At a glance
- Format: Standard
- Colors: Blue / Green (UG)
- Archetype: Simic tempo / card advantage
- Power tier: mid-high
- Standard: ✅ Legal
Strategy
Blue-primary, green-splash tempo built on the “draw your second card each turn” payoffs. A 1-drop cantrip shell (Opt, Spyglass Siren, Spectral Sailor) plus Clue tokens and Chart a Course reliably triggers a SECOND draw every turn, which is the deck’s whole engine: Otter-Penguin turns unblockable for the turn, Knowledge Seeker and Tiger-Seal grow/untap, and Mischievous Mystic spits out flying Faeries. Brineborn Cutthroat plus Spectral Sailor’s flash means you hold up Essence Scatter / Negate on the opponent’s turn and still develop, casting Opt or a bounce spell on their turn to pump Cutthroat AND tick the second-card payoffs. Enduring Curiosity and Tatyova convert combat hits and land drops into a grinding card lead; Kiora refills outright and threatens an 8/8 Scion. Exclusion Mage, Boomerang Basics and Rocky Rebuke supply the tempo interaction the original list was thin on — UB-control instincts ported into Simic, with green doing only ramp/fixing (Breeding Pool, Dreamroot Cascade) and a fight effect.
Upgrade path
Owned-only, zero rare/mythic SPELL crafts. Owned rares used as spells: Enduring Curiosity (own4), Kiora the Rising Tide (own2), Tiger-Seal (own2) — all already owned, no crafts. Breeding Pool is the single approved branch-out shock and the only unowned card, kept at the 1 copy the prior list ran. Refinement vs the prior build: the second-card engine was under-fueled, so I added Opt x2 and Spyglass Siren x1 (own4 common/uncommon) as cheap instant-speed enablers that trigger the payoffs every turn and double as Brineborn fuel, and added Tiger-Seal x1 (OWNED rare, no craft) as an on-theme untapping 1-drop. Swapped the clunky Forecasting Fortune Teller / Mischievous-only redundancy for Exclusion Mage x2 (repeatable bounce on a body) to firm up tempo. Manabase shape unchanged (shock + Dreamroot + owned taplands + basics); a 2nd Breeding Pool would be the only further upgrade and costs a rare craft, so it’s held back.
Cards
Decklist
Paste straight into MTG Arena (or Moxfield/Archidekt):
Deck
4 Spectral Sailor
1 Spyglass Siren
1 Tiger-Seal
4 Otter-Penguin
3 Knowledge Seeker
3 Brineborn Cutthroat
2 Mischievous Mystic
1 Exclusion Mage
2 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
3 Enduring Curiosity
2 Kiora, the Rising Tide
2 Opt
2 Essence Scatter
2 Chart a Course
2 Negate
4 Breeding Pool
16 Island
3 Forest
2 Tishana's Tidebinder
1 Boomerang Basics
Sideboard
A 15-card sideboard for best-of-three (Traditional) play — swap these in game 2/3 against the matchups below.
This is a blue-primary tempo/control deck, so the sideboard leans on counters (its real strength) with a light green permanent-removal package to mop up resolved engines. Green is a 7-source splash — don’t try to cast two green cards a turn.
vs Mono-Red Aggro (also Gruul/Boros): +2 Essence Scatter, +2 Instant Ramen, +2 Spell Pierce / -1 Negate, -2 Chart a Course, -2 Enduring Curiosity, -1 Tishana’s Tidebinder. Essence Scatter counters Screaming Nemesis / Heartfire Hero / Emberheart on the stack (clean answer that dodges Nemesis’s damage-punish clause), Spell Pierce stops burn to the face, Instant Ramen cantrips and buys 3 life.
vs Dimir Midrange: +2 Spell Pierce, +1 Negate, +1 Disdainful Stroke, +2 Glorious Decay / -2 Essence Scatter (their creatures matter less), -2 Opt, -1 Boomerang Basics. Counter Enduring Curiosity / Kaito / removal on the stack; Glorious Decay kills evasive fliers or exiles graveyard cards and replaces itself. Unforgiving Aim/Quandrix Charm destroy a resolved Enduring Curiosity.
vs Golgari Midrange: +2 Unforgiving Aim, +1 Quandrix Charm, +1 Origin of Metalbending, +1 Disdainful Stroke / -2 Opt, -2 Essence Scatter, -1 Boomerang Basics. The green suite blows up a resolved Unholy Annex; counters handle Glissa and ramp payoffs.
vs Zur Domain: +2 Spell Pierce, +1 Negate, +1 Disdainful Stroke, +1 Quandrix Charm / -2 Essence Scatter, -2 Chart a Course, -1 Boomerang Basics. Disdainful Stroke and the noncreature counters answer Overlords and ramp; Spell Pierce taxes enchantment payoffs.
vs Azorius Oculus: +3 Glorious Decay, +2 Spell Pierce / -2 Opt, -2 Chart a Course, -1 Boomerang Basics. Glorious Decay exiles graveyard fuel and kills Abhorrent Oculus’s support fliers while cantripping; counters stop the reanimation payoffs.
vs Mono-White Tokens / Jeskai Convoke: +2 Unforgiving Aim, +1 Origin of Metalbending, +2 Essence Scatter / -2 Opt, -2 Negate, -1 Boomerang Basics. Break Caretaker’s Talent / Enduring Innocence with the green removal; Essence Scatter and bounce trade with the best go-wide payoffs (no true sweeper in-color — the only option is a 7-mana bounce that also resets your own board, so we lean on interaction instead).
Full deck with sideboard (paste into Arena for Bo3):
Deck
4 Spectral Sailor
1 Spyglass Siren
1 Tiger-Seal
4 Otter-Penguin
3 Knowledge Seeker
3 Brineborn Cutthroat
2 Mischievous Mystic
1 Exclusion Mage
2 Tatyova, Benthic Druid
3 Enduring Curiosity
2 Kiora, the Rising Tide
2 Opt
2 Essence Scatter
2 Chart a Course
2 Negate
4 Breeding Pool
16 Island
3 Forest
2 Tishana's Tidebinder
1 Boomerang Basics
Sideboard
2 Spell Pierce
2 Essence Scatter
1 Negate
1 Disdainful Stroke
3 Glorious Decay
2 Unforgiving Aim
1 Quandrix Charm
1 Origin of Metalbending
2 Instant Ramen
Card images & data via Scryfall.