Blue/Green Polymorph Decklist

April 15, 2010 | Posted by Dee

Three weekends ago, an interesting Polymorph deck got 9th place in a big StarCityGames.com Standard tournament with over 400 players. The deck was piloted by Isaiah Ley and he went 8-2 in the swiss rounds.

I had seen Polymorph decks before but they looked pretty bad. They didn’t do very well in tournaments and they were easy to beat. Those decks paired blue with red. But it looks like green/blue is the way to go.

Here’s the decklist.

UG Polymorph

Spells (35)

Creatures (2)

2 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Lands (23)

Sideboard (15)

Polymorph Fodder

Any Polymorph deck has have a good amount of creatures to target with Polymorph. But the creatures can’t actually come from creature spells. Your creature spells need to be powerful creatures with game winning abilities to make Polymorph worth it.

Isaiah’s deck uses the following non-creature spells to produce creatures.

3 Wind Zendikon

This enchantment is great because it’s cheap and reusable with Khalni Garden. If you enchant Khalni Garden and your opponent destroys the 2/2 blue Elemental creature, Khalni Garden goes back into your hand. You can then replay it and get another 0/1 green Plant creature token.

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

Garruk is a solid creature generator that also functions as a win condition and mana source.

4 Khalni Garden

This land is perfect for the deck and is a great reason to play green instead of red. Khalni Garden gives you a creature token without having to take up a spell slot.

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Winning the Game

4 Polymorph

Not much to say here. In most of your games, you will need to resolve this card to win the game.

2 Iona, Shield of Emeria

Iona is the best creature to get with Polymorph because her ability is game breaking against most of the decks in Type II. Typically, you should name black against Jund and white against decks that play white spells.

Two copies are necessary. If you only have one copy, you could draw it and leave yourself with no creature spells in the library for Polymorph.

Yes, Jace can to put the card back in the library but you may not draw Jace or your opponent could destroy the blue planeswalker.

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Card Drawing and Library Manipulation

In a combo deck, you need a lot of card drawing and library manipulation to gather your combo pieces.

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Jace is the one of the best cards if you want to draw a lot of cards and manipulate your library. With 12 ways to shuffle your library (5 fetchlands, 4 Ponder, and 3 Rampant Growth), Jace’s 0 ability becomes really powerful. If you don’t like the top cards on your library, you can just shuffle them away and look at three new cards.

Also, Jace gives you another win condition with his insane ultimate.

4 Halimar Depths

Halimar Depths allows you to dig three cards into your library to find the card you need. If you don’t have anything useful in those three cards, you can shuffle the cards away with one of your shuffle effects.

4 Ponder

This card is similar to Halimar Depths except you get to draw a card and you have the option to shuffle.

4 Explore

Explore helps in at least two ways. It helps you dig through your deck and the mana ramp aspect allows you to cast a turn three Polymorph.

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Protecting Your Combo

With all the instant speed removal in Standard, your combo can be easy to disrupt. Therefore, you need some cards to protect the combo.

2 Spell Pierce
2 Negate

These two counterspells provide the same function. Spell Pierce is great early while Negate stops any non-creature spell late in the game.

2 Vines Of Vastwood

This green spell protects your Polymorph targets at instant speed for only one mana. Also, this card is great because it still allows you to cast Polymorph. It keeps your opponents from targeting your creatures but you can still target them with Polymorph.

Also, in a pinch, it can protect Iona if your opponent has removal spells in two different colors.

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Miscellaneous

4 Into the Roil

Think of this card as the blue Oblivion Ring. It deals with just about anything for a turn. And a turn is often all you need to lock out your opponent with Polymorph. Also, since you bounce the threatening permanent, you can keep it from being cast again with Iona.

3 Rampant Growth

This green sorcery speeds up your combo as well as giving you a shuffle effect for Jace. Also, a turn 3 Jace or Garruk can be pretty powerful.

2 Essence Scatter

Green and blue are not good removal colors so you have to resort to counterspells to stop creatures.

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Lands

The lands are pretty straightforward. You need a full set of Misty Rainforest to fix your mana. Plus, the shuffle effect is great with Jace, which is why the deck has an extra fetchland (Scalding Tarn).

Halimar Depths and Khalni Garden are great because they produce mana and provide spell-like effects.

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Sideboard

2 Sphinx of the Steel Wind

Sphinx is great against Jund unless they sideboard Deathmark or Doom Blade. If you’ve been scouted and you think your opponent knows about your Sphinxes, you should stick with Iona for game 2.

Against unsuspecting opponents, I would bring in the Sphinxes for game 2 but then bring back Iona if there is a game 3 since there’s a really good chance your opponent will sideboard Deathmark.

1 Dispel

Dispel is great against counterspells. The new U/W control decks don’t have counterspells main but they will have Negates in the sideboard.

4 Flashfreeze

This counterspell is the weapon of choice against Jund, RDW, and Eldrazi Green.

3 Fog

Fog is great against RDW. It basically counters Ball Lightning and makes Hell’s Thunder and Hellspark Elemental less effective – all for one mana.

1 Negate
2 Spell Pierce

More counters to stop cards like removal that your opponents will probably be bringing in for the post-sideboard games.

1 Progenitus

Progenitus comes in versus mill. You can also bring it in against slow decks that have multiple colors to deal with Iona.

1 Garruk Wildspeaker

Not sure what the extra Garruk is for. Maybe to add an extra win condition or to stop other Garruks in decks like Jund and Eldrazi Green.