What is Spiral Blue? It is a version of Tolarian Academy that was played after Tolarian Academy and Windfall got banned. Instead of untapping the Academy, it untaps Mana Vault instead. It still has Time Spiral (its namesake) and it packs lots of counterspells to buy time and try to get enough lands on the board to play Mind Of Matter and hopefully combo-off with Stroke of Genius plays (eventually milling the opponent.) We joked before the match that Spiral Blue had no way (maindeck) to deal with creatures, it only had counterspells, and it needed lots of mana to even play Mind Over Matter. So we had low expectation for its tournament chances. Decks with good cheap creatures would be favored against it. The kind of creatures played in Magic back in 1999 were not much of a concern. But nowadays, a single creature getting through the counterspell gauntlet would probably just wreck the deck.
Luckily for Spiral Blue, however, Temur Marvel did not have any cheap creatures. In fact, Marvel was going to have a tough time resolving any threats against all those counterspells. So… would Spiral Blue, a much weaker version of the great & powerful Academy deck, also be able to make its mark?
G1: Not even close. Marvel can’t get any threats to resolve. Spiral Blue waits until Marvel is close to hard casting Ulamog (which would be bad) then combos off with Mind Over Matter + Mana Vault + Stroke of Genius (drawing into more Strokes). Didn’t even need to Time Spiral. Spiral 1-0.
G2: Another blowout. This time a Time Spiral was played. Marvel still didn’t have any threats resolve. Spiral 2-0.
G3: Post-sideboard Marvel was able to weed out dead cards and add more threats. Now the games got interesting. Spiral Blue kept a risky 1 land + Brainstorm hand and found no lands. A turn 2 Mana Vault got censored and then later, at 8 mana, a Chandra resolved thanks to Negate backing her up. Several turns later after many attacking 3/1s, and it was over. Spiral 2-1.
G4: A weird game where two Tireless Trackers resolved and over ran the monoblue deck. Spiral 2-2.
G5: An early Rogue Refiner was not countered, with Spiral opting instead to play Intuition and get a needed Mana Vault. Rogue Refiner gets in two attacks. Then Spiral managed to get Mind Over Matter onto the board, but in response, Temur Marvel destroyed the Mana Vault with two Druid’s Deliverances (the first one got countered.) A Chandra came down to put on pressure, knock him to 5 life, and put Spiral at dead next turn. Could Spiral go off? With his back to the wall, the Spiral player plays Time Spiral. We all get new hands. Marvel draws into a Dispell! Will it stop the combo? Nope. Dispell gets countered, and an Intuition for Mana Vault followed by Stroke of Genius gets the ball rolling. He draws into Stroke number two and draws his entire deck. Game over, Spiral Blue advances! Spiral Blue 3-2.