Plumeveil looks like a fun card, but I would say that it falls more under the category of playing not to lose than playing to win.
I’m continuing to put up great results with monoU! Went on an 11-2 run online over the weekend, dropping matches to Burn and Jund. Also came away from my first paper event with a 3-1 record, taking down Burn, Jeskai, and Ponza, while losing to Storm. As long as UWC is the deck to beat, it seems that we’re going to be fairly well positioned.
What are people’s thoughts on Ancestral Vision outside of the As Foretold shell—just as a pure value card?
You sometimes see Control decks run the card as a one-of. Obviously it’s great in your opener, but it’s also a non-symmetrical draw effect that rewards you for taking more turns, and isn’t a dead draw late on as frequently as it is in most other decks. Strange though it may seem, I could even see it in the sideboard for long and grindy matchups (although deciding what to remove for it is another matter).
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
So I've been bouncing between Taking Turns and UW control lately and I have actually started to run 1 Ancestral Visions mainboard and have experimented with 2 in the sideboard against the UW and Jeskai matchups..
So far it feels really good.. Like I think you beat them by just playing sneaky.. at my LGS it's all control matchups right now and most of my combo wins come from clever plays like remanding my own spells and relying heavily on gigadrowse EOT.. and ancestral visions has been really good with that gameplan
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
UU"Brute force can sometimes kick down a locked door, but knowledge is a skeleton key"UU
^Nice, glad to hear it. I picked up a copy and will try it...somewhere. Lol. Hard to make any cuts, really, but I’ll find a slot. I think it will add some nice resilience and ability to push through heavy interaction.
Just as a thought experiment, what kind of printings in new sets would improve the deck? Let’s assume that they aren’t giving us better time walks or Force of Will anytime soon. So aside from the obvious bombs, what would we be in the market for? My first thought is something along the lines of Gigadrowse/Exhaustion/Boomerang, aka cards that aggressively disrupt the opponent at the cost of card disadvantage, which seem to be a category of effects that we leverage uniquely well. It’s hard to say what form such a printing could take, but it would probably have to tax or penalize attacks in some way to supplant existing tech. Well, if nothing else we can probably hope for a Gigadrowse reprint and cheaper foils!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
What are people’s thoughts on Ancestral Vision outside of the As Foretold shell—just as a pure value card?
in my builds it's entirely replaced howling mine as the non-dictate draw engine.
I'm currently running 3, just because space is tight. If i could run 4 i'd consider it.
Nice, so in your build it’s Ancestral x3, Dictate x4 (I assume), and how many Jace?
I’m still running Mine x2 and haven’t been scared away from it just yet. The thought of playing a third Mine in the side occurred to me; seems fairly subpar, but Vision could be real there. Might just be better off in the main deck though, which is why I wonder about your Jace count and thus your overall number of draw engines.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
Actually the format hasn't been too bad with Kolghan's Command lately... I haven't seen it much so I have slowly been adding Howling Mine back in.. Im currently running 2 again like old time sakes lol
Also, recent change: Ive went up to 4x Exhaustion and love it!.. I think the card is a lot better right now with the decks being played the most
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
UU"Brute force can sometimes kick down a locked door, but knowledge is a skeleton key"UU
Yeah, Exhaustion is backbreaking a lot of the time. I’ve toyed with running four as well, but, working with the assumption that seven combined Gigadrowse/Exhaustion effects is optimal (which is far from a hard and fast rule, but seems like a good number based on a variety of calculations), Gigadrowse still appears to be slightly better as the four-of, just because it’s lower variance. Exhaustion is sometimes game-endingly good, and other times it needs a little help to be useful (that help often coming in the form of Gigadrowse, for what it’s worth), whereas Gigadrowse is pretty much always live on its own.
It’s also worth noting that Phantasmal Image is the fourth most played creature in the format right now! Picking up free kills on Images while tapping down their team and/or mana is really great.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
Wow, I didn't know that about Phantasmal Image being so heavily played.. It makes since with all of these tribal decks taking a play from Humans lol
I will agree that gigadrowse is a lot better but my reasoning behind running 3 to the 4 exhaustion is because there are like two types of deck in the format at the moment:
Option A: Aggro - usually has everything turned sideways anyhow so exhaustion is incredible
Even Mardu sort of fills this role as they are usually spending entire turns casting faithless looting into inquisition into bolt into lingering souls
Option B: Control/Decks that leave up mana - Gigadrowse is better here obviously but once you have them tapped down EOT, being able to consistently chain together exhaustions is better than having to again spend 6-7 mana if you fizzle..It also punishes these decks for trying to advance their win condition in the mid game.. Like usually if Teferi resolves, gigadrowse will not win that game but being able to exhaustion them cuts them off better..
I mean overall this is just something I am experimenting with.. At the moment it has been working a lot better. I find a lot of my matches I win by being able to double spell.. Like exhaustion + dictate or Jace
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
UU"Brute force can sometimes kick down a locked door, but knowledge is a skeleton key"UU
^Agree with you totally about Mardu, Exhaustion is great there; their mana efficiency and consistency means that an Exhaustion usually gets maximum value. Between that and Mardu’s slow clock, I actually find the matchup to be rather favorable—certainly far moreso than other black Thoughtseize decks like BGx or Grixis Shadow.
You make another good point about how Exhaustion acts as a fizzle failsafe after Gigadrowsing a control opponent. I’ve been siding out two copies against these decks, leaving me with only one, and I’m wondering whether I should be leaving in a second...but Commandeer, Negate, and Dispel are all I’m bringing in. Everything else in the deck is good too lol. Tough call!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
Yeah - as I see it
if they have five lands open then gigadrowse costs (5) to repeat a second time... as opposed to doing it once and then chaining exhaustion for (3)
I just really hate playing against Mardu lol.. feels like every time I play someone they just have the perfect hand and draw foolishly perfect
EDIT: Also Grim Flayer, Have you tried devastation tide by any chance, since you are running mono blue? I have been seriously contemplating it as being able to just wipe everything seems like a really good fail safe lol
Nope—I don’t think Devastation Tide is where we want to be, mostly because (this is especially true in monoU) we’re just kind of spinning our wheels if we interact at card disadvantage without a payoff for interacting, whether that be a Mine effect, Ancestral ticking down, Jace, Thing, or As Foretold. Tide has the potential to undo all of our hard work in terms of resolving and protecting a payoff, most notably in the case of Thing, or Jace working toward his ultimate.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
Not in every matchup (ahem, humans), but take a wider look across the meta and it's got a better base now than it has done for quite a while. Affinity is basically dead and has been replaced by a deck swarming with two-drops. KCI can be remanded just fine. Tron is obviously great.
In fairness my current list isn't running any at all (I'm jamming four Opt instead, with terminus in the sideboard) but if there was ever a time, it's probably now... For about two weeks probably hahaha
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
It’s basically a snapcaster mage with upside (just not a creature)
Feel like it’s everything we want: card selection, instant speed, a way to recur our spells, low cmc.
It's interesting, no doubt. The card selection is the main consideration here, as that's the only reason you'd ever run it over the full fat version of snappy.
So as a combo deck that relies on the combat step to win and does occasionally need to block a creature or two to survive, how highly do we value that Surveil 2 over a 2/1 body?
That's a tough question. Notably, this spell can't sit in front of a Jace to protect your engine, and can't be bounced and re-bought with Cryptic. It also doesn't help you shorten your clock when you're swinging in with a 6/6 land by adding an extra two power and it isn't an ambush viper.
But, it does 'dig' a couple of cards deep. Sort of... It doesn't help you dig for dictates or land, but it digs for warps. That's not nothing. In fact that extra dig could and would occasionally win games. The real question is: would you win more games from that slight extra dig than you would lose from not having access to our trusty 2/1 flash blocker or attacker?
I think the answer will be mostly matchup dependant. The metagame will lead us towards a changeable answer. I'm inclined to suggest that the main weakness of the deck is the early game and aggro decks. The late game tends to end in our favour. For that reason alone, the flash blocker is going to be relevant more often than the extra little bit of dig, in terms of games won and lost.
Verdict: close but no cigar. Maybe a budget alternative but let's not kid ourselves, we aren't in the business for strengthening our late-game. We ARE the late-game. Good ol' fashioned snappy ambushes goblin guides all day long and this new spell doesn't. Therefore, it doesn't make the cut.
I agree with that assessment lol
And honestly the instant speed is irrelevant because 90% of the time it would be cast at sorcery speed similar to snapcaster mage to keep the time warps flowing lol.. I guess you could hypothetically like Mission Briefing a piece of disruption and then surveil into being able to combo the following turn but that is so narrow
Now give me a jumpstart extra turn effect and you may have me interested lol
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
UU"Brute force can sometimes kick down a locked door, but knowledge is a skeleton key"UU
Alright, boys and girls. I’m back with a report from the SCG Open in Syracuse. This was my first such event ever, so of course I had to bring this relatively fringe deck that I started playing less than two months ago! But, as people who’ve been reading this thread will know, I took preparation for piloting and sideboarding very seriously, and continue to believe that the deck is well positioned at the moment. Sadly, I didn’t run into many of the popular decks we’re built to prey upon—just one, to be exact.
I ran the exact mono-blue list posted upthread, with a single change: cutting my Boomerang for an Ancestral Vision. I was loathe to drop the Boomerang as it has been a strong performer, but the card shines most against midrange and control where bouncing a land can be backbreaking; and since Vision is probably even better in those matches while giving me a non-symmetrical draw effect, that’s the change I went with.
I didn’t end up taking notes, so what follows will be out of order and perhaps imprecise in places. I faced Infect x2, Humans, 4c Shadow, Ad Nauseam, and Titanshift. Titanshift is a great one for us, but otherwise that is a murderer’s row of matchups that range from unfavorable to horrifyingly bad. Where were all the Tron and UWC players? Sitting on either side of me pretty much every game, that’s where. Not gonna lie, I feel pretty aggrieved as far as the matchup lottery went. That’s part of the game, but as someone who probably won’t make it to another of these for a year at least, I reeeaallllly could have used a spread of opposing archetypes that was less brutal!
That said, the deck performed fantastically given the circumstances. I beat Titanshift—the only match in which I was the firm favorite—and did it in some style. Blind flipped three Miracles in two games, Commandeered a Scapeshift, and eventually won G2 with an Exhaustion that locked him out of paying for his Summoner’s Pact. My poor opponent was just laughing by the end of the match, nothing he could have done differently.
I also took Ad Nauseam’s scalp by the skin of my teeth after three grueling games. Game 3 was especially crazy with plenty of nerve-racking moments, including the casting of an Ad Naus for value. In the end, I got there on the back of 1) knowing the opposing deck very well and 2) Chalice of the Void, which was my MVP of the weekend. My third win of the day came against Infect (!!!), which felt amazing. I’ve heard it said that this is our actual worst matchup, and I took it down at my first major event against an opponent that only mulled once (to 6) and had strong progressions every time. Winning Game 1 here was huge, which I did while at 9 poison counters, eventually taking over with Jace and winning with some Infect damage of my own. Game 2 he killed me T3 through a Remand! Game 3 I resolved a T2 Chalice and played cagily until I found a Thing around T6/7, and then a well-timed Awoken Horror flip put the match to bed.
Even my three losses weren’t so bad considering the nature of the matchups. The first one I’ll mention was 4c Shadow; my opponent was skilled and pleasant (as was everyone else, honestly), and he ended up making top 32. Happy for him, and also happy to have taken G2 off of him. G1 could also have gone my way, really—after stabilizing and untapping with a Dictate in play I bricked for two turns on relevant draws—but that does happen. G3 he just curved out perfectly and stripped away my interaction while I drew time walk after time walk.
My other Infect opponent 2-0ed me. G1 he got me T4 without me really having anything to say about it. G2 I was in what felt like total control around turn 7, with a Dictate down and a handful of interaction, but I missed my land drop and had only Temporal Masteries in hand as far as time walks went. I passed the turn. My options were to Gigadrowse him in his upkeep or to Cryptic during the beginning of combat step. Gigadrowse seemed like the safer and more efficient line—Cryptic gets blown out by double Spell Pierce, and even assuming it resolved I’d have been forced to tap his team and bounce his Inkmoth, which wastes the draw potential of Cryptic. So I went for the Gigadrowse, tapping his Glistener Elf and all five of his lands. Turns out he had Pierce for the copy targeting Elf and then enough gas in hand to make the Elf an 11/11 on the spot (I had taken no poison damage thus far) because Become Immense is a balanced card. Punished. In retrospect, I could have waited to Gigadrowse during the beginning of combat, even though giving him two more draws would have been riskier, because maybe he would have tried to deploy a Blighted Agent or something first to test the waters. Either way I guess I should have left one of his lands open and targeted the Elf twice? I would certainly have tagged it twice if I’d hit my land drop. Feels really unlucky, but then again I’d have been a major dog in the matchup G3 on the draw. Well played by my opponent.
Lastly I’ll touch on the Humans matchup. G1 I had what would have been a nut draw coupled with minimal disruption on his end except for the fact that he found three Vials over the course of the early turns. Needless to say, my Gigadrowses and Exhaustions weren’t able to lock him out, and eventually he drew enough Mages and Freebooters to lock me out! G2 I beat a no-Vial, heavy disruption progression via Thing and multiple Exhaustions. G3 I take my hat off to my opponent; his decisions were next level. He slammed a Teeg T2 and then never attacked with it once despite having an anemic clock for a while, playing around the old Snapcaster ambush, which I was indeed holding in hand.
During the game-deciding turn, he cast a Meddling Mage, with another Mage already on the field naming Exhaustion. Teeg was locking me out of Cryptic. I had a Thing with three counters remaining on it but was facing lethal even with it blocking. My outs to his board were Echoing Truth (one was already in my graveyard, and by this point he knew of my Snapcaster in hand) or Gigadrowse (which was in my hand but he didn’t know about it). If I responded to the Mage with Snap->Truth on some beaters, I could stay alive for a turn, but would then have two draws to find exactly my other Truth to bounce the Teeg and then go off. My other line was to let the Mage resolve, hope he named Truth instead of Gigadrowse, and then Gigadrowse his board down, giving me a better chance to topdeck one of my other three Gigadrowses to stay alive. (I had no other castable instants or sorceries in hand, so either way I wasn’t likely to flip Thing next turn). I went with what I think was the correct line—letting the Mage resolve—and the dude promptly named Gigadrowse. GG WP. There was a solid dozen people watching who witnessed the end of my G2 Thing beats for the win and then the entirety of G3, so it was a pretty epic loss. Opponent was nice and said that he got lucky, but I corrected him: his Mage naming was next level for the entire match, and he earned the win.
I was absolutely exhausted after these six matches, and was more than happy to sign the drop slip at 3-3. Given the combination of a highly unfavorable spread of matchups, six very competent opposing pilots (who took two or perhaps three total mulligans between them), and the somewhat fringe nature of Turns as a deck, I can’t be anything but pleased with how the deck performed for me. Based on this display, I can’t help feeling that I’d have been a very strong contender for Day 2 if I’d run into more Tron/UWx and less Infect/Shadow/Humans. Oh well! Still had a great time, and all things considered I think my belief in the viability of monoU Turns in the current meta has been affirmed.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
GB Golgari Midrange GB YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
what are the best cards against Bant Spirit and 5C Humans?
it's a tough match up and I can not find solutions against these 2 decks
Thanks
What version are you on? Gigadrowse and Exhaustion should be able to get you to the critical turns (4 and 5) and you should be able to go from there. They offer no removal for Dictate, nor an Awakened Land, so you should be in the clear.
As a suggestion, I run 2x Path to Exile mainboard and then the 3 Terminus in my sideboard.. I find that the path work well against humans and spirits.. especially since their clock isn't that quick so you just need spot removal for things that could interrupt winning.
@Grim Falyer
Congrats man on your first Starcity! I totally get what you mean about them being exhausting.. When I went to the one in Massachusetts recently my last match of the day was against Storm and I was just completely drained and made a million misplays lol.
I have another coming up in a week or two, and Im excited!
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
UU"Brute force can sometimes kick down a locked door, but knowledge is a skeleton key"UU
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I’m continuing to put up great results with monoU! Went on an 11-2 run online over the weekend, dropping matches to Burn and Jund. Also came away from my first paper event with a 3-1 record, taking down Burn, Jeskai, and Ponza, while losing to Storm. As long as UWC is the deck to beat, it seems that we’re going to be fairly well positioned.
What are people’s thoughts on Ancestral Vision outside of the As Foretold shell—just as a pure value card?
You sometimes see Control decks run the card as a one-of. Obviously it’s great in your opener, but it’s also a non-symmetrical draw effect that rewards you for taking more turns, and isn’t a dead draw late on as frequently as it is in most other decks. Strange though it may seem, I could even see it in the sideboard for long and grindy matchups (although deciding what to remove for it is another matter).
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
So far it feels really good.. Like I think you beat them by just playing sneaky.. at my LGS it's all control matchups right now and most of my combo wins come from clever plays like remanding my own spells and relying heavily on gigadrowse EOT.. and ancestral visions has been really good with that gameplan
Just as a thought experiment, what kind of printings in new sets would improve the deck? Let’s assume that they aren’t giving us better time walks or Force of Will anytime soon. So aside from the obvious bombs, what would we be in the market for? My first thought is something along the lines of Gigadrowse/Exhaustion/Boomerang, aka cards that aggressively disrupt the opponent at the cost of card disadvantage, which seem to be a category of effects that we leverage uniquely well. It’s hard to say what form such a printing could take, but it would probably have to tax or penalize attacks in some way to supplant existing tech. Well, if nothing else we can probably hope for a Gigadrowse reprint and cheaper foils!
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
in my builds it's entirely replaced howling mine as the non-dictate draw engine.
I'm currently running 3, just because space is tight. If i could run 4 i'd consider it.
Nice, so in your build it’s Ancestral x3, Dictate x4 (I assume), and how many Jace?
I’m still running Mine x2 and haven’t been scared away from it just yet. The thought of playing a third Mine in the side occurred to me; seems fairly subpar, but Vision could be real there. Might just be better off in the main deck though, which is why I wonder about your Jace count and thus your overall number of draw engines.
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
Also, recent change: Ive went up to 4x Exhaustion and love it!.. I think the card is a lot better right now with the decks being played the most
It’s also worth noting that Phantasmal Image is the fourth most played creature in the format right now! Picking up free kills on Images while tapping down their team and/or mana is really great.
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
I will agree that gigadrowse is a lot better but my reasoning behind running 3 to the 4 exhaustion is because there are like two types of deck in the format at the moment:
Option A: Aggro - usually has everything turned sideways anyhow so exhaustion is incredible
Even Mardu sort of fills this role as they are usually spending entire turns casting faithless looting into inquisition into bolt into lingering souls
Option B: Control/Decks that leave up mana - Gigadrowse is better here obviously but once you have them tapped down EOT, being able to consistently chain together exhaustions is better than having to again spend 6-7 mana if you fizzle..It also punishes these decks for trying to advance their win condition in the mid game.. Like usually if Teferi resolves, gigadrowse will not win that game but being able to exhaustion them cuts them off better..
I mean overall this is just something I am experimenting with.. At the moment it has been working a lot better. I find a lot of my matches I win by being able to double spell.. Like exhaustion + dictate or Jace
You make another good point about how Exhaustion acts as a fizzle failsafe after Gigadrowsing a control opponent. I’ve been siding out two copies against these decks, leaving me with only one, and I’m wondering whether I should be leaving in a second...but Commandeer, Negate, and Dispel are all I’m bringing in. Everything else in the deck is good too lol. Tough call!
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
if they have five lands open then gigadrowse costs (5) to repeat a second time... as opposed to doing it once and then chaining exhaustion for (3)
I just really hate playing against Mardu lol.. feels like every time I play someone they just have the perfect hand and draw foolishly perfect
EDIT: Also Grim Flayer, Have you tried devastation tide by any chance, since you are running mono blue? I have been seriously contemplating it as being able to just wipe everything seems like a really good fail safe lol
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
It's funny, I've played two color Taking Turns for so long I often forget that mono blue is its own separate beast almost haha
Not in every matchup (ahem, humans), but take a wider look across the meta and it's got a better base now than it has done for quite a while. Affinity is basically dead and has been replaced by a deck swarming with two-drops. KCI can be remanded just fine. Tron is obviously great.
In fairness my current list isn't running any at all (I'm jamming four Opt instead, with terminus in the sideboard) but if there was ever a time, it's probably now... For about two weeks probably hahaha
It’s basically a snapcaster mage with upside (just not a creature)
Feel like it’s everything we want: card selection, instant speed, a way to recur our spells, low cmc.
Commander: Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim Clerics BW, Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest Voltron RWU
It's interesting, no doubt. The card selection is the main consideration here, as that's the only reason you'd ever run it over the full fat version of snappy.
So as a combo deck that relies on the combat step to win and does occasionally need to block a creature or two to survive, how highly do we value that Surveil 2 over a 2/1 body?
That's a tough question. Notably, this spell can't sit in front of a Jace to protect your engine, and can't be bounced and re-bought with Cryptic. It also doesn't help you shorten your clock when you're swinging in with a 6/6 land by adding an extra two power and it isn't an ambush viper.
But, it does 'dig' a couple of cards deep. Sort of... It doesn't help you dig for dictates or land, but it digs for warps. That's not nothing. In fact that extra dig could and would occasionally win games. The real question is: would you win more games from that slight extra dig than you would lose from not having access to our trusty 2/1 flash blocker or attacker?
I think the answer will be mostly matchup dependant. The metagame will lead us towards a changeable answer. I'm inclined to suggest that the main weakness of the deck is the early game and aggro decks. The late game tends to end in our favour. For that reason alone, the flash blocker is going to be relevant more often than the extra little bit of dig, in terms of games won and lost.
Verdict: close but no cigar. Maybe a budget alternative but let's not kid ourselves, we aren't in the business for strengthening our late-game. We ARE the late-game. Good ol' fashioned snappy ambushes goblin guides all day long and this new spell doesn't. Therefore, it doesn't make the cut.
And honestly the instant speed is irrelevant because 90% of the time it would be cast at sorcery speed similar to snapcaster mage to keep the time warps flowing lol.. I guess you could hypothetically like Mission Briefing a piece of disruption and then surveil into being able to combo the following turn but that is so narrow
Now give me a jumpstart extra turn effect and you may have me interested lol
I ran the exact mono-blue list posted upthread, with a single change: cutting my Boomerang for an Ancestral Vision. I was loathe to drop the Boomerang as it has been a strong performer, but the card shines most against midrange and control where bouncing a land can be backbreaking; and since Vision is probably even better in those matches while giving me a non-symmetrical draw effect, that’s the change I went with.
I didn’t end up taking notes, so what follows will be out of order and perhaps imprecise in places. I faced Infect x2, Humans, 4c Shadow, Ad Nauseam, and Titanshift. Titanshift is a great one for us, but otherwise that is a murderer’s row of matchups that range from unfavorable to horrifyingly bad. Where were all the Tron and UWC players? Sitting on either side of me pretty much every game, that’s where. Not gonna lie, I feel pretty aggrieved as far as the matchup lottery went. That’s part of the game, but as someone who probably won’t make it to another of these for a year at least, I reeeaallllly could have used a spread of opposing archetypes that was less brutal!
That said, the deck performed fantastically given the circumstances. I beat Titanshift—the only match in which I was the firm favorite—and did it in some style. Blind flipped three Miracles in two games, Commandeered a Scapeshift, and eventually won G2 with an Exhaustion that locked him out of paying for his Summoner’s Pact. My poor opponent was just laughing by the end of the match, nothing he could have done differently.
I also took Ad Nauseam’s scalp by the skin of my teeth after three grueling games. Game 3 was especially crazy with plenty of nerve-racking moments, including the casting of an Ad Naus for value. In the end, I got there on the back of 1) knowing the opposing deck very well and 2) Chalice of the Void, which was my MVP of the weekend. My third win of the day came against Infect (!!!), which felt amazing. I’ve heard it said that this is our actual worst matchup, and I took it down at my first major event against an opponent that only mulled once (to 6) and had strong progressions every time. Winning Game 1 here was huge, which I did while at 9 poison counters, eventually taking over with Jace and winning with some Infect damage of my own. Game 2 he killed me T3 through a Remand! Game 3 I resolved a T2 Chalice and played cagily until I found a Thing around T6/7, and then a well-timed Awoken Horror flip put the match to bed.
Even my three losses weren’t so bad considering the nature of the matchups. The first one I’ll mention was 4c Shadow; my opponent was skilled and pleasant (as was everyone else, honestly), and he ended up making top 32. Happy for him, and also happy to have taken G2 off of him. G1 could also have gone my way, really—after stabilizing and untapping with a Dictate in play I bricked for two turns on relevant draws—but that does happen. G3 he just curved out perfectly and stripped away my interaction while I drew time walk after time walk.
My other Infect opponent 2-0ed me. G1 he got me T4 without me really having anything to say about it. G2 I was in what felt like total control around turn 7, with a Dictate down and a handful of interaction, but I missed my land drop and had only Temporal Masteries in hand as far as time walks went. I passed the turn. My options were to Gigadrowse him in his upkeep or to Cryptic during the beginning of combat step. Gigadrowse seemed like the safer and more efficient line—Cryptic gets blown out by double Spell Pierce, and even assuming it resolved I’d have been forced to tap his team and bounce his Inkmoth, which wastes the draw potential of Cryptic. So I went for the Gigadrowse, tapping his Glistener Elf and all five of his lands. Turns out he had Pierce for the copy targeting Elf and then enough gas in hand to make the Elf an 11/11 on the spot (I had taken no poison damage thus far) because Become Immense is a balanced card. Punished. In retrospect, I could have waited to Gigadrowse during the beginning of combat, even though giving him two more draws would have been riskier, because maybe he would have tried to deploy a Blighted Agent or something first to test the waters. Either way I guess I should have left one of his lands open and targeted the Elf twice? I would certainly have tagged it twice if I’d hit my land drop. Feels really unlucky, but then again I’d have been a major dog in the matchup G3 on the draw. Well played by my opponent.
Lastly I’ll touch on the Humans matchup. G1 I had what would have been a nut draw coupled with minimal disruption on his end except for the fact that he found three Vials over the course of the early turns. Needless to say, my Gigadrowses and Exhaustions weren’t able to lock him out, and eventually he drew enough Mages and Freebooters to lock me out! G2 I beat a no-Vial, heavy disruption progression via Thing and multiple Exhaustions. G3 I take my hat off to my opponent; his decisions were next level. He slammed a Teeg T2 and then never attacked with it once despite having an anemic clock for a while, playing around the old Snapcaster ambush, which I was indeed holding in hand.
During the game-deciding turn, he cast a Meddling Mage, with another Mage already on the field naming Exhaustion. Teeg was locking me out of Cryptic. I had a Thing with three counters remaining on it but was facing lethal even with it blocking. My outs to his board were Echoing Truth (one was already in my graveyard, and by this point he knew of my Snapcaster in hand) or Gigadrowse (which was in my hand but he didn’t know about it). If I responded to the Mage with Snap->Truth on some beaters, I could stay alive for a turn, but would then have two draws to find exactly my other Truth to bounce the Teeg and then go off. My other line was to let the Mage resolve, hope he named Truth instead of Gigadrowse, and then Gigadrowse his board down, giving me a better chance to topdeck one of my other three Gigadrowses to stay alive. (I had no other castable instants or sorceries in hand, so either way I wasn’t likely to flip Thing next turn). I went with what I think was the correct line—letting the Mage resolve—and the dude promptly named Gigadrowse. GG WP. There was a solid dozen people watching who witnessed the end of my G2 Thing beats for the win and then the entirety of G3, so it was a pretty epic loss. Opponent was nice and said that he got lucky, but I corrected him: his Mage naming was next level for the entire match, and he earned the win.
I was absolutely exhausted after these six matches, and was more than happy to sign the drop slip at 3-3. Given the combination of a highly unfavorable spread of matchups, six very competent opposing pilots (who took two or perhaps three total mulligans between them), and the somewhat fringe nature of Turns as a deck, I can’t be anything but pleased with how the deck performed for me. Based on this display, I can’t help feeling that I’d have been a very strong contender for Day 2 if I’d run into more Tron/UWx and less Infect/Shadow/Humans. Oh well! Still had a great time, and all things considered I think my belief in the viability of monoU Turns in the current meta has been affirmed.
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
What version are you on? Gigadrowse and Exhaustion should be able to get you to the critical turns (4 and 5) and you should be able to go from there. They offer no removal for Dictate, nor an Awakened Land, so you should be in the clear.
Spirits
Spirits
As a suggestion, I run 2x Path to Exile mainboard and then the 3 Terminus in my sideboard.. I find that the path work well against humans and spirits.. especially since their clock isn't that quick so you just need spot removal for things that could interrupt winning.
@Grim Falyer
Congrats man on your first Starcity! I totally get what you mean about them being exhausting.. When I went to the one in Massachusetts recently my last match of the day was against Storm and I was just completely drained and made a million misplays lol.
I have another coming up in a week or two, and Im excited!