Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-AQULMQPOo&t=674s
Introduction:
An ever strong and changing population is the key to a powerful civilization. The masses feed their energy into a system through ideas and work. This effect is compounded through time as creativity and effort inspires and begets others. The deck I would like to talk about today is an attempt to follow along those lines. With Deekah, Fractal Theorist leading as our commander, I would like to talk about a deck I like to call “Dee’s Tokens.”
Strategy:
To start, let’s talk about Deekah and her abilities which says “Magecraft- Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, create a 0/0 green and blue Fractal creature token. Put X +1/+1 counters on it, where X is that spell's mana value.” And “3 and a Blue: Target creature token can't be blocked this turn.” This ability allows us to create a wide strategy, or having a multitude of creatures for attacking, in which we can overrun our opponents. With such, we’re wanting to have a large amount of Instants and Sorceries in order to trigger Magecraft on Deekah to get the tokens. An important factor is that the bigger the mana value of our spells the bigger the tokens that Deekah can produce. With such, one strategy is to play X spells such as Blue Sun’s Zenith to produce a large token by essentially mana dumping or using all our available mana into one spell. Producing these large tokens works great with Deekah’s second ability which allows one of token creatures to become Unblockable, letting us get in big damage.
With us using Instant and Sorceries to trigger Deekah, we can compound this effect by having other creatures that produce similar effects. Cards like Talrand, Sky Summoner and Shark Typoon generate similar value to Deekah as we cast Instants and Sorceries allowing for our go wide strategy to be more effective. Though not all our token generators have means of evasion, we have effective ways by which to get around our opponents’ creatures in the deck such as Sleep and Perplexing Test to open the board for our attacking tokens.
Another strategy that we need to take advantage of is mana reduction for our Instants and Sorceries. Mana dumping is an issue that we run into in the deck, and the less mana we can use to achieve great effects, the better off we will be when trying to interact with our opponents. Cards like Jace’s Sanctum are the perfect way for us to achieve this and get a little extra value out of our Instants and Sorceries.
The deck also runs decent interactions with us having access to counterspells. Though it is very important to time counterspells correctly, it is one of the best measures we have of disrupting our opponents’ strategies. Should our counterspells not be effective and our opponents are able to play key cards, then we can, in some cases, use their strategy to our advantage with cards like Blue Sun’s Twilight.
Downsides:
One of the biggest downsides to the deck is that we need a lot of mana for our strategy to work. Essentially every turn, we are mana dumping into our spells so that we can have a good token generation effect; however, this comes with the cost of potentially not having mana to interact with. Though we’re running cards to make this issue a little more manageable like High Tide, often we’re going to have to make the decision of spending all our mana to get any great effects or holding back some to be able to react to our opponents.
Another issue that stems from us having to mana dump, is that the deck operates quite slowly. Our early turns are going to be dedicated to mana acceleration and hand fixing with cards like Thran Dynamo and Ponder. With such, our board presence doesn’t become too prevalent till turn 4 or 5, or whenever we are able to start casting our token makers. This long of a time being open can leave us vulnerable to faster strategies; however, if we can make it to mid- to late game, then our opponents will have to crash through a wall of tokens if they want to get more damage on us.
Lastly, and we can’t lie to ourselves, we’re not the greatest of token strategies. Without our access to Green or White, we miss out on incredible cards like Doubling Season and Anointed Procession; however, if we’re able to keep our board stable, we could generate about 3 to 4 tokens per Instant or Sorcery we cast. Other token strategies though will more than likely out-race us with go-wide strategies as other colors are able to produce tokens at a much faster rate than mono-blue.
Best Performing Cards:
• Creatures: Some great creatures in the deck that need some mentioning are Diluvian Primordial, Octavia, Living Thesis, and Hullbreaker Horror. These are all some big spells; however, all their effects come with incredible benefits that we can utilize. Diluvian Primordial allows us to cast essentially three different Instants or Sorceries for free, and with them being from our opponents, could grant us effects that could really benefit our strategy while also triggering our token makers. Octavia is our overrun effect with it being able to turn our board into a monster to deal with for a turn. Octavia is also special in which it doesn’t take away key words or counters away from our creatures when he triggers, so if we use Octavia with a Deekah token or a Talrand token they will keep their counters or Flying while increasing their Power and Toughness. Hullbreaker Horror is a great way to slow our opponents down and clear the board to let our tokens come crashing in. Hullbreaker also has the potential to bounce our own creature which can be good in the situation where we want ETB triggers from cards like Master of Waves or saving permanents from targeted removal or board wipes.
• Artifacts: Some of the better Artifacts that we’re running are Lithoform Engine, Geometric Nexus, and Mindsplice Apparatus. Lithoform Engine grants us a lot of versatility with us being able to copy abilities, Instants and Sorceries, or just a copy of one of our permanents. Many times, with us wanting to create tokens from Deekah and other token generators, we will want to copy either the triggered ability, but with Deekah and her Magecraft ability, we will want to copy an Instant or Sorcery to obtain maximum value. Geometric Nexus is a nice card that can pump out crazy high Power and Toughness creatures with little effort. With it saying, “whenever a player casts an Instant or Sorcery” Geometric Nexus uses ours and our opponents’ spells to benefit. This value will stack quite quickly especially if played early as our opponents will likely be casting Instants or Sorceries in order to set their board and hands up. Mindsplice Apparatus is one of our means to reduce Instant or Sorcery spells, but with Flash, it is easy to hold until our opponents turns just so that we don’t commit to this spell and have no mana available to interact with.
• Enchantments: The best Enchantments we’re running would have to be Shark Typhoon, Swarm Intelligence, and Wizard Class. Shark Typhoon is another token generator that triggers on all non-creature spells as well as creating token with great evasion in Flying to get around a lot of our opponents’ boards. Swarm Intelligence allows us to go hard into our Instants and Sorceries as it will grant us a copy every time one is cast. This could make our strategy go quite well as it can essentially multiply our mana by two should we mana dump into an X spell as well as triggering Deekah’s ability twice for every Instant or Sorcery. Wizard Class, though not as flashy as the other two Enchantments, grants us a lot of value. No hand size is quite important, as we will never have to give up on strategies or possible interactions, the draw two just fills up our hand a little, but the last ability is what we’re really looking towards as this Level 3 ability grants a great amount of pump to our tokens with just a little draw support from our Instants and Sorceries.
• Sorceries: Some Sorceries that I think need to be mentioned are Clone Legion, Rite of Replication, and Sleep. Clone Legion allows for a nice standstill with other decks that have an incredible board state or allows for us to double up on our board to overrun our opponents. Rite of Replication runs fantastic with some of our token makers, especially if we can Kicker it with something like Master of Waves to get multiple effects with little effort. For the last card, and though it doesn’t seem like the best include after Clone Legion or Rite of Replication, is Sleep. Sleep allows us to tap down an enemies’ board for a full rotation, which opens us up to full swing at our opponent; however, it also allows for our opponents to take advantage of the situation to also attempt attacks on the open player, potentially getting a player out of the game.
• Instants: Some fantastic Instants that we’re running are Perplexing Test, High Tide or Dramatic Reversal, and Polymorphist’s Jest. Perplexing Test allows us to have almost a one-sided board wipe which keeps all tokens around but bounces regular creatures or vise versa. This is a great effect as if opponents don’t have many token creatures or any, we are able to get in for great amounts of damage as they’ll have to spend their turn redeploying their board. With it being an Instant, we can also do this in response to taking a lethal attack by setting our opponent back a turn. High Tide and Dramatic Reversal serve the same purpose, with them giving us a means of explosive one-time mana acceleration. This allows us to pump great numbers into our X-spell or set up our board to be in a better position. Should the two be used together in one turn, an Island can produce up to 4 mana. Finally, we have a fantastic combat trick in the form of Polymorphist’s Jest. Should we attack into a high Power and Toughness board, we’re able to lower all our opponent’s creatures down to 1/1s. Should they attack into our board, the same thing can occur, and this is important as we can reliably take down huge boards with very little effort on our part.
• Battles: Though Battles are still relatively new, we will be attempting to run one of them. Battle of Segovia generates some tokens for us once we cast it, but we’re really looking for the effect on the back which gives our Noncreature spells Convoke. This is a great effect as we can use our tokens beyond just attacking, with them all essentially becoming mana dorks, which in turn, will generate us even more tokens as we cast more spells. The effect of us also untapping four of our creatures is also great as we’re able to essentially “hold mana” for responses in the form of Instants or have a few blockers, the option is really ours.
• Planeswalkers: The deck sadly does not run any Planswalkers as there aren’t many that fit our strategy. I should say that there may be an argument to add Teferi, Temporal Archmage, as his -1 ability allows for us to untap four permanents; as well as Teferi, Temporal Pilgram, as we can make decent tokens off his -1 ability. The problem we run into though is that we may spend 6 mana for Archmage to untap four Islands and he be attacked into by our opponents with us having only got one activation off. Pilgram also runs into the same problem that we’re spending 5 mana to get one effect, that being we get a token that might be used to block a single attacker from Teferi. Overall, Planeswalkers may not be suited for this deck in my opinion; however, should you think they fit, by all means change the list to accommodate your specific taste.
• Lands: Some of the Lands that should be talked about are Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and Buried Ruin. Nykthos is an all-star card for any mono-colored deck and the price around it shows. Though it does cost a bit and can be replaced if on a budget, Nykthos gives a nice extra bit of acceleration that is comparable to a repeatable High Tide, and should we be able to get enough Devotion for a good payoff, Dramatic Reversal would be an incredible pairing with this card as we can dump hard into our X spells. As for a little less exciting, but nevertheless important land, Buried Ruin is our only option for Artifact recursion. With it, should our important Artifacts such as Lithoform Engine or Geometric Nexus get destroyed, then when can bring it back for the low cost of sacrificing Buried Ruin.
Potential Upgrades:
Though upgrades are rather player and playgroup dependent, some options I would consider are The Ozolith, Snapcaster Mage, and Cyclonic Rift. Putting in The Ozolith grants us a nice way to keep our counters when our Deekah tokens inevitably start dying off either due to Combat, targeted removal, or just a board wipe. Moving around these counters can be good as we do have some token generators that create Flying creatures, simply saying that we can have a huge creature with a great form of evasion. Snapcaster Mage is a classic powerhouse that gives any Instant or Sorcery in our Graveyard Flashback. This is essentially a means of recursion for our Instants and Sorceries; however, this is best to use for our Instants as it gives us greater versatility for interaction against our opponents. Finally, Cyclonic Rift is just one of the best bounce wipe spells in Blue. With it, we are able to open up all of our opponents’ boards and can easily full swing into anyone we would like. It can also be used defensively with it being an Instant, as large attacks from our opponents can be completely nullified.
Conclusion:
Deekah is a deck that seeks to out-value and overrun our opponents to make it over the finish line. We want to play big spells and make a wide range of tokens. We will be an army against our opponents, with combat tricks that can be hard to predict. If you think Deekah is a deck you would like to play or look over, I will have a link to the full deck in the description. Of course you can take it and edit it to make it your own and allow it to fit into your play groups, some of the potential upgrades are just a suggestion if I were to tinker and edit the deck to reach a higher power level. Speaking of which, I would place Dee’s Tokens around a power level of 6. I’m granting this above average level as I think we have a solid strategy and multiple ways of forcing it while also attempting to gain value from controlling our opponents’ boards. Sadly, we don’t just explode early and just need the time to set up, but once we get there, I believe our value and army will be hard to stop.
