When putting together this deck, there were so many ways I could have gone with respect to the engine that would drive the deck that deciding on a final path to start with was extremely difficult. The reason it was so difficult was simple:

Blue is really, really, really good at drawing cards.

Card Drawing = Big, Big Snake.

So when WoTC went out and made a card that went ahead and turned card drawing into a Big Fatty win condition with Lorescale Coatl, well I just had to made a deck.

So keeping in mind that once again this is the starting line, and not the finished product, let’s dive right in with a set of Lorescale Coatl.

+4 Lorescale Coatl

The obvious place to start with Lorescale Coatl in terms of discussion is “how good is a 3 mana win condition?” And that is an important point. This isn’t Goyf, and it’s not Wild Nactyl. It’s not even Quirion Dryad. So there are some important points to make. First of all, can you afford to play Lorescale as your only win condition? I think not. Turn 3 is too long to wait (turn 4 when it can attack), and since it has no evasion, you can’t count on it to simply beat through – it could literally be blocked by a something as simple as a Bitterblossom Token or a Factory returned by Crucible/Loam. So we’ll have to do two things. First we’ll need to add at least a couple of alternate creatures, and second, we’ll have to make sure we get to turn 3!

If I'm busy drawing cards, I want to be countering spells for free.

I went with Tarmogoyf because I can get him down turn 2 to block other aggros (including Goyf). The free counters are an obvious choice to survive the first couple turns, but Counterbalance and Top are in there for a dual purpose - to survive the long game and to pump Coatl. Finally, getting a 2nd top isn’t nearly as useless as it used to be, because it’s +1/+1 on your Coatl for the price of 1 mana – although we’ll find another use for an extra top later. The ability to stop a lot of combo, counter 1 or 2 mana removal spells (and 3s as well as we’ll end up running 8 3cc cards) and keep chump blockers off the case is perfect for the mid game of beating with Coatl.

But, with this deck, I don’t want there to be much of a mid game. I want to grow Coatl to be huge – time to draw cards. The first draw spell we’ll use is of course, Brainstorm. There is absolutely no reason to not run 4x of the card. It’s card quality, a permanent Giant Growth on Coatl, and a way to arrange your topdeck with counterbalance. In short it's perfect. Sadly, I don't think that leaves a lot of room for Ponder. Ponder, Brainstorm and Top would be too much - we need the space for other, more robust card drawing. So from there, there are a lot of worthwhile draw spells. First there’s Standstill, which is a great draw spell and might work just fine in this deck, but I think counterbalance is too important to the overall concept, and having Factories around to help break Standstill might ruin the plan of having two blue mana on turn 2. Then there are two draw spells I really love – Mystic Remora and Meditate. Right now this engine is really big in Vintage. Remora is of course, just not that good against aggro, and I think in the short game it’s a poor card unless you are facing down combo. Meditate, however, is the nuts – 4 cards. If you had this play:

Turn 1: Sensei's Divining top
Turn 2: Counterbalance
Turn 3: Coatl

on turn 4 you could Meditate, Brainstorm, and attack with a 10/10 Coatl. Yup, from 2/2 to 10/10. If Polymorph/Natural Order into Progenitus is good enough to place, surely a 10/10 (though without the protection from everything) that is attacking a turn earlier with a mittfull or protection can place as well. Not to mention you’ve got 4 extra cards in hand, 5 if you pop Sensei's Diving Top. If you lose a turn, you should have enough free spells (not to mention a counterbalance with top out and a fixed topdeck) to handle the loss of the turn. However, there was just one thing that could make me turn away from Meditate – Thirst for Knowledge. For the same cost, you get to draw 3 cards, and give up 1 or 2, but you don’t have to lose your next turn. What a toss up. +3 card advantage and +4/+4 on the Coatl, but minus one whole turn, or +1/0 card advantage and +3/+3 on the Coatl. With so many decks in this meta still able to turn sideways and without the guarantee of a win-now play, I don’t think this deck could really handle Meditate.

There were other options, like Diminishing Returns (+7/+7!) but then, since the Coatl itself has no evasion and even +7/+7 isn’t a win-now type of play if it did, I don’t think it’s worth giving your opponent a fresh hand to play with as well. Sylvan Library is a cute trick (you actually draw three cards, then put two back), but takes up the same space that Top does, and top works much better with Counterbalance to ensure your Coatl stays on the board. Gush was also a possibility, and possibly a very good one, but without a lot of testing on Gush, I couldn’t tell you whether the tempo loss trying to attack with a creature without evasion was worth the +2/+2 and +1 Card advantage. If Fastbond was available, I think we’d probably use Gush. But since it’s not, let’s go with:

+4 Brainstorm
+4 Thirst For Knowledge

Lastly, we can’t forget, much like Goyf-based decks, that we need some removal. In this case, I think Swords to Plowshares is probably our best choice over Path to Exile. The extra life isn’t going to matter an awful lot with the amount of control in the deck – we could probably just attack again. However, I did decide to go with at least a single Path to Exile so that Meddling Mage or Extirpate wouldn't take away all our removal

+3 Swords to Plowshares
+1 Path to Exile

Crazy snake bite you now!

+1 Vedalken Shackles
+1 Berserk

And of course we need our mana base. Preferably, we want a lot of Islands and fetchlands, to both escape Wasteland and fully utilize Brainstorm and Top. And I think we’ll minimize the problems that arise if your opponent manages to get a moon effect in play by including one of each basic. Also, since we are running a full compliment of Thirst for Knowledge, running Chrome Mox also makes the Thirsts more powerful while providing some Wasteland-proof mana and some possible acceleration. So our mana base will look like:

+3 Flooded Strand
+3 Polluted Delta
+8 Island
+1 Forest
+1 Plains
+2 Breeding Pool
+2 Tundra
+4 Chrome Mox

Free cards... how many is up to your opponent

Of course, like all good classic decks, I think we need to put in a full compliment of Pithing Needle, so we can name Necropotence of Grindstone or Wasteland or Mishra’s Factory (or all 4), but Meddling Mage might also fit our plan here. Naming Tendrils of Agony with Meddling Mage would also work out very well so long as you can counter the Soul Spike aimed it’s way.

Lastly, I wanted to think about problem decks, for example, the mirror of counterbalance would be bad, as we’d probably not be able to resolve to many Brainstorms or continually reuse Top. So Krosan Grip and Trygon Predator seem like excellent options.

+4 Mystic Remora
+4 Ethersworn Canonist
+4 Pithing Needle
+2 Krosan Grip
+1 Trygon Predator

So our final deck looks like:

And there you have it. Of course, as always with the Starting line, it’s unlikely one person is going to come up with the best deck right away, so I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions