Hi, and welcome to my first in depth analysis of a deck I have made. This deck is designed for standard, and uses surveil synergy to get HEAPS of value out of menial cards! First off the hatchet, we need to discuss the deck’s land. As U/B isn’t really one to get swamped with mana, and its only two colours, Dimir Guildgate and Watery Grave, are the only dual lands. This deck also benefits from value lands such as: Arch of Orazca (for card draw), Field of Ruin (to destroy lands which impose a threat to us), Reliquary Tower (just a good card in general, the limitless hand size is so worth it), and Detection Tower (to counter cards like Shalai, Voice of Plenty, or other hexproof cards that we can’t immediately deal with). As far as basics are concerned, Swamps and Islands are the only necessary ones. (10 swamps, 9 Islands –though this doesn’t really matter).
Before we dive into the juicy deck; the sideboard must be mentioned. This will contain our counterspells, Cancel (x4), Murder (x1), Cast Down (x1), Sinister Sabotage (x4), Wizard's Retort (x4) and a single Primal Amulet
for the value train.
Okay, into the deck! We will run 2 enchantments; Disinformation Campaign and Arguel's Blood Fast
. Disinformation adds a whole lot of value for us, however it isn’t really necessary and is rather expensive to get extensive use out of it. Arguel's Blood Fast
however adds a bunch of card draw, and the life gain is essential late game, when we eventually loose life, if we are self-burning or going up against an aggro Meta. Okay, Value time.
This deck needs some more card draw, so we will run 2 notion rains, which will be more than enough. Mnemonic Betrayal will also be handy if we manage to kill a biggn’ and want to play it for ourselves. So this deck needs a board wipe, 3 in fact. We will run 3 River's Rebuke, and 2 Thought Erasure just for early game harassment. Now, Quasiduplicate is an interesting card, it will give us some value, HOWEVER, it only is really spicy if your copying something, and then use Primal Amulet
transformed, to copy it and you can see where that goes… but we won’t go overboard with it, so we will run just 1 copy.
NOW, my friends –the first part of the dreaded, the Planeswalkers. So, I was tossing up between Karn, Scion of Urza, and Tezzeret, Artifice Master, and here is my thing. Tezzeret is really good, because he makes blockers (which is hard-ish to get in the deck), and he also has card draw, and his total isn’t bad either. Karn on the other hand is just gas. He played on turn 4, is scary as you’re sifting through your deck, and he very quickly becomes worth it. So, I have added 1 copy of both. However, for all of you Budgeters out there, Karn isn’t as important.
Okay, now for the tricky bit- the creatures. First off the bat, Etrata, the Silencer, is one of the win conditions in this deck, I mean, if your surveiling you may as well do it into something. But, we want to abuse Etrata’s ability, so when we flash in Sentinel of the Pearl Trident when Etrata’s ability is on the stack, she will in fact be taken back to the field, and we will still shuffle our library. For more of the rulings, http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=452920.
Theif of Sanity is in my opinion, a new Dimir staple. I mean COME ON, it is amazing. It is both mill and Value at the same time! It’s like super-card draw mill. Anyways, we are also adding Nightveil Predator for the Value, and Nightveil Sprite for the surveil.
Now for the whole reason of this deck; Thoughbound Phantasm and Dimir Spybug. My god will these things get big. So, yes, add them in. Now, I like Lazav, the Multifarious, simply because he is great. I mean, he has a lot of synergy, and you can do insane things with this card. We will also add Dream Eater because we are mean, and want no one to play with us. Blood Operative is a good card, but we only really need 1, because once he is out there, the surveiling quickly makes him a Squee, the Immortal. Now, we are also going to add Twilight Prophet because –he is ridiculous. Card draw is good by itself, but vampiric abilities are even better. We are also going to run a Hostage Taker, a Isareth the Awakener, and a Deadeye Tracker for the VALUE TRAIN.
Finally the pièce de résistance is Doom Whisperer, I mean, dear god, is this card AMAZING. It will make this deck work, and is the key component of the deck.
-Signed
ARAISFERN
