UB Tempo

Someone commented on the How to Mox article with simply "UB tempo". Whoever they are they are on the money, UB tempo decks are hard to build but are one of the very best places for Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond. One of the reasons they are not easy to build is the many number of different ways to go about building such a deck. I have two fairly polar examples here, both of which I fairly recently played with. The first is very much like UR tempo in cube however it uses more disruption in the slots burn would occupy. The second list is far more like a Pox deck or even a GW hatebears deck. Essentially both decks are very similar but they go about getting tempo in a different way, the former works on being cheaper and faster while the second deck is all about making your opponents slower.





UB Cheap Tempo

25 Spells

Chrome Mox

Black Vice
Delver of Secrets
Cloudfin Raptor
Phantasmal Bear

Gravecrawler
Diregraf Goul
Gnarled Scarhide
Vapour Snag

Spell Pierce
Disfigure
Brainstorm

Sinkhole
Boomerang
Dark Confidant
Blood Scrivener

Pain Seer
Snapcaster Mage
Remand
Memory Lapse

Daze
Arcane Denial
Looter il-Kor
Bitterblossom

Riftwing Cloudskate

15 lands

Wasteland
Rishidan Port
Underground Sea
Underground River

Polluted Delta
Watery Grave
Darkslick Shores
Drowned Catacomb

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sunken Ruins
Temple of Deciet
Creeping Tarpit

Faerie Conclave
1 Island
1 Swamp


So this list is fairly simple, the aim being to make a one drop threat and then back that up with enough disruption that it basically goes the distance. Mana Leak is an excellent card I am not playing, Deathrite would also fit in this list very easily but would likely command a higher land count with more sac lands to get the best from him. With so few lands a green splash to use his life gain is probably not worth it unless you know your match ups and really want life gain. If that is the case this is not the best kind of deck to be playing! This list can run either Mox or both however it is so cheap that a second Mox is somewhat overkill, you are not ramping into much useful beyond two mana. The Chrome is easier to fit in around a greedy mana base and I have a lot of low power cards I am going to be happier losing than land.


The playing of this deck is the hardest part as you need to know when to carry on laying threats and when you need to be representing counter magic. A Wrath effect will really take a lot of the wind out of your sails and with no red to burn people out you really need to be making mass removal as awkward as possible for your opponent. This deck commands a really strong knowledge of what is in the format and what cards your opponent is likely to have. As a result Gitaxian Probe might be more value than Brainstorm in the deck. You can of course go the targetted discard route however they are not great tempo cards nor do they work brilliantly with Black Vise or mana denial strategies. A nice safe Inquisition of Kozilek is still going to be very strong in this deck even with a few anti-synergies on the go. While this deck may be a little weaker than the red version due to having to play narrow cards like Disfigure instead of juicy burn it rather compensates by being a total free win should there be any kind of hiccough from your opponent. Woe betide the player who misses a land drop against you or is forced to keep a hand with nothing cheaper than a three drop. It also has a lot more late game than the red version due to the card advantage from Dark Confidant and company. Both Pain Seer and Blood Scrivener are able to perform near their best in this kind of deck as you have other more pressing threats out and the ability to expend your hand very fast.



UB Pox Tempo

23 Spells

Chrome Mox
Mox Diamond

Vapour Snag
Black Vice
Skullclamp
Deathrite Shaman

Baleful Strix
Smallpox
Sinkhole
Boomerang

Bloodghast
Bitterblossom
Talisman of Dominance
Snapcaster Mage

Remand

Dictate of Kruphix
Jace Beleren
Tanglewire
Trinket Mage

Braids
Smokestack
Venser, Shaper Savant

Deathcloud

17 Lands

Tropical Island
Bayou
Underground Sea
Underground River

Verdant Catacombs
Misty Rainforest
Polluted Delta
Watery Grave

Darkslick Shores
Drowned Catacomb
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Sunken Ruins

Temple of Deciet

Seat of Synod

Vault of Whispers

Creeping Tar Pit

Island


This list is not as refined as the former one. Bitterblossom and Bloodghast are awkward in this deck and do not usually offer a complementary game plan. There are a lot of cards that would really love more support such as the Skullclamp however there just isn't the space and so sometimes they will really under perform.
I was really tempted to sling a Mox Opal into this deck while speaking of cards that need more support! Although it leaves you very light on ways to actually kill people I would be tempted to cut all three of the afore mentioned cards in this list in favour of more cheap mana denial in the form of Eye of Nowhere, Hoodwink and likely Cryptic Command. Such a change would make games more one sided, should you get on top of the game and get a mana advantage then you should be able to sustain them doing nothing at you for the rest of the game however if they were to sneak some stuff out before you got going then you are much more likely to just fold to it. The deck is a little one sided anyway, it will obliterate any midrange thing you run against it yet it will fold pretty hard to a white weenie or red deck wins list. It can even struggle against certain builds of control and combo as they can respectively disrupt your few key spells or they can sneak their key spells out despite the very low economy of the game.


Jace Beleren is one of your best cards. The +2 is usually better than the -1 to draw yourself cards and so you have a very powerful cheap card draw tool that drastically reduces the pressure you are under and doubles up as an actual threat, something you are light on even with the Bitterblossom etc in the list. The Dictate is basically just your backup Jace and between the two of them they allow you to be able to expand so much of your resources on killing and bouncing lands. Small Pox is one of your other best cards although it is also a little awkward. The best way to beat a turn one Goblin Guide is to lay a pair of Mox and Small Pox, sure you will only have a couple of cards to work with from there on but they are going to be restarting the game while you already have a huge mana advantage. You simultaneously can cripple someone's economy and their tempo and you can do it early. Death Cloud is obviously better overall and will end most games for you in your favour but it does nothing for you in the early game. Unfortunately Small Pox is about the worst card you can play should you be doing a Deathrite Shaman opener and so you have to make your game plan work around your various awkward cards.

Sadly there is no viable redundancy for Black Vice because it is your best win condition. You will win most games where you are on the play and you open with the Vice, the rest of the deck just supports it so well. Follow it up with thigns like Remand and Boomerang and you will find that sometimes the damage goes up from three rather than down! Black Vice is the only real chance this deck has of ending the game quickly, otherwise you will usually end up just de-permanenting your opponent and have them concede.


These decks look like they have completely different game plans which they kind of do but if you reduce it down they are both just tempo decks. The former tries to go quicker and earlier with the things it does while the latter wreaks havoc with the economy of the game so that its opponent has to go slower than it. The first is full of threats while the second has very few but I reckon if you could plot some curve of threat density per turn assuming an average number of turns for each deck specifically they would wind up about the same. In some ways the same analogy can be drawn between a ramp deck and a control deck, their plan is both to place a large powerful threat into play, the ramp deck goes fast to get to that point while the control deck slows the opponent down so as to get to the same point. The main point of these decks was to reinforce the previous article on Mox use by giving some examples of decks that can utilize, and compensate for, them in many ways I discussed.