blue strategy

A couple of days ago, I played against a red deck with my fairly new blue
deck.

The problem I kept having was that the red deck would keep killing my
smaller unblockable creatures almost as soon as I got them out. I was able
to get red down to 1 life repeatedly, but he kept using dewdrop to heal.

I'm wondering if blue has any:

A) good direct damage cards

B) any inexpensive large critters that might survive a blast
of 4-5

C) cards that would stop an opponent from playing a
HUGE direct damage spell

The last was what did me in. My opponent had a land that let him keep
storing mana up, then he used it to power a disintegrate spell, doing 9
damage all at once.

It really, really made me wish I had some way to reflect the damage back
to him. For 80% of the game, he was at 1-3 life points, while I was up at
16-18.

On Sat, 3 Nov 2007 08:09:16 -0500, OhioGuy <none.TakeThisOut@none.net> wrote:
> The problem I kept having was that the red deck would keep killing my
>smaller unblockable creatures almost as soon as I got them out. I was able
>to get red down to 1 life repeatedly, but he kept using dewdrop to heal.

No 'dewdrop' found. (Do you mean, perhaps, Sun Droplet?)

> I'm wondering if blue has any:
>A) good direct damage cards

Good? No. Blue doesn't get direct damage as such. Psionic Blast, or the
various Tims, are about as close as it gets. (It has some specifically
anti-red cards such as Volcanic Eruption, but that's about it.)

>B) any inexpensive large critters that might survive a blast of 4-5

Blue doesn't get cheap creatures either, though it pays less for Flying
than some other colors. Sorry...

>C) cards that would stop an opponent from playing a
> HUGE direct damage spell

Now these Blue has in abundance: counterspells galore, and variations on
Power Sink / Force Spike / etc. Also stranger things like Mana Maze. Blue is
the king of fiddling with spells that are on the stack, one way or another;
it's also very good at returning things to hand, and at giving things in play
Odd Conditions to deal with (Energy Flux, Apathy, Frozen Solid, etc.). It's
terrible at actually destroying things.

> The last was what did me in. My opponent had a land that let him keep
>storing mana up, then he used it to power a disintegrate spell, doing 9
>damage all at once.

That would be a nice target for Boomerang once it has a few counters on it,
don't you think?

> It really, really made me wish I had some way to reflect the damage back
>to him. For 80% of the game, he was at 1-3 life points, while I was up at
>16-18.

Boomeranging his Sun Droplet could also cause aggravation, I think. You
usually don't go wrong including a few counterspells and a few ways to return
things to hand in a Blue deck. (Play to your strengths...)

Dave
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