Card Overview:
Creatures:
Enigma Drake is one of our two main creatures in the deck. Played on curve we have a 2/4 body with evasion that can poke in or stave off early aggression. The name of the game is to sling spells until these things get big. Our access to lower cost, efficient spells will be key to doing this.
Vizier of Many Faces Let's us copy our Drakes or big threats from the enemy, and if we mill it or it's removed somehow, we can bring it back on turn 5.
Spells:
Censor / Countervailing Winds function as our counter-spell suite. They allow us to take out major win conditions like The Scarab God or Approach of the Second Sun before they hit the board. Countervailing scaled incredibly well into the lategame by taking advantage of our graveyard, and Censor can take out threats the opponent may tap out for in the early game like Chandra, Torch of Defiance or Bristling Hydras.
Unsummon is a pretty flexible card and depending on your preference, we could even use a full set of these in the deck. While early game they help us essentially timewalk our opponent and react to threats we may not have expected, late game they help us protect our Drakes and Viziers. The card disadvantage they give can be remedied by our other spells that let us draw.
Hieroglyphic Illumination With an open blue mana, you can quickly cycle it while putting a spell in the graveyard before your opponent ends their turn. Later on and at instant speed, it can be a good mana sink to grab two quick cards.
Strategic Planning plays an interesting role in our deck. It lets us not only find the spells, creatures or even lands that we need to get the game going in our favor -- but also mills cards we don't need. If those happen to be spells, guess what? Our Drakes just got bigger.
Sweltering Suns is a lot of the time our "Oh Shit" button. Aggressive and tribal decks can have the ability to sometimes overwhelm us with creatures. Maybe multiple Earthshaker Khenra are coming out of nowhere. Other times, cards like Anointed Procession get out of hand and we're staring down the barrel of 15
Cat Token
with lifelink. Those are the times you need this card. It will save your ass. It also cycles, which is awesome.
Lightning Strike / Shock If you couldn't counter the threat, we burn it. Replace LS with sideboard cards like Abrade against artifact heavy decks, and replace Shock with Magma Spray against nasty Earthshaker Khenra who want to come back to haunt you.
Search for Azcanta
is super awesome. Instead of putting a spell we don't need at the bottom of our deck before we draw it, why not just put it in our graveyard to buff our Enigma Drakes? This deck should probably be running 2 copies of this card.
Lands:
Hostile Desert You could maybe run 2 of these (I wouldn't run anymore though) and be fine. The idea behind it is to make use of any milled land cards in the graveyard by turning itself into a decent blocker and more importantly, allowing us to make the Hostile Desert trigger Raid for our Protean Raider.
Ipnu Rivulet Helps not only deal with impending threats (see Approach decks) but also mill 5 cards from our own deck to buff Enigma Drakes. If you're feeling lucky with a Drake already on the field you can hypothetically buff it up to a 7/4 on turn 4. But if you're not into that, you can always just mill the opponent's deck for no reason and watch as he throws all his copies of Rhonas the Indomitable in the trash can.
Sideboard:
The Locust God is a pretty neat card. We have lots of card draw too. Unfortunately, playing this as your main win condition against heavy aggression can get you murdered. Replace two Protean Raider with these big guys against control / mid-range matchups. Keep an answer ready for counterspells. Tapping out for this thing gives me very mixed feelings, but hey -- it's better than just playing The Scarab God like everyone else right?
Oh yeah, Negate + Pull from Tomorrow
are for your control matchups too. Metagame is wonky right now, so keep Negate on hand for spell heavy stuff and Essence Scatter on board for creature heavy stuff.
Hour of Devastation Highway to the Danger Zone.
Extra Thoughts:
Splashing black into the deck could be useful to bring in cards like Fatal Push that can have some super fun interaction with our Siren's Ruse flicker. But I think that may be detracting from the identity of the deck. We're not a U/B deck. We're a U/R deck. If you have an thoughts on that though, lemme know.
Feel free to drop suggestions, thanks.
