Hello! This week I'll be looking to build a big mana blue deck with Teferi. He lends himself well to big mana with his -1 ability. There are quite a few blue cards that interact with large amounts of mana, and Blue is the color with the most interaction with Artifacts. That makes colorless mana have more impact, and colorless mana is easier to generate. That means we are going to want all the high cost hits.
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre
Karn
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
To get to this level of mana we are going to need to play tons of artifact mana. Normally I include the perfunctory amount at the end, but this is going to be a major component of our deck so we are going to put them up front.
IN:12
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Since Teferi can target lands and we are mono color We want to include Caged Sun and Extraplanar Lens. The common trick Lens is to play only Snow Covered Islands to reduce helpping out your opponents. We'll do this but honestly its not that big a deal unless you are playing against another mono blue deck, who's likely doing the same thing.
IN:2
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
As an overall direction, ramp is ok but we want something meaty. Teferi likes other planeswalkers because of his ultimate. Two of the primary things we want to ramp into are planeswalkers. So building into the best mono-blue walkers seems like a cool direction.
IN: 5
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
There are other blue walkers, but these are clearly the best for us. Tezzeret is like a back up Teferi, and we can build around is -x for maximum value. Jace is of course great, and the colorless walkers were discussed in the opening paragraph. Tamiyo is included both to increase our walker count and because her + gives us really solid control of troublesome permanents. Sleep in EDH is back breaking because of how much happens between your untap steps. Her - can also net quite a few cards, and her ult is game winning.
Now that we have our walkers, how are we going to get value out of them? Walkers are notoriously hard to keep alive in EDH since they give people easy targets to attack.
IN:16
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Those are some good tricks and ways to extract value from our Walkers. We play a lot of board resets to buy us the time to use our massive mana lead. The Contagion artifacts do double duty of controlling the board and pumping up our walkers. We have a number of counter spells to try and force through our big plays and some single target bounce to protect ourselves but obviously there is no substitute for good old fashioned blockers.
IN:12
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
And for good measure
IN:2
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
And the rest are utility artifacts and library maniuplation
IN:10
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Treasure Cruise
Intellectual Offering
Intuition(Crucible of Worlds, Petrified Field, Academy Ruins is our default)
Voltaic Key
There's definitely some things I'm missing, but that seems like a workable first draft. Onto the lands!
One of the primary benefits of being mono-color is that we get to run all sorts of utility lands for maximum value. We are going to start with 38and see if we need more or less.
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
This gives a huge number of things to be doing with our lands if we start to flood out. I have a feeling that Nykthos isn't going to do enough in this incarnation of the deck, but its a really solid way to get a lot of mana going. We are focused on colorless permanents so we might want to look at including some color dense stuff in the future to power up our Shrine to Nix. Things like Future Sight or, hilariously, Mind Over Matter.
Dudes:
Ulamog
Kozilek
Steel Hellkite
Pentavus
Triskellion
Duplicant
Solemn Simulacrum
Phyrexian Metamorph
Mulldrifter
Consecrated Sphinx
Jin-Gitaxias
Psychosis Crawler
Memnarch
Value:
Time Spiral
Sensei's Divining Top
Etherium Sculptor
Mystical Tutor
Thirst for Knowledge
Crucible of Worlds
Intellectual Offering
Intuition
Voltaic Key
The Chain Veil
Contagion Engine
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Stroke of Genius
Blue Sun Zenith
Protection:
All Is Dust
Wash Out
Aether Spouts
Evacuation
Cyclonic Rift
Arcane Denial
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Force of Will
Into the Roil
Repeal
Capsize
Planewalkers:
Tezzeret the Seeker
Jace, the Mind Scuptor
Tamiyo the Moon Sage
Ugin the Spirit Dragon
Karn Liberated
Artifact Mana:
Gilded Lotus
Mana Vault
Grim Monolith
Mana Crypt
Sol Ring
Worn Powerstone
Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Dreamstone Hedron
Basalt Monolith
Mind Stone
Fellwar Stone
Extraplanar Lens
Caged Sun
Sculpting Steel
Land:
Eye of Ugin
Petrified Field
Hall of the Bandit Lord
Tower of the Magistrate
Ancient Tomb
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wasteland
Academy Ruins
Temple of the False God
Nykthos, Shrine to Nix
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth(purely to be able to tap our painlands for colorless)
Reliquary Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge (Untaps Nykthos and a few of our dudes.)
Diamond Valley (Eating Eldrazi makes them searchable with Eye of Ugin and dodges lots of exile effects)
Deserted Temple
Thespian's Stage
Mystifying Maze
Tolaria West
Dust Bowl
Thawing Glaciers
18x Snow Covered Island
Immediately stuff jumps out at me to add. Future Sight is probably number one on the list since its simultaneously a color dense permanent for Nykthos and infinite with Top/Sculptor. With Top its 1 draw a card. I also think we could use more things to ramp into, or more to do with our colored mana. More clones would be great. Also, to address the obvious, Teferi is amazing with Stasis effects. He can keep your mana up or build to his ult since his fellow walkers are protected by the Stasis effect. I don't think that's particularly fun even though its very strong. I might include Frozen Aether at some later date as a way to stave off Haste dudes, but honestly Teferi should pay for himself immediately and let you hold up Evacuation or some other non-sense. Sunder would be cheeky, but might be exactly what we want. I did not intentionally leave out Mindslaver, and it might be the right call. I did intentionally leave out Time Twister. It would be very good, but as much as I don't care over much about listing expensive cards I'll draw the line at a card from the power nine, weakest of the bunch though it is.
Updates* -
These are some changes to make based on initial reception.
OUT:
Pentavus
Triskellion
Contagion Clasp
Inexorable Tide
Aether Sputs
Fellwar Stone
Rewind
Pact of Negation
Into the Roil
The reasoning behind the majority of these changes is that we had started to split between a big mana deck and a proliferate deck. Pentavus, Triskellion, Tide and Clasp are really only worth it if we go full bore. Engine is still fine because it functions as a board wipe. Rewind gives us mana at the wrong time, and Pact of Negation is cool but not worth the risk unless you are going to win immediately. Aether Spouts would be a sweet instant but at sorcery speed is going just be worse than Wash Out or Evacuation most of the time. Into the Roil is competitive with Repeal and Cyclonic Rift. Rift is obviously insane, so the choice was between ItR and Repeal. I sided with Repeal since its easier to cantrip with it and the primary advantage of ItR, its fixed cost, is meaningless here since we are in the business of out mana-ing our opponents.
IN:
Blightsteel Colossus
Mana Drain
Trechery
Tower of Fortunes
Future Sight
Expedition Map
Myojin of Seeing Winds
Gauntlet of Power
Invoke Prejudice
We make room for more big mans with Blightsteel and Myojin each being game ending threats, though in different ways. We get to make more mana with Drain and Gauntlet leading the charge. Treachery should have been in the first draft, I just forgot it. Tower of Fortunes gives us a colorless way to draw cards. The last three cards, Invoke Prejudice, Future Sight, and Expedition Map, are all about powering up Nykthos. Invoke Prejudice is uniquely hilarious since normally we won't control a colored creature. Our general is a planeswalker and thus will leave even other mono-blue players out in the cold.
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