UL's Better Deckbuilding: Barrin, Master Wizard EDH

Another Thor's Day, another Landdrops List.

Better Deckbuilding returns with one of the most ambitious brews built around one of the strangest cards Blue has to offer- the oldest sage, Barrin.

WHY BARRIN?

Barrin completed the "Double Rainbow" of Old Border/New Border Mono-Colored Commander decks I had, which was as follows:

Green- Silvos/Melira
White- Lin Sivvi/Isamaru
Red- Starke/Heartless Hidetsugu
Black- Greel/Akuta
Blue- Barrin/Thassa

Shortly thereafter, I became disillusioned with the maintenance of all these decks and have reduced it down to one apiece.

Still, it was the initial Old-Border requirement that drew me to Barrin. I'd gone through several different plans, ideas, and really had a lot of difficulty picking out Commanders because there isn't a lot of design space. You're either Aggro-Control, Artifact-Combo, Control, or just plain Gimmicky.

And if you see what's going on here, your Spidey Senses are right. This deck is pretty Gimmicky.

THE STRATEGY

Aside from Barrin being OB, the other big design quality was to create a blue deck which could control the board without playing counterspells. This was pretty congruent with my more aggressive approach to Commander. Back in January, I realized that I didn't do a whole lot of attacking in games, and in my interests to better both me as a player, and inform you as a blogger, I decided to concoct some techniques for more aggressive players who want to get good in a Wrath-Heavy format.

The strategy with Barrin is pretty simple. He is the Ultimate Unsummoner, throwing away everything on your board to throw threats back into your opponent's hands.

This goal is accomplished by committing permanents to the board state, and constructing lines of play in the game to pursue value. Much like Greel, we're able to get a little extra out of cards we play by doing something in the game that could be construed as anti-value or counterintuitive.

Because most players have to play creatures as threats to deal damage, this deck matches up well by out tempo-ing your opponents, not only with creatures, but other atypical permanents.

THE TECH

The first card we'll talk about is Jace, Memory Adept.

Not only does this deck feature most of the blue walkers (Still Mind Sculptor-less), but it also has a very strong "Jace" theme.

The idea with this comes from the staleness of seeing Jace get re-printed over and over. My playgroup in particular is just tired of seeing him, and so am I.

Though playing him doesn't sound like I support the paradigm, the idea was that sacrificing Jace and all his things to make a game more interesting gave the deck a silly but fun way to shed light in an otherwise angry beef with Wizards over the guy who is clearly their favorite blue p-dub.

While most of the walkers in this deck don't unite to form a real theme, one of the neat parts of my design is the sort of improvisation it takes to play it. Ultimately, this yields some seriously high variance in terms of games, which is not something I'm used to at all, let alone in a color that plays so consistently.

JMA is up here because I actually won a game using his second ability multiple times. Never thought I'd get that many chances, but I did, and it was cool. The planeswalkers in this color really have an underrated sense of respect at the table (with the exception of Tamiyo), and so it's not impossible in this deck to buy enough turns to go off with an ultimate ability, which gives us a chance to win.

So, not everything in here is an oddball.

Should be common knowledge that Gilded Drake is an incredibly powerful card. Along side his buddy Barrin, GD's even better, acting as recurring removal for your opponent's threats. Coupled with Sower of Temptation, these cards have the ability to continue to take your opponent's best thing, and combo with Barrin in order to force your opponent's removal spells.

Gilded Drake is the cheapest and most effective tool we have in the box.

The best way to play Barrin is to have cheap cards and enough Islands to get out before you cast him the first time.

Hatching Plans, the Wellsprings, and even Ordeal of Thassa have been nice options in this department.

HP is obviously the least flexible of the aforementioned, but it's still powerful. Barrin wants to play as much stuff as he can get out, and blue is never in short supply of weird things that let you draw cards. This is probably one of the better cards that takes advantage of the "permanent" requirement in Barrin's ability.

Early on in testing, I was playing a lot of Clone effects, which I deemed "too good" for what I was trying to accomplish.

Enter Master of Predicaments. Our group tends to love the Fact or Fiction subgame, and this resembled the spirit of the subgame, so I went with it. Turns out, it's been fun.

We play good cards in here, but not everyone should be putting a target on your back. Sometimes, you gotta live a little, and Master of Predicaments embodies the the philosophy and personality I've given to the deck.

One of the things that makes this card good is that the balancing number is 4. Conveniently, this is where a majority of my cards sit, including the Jace suite. Having spells that sit in this range just make it a little more difficult for your opponent to guess.

With access to bounce effects, we can potentially get multiple uses out of Morph creatures.

Since Khans dropped a bunch of new ones on our doorstep, I decided to do a little bit of testing.

Spellsnatcher is a card Grandpa really liked in his review of the set, and it's one I like too. Bringing in the Morph package for this deck is where I fudged my rule about counterspells, but the deck was having trouble with some answers, and I figured it was better to have them in fun, permanent-sized morsels. So no, I don't feel bad about it.

Bringing in the morph dudes also provided me the chance to add Ixidron for extra removal and another layer of trickery.

The last janky card we'll talk about is Shapeshifter's Marrow.

Before milling effects on planeswalkers became a plan in the deck, I had Geralf's Mindcrusher and Shapeshifter's Marrow in the deck.

It's kind of a happy accident that these cards all oddly worked together. The idea for Mindcrusher was just to be a nuisance, since it could be sacrificed and bounced to reset itself. And Marrow, disguised as an Enchantment, could be come an opponent's creature, and reset if I didn't like it.

Even though this card is more likely to get pitched by Merfolk Looter, I haven't seen enough of it to warrant cutting it. The theme and eccentricity exuding from it fit so well in here.

There are a lot of neat tricks in here, like resetting Solemn or Scourge of Fleets, or throwing 0/1 Goats from Springjack Pasture away to get rid of real creatures.

Aethersnipe ranks right up there. This is a significantly better card in Pauper, I'll admit, but I'm not against playing it in Commander.

Since Evoke gives you a chance to respond, Aethersnipe's trigger can actually be stacked and used in conjunction with Barrin's ability to either double your bounce triggers or recur Aethersnipe. Same goes with Nevermaker and Mulldrifter, some of TGZ's favorite pets. Again, just a another way to navigate the deck, especially in a tight spot.

Anyway, here's the full list:
The Bollocks Barrin Plan

Stay Tuned to the TGZ Station! C14 Spoilers are around the corner!

Shipping the Turn to You!
-UL