I lately tried alot building decks around Snapcaster Mage.
This is one of my favorite variants so far.
The basic idea is to use Hedron Crab and
Glimpse the Unthinkable
to mill yourself, so you can create (Bridge from Below) or return creatures (Bloodghast, Unearth) or reuse your sorceries and instants (Snapcaster Mage).
Aether Vial allows you to get your creatures out faster and use Snapcaster Mage even with just one or two lands out. Two counters is all you need, which makes it slightly more awesome than usual.
Dark Confidant provides card advantage which is comparably painless even without Sensei's Divining Top. On average you lose still about 1 life each turn, so having two outside might even be worth it - also because you have ways to sacrifice them if necessary:
Carrion Feeder triggers your Bridges while getting bigger, and can eat anything that might get Swords to Plowshares'd/exiled.(He especially likes eating vampire spirits that may or may not have attacked this turn if you have a land card in your hand.)
Obviously, should you need him, Unearth and the Snapcasters can help you getting him. And Dark Confidant. And Brainstorm...
Phyrexian Tower is another sac outlet for Bridge from Below just in case you still shouldn't get Carrion Feeder.And this land conveniently recycles Bloodghasts for their mana cost. (Well, or any other creature for BB.)
Brainstorm is especially useful in this deck, especially with Hedron Crab and a land in hand (that you might get by casting Brainstorm):It gets two cards in your hand back on the library, to immediatele afterwards get thrown in the graveyard where you want them.This is especially important for the Bridges and also relevant for the Bloodghasts. But also any other card you currently have no use for (like AEther Vial or Phyrexian Tower.)
It might sound ridiculous for a two-color-deck, but i'm still unsure about the mana base.Actually i pretty much only need one black mana and one blue mana to cast any card.
(The only exception is Bloodghast, but as i just said before you'd usually want to Brainstorm these back on top and then mill them with either Hedron Crab or
Glimpse the Unthinkable
. And even if you don't have Brainstorm and no other creature left to cast, there's still Aether Vial.)
I also used
Circling Vultures
and Delver of Secrets
at some point, which both do well in the deck.
I can usually make sure the Vultures get their snacks. But unlike Dredge i don't want this deck to get entirely screwed by a Relic of Progenitus or the like, so i removed them.(Although i love using unpopular cards in an effective way!
Barrow Ghoul
is comparably good and probably the best Tarmogoyf replacement you can get without running green (or white for the Jotun Giant).
The Delver currently would only have twelve cards that can transform him, but Brainstorm could help out.There are plenty of spells to choose from if you want to add him though: Dark Ritual,
Cabal Ritual
, Gitaxian Probe or Culling of the Weak all do a good job with the Spellmage (/the Bridge).
Reanimate and Stitch Together in partricular are in the Maybeboard since you sneak some good targets for them into the deck.(Threshold is reached easily with either Glimpse or Hedron Crab and a fetchland...which is also why i made some more Hedron Crab decks, maybe i'll upload some of them sooner or later.)
As you see there are many 3cc creatures in the maybeboard with unsuiting colors, particularly green. Some of these might actually be worth splashing since they're awesome with Unearth (Eternal Witness and sac outlet (Caller of the Claw, Mangara of Corondor) or just otherwise suit into the deck (Kitchen Finks,
Nulltread Gargantuan
,
Mentor of the Meek
)
