Mono-Blue Ivankov - Is this deck actually bad? (Mesquite Deck Introduction)

Intro

Hey guys, Cross (@Cross_Aii) here, and today we are going to be looking at Ivankov! I did a video showcasing Ivankov on my YouTube not too long ago. Hopefully y’all enjoyed that list, but the deck gets much better than what I have shown.

Thanks to this card, this deck is actually very strong now. Drawing 2 cards may have not been enough in the past, even when every deck was weaker. But even with inflation, and every deck getting stronger, the ability to draw 4 cards at the end of every turn is too incredible.

The Ivankov stage was also the ORIGINAL Sakazuki leader skill. Now that the blue card pool has gotten stronger, using Perona + Ivankov stage, to search for any card in the deck is incredibly powerful.

Let’s go ahead, and look at where I believe Ivankov to be in the meta.

Position in the Meta

As I mentioned in my Gurple Doflamingo article, Uta & BY Luffy are both decks that I would probably never take to an EB01 tournament, but they’re the benchmark for what I consider to be good enough, for me to personally consider taking to a post-ban EB01 Tournament.

I believe Ivankov to be positioned quite strongly going into Mesquite. The deck is capable of beating most the top decks on this list. I’m fairly confident that it’s favored into BY Luffy & RP Law. I believe the Moria matchup is a bit tricky depending on if Kuzans & 6-Cost Sakazukis are involved. And I believe it is favored into Uta as well.

Even if y’all believe I am overestimting Ivankov (which is very possible), it is a fundamentally powerful deck. I can say for certain that I can not rate this deck any lower than A+.

Thanks to 1 Cost Blocker law, 3 Cost Doflamingo, as well as us playing towards our leader skill in general, it’s rather easy to maintain 4-5 life leading into our 7-Cost Ivankov turn.

And between 3 Cost Doflamingo, 1-Cost Buggy (Impel Down searcher), Perona, & Ivankov Stage (earns us an extra don every turn), the combo is rather consistent to draw by our 7-don turn.

Ivankov decks in the past didn’t even use Perona (which I’ll explain later), so this is an extra layer of consistency, that will be extremely important for this deck.

Let’s go ahead and look at the list.

Decklist

This is my current Ivankov list:

And this is the list I featured on YouTube:

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As you can seem there’s been a LOT of changes.

I overall made the deck more consistent, I added in 2 3-Cost Ivankov to give us more 3-don turn plays. And we swapped in Pudding & Duvals to highroll off the Ivankov. And Duval is extra search AND counter power, which I think outperforms blocker Law in general. Perona is an extra layer for consistency to make sure we get the golden Ivankov + Inazuma on curve (just botdeck off Perona, if either of these pieces are missing).

Red Roc gives us more longevity by getting rid of pesky units like 8-Cost Moria. Gravity blade is better than Red Roc against R/P Law, but we generally prioritize playing Inazuma on back-to-back turns against RP Law. 

My evaluation of Gravity blade may be slightly incorrect, but even when testing Blue Doflamingo recently, I found that it generally felt stronger to be playing units, than establishing no board and playing gravity blade. Like if my opponent is playing Moria or R/P Law, and they just cleared my Inazuma, I ideally want to be playing another Inazuma. I still include 1, because it’s very strong in long-games, but I typically don’t want to see this card in the early game.

This is an interesting take compared to Sakazuki, because people told me gravity blade is bad in Saka, because I don’t develop any board. Yet we also don’t establish board in any blue decks, yet people want to play 10 of this card in every blue. I personally think gravity blade has it’s strengths in both decks, it’s just an interesting observation.

Gum-Gum Red Roc, is my 2-of event in choice, because in the scenario that the opponent value Moria’s, this card’s ability to botdeck 8Moria will give us a lot of longevity. Green Kid will also be a popular counter card going into the EB01 meta, and being able to directly botdeck it will be nice.

Let me go ahead and explain some of the card choices, that I didn’t just mention:

1 Cost Blue Nami - This card could have been Kaya or another Impel Down 2K, but I figured that it would be rather strong for bouncing annoying 3-Cost units from RP Law, Film Namis against Uta, and 3 Cost Brooks against Moria. This is not a card we want to see in the early game, but gets stronger and stronger as the game goes on.

Duval - Similar to why I used to have Blocker Law, except this card also stacks our deck, has counter, and can be highrolled off of 3-Cost Ivankov!
Perona - Combined with the Ivankov stage, this card can search for any card in the deck!

4-Cost Blue Pudding - One of the strongest cards against B/Y Luffy and Uta, being able to reset their hand to 5, will severely limit their options

2-Cost Blue Pudding - Not only can this card can be highrolled off Ivankov, but it’s a convenient card to dump from our hand. This is relevant, because we can play this card with extra don we have. Then grab it back to our hand on a different turn, and now we have a guaranteed 2K counter in hand, and we can use Inazum to draw up to 4 cards. This is a card that has become strong, thanks to Inazuma.

White Snake - My latest spicy addition. Originally I wanted to just play Love-Love beam, but I liked that this card could be used in the early-game if necessary. The ability to become a 6K leader for a turn, in a deck where we want to dump our hand as much as possible is too synergetic.

This will be very strong against aggro decks in the long-game, and I think this card outshines the new Impel down event, because it is much harder to play around.

Now let’s go ahead and look at the mulligan:

Mulligan

The goal of this deck is to dump all our hand from the start of the game, stay at about 5-life by our Ivankov turn, and then endlessly dump our hand, and draw more cards, until our opponent has lost, or we have somehow ran out of resources.

General Mulligan: Either multiple copies of Perona/Buggy/Duval/3Cost Doflamingo or Ivankov/Inazuma + Perona/Buggy/Duval/3Cost Doflamingo

The goal of the mulligan is to ensure we see our golden combo by our 7-don turn.

Now let’s look at the curve:

Don Curve

Going First:

1: Buggy/Perona/Stage

3: 3Cost Doflamingo / Duval + Stage

5: 5Crocodile or Doflamingo/Buggy/Perona/Duval (If we haven’t secured the combo yet)

7: 7Cost Ivankov + Inazuma (or Luffy, if Kuzan is on the opponent’s board)

9: 7Cost Ivankov + Whatever or Inazuma + Perona/Buggy/Stage

10: Whatever is in our hand

Going Second:

2: Duval/Buggy/Perona + Stage

4: Duval/3Cost Doflamingo + Buggy/Perona + Stage

6: Inazuma or 6Luffy or Crocodile + Stage

8: 7Cost Ivankov + Inazuma + Stage/Buggy/Perona

10: Whatever is in our hand

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When playing this deck, make sure to abuse the ability to check the top cards of our deck, before drawing off of stage or Ivankov. And also realize that if we have nothing that we want in the top of our deck, then it’s better to just bottom deck it.

It’s sad that Perona doesn’t draw a card, but it really is a godsend to have a choice on whether we botdeck or not when searching for a card we want.

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This is it for my introduction of Ivankov. Please let me know how the Ivankov testing goes. Moria is the last deck I plan to showcase today, so stay on the look out for that!

With that being said, I’ll catch y’all in the Moria article, peace.