r/spikes

Introduction

Blue/White is a very powerful and synergistic deck in this format. I don't think that's news to anyone, but I think what makes it more powerful and versatile than most people think is this goes beyond the simple draw 2 synergy. A lot of people think the blue/white deck is built around having a bunch of ways to draw 2 (whether by recruiting or just drawing) and then having payoffs like [[Lakeshore Apothecary]], [[Bard the Bowman]], and [[Master's Councillors]] be great payoffs. This kind of blue/white deck is powerful, but the payoffs are limited to just 1 common and a few uncommons where if this was the only way to build the deck it wouldn't be very versatile. It would be one of those it's good when it's wide open decks, and I think blue/white is a true pillar of the format. I've been doing well drafting blue/white frequently and wanted to share what I think makes it such a pillar.

What makes blue/white synergistic is recruit. Recruit itself is a synergy, and not just part of the draw two synergy. Getting a 1/1 is shockingly good from discarding a nonland. Way more powerful than the connive +1/+1 counters are. It's at the point now where unless I'm actively flooding out I discard a nonland. While you are wiling to discard plenty of nonlands to get a 1/1, it's nice to discard cards that are still useful from the graveyard. [[Plunder the Trollshaws]] is the best card for this, but [[Eagle's Rescue]] is also quite good, and even [[Moment of Glory]] is not terrible because of this.

Just an aside on Moment of Glory. The 17 lands data on this card is wild. Among white commons in general Moment of Glory is 8th out of 10 which is bad but not an F. In blue/white though it moves all the way up to 4th out of 10 (slightly below average), but in red/white it's WAY in last place, and is the 2nd lowest card in the entire set with data in Red/White. Truly terrible.

So anyway I think 1/1s are better than +1/+1 counters, but in this format 1/1s go even further than normal. There's a ton of menace in this format. That doesn't matter to you though because you have a bunch of 1/1s to block menace creatures. [[Crude Bent Blade]] is reduced in effectiveness because you usually have a 1/1 to sacrifice to it. Also they are amazing at chump blocking. Chump blocking in this format is amazing! I Know that sounds weird, but it's a super fast format, there are a ton of big creatures, and none of them seem to have trample. It's a tailored made format to chump block.

So the main gameplay is a combo of tons of card draw and card selection, flooding the board with 1/1s, and killing them either with tall creatures, going wide, or flyers. It's a great way to win lots of games.

Ok now that we went over the deck as a whole lets go over the key cards and discuss them.

Card Evaluation

Most Important Commons (B- level)

Lakeshore Apothecary, Plunder the Trollshaws, and removal.

These should be your top picks at common until you have either a huge amount of them, or a critical need somewhere else (pretty unlikely on Arena at least). Lakeshore Apothecary despite not being necessary for the deck to succeed is still very powerful, and there aren't other common 2 drop creatures you want in this deck anyway so this fills a critical need there. Plunder the Trollshaws is amazing for all the reasons I linked above. If you don't get it there are replacements, but it is the best at it's job. Without a few of these the deck is vulnerable to flooding out in a way it just isn't otherwise. I wouldn't even question playing 4 of these. Beyond that it depends, but this card is absolutely critical. Removal is the other most critical part. If you don't get enough removal your deck can and will lose to opponents synergy and bombs. Blue/White has less removal than one would want so it's important to make sure to get some. I would say until you have 4 removal spells take removal at the same level as these top commons. Once you are at 4 pieces of removal you can be a little more chill about it. Between the 3 removal spells ([[Magnificent End]], [[Uneasy Partings]], and [[Enchanted River's Grasp]]) I would say in general Magnificent End is the best, and then the 2 blue removal spells are slightly lower, but these are deck dependent, and you want a mix of the 3 over stacking 1 removal spell.

Next Level Down Commons (C+ level)

[[Patient Instructor]], [[Bilbo Baggins, Burglar]], [[Long Lake Nuisance]]

These are your card draw/recruit sources. The fact that there are 3 good ones definitely reduces their importance. Of these 3 Long Lake Nuisance is the best. As a 3 power flyer this thing ends games. Despite the abundance of card draw this card would be in the category above except that people haven't caught on and it's really easy to get a ton of these, and as a 4 drop creature you don't want an unlimited amount. Bilbo probably has the highest power level of any common in this archetype, but the fact that patient instructor is another powerful card draw common creature at 3 mana you just don't need to pick Bilbo that highly. If you do your 3 drop creature slot will become overloaded.

Two additional notes on Bilbo. First don't worry about Bilbo being a legend and put less in your deck because of it (I would run 4 Bilbo's if I had no other 3 drop creatures). Between him having 1 toughness, having lots of recruit, and still being able to use the scry adventure with your second Bilbo while the 1st one is on the battlefield it isn't an issue. Second if for some reason you can't get any good flashback/graveyard spells like Plunder the Trollshaws recruit will become less good, and Bilbo should move up your pick order because he draws without discarding.

Patient Instructor is the last card in this list, and it's very good. I treat it as basically interchangeable with Bilbo most of the time. The vigilance on this is shockingly good as it allows you to race really well. A lot of times your opponent won't want to block with their menace creature and you can get a lot of free damage in while still leaving this back to block.

Bread and Butter Commons (C level)

[[Dwarven Provisioner]], [[Esgaroth Garrison]], [[Lake-town]]

Dwarven Provisioner benefits from being basically the only other playable 2 drop creature outside of Lakeshore Apothecary. It can also help with go-wide and dwarf synergies (more on those below). Esgaroth Garrison does a great job of holding up the ground, and provides critical redundancy as a source of recruit if the top cards dry up. When this deck is open though I usually cut these because I have plenty of the C+ commons. I think Lake-town is very nice as fixing and tap lands are totally playable since this deck has plenty of card selection, and very few 1 drops. The counters from Lake-town are also nice. I usually try to put them on Patient Instructor or a human enchanted with Eagle's Rescue.

The Rest of playable Commons (C- level)

[[Hobbit Hole]], [[Confusticate and Bebother]], Moment of Glory, [[Mirkwood Nurturer]], [[Lake-town Lookout]], 2 drop common creatures

Only play these if you have a hole in your deck, or they have crazy good synergy in your specific deck. Mirkwood Nurturer combos really well with [[The Mountain-king's Return]] for example. If the common card isn't on this list I would really try hard not to play it at all.

Uncommons

So instead of categorizing the uncommons I thought I would just explain card by card the important uncommons. I'll include the uncommons ranked by how good they are in descending order. I'll include a grade next to it and an explanation.

[[Celebrate the Mountain-king]] (A-): This card is amazing. If you discard something like Plunder the Trollshaws to the recruit on this the card essentially acts like 4 mana Exile a nonland permanent, draw a card, and create a 1/1. If you are low on removal going into pack 3 I would take this over ANYTHING! The fact that it hits nonland permanent is not insignificant either. There are a lot of broken artifacts and enchantments in this set (like this one) and this is the only realistic way to hit those in blue/white. Absolutely busted card in Blue/White.

[[Stone by Sunlight]] (B): Critical removal. The 4 power constraint is not a problem in this set. There will always be targets. Furthermore the indestructible option is viable and useful. I probably pick it about 30% of the time. Realistically I would play 4 of these no problem. Ideally you can fill your deck with this and Mountain-king and then you don't have to play as much of the mediocre common removal.

[[Bilbo, Luckwearer]] (B): I think this gets better the worse your deck is overall, because as the deck gets good most of what this provides gets covered by other cards. In Sealed for example this card I think is better than Stone by Sunlight. The switcheroo adventure is nice because you almost always have a 1/1 to switch. Also if you have the option to discard a land to this cards loot effect I usually do because there is no penalty like there is to recruit.

[[Thranduil, Sindarin Liege]] (B-): Great card in general, but also provides a good synergy with recruit as it ensures you have tons of lands to play. I usually try to play this on turn 5 so that I can trigger it's landfall immediately. I also wouldn't worry about playing this cards adventure that much. Recruit gives you plenty of lands, and you often have better things to do on turn 3.

Bard the Bowman (B-): Understatted but has plenty to make up for it. Basically the best card in the set when trying to race. Putting a +1/+1 counter and lifelink on a flyer every turn is impossible to beat in a race. Furthermore this has reach so you can chump with this against their big flyer in a critical turn if you need to. Try to trigger it the turn you play it because this is a removal magnet, but if necessary just play it on turn 3 and trigger it next turn.

The Mountain-king's Return (B-): This uncommon version of the common Bilbo. This card is a very powerful recruit card, and is better than the common ones, but often it acts as a slightly better Patient Instructor. This does combo with a few cards very well though. In particular Mirkwood Nurturer is amazing to discard to this and will allow you to pick up and play this again.

Master's Councillors (B-): The uncommon Lakeshore Apothecary, but not necessarily better. The mill is very real if you have multiples of this, and if that is the case this becomes better than Apothecary. However, with only 1 copy you are unlikely to present a real mill threat and I would rather have Apothecary over this.

[[Iron Hills Blacksmith]] (C+): This is better in Red/White but it's plenty good here. Combos very well with Eagle's Rescue and the Mountain-king's Return.

Eagle's Rescue (C+): The second best card to discard to recruit behind Plunder the Trollshaws. I usually try to play this from the graveyard unless it's providing an immediate win. Fine to put on 1/1 tokens, even better if you can put it on a Lakeshore Apothecary, but the best is to put it on the blacksmith as discussed above.

[[Thrór's Map]] (C): Gets better if you are splashing or somehow have a shortage of recruit/card draw. Overall though this shouldn't be necessary as there is so much redundancy with card draw.

[[Sound the Trumpets]] (C): This can work if you have a ton of instants or are especially controlling. I wouldn't consider it a premium card though.

[[Ravenhill Flock]] (C): It will get out of hand quickly, but as a understatted 4 mana creature that doesn't have an ETB in a fast format it has a lot working against it. If you don't get any Long Lake Nuisances this goes up, but I would definitely take this below the common flyer.

[[Lake-town Toymaker]] (C-): Seems like it would be a good fit in this deck, but a few things make it way underperform. First you have so many good 4 drops already that there often isn't room for this. Second this card triggers at the start of combat, which is a problem often. It straight up doesn't work with cards like the uncommon Bilbo, [[Great Gilded Boat]], and [[Bard's Company]]. And while you can get it to work with instant speed card draw and recruit creatures it requires you to spend your mana precombat which isn't always what you want to do. Also most of the time you won't trigger this on the turn you play it. Between all that this card is much worse than it looks.

Other Topics

Avoids:

I think the #1 thing you want to avoid are playing expensive creatures that are not included in this list. Cards like [[Eagle of the Great Shelf]], [[Gandalf, Wandering Wizard]], [[Ori, Keeper of Songs]], and [[Dwarven Shortsword]] are absolutely traps. Between the top recruit commons and all the great 4+ drop uncommons and rares you just won't have room to play random other mediocre expensive creatures. If there is a pick where there are no top commons available spend a pick on a random cheap creature or a dual land because there is at least a chance you end up short on 2 drop creatures and fixing. You won't be short on 4 drop creatures.

The other thing to avoid are generic go wide effects. This deck has the ability to go wide with recruit, but you want your payoffs to that to be with cards that fit within a recruit/draw two deck. Not cards that only support going wide. So Moment of Glory supports go wide but is a great card to discard to recruit. Dwarven Provisioner is good for going wide, but also fills a need as a cheap creature. [[Thorin's Last Stand]] is just purely a go wide payoffs and should be avoided. Esgaroth Garrison is good as a recruit card, but if you have enough of those don't play this just because it's good when you go wide.

Dwarf Version:

There are some very powerful white dwarfs in this set. In particular [[Fíli the Pathfinder]] and [[Kíli the Resourceful]] are quite good if you can get storied or play more dwarves. Are these worth altering your deck to play? The answer is yes, but only slightly. I would bump up decent cards in the deck if they are dwarves. Stuff like Dwarven Provisioner and [[Bofur, Reliable Guardian]]. I would not however start taking unplayable cards just because they are dwarf payoffs. So still try to avoid Dwarven Shortsword.

Other colors besides White?

So I don't know if you noticed but in particular at common all the best cards are blue. So that begs to question can this deck do well as a different second color like black? I personally haven't made it happen yet, but I think the answer is definitely yes. In particular I think black has a great removal suite to compliment blue, and also has plenty of powerful cards in general. In my experience though Black has been relatively cut as a color when drafting, and white has been fairly open, but if for some reason both blue and black are open at your table I would not hesitate at all to draft a blue/black version of this deck.

Blue/Red and Blue/Green versions are trickier. They both can work, but I don't think are particularly setup to thrive in this kind of deck. I have seen blue/green draw two decks do well, but those seem to be built more around having a critical amount of Apothecaries versus recruit synergies.

Conclusion:

So hopefully this helps clarify how to draft a good blue/white deck. Right now I think this color pair is criminally underdrafted so you should be able to get a ton of the best cards. I think even down the line as people adjust it will still be good, but you will have to adjust. Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions.

I mainly play on Arena. I know the classic "BO1 isn't real Magic" mantra, but it’s currently the most efficient way for me to farm cards. I'm hoping you can help me out and give me some advice on how to improve my win rate in control mirrors and against Azorius Tempo.

My deck is at the end of the post.

Against traditional control, I’ve found a cheeky strategy: I just stall and wait for my Mistraise Villages. I run two copies, and they act as my primary win condition while I set up my Tablets and Talents, eventually upgrading the Talents for an OTK.

This is perfectly feasible against control decks that rely on "normal" win conditions (burn damage, big late-game creatures, etc.). However, against Mill, this strategy is way too passive. Cards like Mathematics or Riverchum Monument just destroy me. I often find myself wasting my cheap counterspells trying to protect early plays before I can even get my Village online.

More often than not, my graveyard ends up larger than my library and I just mill out. If I’m incredibly lucky, I can find my Village in time and steal a win, but it's rare.

Then there's Azorius Tempo. This matchup feels literally impossible—I swear I am 0-100 against it. Once they drop a High Noon, they just sit back and bounce every single spell I try to resolve.

I understand that these matchups are probably just inherently unfavorable, but I feel like they shouldn't be this one-sided. I'm likely making things harder for myself with my lines of play. Any suggestions, tech cards, or gameplay tips would be hugely appreciated!

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decklist

23 lands ( 1 mountain 1 plain 1 island 2 mistraise village 4 biblipplex /// rest is various dual )

2 creatures, Thor god of Thunder

4 widosom of ages

3 abandon attachments

3 stockup

1 spell snare

1 three steps ahead

2 it'll quench ya!

3 firebending lessons

4 combustion technique

1 iroh's demonstration

2 avengers disassemble

1 lantern of souls

4 tablet of discovery

2 artist's talent

4 jeskai revelation.

Now that the first weekend of the new standard RCQs is over, what did everyone see? What were the metas like? I did 2 with a 29 person turn out and 18 person turn outs. Top 8s were very diverse with things like 5 color spiders, Kona combo, Izzet horse/opus and Golgari landfall spread across the 16 top decks.

Hello!

If you're like me and enjoy interesting, unpopular combo decks, you may have heard of the "4c gearhulk combo" deck, also known as "SewerBloom". The deck aims to combo off by using the jolly balloon man to copy a nurturing pixie, which bounces a sewerveilance cam to untap JBM. then you tap a bloom tender for a bunch of mana, play the cam, untap the tender, use the left over mana to make another pixie, repeat until you have enough hasty fliers to win.

The supporting pieces of the deck are gearhulk, which upon entering tutors up 2 combo pieces, and nature's rhythm, which is used to get our 1x JBM out of the deck.

Previously, both stormchasers talent and badgermole cub were used in this deck. Talent was great because it gave you blue and red for bloom tender on a one drop, and let you recur boomerang basics, which could extend your mana production loops. Badgermole cub was... Badgermole cub. It's insane mana acceleration and ability to allow a blue land to tap for UG instead of just one mana is what allowed the earth bent land to be used to combo off.

However, without those pieces, the deck has been left utterly unplayable. I have a couple of ideas for trying to piece it back together (I'm well aware it won't be anywhere near as strong as it was before), but since I'm wildcard poor, I want to get some outside perspective on this rebuild.

Option 1: we jam transdimensional bovine and figure of fable / spider manifestation. Bovine is a double dork which means it can sustain the infinite. Costing three mana and not accelerating our other mana sources is tough, but at least it's copies 5-8 of a combo piece. This way feels simple and not cute, but also heavily restricts lots of the lines that would previously allow the deck to explosive win from bad spots. Figure of fable and spider manifestation are early plays that also accelerate our bloom tender. Not sure the exact ratio of cards that would get used here.

Option 2: instead of using a double dork, we double the sewerveilance cam triggers. The best candidate for this is starfield vocalist, which can warp in for 1U on the combo turn. By double triggering the cam, single mana dorks (like the 0/4 treefolk druid that can make any color) can now make enough mana to sustain the combo. This seems like the coolest fix but also probably the worst of the three I came up with in my head.

Option 3: formidable speaker. This card would allow us to tutor up bloom tenders. In addition, it's ability to pay 1 of the ideally 3 mana tender makes to untap tender and make more mana, means that formidable speaker does a better impression of cub than you might think. Alongside this, I believe we would use some number of spider manifestations as well, to still be giving our tender access to red mana. Figure of fable too for white mana pre gearhulk, but again, maybe that's all too cute.

I would love any input from anybody else who played or is playing this deck, or if anybody is just looking for a fun deck building challenge.

Thanks!

Hello r/spikes,

I am looking to join a community of other spikes to hone my standard skills.

What community discords / content creator discords would you recommend?

Thank you!

Hello spikes!

This is the place where any and all decks can be posted for all spikes to see. The goal of this is to fit all your needs for competitive magic. Maybe it's a card consideration given an X dollar budget. Maybe you need that sweet sideboard tech that no one else thought of? Perhaps you just can't figure out the best card to beat a certain matchup. The ideas here are only limited by your imagination!

Feel free to discuss most anything here. We only ask that with any question, you also make sure to post your decklist so people have some context to answer your question. Otherwise, have at it! If you have any questions, shoot us a modmail and we'll be happy to help you out. Survive your deck check and survive your competition!

Hello Everyone,

It has been a really long time since my last write-ups! Well, I am back with a writeup of one of my current favorite decks in Modern. This strategy is so much fun (for the one using it lol) and I wanted to talk about it.

I really dont like what publishing it through Google Drive does to the formatting. Makes it looks so ugly. Any thoughts on how to fix that? I could also email yall the pdf if anything. Let me know what you think

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQF_dXMsll7KlftqkjqKPSAOwZ-3SmVFfQ52dzw9LGlxBlzybQKKYIGRU-apdoH7Yk52wdGXw_O5v3_/pub

Anyone having success testing for standard on MTGO? My main format is modern so I already have a manatraders subscription and that’s working great. I’ve recently wanted to learn more standard, but I’m also a grad student so sinking money into both MTGO and Arena is rough, especially because I’m not great at limited so it’s hard going infinite on the latter.

Is it feasible to play standard mainly on MTGO? I’m wondering if the league queues will be too long given how everyone’s on arena. On the other hand I’d expect the competition to be steeper which is good for learning. Any thoughts?

Being a Mono-Green Landfall Player, I kept hearing that Mono-Green was done with the ban of Badgermole Club. Everyone kept saying Jeskai Control would take over Standard with Mono-Green and Izzet being banned.

On Magic 4 Ever Tracker, Post-Ban Mono-Green Landfall has the best conversion rate into the Top 8 of any Standard Deck. It took 1st on the last Standard Challenge 32 2026-08-11, taking 3 of the top 8 spots.

Badgermole Club was never a core card of the Landfall deck. I won so many games without even drawing Badgermole Club. It was nice to have but it was never an essential card for the deck. I would say only banning Icetill Explorer and Mightform Harmonizer would kill the deck.

Whether this is healthy for Standard I don't know. All I know is that Mono-Green Landfall is even more dominate now than before the ban.

So we just had quite the shakeup.

Per MTGgoldfish past month, the current T8 most popular decks are (winners ✅; losers 🫠):

1. Prowess (lost talent 🫠)
2. Jeskai lessons (gran 🫠gran)
3. WG Ouro (Lost cub 🫠)
4. Spellementals ✅
5. 4CC ✅⬆️👍🏽
6. mono G LF (cub 🫠)
7. Dimir x (✅👍🏽)
8. Izzet lessons (🫠😵💀)

While I didn’t expect all this (noteworthy just one more RCQ season left before talent was rotating out in Jan with many other cards) this is a decent ban upstate. The top 5 standard decks were pretty locked with just minor % changes each week.

This successfully hits each of the t3 decks (including every variation of prowess/spells/self bounce which is like ~19% of the meta), without outright killing any deck (except maybe izzet lessons, im sure you all will figure it out tho Ancestral is still quite the card).

Seems this should also give any decks that had a bad MU against the 3 most popular decks a window of opportunity as well.

What are your thoughts?

I can remember happily feasting on Jeskai - but that was before Tablet. Perhaps that's what WOTC was counting on :)

But seriously, do you think it might make a return? It got 7th place in a recent tourney. It SBs well - Betrayal for GY, Black Sun for green. And it plays a metric ton of removal.

I'm not seeing that it has gained a lot from recent sets though?

Anyway it was the first deck I took to Mythic so I'm fond of it. Hope it does well - what are your thoughts?

[[Practiced Offense]]

With the recent bannings I interpret the strongest build around cards in the format to be Practiced Offense and either [[Jeskai Revelation]] / [[Tablet of Discovery]]. Now that we have lost the [[Badgermole Cub]] synergy, what is the next best home for this powerful magic card?

Feel free to post your deck list ideas if you think you've stumbled upon something interesting!