I.  Introduction

So I decided to make a mono-blue deck.  That's right, it's the color that I probably use the least.  I don't like instants, and I don't like "I win" combos.  I'm going to try something infinite and hopefully not going to do anything broken in the deck.  So you won't be seeing any of these combos:

 or    and  

 plus    plus  

 plus    plus  

 or    and  

Admittedly none of these are infinite.  They are just the combos I could immediately think of off the top of my head that had been played against me recently, and they are truly annoying.  Although I am going to include some of the above cards, I am not going to include the entirety of any of these combos.  I am not against any of the cards above on an individual basis, I'm just not a huge fan of the combos themselves, mainly because they are typically non-interactive and easy to assemble.  However, this is just my opinion.

I am going to play a few counterspells, but generally only ones with high casting costs and are goofy that wouldn't see play in a 60 card deck.  I will play some theft, as I never really had a problem with that before.  But the idea is to pick a Commander where people aren't going to immediately gun for me, and I don't want to be "that guy" at the table that sets up the huge storm count to Brain Freeze the entire table on turn 5.  Now, I don't want to get into a whole "what is casual?" debate.  I understand why people play the decks or combos, and if you like playing this kind of stuff, more power to you.  It's just not my style.  Keep in mind that if you play enough games of Commander, you will see each of the above combos played, and you should likely be prepared for them, or just let the player combo out so you can move on to the next game.  But the deck I'm showing you today is not going to be a hugely powerful monster that wins 95% of the time and make people throw down their keyboards or laptops in frustration every time they play against it.  Hopefully it will be fun.  Let's see how I do with this goal.

II.  The Deck:  A Blue Deck?!?  You Impostor!

So being mono-blue, people are generally going to expect me to play a mess of counters or other things that bug them, and they are going to gun for me pretty quickly.  I don't want people to freak out right away, so I need to avoid certain Commanders.  I don't want to use Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, who basically says "You can't play instants.  And by the way, all my dudes have flash."  I don't want one of the Card Advantage Royalty, aka Arcanis the Omnipotent and Azami, Lady of Scrolls.  I don't want to try and lock people out of playing the game with Erayo, Soratami Ascendant.  I also don't want to use Arcum Dagsson, who will try and kill all opponent's lands with some frustrating Mycosynth Lattice/March of the Machines combo.  Keep in mind these observations are based upon my experiences.  

Annoying.

What I do want is a non-threatening Commander who has a useful ability.  I want someone who isn't going to jump right out and say "Take your punishment and like it" like the Commanders above typically do.  That's why I went with this guy(?  I can never really tell with some of the Kamigawa legends.):

Not so annoying.

Sakashima is actually pretty useful.  He is your friendly Clone variant.  He can copy the best creature on the board, and he can bounce himself to avoid being tucked.  I think those are two generally pretty useful abilities that won't keep my opponents from playing their decks.  And my opponents will hopefully end up taking that into consideration when deciding who to go after.  Early on I can use him to copy a Solemn Simulacrum to ramp up the mana.  Later, I can copy someone's Seedborn Muse.  I have copied these creatures, as well as Woodfall Primus, Deus of Calamity, Reya Dawnbringer, Maelstrom Archangel, and Baneslayer Angel.  Sakashima can even copy an Eldrazi like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in the late game, as well as other people's Commanders and legends without repercussion.  Good stuff.  

Choosing Sakashima as my Commander brings to the forefront the role of politics.  If you want, when playing this deck you can start off by letting everyone know you aren't going to be "that guy."  Or you can just let the cards do the talking.  Oftentimes someone will make a comment about hoping that I don't counter their spells.  I this commend to tell my opponents that I only run 5 hard counters, or that I don't have any broken combos in my deck.  But people are going to be wary of you because you are the blue player and they may not always believe you.  Just be prepared for games when everyone starts attacking you and you haven't done anything of consequence yet.

When I first put together the deck, I wanted to avoid Counterspells entirely.  I really wanted to focus on the copying, theft and card draw, as well as other fun cards and stuff that I don't typically see used.  However, I noticed that due to blue's inability to deal with permanents, there were sometimes spells that just needed to be countered, or I would be completely hosed.  There were also times when others at the table looked at me to have an answer for when an opponent dropped a game changing bomb.  I guess it pays to be prepared.  So I bent my rule a little and added a few counters.  Let's take a look at the deck. 

Sakashima the Impostor

A Commander Deck

Creatures 1 Aeon Chronicler 1 Arcanis the Omnipotent 1 Body Double 1 Clone 1 Draining Whelk 1 Duplicant 1 Inkwell Leviathan 1 Keiga, the Tide Star 1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner 1 Magus of the Future 1 Memnarch 1 Sakashima the Impostor 1 Scrivener 1 Solemn Simulacrum 1 Soramaro, First to Dream 1 Sower of Temptation 1 Sun Quan, Lord of Wu 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir 1 Thada Adel, Acquisitor 1 Trinket Mage 1 Uyo, Silent Prophet 1 Venser, Shaper Savant 1 Vesuvan Doppelganger 1 Vesuvan Shapeshifter 1 Willbender 25 cards Other Spells 1 Crystal Shard 1 Everflowing Chalice 1 Expedition Map 1 Extraplanar Lens 1 Gauntlet of Power 1 Journeyer's Kite 1 Mana Crypt 1 Mind's Eye 1 Nevinyrral's Disk 1 Oblivion Stone 1 Sculpting Steel 1 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Sisay's Ring 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Sword of Light and Shadow 1 Tormod's Crypt 1 Worn Powerstone 1 Strip Mine 1 Jace Beleren 1 Future Sight 1 Honden of Seeing Winds 1 Capsize 1 Desertion 1 Evacuation 1 Fact or Fiction 1 Hinder 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Overwhelming Intellect 1 Spelljack 1 Stroke of Genius 1 Twincast 1 Acquire 1 Blatant Thievery 1 Borrowing 100,000 Arrows 1 Bribery 1 Eternal Dominion 1 Fabricate 1 Rite Of Replication 1 Time Spiral 37 cards

Lands 1 Ghost Quarter 28 Island 1 Miren, the Moaning Well 1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge 1 Reliquary Tower 1 Seat of the Synod 1 Thawing Glaciers 1 Tolaria West 1 Vesuva 36 cards

Strip Mine should be with the lands, bringing our land count up to 37.  Let's take a look at the cards:

Counterspells

Venser, Shaper Savant, Draining Whelk, Desertion, Overwhelming Intellect, Hinder, Spelljack:  Your counters.  Some are situational, and most cost a lot of mana.  Venser isn't a hard counter, and has been a little bit underwhelming for me.  Hinder is actually the card that can be most annoying, especially if you counter a Commander.  But I will only do this if the Commander is truly something I can't deal with, and I didn't include Tunnel Vision in the deck.  They are useful to have.

Card Draw

Aeon Chronicler, Arcanis the Omnipotent, Sword of Fire and Ice, Jace Beleren, Honden of Seeing Winds, Fact or Fiction, Stroke of Genius, Mind's Eye, Borrowing 100,000 Arrows, Overwhelming Intellect:  Your card draw.  Every deck needs some, and blue provides better than most.  Arcanis obviously combos with Minamo, School at Water's Edge.  Unexpected All-Star is Borrowing 100,000 Arrows, which can sometimes draw up to 6 cards.  Occasionally you only get 1, but usually it works out to a Counsel of the Soratami at the very least.  Plus, I like the name a lot.

Copy Effects

Body Double, Clone, Duplicant, Vesuvan Doppelganger, Vesuvan Shapeshifter, Rite of Replication, Sakashima the Impostor, Twincast, Uyo, Silent Prophet:  Your copying effects.  Other cards I considered were Dance of Many and Followed Footsteps, but they didn't make the cut.  The only problem with these copying cards is that sometimes they sit in your hand while you wait for a juicy target.  But usually there's something out there worth getting.  I guess Duplicant is more of a removal spell, but it copies stats, so I put it here.

Theft

Keiga, the Tide Star, Memnarch, Sower of Temptation, Thada Adel, Acquisitor, Desertion, Spelljack, Acquire, Bribery, Blatant Thievery:  Your stealing effects.  I admit there is a decent amount in here, and finding the right balance wasn't easy.  We don't have a ton of huge beaters and threats in here, so you have to go take them from your opponents.  Obviously you need to make certain decisions when using cards like Bribery and Acquire.  Specifically, you need to balance the possibility of the player you pick having something useful for you right then versus wanting to see their deck to determine what additional threats and/or game plans they may have.  Bribery is going to be even better once ROE comes out and people start packing their decks with Eldrazi.  Keep in mind that if you do play with Eldrazi, you need to be able to get rid of it if an opponent is playing it as well.

Tutors

Trinket Mage, Expedition Map, Mystical Tutor, Fabricate, Tolaria West:  Your tutors.  There are a decent number of ways to search up cheap artifacts in here.  One card that I didn't include was Personal Tutor.  I had a reason, but now I don't remember what it is.  Fabricate is often used to find Oblivion Stone as your answer to problem board positions.  And don't forget that if you need some extra mana, you can use Tolaria West to get your Mana Crypt.

Mana Help

Solemn Simulacrum, Everflowing Chalice, Expedition Map, Journeyer's Kite, Mana Crypt, Sisay's Ring, Worn Powerstone, Gauntlet of Power, Extraplanar Lens, Thawing Glaciers: Your mana accel/smoothing/fixing.  This deck is very mana hungry, just like many decks in Commander.  Making sure that you hit your early land drops can be crucial.  Don't be afraid to use Sakashima to copy a Simulacrum in the early game.  You can also use Vesuva to copy the Glaciers, and just search out lands each turn.  And since we are mono-colored, the duo of Extraplanar Lens and Gauntlet of Power go in.  Obviously Snow-Covered Islands would be better since we are using Extraplanar Lens, but I didn't have enough.  And Sisay's Ring just looks cooler than Ur-Golem's Eye.

187 Creatures

Draining Whelk, Scrivener, Solemn Simulacrum, Sower of Temptation, Trinket Mage, Venser, Shaper Savant, Duplicant:  Your 187 creatures, in that they have an effect when they come into play.  Obviously these all go well with Crystal Shard so that you can bounce and re-use them.  The one card that has under performed has been Scrivener.  I usually discard it when my hand gets too full.  I just don't seem to draw it when there are useful instants in my graveyard.  But it has come though in the clutch at least twice when I was able to pull back an Evacuation to help with a horrible board position, so I'm keeping it for now.

Beaters

Inkwell Leviathan, Soramaro, First to Dream, Sun Quan, Lord of Wu:  Your beaters.  Each of these guys has some form of evasion.  Leviathan is just hard to deal with.  Soramaro is usually pretty large, and can help with card draw if necessary.  Sun Quan can make all your creatures get through.  In addition, many of your copy and steal effects will net you a large creature or two as well.

Combo

Magus of the Future, Future Sight, Sensei's Divining Top:  This is the "Pay 1, draw a card" combo, requiring only one of the Future cards.  However, it can only be done at sorcery speed.  In addition, without Helm of Awakening or Etherium Sculptor, I cannot draw my deck or generate a huge storm count for a big Brain Freeze.  So I think this combo is ok.

Answers

Capsize, Oblivion Stone, Nevinyrral's Disk, Evacuation, Time Spiral, Tormod's Crypt:  Your answers to problem permanents.  Obviously the blue answers are only temporary, but they can usually have a very good effect on the board.  They also slow down your opponents, who have to use their resources again to play things they had already played.  For a while I had Temporal Cascade to make people shuffle away the stuff I had bounced, but it rarely came up like that, and I like Time Spiral better.  The Stone and the Disk are re-set buttons that can be used to change the board position drastically.  Time Spiral and the Crypt are your answers to graveyard shenanigans.

Goofiness

Eternal Dominion:  This is a fun card, and entirely dependent on your opponents.  Obviously you are going to want to get a feel for what kind of decks your opponents are playing before casting it, because once you play this card, there is no going back.  If there's a mono-white deck out there, there are usually a few defensive enchantments and artifacts that are useful.  If you want to go on the offensive, hit the person playing the red/green Stonebrow, Krosan Hero deck.  Also, keep in mind the types of cards your opponents are playing.  If their deck is full of dual lands and power cards, you obviously want to chose them before hitting the guy using Craw Wurms.  However, remember that once an opponent loses or concedes, all of their permanents that you control leave play.  I have only played this card a few times, and it did screw me once, but it was still fun.

So basically in the early going you want to set up your mana, get some accel, and draw cards.  Thereafter you can start copying/stealing and go to town.  The early game is where people decide whether you are a threat or not.  If you play a turn three Teferi, people are going to think you are a threat, and they will gun for you.  Teferi on turn 8?  Not nearly as big a deal.  So keep this in mind when you are making your plays and setting up.  I know I won a game where a opponent had a turn 4 Deus of Calamity because all I was doing was using Thawing Glaciers, while another guy had out Land Tax and Sun Droplet.  Those two cards by themselves, or even together, aren't threatening.  But the player showed that he could recover from Deus' land destruction, and made himself a target.  Meanwhile I was discarding large bodies like Inkwell Leviathan to keep using my Glaciers.  By the time the Deus was removed, I was set up, and ready to take over. 

Like most mono-blue decks, this deck can occasionally have difficulty with enchantments and artifacts that are in play.  Like usual, you are going to have to rely on O-Stone to deal with a difficult board position.  Capsize can help out with problem permanents as well.  Most of the time creatures aren't a problem, as you can copy or steal them.

III.  The Game:  Fight!

I want to preface this game report with a little blurb.  So early on in my testing, but after I'd pretty much finalized the list, I played a series of pretty fun games where people didn't (for the most part) drop.  I played two games against a guy using Sek'kuar, Deathkeeper as their Commander who used infinite combo's each game by turn 8 or so.  He actually used different combo's each time, and it was actually pretty interesting.  I really wanted to report on at least one of these games, basically to show the irony of losing to a non-blue combo deck with my blue non-combo deck.  However, they were lost into the replay Aether.  Ah well.

There were other games where I the deck worked pretty much as I wanted:  Lay low for a little while, then overwhelm people with card advantage and copy/stealing effects.  However, the replays would crap out about halfway through, and I couldn't prepare full reports.  I really wanted a report where no one dropped.  Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.  So this game is one of the very few where the replay didn't screw it up.  Although it isn't entirely representative of the deck, it gives you an idea of what can happen.

So here are my opponents:

Sen Triplets usually means a very controlling deck.  Expect mass destruction from white, card draw from black, and occasional counters from blue.  Rith decks can go a variety of different ways, but often times use the tokens Rith can create to its advantage.  White Crovax mostly means white control, while occasionally leading to tokens and weenies.  Sen Triplets win the roll.  Here's my opening hand:

Soramaro, First to Dream, Mind's Eye, Bribery, Stroke of Genius, 3 Islands

Another card I've never seen played.  Seems powerful.

Capsize, Fabricate, SDT, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, 2 Islands and Oblivion Stone

Although fragile, there are a couple of nice one-drops out there to search up.

IV.  Conclusion

This wasn't a typical game.  Basically two of the players had a grudge and beat the heck out of each other (Rith and Crovax), and the person that appeared to be setting up a dominant board position Sen Triplets quit.  The remaining player complained of mana flood, and didn't do much beside play his Commander.  That left me with the ability to swoop in and sweep up the mess.  The Rith player stuck around to watch the game, and basically said he didn't think I had a chance before I pulled it off.  Although this isn't typically the way that I like to win (doing nothing then winning with one big play), the fact that I copied Eternal Dominion so many times makes me happy.  So I guess the moral of the story is not to let the grudge match weaken you so much that you can't finish the game out.

I will be honest:  With the high amount of steal effects, the deck can be kind of annoying.  But I think that blue decks just annoy people in general.  Actually the two most commented cards by opponents were Memnarch and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner.  I'm fine with Kira, but while Memnarch is pretty mana intensive, it is used as a late game card to steal away stuff and win and people just don't like that.  However, if you think that there is too much theft in the deck, it may go out for something like Darksteel Colossus, Sphinx Ambassador or the new sphinx from ROE, Sphinx of Magosi.  No one really complained about Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, which surprised me, I think mainly because they knew once it was gone it wasn't likely to come back.  

Kederekt Leviathan is another answer card that can be added, to help you get out or sticky situations.  A card which can be added but isn't necessary is Tolarian Academy.  There are a decent amount of artifacts in the deck, so I'm guessing it would often tap for 3, which isn't completely broken.  Ixidron is sort of a blue version of Humility, which can come in handy.  And if you really want cool points, add Vizzerdrix.  Please get a screenshot if you get him into play and another if you kill someone with him.

Like I said in the beginning, politics plays a big role with this deck.  If you show that you aren't trying to do anything broken, people will often leave you alone.  However, after you Spelljack someone's Blatant Thievery, their feelings often change.  But I am actually fine with this deck.  It has some fun cards, and doesn't do anything too broken.  You can sometimes get rushed early game and get put on the defensive just because you're the blue deck, but that's just part of the game.  Keep in mind, this is all my personal preference.  You may hate this type of deck, just like I hate Armageddon and Winter Orb.  But I'm putting it out there so you can at least look into what's possible.

Finally, although this was one of the rare games where I had mana problems, I think adding in one or two more Islands may be helpful as well.  Candidates for cutting include Willbender, Jace Beleren and Stroke of Genius.

Thanks for reading!  Until next time, when I look at a deck using Bladewing the Risen!

Leviathan, aka Tarasco on MTGO