Glowing Ranks: Blue Legends

Welcome back Zoners!

Today we're going blue in our Commander Power Rankings.

As we all know, Blue is probably one of the best colors in all of Magic. Being the pinnacle color in Control, a tangential color for artifact combos, and the most direct route to card draw, ranking the blue Legends can be a very subjective task due to the redundancy of function, and whether or not you compare the combo decks at their most potent, least potent, or a confusing average.

So let's rack 'em up and rank 'em!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Thassa, God of the Sea

Mono-U devotion is a pretty big deck in Standard for a little while longer, mostly because of access to hybrid symbols.

Still, I've found Thassa to be a pretty strong Commander, and that's obviously without Nightveil Specters and Frostburn Weirds.

Thassa presents incredible value. It's an aggressive deck that can afford to sacrifice a few counterspells for more threats. When coupled an every turn chance to smooth your draws, the Thassa build paves the way for a very precise, turn-sideways kind of deck, where Thassa puts a nice bit of pressure on your opponents quickly.

Arcum Dagsson

There's no real order to the Honorable Mentions. Personally, I think this deck is more garbage than good, and I've been vocal about that here on the blog.

A few years back GG tested this deck against Jhoira, one of the premier top Tier decks, and it straight up folds to the extra disruption Jhoira gets to play.

Sacrificing counterspell spots for more permanent-based Artifact griefer cards is both the Dagsson deck's strength and weakness. I'm not a big fan of approaching the game with the arrogance of a Stax deck that comes in and says, "You have to beat me," because it shouldn't work, and more than likely won't if your opponent knows how to build decks and play properly.

With Metalworker unbanned as of a few days ago, this deck obviously gets better. However, I only mention Arcum because my credibility would be questioned if I didn't, even though Wizards has recently printed a card which should allow the Arcum delusions of grandeur to disappear.

Muzzio, Visionary Architect

MUZ-ZI-OOOO!!!!

Easily a better deck than Arcum, particularly if you want to play Stax. The deck doesn't have to commit to silly artifact token generators, and bad dude mana rocks. This deck gets to play real artifacts, good combos, and back it all up with counters. It's a pretty good plan overall, as Muzzio is versatile enough to play early or late, either working to get the deck going, or coming in later to find a threat to end the game.

I'll admit I got very confused about the way his ability worked. I was under the impression that the CMC of your highest cost artifact had to be less than or equal to the card you found when you looked at the top of the library. This is separates the Muzzio from the Arcum, and why, even though you have to invest mana, this deck is better than his Coldsnap counterpart.

5. Thada Adel, Acquisitor

Welcome to the real decks, ladies and gents.

It's safe to say that the Thada Adel deck can have it all and is rolling very deep in terms of toys. Between Sol Ring re-prints and an extra set of Mirrodin seeing print following her Worldwake debut, Thada is a very dangerous, proactive, and fun deck to play.

My favorite quality of this deck is the amount of information you can gather in looking at your opponent's library. While her combat damage trigger is really fair when compared with Master of Predicaments, Sphinx Ambassador, Daxos, and other cards that allow you to play your opponent's stuff, there's still plenty of value to be found by just taking away your opponent's most powerful artifact stuff.

4. Braids, Conjurer Adept

Braids was one of my favorite decks for quite some time. The ability to play threats for free and leave room for answers without a whole lot of other nonsense provides a very wide set of skills for just about every situation.

I wasn't even playing what would be considered a full strength Braids deck, and the results were a success.

30+ threats and 20+ Instants was the recipe that insured I always had something to play for the Braids trigger, and always had a response to something another person was playing.

3. Talrand, Sky Summoner

Now, Talrand is a deck that I believe is a lot better than the lists the Internet has to offer.

Though it can be weak to removal heavy decks, the amount of counter-magic and control that can be crammed into the 99 is massive and always getting better. Don't believe me? Just look at Aetherspouts and Polymorphist's Jest. The only direction this deck can go is up, in terms of ammunition.

2. Azami, Lady of Scrolls

All hail the mighty card draw combo queen! Though the artwork may reveal quite a mess, it's all about Wizard tribal and Mind Over Matter.

Though this deck has been accepted as universally good, and really is (again, unlike the false acclaim of Arcum Dagsson), the weakness to me of Azami is that this deck wants to play creatures that don't really want to attack. Still, because control cards are getting better, the deck can afford to play a few.

1. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Teferi tops the list for me for a variety of reasons. Number one, he has immediate impact, and can be played whenever you need.

Number two, he combos with Knowledge Pool, effectively shutting people out of the game. Unlike Azami, his two-card combo is completely tutorable, and able to shut the game down pretty quickly. It's safe to say none of the other mono-blue Commanders can really do this, and live to see it.

The last reason Teferi bests his blue counterparts is his flexibility. Teferi is all about tempo- specifically, removing your opponent's ability to respond whilst increasing yours. Unlike the other decks on this list, Threats and counterspell quantities can be liberally played with to suit the greater metagame.

Pass Turn.
-UL