Preamble: EDH is about fun, chaos and a social environment. All of this makes it pretty hard to play mono-blue: at least without being a bit of a jerk. Most mono-blue commanders are for combos, hard control, or they play like a white aggro deck. I set out to construct a deck that played like a blue deck, but wasn't unfun to see on the table. It had to be Vorthos friendly, fair for newer players, and hard for my experienced friends to put a bead on. Ixidor is perfect. (Wondering who this dashing man is? Look Here)
The key to any morph strategy is to keep your opponents in the dark as long as possible. Even with a full field, it can be hard to know what exactly this deck is capable of. Even if you memorize the decklist, you don't know the value of what I have. That's the value of morph.
Preamble 2: Morphin' Boogaloo:A quick word on morph since no one I play really understands it.
1.) Playing a creature (Or land, or whatever) face-down for 3 is treated like casting any other creature spell, for timing and for anything else that effects casting. You can Remove Soul my Zoetic Caverns as I play it face down.
2.) You can't shuffle around your face-down cards. If you attack with something, everyone has every right to know next turn which creature that was. Similarly, if you turn something face down on the battlefield, its now considered common knowledge what it is: e.g. if you turn Mischievous Quanar face down, you have to tell anyone who asks which one he is. Don't be a jerk.
3.) Turning face up does not use the stack, abilities triggered by it turning face up do. So, if I am flipping my Unblinking Bleb face up, you cannot play Massacre in response to kill it. You cannot do anything until it is face up. This is a "special action". You could however Tome Scour in response to the Bleb's scry ability, and your spell would take effect before the scry does.
4.) If a face down creature would leave the battlefield, or when its owner wins/loses the game, that card's owner must reveal it for everyone to see. This is so that players can validate that I am not playing Islands face down as creatures. Failing to do so results in a forfeit. This is serious, so again, please don't be a jerk.
Finally the cards:
Formless Entities: Its a morph deck, we need morph! Here, have some morph: Aphetto Alchemist, Aquamorph Entity, Brine Elemental, Chromeshell Crab, Coral Trickster, Disruptive Pitmage, Echo Tracer, Fathom Seer, Fledgling Mawcor, Ixidron, Maelstrom Djinn, Mischievous Quanar, Nameless One, Quicksilver Dragon, Raven Guild Master, Riptide Biologist, Riptide Entrancer, Riptide Survivor, Shaper Parasite, Slipstream Serpent, Unblinking Bleb, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Voidmage Apprentice, Voidmage Prodigy, Wall of Deceit, Weaver of Lies, Willbender, Zoetic Cavern That enough morph? Every decent morph creature in blue. (Sorry Raven Guild Initiate, and yes I know Ixidron doesn't have morph.)
There will be no pickles!! Despite running Brine Elemental + Vesuvan Shapeshifter
I do not combo them out into a one-sided stasis. They are here on their own merits, not to be an un-fun combo. Think of them like those two friends who you like individually but hate when they are together.
Wizard-tribe: There are 9 morph wizards here, and 5 more that aren't: Aphetto Runecaster, Arcanis the Omnipotent (Vorthos Bonus! From the pits with Ixidor), Riptide Director, Vedalken AEthermage and Ixidor of course. Its safe to say there is a minor wizard sub-theme which I may expand.
Vorthos!: Aqueous Form, Curse of the Swine, Rapid Hybridization, Ovinize and Turn to Frog all represent ixidor's mastery over form shaping magics. I don't care if its Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Gideon Jura or Erebos, God of the Dead himself. If it has a body, Ixidor will contort it to his whims!
Dismiss into Dream Ixidor denies your 'reality'!
Akroma's Memorial Akroma is Ixidor's Greatest creation, sculpted in the image of his lost love. Of course he will have this. Sword of Vengeance is the sword of Akroma. Ixidor sculpted the sword, and he will use it in her absence!
Time Stop in the novels, Ixidor bends space and time themselves near the end of his life. He gets pretty crazy, and is basically the embodiment of blue magic at this point. No card in magic feels more powerful than Time Stop to me, and its fitting that a master wizard like ixidor would have it.
Good Stuff: The rest should be pretty self-explanatory. Have you ever asked why a blue deck needed Cryptic Command or Cyclonic Rift?? I tried to keep the deck from getting out of control with the control though. Some are especially good here like All Is Dust which doesn't touch face-down creatures. Some like Distant Memories are very solid cards for EDH that I think are overlooked. (You can always use it to return your commander to the command zone if he is tucked)
tl;dr: Its blue, it has morph and wizards. It tries to be fun without sucking.
