just punish our opponents for doing stuff. We have plenty of other ways to mess with our opponents, and cards like these just put a huge target on your head for a relatively small payoff.
Storm Cauldron
and
Ghirapur Orrery
don't really do anything worthwhile either. We don't care about getting extra land drops, we can play a huge number of lands basically for free with our commander in play.
Combos
This is where Patron of the Moon shines. If you decide to play this deck, you'll start to find neat little combos popping up everywhere.
Amulet of Vigor
is our strongest combo piece. Without it, you can't really go infinite. Mana doublers like
Gauntlet of Power
and
Caged Sun
are just as important, although opponents will generally target them more often. By far the most powerful mana doubler we have access to is
High Tide
. No card is more explosive than it is. In a pinch, it makes for a good temporary boost to mana as well. Learning when to cast your
High Tide
is key to success here. The next combo piece we need is anything that returns lands to our hands.
Trade Routes
and
Meloku the Clouded Mirror
are the most efficient land bouncers, but
Pearl Lake Ancient
and
Soratami Cloudskater
will do just as well if you have more mana doublers.
In general a combo will go like this:
- Play
High Tide
if you have it
- Tap all of your lands to float their mana
- return your lands to your hand
- put them back into play with
Patron of the Moon
, they get untapped because of
Amulet of Vigor
- repeat steps 2 through 4
- Play one of our draw x spells, like
Stroke of Genius
- Win with
Laboratory Maniac
