Mono Blue draw shell, control or combo?

[serracollector]

I am currently trying to come up with a deck idea based around a set of cards with great synergy, but don't know if it is better to go with a control route, combo route, or what?
The "shell" of the deck idea is:

4 x Read the Runes
4 x Hatching Plans
4 x Perilous Research
4 x Ichor Wellspring

The idea is to use Reasearch and Read the Runes to sac the Plans and Wellsprings for mass CA at low mana cost.  Read the runes and hatching plans leave stroke and such cards in the dust.

Since Runes and Research are instants, I am thinking a control shell of 4 x Force/Spell Pierce/Drain/Mana leak, could form a new kind of BBS possibly.  

Or it could be used as some kind of combo if you throw in Rits and such, leading to a chain of drawing into y. win/tendrils.   Don't know if it is fast enough for this though.  The 2 mana needed for Ichor and Hatching plans during mainstep obv slows this plan, but in scenerious of land mox, ichor/plans, turn 2 rits, runes, draw 7-8 is nice tho.  Just not sure how to make it consistent enough for combo.

So is this viable?  Maybe in a BBS shell, you could play ancient tombs, to help pump out ichors faster? Well, anyways, thought's and comments welcome, how would you use this shell, or would you?

[TopSecret]

The problem I'm seeing is that if you spend 16 slots on card drawers you could get card drawers stuck in your hand while the opponent casts cards that do things. Also, there's a problem of random hands that don't have the right combinations of cards.

[xouman]

I tried a Ug deck with 4 x Read the Runes 4 x Hatching Plans 4 x Perilous Research 4 x chromatic star 4 x terrarion and lorescale coatl, nice sinergy altogether. The deck was utterly crap XD

Also tried a Urb approach, with rebs, gargadons and bitter ordeal, but was extremely slow and couldn't fit a correct manabase.


A monoU could be tested similar to a high tide, but I'm afraid it needs too many slots to be effective

[Delha]

The idea is to use Reasearch and Read the Runes to sac the Plans and Wellsprings for mass CA at low mana cost.  Read the runes and hatching plans leave stroke and such cards in the dust.

I think you're neglecting the mana cost of Wellsprings and Plans. Research+Wellspring costs you  and nets you +2 CA. Research+Plans costs  for +3 CA. Runes either nets you less CA or costs more mana. That's not a spectacular improvement over Concentrate, and far from what most would consider "low cost". When you consider that the latter isn't dependent on having two cards together at once, that gain is further diminished.

I suspect that the clunkiness of such an engine far outweights the benefits, and isn't realistically feasible as a replacement for BS+Ponder+Preordain. The incredible mana efficiency of the old package seems to have proven itself time and time again, even bearing in mind the trade of true CA for virtual.

[TopSecret]

Also, and I'm not saying this is viable, but there was a shell posted by someone (I forget who) a bit ago that was similar but instead used Abjure and Mystic Remora instead of Wellspring and Read the Runes. Abjure shows a lot more promise to me because it makes Hatching Plans into a three mana + 2 CA that counters a spell and therefore wastes opposing mana. Remora isn't bad by itself either a lot of the time. The problem with such a plan with regards to Wellspring is that it is not blue so it can't be sacked to Abjure. So it's possible that the cards just aren't there to make it viable yet. There's also tricks like Sensei's Top + Repeal or Hurky's Recall, that new card Steel Sabotage, or hell even Crack the Earth (worst case they sac a land!), but I don't see how such a deck will be viable without some future printings or some serious rearranging of which cards are being considered here.

[beder]

Also, and I'm not saying this is viable, but there was a shell posted by someone (I forget who) a bit ago that was similar but instead used Abjure and Mystic Remora instead of Wellspring and Read the Runes. Abjure shows a lot more promise to me because it makes Hatching Plans into a three mana + 2 CA that counters a spell and therefore wastes opposing mana. Remora isn't bad by itself either a lot of the time. The problem with such a plan with regards to Wellspring is that it is not blue so it can't be sacked to Abjure. So it's possible that the cards just aren't there to make it viable yet. There's also tricks like Sensei's Top + Repeal or Hurky's Recall, that new card Steel Sabotage, or hell even Crack the Earth (worst case they sac a land!), but I don't see how such a deck will be viable without some future printings or some serious rearranging of which cards are being considered here.

Here is the post you are talking about : http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37964.0
The idea was indeed to rely on hatching and abjure to draw and disrupt.

The main difficulty of this build is to succeed in consistently having a blue permanent in order to be able to support abjure. Remora is the best  permanent that I found at that time. Unfortunately, it is not 100% reliable given that it is destroyed after a while... In the meantime, no other interesting options has been released.