Budget Magic: Eight-Rare ($80) Mono-Blue Flash (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Budget Magic! If you've been watching spoiler videos for recent sets, you might remember that for the last year, pretty much every set has had at least one card that made me say, "I think this might be good in some sort of flash deck." But for some reason, we haven't actually played a flash deck. Thanks to the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed and the printing of Voracious Tome-Skimmer, the time is right. So today, we're heading to our new Lorwyn Eclipsed Standard format to play some Mono-Blue Flash! The best part is that the deck costs just $75 in paper and costs just eight total rares to build on Magic Arena! Can Mono-Blue Flash compete in Lorwyn Eclipsed Standard on a budget? Let's get to the video and find out!
Budget Magic: Mono-Blue Flash
The Deck
Mono-Blue Flash is a tempo deck built around flash creatures. While most of our creatures aren't rawly powerful, they are tricky and sneaky. And if we can keep our opponent on the back foot, with their power combined, they can beat down to take home the win!
The core of our deck today is two card-advantage engines. As I mentioned a minute ago, most of our cards aren't super powerful in a vacuum, which means we'll need a lot of them to win. Thankfully, Enduring Curiosity and Voracious Tome-Skimmer are really good at drawing a ton of cards. I'm not going to say too much about Enduring Curiosity—if you've played any Standard over the past couple of years, you know its power. Being able to draw a card whenever one of our creatures deals combat damage works super well with all of our cheap, sometimes evasive flash threats. It is easily the strongest standalone card, and it's so important to our deck's functioning that we're willing to spend a full half of our budget on it!
On the other hand, Voracious Tome-Skimmer is a new Lorwyn Eclipsed uncommon, and it's a good one. For three mana, we get a 2/3 flier that allows us to pay a life to draw a card whenever we cast a spell during our opponent's turn. Outside of Voracious Tome-Skimmer itself, every single nonland card in our main deck is either an instant or has flash, which means that once we get a Voracious Tome-Skimmer, essentially all of our cards have a kicker of "pay 1 life, draw a card," which is wild. In our dream world, we'll stick a Voracious Tome-Skimmer and then never tap mana on our turn for the rest of the game, instead doing everything at instant speed during our opponent's turn to maximize the number of cards we can draw. While perhaps not quite as strong as Enduring Curiosity in a vacuum, it's an absurdly strong card-draw engine in our deck. And being able to play both Voracious Tome-Skimmer and Enduring Curiosity helps make sure that we have one of these card-advantage engines each game, which is super important because it's hard to win without them.
As far as the rest of our creatures, they are all flash threats. Spectral Sailor gives us a one-drop, and in theory, it can be a card-advantage engine too, although we don't really want to pay four mana for a single card if we can help it. Meanwhile, Plumecreed Escort helps us protect Enduring Curiosity and Voracious Tome-Skimmer by giving something flash when it enters, which is a solid ability on a 2/1 flying, flash body.
Next up, we have a bunch of flash creatures that also work as removal. Floodpits Drowner taps something down for two turns. Faebloom Trick taps something down for one turn while also giving us two 1/1 fliers. (The card is really strong in the deck.) Horned Loch-Whale is our most expensive flash creature as a six-drop, although we can use it as removal for just two mana thanks to its adventure mode. These cards let us add pressure to the battlefield while triggering our card-advantage engines and slowing our opponent down, which is exactly what our deck wants to do.
Our last flash creature is The Unagi of Kyoshi Island, which is . . . fine? While it does fit the deck's theme, it never felt super impactful, and it's a bit expensive at five mana. If I were building the deck today, I'd probably cut it for another counterspell, just to help keep the deck's cost down on Magic Arena, although it's also fine to play it as well.
As far as spells, we have Into the Flood Maw for more tempo. Being able to bounce anything for one mana while triggering Voracious Tome-Skimmer is super strong. Meanwhile, Noggle the Mind is the blue Doom Blade, answering any creature (by turning it into a 1/1 with no abilities) for two mana at instant speed. While there are some one-mana versions of this effect in Standard, Noggle the Mind is worth paying an extra mana for in our deck since we really want to play everything at instant speed.
As far as counterspells, we have one Spider-Sense in the main alongside three Phantom Interference, which can also make a 2/2 flier at instant speed, with a bunch more counterspells in the sideboard.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 6-3 with Mono-Blue Flash, good for a 67% match-win percentage, which is great, not just for a budget deck but for any deck. The deck actually felt incredibly powerful. While aggro decks can be a problem, if we can get out on the front foot to maximize our tempo advantage, the deck can be very hard to beat thanks to its combo of sneaky threats and endless card advantage.
Speaking of card advantage, Voracious Tome-Skimmer really impressed me. Sure, there are some games where we just play it, and it immediately dies. But if it sticks, it's a three-drop that can win the game almost by itself. We had some games where we drew 10+ cards with Voracious Tome-Skimmer, and it more or less snowballed into a win.
As far as changes I'd make to the budget build, I overlooked Spell Snare, and that was probably a mistake based on last week's Pro Tour, where 45% of the field was Badgermole Cub decks. As I mentioned earlier, I think The Unagi of Kyoshi Island is cuttable, and we can probably cut at least one Horned Loch-Whale as well, which would give us room for two or three copies of Spell Snare. Agna Qel'a would also be great in the mana base, but it would increase the budget (especially on Magic Arena since it's a rare). But if you have $3 or three rare wildcards, I think it's worth playing up to three copies in the mana base for filtering.
So, should you play Mono-Blue Flash in Standard? If you are looking for a budget deck and like the flash / tempo play style, I think the answer is yes! The deck felt solid and seemed like it can actually keep up with many of the best decks in Standard!
Ultra-Budget Mono-Blue Flash
If you want to make the deck even cheaper, there aren't a ton of options. Enduring Curiosity is half of the deck's budget, but it's necessary to make the deck function. In paper, you can potentially cut Into the Flood Maw for Bounce Off and save about $20. (Bounce Off also has the upside of being able to bounce our own creatures in response to removal.) Otherwise, no other card in the deck costs more than $1, so there isn't much to cut. Meanwhile, on Arena, the easiest way to make the deck cheaper is to make the Spell Snare changes we talked about. Both Horned Loch-Whale and The Unagi of Kyoshi Island are rares, so trading them in for the uncommon Spell Snare would get the budget down to just five rares. And while the card is great in the deck, you could also cut Spider-Sense for another Phantom Interference to get the total cost down to just four copies of [[Enduring Innocence].
Non-Budget Mono-Blue Flash
Finally, non-budget Mono-Blue Flash doesn't get a ton of changes, but it does get a few upgrades around the edges. We get one Wan Shi Tong, Librarian, one Glen Elendra Guardian, and a Stoic Sphinx in the main deck, along with some Spell Snares and Agna Qel'a in the mana base, while Tishana's Tidebinder and more Spider-Senses join the sideboard. The deck should play almost exactly like the one in the video; you just get a handful of high-rarity flash threats and a couple of upgraded sideboard options.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
