GET READY TO DRAW
I'm going to break this deck down into how you're going to win with it in Setup and Win Conditions ,how you're going to control the field in Control , and how you're going to be keeping all these cards you'll be drawing in Hand Size. So lets go ahead and dive in!
How To Win
Setup
The main card you need in this deck is
Enter the Infinite
. It is the crux of all your win conditions. To help you get to it we have
Merchant Scroll
and
Long-Term Plans
that will let you search your library for it. You will also be tapping
Arcanis the Omnipotent
as much as you can to get to
Enter the Infinite
as fast as you can. This can be expedited by using card:Free from the Real to allow you to tap your commander like crazy.
Now I know what you're thinking and yes
Enter the Infinite
does have a very high mana cost. Thats why the last card of your setup is
High Tide
. This allows you to play
Enter the Infinite
on your 7th turn if you have only basic lands to tap for mana.
Doing a little bit of math I've found that in your initial hand you have a 25.77% chance of drawing one of these cards. (I'll include all my math at the end :) ).
In addition to all this,
Archmage Ascension
will help you round up whatever cards you are missing, but only after your commander is already on the field. This card is meant as a backup if the heart of the cards isn't on your side.
Win Conditions
Alrighty, so in true blue fashion we won't really be hitting our opponents for combat damage. All of these are working in conjunction with
Enter the Infinite
, so with that in mind let's get into it!
Mill Them!
Our milling cards are
Jace's Erasure
,
Psychic Corrosion
, and
Sphinx's Tutelage
with the last two orienting themselves better for multiplayer games. Out of all of these, try to get your hands on
Psychic Corrosion
.
No Health
For this strategy we will be playing
Psychosis Crawler
which allows us to take one life for each card we draw from EACH opponent. What a deliciously evil card. If you're playing against a troublesome Trostani or other health gain deck just throw
Rite of Replication
with its kicker cost and maybe even a clone
Clone
to take health up to 7x the amount of cards drawn.
Library looking a little low? Try using
Psychic Spiral
or
Elixir of Immortality
to fatten up that mind brick a little bit.
Are all the cards in your hand? Try using
Devastation Tide
,
AEtherize
,
Into the Roil
, or
Engulf the Shore
to return whatever permanent is allowing you to have no maximum handsize, then return everything to your library.
Draw Until You Win!
This win condition is pretty straight forward. Just have
Laboratory Maniac
on the field, play
Enter the Infinite
, and then tap
Arcanis the Omnipotent
.
For everything above you have a 31.24% chance of drawing one of these cards in your intial hand.
When in doubt, Punch them
Sometimes things dont go as planned. Sometimes you just need some massive creatures to punch your opponent right in the face. It isn't very mono-blue of you, but hey it works! For this we'll be using
Toothy, Imaginary Friend
,
Soramaro, First to Dream
, card:Pyschosis Crawler,
Aeon Chronicler
, and
Diviner's Wand
equipped to any creature really.
We can also play
Clone
and
Rite of Replication
to add some extra power to our ranks.
Lastly, you'll be playing
Scourge of Fleets
on top of this to open the field up for you.
Control
For control I am going to break it down into Cancels and Returns.
Cancels
I'm not going to list all of them here, but there are 11 of them. The highest cost of which is
Rewind
which has a converted mana cost of 4. This means there is 57.36% chance that you start off with one of these in your hand, so we are very prepared to keep dangerous cards off the field while we build towards our combos.
Other cards that are going to assist your cancels are
Guile
which lets you play the cards you cancel and
Jace's Sanctum
which will be reducing the cost by 1 colorless mana.
Reutrns
We have
Devastation Tide
,
AEtherize
,
Into the Roil
,
Engulf the Shore
, and
Scourge of Fleets
to help bounce everything back for us.
These have a 25.77% chance of one of them being in your initial hand.
Getting Our Spells Back
In addition to all these control spells we also have
Metallurgic Summonings
,
Mnemonic Wall
,
Archaeomancer
, and
Elixir of Immortality
to try to help regain our spells. There are no cards that return creatures back from the graveyard directly to your hand so keep that in mind as you cancel spells.
These also have a 25.77% chance of one of them appearing in your initial hand.
Hand Size
There are 7 cards in this deck that keep you from having a maximum hand size. Meaning in your initial hand you have a 41.15% chance of drawing one of them. Handsize shouldn't be something to worry about with this deck and even if you do find yourself discarding a few card initially we do have cards to help return those to our hand/deck.
The Math
So the chance of drawing a card is as follows:
chance=(1-((factorial(deck-X))(factorial(deck-draw)))/(factorial(deck)(factorial(deck-X-draw))))*100
where deck=99,draw=7,and X is the group of cards in question.
If you're wondering the chance of drawing two cards from the same set that gets a bit more complicated because we need to know when the first of the two was drawn and I didn't want to hypothesize on such a variable event.
If you want to know the likelihood of drawing a card from two different sets in the first seven, just multiple the percent chances of each event together. (Ex: What is the likelihood I will draw a win condition with an infinite handsize card? That is .4115*.3124=.1285 so that has a 13% of happening.)