Here are some random thoughts I've had after brainstorming with Opt in the format. I really feel that Turns wants to jam the full playset, along with the max number of Serum Visions as well, into mono blue. The sideboard is still a work in progress, which I'll detail below.
I also traded Inkmoth Nexus and Gemstone Caverns for two more Islands, making UU easier turn two, and I run Laboratory Maniac in place of one Snapcaster Mage for another win-con and helps beat the mill decks in my area. I've traded the second Snappy back and forth with Lab Man every other game and it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. As nice as Snappy is, especially in a mono U list, I've been tempted to replace the single I'm currently running for a third Cryptic Command.
I've become a believer in Opt with the dozen matches I've used it so far. My sideboard has fluctuated with Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Ceremonious Rejection and Dispel which gives us more game turn one and fuels Snapback as worse case scenario. Remand sides in against mid-range, combo, and control matches. I can now vouch for Boomerang and Snapback main. Just to echo sentiment here Remand has been too late multiple times for me and I've never had a situation, against creature based decks, where I wished they replaced Boomerang or Snapback. If you're playing mono U then you should at least test them for yourself. Turn two Howling Mine with a Snapback in hand is stronger than it appears and the extra card drawn next turn mitigates the disadvantage while pushing your opponent to their heels and sometimes completely on their ass.
My sideboard Chalice of the Void has fluctuated as well. When I bring them in I end up trading Opt out so I haven't noticed too much Counterbalance in testing.
I have a couple days off work coming up soon so I'm going to try to spend an entire day testing on Cockatrice and I'll post my results and any changes I end up making. If anybody has Cockatrice then add me and we'll do some testing together! My username is the same so just add me and send me a message saying you're from mtgsalvation.
This deck is not like ad nauseam where you insta-win with the right set up. I have passed the turn in the Middle of a chain keeping up giga/cryptic/remand. I have remanded to Flip Titi and so on. I'm still not convinced by commandeer, so disrupting shoal seems like a hard pass.
In the small example you've made, Opt instead of Remand would give you a better chance to continue going off instead of passing the turn back. Opt is also way better to help flip Titi.
I'm honestly not convinced about Commandeer either; I used to run it a few years ago as a singleton when my list more more tempo than combo, and I traded it off within a month. I have a pair of them on the way to test out for my updated build, so I'll get back to you on how that goes. The only difference with Disrupting Shoal is that I started with and traded off more of them. In a build with plenty of Opt, Serum Visions, and Gigadrowse, Shoal could do work against Burn, but I feel we have better tools there.
The discussion on remand is productive. Agreed it's a bad topdeck later in the game, but similar to RUG scapeshift and twin used to run when they were tier 1, it's a piece of early interaction that plays into our game plan strongly. Ideally we want anything "not a turn" to draw us a card, be a land or be a "pseudo turn".
Taking his argument about remand, you could quite easily replace "remand" with any other interaction available to us. Path, snapback, commandeer, fatal push etc. All of these produce the exact same argument he makes when you've got "7 mana and I need to draw a time warp NOW". Oh no, fatal push doesn't help you win, it's bad.
you see?
This makes his argument difficult to parse, because honestly we need about 4 good pieces of interaction in the deck, and out of all the options available to us, remand is the one that draws us a card while slowing an opponent down who's curving out against us. Sure, it's bad against discard and against certain decks it has a limited window of usefulness, but the same can be said for any similar effect such as mana leak or push.
So what's the answer? Spreading Seas is "okay" but not backbreaking unless your opponent happens to be getting screwed by their manabase and against a lot of decks this rarely happens (admittedly some decks can get rekt by Seas but it's not the majority). Seas also doesn't affect the board or interrupt a combo, so you're gambling on whether it's even going to give you a useful effect. I'm about 50/50 on this card and it's definitely meta dependant.
I'm having a very hard time accepting his argument on face value, because what he is saying is essentially "don't run interaction because it doesn't help you win" and I don't think that's a useful thing to say.
Basically that part of his article was garbage. Sounds sensible when taken at surface value, and then stops making sense when you actually go deep into what he's saying.
His point was that Spreading Seas can be cast proactively so that it can be either a tool to slow an opponent, or a "pay 2 to draw a card" effect while going off. Remand is a fine tool to slow opponents, but it's nearly dead as a topdeck while we are going off because it is reactive card draw. Both aren't amazing against the faster decks that can race us, but at least Seas can help us continue to go off if we make it to that point. Unlike RUG Scapeshift and Twin, Turns doesn't just combo off and win on the spot; they never have to worry about tripping over Remand as a dead card like we do. I don't feel like Seas is optimal for this deck either, but I understand why Corbin prefers it.
The reason I ended up switching to Remand way back was because I had been running cards like Boomerang and Mana Leak and finding that the lack of card velocity left me short of going off way too often. I realized that I'd rather have the temporary answer and a card than a more powerful answer without it. Now there are effects that exist like Fatal Push that are so low-cost and powerful that we can still interact impactfully and maintain our progress, but it's a bit disingenuous to draw a conclusion the author never made. He prefers proactive, interactive tools that still draw cards, and I can understand why. Maybe now that the more recent black cards like Push and Collective Brutality have been printed, he might consider playing a bit differently...but we won't know until he comments on it. The crux of it is your interaction needs to be proactive (or at least capable of it, like Cryptic) and draw you cards (directly or virtually, like with Gigadrowse and Exhaustion), not to avoid all interaction.
You mentioned Snapback, but I would rather play that than most of the other cards you listed along with it, since it can recycle (more turns or draw) or save (protect our win con) Snapcaster Mage as well as slow opponents early. It can also do this for Clique if you're running any. This is why I'll be running Snapback before I mess with anything else as far as non-drawing early interaction.
Moreover, I agree with the argument you constructed in this example. I'd rather be playing Opt than any of the cards you mentioned, for all of the reasons I just can't shut up about. (That, and I like a consistent and painless mana base in this style of deck, so I'm not about the white or black splash yet.) The only exceptions should be options that break matches open, which explains why the black and white splashes are the better ones to consider. It may yet be correct that, as you say, Chalice is just too good not to play, so I will test with them as well to see how it plays out.
in fairness to anyone testing it, I really like disrupting shoal. i'm not sure if it's the best fit in this specific deck, but it's criminally underplayed in modern.
(fair play to infect for evolving and adopting the card recently. i quite like it there)
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Since we are on the topic of Opt and its conflict with Chalice. I have to ask: Are we siding out Opt when we side in the Chalice? doesn't that fix like half the problem? In the matchups that we are already siding in chalice for (at x = 1), are there other cards we would like to side in with chalice? Siding in more than just chalice would let us side out Serum Visions as well. Wouldn't this would fix the problem all together?
Although losing the consistency that they give us is bad, this may become the thing to do when bringing chalice in. But assuming we side out 7-8 one mana cantrips for 3-4 chalice and 3-4(?card that doesn't cost 1 mana?) should work just fine as long as we are still drawing buckets of cards. My first thoughts are to bring in something that costs 0 mana and still give us something to do on turn 1 (Ancestral Vision), or cost 2 mana and draw me lots of cards (Extra Howling Mines?)
It sounds odd to put extra draw power in our sideboard but I have to suggest it as an option.
Since we are on the topic of Opt and its conflict with Chalice. I have to ask: Are we siding out Opt when we side in the Chalice? doesn't that fix like half the problem? In the matchups that we are already siding in chalice for (at x = 1), are there other cards we would like to side in with chalice? Siding in more than just chalice would let us side out Serum Visions as well. Wouldn't this would fix the problem all together?
I'm at 3 Opt main and 3 Chalice of the Void side. I swap them without changing Serum Visions while on the play. I don't see why you wouldn't bring in otherspecifichate as you're either playing them turn one or you don't get Chalice of the Void and play them regardless. Cards such as Snapback and Commandeer give purpose to your dead spells and Whiplash Trap dodges Chalice. Speaking from a mono U standpoint.
Worse case scenario when playing Chalice at one is it's doing what it's suppose to and the opponent is losing or diminishing to a position they can't win. Chalice of the Void is too powerful against our bad match-ups to not play.
You are all on the right track with your lines of thinking. What we should be doing is working out the sideboard lines with Opt, especially with Chalice.
Turns was the deck I first jammed Ancestral Vision into before it was unbanned for testing, and as excited as I was about it, I learned quickly how swingy that card is. It's like the opposite of Temporal Mastery, but worse; every successive turn I wanted to see AV less. It's just too inconsistent for me to ever consider it seriously for a competitive build of this deck.
How does Whiplash Trap give purpose to your dead spells? And why would you trade proactive one-cost spells like Opt out of the main for one-cost reactive spells when bringing in Chalice?
Since we are on the topic of Opt and its conflict with Chalice. I have to ask: Are we siding out Opt when we side in the Chalice? doesn't that fix like half the problem? In the matchups that we are already siding in chalice for (at x = 1), are there other cards we would like to side in with chalice? Siding in more than just chalice would let us side out Serum Visions as well. Wouldn't this would fix the problem all together?
I'm at 3 Opt main and 3 Chalice of the Void side. I swap them without changing Serum Visions while on the play. I don't see why you wouldn't bring in otherspecifichate as you're either playing them turn one or you don't get Chalice of the Void and play them regardless. Cards such as Snapback, Commandeer, and Whiplash Trap give purpose to your dead spells and the latter dodges Chalice. Speaking from a mono U standpoint.
Worse case scenario when playing Chalice at one is it's doing what it's suppose to and the opponent is losing or diminishing to a position they can't win. Chalice of the Void is too powerful against our bad match-ups to not play.
How does Whiplash Trap give purpose to your dead spells? And why would you trade proactive one-cost spells like Opt out of the main for one-cost reactive spells when bringing in Chalice?
I was saying Whiplash Trap dodges Chalice while acting as 1 CMC.
I was thinking the idea is to pull all the cards out that the Chalice would shut down, not bring in additional nonbodeaddraws to clog up our lategame.
...and hoping we could come up with a more clearly defined plan for what to side out when we are going to slam down a chalice at, X=1, or X=2.
Assuming Chalice comes down on your second turn, your opponent doesn't blow it up, or the chance of never seeing it. Basically what I implied was we can't completely disregard cheap answers against the decks we have the most problems with. Decks that play a lot of cheap spells and can beat us before our "Time Walk" abilities become relevant.
Just so we're all on the same page, what cards are coming out for opt to replace?
My list has 4 'interaction' slots (currently trialling 3 path, 1 commandeer instead of 4 remand)
Everything else is kinda locked in.
4 gigadrowse
3 exhaustion
4 dictate
3 howling mine
2 cryptic
11 Warps
2 snapcasters
4 serum viz
I think I've trimmed these spells down to as low as we'd want them. That leaves just the 4 spots to fill (5 if we drop a land). Are we really suggesting that opt is worth more to us than some interaction? That's what it would be replacing. It's an OK draw spell but is it *that* good? I'd say probably not. the deck needs to have some meaningful interaction on turns one or two, as far as I can judge from my time with turns.
Secondary thought; if we are dropping a land, then wanting to side opt out when bringing chalice in, then we will be hampering ourselves in terms of mana in every matchup where we want to side in chalice. Worth considering.
Finally, without instant speed interaction a-la remand/cryptic/path/similar, I don't think I'd run opt at all anyway. That's kind of a precondition that needs to be met before the spell gets any benefit from being instant, otherwise you're probably better off running sleight of hand. Like; what's the point of having a draw spell that you hold into your opponent's end step for no particular reason other than you *might* hit a temporal mastery... Drawing cards is good, filtering is good, but we need to be able to be the kind of deck that sits back and holds up instant-speed interaction before we consider opt as one of our go-to draw spells. And for the record, I don't think gigadrowse counts. We want to ideally be gigadrowse-ing in our opponents' upkeep to deny them a turn, rather than wait until their end step. This means if we're holding it up, we've basically made the choice to cast it & there's no point in holding up opt as backup.
We are basically tap-out control. That style of deck doesn't care for opt, because you will be using it at sorcery speed most of the time.
Don't get me wrong, testing is good. It may reveal that we want to be playing more cantrips in general, but we all need to recognise what lines of play and supporting cards enable Opt and what strategies aren't a good fit for the card. If your deck will be using it at sorcery speed the majority of the time because you don't have much instant speed interaction in your deck (a-la tap out control as I previously mentioned) then there are better options than opt currently in modern.
Quite frankly I'd love to be wrong about opt. I personally have a lot of time for the card and really want "EoT opt, miracle temporal mastery" to be a thing. Like, I ship that so hard. However as mentioned above, there are issues. Let's hope the deck can evolve through testing and adopt (or not) in a meaningful way based on numbers rather than emotions or gut feelings.
I was saying Whiplash Trap dodges Chalice while acting as 1 CMC.
Okay, cool. I see that you edited that line for clarity now. Whiplash Trap seems to live up to its name, though; it is too expensive, and the condition to allow it to be playable is way too restrictive to take the card seriously. I much prefer the other cards you mentioned like Snapback and Boomerang, and even Boomerang doesn't make the cut for me anymore (though it is hilarious against ramp decks with Snapcaster backup).
Just so we're all on the same page, what cards are coming out for opt to replace?
My list has 4 'interaction' slots (currently trialling 3 path, 1 commandeer instead of 4 remand)
Everything else is kinda locked in.
4 gigadrowse
3 exhaustion
4 dictate
3 howling mine
2 cryptic
11 Warps
2 snapcasters
4 serum viz
I'm in almost full agreement with your list here, though with Snapcasters people have had decent luck with only ten Warp effects. I'm currently running four each of Warp, Mastery, and Waterveil, but I will admit that might be overkill, especially if we are looking for a slot or two of more interaction. Everything else is well-established in mono blue.
I think I've trimmed these spells down to as low as we'd want them. That leaves just the 4 spots to fill (5 if we drop a land). Are we really suggesting that opt is worth more to us than some interaction? That's what it would be replacing. It's an OK draw spell but is it *that* good? I'd say probably not. the deck needs to have some meaningful interaction on turns one or two, as far as I can judge from my time with turns.
I pulled the four copies of Remand to make room for Opt, and I am running twelve Warps and 22 lands (with only one that can't produce blue in Mikokoro). Opt, along with Serum Visions, makes hitting the early interaction we're already playing more consistent. I was amazed at how well I kept up in the first few turns, as well as the consistency to hit the Mine effect more frequently when we need it as early as possible.
It's also important to note that by your phrasing here it seems you have yet to playtest the card in the current build (regardless of experience with the card before the joy of Turns). You're one of the more cohesive and articulate posters here, so your feedback from actual experience in this deck would be very welcome. The more quality results-based input we get, the better.
Secondary thought; if we are dropping a land, then wanting to side opt out when bringing chalice in, then we will be hampering ourselves in terms of mana in every matchup where we want to side in chalice. Worth considering.
You make an excellent point here. Running 22 lands with eight cantrips gave me nice results with land drops overall, but I can imagine that would not be the case if we cut some of the draw out. The real question is whether or not to sideboard out the one-mana cantrips when bringing in Chalice.
If you're playing three copies of Chalice in the board (a standard amount, by the looks of recent lists), playing the cantrips really helps you get them as early as possible. Once down, the amount of time it buys us against matches like Burn and GDS is second to none, so it's basically our favorite card to see early. Coupled with other sideboard cards like Titi (even countered cantrips still remove ice counters) or EE (which has a mana cost that can allow us to circumvent our own Chalices, if they hit a lot of creatures early), this would be very hard for those decks to handle.
This brings us full circle, though; if we leave in the cantrips when we bring in Chalice, what do we remove instead? I used to do a three for three swap of Cryptic with Chalice, but those numbers no longer line up with only two of the former. Gigadrowse is less impressive against Burn than most decks, so that is an option (though Giga is good with Titi and all of those cantrips). Hmmm.
And, of course, if you do feel like most or all of the cantrips need to come out, would you bring in a 23rd land from your sideboard? That's pretty precious space to tie up with a land. I plan to test with Chalice in the board at FNM on the 29th, and hopefully for a few games this upcoming Friday between the official rounds, so I'll report back once I do.
Finally, without instant speed interaction a-la remand/cryptic/path/similar, I don't think I'd run opt at all anyway. That's kind of a precondition that needs to be met before the spell gets any benefit from being instant, otherwise you're probably better off running sleight of hand. Like; what's the point of having a draw spell that you hold into your opponent's end step for no particular reason other than you *might* hit a temporal mastery... Drawing cards is good, filtering is good, but we need to be able to be the kind of deck that sits back and holds up instant-speed interaction before we consider opt as one of our go-to draw spells. And for the record, I don't think gigadrowse counts. We want to ideally be gigadrowse-ing in our opponents' upkeep to deny them a turn, rather than wait until their end step. This means if we're holding it up, we've basically made the choice to cast it & there's no point in holding up opt as backup.
We are basically tap-out control. That style of deck doesn't care for opt, because you will be using it at sorcery speed most of the time.
Don't get me wrong, testing is good. It may reveal that we want to be playing more cantrips in general, but we all need to recognise what lines of play and supporting cards enable Opt and what strategies aren't a good fit for the card. If your deck will be using it at sorcery speed the majority of the time because you don't have much instant speed interaction in your deck (a-la tap out control as I previously mentioned) then there are better options than opt currently in modern.
Quite frankly I'd love to be wrong about opt. I personally have a lot of time for the card and really want "EoT opt, miracle temporal mastery" to be a thing. Like, I ship that so hard. However as mentioned above, there are issues. Let's hope the deck can evolve through testing and adopt (or not) in a meaningful way based on numbers rather than emotions or gut feelings.
You keep hammering this narrative of "Opt isn't good here" without either playing the card, or paying attention to interactions I have mentioned numerous times (a list that is nowhere near exhaustive). I'm telling you from experience: this simply isn't true.
Yes, being able to miracle off of an Opt is good, which already makes it better than Sleight of Hand for us. Yes, there are times where sorcery-speed casting with Opt will be the correct play. Yes, leaving blue mana open and seeing what your opponent does before you scry and draw are all potent yet subtle options Opt gives you. The ability to have more choices during our own upkeep, as well as our opponent's upkeep, attack, and end steps, for a single mana...this is not something we've had before, and it's powerful even if we're not necessarily packing Remand, Path, or Fatal Push.
With four mana up, we can fire off Opt and cast Dictate eot if it's in the top two cards of our library, but not in our hand. Or if it's Bushwhacker Zoo, we might prioritize a Gigadrowse off of a scry instead if they explode and threaten lethal, but might be able to hit or directly cast Dictate if they don't. Similar lines can come up against blue-based decks; say they drop a threat on-curve, then drop a land. If it's a blue producer, and you know they're packing Stubborn Denial or Spell Pierce, you have basically the same scenario. Hey look, Burn just plopped a bunch of one-drops before we could get Chalice down; maybe we should prioritize Engineered Explosives instead off of a dig now. Likewise, Cryptic comes into play later as well, and this is all just scratching the surface.
Serum Visions sets up some great lines with Opt, since you could stack both options, or at least one good one on top. You can reach much further into your library before you untap with Mikokoro and a blue mana up if you hit Opt. And, as we know, having the ability to enable the miracle Mastery on top of all of this is fantastic, including during our own upkeep (say we used our turn three eot to cast Dictate, then we want a better chance to go off before the opponent can untap).
I'm definitely not sold that my build is running at peak efficiency. It is almost certainly the case that some of those numbers will need tweaked, and probably to accommodate more interaction in the main. All I'm saying is that Opt is good in this deck (and that Remand is basically a casualty of that), and that you really need to play and see what it's capable before you (pre)judge it.
Opt has lead me to brew some janky versions of Turns that I probably won't ever play - I had a build with Opts and Thought Scours alongside a full set of Snapcasters, some Noxious Revival, and a spicy one-of Temporal Trespass that seemed good, but folds to Chalice on 1 in an Eldrazi Tron meta.
With that said, I'm going to try a direct swap of Opts for Visions, picking up my playset of Remands again and upping the Snapcaster count. I'll post a list after work today.
Well guys, it's been a while. Life and whatnot getting in the way has meant that I haven't been able to bust out any extra turns for a while. But finally, I'm back! I must say, I'm super impressed with all the brewing you lot have been up to - it's pretty awesome to see such dedication to the deck. Will definitely be changing my old monoblue version into a remandless UW or UB version to give this new direction a spin. Will try and get some testing in to see if I have any thoughts.
One thing I did think about the UW version. I've seen some lists playing Riot Control which seems pretty cool, just wondered if anyone had tried out Repel the abominable as a 2 mana alternative that does nearly the same thing (there are a few humans like blighted agent (sadly) but being one mana less could make a difference. And hey our snapcasters still get to deal damage (though this is obviously NOT the main appeal)). Any thoughts on this?
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Back to extra turns, at long last!
Avatar in homage to my friend's elk tribal deck. Turn 2 Wetland Sambar, turn 3 Descendants' Path, turn 4 upkeep with the descendants' path trigger on the stack, Brainstorm putting Axebane Stag on top to be freshly windmill slammed into play by Descendants' Path. Too op for me.
I couldn't find any discussion in this thread about temple bell. Is that just too cute? 3cmc competes with dictate and exhaustion but controlling the draw is a nice benefit over howling mine. Just throwing out a discussion point 🤷♂️
The deck has meandered about a bit but generally stuck to a fairly stock core, as you might expect.
Recent considerations that didn't quite take off were cards like As Foretold. Very interesting that's for sure.
You return to us at an interesting time, when we have good matchups against the best two decks in the format (eldrazi and death's shadow) but some highly taxing and potentially dodgy matchups in the remainder of the top tier roster. For example, recently we see storm gaining meta share and that can't be good for us. Scapeshift is tricky and collected company decks have some targeted hate (and a strong combo) which has the potential to outrace and disrupt us.
We are however seeing somewhat of a renaissance of control in the format and I've always liked our deck vs control lists because of the 4x maindeck gigadrowse. Where things get complicated is that current control lists have taken advantage of the shift from bolt to fatal push as the primo removal in the format, and have adopted a more aggressive stance running cards like geist of Saint traft whereas before when goyf was more prevalent, geist was pretty terrible. This means that control is no longer an easy ride, it's possible to get slammed out of a match very quickly if the control player has the right draw.
It's a great time to be playing modern, no denying it. I've taken to packing four decks wherever I go rather than just 'old faithful' turns, and it's paid off a few times when I've had the option to run (for example) scapeshift, coco or elves instead of the blue deck.
You may find your own meta a little hostile to the deck (I know I have) but just like anything, perhaps moreso, turns can be tweaked.
Good to have you back bud. Let us know how you get on. I haven't had the chance to hit up any modern tournaments recently as my local game store closed down!! Thankfully a new one took over, but they are building things up slowly and so far each event has only had about 4-8 people. It's a far cry from the 30-person modern events where I used to live.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
About half way down he does drop the taking turns deck as one that would likely want to play it as a 4-of because of the instant potential to miracle Temporal Mastery once in a while. The list he posted seem pretty old as it's still running elixir in the main and not many of the pseudoturns.
Excited to see Corbin's new list next week; thanks for the heads-up! We should place bets on deck list guesses
Manfield's list feels too top-heavy for me. Four Cryptic and so many warps with only six Mine effects seems risky. Elixir...meh. Hope he posts a post-Opt list soon as well.
Temporal Tresspass seems like bait. It really isn't better than any of the other commonly-played warps, and it makes us more vulnerable to random Relics.
Agreed that Gigadrowse in large doses is great right now, btw. It breaks games wide open against so many decks, and can be played early or late.
I'll probably end up putting the Howling Mines back in, but I figured I'd give this a shot for a bit.
Why take out Serum Visions completely? It seems like the more card selection we have, the better off we are. Yes, Remand is alright, but it feels like the worst card in the deck at this point. My take next friday FNM is going to be very close, but just a bit different:
Still very much up in the air on the sideboard, but it will have TitI and Hurkyl's Recall. Not entirely sold on CotV so if someone has a REALLY good argument, I'm all ears (or is it eyes since it's written??)
I'll probably end up putting the Howling Mines back in, but I figured I'd give this a shot for a bit.
Why take out Serum Visions completely? It seems like the more card selection we have, the better off we are. Yes, Remand is alright, but it feels like the worst card in the deck at this point. My take next friday FNM is going to be very close, but just a bit different:
Still very much up in the air on the sideboard, but it will have TitI and Hurkyl's Recall. Not entirely sold on CotV so if someone has a REALLY good argument, I'm all ears (or is it eyes since it's written??)
Seems we're mostly in agreement on a lot of things. A straight-up swap from Serum Visions to Opt does not seem like any serious kind of upgrade to me. SV's ability to set up draws and dig deep is too good to cut from a deck like this.
I also agree that Remand, as good as it can be, is one of the weaker cards in the deck at the moment. Spreading Seas is a lot more proactive, and still gives you some early interaction with the card draw. And of course, Opt can just slot in there and keep everything else you have flowing better.
Mine is like a necessary evil; I tried cutting them from the deck a long time ago, and nothing else was ever as good. Jace Beleren, Ancestral Vision, Temple Bell...nothing is as consistent and easy to curve with as Mine.
Agree with you on all of the sideboard cards as well, though I will be testing with Chalice a bit, because it is just that brutal against a lot of decks. Might not end up sticking around, but I will test it honestly and thoroughly first.
The one real sticking point I have about your list here is that you have four non-blue-producing lands in a 22-land list. With such a strong focus on as much early blue as possible, this needs to be reduced to three, and possibly one or two of those. How has testing or goldfishing been for you with this?
My pre-opt list had 23 lands with 5 non-blue and I rarely had issues. The old list was the 4 above with an additional radiant fountain for a bit more life gain. I could probably drop that now and up my island count to 19 but with the filtering from opt and SV, I feel pretty good with only 18 U sources ATM.
As I said, will be testing at a pretty competitive FNM next week with pretty much the exact 60 listed above. Might make the land switch as noted.
Absolutely agree with the integral howling mine's. I really HATED them before Ancestral Vision was unbanned and ecstatic when AV was was released. It just didn't play right in the deck, even with all the turns later on; felt like a win more. I need to be more cognizant about tapping down lands during their upkeep along with the mine to deny them the extra draw.
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Very close to my list. Main differences being;
- 1 Opt
- 1 Gigadrowse
- 1 Part the Waterveil
+ 2 Snapback
+ 1 Boomerang
I also traded Inkmoth Nexus and Gemstone Caverns for two more Islands, making UU easier turn two, and I run Laboratory Maniac in place of one Snapcaster Mage for another win-con and helps beat the mill decks in my area. I've traded the second Snappy back and forth with Lab Man every other game and it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. As nice as Snappy is, especially in a mono U list, I've been tempted to replace the single I'm currently running for a third Cryptic Command.
I've become a believer in Opt with the dozen matches I've used it so far. My sideboard has fluctuated with Spell Pierce, Spell Snare, Ceremonious Rejection and Dispel which gives us more game turn one and fuels Snapback as worse case scenario. Remand sides in against mid-range, combo, and control matches. I can now vouch for Boomerang and Snapback main. Just to echo sentiment here Remand has been too late multiple times for me and I've never had a situation, against creature based decks, where I wished they replaced Boomerang or Snapback. If you're playing mono U then you should at least test them for yourself. Turn two Howling Mine with a Snapback in hand is stronger than it appears and the extra card drawn next turn mitigates the disadvantage while pushing your opponent to their heels and sometimes completely on their ass.
My sideboard Chalice of the Void has fluctuated as well. When I bring them in I end up trading Opt out so I haven't noticed too much Counterbalance in testing.
I have a couple days off work coming up soon so I'm going to try to spend an entire day testing on Cockatrice and I'll post my results and any changes I end up making. If anybody has Cockatrice then add me and we'll do some testing together! My username is the same so just add me and send me a message saying you're from mtgsalvation.
In the small example you've made, Opt instead of Remand would give you a better chance to continue going off instead of passing the turn back. Opt is also way better to help flip Titi.
I'm honestly not convinced about Commandeer either; I used to run it a few years ago as a singleton when my list more more tempo than combo, and I traded it off within a month. I have a pair of them on the way to test out for my updated build, so I'll get back to you on how that goes. The only difference with Disrupting Shoal is that I started with and traded off more of them. In a build with plenty of Opt, Serum Visions, and Gigadrowse, Shoal could do work against Burn, but I feel we have better tools there.
His point was that Spreading Seas can be cast proactively so that it can be either a tool to slow an opponent, or a "pay 2 to draw a card" effect while going off. Remand is a fine tool to slow opponents, but it's nearly dead as a topdeck while we are going off because it is reactive card draw. Both aren't amazing against the faster decks that can race us, but at least Seas can help us continue to go off if we make it to that point. Unlike RUG Scapeshift and Twin, Turns doesn't just combo off and win on the spot; they never have to worry about tripping over Remand as a dead card like we do. I don't feel like Seas is optimal for this deck either, but I understand why Corbin prefers it.
The reason I ended up switching to Remand way back was because I had been running cards like Boomerang and Mana Leak and finding that the lack of card velocity left me short of going off way too often. I realized that I'd rather have the temporary answer and a card than a more powerful answer without it. Now there are effects that exist like Fatal Push that are so low-cost and powerful that we can still interact impactfully and maintain our progress, but it's a bit disingenuous to draw a conclusion the author never made. He prefers proactive, interactive tools that still draw cards, and I can understand why. Maybe now that the more recent black cards like Push and Collective Brutality have been printed, he might consider playing a bit differently...but we won't know until he comments on it. The crux of it is your interaction needs to be proactive (or at least capable of it, like Cryptic) and draw you cards (directly or virtually, like with Gigadrowse and Exhaustion), not to avoid all interaction.
You mentioned Snapback, but I would rather play that than most of the other cards you listed along with it, since it can recycle (more turns or draw) or save (protect our win con) Snapcaster Mage as well as slow opponents early. It can also do this for Clique if you're running any. This is why I'll be running Snapback before I mess with anything else as far as non-drawing early interaction.
Moreover, I agree with the argument you constructed in this example. I'd rather be playing Opt than any of the cards you mentioned, for all of the reasons I just can't shut up about. (That, and I like a consistent and painless mana base in this style of deck, so I'm not about the white or black splash yet.) The only exceptions should be options that break matches open, which explains why the black and white splashes are the better ones to consider. It may yet be correct that, as you say, Chalice is just too good not to play, so I will test with them as well to see how it plays out.
(fair play to infect for evolving and adopting the card recently. i quite like it there)
Although losing the consistency that they give us is bad, this may become the thing to do when bringing chalice in. But assuming we side out 7-8 one mana cantrips for 3-4 chalice and 3-4(?card that doesn't cost 1 mana?) should work just fine as long as we are still drawing buckets of cards. My first thoughts are to bring in something that costs 0 mana and still give us something to do on turn 1 (Ancestral Vision), or cost 2 mana and draw me lots of cards (Extra Howling Mines?)
It sounds odd to put extra draw power in our sideboard but I have to suggest it as an option.
Uw Taking Turns
The Bad Moon
Small Mardu Midrange
Big Mardu Midrange
Grixis Waste Not Combo
Bw 8-Rack
Bw Midrange
I'm at 3 Opt main and 3 Chalice of the Void side. I swap them without changing Serum Visions while on the play. I don't see why you wouldn't bring in other specific hate as you're either playing them turn one or you don't get Chalice of the Void and play them regardless. Cards such as Snapback and Commandeer give purpose to your dead spells and Whiplash Trap dodges Chalice. Speaking from a mono U standpoint.
Worse case scenario when playing Chalice at one is it's doing what it's suppose to and the opponent is losing or diminishing to a position they can't win. Chalice of the Void is too powerful against our bad match-ups to not play.
Turns was the deck I first jammed Ancestral Vision into before it was unbanned for testing, and as excited as I was about it, I learned quickly how swingy that card is. It's like the opposite of Temporal Mastery, but worse; every successive turn I wanted to see AV less. It's just too inconsistent for me to ever consider it seriously for a competitive build of this deck.
How does Whiplash Trap give purpose to your dead spells? And why would you trade proactive one-cost spells like Opt out of the main for one-cost reactive spells when bringing in Chalice?
Snapback, Commandeer and Disrupting Shoal are great ways of using dead cards (as long as they are Blue).
I was thinking the idea is to pull all the cards out that the Chalice would shut down, not bring in additional nonbo dead draws to clog up our lategame.
...and hoping we could come up with a more clearly defined plan for what to side out when we are going to slam down a chalice at, X=1, or X=2.
Uw Taking Turns
The Bad Moon
Small Mardu Midrange
Big Mardu Midrange
Grixis Waste Not Combo
Bw 8-Rack
Bw Midrange
I was saying Whiplash Trap dodges Chalice while acting as 1 CMC.
Assuming Chalice comes down on your second turn, your opponent doesn't blow it up, or the chance of never seeing it. Basically what I implied was we can't completely disregard cheap answers against the decks we have the most problems with. Decks that play a lot of cheap spells and can beat us before our "Time Walk" abilities become relevant.
My list has 4 'interaction' slots (currently trialling 3 path, 1 commandeer instead of 4 remand)
Everything else is kinda locked in.
4 gigadrowse
3 exhaustion
4 dictate
3 howling mine
2 cryptic
11 Warps
2 snapcasters
4 serum viz
I think I've trimmed these spells down to as low as we'd want them. That leaves just the 4 spots to fill (5 if we drop a land). Are we really suggesting that opt is worth more to us than some interaction? That's what it would be replacing. It's an OK draw spell but is it *that* good? I'd say probably not. the deck needs to have some meaningful interaction on turns one or two, as far as I can judge from my time with turns.
Secondary thought; if we are dropping a land, then wanting to side opt out when bringing chalice in, then we will be hampering ourselves in terms of mana in every matchup where we want to side in chalice. Worth considering.
Finally, without instant speed interaction a-la remand/cryptic/path/similar, I don't think I'd run opt at all anyway. That's kind of a precondition that needs to be met before the spell gets any benefit from being instant, otherwise you're probably better off running sleight of hand. Like; what's the point of having a draw spell that you hold into your opponent's end step for no particular reason other than you *might* hit a temporal mastery... Drawing cards is good, filtering is good, but we need to be able to be the kind of deck that sits back and holds up instant-speed interaction before we consider opt as one of our go-to draw spells. And for the record, I don't think gigadrowse counts. We want to ideally be gigadrowse-ing in our opponents' upkeep to deny them a turn, rather than wait until their end step. This means if we're holding it up, we've basically made the choice to cast it & there's no point in holding up opt as backup.
We are basically tap-out control. That style of deck doesn't care for opt, because you will be using it at sorcery speed most of the time.
Don't get me wrong, testing is good. It may reveal that we want to be playing more cantrips in general, but we all need to recognise what lines of play and supporting cards enable Opt and what strategies aren't a good fit for the card. If your deck will be using it at sorcery speed the majority of the time because you don't have much instant speed interaction in your deck (a-la tap out control as I previously mentioned) then there are better options than opt currently in modern.
Quite frankly I'd love to be wrong about opt. I personally have a lot of time for the card and really want "EoT opt, miracle temporal mastery" to be a thing. Like, I ship that so hard. However as mentioned above, there are issues. Let's hope the deck can evolve through testing and adopt (or not) in a meaningful way based on numbers rather than emotions or gut feelings.
Okay, cool. I see that you edited that line for clarity now. Whiplash Trap seems to live up to its name, though; it is too expensive, and the condition to allow it to be playable is way too restrictive to take the card seriously. I much prefer the other cards you mentioned like Snapback and Boomerang, and even Boomerang doesn't make the cut for me anymore (though it is hilarious against ramp decks with Snapcaster backup).
I'm in almost full agreement with your list here, though with Snapcasters people have had decent luck with only ten Warp effects. I'm currently running four each of Warp, Mastery, and Waterveil, but I will admit that might be overkill, especially if we are looking for a slot or two of more interaction. Everything else is well-established in mono blue.
I pulled the four copies of Remand to make room for Opt, and I am running twelve Warps and 22 lands (with only one that can't produce blue in Mikokoro). Opt, along with Serum Visions, makes hitting the early interaction we're already playing more consistent. I was amazed at how well I kept up in the first few turns, as well as the consistency to hit the Mine effect more frequently when we need it as early as possible.
It's also important to note that by your phrasing here it seems you have yet to playtest the card in the current build (regardless of experience with the card before the joy of Turns). You're one of the more cohesive and articulate posters here, so your feedback from actual experience in this deck would be very welcome. The more quality results-based input we get, the better.
You make an excellent point here. Running 22 lands with eight cantrips gave me nice results with land drops overall, but I can imagine that would not be the case if we cut some of the draw out. The real question is whether or not to sideboard out the one-mana cantrips when bringing in Chalice.
If you're playing three copies of Chalice in the board (a standard amount, by the looks of recent lists), playing the cantrips really helps you get them as early as possible. Once down, the amount of time it buys us against matches like Burn and GDS is second to none, so it's basically our favorite card to see early. Coupled with other sideboard cards like Titi (even countered cantrips still remove ice counters) or EE (which has a mana cost that can allow us to circumvent our own Chalices, if they hit a lot of creatures early), this would be very hard for those decks to handle.
This brings us full circle, though; if we leave in the cantrips when we bring in Chalice, what do we remove instead? I used to do a three for three swap of Cryptic with Chalice, but those numbers no longer line up with only two of the former. Gigadrowse is less impressive against Burn than most decks, so that is an option (though Giga is good with Titi and all of those cantrips). Hmmm.
And, of course, if you do feel like most or all of the cantrips need to come out, would you bring in a 23rd land from your sideboard? That's pretty precious space to tie up with a land. I plan to test with Chalice in the board at FNM on the 29th, and hopefully for a few games this upcoming Friday between the official rounds, so I'll report back once I do.
You keep hammering this narrative of "Opt isn't good here" without either playing the card, or paying attention to interactions I have mentioned numerous times (a list that is nowhere near exhaustive). I'm telling you from experience: this simply isn't true.
Yes, being able to miracle off of an Opt is good, which already makes it better than Sleight of Hand for us. Yes, there are times where sorcery-speed casting with Opt will be the correct play. Yes, leaving blue mana open and seeing what your opponent does before you scry and draw are all potent yet subtle options Opt gives you. The ability to have more choices during our own upkeep, as well as our opponent's upkeep, attack, and end steps, for a single mana...this is not something we've had before, and it's powerful even if we're not necessarily packing Remand, Path, or Fatal Push.
With four mana up, we can fire off Opt and cast Dictate eot if it's in the top two cards of our library, but not in our hand. Or if it's Bushwhacker Zoo, we might prioritize a Gigadrowse off of a scry instead if they explode and threaten lethal, but might be able to hit or directly cast Dictate if they don't. Similar lines can come up against blue-based decks; say they drop a threat on-curve, then drop a land. If it's a blue producer, and you know they're packing Stubborn Denial or Spell Pierce, you have basically the same scenario. Hey look, Burn just plopped a bunch of one-drops before we could get Chalice down; maybe we should prioritize Engineered Explosives instead off of a dig now. Likewise, Cryptic comes into play later as well, and this is all just scratching the surface.
Serum Visions sets up some great lines with Opt, since you could stack both options, or at least one good one on top. You can reach much further into your library before you untap with Mikokoro and a blue mana up if you hit Opt. And, as we know, having the ability to enable the miracle Mastery on top of all of this is fantastic, including during our own upkeep (say we used our turn three eot to cast Dictate, then we want a better chance to go off before the opponent can untap).
I'm definitely not sold that my build is running at peak efficiency. It is almost certainly the case that some of those numbers will need tweaked, and probably to accommodate more interaction in the main. All I'm saying is that Opt is good in this deck (and that Remand is basically a casualty of that), and that you really need to play and see what it's capable before you (pre)judge it.
With that said, I'm going to try a direct swap of Opts for Visions, picking up my playset of Remands again and upping the Snapcaster count. I'll post a list after work today.
Modern: U Living End
Standard: UW Approach of the Second Sun
One thing I did think about the UW version. I've seen some lists playing Riot Control which seems pretty cool, just wondered if anyone had tried out Repel the abominable as a 2 mana alternative that does nearly the same thing (there are a few humans like blighted agent (sadly) but being one mana less could make a difference. And hey our snapcasters still get to deal damage (though this is obviously NOT the main appeal)). Any thoughts on this?
Avatar in homage to my friend's elk tribal deck. Turn 2 Wetland Sambar, turn 3 Descendants' Path, turn 4 upkeep with the descendants' path trigger on the stack, Brainstorm putting Axebane Stag on top to be freshly windmill slammed into play by Descendants' Path. Too op for me.
The deck has meandered about a bit but generally stuck to a fairly stock core, as you might expect.
Recent considerations that didn't quite take off were cards like As Foretold. Very interesting that's for sure.
You return to us at an interesting time, when we have good matchups against the best two decks in the format (eldrazi and death's shadow) but some highly taxing and potentially dodgy matchups in the remainder of the top tier roster. For example, recently we see storm gaining meta share and that can't be good for us. Scapeshift is tricky and collected company decks have some targeted hate (and a strong combo) which has the potential to outrace and disrupt us.
We are however seeing somewhat of a renaissance of control in the format and I've always liked our deck vs control lists because of the 4x maindeck gigadrowse. Where things get complicated is that current control lists have taken advantage of the shift from bolt to fatal push as the primo removal in the format, and have adopted a more aggressive stance running cards like geist of Saint traft whereas before when goyf was more prevalent, geist was pretty terrible. This means that control is no longer an easy ride, it's possible to get slammed out of a match very quickly if the control player has the right draw.
It's a great time to be playing modern, no denying it. I've taken to packing four decks wherever I go rather than just 'old faithful' turns, and it's paid off a few times when I've had the option to run (for example) scapeshift, coco or elves instead of the blue deck.
You may find your own meta a little hostile to the deck (I know I have) but just like anything, perhaps moreso, turns can be tweaked.
Good to have you back bud. Let us know how you get on. I haven't had the chance to hit up any modern tournaments recently as my local game store closed down!! Thankfully a new one took over, but they are building things up slowly and so far each event has only had about 4-8 people. It's a far cry from the 30-person modern events where I used to live.
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=14155&writer=Seth Manfield&articledate=9-8-2017
About half way down he does drop the taking turns deck as one that would likely want to play it as a 4-of because of the instant potential to miracle Temporal Mastery once in a while. The list he posted seem pretty old as it's still running elixir in the main and not many of the pseudo turns.
4 Cryptic Command
4 Dictate of Kruphix
1 Elixir of Immortality
1 Exhaustion
2 Gigadrowse
2 Howling Mine
2 Part the Waterveil
4 Serum Visions
3 Sleight of Hand
4 Spreading Seas
4 Temporal Mastery
1 Temporal Trespass
4 Time Warp
2 Walk the Aeons
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
2 Radiant Fountain
Sounds like Corbin Hosler will have an article RE: turns that is gonna be posted on Monday (see snip from twitter)
Manfield's list feels too top-heavy for me. Four Cryptic and so many warps with only six Mine effects seems risky. Elixir...meh. Hope he posts a post-Opt list soon as well.
Temporal Tresspass seems like bait. It really isn't better than any of the other commonly-played warps, and it makes us more vulnerable to random Relics.
Agreed that Gigadrowse in large doses is great right now, btw. It breaks games wide open against so many decks, and can be played early or late.
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
3 Part the Waterveil
Mines
4 Dictate of Kruphix
Card Draw
4 Opt
4 Remand
3 Cryptic Command
4 Gigadrowse
4 Exhaustion
3 Snapcaster Mage
Lands
20 Island
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Inkmoth Nexus
3 Thing in the Ice
2 Spell Snare
2 Spellskite
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Shadow of Doubt
2 Ceremonious Rejection
I'll probably end up putting the Howling Mines back in, but I figured I'd give this a shot for a bit.
Modern: U Living End
Standard: UW Approach of the Second Sun
Why take out Serum Visions completely? It seems like the more card selection we have, the better off we are. Yes, Remand is alright, but it feels like the worst card in the deck at this point. My take next friday FNM is going to be very close, but just a bit different:
4x Gigadrowse
4x Opt
4x Serum Visions
2x Howling Mine
4x Dictate of Kruphix
4x Exhaustion
2x Cryptic Command
4x Time Warp
3x Part the Waterveil
1x Commandeer
4x Temporal Mastery
1x Gemstone Caverns
1x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1x Radiant Fountain
18x Island
Still very much up in the air on the sideboard, but it will have TitI and Hurkyl's Recall. Not entirely sold on CotV so if someone has a REALLY good argument, I'm all ears (or is it eyes since it's written??)
Seems we're mostly in agreement on a lot of things. A straight-up swap from Serum Visions to Opt does not seem like any serious kind of upgrade to me. SV's ability to set up draws and dig deep is too good to cut from a deck like this.
I also agree that Remand, as good as it can be, is one of the weaker cards in the deck at the moment. Spreading Seas is a lot more proactive, and still gives you some early interaction with the card draw. And of course, Opt can just slot in there and keep everything else you have flowing better.
Mine is like a necessary evil; I tried cutting them from the deck a long time ago, and nothing else was ever as good. Jace Beleren, Ancestral Vision, Temple Bell...nothing is as consistent and easy to curve with as Mine.
Agree with you on all of the sideboard cards as well, though I will be testing with Chalice a bit, because it is just that brutal against a lot of decks. Might not end up sticking around, but I will test it honestly and thoroughly first.
The one real sticking point I have about your list here is that you have four non-blue-producing lands in a 22-land list. With such a strong focus on as much early blue as possible, this needs to be reduced to three, and possibly one or two of those. How has testing or goldfishing been for you with this?
As I said, will be testing at a pretty competitive FNM next week with pretty much the exact 60 listed above. Might make the land switch as noted.
Absolutely agree with the integral howling mine's. I really HATED them before Ancestral Vision was unbanned and ecstatic when AV was was released. It just didn't play right in the deck, even with all the turns later on; felt like a win more. I need to be more cognizant about tapping down lands during their upkeep along with the mine to deny them the extra draw.