Isochron Scepter help

[Dkidd201]

A friend of mine recently made a quite annoying deck utilizing Isochron Scepter in a blue mill deck. The deck is mostly control and eats away at your library very quickly. He'll usually drop either boomerangs, counterspells, snaps or vison charms on his scepters really screwing your chances of getting anything on the board. And plus he'll use a brainfreeze after using his scepters, which sometimes if hes playing spells can be a 24 card mill. We only play casual so I would like any suggestions on how to counter his combos. I been thinking of a few things to do but I'd love some feedback.

The only decks that I come close to beating him with are either fast creature decks, or my blue/black megrim/warped devotion because of counterspells.

[NightLoki]

basically, you've gotta bait him into burning his counters on stuff that doesn't matter so you can resolve the stuff that does. there's very few artifact destruction spells that'll be the fix all end all here, it's just a really good card for a reason

[Dr.KnowMaD]

Gaea's Blessing is probably what your looking for.

Also, use Split Second cards such as Krosan's Grip or Wipe Away. This is one of the best and most efficient ways of ridding a scepter.

Something else you could do is A- play something with no board permanents like a storm deck. Or B- beat him at his own game, one way by using the scepter yourself and imprint your Counterspell, then play Arcane Laboratory (only one spell a turn) and lock him out of the game.

But don't forget Lokis advice because you should be trying to out cunning your opponent anyways.


Have fun,
Dr.KnowMaD

[JundMage]

If you could, would you please post this deck of your friends, because I would like to analyze it better, to come up with some ideas:)

[Dkidd201]

Thanks for all the great advice guys, I really appreciate it all.

His scepters are really annoying and unless I'm using one of my decks that has destroy artifacts and or counters and scepters of my own its extremely hard to beat.

I don't have an exact card list for his deck but I can tell you what I know he has in the deck for the most part.

Isochron Scepter
Brain Freeze
Counterspeel
Rewind
Snap
Boomerang
Vision Charm
AEther Snag
Warped Devotion
Drowner Initiate
Scalpelexis

His deck is Blue and only has a few black mana because the only black card he runs is Warped devotion, with his boomerangs and snaps on Scepters the warped devotion can pick apart anything on the board and make you discard it all the while not being able to play any spells due to them getting bounced or countered as well. The rewinds and snaps work great because he can use them and untap his mana leaving his scepters still open. Its just a really gay deck and I dont want to just build a deck just to beat his because then he'll talk S*** forever about how I had to build a deck specifically to beat his.

Also I have a question about the creature card "Drowner Initiate" the card reads "Whenever a player plays a blue spell, you may pay 1 colorless. If you do, target player puts the top 2 cards of his library into their graveyard."
Can he pay say 5 mana and play the ability 5 times for 1 blue spell I or he plays to mill me for 10 cards? He argues that the card would state to only use this ability once per turn if he couldn't. I argue that a common creature for 1 blue mana that has that ability and able to use it multiple times would be more than a common. Also that the card states for each blue spell so to play it 5 times would mean 5 blue spells would have to be cast.? Can someone please clarify for me, thank you.

[JundMage]

Okay, what I think is that Drowner Initiate's ability can only be used once for each blue spell. Say, for instance, you try to play a Thorn Elemental (first card I thought of), then he plays an Unsummon and returns Thorny to your hand, he could pay [B]just one[B] mana to mill you for two. Now if you tried to play two creatures and he plays two Unsummons, then he could pay two mana for each Unsummon that came into play, milling you for four. Hope this helps!!!:D
Edit: If you play a blue deck, every blue creature you play, right before it's put on the table, is considered a spell, and your opponent is given a chance to counter it and mill you at the same time. Don't use a blue deck against him... It's a death sentence for your deck...