My first tri-colour deck, - SUGGESTIONS WANTED
Basically I used to have this deck in just Blue-white, focusing mostly on defense vs creature-based decks, but I found that I couldn't easily win within 9 turns and I didn't have the sustain to maintain a long control type game.
Combinations are fairly straightfoward, Sphinx's Tutelage combined with any of the draw sources (Temple Bell, Brainstorm etc) generates passive mill that, against mono-coloured decks, chops them down quite quickly.
Along with Sphinx's Tutelage, Consuming Aberration is a good source of mill with any spells you may have left over after turn 5, turning bad top-decks into another mill source. In a pinch, it may even be a win con if you can swing through with it. (Might sideboard some unblockable buffs...) A neat pocket strat may be to Vanish into Memory or Swords to Plowshares your own Consuming Aberration to get a last surge in card draw or life.
Haunting Echoes
wants to be dropped ASAP really, if you can remove a few key cards from their deck, they're that much easier to kill, not to mention the much higher chance of just drawing land. That, with Traumatize makes short work of most people.
Propaganda and Sphere of Safety are generally more for my multiplayer needs. It's good 'diplomacy' for when people decide it's cheaper to attack someone else. They're also really good at slowing down aggro decks that want to spend their mana on buffs or additional creatures.
Smaller mill spells like
Mind Sculpt
and Tome Scour aren't really the best of options, when you keep in mind the idea of 'cards milled per mana spent'.
Please keep suggestions mindful of an acceptable budget; I'd love to have all of the fetchlands and some other things, but for now, I just want this to work efficiently.
UPDATE: In the event of a 1v1 match up (this deck was built more towards multiplayer), swap out both Sphere of Safetys and both
Mind Grind
s in favour of 4 Hedron Crabs
UPDATE 2.0: I'm currently looking into a adding
Phenax, God of Deception
and perhaps replacing the Propagandas for Wall of Frost. I'm finding that I'm always getting work done with Consuming Aberration and I really want to capitalize on that.
UPDATE 2.1:
Mind Funeral
and
Mind Grind
have been removed in favour of x4 Fraying Sanity. Hedron Crabs are now a x4 in all circumstances. Sideboard has been heavily adjusted in order to accommodate for playing against many different kind of decks.
Hindering Light
and Aegis of the Gods are used to guard against discard, burn and other sorts of nasties.
Karmic Justice
is quite useful in multiplayer and against individuals who enjoy torturing you with specific board wipes. Sphere of Safety, Propaganda, Swords to Plowshares and
Wall of Omens
are used to help counter creature-based decks, they buy a good amount of time and have a more general use than simply just hard-countering the enemy's spells. Disperse is almost purely in the sideboard to bounce things like
Witchbane Orb
and Ivory Mask. Stony Silence and Tormod's Crypt are for specifically stopping artifact decks and graveyard recycling/Eldrazi, respectively.
This deck is currently in the "Anti-creature" configuration. The cards that will be swapped out as needed may be Swords to Plowshares,
Oblivion Ring
,
Wall of Omens
and Propaganda
