2. I’m new to MTGO (only a couple of weeks), and I have recently been trying to build a couple of decks, a Control deck and a Mill deck using Blue and White. Since my collection is quite limited, its no surprise that these two decks are not very successful.

    Both decks are meant to be played for the Standard format. So far, both are a disappointment even with Tamiyo in play.

    I don’t have Jace, the Mind Sculptor but I do have 3 copies of Jace’s Erasure.

    Maybe I should pair blue with a different color other than white?

  3. Good article, with interesting breakdowns. I don’t play classic/vintage but I enjoy watching vids of them and reading discussions on them so I enjoyed this. A couple of things:

    1) Not sure how a one mana 3 power green creature is too good and gets banned (in modern), but a one mana 3 power *evasive* blue creature hasn’t been banned somewhere yet. Why wotc thought that guy was reasonable continues to confound me.

    2) Tiago (not Taigo) Chan is the creator of Snapcaster, unless you are punning on something I am unaware of.

    Had an interesting discussion on twitter the other day re: Sol Ring/Mana Crypt and whether they add anything other than variance to the classic format. Especially in light of control current difficulty in dealing with aggro, I would be interest in your thoughts on that topic.

  4. @raymon: Thanks for commenting and welcome to MTGO! Most competitive Classic decks utilize the graveyard to their advantage. Thus a Mill strategy is not usually effective outside of casual purposes. Assuming that you want to build a casual Mill deck, I would not consider myself knowledgeable enough to advise of the “best” strategy, but there are cards like Glimpse the Unthinkable which can be powerful when paired with Isochron Scepter (both fairly cheap cards). You might also want to consider some of the mill artifacts like good old Millstone and the newest, Grindclock. Tamiyo would be a good option if you can get her to ultimate using things like Tome Scour. I’m sure there are other forums which would have better idea’s unfortunately.

    @Robin: Thanks for your comment. I have a feeling that there will be some major changes on June 20th. I can’t say for sure that Tiago (it was a typo in the article) will be banned in Standard or if it’ll be Delver (or, maybe just Ponder?). For sure, Delver is everywhere, and there is a good chance that Delver gets the hook in Modern. I don’t play Modern right now, so I can’t say how oppressive it is at the moment, but having seen the winning decklists over the past several weeks, it’s definitely one of the top 2-3 decks in the format.

    As for Sol Ring and Mana Crypt, they are important to Classic, but not nearly as useful these days with the number of aggro decks running around. Having Misstep as a back-up for playing Sol Ring on Turn 1 helps, but by no means does a Turn 1 Sol Ring lead to a blow-out Victory, unless you have Tinker in hand. Crypt is a little trickier to evaluate. I’ve probably lost just as many games as I have on on the back of Crypt due to it’s egregious upkeep. I remember one game in particular that I lost when my opponent did no damage to me while I was playing Workshop! Crypt is pure acceleration though on Turn 1. It allows you to cast 2-drops that have one and a colorless mana requirements. It can also lead to a Turn 2 Jace, which is about as fast as possible in Classic (A nut draw of Island, Petal, Crypt and Jace is just about the only way to reasonably get it out on Turn 1, but it’ll probably be countered). I am definitely careful about when I play my Crypt. I’ve lost too many games to it to not respect it’s drawback. If I think I can cheat out a victory I’ll play it on Turn 1, but there have also been games where I’ve left it in my hand, or shuffled it away with Brainstorm knowing that it’s not going to help me win the game.