Historic Bilbo Blue: Fun & Jank Episode 91

Welcome back to another edition of Fun & Jank! Today, we’re venturing into Historic to pilot a list that’s been causing a stir across non-singleton formats like Modern and Legacy, but adapted for MTG Arena’s unique landscape.

The deck is Bilbo Blue, a mono-blue tempo-control shell built entirely around taking Bilbo, Thief in the Night from a cute middle-earth halfling into a absolute engine of non-stop card advantage.

While we may not have all the tools that its counterpart in Modern or Legacy have (mainly Mishra’s Bauble), we can still take advantage of consistent recursion and cheap/free removal every single turn.

So let’s talk about Bilbo and see the initial draft I took to the ladder on stream!

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Bilbo

Bilbo is rather strong engine in and of itself thats quite reminiscent of Dreadhorde Arcanist. Let’s look at the two lines of text in its textbox.

1.) Spells you cast from anywhere other than your hand cost (1) less to cast.

2.) Whenever Bilbo attacks, you cast an artifact, instant, or sorcery from your graveyard. Instants and sorceries get exiled afterward, but artifacts do not.

Because Bilbo lets you re-cast artifacts straight out of the graveyard every single combat phase without exiling them, cards like Aether Spellbomb and Soul-Guide Lantern effectively turn into reusable engine pieces. With Bilbo’s cost-reduction effect, casting an Aether Spellbomb out of the yard costs (0)! You can cycle it for (1) to draw a card or pay (U) to bounce an opponent’s target threat back to hand, every turn, for free on your attack step.

Obviously Artifacts are your best bet in getting long-term value out of Bilbo with 1-mana artifacts able to be casted for free each turn. However, buying back removal or card advantage spells can be just as powerful alongside consistent ways to fill your graveyard.

Outside of Aether Spellbomb and Lantern, the other major ‘player’ I wanted to include in this list was Dismember. Flashing back Dismember off a Bilbo attack functions like a pseudo-Snuff Out. Since Bilbo reduces non-hand spells by (1) you can cast Dismember for only 4 life, giving a Mono-Blue list like this a repeatable way to chop down incoming threats turn after turn.

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The Deck

Let’s talk about my card choices for the main deck.

Cantrips

Pretty basic inclusions here. Ponder pairs well with Prismatic Vista to help shuffle way unwanted cards while also giving us the ability to see three cards at a time. Card selection is important in this shell because we’re constantly digging for removal or counterspells.

Thought Scour doesn’t see a whole lot of play outside of Phoenix these days, but I thing its perfect fit for this shell. Filling the yard for Bilbo, Flow State and Treasure Cruise is incredibly useful while replacing itself at the same time.

Card Advantage

In a deck running an even relatively even split of instant and sorceries, hitting the Instant + Sorcery in yard threshold for Flow State is trivial. It functions as a cleaner Expressive Iteration for mono-blue, digging 3 deep to grab 2 cards.

Treasure Cruise is a top tier reward for aggressively cycling through spells and cracking Vistas. It regularly draws 3 for a single blue mana to refill your tank after dumping cards to things like Force of Negation. It does fight a bit with the idea of keeping the yard stocked for Bilbo to take advantage of, but I think we can churn through enough of the deck to keep things stocked properly.

Interaction

Force gives us mandatory protection to tap out for Bilbo or Stormchaser’s Talent on key turns without leaving ourselves vulnerable to explosive combos. Counterspell remains the gold-standard hard answer for anything that escapes our free counter magic. Force is pretty much always online and its quite reasonable to expect that you can hard cast it when needed.

I included a couple copies of Sink into Stupor in here because it feels like its a crucial MDFC that has a low opportunity cost. It’s nice to remove blockers, tag spells, or remove a problematic permanent like Chalice of the Void.

We’re also taking a page out of standard’s book and playing Boomerang Basics for its synergy with Stormchaser’s Talent. In pinch its great to bounce a creature or the like. But later in the game its also fantastic to use to bounce talent, draw a card, and then replay Talent to get ourselves another Otter. If we can get it to level 2, we can just rebuy Boomerang Basics from the yard and do it again. Its a nice little loop to give us more gas and more bodies on the field.

Win Conditions

Our wincons are not very flashy, and we mainly rely on chipping in for bits of damage early before we get the game under control and can pivot to a beatdown plan. Stormchaser’s Talent is the core wincon of the deck while also playing a role as an addiotnal engine alongside Bilbo. On turn one, it drops a 1/1 Otter token with Prowess, giving us early pressure on the board or an effective blocker against hyper-aggressive decks.

While I originally had Tolarian Terror in this deck as a simple, yet powerful beater, I ended up swapping them out for Riddler. We’re trying to get as much out of cards as possible and this pulls double duty, functioning as both card advantage and a beater at the same time. Great early and great late.

Manabase

Here’s just a couple simple additions to the manabase that I’ve found to be useful. Prismatic Vista is great to shuffle away cards we don’t want with Ponder while also giving us an extra card in the yard for Treasure Cruise to delve away. I decided to add a playset of Verges to help offset constantly having to pay the full 4 life on Dismember. It makes things a bit easier on our life total in the late game. Otawara and Hall of the Storm Giants are more low opportunity cost inclusions to help give us some extra utility and another win condition if needed.

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Gameplay

To be honest, I didn’t expect our build to perform as well as it did on stream. Usually these types of ‘tempo’ decks are lacking in Historic. People have tried to make archetypes like Delver work for quite some time but haven’t found a build, especially not a Mono-U shell, that works.

I fully went into our testing session thinking we’d just get ran over, but was pleasantly surprised. I’m not sure ‘tempo’ is the perfect word for this build, but I think it’s close.

Dismember was an absolute powerhouse during our games and a card I was happy to see every time we drew it. Flashing back Dismember off a Turn 2 or Turn 3 Bilbo swing was regularly the game-defining moment. Paying only 4 life to delete a key threat mid-combat let you continuously wipe away momentum.

I was also very impressed by Aether Spellbomb lopping with Bilbo every turn. Its great insurance against against creature decks and even if we don’t need it, it just cantrips and we can repla it for free of off Bilbo the following turn. Recurring Aether Spellbomb off Bilbo every single attack created a total lockout against single-big-threat decks (like Monstrous Rage targets or Slickshot Show-Off). Bouncing a 3-drop or 4-drop for while attacking meant opponents were essentially forced to skip their main phase actions just to re-play the same creature.

As for Stormchaser’s Talent, the turn 1 Otter token did crucial work soaking up early damage, and leveling it to Level 2 mid-game allowed you to out-value aggro decks that ran out of steam.

Against Jund, Dimir Midrange, etc. the matches were long, dirty fights over resources, which is where Bilbo was an absolute banger. This deck did not enjoy getting our hand ripped apart by Thoughtseizes, but between Bilbo, Cruise, and Flow State it felt like we were perfectly capable of refilling our hand and getting back into the action. These grindy matchups are also what prompted me to swap the Terrors in the original list to Quantum Riddlers.

It was both fun and challenging to manage our graveyard during our matches. Delving away targets for Cruise occasionally left Bilbo with fewer high-impact targets, but using Thought Scour on yourself was the key bridge to keeping both engines fed simultaneously. I will say that Bilbo is a bit tough to get going some times. He does nothing the turn your drop him and you have to swing with him to get anything useful out of the deal. Sometimes he just dies to Fatal Push and you have to pivot quickly.

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Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, Bilbo Blue is easily one of the most rewarding tempo lists I’ve taken to the ladder in a long time. While missing Mishra’s Bauble in Historic initially felt like a handicap, leaning hard into Aether Spellbomb loops, free Dismember buybacks, and the Stormchaser’s Talent + Boomerang Basics engine gave the deck a distinct identity that feels rather unique and out-of-the-box.

If you decided to take this for a pin looking to tweak the 75 moving forward, there’s plenty of room to experiment with the flex slots:

-Depending on how the meta shifts, swapping or adjusting the counts of Aether Spellbomb and Soul-Guide Lantern for other low-cost utility artifacts can completely alter your match-up spreads.

-I think we could make decent use of a manabase that leans a bit heavier into black for some better sideboard options.

Thanks for reading!

As always, feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below. And make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you’re interested in more fun content, check out j2sjosh’s article on Midweek Magic for Midweek Magic. The MTG Hero is also messing around with Izzet Spellementals in Standard which you can check out here!

If you want to help me brew, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together.

Happy Brewin’!