Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Blue/white messiness

Blue/white, always affectionally referred to as Sky Deck by 15 year old Jed, is always a favorite. It's also easily the most garbled here in Dragons of Tarkir. The other color pairings are super straightforward. Red/green wants to build a huge board. Red/black wants to outrace you. White/green wants to throw +1/+1 counters everywhere. Blue/black is throwback to old school removal & control. But what on earth is blue/white?

There are two mechanics in blue white, Rebound and fake-prowess. Rebound is pretty straight-forward, cast the spell once get it again at the beginning of your next upkeep. Fake-prowess refers to creatures benefiting in some way from a non-creature spell being cast. Examples:

 

The link is pretty clear. Cast one rebound spell, get two triggers for free. Also synergizes nicely with the remaining Prowess from Fate Reforged. But is there actually a deck here? Let's list the Rebounders and the fake-prowess from DTK.

       

Six out of the eight explicitly interact with creatures (and I'm sure Void Squall will target a creature a vast majority of the time). The relatively high cost of each spell makes it hard on control decks. Hard to keep mana up to threaten counterspells, removal, and/or morphing. Also interesting is the concept of a rebounding combat trick. Obviously it's a 1 for 1 the first time it's cast, but the next time your opponent sees it coming. Feels very tempo-y, using an additional +2/+2 or protection from ____ to sneak in more damage.

Let's cover fake-prowess.

     

Not the world's strongest layout frankly.

Other tempo-ish cards of note:
          

 

As a reminder, here's what we got in Fate.

         
  

So... using rebound and a weird mixture of prowess triggers, fake-prowess synergies, and evasive creatures, you go over their defenses and beat them on tempo? That is a LOT of moving parts. It comes down to how reliably they get a 3/3, 4/4 landing on turn 5. Because that stops pretty much the whole team, and there aren't that many reliable fliers (most common fliers are 1 power). So my guess is that, unsurprisingly, answers for those roadblocks are going to be a premium. Reliable removal and hardcore tempo.

Thoughts?

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