Mono Blue Tempo

 

I love mono blue tempo however it has never been a great cube archetype. While it does pray on combo decks and the clunkier of opponents, it also tends to roll over dead against most aggressive decks with their actual proper creatures. Overall the deck has historically had a below average win percentage, lower still in an unpowered cube. I still love to play it because it is super option rich and you always feel like you really earned it when you win. You get a lot of game out of the deck, win or lose. Typically you will improve the build a lot with the addition of a second colour for a bit of actual removal, some juicy gold and powerful cards, and some half reasonable dorks! While usually better you do need the fixing, blue is colour intensive at the best of times and tempo decks tend to roll over dead if they have mana issues. So, if the mana doesn't support it you can raw dog your tempo and run it mono. I also just love the purity and challenge of a mono blue iteration. 

Back at the dawn of cube the mono blue tempo list was a kind of skies deck that had a pitiful couple of threats and would try and get you with cheap and free counters. Over time the routes to winning as a blue tempo mage have evolved. These days the most success I have had is with a "instants and sorceries in the graveyard" strategy. It isn't purely self mill nor is it prowess. It is a mix of the two strategies where you cast a lot of cantrips, loot a bunch more away, mill some, and then cast very large and very cheap dorks. While somewhat of a glass cannon archetype, it is about as consistent a deck as you can get. There is a lot of redundancy in the parts for one. A bunch of generic counter magic and a nice pile of cheap cantrips all look much the same. Then you get to look at most of your deck with a variety of looting, scry, and draw. Just so long as you get enough of the appropriate threats you should be able to cobble together the rest and be good to go. Below is the most recent list I cobbled together from a sealed pool.

25 Spells

Delver of Secrets 

Mental Note

Brainstorm

Gitaxian Probe

Consider

Preordain

Sleight of Hand

Unable to Scream

Spell Pierce

Silent Hallcreeper

Chart a Course

Memory Lapse

Suspicious Stowaway

Dress Down

Jace, Reawakened

Falliji Archeologist

Floodpits Drowner

Brazen Borrower

Repulse

Cryptic Coat

Time Warp

Sublime Epiphany

Tolarian Terror

Sailor's Bane

Murktide Regent

15 Islands

While you will play most of the cheap cantrip cards that come your way there is a surprising preference for instant speed stuff. Even if your turn is just a Consider, being able to leave up that mana in their turn will get you a lot of free tempo. You are blue, you are known to be a tempo deck with cheap disruption. People hate running into things like Force Spike, Mana Leak and that sort of thing. You will tend to find leaving up mana worthwhile and thus the various non-disruptive elements of your deck; the card quality and the threats, do better for you if they have flash. I'll take and Opt over a Ponder in this list every day. Malcom is my favourite looter thanks to that flash etc.

This list was a long way from perfect but it had the core bits in place without missing anything. I had a nice spread of answers, both to stuff in play and to stuff on the stack. Not the best of the options but the appropriate areas all covered. I also had pretty premium support tools ensuring I would get off the ground in most games. Lastly I had sufficient depth of threat payoff. It can get a bit scary if you are thin in this department and want to loot threats away early, mill a couple too many, or just eat a lot of removal. So while the deck isn't perfect there are not many clear cuts, just upgrades. Jace, Reawakened is very much a clear cut, not just from the deck but also from the cube. This was me testing the card and it is insufficient. Certainly quite cute and fun when it works but mostly I'll take any two mana looter in preference here, perhaps even OG Merfolk Looter... The other cut is the Cryptic Coat. There are builds of this where you might want such a card. It is evasive and persistent which are good attributes for a threat. However it is also mana intensive and offers no real synergy in this build. Show me a Proft's Eidetic Memory and I start to get more into this kind of card.  If you want access to delirium or artifact synergies for some reason then this is certainly a pretty playable one. I could even see running Enduring Curiosity or Grazliaxx, Illithid Scholar in some settings where I have enough smaller evasive dorks, all be it more fun than good! That direction is more towards the old school skies route of having cheap low quality evasive stuff that you can empower to do some real work.

Time to take a look at the archetype in general and the sorts of cards you want to be packing, and in what sort of ratios. Due to how the cards key off each other in this archetype there are far fewer general rules to follow and lots of little tweaks and interactions to pay attention to in this archetype. I group the cards in to four main camps; threats, support, disruption, and filler. The filler is a bit different to usual. What I would normally consider filler is the actual support side of the deck you need for it to function. Padding might be a better term for it just to differentiate. Regardless, all shall be more clear when we look at the cards in each group.

Threats

Threats come in three main camps, cheap, mid, and payoff. Cheap are one or two mana to deploy, and can be deployed on the first or second turn consistently, even if they are not immediately very threatening. The good ones of these are great and I would play all that I can get my hands on but they are pretty limited in number. The mid stuff is typically 3 or 4 mana to deploy and is usually packing some extra utility to work with. There is lots of choice and power here but it is important to be sparing and play relatively few in this group, ideally those with flash or alternative utility beyond being just a threat. Lastly the payoff stuff that looks like your top end can be cheap as chips to deploy but they need to be setup by filling up the bin.

Generally speaking these threats are in two caps, utility dorks with some evasion, and very over statted beaters (evasion here is still great if it can be found). You want some of both, probably about 50/50 although I tend to end up with slightly more utility stuff because there is a bit more of a bottleneck on the good blue beaters. You also obviously want a spread of the cheap, mid and payoff cards for curving reasons. you also need to consider the means in which your cards consume the payoff. You cannot play too many delve cards. Two or three at most, to include the Oculus. You certainly don't want to waste precious delve spots on cards like Treasure Cruise. You want to convert that resource into game ending power not value. 

Delver of Secrets

Pteramander

Ledger Shredder

Silent Hallcreeper

Astrologian's Planisphere

Wan Shi Tong, Librarian

Malcom, Alluring Scoundrel

Suspicious Stowaway

(I guess manlands go here)

True-Name Nemesis

Cryptic Coat

Kiora, the Rising Tide

Brazen Borrower

Vendillion Clique

Kitesail Larcenist

Whirler Rogue

Quantum Riddler

Abhorrent Oculus

Ethereal Forager

Eddymurk Crab

Tolarian Terror

Sailor's Bane

Murktide Regent

Support

This is the simplest category as it is basically any instant or sorcery that cheaply and easily gets itself and/or more things into the bin. Some come with card quality, some with a bit of utility. Play a lot of these cards, a good third of your nonland cards want to be in this group. I also toss the looters that dont have evasion into this group.

Thoughtscour

Mental Note

Consider

Gitaxian Probe

Brainstorm

Opt

Peek

Careful Study

Preordain

Sleight of Hand

Serum Visions

Censor

Lorien Revealed

Chart a Course

Jace, Vryn's Prodigy

Kitsa, Otterball Elite

Fallaji Archeologist

Picklock Prankster (Free the Fea)

Occult Epiphany

Disruption

Disruption comes in a couple of guises. Mostly in blue we have bounce things and counter things. We do also now have a couple of "make things useless" effects which round out the colour fairly well and leave it able to deal with most kinds of threat it will face, at least in a round about way. This was always a critical weakness of blue as a card like Grim Lavamancer would be too cheap to counter and bounce profitably while it would just wreck you while sat in play. Much as I don't love putting things in my deck that are not instants and sorceries there are some threats that bounce isn't an answer to. Having a smattering of these transform and turn off types of cards can go a long old way. It has made the deck a whole lot more robust to the likes of Blood Artist. While none of these cards are great cards they do a lot of great work in giving blue access to such an important tool. I am pretty happy with a couple of these cards in any of my lists.

Unable to Scream

Dress Down

Fresh Start

Floodpits Drowner

Kitesail Larcenist

Then there is of course the bounce. Nice versatile high tempo trickery. Play a bit but not too much. Play a range too, there is convenient bounce, cheap bounce, and big bounce. The more you spread your bounce types around the more you can usefully fit in. There are a few big name bounce cards I would typically avoid. Things like Venser are just a bit clunky and slow. You have no real use for a 2/2 dork with no evasion and so the extra cost is just a burden. Equally, Cyclonic Rift is merely fine. You can play it and sometimes you will even get to overload mana and win with it. The thing is it is mostly too slow or low value against your weaker matchups and really strong against your good ones. Overkill in the wrong place.  There are some other pretty big spells on this bounce list and I stand by them. I am happy running two such things in my lists. Being able to do some large scale trickery can be really swingy. These cards can both help you get back into a game or actually close one out. They give you the control your big vanilla threats fail to so that you can manoeuvre into a win.

Into the Floodmaw

(or indeed Aether Spellbomb, Silent Departure, or really any one mana Unsummon effect)

Brazen Borrower

Sink into Stupor

Repulse

Cryptic Command

Mystic Confluence

Sublime Epiphany

Counter magic comes in the free, the cheap, and the meaty varieties. The meaty stuff  that can counter is stuff I would play is mostly already to be found on the bounce list. I actually try and play low countermagic counts in this kind of deck. You never want to get stranded with too much of it in hand. You are also playing some fat top end that is dead weight until you fill up the bin. As such you cannot afford to have much else dead weight in hand. This makes the counters that are other things a lot more viable includes. The modal stuff, the cycling and MDFC things, all very welcome places to slap a bit of stack disruption! Also part of the reason that those big modal counter/bounce effects are so welcome here. When it comes to the more pure "this is a counterspell and that is all this does" cards, I want two or three at most, and ideally ones on the cheaper side of things. In cube, blue is also pretty spoiled for good counters so these are not the most important pickups. 

The Cheap

Force Spike 

Spell Pierce

Stern Scolding

Remand

Mana Leak

Memory Lapse

Counterspell

Arcane Denial

Jwari Disruption

The Free

Daze

Flare of Denial  

Force of Negation (and Will...)

Subtlety

The Meaty

Archmages Charm

Cryptic Command

Mystic Confluence

Sublime Epiphany

Filler

Lastly we have the filler. Some of these cards are more dork based cantrips. They typically give a bit of board presence at low cost such that you dont get over run by weenie decks. They are pretty free inclusions and can help a curve very nicely. They don't really empower your synergies but they are low cost inclusions that help buffer the deck nicely in most situations. They can get in a bit of chip damage, fuel a Flare of Denial, sacrifice themselves to win a race, just nice utility. There are also a couple of cantrip cards that can do nothing and can win the game. These are your win more cards and while you rarely want to be playing many of these sorts of thing, this deck can both afford to and quite wants to. Equipment and vehicles exist in this realm too. You do not have quite the depth of dorks to reliably power such things and so they are best kept to a minimum. The recursion tools, Snappy, Tamiyo, Forager, and JVP love having access to a Time Walk. Really the card should sit in the same camp as the meaty bounce/counter effects but they are very much disruptive while a Time Walk isn't. Recursion effects in general are good in a deck with a lot of cheap targets and a lot of self mill! They are good card quality and give a lot of legs. They are just not great tempo so do need to not be overdone. The filler group is the one group you can afford to have nothing from. It is useful for tuning, tweaking, and patching over holes in your list. It can offer some nice utility but you really need to have a reason to play cards from this category. I think I would probably toss all equipment, vehicles, and planeswalkers into this group of cards as well.

Snapcaster Mage

Stormchaser's Talent

Spyglass Siren

Watcher for Tomorrow

Hard Evidence

Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student

Time Warp

Proft's Eidetic Memory

There are not that many cards not already in my cube that I would want to add. This is just one of those decks that loves good generic blue cards and can consequently play a whole heap of premium cards and have them be appropriate. Tossing in lower powered or real narrow cards isn't going to do much to help this deck and it is going to do plenty to worsen the cube overall. Really this deck is now only in the market for power upgrades on the kinds of thing it already has good access too. A couple more fat dorks with cost reduction effects in line would be nice. Tolarian Terror is a pretty bad card all told, just a necessary evil for a singleton synergy deck in a limited format! Temporal Trespass and Wash Out are the only things I might like to try in this although pretty sure threats is where I want any delve going!

You might note a lack of planeswalkers in the list too. You can play a few. Original Jace is one of the best because of the bounce. Walkers are just real risky in this kind of deck. They don't do enough when you are behind and when you are ahead you should really try and turn that into a win rather than establishing a walker. So there you have it, all the good cube cards for a great fun old school archetype that is having a nice surge in potency.

Rakdos Discard

I have been trying to get a discard themed deck working in the cube for as long as I can remember. Madness has always been under supported, both in terms of cards that use the mechanic, and in cube playable ways you can discard those cards. Even in constructed settings the madness decks I built for cube would fail due to low card quality, insufficient interaction, and being quite easy to pick apart themselves. We have had a dash more of the madness cards and a pile more that supports them in recent years, much like everything else! Not to mention generic good graveyard cards and mechanics. There presently isn't even that much in the way of cards in the cube for a discard deck that shouldn't be.  Regardless, I finally got a sealed pool with a sufficient seeming mass of cards to build a discard based deck and it did not disappoint. So much so that I feel I may legitimately be able to bring back some of the narrower cards to further support the archetype. We might have finally hit that critical mass turning point where I am no longer trying to push or force and archtype and instead move to just naturally supporting it.

My list was about two thirds discard synergy stuff and about a third generic good stuff. I would say I managed to get most of the key low cost cards in my pool resulting in it feeling like it was all much more synergic than it was. There are at least enough discard themed cards in the cube that I could run to make it a fully themed deck in the unlikely event that I got everything in a sealed or draft setting. I also splashed white rather ruining the aesthetic of a nice pure example list. My lands were a bit too good not to include teh white, it felt free and I had a couple of very powerful well suited things to bring in. My ideal list however would be straight Rakdos. Below is what I played, everything marked with an * is something I would cut from the "Platonic" or example version of this archetype, be it for being off colour or just not discard themed.  

24 Spells

Marauding Mako

Asmoranaculdicarcaisdar

Stalactite Stalker

Deathrite Shaman

Dragon's Rage Channeler

Nethergoyf 

Faithless Looting

Currency Converter

Underworld Cookbook

Skullclamp*

Flametongue Yearling*

Scrapwork Mutt

Invasion of Tarkir*

Inti, Seneschal of the Sun  

Phlage*

Lingering Souls*

Bastion of Remembrance*

Tersa, Lightshatter

Fable of the Mirrorbreaker

Liliana of the Veil

Broadside Bombardiers*

Sheoldred*

Lethal Scheme  

Rankle, Prankster

16 Lands

Ash Barrens

Marsh Flats

Godless Shrine

Plateau

Elegant Parlour 

Sacred Foundry

Badlands

Blood Crypt

5 Swamp

3 Mountain

You may note that the cards with an * are often role fillers. A lot of them are removal as that is where there is the most deficiency in synergy and support discard tools. I have tried somewhat to supplement the deck with a range of different types as there are delirium components. Mako is a premium one drop that does exactly what you are looking to do and is provided some lower power redundancy from Stalker. Then we have the generically good DRC, DRS, and Nethergoyf who all tie in to the game plan delightfully well with top end power right where you need it on the curve. Asmo and the Cookbook are the cards that perhaps do not deserve a cube slot and are my present  nod to trying to force this archetype. Cookbook has actually done some good work by itself but this is the first time Asmo has performed in cube, even if she has been played once or twice beforehand. These one drops are broadly the most important cards to have a good mass off and what this list did so well. All the missing things where thankfully not from this group and why the deck was so potent.

The best one drop by far however is the Currency Converter. This really makes the whole deck tick along. It turns all your discards into extra value while offering utility at the same time. You can even just use it as a looter itself if you get really stuck for things to do! It really feels like a one mana artifact you can tap to make a Treasure or a 2/2 token each turn in this deck. Perhaps not quite the consistency and burst of a Sol Ring but certainly outclassing it in overall power and utility. The next best card in the list, in no small part thanks to how well it pairs with the Converter is Ash Barrens. It is a cheap, instant speed, card neutral, discard trigger. It is also fixing obviously. Further to that it is a land that discards to get a land which allows for mana production with DRS and Treasure production with converter. It lets you have and play lands comfortably while stocking the discards with lands at the same time. Certainly a higher ceiling than a sac land in the deck, presumably better overall as well. I didn't have any of the LotR land cycling dorks which are also pretty cute if being a little way off as potent as Ash Barrens. You are rarely casting teh top end so it is mostly just an EtB tapped land with a discard trigger and a bit of yard fuel, mostly useful for collecting evidence. This deck is all about tempo and EtB tapped lands are a big cost, I would try and keep them to a minimum. The real trick with this deck is not to get too carried away with big powerful top end stuff and rely on the fact that your early stuff is able to carry pretty hard compared to normal. I was pretty happy with my curve. You get a bit more flexibility than most archetypes as you will have a bunch of looting and discard to toss away unwanted stuff but that doesn't give you licence to be sloppy in deck design.

The deck works much like the various high tempo decks that use synergies or the graveyard to get a little extra out of their cards. Most of the cards are decent in their own right while also supporting each other in both power and utility. You get lots of options while packing a pretty good punch. It doesn't lean so hard on the synergy like old Madness decks that it can be shut down with a little disruption. Even though the curve is low I prefer a slightly higher land count as discarding lands is something you actively want to be able to do early on and flooding out late is a little less likely. Another quirk of the deck is that you get to really vary how much you want out of a card. Sometimes you simply want to toss something in the bin to get some counters on some dorks, perhaps turn on delirium or threshold etc. Other times you hold the card to cast it. You can afford to toss away top end because your one drops can become game ending threats. You can afford to have cards in your hand just being a +1/+1 counter worth of value as you have novel ways to obtain extra value. On the flip side of all this, the deck does not mulligan well. You really want those cards ust as bits of cardboard. Another reason to play a bit land heavier and ensure you have a strong mana base.

Below is the list of cube cards you will often find in most cubes that I would consider good synergy options for this archetype. The kinds of cards I would like to replace the * cards with so as to move towards a purer synergy build. Each with their own pros, cons, and specific synergies that they perform best with. 

Bomat Courier

Lava Dart / Firebolt

Voldaren Epicure

Bloodtithe Harvester  

Ivora, Insatiable Heir

Fear of Missing Out

Collective Brutality

Phyrexian Dragon Engine

Seasoned Pyromancer

Detective's Phoenix

Smuggler's Copter

Bitter Triumph

Bone Shards

Troll of Kazadum

Oliphant

Vengevine 

Bloodghast

Unearth

Reanimate

Urza's Saga (probably, if you got Converter in your pool!)

And here is a list of cards which are not commonly found in cubes that are especially good in this kind of deck that I will now be considering for a trail (re)run in cube. Of which I am only really expecting the first three to have any real hope. The others are really too narrow and look like they are not going to offset that with payoff. The first three are convenient and/or powerful enough that they can make a meaningful impact to the archetype and perhaps see some play outside of it too. 

Hobgoblin, Mantled Marauder

Blazing Rootwalla (and I guess Basking...)

Burning Inquiry 

Goblin Lore 

Hollow One

Ovalchase Daredevil

Squee, Goblin Nabob

Fiery Temper

Street Wraith

Flameblade Adept

Finally, here is my realistic idea of roughly what I'll be aiming at for this archetype within my cube when drafting it next;

Marauding Mako

Asmoranaculdicarcaisdar

Stalactite Stalker  

Deathrite Shaman

Dragon's Rage Channeler

Nethergoyf

Faithless Looting

Currency Converter

Underworld Cookbook

Bone Shards

Unearth

Scrapwork Mutt

Inti, Seneschal of the Sun

Bitter Triumph

Bloodtithe Harvester  

Ivora, Insatiable Heir

Fear of Missing Out

Smuggler's Copter

Tersa, Lightshatter

Fable of the Mirrorbreaker

Liliana of the Veil

Detective Phoenix

Lethal Scheme

Rankle, Prankster  

16 Lands

Ash Barrens

The Figure of Destiny Enigma

 

Cube is a relatively static format compared to most. The tinkerings of their curators doing far more to change the meta than the release of new cards ever does. The one thing that does change with some consistency are the creatures of choice. We get a new staple spell now and again but mostly once a spell is in the cube it stays in the cube. Creatures on the other hand arrive, stick around for a bit, and then get power crept out. They have a limit lifespan and a shockingly short one on average. Obviously this is more down to the curator and how keen they are but I am pretty sure that the average time a new creature added to the cube from the last ten years lasts about six months for somewhat active curators. The only creatures that have ever retained an ongoing space since arriving are utility creatures. The green mana dorks, Mother of Runes, Grim Lavamancer, that sort of thing. That sort of thing and Figure of Destiny apparently... Cube and power creep are most brutal upon the beaters of the game. But somehow the little kithkin is unscathed. He is to cube what Giant Spider is to sealed deck limited!

Figure of Destiny is a threat, a beater, and nothing more. No value offered beyond combat. It is now an incredibly old card, ancient and alone as far as such pure beaters go. The only cards that come close to it in terms of age and role are Siege Gang Commander, Flickerwisp, and Bloodbraid Elf, most of which only really feature in cubes for nostalgia these days, and all of which are absolutely more in the utility/value camp than pure beater. 

Not only has Figure of Destiny outlasted all other threats in cube it has done so without ever really being that overbearing or top tier. It has played alongside Savannah Lions and Mogg Fanatics all the way to Ocelot Pride and Ragavan, all the while never feeling too out of place. The card has always just been a solid role filler. By far and away the three most commonly played aggressive colours played in cube are mono red, mono white, and Boros, for which Figure is a perfect one drop and mana sink. Indeed, just having the card greatly increases the consistency of your Boros beatdown deck. Being able to use any colour of mana to develop your board lets you play the spells in your hand you want without being mana inefficient. Having it effectively turns one of your lands into a dual land when you are Boros. Being a reasonable mana sink is a nice perk for consistency too whatever colour you are.

Being able to level the card at instant speed makes it a very safe way to invest mana allowing you to dodge the worst tempo swinging of answers. It is pseudo flash on all bar the first and safest mana and it is also options. All be it just how and when to use it but it is still far more option rich than almost every other pure beater threat card going. You can go all in on a Figure, you can be safe, or fast and lose, mana efficient, card efficient, or max damage! The card is never the best on any one axis but it performs so consistently on so many while remaining direct. It can afford to perform worse than you average red or white one drop beater and still retain a place by being playable in so many more places than most cards. All places that want what it has to offer.

Cute new things keep popping up and working with Figure. Need a white card that is a red permanent to buff your MHIII Ajani? Need a way to sink that Firebending mana? Slow and steady really does win the race here. It is comical to me that time has shown the best beater in magic to be a one mana 1/1, a two mana 2/2, a five mana 4/4 or an 11 mana 6/6 flyer....  This should really drive home the notion that consistency really is king when it comes to magic. It is like the exact opposite of Ragavan. The legendary monkey has a ceiling so far above Figure it is comical, orders of magnitude better, but it is an infrequent ceiling. Critically, almost every other situation you could find yourself in the Figure is outperforming Ragavan, all be it, usually not by all that much. It is hard to say Ragavan is a weaker card, it clearly isn't. Neither is it weaker on average but Figure still puts in more work. Figure will show up in more places and contribute more. You can output more with a lower average simply by being there more of the time and that is how Figure gets it done. Strength without power.