Imperial Blue

[gamegeek2]

Essentially a Champs-style Tezz deck, but featuring more heavily in the aggro-control route

// Lands
    2  Underground Sea
    2  Tropical Island
    1 [DDE] Swamp
    2  Island
    2  Volcanic Island
    1  Misty Rainforest
    4  Polluted Delta
    1  Scalding Tarn

// Creatures
    1  Magus of the Moon
    4  Dark Confidant
    2  Imperial Recruiter
    1  Inkwell Leviathan
    1  Goblin Welder
    1  Trygon Predator

// Spells
    1  Mystical Tutor
    1  Voltaic Key
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1 [JGC] Demonic Tutor
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Time Vault
    2  Nature's Claim
    2  Jace, the Mind Sculptor
    1 [JGC] Sol Ring
    4  Force of Will
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Black Lotus
    3  Thoughtseize
    4  Spell Pierce
    2  Lightning Bolt
    1  Tinker
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Ponder
    1  Brainstorm

Undecided on the sideboard, but I like the maindeck. It differs in featuring

2 Lightning Bolt; excellent against Bobs, Mind Sculptors, Lodestone, and random creatures
2 Imperial Recruiter, able to fetch
-Bob, for card advantage
-Trygon, for Stax
-Welder, for Stax and regrowing Vault/Key
-Magus of the Moon; strong for catching opponents off guard, and you can often have 3 of your 4 colors up and running well under him

[Cyberpunker]

The problem with running maindeck Lightning Bolts is that they will be dead a lot of times. You can bolt your Orchard token and stuff but really that is suboptimal in my opinion. Imperial Recruiter is interesting but seems too situational. But good luck and I think it can work if you really put work into it.

Disclaimer:

I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just guessing at what I think I know.

[TopSecret]

Since you're probably going to be sideboarding toolbox creatures anyway, maybe Living Wish would be better than Recruiter?

[gamegeek2]

It's just an experiment. I usually play different decks.

Living Wish, eating up sideboard space, seems pretty bad IMO. You can board in utility creatures as then matchup demands and not waste the extra space stuffing them all in there.

[NilsH]

How bout Painter-Grindstone instead of Vault-Key? With some number of Trinket Mages in the deck you find all your pieces with Recruiter.

[gamegeek2]

I was thinking about that, but really it's inferior unless you have Red Blasts or something to go with it.

[vassago]

I think this specific list has bad mana. I think you should decide on a third color choice and go from there.

Also, Imperial recruiter sucks in this deck anyway. The toolbox factor is way to slow to really have a serious impact. Just play more trygon predators or gorilla shamns or what ever creature you really want to get anyway.

How bout Painter-Grindstone instead of Vault-Key? With some number of Trinket Mages in the deck you find all your pieces with Recruiter.

I was thinking about that, but really it's inferior unless you have Red Blasts or something to go with it.

Here is a list I ran from some time ago, it was fun. It isn't too relevant, but I thought it would be useful for you guys delving into this thought experiment.  Here is the thread I was asked to post it in eons ago:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=38008.msg529685#msg529685

1 tolarian academy
3 polluted delta
3 volcanic island
2 flooded strand
2 island
1 underground sea
1 badlands
1 swamp
5 moxen
mana crypt
mana vault
sol ring
black lotus

2 imperial recruiter
4 trinket mage
1 engineered explosives
1 sensei's divining top
4 mana drain
1 echoing truth
1 yawgmoth's will
1 mystical tutor
1 grindstone
ponder
brainstorm
ancestral recall
timewalk
4 force of will
vampiric tutor
1 pyroblast
2 red elemental blast
1 tormod's crypt
1 demonic tutor
4 accumulated knowledge
2 intuition
1 painter's servant

sb

1 darksteel colossus
1 platinum angel
1 tinker
3 extirpate
1 rack and ruin
3 leyline of the void
2 wasteland
1 stripmine
2 energy flux