Howdy! Welcome to Daily Arena. I’m Joe, and today I’ll be briefly talking about the latest “non-Meta” Standard deck I’ve been messing around with, “Mono-Blue Storm”. I’ll start with a link to the deck, the deck list, and some gameplay videos, followed by some thoughts about my experience with the deck.

You can find a description of the deck over on mtggoldfish.com:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-magic-92-33-tix-mono-blue-storm-standard

Here is the deck list:



Mono-Blue Storm

And here are some game play videos:

vs. G/W Tokens



vs. U/B Midrange



vs. B/G Constrictor



vs. Mono-Green Stompy



So far I’ve only played the deck on the Constructed Ladder…I’m short on Rare Wildcards so haven’t been able to put together the full sideboard and don’t feel comfortable taking it into a Competitive Constructed run until I have the complete deck assembled.

After assembling the deck, I lost about 10 games in a row while figuring out how to play it, but since then have had about a 75% win rate. The games where the deck loses hard are against very aggressive builds that can run you over before you start gaining life off of an Aetherflux Reservoir.

So the pattern I usually fall into during games where I am able to pull off the combo is get one Aetherflux Reservoir out and gain life off of it to stay alive while attempting to draw into a second Aetherflux Reservoir and hopefully play it for cheap using Baral’s Expertise that had reduced cost due to Improvise (given to it by Inspiring Statuary). If you can follow this up by Paradoxical Outcome (for a single blue mana!), you’ve probably just won the game.

If you get the cards in just the right order, you can win the game with a single Athersphere Reservoir, assuming you can bounce a lot of zero-cost artifacts using Paradoxical Outcome and luckily draw enough more than you can just barf your hand onto the table for a win.

A few things I’ve learned:

Drawing cards is very important to set up the combo, especially early in the game. Often this means bouncing and replaying Prophetic Prism when you have the chance.

Some match-ups require some interaction for you to survive, especially if you don’t have an early Aetherflux Reservoir. Make sure to leave open an Island for Metallic Rebuke when you need to.

Be careful when playing out Ornithopters against a deck that might have Golden Demise. 🙂

And that’s about it. This deck is a hoot and a half to play when you get to combo off, it’s a bit tricky to play, but very rewarding when you learn to play it well. Most of the games when you don’t are over quickly, which is a plus on Arena.

As always, feel free to contact me with any criticisms, comments, etc., either here, on Reddit, on Twitter via @DailyArena, or on Facebook via the @DailyArenaMTG page.

Peace.

Joseph Eddy is a Father, Husband, Son, Brother, Software Developer, and Gamer. Magic is his favorite hobby, and he’s looking forward to seeing you all on Arena. He streams Magic Arena on a weekly basis (or more), but currently is unable to keep to a set schedule.