First up, I want to apologies that this article is coming out a little bit late. I originally wrote this piece last week, however, for some reason all my data on it was lost off my hard drive when I checked it on Monday. As a result, I have had to write the entire article again, which has taken addition time to complete as you can imagine. Still not sure what happened, but hopefully I have taken the necessary steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Anyway, with all that out of the way lets get back to other mini Historic deck tech series.

As you will remember, last week we begin looking at a series of mono coloured decks for the Historic format for you all to try out while the world is still pretty much on lockdown. In our previous article, we had a look at Mono White Soul Sisters, which I’ll leave a link to here if you missed. Today, it is the turn of the Blue section of the colour pie to show us what they can do, with Mono Blue Tempo.

Mono Blue Tempo is a strategy that aims to play a threat as early as possible, then use bounce and counter spells to slow down your opponent and disrupt their… well, tempo. Not too long ago this was a very powerful deck in Standard, and I believe it also has a home in Historic . It is also a deceptively powerful deck that can quickly out pace most opponents in both recourses and damage output if left unchecked.

As I said above, the plan of the deck is to play a threat as early as possible, and we have a few nice choices to pick from. Spectral Sailor and Siren Stormtamer are both effective turn one flyers that offer addition value depending on our needs. Spectral Sailor can be played at instant speed, allowing it to avoid most forms of sorcery speed removal when it first appears, as well as been a mana sink in the later game when we need card advantage. Siren Stormtamer on the other hand as great thanks to its sacrifice ability, allowing us to protect another one of our threats should the need arise.

Brineborn Cutthroat is another great early drop, this time coming down on turn two. Starting out as a 2/1, this rogue fishman can quickly get out of control thanks to all the instant speed spells we are running. The only thing it doesn’t have is a way to get around pesky blockers. But that is where Merfolk Trickster and Brazen Borrower come into play.

Able to temporarily remove blockers in one way or another, both these creatures are great addition to a tempo strategy (and are decent attackers should we require it). But what really pushes all these creatures be credible threats is our only enchantment in the deck, Curious Obsession. Not only does this little one mana enchantment buff one of our threats, but it gives us so much card advantage that its unlikely we will ever find ourselves without a decent answer to our opponents plans.

Speaking of answers, we also want to make sure our deck is full of them. After all, we want to make sure out tempo our opponent and keep them off the curve at all costs. To do that we are running Unsummon and Blink of an Eye to add to our ‘bounce’ effects. We also want a decent amount of counter magic to stop them from getting anything down on the table. Spell Pierce, Essence Capture and Lofty Denial all do a great job of this, while Dive Down provides us with some addition protection from removal.

Lastly, we will be running two copies of Sea-Dasher Octopus to act as copies five and six of Curious Obsession, as well as a couple copies of Castle Vantress for addition card draw. Finish it all off with nineteen basic Island, and you have the bases of a decently competitive deck.

For the Sideboard, we will double down on bounce and counter magic with Aether Gust, Disdainful Stroke and Keep Safe, as well as adding some more specialised answers. Tormod’s Crypt is a decent answer to most Graveyard decks, Shadowspear is a decent buff effect that also gives us life gain against aggressive brews, and Damping Sphere stops one turn combo decks while also answering some ramp strategies. Finally, Frogify gives us one of our only real removal effects in Blue.

And that about does it for Historic Mono Blue Tempo. What do you think about today’s deck? Is this what you want to play, or have you a different brew you want to try out? Please let me know in the comments below, and while you’re there you could like and subscribe to keep up to date with all we do here at Master of Magics.

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