With November's ban list updates and the release of the Avatar: the Last Airbender set, the Standard format finally feels fresh again, with lots of room for experimentation. Ever since August's rotation, I have been trying to bring back mono-Blue tempo with Eluge, the Shoreless Sea, a deck I wrote about in this article last year, and Avatar finally gave me a direction to take the deck in: lessons. The Izzet build of lessons has performed impressively well, and with this deck tech I'll be breaking down the mono-Blue version. Let's dive in!

Let's start with the deck's threats. The key card of the deck is Eluge, a 4-mana */* with three abilities: its power and toughness are equal to the number of islands you control, it puts a flood counter on a land when it enters or attacks, turning it into an island, and the first instant or sorcery you cast each turn costs Blue (or 1) less for each land you control with a flood counter on it. When Eluge gets going, it can very quickly snowball to a victory, providing a large body and progressively larger cost reductions on our spells. Our other key threat is Abhorrent Oculus, a three-mana 5/5 with flying that manifests dread at the beginning of each opponent's upkeep but requires you to exile six cards from your graveyard to cast it. Usually, this card gets cheated into play with reanimation, but since lessons already want us to fill our graveyard this deck can cast it fairly. Like Eluge, it can quickly get out of hand, filling our graveyard for future Oculi and putting a new threat on the board each turn. Finally, this deck plays two copies of Marang River Regent. This card does just about everything: it has an omen that can draw and discard cards while shuffling back into our library for later and it's a big flying body that can create huge tempo swings by bouncing two nonland permanents.

While we're missing out on two good Red lessons by playing mono-Blue, we still get to play some of the best lessons in the format. Accumulated Knowledge is the big reason to play lessons: a two-mana instant that looks at the top three cards of your library and either puts one into your hand or puts all three into your hand if there are three or more lessons in your graveyard. With seventeen lessons in our deck and many ways to put them into our graveyard, this card should be a consistent draw three. Our other lessons include Abandon Attachments, a two-mana instant that lets you discard a card to draw two, Octopus Form, a way to protect Eluge or Oculus by giving it hexproof for one mana, and two counterspells in the form of It'll Quench Ya! and Sokka's Haiku.

As is the case for most tempo decks, most of our game plan is to disrupt our opponents as much as possible, leaving up mana each turn to either counter their threats or draw more interaction using our cantrips and burst card draw. In addition to the two lessons counterspells, the deck also runs Three Steps Ahead and Confounding Riddle, two flexible counterspells that can also fill the graveyard or, in the case of Three Steps Ahead, create a copy of Abhorrent Oculus or Marang River Regent at instant speed. Finally, we're running two copies of Bounce Off, which returns a creature or vehicle to its owner's hand for one mana. I considered running Boomerang Basics in this spot to include more lessons, but having this effect at instant speed is much more valuable for a tempo deck.

The deck's mana base is nothing too special, just a bunch of islands and four copies of Demolition Field to deal with creature lands, which can be a big problem for this deck. There is also a single copy of Fountainport, which can draw cards and make creature tokens if the game goes long. The sideboard is also basic, with three copies of Soul-Guide Lantern for graveyard hate, four copies of Unable to Scream to deal with creatures, and eight additional counterspells in the form of Negate, Spell Pierce, and Long River's Pull for better matchup coverage.

While this is the list I came up with, there were a lot of cards that I tested or considered for the deck that you can try out too. Secret of Bloodbending is a card that I really wanted to find room for, being able to control your opponent during combat for four Blue mana or letting you control their next turn if you also Waterbend 10. As it turns out, just controlling your opponent during combat can cause a lot of problems, either by tapping their chump blockers, fogging for a turn, or even tapping out a control opponent so they can't counter or remove your threats during your next turn. Spirit Water Revival is also a card that I tested but could never get to work quite right. It can draw you two cards for three, which isn't the best at sorcery speed, or if you Waterbend 6 you can shuffle your graveyard into your library and draw seven, with no maximum hand size afterwards. In theory it can be very strong, but for me it was just a sorcery-speed Divination most of the time, which was very underwhelming. Finally, my list originally included a few copies of Stock Up, which I took out partially to make room for more lessons and partially because it being a sorcery limited its usefulness in the early game, where you usually want to play your land and pass with instant-speed interaction or card draw at the ready.

And that'll do it for this Standard deck tech! If you're interested in more Standard content, check out this article on the state of the meta or this article for three more Standard decks built around Avatar cards.