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.
Maybe make room for Search for Azcanta? I'm probably just a tad bit overhyped for this card tbh.
Maybe make room for Search for Azcanta? I'm probably just a tad bit overhyped for this card tbh.
Don't be, this wil be so, so slow for our deck.
I cant help but think..... for two mana I'd rather just Farseek another island into play. I should probably buy some Rites of Flourishing and test the Ug splash I keep thinking about.
And he somehow found space for 4 Opt, 4 Serum Visions, and even a single Sleight of Hand. giving him 9 one-mana cantrips!
He should pretty much always have one on turn 1. And will be able to dig an extra couple of extra cards deeper and faster than most of us are used to (at the expense of his early interaction, mines and lands). It would seem he is leaning heavily on the turbo-xerox rule to fit them in but it looks like it works just fine.
And he somehow found space for 4 Opt, 4 Serum Visions, and even a single Sleight of Hand. giving him 9 one-mana cantrips!
He should pretty much always have one on turn 1. And will be able to dig an extra couple of extra cards deeper and faster than most of us are used to (at the expense of his early interaction, mines and lands). It would seem he is leaning heavily on the turbo-xerox rule to fit them in but it looks like it works just fine.
I don't understand how a deck like this survives the early game against Aggro and Combo while relying solely on 3x total Gigadrowse and 4x Spreading Seas in the 75. This whole thing seems so top heavy I can't help but imagine that this deck will goldfish until Turn 4 when the opponent plays a win with Stubborn Denial backup. I could totally get into reserving half the sideboard for matches with red though.
I love that he's stuffing the deck with cantrips, but this list is low on early interaction. I'd much rather have a third Gigadrowse than the fourth Cryptic, or singleton Sleight of Hand. I also like that his list is 22 lands, with only two of them that can't produce blue. I disagree that Mikokoro is win-more, but I can definitely imagine metas where a pair of Radiant Fountains might do more work than that and, say, a singleton Inkmoth or Gemstone Caverns. However, without Mikokoro and only having five mine effects? Definitely suspect, even with all of the card draw.
His list only has two Part the Waterveil as win cons (with a singleton Lab Maniac in the side), which seems a bit daring. With all of the cantrips, though, it's extremely unlikely you'll ever miss one before it's too late. Still, it seems like there are too few of PtW, just like with Gigadrowse (though there is at least the third copy of Giga in the board). Worst-case, Elixir is there for him to reshuffle as well, I guess. I'd rather not open us up to the graveyard hate for such a middling effect; at least Snapcaster is a better role-player across the board here if you are going to do that.
Speaking of sideboard...wow. No Thing in the Ice, no Chalice, no Hurkyl's. No artifact sweeper, no pitch spells, no Spell Snare. Seven slow life-gaining artifacts, and Lab Maniac. Now of anything, the sideboard is the most open to interpretation, but this is...well, guess I should playtest it before I naysay it.
siding in remand is funny given recent discussions in this thread.
Do you think that the SB Remand is a worthwhile inclusion or a mistake? I'm trying to figure out which way your comment is leaning.
I completely agree with Mikokoro being a necessary card, not win-more as Corbin says. I've had so many times where the additional draw digs to the card you needed as an "out" to keep going.
This list looks terrible. I have to read the article, but this feels like a list by someone who hasn't played the deck a ton.
Edit, after seeing the videos:
Elixir is terrible, siding in remand is funny given recent discussions in this thread. The side board is a train wreck. No mikokoro is also not a good thing, it is definitly not 'win more'.
Honestly, Mikokoro is the reason I have turned many losses into a win. Even at the effective cost of 3mana per turn, when I don't have any other mines in play, Mikokoro is the only thing keeping me in the game and propelling me to the win.
The same can no longer be said for Elixir. Though 3 mana isn't too much for gaining 5 life, I think we can do better. I have no idea what's going on with the sideboard in that deck. Chalice of the Void is too damn important to leave out of the 75. It wins games by itself.
Also, watching through his 4 games, I've noticed that the 9 maindeck, (4 sv, 4 opt, 1 sleight) cantrips let him keep starting hands that don't have any because he will draw into them very soon. Just something to think about with the addition of opt.
It's true that some of these games ended in wins, some ended in losses already, and it's not guaranteed that Mikokoro would have changed that. It's also true that swapping one Fountain for one Mikokoro wouldn't have guaranteed drawing Mikokoro at each of these spots. The point is that Mikokoro is relevant more often than Radiant Fountain is.
Obviously, this list is very different from the common mono U turns deck, (As Foretold + Ancestral Vision + Elixir and no Parts.) but it is interesting that his win condition is milling the opponent via Mikokoro, Geier Reach Sanitarium and AVs, two copies of Elixir keep him going while he does this tedious process.
Obviously, this list is very different from the common mono U turns deck, (As Foretold + Ancestral Vision + Elixir and no Parts.) but it is interesting that his win condition is milling the opponent via Mikokoro, Geier Reach Sanitarium and AVs, two copies of Elixir keep him going while he does this tedious process.
Yeah, that list looks pretty bad from a competitive standpoint. It's very all-in on As Foretold, though the synergy with Savor the Moment along with the usual AV inclusion looks fun. 12 cantrips and 20 lands...damn.
That said, it's interesting how on-the-radar Turns has been in the past few days. I'm glad to see that the general consensus is to include the set of Opt, but none of it really matters if we aren't posting up results with our lists, right? I'm looking very forward to FNM this week to se how we all do.
I guess I'm somewhat off topic when I bring these up but I've always enjoyed scouring through individual sets and singles. A day or two ago the new judge promos were released and this guy is seeing a reprint; Capture of Jingzhou, seems a little off and somewhat late but raises questions.
If we had access to another 5cc turn spell what would we cut and would the deck change dramatically? To make the deck less top heavy and consistent Temporal Mastery seems like the obvious cut but what would that do to the infrastructure of the deck itself?
Would Opt have the same impact in an environment where the standard is 5cc turn spells?
I'm a bit torn about the hype of a newly introduced instant cantrip, which I agree with in this archetype, but doesn't have the same effect without cheap reactive spells and a lower mana curve. For many competitive years playing business spells over spells that find said spell was the correct path to play mathematically.
I guess I'm asking if this would be the card that pushes the deck out of T3 standards into top tier competitiveness. What is the archetype really missing that doesn't draw short lines to pushing the deck to killer instinct?
Shaun McLaren plays Turns (again) with a slightly odd build in this video. the one linked above is the 3rd in the series and it's a 40-minute grind-fest (probably not worth watching the whole thing, but I did). he makes a few misplays &ultimately gets there but i'm not interested in whether or not he wins - what interested me is some of the sequencing! There's lines there with As Foretold that I hadn't even considered, such as using putting the third counter on Foretold and then using it to cast a Dictate in your own upkeep. or just hard-casting dictate in your upkeep but then having an As Foretold available to slam down an Exhaustion or hold up interaction (or just start casting 3-mana turns in the form of savor the moment).
the deck has far more and beneficial lines available to it than I was previously aware of, through the inclusion of As Foretold. With the inclusion of Opt and lowering the curve, you can begin to get more utility out of As Foretold, as well as use it to hold up interaction such as Spell Pierce (which he does at numerous times during the series).
for the record I think the build he's running is... 'wrong'... insofar as it eschews the deck a bit too far away from having any meaningful win condition. That's something very easily remedied however, with the inclusion of a couple Part The Waterveil (or maybe just a couple Thing in the Ice maindeck). Making this change wouldn't really hamper the deck's ability to 'go off', so i'd consider it a fairly straightforward change.
I'd also be much more interested in the virtues of running cards like Remand, Fatal Push or Path to Exile if As Foretold was in the deck - anything that provides meaningful interaction and can be cast very quickly by the enchantment.
oh and Thing in the Ice suddenly looks much better in the deck when you've got 12 cantrips, Foretold as a way to accelerate casting them and CMC-3 time warps available to cast with an As Foretold. oh and of course ancestral vision pairs with Thing very well.
The list he's running is *rough* but I have a feeling that with a few tweaks it can retain 95% of what makes the 'stock' lists good while adding another dimension to it.
there are downsides, of course. I feel like the deck needs a bit more interaction, but not too much. There's a lot to like about this lower-to-the-ground approach.
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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
This list looks terrible. I have to read the article, but this feels like a list by someone who hasn't played the deck a ton.
Edit, after seeing the videos:
Elixir is terrible, siding in remand is funny given recent discussions in this thread. The side board is a train wreck. No mikokoro is also not a good thing, it is definitly not 'win more'.
I agree with this assessment entirely.
Does anyone else find it weird that more often than not, 'pros' writing articles or making video series on fringe decks use really outdated versions very frequently? I found it very noticeable with decks like Elves soon after Collected Company was printed, or Nykthos Green when it had a popular spurt, or Eternal Command, the list just goes on and on. They always seem to play weird older-versions and i'm guessing they haven't looked at places such as these forums to check the latest wisdom. It would only take five or ten minutes of digging, seems like a no-brainer.
then again, is there another big forum online which also has decklists that people go to instead? it's possible that we're an isolated community?
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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
This list looks terrible. I have to read the article, but this feels like a list by someone who hasn't played the deck a ton.
Edit, after seeing the videos:
Elixir is terrible, siding in remand is funny given recent discussions in this thread. The side board is a train wreck. No mikokoro is also not a good thing, it is definitly not 'win more'.
I agree with this assessment entirely.
Does anyone else find it weird that more often than not, 'pros' writing articles or making video series on fringe decks use really outdated versions very frequently? I found it very noticeable with decks like Elves soon after Collected Company was printed, or Nykthos Green when it had a popular spurt, or Eternal Command, the list just goes on and on. They always seem to play weird older-versions and i'm guessing they haven't looked at places such as these forums to check the latest wisdom. It would only take five or ten minutes of digging, seems like a no-brainer.
then again, is there another big forum online which also has decklists that people go to instead? it's possible that we're an isolated community?
I think it's more likely that most "pro" players don't really do adequate research into the list they're playing. There are exceptions, but more often than not it ends up being a poor example of the Archetype as a whole. Which is kind of sad, but just what it is.
oh and Thing in the Ice suddenly looks much better in the deck when you've got 12 cantrips, Foretold as a way to accelerate casting them and CMC-3 time warps available to cast with an As Foretold. oh and of course ancestral vision pairs with Thing very well.
The list he's running is *rough* but I have a feeling that with a few tweaks it can retain 95% of what makes the 'stock' lists good while adding another dimension to it.
there are downsides, of course. I feel like the deck needs a bit more interaction, but not too much. There's a lot to like about this lower-to-the-ground approach.
didnt want to quote the whole post, but agree with LOTS you've said. the fact that this is a different approach to the turns deck (in the early stages of development) shows that there is real potential (obviously) for the deck to be at least T1.5 or better. Things that could have made this version of the deck better could be as simple as a main deck Emrakul to help shuffle without paying; because you're drawing so many cards, discard her to help shuffle instead of paying to activate the elixir.
If this is really something that is going to be pursued, protecting the As Foretold is 100% key. More of the denial spells like Gigadrowse in turns 1-2 so we keep them off spells would be important. It feels like one of the only cards to mess up your day, in this case, would be abrupt decay. I'm sure there are other instant speed cards that would really goof you up, but none that come to mind ATM. Your finisher could be as simple as 1-2 of the new targeted "draw seven" or the trusted PtW (except this gets exiled when you cast it ) Maybe Kefnet the Mindful would work since it's likely we would have 7 cards in hand quite often during the critical turns.
Either way, I'm a bit bummed since I just unloaded my OG foil AV's the other day and would REALLY want to slot them into something like this. Oh well, guess I'll have to go for the new hotness version!
If this is really something that is going to be pursued, protecting the As Foretold is 100% key. More of the denial spells like Gigadrowse in turns 1-2 so we keep them off spells would be important. It feels like one of the only cards to mess up your day, in this case, would be abrupt decay. I'm sure there are other instant speed cards that would really goof you up, but none that come to mind ATM.
If this is really something that is going to be pursued, protecting the As Foretold is 100% key. More of the denial spells like Gigadrowse in turns 1-2 so we keep them off spells would be important. It feels like one of the only cards to mess up your day, in this case, would be abrupt decay. I'm sure there are other instant speed cards that would really goof you up, but none that come to mind ATM.
Those are all solid options, but I think ultimately the key will be building it closely in parallel to the more 'stock' lists but with a different sort of engine to get you going.
Private Mod Note
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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
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Maybe make room for Search for Azcanta? I'm probably just a tad bit overhyped for this card tbh.
I cant help but think..... for two mana I'd rather just Farseek another island into play. I should probably buy some Rites of Flourishing and test the Ug splash I keep thinking about.
Uw Taking Turns
The Bad Moon
Small Mardu Midrange
Big Mardu Midrange
Grixis Waste Not Combo
Bw 8-Rack
Bw Midrange
And he somehow found space for 4 Opt, 4 Serum Visions, and even a single Sleight of Hand. giving him 9 one-mana cantrips!
He should pretty much always have one on turn 1. And will be able to dig an extra couple of extra cards deeper and faster than most of us are used to (at the expense of his early interaction, mines and lands). It would seem he is leaning heavily on the turbo-xerox rule to fit them in but it looks like it works just fine.
Uw Taking Turns
The Bad Moon
Small Mardu Midrange
Big Mardu Midrange
Grixis Waste Not Combo
Bw 8-Rack
Bw Midrange
I don't understand how a deck like this survives the early game against Aggro and Combo while relying solely on 3x total Gigadrowse and 4x Spreading Seas in the 75. This whole thing seems so top heavy I can't help but imagine that this deck will goldfish until Turn 4 when the opponent plays a win with Stubborn Denial backup. I could totally get into reserving half the sideboard for matches with red though.
4 Dictate of Kruphix
1 Elixir of Immortality
2 Exhaustion
2 Gigadrowse
1 Howling Mine
4 Opt
2 Part the Waterveil
4 Serum Visions
1 Sleight of Hand
3 Spreading Seas
4 Temporal Mastery
1 Temporal Trespass
4 Time Warp
1 Walk the Aeons
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
2 Radiant Fountain
3 Dispel
4 Dragon's Claw
1 Gigadrowse
1 Laboratory Maniac
2 Remand
1 Spreading Seas
3 Sun Droplet
I love that he's stuffing the deck with cantrips, but this list is low on early interaction. I'd much rather have a third Gigadrowse than the fourth Cryptic, or singleton Sleight of Hand. I also like that his list is 22 lands, with only two of them that can't produce blue. I disagree that Mikokoro is win-more, but I can definitely imagine metas where a pair of Radiant Fountains might do more work than that and, say, a singleton Inkmoth or Gemstone Caverns. However, without Mikokoro and only having five mine effects? Definitely suspect, even with all of the card draw.
His list only has two Part the Waterveil as win cons (with a singleton Lab Maniac in the side), which seems a bit daring. With all of the cantrips, though, it's extremely unlikely you'll ever miss one before it's too late. Still, it seems like there are too few of PtW, just like with Gigadrowse (though there is at least the third copy of Giga in the board). Worst-case, Elixir is there for him to reshuffle as well, I guess. I'd rather not open us up to the graveyard hate for such a middling effect; at least Snapcaster is a better role-player across the board here if you are going to do that.
Speaking of sideboard...wow. No Thing in the Ice, no Chalice, no Hurkyl's. No artifact sweeper, no pitch spells, no Spell Snare. Seven slow life-gaining artifacts, and Lab Maniac. Now of anything, the sideboard is the most open to interpretation, but this is...well, guess I should playtest it before I naysay it.
I completely agree with Mikokoro being a necessary card, not win-more as Corbin says. I've had so many times where the additional draw digs to the card you needed as an "out" to keep going.
Honestly, Mikokoro is the reason I have turned many losses into a win. Even at the effective cost of 3mana per turn, when I don't have any other mines in play, Mikokoro is the only thing keeping me in the game and propelling me to the win.
The same can no longer be said for Elixir. Though 3 mana isn't too much for gaining 5 life, I think we can do better. I have no idea what's going on with the sideboard in that deck. Chalice of the Void is too damn important to leave out of the 75. It wins games by itself.
Also, watching through his 4 games, I've noticed that the 9 maindeck, (4 sv, 4 opt, 1 sleight) cantrips let him keep starting hands that don't have any because he will draw into them very soon. Just something to think about with the addition of opt.
"Basically digging until we find a Dictate" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sgDIx-ysU&index=2&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=3m26s
"Might as well be still be efficient here and burn our Exhaustion" (or we could have drawn an extra card instead...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sgDIx-ysU&index=2&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=7m46s
"Getting our Dictate countered was kinda rough" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sgDIx-ysU&index=2&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=16m54s
"Man this is rough" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0sgDIx-ysU&index=2&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=17m50s
This one is subtle, but drawing a Mikokoro here could have changed the course of the game whereas the two life from Radiant Fountain was completely irrelevant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGjNumIJGNk&index=3&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=14m40s
"The problem is how little we're doing right now" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idqEE_62F5c&index=5&list=PLxg8UAfS2YJbqq0PDvXsy8j9LVIdJAcEd&t=24m58s
It's true that some of these games ended in wins, some ended in losses already, and it's not guaranteed that Mikokoro would have changed that. It's also true that swapping one Fountain for one Mikokoro wouldn't have guaranteed drawing Mikokoro at each of these spots. The point is that Mikokoro is relevant more often than Radiant Fountain is.
16 Island
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
Spells (40)
2 Elixir of Immortality
4 As Foretold
4 Dictate of Kruphix
1 Cryptic Command
1 Gigadrowse
4 Opt
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Exhaustion
4 Savor the Moment
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Time Warp
2 Dragon's Claw
1 Grafdigger's Cage
4 Thing in the Ice
1 Cryptic Command
3 Dispel
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Spell Pierce
That said, it's interesting how on-the-radar Turns has been in the past few days. I'm glad to see that the general consensus is to include the set of Opt, but none of it really matters if we aren't posting up results with our lists, right? I'm looking very forward to FNM this week to se how we all do.
If we had access to another 5cc turn spell what would we cut and would the deck change dramatically? To make the deck less top heavy and consistent Temporal Mastery seems like the obvious cut but what would that do to the infrastructure of the deck itself?
Would Opt have the same impact in an environment where the standard is 5cc turn spells?
I'm a bit torn about the hype of a newly introduced instant cantrip, which I agree with in this archetype, but doesn't have the same effect without cheap reactive spells and a lower mana curve. For many competitive years playing business spells over spells that find said spell was the correct path to play mathematically.
I guess I'm asking if this would be the card that pushes the deck out of T3 standards into top tier competitiveness. What is the archetype really missing that doesn't draw short lines to pushing the deck to killer instinct?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmvowWaBd50
Shaun McLaren plays Turns (again) with a slightly odd build in this video. the one linked above is the 3rd in the series and it's a 40-minute grind-fest (probably not worth watching the whole thing, but I did). he makes a few misplays &ultimately gets there but i'm not interested in whether or not he wins - what interested me is some of the sequencing! There's lines there with As Foretold that I hadn't even considered, such as using putting the third counter on Foretold and then using it to cast a Dictate in your own upkeep. or just hard-casting dictate in your upkeep but then having an As Foretold available to slam down an Exhaustion or hold up interaction (or just start casting 3-mana turns in the form of savor the moment).
the deck has far more and beneficial lines available to it than I was previously aware of, through the inclusion of As Foretold. With the inclusion of Opt and lowering the curve, you can begin to get more utility out of As Foretold, as well as use it to hold up interaction such as Spell Pierce (which he does at numerous times during the series).
for the record I think the build he's running is... 'wrong'... insofar as it eschews the deck a bit too far away from having any meaningful win condition. That's something very easily remedied however, with the inclusion of a couple Part The Waterveil (or maybe just a couple Thing in the Ice maindeck). Making this change wouldn't really hamper the deck's ability to 'go off', so i'd consider it a fairly straightforward change.
I'd also be much more interested in the virtues of running cards like Remand, Fatal Push or Path to Exile if As Foretold was in the deck - anything that provides meaningful interaction and can be cast very quickly by the enchantment.
oh and Thing in the Ice suddenly looks much better in the deck when you've got 12 cantrips, Foretold as a way to accelerate casting them and CMC-3 time warps available to cast with an As Foretold. oh and of course ancestral vision pairs with Thing very well.
The list he's running is *rough* but I have a feeling that with a few tweaks it can retain 95% of what makes the 'stock' lists good while adding another dimension to it.
there are downsides, of course. I feel like the deck needs a bit more interaction, but not too much. There's a lot to like about this lower-to-the-ground approach.
I agree with this assessment entirely.
Does anyone else find it weird that more often than not, 'pros' writing articles or making video series on fringe decks use really outdated versions very frequently? I found it very noticeable with decks like Elves soon after Collected Company was printed, or Nykthos Green when it had a popular spurt, or Eternal Command, the list just goes on and on. They always seem to play weird older-versions and i'm guessing they haven't looked at places such as these forums to check the latest wisdom. It would only take five or ten minutes of digging, seems like a no-brainer.
then again, is there another big forum online which also has decklists that people go to instead? it's possible that we're an isolated community?
I think it's more likely that most "pro" players don't really do adequate research into the list they're playing. There are exceptions, but more often than not it ends up being a poor example of the Archetype as a whole. Which is kind of sad, but just what it is.
If this is really something that is going to be pursued, protecting the As Foretold is 100% key. More of the denial spells like Gigadrowse in turns 1-2 so we keep them off spells would be important. It feels like one of the only cards to mess up your day, in this case, would be abrupt decay. I'm sure there are other instant speed cards that would really goof you up, but none that come to mind ATM. Your finisher could be as simple as 1-2 of the new targeted "draw seven" or the trusted PtW (except this gets exiled when you cast it
Either way, I'm a bit bummed since I just unloaded my OG foil AV's the other day and would REALLY want to slot them into something like this. Oh well, guess I'll have to go for the new hotness version!
Greater Auramancy would protect As Foretold & Dictate of Kruphix from Abrupt Decay and the like. If you're playing things like Runed Halo you could also benefit from Greater Auramancy - just something to think about with the Foretold Turns style deck.
Those are all solid options, but I think ultimately the key will be building it closely in parallel to the more 'stock' lists but with a different sort of engine to get you going.