Galina old Border theme

Commander / EDH Mono-Blue

GreekAlchemist2

Enchantment (15)

• 1x Back to Basics
• 1x Confiscate
• 1x Control Magic
• 1x Corrupted Conscience
• 1x Domestication
• 1x Leyline of Anticipation
• 1x Leyline of Singularity
• 1x Mind Control
• 1x Mind's Dilation
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Persuasion
• 1x Propaganda
• 1x Rhystic Study
• 1x Spreading Seas
• 1x Treachery

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Aminatou's Augury
• 1x Blatant Thievery
• 1x Bribery
• 1x Expropriate
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Rite of Replication
• 1x Sea Gate Restoration  ^Flip
• 1x Serum Visions

Land (38)

• 1x Academy Ruins
• 1x Arcane Lighthouse
• 1x Dust Bowl
• 31x Island
• 1x Minamo, School at Water's Edge
• 1x Mystic Sanctuary
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Strip Mine

Creature (14)

• 1x Agent of Treachery
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Callous Oppressor
• 1x Consecrated Sphinx
• 1x Fatespinner
• 1x Gilded Drake
• 1x Hullbreacher
• 1x Phyrexian Metamorph
• 1x Seasinger
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Sower of Temptation
• 1x Stunt Double
• 1x Thada Adel, Acquisitor
• 1x Thieving Skydiver

Artifact (8)

• 1x Gilded Lotus
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mindslaver
• 1x Nyx Lotus
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots
• 1x Thran Dynamo
• 1x Vedalken Shackles

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
• 1x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils

Commander (1)

Instant (13)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Fact or Fiction
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Misdirection
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Opt
• 1x Pull from Tomorrow
• 1x Swan Song

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Maybeboard

Instant (5)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Into the Roil
• 1x Predict
• 1x Thassa's Intervention *f-pre*

Enchantment (4)

• 1x Copy Artifact
• 1x Future Sight
• 1x In Bolas's Clutches
• 1x Search for Azcanta  ^Flip

Artifact (2)

• 1x Coalition Relic
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots

Land (5)

• 1x Castle Vantress
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Tectonic Edge
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Terrain Generator

Planeswalker (4)

• 1x Jace Beleren
• 1x Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1x Jace, Architect of Thought
• 1x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets

Sorcery (4)

• 1x Ponder
• 1x Portent
• 1x Time Spiral
• 1x Time Warp

Creature (3)

• 1x Beguiler of Wills
• 1x Dominating Licid
• 1x Thalakos Deceiver

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Empress Galina steal deck

Apparently mono-blue has removal not only counterspells.

This deck can very effectively play other people's decks and strategies. However you should not expect to win more than your fair share of games, unless you can excel at political manipulation.

Having played this deck a lot, Thada Adel, Acquisitor can be a stronger more proactive commander, however Empress Galina offers amazing late game potential.

This is not really an early game deck. It should go without saying that our card quality goes up the longer the game goes. A Mind Control effect always has better targets the longer the game goes, than the earlier instance you can cast it.

Monoblue control ?

So where does this deck fit into?

Apparently is a control deck that plays the tempo role very well. The downside is that you don't get to really answer stuff from the board.

Eg. you can't clear stack pieces, you can steal them or counter them but the first option doesn't get rid of their effect

However due to the essence of steal cards we can abuse 2 aspects of the game:

• We don't need early ramp. We don't ramp into anything. What is the point of playing control magic a turn earlier when our opponents didn't got the opportunity to play their good creature first.

We abuse this by playing the majority of the early game cantrips, it is better to use this early game time to sculpt our hand instead of land-go

And we also abuse this to dedicate our ramp slots for better cards Gilded Lotus, Thran Dynamo, Nyx Lotus, instead of the usual 2 or 3 mana-rocks. Simply our cards give more mana and we are not punished for playing them as we don't have to do anything else in the early game except of hitting land drops

• Counterintuitively counterspells are not good. Our cards are expensive and usually we need to play them at sorcery speed, so we play the free counterspells, a few of the cheap ones and that is how far it goes. Our cards are expensive so more counterspells won't help alot, a) it takes too much mana for a steal card + counterspell backup, b) if we counter the good stuff we can't steal it.

-Planewalkers are too good as they encourage our opponents to play creatures (to kill the walkers) so we can steal them

Match-ups

The match ups for this strategy are very polarising.

We wreck non - combo goodstuff decks and we get stomped by token and spell based combo decks, everything else is in the middle.

For token decks Leyline of Singularity helps abit as it makes tokens legendary so they can only have one of each name at their board.

For spell based combo decks we simply don't have enough counterspells and we don't don't have early game aggression to beat them up

The saving grace is that in the worst case you need only 1 opponent to steal his stuff and beat the other 2 with his cards, so if there is 1 good stuff deck at the table it is good enough for us.

Also another way to see the game state is the following. The opponent we steal most of his stuff is the least threat to us. On the theoretical 1v1 match up vs that player, steal cards are essentially removals, so he will naturally get behind. So we use removal vs that player to steal his stuff, that also allow us to create board presence vs the other 2 opponents. Another thing to note, is that stealing multiple cards from 1 opponent will naturally be encouraged, as 2 card from the same person's board usually have more synergy together.

Sadly, Homeward Path is a card. We have 3-4 cards in our mana base to deal with this, and after that we have Back to Basics or we can steal it and never activate it. One activation is manageable, repeated ones are backbreaking

Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 35 - 0 Rares 14 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.68
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U, Copy Clone, Treasure
Folders	Old-School EDH