The card looked hot for awhile, but now even casual players eschew Temporal Mastery... it's fallen way off from its $15 high.
Although I am not usually prone to tinkering with pet cards and generally play very stock lists, lately I've been exploring BUG Landstill and wondering if Temporal Mastery might actually be good in a deck of this nature (though it would possibly need to cut Standstill to make it fit). I'm not going to present an actual list, but only describe the idea of the deck. Maybe I'll put in a list later when I have something presentable.
Deck Idea
A Draw-Go deck has a lot of instants in it, making me want to pass the turn with mana open. Some permanents, like Sensei's Divining Top, are great to have in this situation because you can keep finding the right answers to the opponent's questions and keep the land drops flowing.
Other permanents that are great to have are planeswalkers, but the problem here is that they cost a lot of mana to deploy but benefit from extra time spent on the battlefield. I want to cast them early to get value from them over the course of the game, but this flies directly in the face of the Draw-Go plan. It's no fun to resolve a Jace and lose the game, tapped out, with him on the field... it's even worse with a pile of instants stranded in hand.
In the BUG colors and with planeswalkers, we're playing Pernicious Deed: the only question is how many. Pernicious Deed is a mana hog, occasionally asking for another untap step to crack it for a lot of mana. This is one of the limitations we accept to use such a crazy effect.
Temporal Mastery takes care of both of these problems: I can use the turn before the extra one to tap out for Deed or a walker, tick it up twice, and pass the turn with a clear board, active walker, grip of blue instants and a pile of Islands. There may even be the possibility of finishing off an opponent who is low on life via manland aggression.
Has anyone tried something similar to this?
Potential Problems
I suspect the deck's problem will be its sluggishness. There are so many clunky spells that the deck really needs to operate on its chosen battlefield. Counterspell and Abrupt Decay are great at what they do, but expensive. Spell Pierce is a very hard sell in a deck that drags every game out to the point where this spell is irrelevant. Innocent Blood and Disfigure can't compare to StP, and on the Terminus vs. Pernicious Deed comparison, Terminus has a lot to recommend it. It is unlikely that this deck will ever be better than Miracles, but will occupy a similar space in the metagame. On the plus side, however, a lot of the hate for Miracles centers on cheap permanent-based solutions to Sensei's Divining Top like Null Rod, Pithing Needle, and (indirectly) Winter Orb. None of those cards, nor Sylvan Library and Aether Vial, stand to survive long against a deck packed with Deeds and Decays.
Then again in Bug you would have access to decay so miracles is a deck you likely could prey on, especially if it's a bug control list running man lands. Standstill is probably something you would want. Top is a definite as well.
Well, let's take this list as an example sketch of what happens when one tries to fit in both a Standstill package, a full set of Temporal Masteries, and enough Deeds and walkers to take advantage of them. I am also including an experimental walker, Kiora, because I love to exclaim RELEASE THE KRAKEN.
It's hard to do, and just looking at the list it seems to be pulling two many different directions. Temporal Mastery takes up space, planeswalkers take up space, we need a lot of land (24 is a little light for the examples of the archetype seen elsewhere)... and we wind up with a Standstill deck that presents 4 Forces, 2 Counterspells, 2 Spell Snares and 1 Dig Through Time as its maindeck countersuite. Even cracking a Standstill into 2-3 open mana wouldn't be all that likely to give me a blue instant capable of countering whatever it was that broke Still in the first place.
My more dedicated Standstill deck has 3 Spell Snares, 4 Counterspells, 0-2 Snapcaster Mage, and 0-2 Dig Through Time. Together with the Forces, a spell compliment like that almost always provides a usable hard counter if there's enough mana around.
I think that Standstill and Temporal Mastery together (as more than a 1-of plan) might be too much glitz for a 60 card pile.
Re: the Miracles matchup, my gut tells me it's going to be swingy but favoring Miracles slightly. Control matchups are usually all about Jace, and Miracles is even better equipped to find and defend Jace than this deck is. Although BUG isn't going to get Countertop locked, most/all of its threats die to blast effects... and the walkers are very vulnerable to Vendilion Clique (which might also have Karakas backup). Possibly something like Bitterblossom could make the matchup positive. We'll have to keep that in mind when it's sideboard time.
Edit:
Practice Game 1 (on cockatrice vs. Junk-Fit) was a success, though indicative of a few factors. I mulled and kept a clunky hand of:
3 land
Abrupt Decay
Pernicious Deed
Force of Will
...my opponent had a lackluster start as well, with a pair of Cabal Therapy spells in the early turns whiffing on Brainstorm and then taking my Force. I Decayed a DRS. I managed to draw another Force but not a second blue spell when my opponent landed a Veteran Explorer... he Therapied my Deed (which he'd seen) and we were into the game proper. He put out a Scavenging Ooze with his Explorer mana (I got my two Islands) and beat me down to 7 life before I found a Top with another Decay (and some blue spells) under it.
The Decay cleared his beater and he started playing big Green Sun's Zeniths, but by this time I had enough mana to hardcast Force. I was able to counter all of his threats (though it was close) and pull out a Jace with a Temporal Mastery on top of the library. Jace got Maelstrom Pulsed, sadly, before I could pull the trigger on it. I used the Top to delay my Time Walk by two turns until I could get 2 Mishra's Factory and Creeping Tar Pit active, forced him to crack a Deed with my Standstill + Top + manland combo, and cast the Miracle. The manlands would have been deadly right then if the Tar Pit hadn't been StPed, and as it was I brought my opponent to 4 from the attacks. He played a Top, looked at the top 3, and conceded.
I think this game indicates the following:
1) Temporal Mastery is amazing when it's good, but it's very situational. There's no way that 4 is the right number. This is an important result because...
2) There isn't enough countermagic. I was at the mercy of my opponent's draws at one point, and Jace got killed by a Maelstrom Pulse. Had that Temporal Mastery been a Counterspell, Jace would have lived
Hello! I have a couple thoughts to add about this archetype.
First, I firmly and deeply believe that Dig Through Time is better than Standstill. I understand the value and awesomeness of a BUG Landstill deck. That deck wants to hide behind Standstill and beatdown with man-lands. That desire is not synergistic with Temporal Mastery. In particular, Temporal Mastery rewards (as you've noted) Planeswalkers. Therefore, I'd be much more interested in making a way more synergistic BUG TimeWalkers list. Something along these lines:
The high number of cantrips means it's fairly easy to find lands. Additionally, the Planeswalkers I've chosen are somewhat off the cuff. Jace is the best 4cmc walker hands down, better than Kiora. Ashiok is fantastic in control mirrors (particularly Miracles) and she's solid against creature aggro. Lilli is best against combo, but does work elsewhere too. Dig Through Time is fantastic in this high velocity shell, and you can adjust the numbers/types of Control Elements to fit your preference.
Since the point of this deck is to abuse Temporal Mastery, I don't think you can cut down to less than 4. If you do that, then there's no reason at all to not just run a BUG Lanstill list or a BUG Walkers list. I think there's an interesting idea, and this is just off the cuff, of doing an Esper TimeWalkers list. White over green allows for Terminus/Swords over Abrupt Decay/Pernicious Deed. If you find either of those cards don't do enough work, I would make the transition to white instead. A preliminary version of that might look like this:
Anyway, I think this is a very cool concept, and I'm certainly going to brew with Temporal Mastery. It seems criminally underplayed, and I'm sure the right shell could be devised for it. I also like Devastation Tide. Perhaps a Mono-U control list.
Indeed, there's some internal tension between Standstill and the Temporal Mastery plan. Mastery seems to want a deck that's more along the lines of tap-out control, so you've got a lot of stuff in plan to get double duty out of... so we can look more along the lines of Liliana of the Veil, Baleful Strix, discard spells, and Life from the Loam. We could definitely play some number of Wastelands in the MD too, despite running CMC 4s. This would have the obvious synergy with Liliana, handle lands that are troublesome sometimes (like Grove), and there's extra synergy there with Dig as well as Temporal Mastery itself. Therefore, I agree that we should continue exploring shells that should be more synergistic with TM than the BUGStill starting point.
Re: Kiora, I'm more than willing to admit that this is a pet card situation and my desire to try her was not entirely rational. On paper, Ashiok and Liliana are better even in that original shell, despite Liliana's antisynergy with basically the entire list. However, now that I've been testing her, a funny thing has happened. Every time she's been cast, she's resolved... and every time she's resolved, she's ticked straight up to 5 counters, produced her emblem, and by the time the second Kraken hit the field the opponent had conceded. It's 3 for 3 right now, so at this point her performance justifies her presence. I have a lengthy testing session against a very good player scheduled today and this will surely knock her from her pedestal.
Tell ya what though, let's split the labor. How about I test the BUG list you posted above and you test the Esper one? After a couple of games I'll switch it to something with Life from the Loam, Baleful Strix, Wastelands, discard spells, and maybe more Lilianas. Then we can report back.
Indeed, there's some internal tension between Standstill and the Temporal Mastery plan. Mastery seems to want a deck that's more along the lines of tap-out control, so you've got a lot of stuff in plan to get double duty out of... so we can look more along the lines of Liliana of the Veil, Baleful Strix, discard spells, and Life from the Loam. We could definitely play some number of Wastelands in the MD too, despite running CMC 4s. This would have the obvious synergy with Liliana, handle lands that are troublesome sometimes (like Grove), and there's extra synergy there with Dig as well as Temporal Mastery itself. Therefore, I agree that we should continue exploring shells that should be more synergistic with TM than the BUGStill starting point.
Re: Kiora, I'm more than willing to admit that this is a pet card situation and my desire to try her was not entirely rational. On paper, Ashiok and Liliana are better even in that original shell, despite Liliana's antisynergy with basically the entire list. However, now that I've been testing her, a funny thing has happened. Every time she's been cast, she's resolved... and every time she's resolved, she's ticked straight up to 5 counters, produced her emblem, and by the time the second Kraken hit the field the opponent had conceded. It's 3 for 3 right now, so at this point her performance justifies her presence. I have a lengthy testing session against a very good player scheduled today and this will surely knock her from her pedestal.
Tell ya what though, let's split the labor. How about I test the BUG list you posted above and you test the Esper one? After a couple of games I'll switch it to something with Life from the Loam, Baleful Strix, Wastelands, discard spells, and maybe more Lilianas. Then we can report back.
It sounds like you've put a lot of thought and effort into this list, and I think it's awesome that you have. As far as Kiora goes, in a list that's looking to abuse extra turns, having unique planeswalkers is insane. I strongly agree with your 'test first - cut second' policy. Particularly in a list like this with plenty of board control and counter magic, she's a brilliant trump in places Jace isn't. She stalls so well against single threats and can also grind value as well. In particular I love her synergy with Wasteland. Not missing a land-drop in a control deck is huge, so that added Explore does more in a list like this than elsewhere.
I strongly agree with splitting off two different style of deck. A tap out BUG control list and a more pure reactionary Esper control list. A suggestion for your eventual grindy list: Intution. Finding the singleton loam, punishing fire, and grove is huge. It also finds pretty much any other card in the deck as well. I will do some testing with the Esper list and see how I feel about it. Please let me know what your results and conclusions are from your playtesting.
I wouldn't call what I've put into this deck "a lot" of thought at all... that would take months. Maybe when we hit page 40 we can talk about that.
I did some brief testing vs. Miracles with the Josh Cicio BUG Control offered above as a starting point, and that was pretty promising. I also met with my testing partners today, and they definitely found a major weakness of the reactive Standstill type of build: red blasts. It was impossible to keep a blue planeswalker on the board for long, and unlike my original opponents against whom Kiora reached her ultimate, this second bunch blasted her away at the earliest opportunity. She still wasn't appreciably worse than Jace would have been... he would have been a 4 mana Brainstorm vs. a 4 mana Explore in those cases. The jury is still out on her, and I might to keep an exotic walker with a quickly fatal ultimate in the deck.
In contrast, the pre-Cruise list above fared better against Miracles due to the discard spells and Liliana. I think the key to improving the Miracles matchup will be playing a list like that, with black magic that gets through the blasts. I'm going to explore this direction, staying in BUG colors as I still want Loam, Decay, and Deed in the deck. Deed tested fabulously all night and I am considering putting a third one in the board.
You've certainly put more thought and playtesting effort into this than the average brewer. At least in my experience *shrug*. Anyway...
REBs are rough for any blue deck looking to resolve blue permanents. I think a deck like this would have been nearly unplayable during the UR Delver Treasure Cruise era or in any Imperial Painter heavy meta. That said, Hyrdoblasts out of the board do so much work, particularly in some of the rougher matchups like Burn (or any Pyromancer deck really). As far as the Miracles matchup goes, I sincerely love a singleton Nephalia Drownyard in the sideboard. Usually, they have no answer and you can sit on your counterspells all day. In the BUG list it's even better since they usually will remove Counter Balances since we have Abrupt Decay and therefore our countermagic is always good.
I do like Kiora. She's a house in any fair matchup, arguably better than Jace. It's the unfair matchups where she's lackluster, although her clock is better than Jace's against combo. Ashiok shines in the aggro matchups and Lilli is fair in every matchup. Some combination of those 4 walkers seems to be the sweet spot. I would probably shoot for somewhere between 5 and 7 depending on the remainder of your list. As far as black discard goes, we have a couple options. Thoughtseize is probably best, followed by IoK. I dislike Duress as we're not really looking to protect ourselves. I could see Cabal Therapy if somehow you manage to jam Probes in the list. I particularly like probes in a tap-out control list, for the obviously insane value of knowing we actually *can* tap out.
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the non-bo between Pernicious Deed and any creatures we might want to play, but I'm just being snotty. I've been goldfishing a list like the following, and I feel like it has a lot of potential.
This list seems fun. I can see sliding some Loams into the list, most likely in place of some discard. Potentially a singleton loam and a singleton intuition to find it. At some point that's a little greedy, but *shrug*. On a separate note, I've been playing around with an Esper version of this. The problem is, much like Miracles, playing 8 miracle cards is really rough. Additionally, I'm not entirely convinced Swords to Plowshare is better than Abrupt Decay in a list like this. I'm going to do some more tuning. Perhaps it would work better in an Esper Stoneblade shell. Equipment and Lingering Souls are insane when you give them extra turns. I'll return with a list like that soonish.
Playing a bunch of Miracles isn't so bad in Legacy, I think... I've played mostly Miracles for the past year or so and they don't really clunk up too much. That's in the context of 4 Ponder though, which we don't have here.
At this point, I wonder why in the world I ever thought extra turns would be good in a deck filled mostly with reactive magic. Those two elements point in opposite directions! Furthermore, it's actually quite tough to categorize Temporal Mastery. Control decks usually have lands, card selection or filtering, card advantage (virtual or not), answers (be they removal or counters), and some number of win conditions. Each component of a Miracles or a Shardless BUG deck can easily be categorized using this simple framework.
Where do extra turns fit in? Are they necessarily going to fall into the "win more" category by virtue of the necessity of having stuff in play that can take advantage of the extra turn?
I did have an extra idea that I'll try out. Deed tends to be great against decks that try to build up a board presence, and Counterbalance is good against decks that don't. We don't run Counterbalance in BUG because we're running Deed instead. We have a sorry Burn matchup and a weakness to red blasts, which are all 1-drop spells. Top is run as a 3 or 4-of in the MD... so I think there's potential for sideboard Counterbalances to be great here. We're probably taking Deeds out against the decks we'd want CB in against, and even if we want to keep some Deeds in for Miracles to prevent Entreat blowouts, we're free to do that.
I may possibly need to find room for some number of Hydroblasts. Some of my local players are definitely running Blood Moon, even stooping to ugly white-bordered ones.
I also want to try a weird, outlier idea of a Merfolk deck with Brainstorm and Ponder running Temporal Mastery. Maybe it's possible to use the attack step instead of planeswalkers to exploit the extra turn.
I highly support the sideboard plan of counterbalances. They are a wonderful answer in the matchups where our black/green disruption isn't good. Blood Moon can be problematic certainly, but it's manageable. Perhaps we should play a basic of each color, specifically to allow for Abrupt Decay outs.
As far as where extra turns falls, I would put it firmly in the Card Selection/Filtering section. In the worst possible case, it cantrips. In most cases, it will Explore, drawing a card and playing an extra land which is even more insanely good in a board control deck than it is elsewhere. In the best possible cases it's used to power out a faster win than a control deck can normally assemble. While we'd prefer to play 4 Time Walks, this is the closest we can get to that.
In regards to the 8x Miracles thing, I've been playing mostly Gold-Digger (which is a miracleless version of miracles). As such, I've been somewhat disappointed by how clunky they can be sometimes.
In regards to Temporal Mastery in a creature deck. While I think Merfolk would be good with it, Merfolk doesn't normally play enough filtering to take advantage of it. 4x Brainstorm probably isn't good enough. Where I *do* think it would be amazing is in a UW Mentor list. Those decks are looking to play 4x Top anyway to enable sick Mentor Turns. In that deck Mastery both stalls for a mentor, or powers up mentor like no other spell can.
Yeah, Merfolk was a bust. It didn't feel very powerful at all. Adding the Temporal Masteries merely produced a very linear and inconsistent aggro deck... and I tried it with 4 Brainstorm and 4 Ponder. The mana development needs of the deck interfere with the desire to control the top card.
I'm starting to feel sort of foolish for even opening up this vast can of worms. I mean, this is the format of Miracles. I have the cards for it, and most of us considering a deck like this probably do as well. Miracles is possibly the best deck in the format, with proven high finishes over a very long period of time, and I've even got a lot of practice with the deck. It's a little silly to put all that aside and brew about with some pretty speculative cards such as these. Until something important is banned or a game-changing card is printed, I think I'll just sleeve up the UWr cards and call it a day.
Then maybe this isn't exactly the right shell for it? Instead of using it to powerup a powerful board presence, maybe it could be used to powerup a full mana-up control deck. I realized we discussed earlier why they're potentially backwards decks, but it's still worth a shot. I've been recently playing and tuning a version of UWr control called Gold-Digger. It's essentially 'miracles-less miracles' old-school control list. It looks to establish super high velocity to power up its Dig Through Times. While Temporal Mastery exiles itself, it's still a powerful explore effect in a UW deck that's desperately looking to get to the late game. Once it's there it serves to power up the single greatest walker of all time: Jace TMS. I realize this might be a pie in the sky sorta thing, but I can certainly see where it might just work on paper. Gold-Digger plays at least 10 cantrips, next to 4 Digs and 3 Jaces. That sort of deck control is powerful next to Temporal Mastery. I'm going to do some light play-testing with it this week and report back what if I like it.
Perhaps it would work out. I always thought Gold-Digger was an interesting concept, and I tried it briefly in the days of Treasure Cruise. At the time, it didn't really appeal to me... I was really into Counterbalance.
I've always been conflicted as a player between just playing the best deck and brewing things. I like to brew... but I also like to win, and these things are often at odds. With limited opportunities to play real live games at all (let alone tournaments), I find it hard to commit that time to something that isn't proven. 4 Ponder Miracles is just so brutally efficient... hard 1-mana counterspells that double as Jace killers, instant speed 1-mana wraths and removal, all of that efficiency fueling a low land count and putting the extra space into Ponder... it's hilariously overpowered.
It is hilariously overpowered, I don't deny that at all. In fact, I've done very well playing Miracles. But, like you, I enjoy some brewing. Unlike you, I get to play in small Legacy events weekly, so I get to test ideas offline as well. I've been screwing around with an Esper Miracle/Stoneblade mashup. Essentially sliding 2x Stoneforge, 1x Jitte, 3x Lingering Souls with 2 Underground Seas into a stock UW 4 Ponder Miracles list. It's a super fast clock when you need it. Otherwise the package can really stall out, Lingering Souls is good at lingering. It also let's you splash for Thoughtsieze or Cabal Therapy out of the board. I've even tried a super greedy 4-Color version that plays REBs, but I think that one is less efficient.
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Although I am not usually prone to tinkering with pet cards and generally play very stock lists, lately I've been exploring BUG Landstill and wondering if Temporal Mastery might actually be good in a deck of this nature (though it would possibly need to cut Standstill to make it fit). I'm not going to present an actual list, but only describe the idea of the deck. Maybe I'll put in a list later when I have something presentable.
Deck Idea
A Draw-Go deck has a lot of instants in it, making me want to pass the turn with mana open. Some permanents, like Sensei's Divining Top, are great to have in this situation because you can keep finding the right answers to the opponent's questions and keep the land drops flowing.
Other permanents that are great to have are planeswalkers, but the problem here is that they cost a lot of mana to deploy but benefit from extra time spent on the battlefield. I want to cast them early to get value from them over the course of the game, but this flies directly in the face of the Draw-Go plan. It's no fun to resolve a Jace and lose the game, tapped out, with him on the field... it's even worse with a pile of instants stranded in hand.
In the BUG colors and with planeswalkers, we're playing Pernicious Deed: the only question is how many. Pernicious Deed is a mana hog, occasionally asking for another untap step to crack it for a lot of mana. This is one of the limitations we accept to use such a crazy effect.
Temporal Mastery takes care of both of these problems: I can use the turn before the extra one to tap out for Deed or a walker, tick it up twice, and pass the turn with a clear board, active walker, grip of blue instants and a pile of Islands. There may even be the possibility of finishing off an opponent who is low on life via manland aggression.
Has anyone tried something similar to this?
Potential Problems
I suspect the deck's problem will be its sluggishness. There are so many clunky spells that the deck really needs to operate on its chosen battlefield. Counterspell and Abrupt Decay are great at what they do, but expensive. Spell Pierce is a very hard sell in a deck that drags every game out to the point where this spell is irrelevant. Innocent Blood and Disfigure can't compare to StP, and on the Terminus vs. Pernicious Deed comparison, Terminus has a lot to recommend it. It is unlikely that this deck will ever be better than Miracles, but will occupy a similar space in the metagame. On the plus side, however, a lot of the hate for Miracles centers on cheap permanent-based solutions to Sensei's Divining Top like Null Rod, Pithing Needle, and (indirectly) Winter Orb. None of those cards, nor Sylvan Library and Aether Vial, stand to survive long against a deck packed with Deeds and Decays.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
1 Dig Through Time
4 Standstill
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Kiora, the Crashing Wave
4 Force of Will
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Temporal Mastery
2 Innocent Blood
2 Wasteland
2 Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Creeping Tar Pit
Well, let's take this list as an example sketch of what happens when one tries to fit in both a Standstill package, a full set of Temporal Masteries, and enough Deeds and walkers to take advantage of them. I am also including an experimental walker, Kiora, because I love to exclaim RELEASE THE KRAKEN.
It's hard to do, and just looking at the list it seems to be pulling two many different directions. Temporal Mastery takes up space, planeswalkers take up space, we need a lot of land (24 is a little light for the examples of the archetype seen elsewhere)... and we wind up with a Standstill deck that presents 4 Forces, 2 Counterspells, 2 Spell Snares and 1 Dig Through Time as its maindeck countersuite. Even cracking a Standstill into 2-3 open mana wouldn't be all that likely to give me a blue instant capable of countering whatever it was that broke Still in the first place.
My more dedicated Standstill deck has 3 Spell Snares, 4 Counterspells, 0-2 Snapcaster Mage, and 0-2 Dig Through Time. Together with the Forces, a spell compliment like that almost always provides a usable hard counter if there's enough mana around.
I think that Standstill and Temporal Mastery together (as more than a 1-of plan) might be too much glitz for a 60 card pile.
Re: the Miracles matchup, my gut tells me it's going to be swingy but favoring Miracles slightly. Control matchups are usually all about Jace, and Miracles is even better equipped to find and defend Jace than this deck is. Although BUG isn't going to get Countertop locked, most/all of its threats die to blast effects... and the walkers are very vulnerable to Vendilion Clique (which might also have Karakas backup). Possibly something like Bitterblossom could make the matchup positive. We'll have to keep that in mind when it's sideboard time.
Edit:
Practice Game 1 (on cockatrice vs. Junk-Fit) was a success, though indicative of a few factors. I mulled and kept a clunky hand of:
3 land
Abrupt Decay
Pernicious Deed
Force of Will
...my opponent had a lackluster start as well, with a pair of Cabal Therapy spells in the early turns whiffing on Brainstorm and then taking my Force. I Decayed a DRS. I managed to draw another Force but not a second blue spell when my opponent landed a Veteran Explorer... he Therapied my Deed (which he'd seen) and we were into the game proper. He put out a Scavenging Ooze with his Explorer mana (I got my two Islands) and beat me down to 7 life before I found a Top with another Decay (and some blue spells) under it.
The Decay cleared his beater and he started playing big Green Sun's Zeniths, but by this time I had enough mana to hardcast Force. I was able to counter all of his threats (though it was close) and pull out a Jace with a Temporal Mastery on top of the library. Jace got Maelstrom Pulsed, sadly, before I could pull the trigger on it. I used the Top to delay my Time Walk by two turns until I could get 2 Mishra's Factory and Creeping Tar Pit active, forced him to crack a Deed with my Standstill + Top + manland combo, and cast the Miracle. The manlands would have been deadly right then if the Tar Pit hadn't been StPed, and as it was I brought my opponent to 4 from the attacks. He played a Top, looked at the top 3, and conceded.
I think this game indicates the following:
1) Temporal Mastery is amazing when it's good, but it's very situational. There's no way that 4 is the right number. This is an important result because...
2) There isn't enough countermagic. I was at the mercy of my opponent's draws at one point, and Jace got killed by a Maelstrom Pulse. Had that Temporal Mastery been a Counterspell, Jace would have lived
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
First, I firmly and deeply believe that Dig Through Time is better than Standstill. I understand the value and awesomeness of a BUG Landstill deck. That deck wants to hide behind Standstill and beatdown with man-lands. That desire is not synergistic with Temporal Mastery. In particular, Temporal Mastery rewards (as you've noted) Planeswalkers. Therefore, I'd be much more interested in making a way more synergistic BUG TimeWalkers list. Something along these lines:
4x Force of Will
3x Counterspell
2x Spell Pierce
2x Abrupt Decay
2x Pernicious Deed
Filtering(15)
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Dig Through Time
4x Temporal Mastery
3x Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1x Lilliana, of the Veil
Lands(22)
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Creeping Tar Pit
The high number of cantrips means it's fairly easy to find lands. Additionally, the Planeswalkers I've chosen are somewhat off the cuff. Jace is the best 4cmc walker hands down, better than Kiora. Ashiok is fantastic in control mirrors (particularly Miracles) and she's solid against creature aggro. Lilli is best against combo, but does work elsewhere too. Dig Through Time is fantastic in this high velocity shell, and you can adjust the numbers/types of Control Elements to fit your preference.
Since the point of this deck is to abuse Temporal Mastery, I don't think you can cut down to less than 4. If you do that, then there's no reason at all to not just run a BUG Lanstill list or a BUG Walkers list. I think there's an interesting idea, and this is just off the cuff, of doing an Esper TimeWalkers list. White over green allows for Terminus/Swords over Abrupt Decay/Pernicious Deed. If you find either of those cards don't do enough work, I would make the transition to white instead. A preliminary version of that might look like this:
4x Force of Will
2x Counterspell
2x Spell Pierce
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Terminus
Filtering(15)
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Brainstorm
4x Ponder
3x Dig Through Time
4x Temporal Mastery
3x Jace the Mind Sculptor
2x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Lands(21)
3x Tundra
3x Underground Sea
1x Scrubland
2x Island
1x Swamp
1x Plains
4x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
2x Marsh Flats
Anyway, I think this is a very cool concept, and I'm certainly going to brew with Temporal Mastery. It seems criminally underplayed, and I'm sure the right shell could be devised for it. I also like Devastation Tide. Perhaps a Mono-U control list.
Re: Kiora, I'm more than willing to admit that this is a pet card situation and my desire to try her was not entirely rational. On paper, Ashiok and Liliana are better even in that original shell, despite Liliana's antisynergy with basically the entire list. However, now that I've been testing her, a funny thing has happened. Every time she's been cast, she's resolved... and every time she's resolved, she's ticked straight up to 5 counters, produced her emblem, and by the time the second Kraken hit the field the opponent had conceded. It's 3 for 3 right now, so at this point her performance justifies her presence. I have a lengthy testing session against a very good player scheduled today and this will surely knock her from her pedestal.
Tell ya what though, let's split the labor. How about I test the BUG list you posted above and you test the Esper one? After a couple of games I'll switch it to something with Life from the Loam, Baleful Strix, Wastelands, discard spells, and maybe more Lilianas. Then we can report back.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Link to my buddy's bug control list. Could be a great starting point with plenty of room for mastery.
It sounds like you've put a lot of thought and effort into this list, and I think it's awesome that you have. As far as Kiora goes, in a list that's looking to abuse extra turns, having unique planeswalkers is insane. I strongly agree with your 'test first - cut second' policy. Particularly in a list like this with plenty of board control and counter magic, she's a brilliant trump in places Jace isn't. She stalls so well against single threats and can also grind value as well. In particular I love her synergy with Wasteland. Not missing a land-drop in a control deck is huge, so that added Explore does more in a list like this than elsewhere.
I strongly agree with splitting off two different style of deck. A tap out BUG control list and a more pure reactionary Esper control list. A suggestion for your eventual grindy list: Intution. Finding the singleton loam, punishing fire, and grove is huge. It also finds pretty much any other card in the deck as well. I will do some testing with the Esper list and see how I feel about it. Please let me know what your results and conclusions are from your playtesting.
I did some brief testing vs. Miracles with the Josh Cicio BUG Control offered above as a starting point, and that was pretty promising. I also met with my testing partners today, and they definitely found a major weakness of the reactive Standstill type of build: red blasts. It was impossible to keep a blue planeswalker on the board for long, and unlike my original opponents against whom Kiora reached her ultimate, this second bunch blasted her away at the earliest opportunity. She still wasn't appreciably worse than Jace would have been... he would have been a 4 mana Brainstorm vs. a 4 mana Explore in those cases. The jury is still out on her, and I might to keep an exotic walker with a quickly fatal ultimate in the deck.
In contrast, the pre-Cruise list above fared better against Miracles due to the discard spells and Liliana. I think the key to improving the Miracles matchup will be playing a list like that, with black magic that gets through the blasts. I'm going to explore this direction, staying in BUG colors as I still want Loam, Decay, and Deed in the deck. Deed tested fabulously all night and I am considering putting a third one in the board.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
REBs are rough for any blue deck looking to resolve blue permanents. I think a deck like this would have been nearly unplayable during the UR Delver Treasure Cruise era or in any Imperial Painter heavy meta. That said, Hyrdoblasts out of the board do so much work, particularly in some of the rougher matchups like Burn (or any Pyromancer deck really). As far as the Miracles matchup goes, I sincerely love a singleton Nephalia Drownyard in the sideboard. Usually, they have no answer and you can sit on your counterspells all day. In the BUG list it's even better since they usually will remove Counter Balances since we have Abrupt Decay and therefore our countermagic is always good.
I do like Kiora. She's a house in any fair matchup, arguably better than Jace. It's the unfair matchups where she's lackluster, although her clock is better than Jace's against combo. Ashiok shines in the aggro matchups and Lilli is fair in every matchup. Some combination of those 4 walkers seems to be the sweet spot. I would probably shoot for somewhere between 5 and 7 depending on the remainder of your list. As far as black discard goes, we have a couple options. Thoughtseize is probably best, followed by IoK. I dislike Duress as we're not really looking to protect ourselves. I could see Cabal Therapy if somehow you manage to jam Probes in the list. I particularly like probes in a tap-out control list, for the obviously insane value of knowing we actually *can* tap out.
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the non-bo between Pernicious Deed and any creatures we might want to play, but I'm just being snotty. I've been goldfishing a list like the following, and I feel like it has a lot of potential.
4x Force of Will
3x Abrupt Decay
2x Cabal Therapy
2x Thoughtseize
2x Pernicious Deed
Filtering(12)
4x Brainstorm
4x Sensei's Divining Top
3x Gitaxian Probe
4x Baleful Strix
Fun and Profits(10)
4x Temporal Mastery
2x Jace the Mind Sculptor
2x Ashiok Nightmare Weaver
1x Kiora, the Crashing Wave
1x Lilliana of the Veil
Lands(21)
3x Wasteland
2x Island
1x Swamp
3x Underground Sea
2x Tropical Island
1x Bayou
4x Polluted Delta
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Creeping Tar Pit
This list seems fun. I can see sliding some Loams into the list, most likely in place of some discard. Potentially a singleton loam and a singleton intuition to find it. At some point that's a little greedy, but *shrug*. On a separate note, I've been playing around with an Esper version of this. The problem is, much like Miracles, playing 8 miracle cards is really rough. Additionally, I'm not entirely convinced Swords to Plowshare is better than Abrupt Decay in a list like this. I'm going to do some more tuning. Perhaps it would work better in an Esper Stoneblade shell. Equipment and Lingering Souls are insane when you give them extra turns. I'll return with a list like that soonish.
At this point, I wonder why in the world I ever thought extra turns would be good in a deck filled mostly with reactive magic. Those two elements point in opposite directions! Furthermore, it's actually quite tough to categorize Temporal Mastery. Control decks usually have lands, card selection or filtering, card advantage (virtual or not), answers (be they removal or counters), and some number of win conditions. Each component of a Miracles or a Shardless BUG deck can easily be categorized using this simple framework.
Where do extra turns fit in? Are they necessarily going to fall into the "win more" category by virtue of the necessity of having stuff in play that can take advantage of the extra turn?
I did have an extra idea that I'll try out. Deed tends to be great against decks that try to build up a board presence, and Counterbalance is good against decks that don't. We don't run Counterbalance in BUG because we're running Deed instead. We have a sorry Burn matchup and a weakness to red blasts, which are all 1-drop spells. Top is run as a 3 or 4-of in the MD... so I think there's potential for sideboard Counterbalances to be great here. We're probably taking Deeds out against the decks we'd want CB in against, and even if we want to keep some Deeds in for Miracles to prevent Entreat blowouts, we're free to do that.
I may possibly need to find room for some number of Hydroblasts. Some of my local players are definitely running Blood Moon, even stooping to ugly white-bordered ones.
I also want to try a weird, outlier idea of a Merfolk deck with Brainstorm and Ponder running Temporal Mastery. Maybe it's possible to use the attack step instead of planeswalkers to exploit the extra turn.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
As far as where extra turns falls, I would put it firmly in the Card Selection/Filtering section. In the worst possible case, it cantrips. In most cases, it will Explore, drawing a card and playing an extra land which is even more insanely good in a board control deck than it is elsewhere. In the best possible cases it's used to power out a faster win than a control deck can normally assemble. While we'd prefer to play 4 Time Walks, this is the closest we can get to that.
In regards to the 8x Miracles thing, I've been playing mostly Gold-Digger (which is a miracleless version of miracles). As such, I've been somewhat disappointed by how clunky they can be sometimes.
In regards to Temporal Mastery in a creature deck. While I think Merfolk would be good with it, Merfolk doesn't normally play enough filtering to take advantage of it. 4x Brainstorm probably isn't good enough. Where I *do* think it would be amazing is in a UW Mentor list. Those decks are looking to play 4x Top anyway to enable sick Mentor Turns. In that deck Mastery both stalls for a mentor, or powers up mentor like no other spell can.
I'm starting to feel sort of foolish for even opening up this vast can of worms. I mean, this is the format of Miracles. I have the cards for it, and most of us considering a deck like this probably do as well. Miracles is possibly the best deck in the format, with proven high finishes over a very long period of time, and I've even got a lot of practice with the deck. It's a little silly to put all that aside and brew about with some pretty speculative cards such as these. Until something important is banned or a game-changing card is printed, I think I'll just sleeve up the UWr cards and call it a day.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730
Modern: WUBValue Titan UMerfolk WGDeath and Taxes
I've always been conflicted as a player between just playing the best deck and brewing things. I like to brew... but I also like to win, and these things are often at odds. With limited opportunities to play real live games at all (let alone tournaments), I find it hard to commit that time to something that isn't proven. 4 Ponder Miracles is just so brutally efficient... hard 1-mana counterspells that double as Jace killers, instant speed 1-mana wraths and removal, all of that efficiency fueling a low land count and putting the extra space into Ponder... it's hilariously overpowered.
I sure do miss my black cards though.
Overall record: 139-98-15
Total number of matches: 252
Win percentage ignoring draws: 58.649789
Win percentage including draws: 55.158730