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Living with the Blue World "I'm never playing Type 2 again", one player declared after a recent tournament at Boldo's "everyone is playing counterspells". It is true Blue has become a dominate color in magic and in many ways it deprives many players of their fun because they can not do what they want. Unfortunately they look at Blue's dominance as a problem not as a guide to deck construction. If you look at a deck it is composed of only 4 types of cards land, threats, resources, and removal. A threat is any card which can win the game. A resource is a card which increases your resources by drawing more cards, putting more mana on the table, increasing the effectiveness of your threats, or sorting you deck. Removal deals with your opponent's threats. Any counterspell deck has only so many counters which must be used on threats. Unfortunately most decks have started to play so many resources and removal that there is very little to counter and the counter decks can just wait for the few problems which exist. Years ago Dennis Bentley had quite a bit of success. His deck design was based upon the Bentley combo: creatures and land. His idea was to have so many threats that you could survive the opponent's removal. Then play a bit of removal. This deck had great survivability because it always had another threat. Even the removal could be a threat so the creatures only had to get the game close. It's simplicity made it a huge success at a time when control was every bit as pervasive as today. A good example of this type of deck is a white red deck which has been very scarce recently 4 Knight Errant 4 Longbow archers 4 Steadfast Guards 2 Kris Mages 4 Glittering Lynx 2 Honor Guards 4 Diving Griffin 4 Cloud Chaser Eagle 4 Glorious Anthems 4 Shock 4 Earthquake 4 City of Brass 4 Rith's Grove 12 Plains Yes this could be better with rebels but it does not need them. It puts down a few threats and then starts beating. When it can it burns for game or to clear the board. It is fairly counterspell proof as all but four cards are threats to win the game. If you are having trouble with blue try rebuilding your deck so it is all threats and see how it does. Boldo |