It all starts with your Flying one drops. The usual suspects arrive with
Judge’s Familiar and
Cloudfin Raptor to start terrorizing from the sky, but it looks like Ross wanted that extra little push and added a singleton
Galerider Sliver to ensure a consistent turn one play. Continuing into two drops there are perennial two way player
Frostburn Weird playing both defensive and offensive roles, and
Tidebinder Mage which is great in a world rife with Green and Red monsters. Next we find that amazing yet inexpensive God with
Thassa, God of the Sea to both push through Unblockable creature and provide constant card selection. There is also Devotion superstar
Nightveil Specter that help as the only real card advantage in the deck while at the same time stealing options away from your opponent. All of these creatures help to increase your Devotion count for the decks bomb play when you drop a
Master of Waves and clutter the board with an army of
Elemental tokens. As another slight addition to the devotion count there’s also a miser
Bident of Thassa which gives the deck that slim extra card draw when it’s on the offensive. The real innovation in the deck comes from the inclusion of anthem artifact
Hall of Triumph which will help to ensure that the Masters tokens don’t just disappear whenever he takes a hike, a huge issue in the past. For a few bits of removal in the deck we find a pair of
Rapid Hybridization to keep the skies free of blockers and
Cyclonic Rift when you just need to flick the reset switch on the other side of the board.
While I won’t exactly say that this looks like we are heralding in a new era of
Mono-Blue it is encouraging to see that there is always place for tried strategies to return for another round. This is also a fairly good deck to invest in going forward into the next Standard season as it is powerful and maintains a good amount of its list. And while
Frostburn and
Nightveil are two huge losses we should no doubt see decent replacement options with the upcoming new sets. I would definitely say this list is worth taking for a spin and working forward into the next year.
