I'm pretty sure that Notion Thief is the worst offender vs Jace. It's probably also one of the best sideboard cards against our deck. Jace's Defeat is just a bad Negate or Disdainful Stroke (they can hit Karn and Scapeshift).
I was not aware that a card such as Invasive Surgery existed. It is really good, specially with Search for Azcanta builds.
That being said, I'm not very worried about mostly blue decks. I think we are favored against them, at least g1 because they have a lot of dead cards. They are the beatdown and they're not very good beatdown decks.
G2-3 is a different beast. There's the gamble of bringing Thing in the Ice, as they're pretty much siding out Wraths.
I think Ancestral Vision builds of Turns will be more successful if the metagame is full of discard spells and these miracles decks, because of the inevitability of winning the card draw battle. You have the better lategame than them. It's actually worse if they just try to aggro you out instead of grinding. That being said, BBE into Kolaghan's Command is still a backbreaker.
On the topic of Leylines: I hate them. Whenever I side them in and have a decent hand I feel the pressure to mulligan to look out for one. And if I keep, I always have the impression of topdecking one in the worst possible time. I just don't like the extra stress and variance they add to your games and I will always advise against it.
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Why don't you come and contribute making the best Abzan deck in modern? Abzan Liege
1. I'm pretty sure that Notion Thief is the worst offender vs Jace.
2. That being said, I'm not very worried about mostly blue decks.
3a. I think Ancestral Vision builds of Turns will be more successful if the metagame is full of discard spells..
3b. That being said, BBE into Kolaghan's Command is still a backbreaker.
4. On the topic of Leylines: I hate them.
1. Total agree. Notion Thief is going to pop up now because it's good vs the brainstorm effect from Jace along with the cascaded/or free cast AV, along with other card draw spells or engines.
2. You're right about that. Our normal match up vs a U control deck is pretty solid, except when it's got low CMC creatures like Death's Shadow or Tasigur.
3a. Again, you're totally correct about this. A turn 1 suspended AV, or even a turn 4+ will really help to keep us ahead in the card advantage game. Or it will be a good target for their discard spell. If they IoK or Thoughtseize you on the play turn 1 and see AV and Dictate or SV, I feel like they'd take the AV. Maybe I'm wrong.
3b. BBE is going to be pretty solid against us. Seeing more K-Commands will likely make me drop Howling Mine entirely now. It still makes us discard a card and probably shocks us (since we've been unlikely to get a creature in their yard.)
4. Was simply a question. Maybe the W splash could get away with playing 2-3 Sanctity main, but mono U and the UB versions are unlikely to want them main.
Watching Saffron Olive play the UW Miracles deck on the Team Modern Super League stream last night and go 3-0 vs Lantern, Burn and G-Tron made me really consider slotting Remand back in somewhere. The tempo it can provide is insane and maybe I'm just bitter because it never seemed to work well for me in the past (very results oriented thinking (ROTy)).
So in a world where we start seeing more jund (even a slight increase) I think I may put some more stock in ancestral vision.
I was only running 1x holding mine anyway (figured 2x Jace was as good as the second mine) and I can squeeze down on a couple of other spells in order to get a playset of vision in there.
Let's see how it goes
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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
Got to try Jace in a fairly stock shell Tuesday night and it didn't disappoint. Had a go against bogles and crushed it. The turning point was Jace + exhaustion and then from there i was near 100% to win.
However, with the inclusion of Jace in the deck I'm more inclined to dip into red as the splash colour. I feel like having access to bolt and snapcaster is great against all the aggro weenie decks which will try to go under the new midrangey format. Out of the board I'm thinking a couple of pyroclasm wouldn't go amiss either. A quick way to turn-2 stonewall an aggro deck is something we've been missing until now, and of course forces your opponent to commit more to the board and give you additional value from exhaustion.
Stony silence (my main reason for being in white) wasn't mainly there for Tron. It was for affinity and lantern. Now lantern's officially dead I think I can adopt more general cards to hit affinity.
Izzet staticaster is great. Counterflux is slow but a hard 'nope' against decks like ad nauseam and storm which have always been tricky for us. Crumble to dust, keranos (!!), kozilek's return, electrolyze, madcap experiment/emperion. these are all good cards which would fit well within a turns shell, out of the sideboard.
I'll need a day or two to collect my thoughts and present a list.
I'm pretty convinced at this point though that red solves a lot of the problems (I.e. Very fast aggro decks) which we've had up until now. As good as collective brutality is against burn, it's a very narrow card to put all your hopes and dreams on.
Oh and for sure, ancestral vision is looking better all the time. Especially if we have more decks packing bloodbraid and midrange Jace nonsense happening around us.
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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
How close is Ghostly Prison too finding slots in the main in UW Turns? I used them on modo while Exhaustion was bugged and found them staying in most games, against aggro it slows them down and against control it forces them to be spending their mana to put a clock on us, which is even more relevant if they are trying to win with man-lands like Celestial Colonnade.
Now that Jace, the Mind Sculptor provides a new win condition for blue decks I don't know if it will hold up as well but it does do work against a Bloodbraid Elf on four.
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Modern
Yes, I am that guy.
Yes, I have had my nose broken before.
This list is the same sort of thing that I'm playing. I went down 1 mine and 2 search for azcanta for 2 Jace and 1 snapcaster.
Plus I'm running some lands to splash a second colour and a couple of coloured spells in the side, but overall it's very similar & I agree with a lot of the choices 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
Some odd card choices justifications: a.Day's Undoing:
I was playing without this card before. Since I'm playing only 8 walks and 2 wincons, there were games that I would be running out of cards and turns. Between this and Elixir of Immortality, I rather pay 3 mana and draw 7, instead of gaining 5 life.
b. Miser's Living End:
Boy, if there's one card that makes me smile in this list is the one-of Living End. Great idea from someone here in the thread. It generally acts as a sweeper, but there's a hidden mode for this deck: if you have a Snapcaster Mage in the graveyard, this reads as: wrath your board, Time Warp from the graveyard for 0 mana. This was surprisingly relevant a lot of games.
Other As Foretold lists run a fourth Wheel of Fate
c. 4 Field of Ruin, no other nonbasics:
I'm starting to think that 4 FoR is a little bit too much, but boy do I love them. Maybe I'll go to 3 and add Oboro or Minamo. Maybe something that is not an Island to avoid getting Choke'd out.
d.2 Exhausts, 3 Gigadrowse:
Most As Foretold lists run 4 of both of those and no Snapcaster. I just balanced the numbers because I think running 2 Snappies is the perfect number for this deck. I might run 3 Exhaust/2 Gigadrowse, depending on the meta. Currently I'm expecting more control decks, so more drowses.
e.Notion Thief on the SB:
This cards actually read: 2UB, win the game versus tap-out for Jace, so it's pretty good in the meta. It also wrecks Ancestral Vision matchups and is simply great vs any kind of draw-go deck.
The rest of the sideboard is kind of all over the place.
Enhancements to be done:
1. Mana base should have at least one Watery Grave. This is because with the current manabase I can't Thoughtseize turn 1 from the sideboard.
2. Elixir of Immortality should be Collective Brutality.
3. There should be at least 2 Brutalities between sideboard and mainboard. Card's really good.
4. This can be splashed for white to run great hate cards like Stony Silence and Aven Mindcensor, but I want to play Notion Thief for a while.
It's funny you posted this because I saw on twitter a few hours back that @Truckis123 (convo snap attached) ran the deck I posted at the top of page 68 and said "Turns turned out fantastic with Jace." I inquired as to the As Foretold's replacing dictate and the lack of gigadrowse to which he responded:
"dictate is a valid option but I like the utility from As Foretold. Tolaria west for living end is bonkers. Gigadrowse is not really needed. It's card-advantage and just a fog most of the time. You don't have to tap out blue to go off with this build."
My response to this, and a question I pose to you as well is: is the primary win-con now Jace? Removing PtW and only having 2x snappy seems highly risky against cards like Surgical Extraction or Pithing Needle/Sorcerous Spyglass. Maybe it's just that controlling that you're not worried about these cards?
I'm really liking the inclusion of 3-4 Field of Ruin (although I missed the boat on cheap(er) foils) to take care of the random creature lands, tron lands and other splash duals.
Edit: Seeing as it's been mentioned exactly 1 time, almost exactly 1 year ago to the day (Feb 16, 2017 @ 8:00am CST), what do we think about Mindbreak Trap in the board vs storm, Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand and others?
Edit 2: @Truckis123 responded to my question about Jace being the only win-con and whether it would be good to include some number of PtW; he said:
"Nope, I don't need another type of wincon, but I did add a third snapcaster now to be more aggressive "
Basically, you can win if you're facing permanent-based answers to Jace, the Mind Sculptor, because you can just bounce them and proceed to go off. You will see most of the cards in your deck anyway. However, I'm very much afraid of Surgical Extraction. Maybe the answer to it is having extra wincons on the sideboard: Thing in the Ice and Laboratory Maniac come to mind. The only win-con is Jace. Well, maybe hitting with Snapcaster is possible, but I find it difficult.
I've received the suggestion of running Chalice of the Void for the Burn matchup. The good part about Chalice is that it hits Surgical Extraction, so maybe that's the direction I'm taking. Maybe I should include one Part the Waterveil, but so far so good.
About why running Day's Undoing and Wheel of Fate is because they have different applications. I use Wheel whenever I need to dig deep and find a Time Warp. I use it preemptively so I can continue comboing-off. Day's Undoing is actually the opposite: I only use it after I have already cast a Time Walk in the turn. Day's Undoing ensures that I can reuse any effect I already did in the deck and guarantees I can outgrind any resources my opponent presents. Milled both Jaces? Ok, now I have another library with 2 of them. I need to bounce something but already used my Cryptics? Day's Undoing is the answer.
Day's Undoing covers the Elixir of Immortality bit of the deck. The upside is that it draws 7 as well while it does it. I guess it's more important because I'm not running Mine effects.
VS Storm (and Burn), Chalice of the Void is king.
VS Grishoal and Ad Nauseam, I think running more permission is ok. They are not in a position to simply tapout versus us, so games take a little longer. Maybe they are favored against us, but I'm ok with that. They're not big % of the meta decks, imo.
Maybe my pet Gigadrowses have to go, but I like the 3/2 split with Exhaustion so far. Will post it after I learn a bit more about other matchups.
OK so larger post incoming. I'm writing this over breakfast.
Caveat to what I'm about to write is that it's primarily a consideration for the stock or small-splash builds of the deck which aren't trying to do anything weird or cute.
I'm going to compare the following:
The 'cheaty' version
4x as foretold
4x ancestral vision
With
The 'dictate' version
4x dictate of kruphix
3x howling mine
1)
The dictate option has a smaller footprint in the deck and every card in the package does functionally the same thing. Completely redundant in that sense.
Conversely the cheaty package has a larger footprint and faces the issue of requiring both pieces at the same time. It's possible to draw one, not the other or just draw them in the wrong order. As we'd only be running 4 of our actual card draw spell it's feasible that some games you'd just never see it.
- Dictate wins on this front.
2) once a mine effect is on the field you get persistent card draw while digging through your deck and taking extra turns. Every turn taken draws you into more additional gas.
Conversely with the cheaty package you only get to draw additional cards when you luck into one of your 4 visions. This means many situations will arise where you are taking turns blind, drawing only a single card at a time and hoping that the top card of your deck is an ancestral vision otherwise you lose. Frankly this is the worst aspect of running the As Foretold engine. You are completely reliant on topdecking an ancestral vision and have no other means of card velocity apart from a couple of cantrips.
- Dictate wins this aspect
3) dictate can be flashed in, getting around various forms of interaction such as discard.
Conversely, if your opponent casts an inquisition of kozilek and you're holding either a vision or a foretold (waiting for the other half and casting your interaction in the early turns) your draw engine is gonna get wrecked.
4) you're incentivised to wait on casting as foretold because it does literally nothing by itself.
To be honest, there's no good reason to drop dictate from the deck. Running as foretold *instead* is just bad deckbuilding.
However, there's a world where you could fit the two packages together. I've seen it before. It's not great but it's a semi-reasonable experiment at the very least.
Moreover, I really like the idea of dictate + ancestral vision, dropping the gimmick of as foretold altogether and just utilising raw draw power and the strongest parts of both engines. Get your cake and eat it.
So yeah. Friends don't let friends drop dictate for foretold.
(also running jace alongside the dictate version, with every Jace replacing 0.5 of a howling mine is definitely the more synergistic route to take).
And finally I feel like there's a potential mixed hybrid list between the as foretold living end deck and the turns deck somewhere to be found. Dropping cantrips for cycling creatures is a simple swap, being able to wipe the board and cast Jace on the same turn is a big game. A build like that would probably shave on turn spells down to perhaps 8. Who knows. There's potential there for an intrepid deckbuilder haha. Probably wouldn't quite work though, the turns package itself has a huge deck footprint and would muscle out everything else. Plus the part the waterveil/Jace combo of wincons is just too clean. Going any other route would be cuteness for the sake of cuteness.
I believe your analysis is biased, or, to a lack of a proper word, shallow. The arguments you gave seem heavily influenced by the fact that you have a wrong understanding on how As Foretold version works, and I'll prove it along this post:
It's possible to draw one, not the other or just draw them in the wrong order. As we'd only be running 4 of our actual card draw spell it's feasible that some games you'd just never see it.
This statement is wrong in several aspects: a. You forgot the fact that Ancestral Vision can be suspended on turn 1 and you draw three on turn 4. It is way better than Serum Visions, even if you do have an As Foretold in hand. Almost nothing beats a turn 1 Ancestral Visions. You don't need both together to play both cards.
once a mine effect is on the field you get persistent card draw while digging through your deck and taking extra turns. Every turn taken draws you into more additional gas.
You generally don't stop taking turns with As Foretold once you start taking them. I would say that the upside is that your opponent doesn't get cards as well, but most lists run at least 1 Day's Undoing and some number of Wheel of Fate.
his means many situations will arise where you are taking turns blind, drawing only a single card at a time and hoping that the top card of your deck is an ancestral vision otherwise you lose. Frankly this is the worst aspect of running the As Foretold engine. You are completely reliant on topdecking an ancestral vision and have no other means of card velocity apart from a couple of cantrips.
Like I said before, you're not reliant on topdecking Ancestral Vision because you can play it turn one and you can tutor for it. @Truckis123 lists runs a total os 8 cantrips to add redundancy and it's the direction I'm leaning as well. The deck is very consistent just for you. Your opponent does not draw stuff along the ride.
"A couple of cantrips" statement is very misleading.
3) dictate can be flashed in, getting around various forms of interaction such as discard.
Like turn 1, 2 or 3 (on the draw) Inquisition of Kozilek?
My opponents don't get to turn 3/4 discard me and live.
Conversely, if your opponent casts an inquisition of kozilek and you're holding either a vision or a foretold (waiting for the other half and casting your interaction in the early turns) your draw engine is gonna get wrecked.
I believe I already proven that you don't need to wait to have both pieces out to play one of the cards, but I made the case only for Ancestral Vision. Now I will make the case for As Foretold. As Foretold is:
1. An incremental ramp spell.
This cannot be understated. Once As Foretold hits the ground, you're at the best ramping 2 mana per turn, and at least ramping 1.
This is because you can cast a spell with As Foretoldeach turn. It includes your opponents. This means I can flash a Snapcaster Mage on their turn when it is at 2, play Cryptic Command on 4, etc.
Having an As Foretold guarantees you win the resource war lategame. It gives you inevitability. I would argue that only Tron has a better lategame than that. This gets really broken once you start taking extra turns.
One of the issues with Dictate of Kruphix versions is that you take some time to go off. This is because you need to either luck out a Miracle'd Temporal Mastery so you can develop your resources to add more Mine effects, or you have to string 2-3 Time Warps AND land drops so you can play stuff beyond the Walks. Having one As Foretold in the field means you completely ignore the "must have Time Warp or Miracle to develop". You can play more than one spell per turn from the get-go.
So, in comparison, you need Dictate +2-3 Time Warps +lands from the top vs As Foretold +Time Warp and/or Ancestral Vision.
The other aspect of this is, well, I have felt that wins with As Foretold are that much faster. This is relevant if you are playing a big tournament like a GP.
2. An [Unrestricted Vintage Mode] enabler.
That's the part that most people cling to, as you did. This turns Ancestral Vision into sorcery speed free Ancestral Recall, Wheel of Fate into free Wheel of Fortune and Living End into free Living Death. That's some crazy upside and it lets you win matches out of nowhere. That's the crazy bonkers part, put the first one is relevant.
This cannot be understated. There's no game that keeps going once you resolve one or two Ancestral Recall. You could say that you add a secondary win-condition of burying the opponent in card advantage. Try to win a game versus a monoblue deck that draws 6 cards more than you over the course of four turns.
You don't have Time Warp to keep going? No problem. I still have all these goodies in hand.
4) you're incentivised to wait on casting as foretold because it does literally nothing by itself.
Wrong by the statements above.
To be honest, there's no good reason to drop dictate from the deck. Running as foretold *instead* is just bad deckbuilding.
Or... just a very biased opinion
I understand that you want to justify why you play Dictate of Kruphix build, but you shouldn't try to trash the other build if you don't understand how it plays out. The impression that you gave me is that you haven't played enough games with the As Foretold version, or maybe that you played it with the same mindset of Dictate build.
They're completely different beasts and, while winning mostly the same way, they play very different. I recommend you give it a try with or watch someone experienced with the deck play it.
Oh, that's actually a good idea. Once I set the sideboard I think I'll upload some videos with commentary on how to play the As Foretold version.
I played truckis old deck a lot before and really like wheel of fate, ancestral and now with the new splash of 1 living end. So I took some inspiration from truckis new list and the old and built this below! Been a blast to play, love Chandra and Jace together! Both on the field are bonkers
Unsure of sideboard but I figure it out along as I play with it
I was not aware that a card such as Invasive Surgery existed. It is really good, specially with Search for Azcanta builds.
That being said, I'm not very worried about mostly blue decks. I think we are favored against them, at least g1 because they have a lot of dead cards. They are the beatdown and they're not very good beatdown decks.
G2-3 is a different beast. There's the gamble of bringing Thing in the Ice, as they're pretty much siding out Wraths.
I think Ancestral Vision builds of Turns will be more successful if the metagame is full of discard spells and these miracles decks, because of the inevitability of winning the card draw battle. You have the better lategame than them. It's actually worse if they just try to aggro you out instead of grinding. That being said, BBE into Kolaghan's Command is still a backbreaker.
On the topic of Leylines: I hate them. Whenever I side them in and have a decent hand I feel the pressure to mulligan to look out for one. And if I keep, I always have the impression of topdecking one in the worst possible time. I just don't like the extra stress and variance they add to your games and I will always advise against it.
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
2. You're right about that. Our normal match up vs a U control deck is pretty solid, except when it's got low CMC creatures like Death's Shadow or Tasigur.
3a. Again, you're totally correct about this. A turn 1 suspended AV, or even a turn 4+ will really help to keep us ahead in the card advantage game. Or it will be a good target for their discard spell. If they IoK or Thoughtseize you on the play turn 1 and see AV and Dictate or SV, I feel like they'd take the AV. Maybe I'm wrong.
3b. BBE is going to be pretty solid against us. Seeing more K-Commands will likely make me drop Howling Mine entirely now. It still makes us discard a card and probably shocks us (since we've been unlikely to get a creature in their yard.)
4. Was simply a question. Maybe the W splash could get away with playing 2-3 Sanctity main, but mono U and the UB versions are unlikely to want them main.
Watching Saffron Olive play the UW Miracles deck on the Team Modern Super League stream last night and go 3-0 vs Lantern, Burn and G-Tron made me really consider slotting Remand back in somewhere. The tempo it can provide is insane and maybe I'm just bitter because it never seemed to work well for me in the past (very results oriented thinking (ROTy)).
Spirits
Spirits
I'm still on the same Turns set I've been on since forever.
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
2 Part the Waterveil
1 Temporal Trespass
Then number of games that Trespass has stolen for me are meaningful.
Spirits
I was only running 1x holding mine anyway (figured 2x Jace was as good as the second mine) and I can squeeze down on a couple of other spells in order to get a playset of vision in there.
Let's see how it goes
Spirits
However, with the inclusion of Jace in the deck I'm more inclined to dip into red as the splash colour. I feel like having access to bolt and snapcaster is great against all the aggro weenie decks which will try to go under the new midrangey format. Out of the board I'm thinking a couple of pyroclasm wouldn't go amiss either. A quick way to turn-2 stonewall an aggro deck is something we've been missing until now, and of course forces your opponent to commit more to the board and give you additional value from exhaustion.
Stony silence (my main reason for being in white) wasn't mainly there for Tron. It was for affinity and lantern. Now lantern's officially dead I think I can adopt more general cards to hit affinity.
Izzet staticaster is great. Counterflux is slow but a hard 'nope' against decks like ad nauseam and storm which have always been tricky for us. Crumble to dust, keranos (!!), kozilek's return, electrolyze, madcap experiment/emperion. these are all good cards which would fit well within a turns shell, out of the sideboard.
I'll need a day or two to collect my thoughts and present a list.
I'm pretty convinced at this point though that red solves a lot of the problems (I.e. Very fast aggro decks) which we've had up until now. As good as collective brutality is against burn, it's a very narrow card to put all your hopes and dreams on.
Oh and for sure, ancestral vision is looking better all the time. Especially if we have more decks packing bloodbraid and midrange Jace nonsense happening around us.
Now that Jace, the Mind Sculptor provides a new win condition for blue decks I don't know if it will hold up as well but it does do work against a Bloodbraid Elf on four.
Yes, I am that guy.
Yes, I have had my nose broken before.
This list is the same sort of thing that I'm playing. I went down 1 mine and 2 search for azcanta for 2 Jace and 1 snapcaster.
Plus I'm running some lands to splash a second colour and a couple of coloured spells in the side, but overall it's very similar & I agree with a lot of the choices there.
4 Field of Ruin
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
2 Sunken Hollow
2 Tolaria West
1 Snow-Covered Island
4 Ancestral Vision
3 Wheel of Fate
1 Living End
4 Serum Visions
3 Gigadrowse
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 As Foretold
2 Exhaustion
2 Day's Undoing
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Cryptic Command
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
2 Notion Thief
2 Thoughtseize
2 Thing in the Ice
2 Dispel
1 Negate
1 Echoing Truth
1 Cryptic Command
1 Elixir of Immortality
Some odd card choices justifications:
a. Day's Undoing:
I was playing without this card before. Since I'm playing only 8 walks and 2 wincons, there were games that I would be running out of cards and turns. Between this and Elixir of Immortality, I rather pay 3 mana and draw 7, instead of gaining 5 life.
b. Miser's Living End:
Boy, if there's one card that makes me smile in this list is the one-of Living End. Great idea from someone here in the thread. It generally acts as a sweeper, but there's a hidden mode for this deck: if you have a Snapcaster Mage in the graveyard, this reads as: wrath your board, Time Warp from the graveyard for 0 mana. This was surprisingly relevant a lot of games.
Other As Foretold lists run a fourth Wheel of Fate
c. 4 Field of Ruin, no other nonbasics:
I'm starting to think that 4 FoR is a little bit too much, but boy do I love them. Maybe I'll go to 3 and add Oboro or Minamo. Maybe something that is not an Island to avoid getting Choke'd out.
d.2 Exhausts, 3 Gigadrowse:
Most As Foretold lists run 4 of both of those and no Snapcaster. I just balanced the numbers because I think running 2 Snappies is the perfect number for this deck. I might run 3 Exhaust/2 Gigadrowse, depending on the meta. Currently I'm expecting more control decks, so more drowses.
e. Notion Thief on the SB:
This cards actually read: 2UB, win the game versus tap-out for Jace, so it's pretty good in the meta. It also wrecks Ancestral Vision matchups and is simply great vs any kind of draw-go deck.
The rest of the sideboard is kind of all over the place.
f. As Foretold package instead of Dictate of Kruphix:
I was playing Living End before this and just fell in love with unrestricted Ancestral Recall. This deck brings a ton of other unrestricted Power, like Time Walk and Timetwister. I just don't like playing fair magic.
Enhancements to be done:
1. Mana base should have at least one Watery Grave. This is because with the current manabase I can't Thoughtseize turn 1 from the sideboard.
2. Elixir of Immortality should be Collective Brutality.
3. There should be at least 2 Brutalities between sideboard and mainboard. Card's really good.
4. This can be splashed for white to run great hate cards like Stony Silence and Aven Mindcensor, but I want to play Notion Thief for a while.
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
"dictate is a valid option but I like the utility from As Foretold. Tolaria west for living end is bonkers. Gigadrowse is not really needed. It's card-advantage and just a fog most of the time. You don't have to tap out blue to go off with this build."
My response to this, and a question I pose to you as well is: is the primary win-con now Jace? Removing PtW and only having 2x snappy seems highly risky against cards like Surgical Extraction or Pithing Needle/Sorcerous Spyglass. Maybe it's just that controlling that you're not worried about these cards?
I'm really liking the inclusion of 3-4 Field of Ruin (although I missed the boat on cheap(er) foils) to take care of the random creature lands, tron lands and other splash duals.
Why do you run both Day's Undoing AND Wheel of Fate? Feels like you really only need one-or-the-other.
Edit: Seeing as it's been mentioned exactly 1 time, almost exactly 1 year ago to the day (Feb 16, 2017 @ 8:00am CST), what do we think about Mindbreak Trap in the board vs storm, Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand and others?
Edit 2: @Truckis123 responded to my question about Jace being the only win-con and whether it would be good to include some number of PtW; he said:
"Nope, I don't need another type of wincon, but I did add a third snapcaster now to be more aggressive
I've received the suggestion of running Chalice of the Void for the Burn matchup. The good part about Chalice is that it hits Surgical Extraction, so maybe that's the direction I'm taking. Maybe I should include one Part the Waterveil, but so far so good.
About why running Day's Undoing and Wheel of Fate is because they have different applications. I use Wheel whenever I need to dig deep and find a Time Warp. I use it preemptively so I can continue comboing-off. Day's Undoing is actually the opposite: I only use it after I have already cast a Time Walk in the turn. Day's Undoing ensures that I can reuse any effect I already did in the deck and guarantees I can outgrind any resources my opponent presents. Milled both Jaces? Ok, now I have another library with 2 of them. I need to bounce something but already used my Cryptics? Day's Undoing is the answer.
Day's Undoing covers the Elixir of Immortality bit of the deck. The upside is that it draws 7 as well while it does it. I guess it's more important because I'm not running Mine effects.
VS Storm (and Burn), Chalice of the Void is king.
VS Grishoal and Ad Nauseam, I think running more permission is ok. They are not in a position to simply tapout versus us, so games take a little longer. Maybe they are favored against us, but I'm ok with that. They're not big % of the meta decks, imo.
Maybe my pet Gigadrowses have to go, but I like the 3/2 split with Exhaustion so far. Will post it after I learn a bit more about other matchups.
EDIT: Chalice of the Void is so boss that maybe cutting every 1 mana spell in the deck and adding Chalice of the Void and Simian Spirit Guide in the maindeck is an option. (This one is for the crazy idea notebook)
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
Night y'all
Will try as a one of, just to see where this leads to
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
a lotus bloom/as foretold version sounds pretty spicy.
Caveat to what I'm about to write is that it's primarily a consideration for the stock or small-splash builds of the deck which aren't trying to do anything weird or cute.
I'm going to compare the following:
The 'cheaty' version
4x as foretold
4x ancestral vision
With
The 'dictate' version
4x dictate of kruphix
3x howling mine
1)
The dictate option has a smaller footprint in the deck and every card in the package does functionally the same thing. Completely redundant in that sense.
Conversely the cheaty package has a larger footprint and faces the issue of requiring both pieces at the same time. It's possible to draw one, not the other or just draw them in the wrong order. As we'd only be running 4 of our actual card draw spell it's feasible that some games you'd just never see it.
- Dictate wins on this front.
2) once a mine effect is on the field you get persistent card draw while digging through your deck and taking extra turns. Every turn taken draws you into more additional gas.
Conversely with the cheaty package you only get to draw additional cards when you luck into one of your 4 visions. This means many situations will arise where you are taking turns blind, drawing only a single card at a time and hoping that the top card of your deck is an ancestral vision otherwise you lose. Frankly this is the worst aspect of running the As Foretold engine. You are completely reliant on topdecking an ancestral vision and have no other means of card velocity apart from a couple of cantrips.
- Dictate wins this aspect
3) dictate can be flashed in, getting around various forms of interaction such as discard.
Conversely, if your opponent casts an inquisition of kozilek and you're holding either a vision or a foretold (waiting for the other half and casting your interaction in the early turns) your draw engine is gonna get wrecked.
4) you're incentivised to wait on casting as foretold because it does literally nothing by itself.
To be honest, there's no good reason to drop dictate from the deck. Running as foretold *instead* is just bad deckbuilding.
However, there's a world where you could fit the two packages together. I've seen it before. It's not great but it's a semi-reasonable experiment at the very least.
Moreover, I really like the idea of dictate + ancestral vision, dropping the gimmick of as foretold altogether and just utilising raw draw power and the strongest parts of both engines. Get your cake and eat it.
So yeah. Friends don't let friends drop dictate for foretold.
(also running jace alongside the dictate version, with every Jace replacing 0.5 of a howling mine is definitely the more synergistic route to take).
And finally I feel like there's a potential mixed hybrid list between the as foretold living end deck and the turns deck somewhere to be found. Dropping cantrips for cycling creatures is a simple swap, being able to wipe the board and cast Jace on the same turn is a big game. A build like that would probably shave on turn spells down to perhaps 8. Who knows. There's potential there for an intrepid deckbuilder haha. Probably wouldn't quite work though, the turns package itself has a huge deck footprint and would muscle out everything else. Plus the part the waterveil/Jace combo of wincons is just too clean. Going any other route would be cuteness for the sake of cuteness.
This statement is wrong in several aspects:
a. You forgot the fact that Ancestral Vision can be suspended on turn 1 and you draw three on turn 4. It is way better than Serum Visions, even if you do have an As Foretold in hand. Almost nothing beats a turn 1 Ancestral Visions. You don't need both together to play both cards.
b. As Foretold lists also run Wheel of Fate and Tolaria West. This is to compensate "just" 4 Ancestral Vision. It has more redundancy than Dictate Versions, that run at most 6 Mine effects.
You generally don't stop taking turns with As Foretold once you start taking them. I would say that the upside is that your opponent doesn't get cards as well, but most lists run at least 1 Day's Undoing and some number of Wheel of Fate.
Like I said before, you're not reliant on topdecking Ancestral Vision because you can play it turn one and you can tutor for it. @Truckis123 lists runs a total os 8 cantrips to add redundancy and it's the direction I'm leaning as well. The deck is very consistent just for you. Your opponent does not draw stuff along the ride.
"A couple of cantrips" statement is very misleading.
Like turn 1, 2 or 3 (on the draw) Inquisition of Kozilek?
My opponents don't get to turn 3/4 discard me and live.
I believe I already proven that you don't need to wait to have both pieces out to play one of the cards, but I made the case only for Ancestral Vision. Now I will make the case for As Foretold.
As Foretold is:
1. An incremental ramp spell.
This cannot be understated. Once As Foretold hits the ground, you're at the best ramping 2 mana per turn, and at least ramping 1.
This is because you can cast a spell with As Foretold each turn. It includes your opponents. This means I can flash a Snapcaster Mage on their turn when it is at 2, play Cryptic Command on 4, etc.
Having an As Foretold guarantees you win the resource war lategame. It gives you inevitability. I would argue that only Tron has a better lategame than that. This gets really broken once you start taking extra turns.
One of the issues with Dictate of Kruphix versions is that you take some time to go off. This is because you need to either luck out a Miracle'd Temporal Mastery so you can develop your resources to add more Mine effects, or you have to string 2-3 Time Warps AND land drops so you can play stuff beyond the Walks. Having one As Foretold in the field means you completely ignore the "must have Time Warp or Miracle to develop". You can play more than one spell per turn from the get-go.
So, in comparison, you need Dictate +2-3 Time Warps +lands from the top vs As Foretold +Time Warp and/or Ancestral Vision.
The other aspect of this is, well, I have felt that wins with As Foretold are that much faster. This is relevant if you are playing a big tournament like a GP.
2. An [Unrestricted Vintage Mode] enabler.
That's the part that most people cling to, as you did. This turns Ancestral Vision into sorcery speed free Ancestral Recall, Wheel of Fate into free Wheel of Fortune and Living End into free Living Death. That's some crazy upside and it lets you win matches out of nowhere. That's the crazy bonkers part, put the first one is relevant.
This cannot be understated. There's no game that keeps going once you resolve one or two Ancestral Recall. You could say that you add a secondary win-condition of burying the opponent in card advantage. Try to win a game versus a monoblue deck that draws 6 cards more than you over the course of four turns.
You don't have Time Warp to keep going? No problem. I still have all these goodies in hand.
Wrong by the statements above.
Or... just a very biased opinion
I understand that you want to justify why you play Dictate of Kruphix build, but you shouldn't try to trash the other build if you don't understand how it plays out. The impression that you gave me is that you haven't played enough games with the As Foretold version, or maybe that you played it with the same mindset of Dictate build.
They're completely different beasts and, while winning mostly the same way, they play very different. I recommend you give it a try with or watch someone experienced with the deck play it.
Oh, that's actually a good idea. Once I set the sideboard I think I'll upload some videos with commentary on how to play the As Foretold version.
Currently working on making the best Time Warp deck in here: Taking Turns
Unsure of sideboard but I figure it out along as I play with it
4x Ancestral Vision
1x Living End
4x Serum Visions
4x As Foretold
4x Exhaustion
1x Day's Undoing
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2x Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2x Cryptic Command
4x Time Warp
4x Temporal Mastery
1x Part the Waterveil
3x Steam Vents
2x Flooded Strand
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1x Darksteel Citadel
2x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
3x Tolaria West
5x Island
2x Ceremonious Rejection
2x Swan Song
2x Hurkyl's Recall
3x Thing in the Ice
2x Disrupting Shoal
1x Tormod's Crypt
1x Relic of Progenitus
2x Chalice of the Void