They rush across the battlefield, enraged warriors with weapons raised, shouting a battle cry as they rush towards the citadel of their enemy. Inside, another shout goes up, not a cry of battle, but a chant. Powerful spells are summoned and unleashed on the charging horde.
When brute strength is met with cunning tactics, who will emerge victorious? That, planeswalker, is up to you....
It's a familiar matchup in MtG: a creature-heavy deck trying to smack around a controlling deck on the other side of the table, trying to get in blows between countering and deflecting spells and abilities. This deck ironically has as many creatures as the "creature-heavy" Warrior deck, but focuses much more on trickery than pure battle. (The opposing Warrior deck is here: http://www.mtgvault.com/jre47/decks/duel-decks-warriors-vs-wizards)
Just like Wizards' Duel Decks, this is centered around one feature rare and contains primarily Modern-legal cards with some older ones mixed in (which, if printed, would get the new, current border and in some cases updated art as well). [Side note: this deck features a LOT more older cards than most, due to Wizards having a good chunk of their tribal support in Magic earlier history. Just FYI!] It also sticks to just a handful of rares and tends to go with a lot of one-ofs among other cards, with a small handful of key cards that may get multiple copies (and even then, usually only two). Each deck has the same number of rares and even uncommons in an attempt to keep them balanced. Also, unlike Event Decks and other feature decks from Wizards, Duel Decks lack sideboards. I tried very hard to keep with all those restrictions here... believe me, if this were your more typical constructed deck, it would look a lot different!
Unlike most of my Duel Decks thus far, neither of these decks feature a mythic rare as the "face" card. Wasn't my plan, but unfortunately there are no mythic Warriors that were A.) in the right colors for what I wanted to do or B.) interesting enough to headline the deck. So while there ARE some mono-blue mythic Wizards that would have been fun (I thought long and hard about Teferi and even Master of Waves), it didn't seem fair to have a mythic on one side and not the other. So while this deck has multiple legendary Wizards, I consider Azami, Lady of Scrolls to be the headline "general", as she obviously works brutally well with other Wizards to keep your hand stocked, one of the many advantages this has compared to the Warrior deck. Anyway, the other rares are Venser Shaper Savant, Patron Wizard, Sigil Tracer, Cytoplast Manipulator, Tidebinder Mage, Psychic Trance, Riptide Laboratory, and Minamo School at Water's Edge. There are some decent chase cards in there, but they're mainly all here to fit the Wizard theme.
And they fit like a glove. Venser counters or bounces key threats. Patron Wizard and Psychic Trance counter like crazy. Tidebinder Mage and Cycoplast Manipulator neutralize the biggest threats, and Manipulator works against one of the Warrior deck's all-stars, Bramblewood Paragon, by being able to snag any Warrior Paragon puts counters on. Nasty!
In general, this deck is adept at digging for answers from the library and disrupting the opponent. It can strike back in battle, using some strength reducing tricks on opposing creatures to come out on top, or can sometimes just fly over those creatures (literally). It also has something newer players would probably be shocked to see in blue: pingers, creatures that can tap to deal small amounts of damage to opposing creatures or directly to the opponent's face. These days, Wizards like these typically are red, but this was a blue specialty for a long while. Go old school and use these Wizards to ping the opponent to death, potentially without having to ever step foot into the red zone. Who needs brute force when you have clever magic tricks and a keen mind to use them?
I appreciate anyedback you can provide here, good or bad. How's the balance between the two decks? Anything I can improve? Any gaping holes that you see? Useful comments will get you +1 rep points and a virtual slap on the back. :-P
If you liked this, check out my other duel decks at "http://www.mtgvault.com/jre47/duel-deck". I have many already and they're expanding quickly. If you have any specific requests (planeswalker vs. planeswalker, theme vs. theme, race vs. race, or anything else), let me know and I'll see what I can put together.
Thanks for reading!