Mono Blue Tempo-Control
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” - Bruce Lee
This Bruce Lee quote is the perfect fit for the spirit of "I Just BLUE Myself" deck. You must be flexible and consider many lines of play to get victories. This deck is very reactive and you must adapt to your opponent to find the way. This is a very fair deck with game against more competitive decks than most would expect. It is blue jund - there are many 50/50 match ups and you must grind them out and empty your mind to find the sequence to victory.
Card Discussion
Repeal is a great tempo play (really good against Urza's Saga tokens) that can often be a time walk. Sometimes you repeal one of your threats to dodge a removal spell and replenish your hand.
Also feels super good to repeal a snappyboi that's about to be killed. Or bounce a snappyboi with cryptic.
This deck also has a ton of counterspells- counterspell, archmage's charm, cryptic, remand, spellsnare. The addition of regular counterspell has greatly increased the power of this deck.
Lazotep Plating has been great against jund and burn. A great tempo play to protect self from burn / hand disruption or a removal spell for creatures that gives a 1/1 body.
Blast Zone / Ratchet Bomb is the greatest tools against decks that go wide quickly (Rhinos, Hammertime). Ratchet bomb is also notably good against Monkey, DRC, and Death's Shadow. Summon Ratchet Bomb if you anticipate your opponent will board in Chalice of the Void.
THING IN THE ICE VARIANT:
Sometimes I run 4 Thing in the Ice (instead of Murktide) and a 2/2 split of Rapid Hybridization / Pongify (in lieu of 4x Suspend). Rapid Hybridization / Pongify is a high utility card. Do it in response to removal to keep a threat on the board. Do it to remove one of their creatures to later bounce the token with thing in the ice, repeal, or cryptic. Snappy boi feels good to bounce when the Thing goes off.
In this build, I also shave one Snapcaster (from 4 down to 3) and put in one Murktide.
Cantrips refill your hand and work toward transforming Thing in the Ice or to fill the graveyard for snapcaster / azcanta / murktide. (Cantrips in deck are consider, serum, repeal, remand, cryptic, archmage's charm).
Murktide is well positioned in the meta and seems to be a little bit better at this point.
