UL's Better Deckbuilding: Braids' Better Blueberry Bounce House

The Blueberry Bounce House has been reopened under new management, Zoners.

And though I love Linessa's art and her sweet FutureSight border, I took her apart cause I needed better results on the bottom line.

After having a ball with Chisei, I decided to go back and fix-up the ol' Bounce House.

Enter Blue Braids- the Planar Chaos Queen and Charlize Theron card-el-ganger.

With her help, bouncing and profit are now at an all-time high.

The key to the Blueberry Bounce House Business Model is fundamental strategies. We're not reinventing any wheels, nor are we trying to go outside of the color pie to pave any new paths to victory.

Simply, I call it "Passive-Aggressive Control." Braids' ability is really the key component here, giving you and your opponent(s) the opportunity to warp in free stuff. When combined with the world's largest collection of cheap Unsummon and Boomerang spells, this design becomes one strangely counter-intuitive self-defeating tempo-oddball kind of deck.

There are a lot of competing thoughts about when to actually cast Braids. Some people like to play her ASAP as possible, keeping Turn 1 Sol Ring/Mana Crypt hands for a Turn 2 Braids so they can play Ulamog or Blightsteel on Turn 3.

Because I don't play those creatures, my endgame is a little different. Sure, I'm playing Sol Ring, but that's really not what my design is trying to do. I prefer to play Braids when I can leverage her value effectively, and normally only for a couple of turns so I can cheat in a couple "non-offensive-but-still-serious" threats. As a result the game becomes fairly grind-a-licious.

Therefore, I tend to cast Braids to change tempo, playing her when I've got a decent handle on the board, and I know I can manage a real potential threat. It only takes a few turns for her ability to fill up the battlefield, so I tend to cast her when I've got 1-2 decent creatures in hand, a protective spell, and enough mana to cast her and hold up protection.

Overall, I've had a lot of fun and success with this deck. With access to some Clone effects, an expansive Isochron Scepter package, and one sweet new favorite pet card which I'll get to in a minute, this deck has an impressive axis of interactivity that allows you to play off of other people's stuff as much as your own. I find that it's a particularly enjoyable deck in 1v1 and multiplayer, the latter of which Braids has shown to be the most politically powerful Commander I've ever played.

Proteus Staff has been nothing but ultimate fun for me. It's got a lot of text, so I'll give you the skinny.

Basically, you're trading someone's dude in play for the next dude in that person's deck at sorcery speed. Hopefully, you see the drawbacks here, which are obvious and have the potential to be scary.

Honestly, it hasn't been anything but an all-star here, tucking Voltron Commanders, and other big threats that Braids helps sneak in.

But of all these things, my absolute favorite is to Staff my Looters and little guys into the big beefy flyers or Darksteel, even. Like Cascade, it's a real "wheel-spinner" of a card, and I enjoy trying to calculate the odds of what I'm going to get out of it. It's great in this deck.

I bought a couple copies of this card when Scars came out, thinking it was going to be super sweet.

Due to lackluster performances, Quickie was sidelined in the binder almost immediately, and I was kinda bummed.

It wasn't until I started piecing Braids together that I re-discovered the 7/7 shapeshifter, and I'm glad I did.

This is a pretty optimal place for a guy like this- Mostly, because you get to play him for free. Either that, or you get to play something better for free, and then pay 7 to have a second copy of its ETB effect or whatever it does.

Results still vary, cause let's be real- a 7/7 Darksteel copy for 5UU isn't nearly as good as having Clone or Metamorph.

Still, he's really fun to play off other guys in this deck as well as other people's dudes. I've beat down with a 7/7 Eternal Witness copy, even turned him into any of the cool blue Sphinxes I'm playing. Double Sphinx Ambassador triggers are fun.

If I'm not Transmuting Drift of Phantasms for Proteus Staff, or Wizardcycling Vedalken AEthermage for Snapcaster or Venser, I'm getting the Fatespinner.

Being a slower deck, the less Combat steps I have to take damage in, the better my chances are of winning the game. Playing blue means wearing a target, and this isn't a new thing for blue decks to have to think about.

However, maybe Fatespinner is a card you haven't had to deal with before. Being such a wimpy little thing, it's not really worth wasting removal on, so it's kind of the perfect way to keep the damage monkeys off your back so you can draw cards and play lands. I feel like Fatespinner's just an all-around winner whenever you're playing a slower-paced blue control deck, but that's just me. Feel free to weave your own tale with her. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Playing anything less than 40 lands in an EDH deck is almost always going to mean that I won't be making land drops until turn 12 like I want to.

Braids plays 38, which was just an arbitrary number I assigned cause it felt right, and I'm not going to add land for no reason.

So why is AEtherplasm good? When you don't make your land drops, and you're stuck with all kinds o' big costed nonsense in your hand, AEtherplasm's awesome.

Like Fatespinner, this card is excellent at deterring attacks, despite its frail 1/1 frame. Mostly, because I don't play decks where I don't have cards in hand. So this guy is always scary.

And though AEtherplasm is an Illusion, his little combat trick is pretty special. I think of it as Pseudo-Flash, acting as another way to cheat stuff in without Braids.

With all the bounce spells I play too, it's not uncommon to bounce a guy in play in response to someone declaring an attack, and then abuse AEtherplasm to get another ETB trigger.

There are a lot of fun times to be had with this card, and I'm only getting started. 

Ghostly Flicker is another nice way to get extra triggers.

I was playing against a 5-color mono-blue Reaper King combo deck and Ultimus Prime where I was able to do some serious damage with this and a Kederekt Leviathan. It was particularly brutal because they were missing land drops and relying on rocks and GoP to save them. But it didn't.

Flicker also helps me reset Clones and get extra triggers off Venser or FoF Sphinx. Cause I like getting multiple Fact or Fiction triggers in a game. 

My best play with G-Flix was activating Avarice Totem to take a Commander and then flicking Venser to bounce Totes back.

Because I don't play anything other than instants that I can't cheat into play with Braids, the restrictions on G-Flix don't prohibit me from much. And if you run cards like Mnemonic Wall or Archaeomancer, this card can rack up a bonkers quantity of card advantage.

I put this up for talk on The Stack some weeks ago, so you know that I already kinda like this thing.

Now that I've had a chance to playtest this card, I have to say it's been hilariously fun.

Understand, I know this card doesn't look appealing to most cause it isn't "good" by whatever standards you want to set for yourself.

Though I do have to tell you I've won games on the back of this card. Granted, it was full of scrappy and terrible draws for both me and my opponent, but it happened, and I can't not mention this if I'm being fair to Avarice Totes.

Being able to interact with enchantments is a hard thing in blue, and this is one of the couple ways to handle this problem on the board without sending it back to your opponent's hand. Just try it. Let people laugh. Then take their stuff, and make them pay the Troll Toll to get it back. At worst, it's something to pitch to Merfolk Looter. I like being able to make easy decisions like that some times.

Since the article is taking its turn into the goofy cards, let's go ahead and talk about some of the stuff I've already cut.

I was asked on TappedOut, "Hey UL, Y U No Play Paradox Haze?" already, and the answer is simple.

Contrary to what people think, this card isn't actually great in Braids.

The reason is that this will either do two things.

1. People will see it, see you cast Braids, and then kill Braids.
OR
2. You will cast it, cast Braids, and then have one thing to cast in your hand, so you get no value.

Happened to me every time I had it, so I just figured having a guy was wayy better, and it has been. Plus, the only card I want to transmute for is Proteus Staff anyway, so it alleviates any ridiculous decisions I would've had to make.

I was pretty convinced this card was going to be a beating and a half.

What I didn't realize was just how bad Sorcery was. It took quite a few games to realize that I was tossing this card every time to Merfolk Looter for something with Instant Power. So it got replaced by AEtherize.

I am bummed though. I really like everything about this card, save its card type. We even get Teferi Flavor Text.

Inundate also got replaced too. I couldn't count on big sorcery speed spells to win. And I actually haven't needed them.

I guess this is no surprise to people, but I thought if there was any place where this card was gonna be great, it'd be in a place where I could set up, play Braids, then drop a dude, and get value.

The biggest problem with this Doppelganger is that it's great if you're trying to get into the red zone. That's what it's designed for. I've heard other people call it, "Blue Haste," and I think this is the best assessment.

Thing is, I haven't needed blue haste, and most blue players won't. What I needed was more ETB effects, so it got cut.

I could however, see this card possibly being great in Animar, with all the mana dorks and stuff that I play. I don't have a lot of cards I like to play before Animar, but this might be one more suited for playing offense. Cryptoplasm had the same problem, and I did the same thing.

I really do like this art, mostly for the purple shading and the lumpy shapes on these creatures. Too bad the card isn't good.

The Braids list is mostly finished now, and I'm overall pleased with how it plays. Feel free to check it out here at TappedOut. Most of my other lists are there too, so check 'em out, leave me notes, etc. Always happy to answer questions about my choices and field criticism and suggestions.

The Braids-y Bunch (aka Blueberry Bounce House 2.0).

Thursday we've got Johnny Confidant showing off more budget choices in his Tops Down series, so continue to check those out.

Till then,

-UL