Mono-blue decks inMagic: The Gatheringare known for their ability to control the battlefield through a carefully weaved web of instants and sorceries. Blue likes to set the pace of the game, and then when they’ve forced their opponents into submission, they swoop in to steal the win. These decks usually opt for instant, sorceries and artifacts over creatures; thus, they often require a bit more planning and skill to pull off a win.
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But make no mistake; a well-built mono-blue deck can be incredibly difficult to beat. Unless you have a way to negate their control spells, you’ll be forced to play at their pace and struggle to roll out your strategy. If you want to play puppet master on your next game night, consider one of these commanders for your next Brawl deck.
10Talrand, Sky Summoner
Blue sometimes struggles to create a combat presence, but Talrand, Sky Summoner eliminates that weakness by creating a 2/2 Drake creature token whenever you cast an instant or sorcery. Uselow mana cost instantslike Fading Hope and Perilous Voyage to bounce your opponents' permanents back to their hand, which will simultaneously flood your board with Drake creatures.
Use the Drakes to chip away at your opponents' life total while keeping some counter spells handy to ensure Talrand isn’t removed, keeping a steady stream of creatures pouring out of the skies.
9Bruvac, The Grandiloquent
Milling is regarded by some as one of Magic’s less honorable strategies, but unfortunately for the gripers and groaners, it’s still a valid way to win. Bruvac, the Grandiloquent is one of thestrongest mill commandersthere is, effectively doubling the amount of cards you force your opponents to mill each turn.
Sorceries like Maddening Cacophany, when kicked, can make your opponent mill their entire deck in one shot, giving you the win. Be sure to keep some control staples like Counterspell and Negate to limit your opponents' board presence, as you’ll need to stay alive long enough to totally mill out an opponent, especially in a multiplayer format.
8Lier, Disciple Of The Drowned
Lier, Disciple of the Drowned gives all of your instant and sorcery spells flashback, meaning they can be cast twice instead of once. With so many low mana value instant and sorceries in mono-blue, by the time you cast Lier, you’ll have an arsenal ready to cast from your graveyard.
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This especially helps if you’re struggling to draw the right cards. You can always look through your graveyard to see what you can cast. Being able to cast big sorceries like Sea Gate Restoration and Mascot Exhibition twice is a huge advantage during the late game.
7The Reality Chip
If equipment Jellyfish isn’t enough to sell you on using The Reality Chip as a commander, then its power certainly will. With a colour that relies heavily onscrying and drawing cards, being able to look at the top of your library any time is a huge advantage, as you can effectively plan for future turns.
But if you reconfigure this card, you’re able to start playing lands and casting spells from the top of your library. Be sure to include cards like Otherwordly Gaze, allowing you to manipulate the top of your library to make the most valuable cards playable using The Reality Chip’s ability. Reconfigure also adds a layer of protection because, if the creature a reconfigured card is attached to dies, it reverts to a creature as opposed to being destroyed.
6Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling decks are all about enter the battlefield effects. At the beginning of your end step, you get to exile one creature you control and return it to the battlefield under your control. This works great with mono-blue staples like Mulldrifter, as you can repeatedly trigger its ability to generate continuous card draw.
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This is a more creature focused blue deck, which means you don’t have to worry about stalling your opponents as much. Instead, focus on cards like Displacer Kitten to help blink your creatures, getting repeated value from powerful enter the battlefield effects.
5Orvar, The All-Form
Orvar, the All-Form’s strategy requires two things: spells to target your permanents and permanents worth copying. If you target your permanents with an instant or sorcery, you get to create a copy of any one of those targeted permanents. More likely than not, you’ll use this ability to copy your strongest creatures, but it can also be used on powerful artifacts like Lithoform Engine.
Using cards like Dive Down and Rescue will not only protect your creatures from removal, but allow you to create a copy of them as well. Or, use spells like Quasiduplicate that create a copy of a creature, and Orvar’s ability will give you two copies for only three mana!
4Jacob Hauken, Inspector
If you like making huge plays in the late game, Jacob Hauken is the commander for you. Tap him to draw a card and exile a card from your hand face-down. Then, if you pay six mana, you’re able to transform him into the legendary enchantment, Hauken’s Insight, which allows you to play cards you’ve exiled with it for free.
Since Hauken’s Insight also allows you to exile the top card of your library during your upkeep, you can use scrying to ensure you exile high mana value creatures like Cityscape Leveler. Then, each turn, repeat this process and cheat out massive cards for free.
3Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
Jin-Gitaxias is a master of controlling the battlefield, and this iteration from Neon Dynasty is no exception. Once each turn, when you cast an instant, sorcery or artifact spell, you get to copy it. This ability has a lot of utility and can react to whatever is happening on the battlefield. Is your hand looking paltry? Copy instants like Thirst for Discovery for card draw. Overwhelmed by creatures? Copy control spells like River’s Rebuke. Or just go for the throat and copy creatures like Hullbreaker Horror.
Additionally, once a turn, when an opponent plays an instant, sorcery or artifact card, it’s countered by Jin-Gitaxias. This makes your opponents choose their moves very carefully and limits their actions.
2Emry, Lurker Of The Loch
Emry, Lurker of the Loch is a graveyard-based artifact commander. Even if you lose artifacts, she can bring them back from the bottom of the loch for you, allowing you to cast an artifact from your graveyard if you tap her. That means low mana cost artifacts like Aether Spellbomb can be repeatedly cast and sacrificed to get their value over and over again. Or if you lose abig artifact creature, you can just cast it again the following turn.
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Additionally, Emry costs one less mana to cast for each artifact you control. So even with commander tax, if you have enough artifacts, Emry can be cast for as little as one blue mana.
1Baral, Chief Of Compliance
Baral, Chief of Compliance will have your opponents looking at you each time they cast a spell asking, “Does it resolve?” The answer will often be, no it does not. Making your instant and sorceries cost one less to cast means popular counter spells like Memory Lapse and Disdainful Stroke only cost one mana.
Baral cares mostly about preventing your opponents from doing anything. At all. While incredibly infuriating to play against, no argument can be made against the effectiveness of this strategy. You’ll spend the game countering or bouncing spells back into your opponents' hands, waiting for a couple powerful creature cards or enchantments like Shark Typhoon to finish off your opponents while they struggle to keep anything on the battlefield.
