Hey Grim Flayer!
I have a lot of people in my LGS who like to run Dredge and all of the Hollow One/Vengevine decks and I have learned that trying to attack their graveyard is easy to counter and something they have a lot of experience playing around.. I usually side in 3x Terminus and it usually works pretty well.. Not only does it make their graveyard weak and buy several turns but it also removes the threats entirely..
That or I would try Settle the Wreckage (This is if you are splashing white obviously)
If you are still running mono blue, I image Thing in the Ice would be a good answer since it bounces their creatures to their hand and presents a fast clock.. But i don't have that much experience with that..
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Hey Grim Flayer!
I have a lot of people in my LGS who like to run Dredge and all of the Hollow One/Vengevine decks and I have learned that trying to attack their graveyard is easy to counter and something they have a lot of experience playing around.. I usually side in 3x Terminus and it usually works pretty well.. Not only does it make their graveyard weak and buy several turns but it also removes the threats entirely..
That or I would try Settle the Wreckage (This is if you are splashing white obviously)
If you are still running mono blue, I image Thing in the Ice would be a good answer since it bounces their creatures to their hand and presents a fast clock.. But i don't have that much experience with that..
Yep, white definitely has the luxury of packing broad anti-creature tech that also lines up very well against graveyard-based strategies. If you’re on UW, I absolutely agree with leaning on Terminus and Settle (although, if ever there was a time for RiP over the recent months, it’s probably now). But even within the confines of the UW build, there’s no clear consensus—and for those not splashing white, it gets even murkier. Here are the cards relevant against opposing graveyard strategies in the 75s of the 10 most recent Turns lists from mtgtop8:
As can be seen, different pilots are placing wildly varying levels of emphasis on answering opposing graveyards. Three of the ten players include nothing whatsoever on this front; another three go so far as to include two copies of RiP despite already having access to other incidiental hate. The remaining four pilots are somewhere in the middle, but even for those, the choice between Relic, Cage, and Surgical (and the numbers of such) seems to be a matter purely of preference.
As a monoU player, I can see arguments for each of them. I can also see the argument for cutting back a tad on counter magic to dedicate more slots to grave hate. Relic in particular is starting to interest me, purely on the back of its cantrip, which of course helps with consistency in our deck.
As mentioned before, I can also see the case for declining to battle on this axis, instead leaning on Gigadrowse, Exhaustion, and Echoing Truth (plus Terminus or maybe even Anger or the Gods for those splashing) to survive the early assaults.
There does not seem to be an obvious choice here.
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Nexus of fate makes me wonder how good a Turbo Fog Deck would be in Modern, I don't think Modern is aggro enough but with Humans and Vengevine running rampant and if WOTC bans out Ancient Stirrings or other KCI relevant stuff well the potential is there.
Alright so I ran a single Nexus of Fate at FNM this week and I can already tell it wouldn't work well...
Yes it shuffles back in.. but that's the problem.. part of our success comes from stacking the deck over time with cantrips and that makes it all luck... You would have to run at least 3x but then you're looking at 3 7cmc spells that have no way of cost reduction..
After seeing that, I have given up on the idea unless you do as Moush was saying and ran like a UW control deck with 4x nexus of fate included... and at that point the deck isn't really "Taking Turns" anymore
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My friend is coming back into town and I think we might got to FNM and play the same deck: Turns.
Anyway, this will be my first experience with the deck and I have a few questions:
Based on the discussion here, it seems that the white splash is accepted as the "best". Is that correct?
Is 1 the correct number of Jace, the Mind Sculptor to run? I have 3 sitting around and it seems the potential to brainstorm when going off could be better than simply drawing an extra card. But it does cost 2 more than mine and 1 more than Dictate.
Anything else someone new to the deck should know before jumping in?
Thanks
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EDH RGOmnath, Locus of ManaRG URThe Locust godUR
Modern UWMiraclesUW
Legacy BGIce Station Zebra (Living Fins)BG UBRGrixis ControlUBR RGLandsRG
There are people in the forum trying all of the colors and there isn't a clear "best". I personally play UW and really like Terminus and Timely Reinforcements as well as Stony Silence... That being said there Timewalkinonsunshine runs a UR and said he likes it a lot because it gives you access to lightning bolt, pyroclasm for elves/humans/pyromancer, and also ancient grudge...
I think overall, it's just a matter of picking a color that makes sense to you and your local area and just sticking with it for practice..
As for Jace, the overall opinion is to run 1-2.. In the current format he doesn't really stick around unless you can cast him in the late game in a turn while also casting an extra turn spell.. Most of the time he is used to just set up a miracle. It's more important to run dictate and howling mine as well as interruption. Honestly you could run the second one in the sideboard as an option to grindy matchups since he is a win condition in his own right lol
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As for Jace, the overall opinion is to run 1-2.. In the current format he doesn't really stick around unless you can cast him in the late game in a turn while also casting an extra turn spell.. Most of the time he is used to just set up a miracle. It's more important to run dictate and howling mine as well as interruption. Honestly you could run the second one in the sideboard as an option to grindy matchups since he is a win condition in his own right lol
I run 3 Jace's, but I'm in a UG build with Emrakul and Oracle's Vault. Terrible card but its just fun to cast Emrakul for free.
I played UB turns for a while and had the most success with that version (Collective Brutality and Fatal push being key). Additionally, now that Leyline of the void is super relevant for this deck, UB seems to be the correct path (since interacting before your turn on the draw seems to be key these days). What happened to that version?
I think this is the kind of deck that can really benefit from playing Baral. Combined with Remands, it allows you to cycle through the cards you need faster. Having the ability to reduce your spells by 1 is essentially getting faster by a whole turn.
I think every variant is equal since all of them have very strong sideboard choices. That being said, I have really wanted to try UB for a while.. The only problem though is that your cheapest board wipe is Bontu's last reckoning or damnation as opposed to like Terminus
And I agree! I'd love to try Baral but don't really know how to make it work
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I think every variant is equal since all of them have very strong sideboard choices. That being said, I have really wanted to try UB for a while.. The only problem though is that your cheapest board wipe is Bontu's last reckoning or damnation as opposed to like Terminus
And I agree! I'd love to try Baral but don't really know how to make it work
I think my issue with the W version is that you're trying to play like a control deck, but much worse. Turns is a very linear deck that only has one objective in mind: Taking all the turns. The interaction should be kept at a minimum unless it helps further the game plan.
This is why I tend to scratch my head when i see some lists eschewing on the Gigadrowses and Exhaustions. These are in themselves, time walks and linchpins.
Def not a fan of bontu's last reckoning here. Baral is more of a sideboard card since I think the deck generally has a very good G1 vs the majority of the field.
As a side note, the only deck you'd want a board wipe for is elves. It's a really tough matchup because of how fast they take to the board, which makes gigadrowse kind of bad. However, if you're super concerned about that matchup, you can play hibernation in the sideboard.
This post has me a bit confused..
First off, I don't understand why you say white feels like control... yes UW control is a thing but it doesn't follow that at all.. the white only enables 2x path and then the best white sideboard options in the format (Stony Silence, Timely Reinforcement, Terminus, Rest in Peace, Leyline, etc..) I don't think it changes the deck in any way that black would for fatal pushes and red for lightning bolt and pyroclasm...
Second, I thought you were mentioning the use of Baral in your previous post.. I don't think he belongs in the current Taking Turns but I think it would be interesting to build around him for a different version of the deck..
And lastly, I have to disagree on board wipes.. Yes elves is an absolute but I think it is equally important in Humans as well as decks like GW company, affinity, etc.. It seems foolish to not sideboard in some hate especially given the speed at which all of those decks can win if you aren't really slowing them down... After all gigadrowse and exhaustion only do so much...
All of this being said; I would really like to see your list if you don't mind! I am interested in trying UB at some point and it would be cool to go off of
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I followed his reddit thread and brought some changes to the mana base. I played it for a while, did well but then modern season ended and moved on to something else. At that time, humans was definitely not really on the radar so the deck would play very differently, i suppose.
There is another reddit thread that (has been dead for like 4 months now) has him change it to UW. So there is merit to go in that direction. But even then, still no board whips. I do believe they are a trap for this sort of deck because you have to dilute your overall gameplan in order to accommodate them.
Idk.. I've been playing the deck for quite a while now (went from mono blue to now UW and have stuck there)
I run 3 Terminus and 1 Supreme Verdict in the sideboard and it doesn't dilute the deck at all..
I think that falls under the mindset that "it's all combo 100%" which is definitely not the case.. The interaction the deck runs is just as important as the engine. We don't have the advantage of speedy kills like Storm that can go off on turn 3 so it is important that you can consistently slow the game down. When you played before I think the format was a lot slower with Elves being the big scary aggro deck and im guessing that Grixis Death Shadow was also a concern at the time... But now these other decks are getting crazy and trying to focus on just the "turns" part isn't enough...
And Daniel Wong comments on here! He's been on UR lately
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Well, well...Thing in the Ice continues to impress. I seriously underrated this guy when first exploring the Turns archetype. Just yesterday, at the end of my first MTGO session with this deck, Thing won me games 2 and 3 against BG Elves that I otherwise had no business winning with my mono-blue build. I have always loved TiTi conceptually and from a game design perspective, but it has always stuck me as just slightly too cute for Modern. But in the context of the current aggro-heavy meta—and in the sideboard of U Turns, where bounce effects are crucial and opponents will side out their spot removal ASAP—Thing fits like a glove.
My MTGO list, for now, is slightly budget conscious, which means that the build I’ve posted earlier in this thread is playing the 4th copies of Gigadrowse and Exhaustion over the lone JtMS and the 4th Cryptic. I’m also eschewing grave hate altogether in the side—partially because Surgical and Cage are pricier than the cards I’m using, but mostly because I want to investigate firsthand how the deck fares without dedicating slots to grave hate.
So far so good! I’ll continue tweaking and testing with good old monoU, and may even look toward uploading some gameplay footage in the near future, just gotta find the time and figure out what the easiest way is to set that up.
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Glad you're loving the deck Grim Flayer! Not sure if you've tried it, but you could try Jace, the Living Guildpact.. I've always thought that it was a better Mindsculptor for modern since it comes in with higher loyalty and can bounce any permanent. Yes it costs more loyalty then JtMS at -3 compared to -1 but it can take care of ANY threatening permanent and the only time you minus is if you're in danger of dying anyhow lol
Just a suggestion!
And as for Thing in the Ice, I have also recently been running them in the sideboard. I've been super lucky this month so far and have been placing in either first or second every week at FNM which has been nice at building up the trade binder and I have also been able to experiment with different card. TiTi definitely feels like a more reliable win con than Part the Waterveil at some points!
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Thank you, my friend. I’m 13-3 so far with this deck in the MTGO Tournament Practice lobby, which, while not representing as difficult competition as the leagues do (to the best of my knowledge, winrate tends to drops off between 15-25% from tourney practice lobby to competitive leagues), still bodes very well. It’s also a small sample size as yet, but my winrate is actually higher here than with Abzan, where I’ve been having all kinds of success at the local level.
Not sure if you've tried it, but you could try Jace, the Living Guildpact.. I've always thought that it was a better Mindsculptor for modern since it comes in with higher loyalty and can bounce any permanent. Yes it costs more loyalty then JtMS at -3 compared to -1 but it can take care of ANY threatening permanent and the only time you minus is if you're in danger of dying anyhow lol
Just a suggestion!
Spicy! Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s the best here—we really, really need his +1 to be some form of a true draw IMO. That’s the biggest downfall of this card. Still, I agree that having the ability to bounce random permanents of any type in your deck is great. My miser’s Boomerang has been serving me well in this regard.
And as for Thing in the Ice, I have also recently been running them in the sideboard. I've been super lucky this month so far and have been placing in either first or second every week at FNM which has been nice at building up the trade binder and I have also been able to experiment with different card. TiTi definitely feels like a more reliable win con than Part the Waterveil at some points!
Nice job, congrats! Thing has been a consistent wincon for me so far as well. Your closing statement leads me to a couple of conceptual questions I’d like to throw out to the community, beginning with the Thing/Part comparison:
- For those playing Thing in the sideboard, how often is he a straight swap in for extra turn spells? Is that sort of a given, or should it be evaluated on a matchup-by-matchup basis? I’ve generally been siding out one Part and one matchup-dependent card for my two copies of Thing, when he is called for. Thoughts on this?
- I’m finding the line between matchups where Gigadrowse is better than Exhaustion or vice versa to be surprisingly blurry at times. I think it’s important to really narrow this down to an exact science as much as possible, because 1) it seems that anywhere from 2-4 copies of each card in the 75 is viable, especially for monoU, and 2) min-maxing the efficacy of your interaction post-side is sweet. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious—like Gigadrowse being clearly superior against a draw-go Control deck—but otherwise, how is the hierarchy between these two lynchpin cards perceived? Both are pretty great against Tron, but which should be trimmed first if there’s room for side tech that needs to be made? Neither is likely to line up perfectly against Merfolk—do we shave 1-2 of both, or leave them all in? If you were to main four copies of one and three of the other in a blind meta, should Exhaustion or Gigadrowse claim the full playset? And is the fourth copy of whichever one misses out worth a sideboard slot?
Sorry for the wall of text! If it seems like I’m going deep here...well, I am. I love to craft really thorough sideboard plans, but first I’d love a little feedback on some of the broader questions raised above, just to make sure my conceptual framework is sound.
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So i'll give my input because I think I have found a nice balance (If you go back in the forum a little bit I posted my side boarding guide for each matchup)
Generally I will cut: -1 land, -1 Temporal Mastery, -1 Cryptic/Remand (some form of interaction that appears useless in the matchup), -1 Dictate to make room for whatever I am side boarding.. I don't think you want to ever cut too heavily on time warp effects if you can help it. In creature matchups one of the first cards I would sideboard out to make room for Thing in the Ice is Jace (which you aren't running online atm) but if you own him in paper it is good to remove him for game 2.
As for gigadrowse and exhaustion, I never touch them.. They stay mainboard always.. I think it is wrong to think of them as two separate cards in the deck because they work off of each other. Against any deck in modern being able to cut them off of mana in their upkeep or tap down their creatures in the early game followed up by exhaustion on your next turn is very difficult to play around. Gigadrowse also corners your opponents into playing how you want them to. IE: If you are playing against Mardu pyromancer and you think they are sitting on a discard spell and you are about to combo - tapping down their black sources forces them into either playing a young pyromancer or wasting their turn on faithless looting..
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Alright I hate to double post but my LGS is having a big "Win an Underground Sea" tournament this weekend and i'm trying to tweak my sideboard..
What do you think of:
The main focus is to have enough interaction against: Jeskai/Graveyard/KCI/Burn as those appear to be my most difficult matchups.. I think the increased number of dispel might help a lot and I have recently started to like Tormod's Crypt since it doesn't hurt us at all (The 1x Rest in Peace is for KCI since Tormods doesn't synergies with stony silence)
But I would love to hear input from the forum
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So i'll give my input because I think I have found a nice balance (If you go back in the forum a little bit I posted my side boarding guide for each matchup)
Generally I will cut: -1 land, -1 Temporal Mastery, -1 Cryptic/Remand (some form of interaction that appears useless in the matchup), -1 Dictate to make room for whatever I am side boarding.. I don't think you want to ever cut too heavily on time warp effects if you can help it.
This is interesting, specifically the Dictate cut. Can you elaborate on your thinking here? To me, Dictate seems like our actual best card in almost every matchup. I’ve been cutting one or both Howling Mines against hyperaggro, but have never touched a Dictate in any matchup. (I also went back and reviewed Daniel’s GP Hartford report: he trimmed on Dictate only once out of 13 rounds, shaving a lone copy against Storm.)
However, I’m glad you mentioned cutting a land. I need to start doing this sometimes. It’s basically just something you do against the faster matchups, be they aggro or combo, as far as I can tell.
In creature matchups one of the first cards I would sideboard out to make room for Thing in the Ice is Jace (which you aren't running online atm) but if you own him in paper it is good to remove him for game 2.
Completely agreed here. It’s also worth noting that I have definitely missed the Jace when playing online. This deck is able to land him on an empty board a fair amount of the time...but not when he’s excluded from the deck!
As for gigadrowse and exhaustion, I never touch them.. They stay mainboard always.. I think it is wrong to think of them as two separate cards in the deck because they work off of each other. Against any deck in modern being able to cut them off of mana in their upkeep or tap down their creatures in the early game followed up by exhaustion on your next turn is very difficult to play around. Gigadrowse also corners your opponents into playing how you want them to. IE: If you are playing against Mardu pyromancer and you think they are sitting on a discard spell and you are about to combo - tapping down their black sources forces them into either playing a young pyromancer or wasting their turn on faithless looting..
For sure, the two cards have wonderful synergy, and together they form the backbone of this deck’s interaction, especially if you aren’t splashing a secondary color. But IMO it’s incorrect to see them as untouchable. Without intending to fall victim to the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, I once again referred to Daniel’s GP Hartford report. He sided out at least one copy of Exhaustion or Gigadrowse in 11 out of his 13 matches (the two exceptions being Jund and Tron), and in many cases he sided out large numbers of both!
There’s a great deal of heterodoxy in how people build and pilot this deck. That’s cool, and that’s part of what attracted me to it. But that’s also why I’m working hard to get the best possible understanding of things like the role of graveyard hate and the minor percentage point advantages to be found in understanding the exact roles of Gigadrowse vs Exhaustion. Even though I’m still very new to Turns, I’m strongly considering bringing it to an SCG Open next month, which is why I’m so hungry for people’s thoughts. Thanks, and keep them coming!
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I have a lot of people in my LGS who like to run Dredge and all of the Hollow One/Vengevine decks and I have learned that trying to attack their graveyard is easy to counter and something they have a lot of experience playing around.. I usually side in 3x Terminus and it usually works pretty well.. Not only does it make their graveyard weak and buy several turns but it also removes the threats entirely..
That or I would try Settle the Wreckage (This is if you are splashing white obviously)
If you are still running mono blue, I image Thing in the Ice would be a good answer since it bounces their creatures to their hand and presents a fast clock.. But i don't have that much experience with that..
Yep, white definitely has the luxury of packing broad anti-creature tech that also lines up very well against graveyard-based strategies. If you’re on UW, I absolutely agree with leaning on Terminus and Settle (although, if ever there was a time for RiP over the recent months, it’s probably now). But even within the confines of the UW build, there’s no clear consensus—and for those not splashing white, it gets even murkier. Here are the cards relevant against opposing graveyard strategies in the 75s of the 10 most recent Turns lists from mtgtop8:
UW: 2x RiP, 2x Terminus, 1x Settle
Esper: 2x RiP, 1x Surgical
UR: None
UB: 2x Surgical
U: 3x Grafdigger’s Cage
UR: None
UB: None
UW: 3x Terminus, 2x RiP
UW: 4x Terminus
U: 2x Relic
As can be seen, different pilots are placing wildly varying levels of emphasis on answering opposing graveyards. Three of the ten players include nothing whatsoever on this front; another three go so far as to include two copies of RiP despite already having access to other incidiental hate. The remaining four pilots are somewhere in the middle, but even for those, the choice between Relic, Cage, and Surgical (and the numbers of such) seems to be a matter purely of preference.
As a monoU player, I can see arguments for each of them. I can also see the argument for cutting back a tad on counter magic to dedicate more slots to grave hate. Relic in particular is starting to interest me, purely on the back of its cantrip, which of course helps with consistency in our deck.
As mentioned before, I can also see the case for declining to battle on this axis, instead leaning on Gigadrowse, Exhaustion, and Echoing Truth (plus Terminus or maybe even Anger or the Gods for those splashing) to survive the early assaults.
There does not seem to be an obvious choice here.
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Yes it shuffles back in.. but that's the problem.. part of our success comes from stacking the deck over time with cantrips and that makes it all luck... You would have to run at least 3x but then you're looking at 3 7cmc spells that have no way of cost reduction..
After seeing that, I have given up on the idea unless you do as Moush was saying and ran like a UW control deck with 4x nexus of fate included... and at that point the deck isn't really "Taking Turns" anymore
My friend is coming back into town and I think we might got to FNM and play the same deck: Turns.
Anyway, this will be my first experience with the deck and I have a few questions:
Anything else someone new to the deck should know before jumping in?
Thanks
RGOmnath, Locus of ManaRG
URThe Locust godUR
Modern
UWMiraclesUW
Legacy
BGIce Station Zebra (Living Fins)BG
UBRGrixis ControlUBR
RGLandsRG
There are people in the forum trying all of the colors and there isn't a clear "best". I personally play UW and really like Terminus and Timely Reinforcements as well as Stony Silence... That being said there Timewalkinonsunshine runs a UR and said he likes it a lot because it gives you access to lightning bolt, pyroclasm for elves/humans/pyromancer, and also ancient grudge...
I think overall, it's just a matter of picking a color that makes sense to you and your local area and just sticking with it for practice..
As for Jace, the overall opinion is to run 1-2.. In the current format he doesn't really stick around unless you can cast him in the late game in a turn while also casting an extra turn spell.. Most of the time he is used to just set up a miracle. It's more important to run dictate and howling mine as well as interruption. Honestly you could run the second one in the sideboard as an option to grindy matchups since he is a win condition in his own right lol
I run 3 Jace's, but I'm in a UG build with Emrakul and Oracle's Vault. Terrible card but its just fun to cast Emrakul for free.
I played UB turns for a while and had the most success with that version (Collective Brutality and Fatal push being key). Additionally, now that Leyline of the void is super relevant for this deck, UB seems to be the correct path (since interacting before your turn on the draw seems to be key these days). What happened to that version?
I think this is the kind of deck that can really benefit from playing Baral. Combined with Remands, it allows you to cycle through the cards you need faster. Having the ability to reduce your spells by 1 is essentially getting faster by a whole turn.
And I agree! I'd love to try Baral but don't really know how to make it work
I think my issue with the W version is that you're trying to play like a control deck, but much worse. Turns is a very linear deck that only has one objective in mind: Taking all the turns. The interaction should be kept at a minimum unless it helps further the game plan.
This is why I tend to scratch my head when i see some lists eschewing on the Gigadrowses and Exhaustions. These are in themselves, time walks and linchpins.
Def not a fan of bontu's last reckoning here. Baral is more of a sideboard card since I think the deck generally has a very good G1 vs the majority of the field.
As a side note, the only deck you'd want a board wipe for is elves. It's a really tough matchup because of how fast they take to the board, which makes gigadrowse kind of bad. However, if you're super concerned about that matchup, you can play hibernation in the sideboard.
First off, I don't understand why you say white feels like control... yes UW control is a thing but it doesn't follow that at all.. the white only enables 2x path and then the best white sideboard options in the format (Stony Silence, Timely Reinforcement, Terminus, Rest in Peace, Leyline, etc..) I don't think it changes the deck in any way that black would for fatal pushes and red for lightning bolt and pyroclasm...
Second, I thought you were mentioning the use of Baral in your previous post.. I don't think he belongs in the current Taking Turns but I think it would be interesting to build around him for a different version of the deck..
And lastly, I have to disagree on board wipes.. Yes elves is an absolute but I think it is equally important in Humans as well as decks like GW company, affinity, etc.. It seems foolish to not sideboard in some hate especially given the speed at which all of those decks can win if you aren't really slowing them down... After all gigadrowse and exhaustion only do so much...
All of this being said; I would really like to see your list if you don't mind! I am interested in trying UB at some point and it would be cool to go off of
I followed his reddit thread and brought some changes to the mana base. I played it for a while, did well but then modern season ended and moved on to something else. At that time, humans was definitely not really on the radar so the deck would play very differently, i suppose.
There is another reddit thread that (has been dead for like 4 months now) has him change it to UW. So there is merit to go in that direction. But even then, still no board whips. I do believe they are a trap for this sort of deck because you have to dilute your overall gameplan in order to accommodate them.
This should give you some direction
I run 3 Terminus and 1 Supreme Verdict in the sideboard and it doesn't dilute the deck at all..
I think that falls under the mindset that "it's all combo 100%" which is definitely not the case.. The interaction the deck runs is just as important as the engine. We don't have the advantage of speedy kills like Storm that can go off on turn 3 so it is important that you can consistently slow the game down. When you played before I think the format was a lot slower with Elves being the big scary aggro deck and im guessing that Grixis Death Shadow was also a concern at the time... But now these other decks are getting crazy and trying to focus on just the "turns" part isn't enough...
And Daniel Wong comments on here! He's been on UR lately
My MTGO list, for now, is slightly budget conscious, which means that the build I’ve posted earlier in this thread is playing the 4th copies of Gigadrowse and Exhaustion over the lone JtMS and the 4th Cryptic. I’m also eschewing grave hate altogether in the side—partially because Surgical and Cage are pricier than the cards I’m using, but mostly because I want to investigate firsthand how the deck fares without dedicating slots to grave hate.
So far so good! I’ll continue tweaking and testing with good old monoU, and may even look toward uploading some gameplay footage in the near future, just gotta find the time and figure out what the easiest way is to set that up.
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Just a suggestion!
And as for Thing in the Ice, I have also recently been running them in the sideboard. I've been super lucky this month so far and have been placing in either first or second every week at FNM which has been nice at building up the trade binder and I have also been able to experiment with different card. TiTi definitely feels like a more reliable win con than Part the Waterveil at some points!
Thank you, my friend. I’m 13-3 so far with this deck in the MTGO Tournament Practice lobby, which, while not representing as difficult competition as the leagues do (to the best of my knowledge, winrate tends to drops off between 15-25% from tourney practice lobby to competitive leagues), still bodes very well. It’s also a small sample size as yet, but my winrate is actually higher here than with Abzan, where I’ve been having all kinds of success at the local level.
Spicy! Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s the best here—we really, really need his +1 to be some form of a true draw IMO. That’s the biggest downfall of this card. Still, I agree that having the ability to bounce random permanents of any type in your deck is great. My miser’s Boomerang has been serving me well in this regard.
Nice job, congrats! Thing has been a consistent wincon for me so far as well. Your closing statement leads me to a couple of conceptual questions I’d like to throw out to the community, beginning with the Thing/Part comparison:
- For those playing Thing in the sideboard, how often is he a straight swap in for extra turn spells? Is that sort of a given, or should it be evaluated on a matchup-by-matchup basis? I’ve generally been siding out one Part and one matchup-dependent card for my two copies of Thing, when he is called for. Thoughts on this?
- I’m finding the line between matchups where Gigadrowse is better than Exhaustion or vice versa to be surprisingly blurry at times. I think it’s important to really narrow this down to an exact science as much as possible, because 1) it seems that anywhere from 2-4 copies of each card in the 75 is viable, especially for monoU, and 2) min-maxing the efficacy of your interaction post-side is sweet. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious—like Gigadrowse being clearly superior against a draw-go Control deck—but otherwise, how is the hierarchy between these two lynchpin cards perceived? Both are pretty great against Tron, but which should be trimmed first if there’s room for side tech that needs to be made? Neither is likely to line up perfectly against Merfolk—do we shave 1-2 of both, or leave them all in? If you were to main four copies of one and three of the other in a blind meta, should Exhaustion or Gigadrowse claim the full playset? And is the fourth copy of whichever one misses out worth a sideboard slot?
Sorry for the wall of text! If it seems like I’m going deep here...well, I am. I love to craft really thorough sideboard plans, but first I’d love a little feedback on some of the broader questions raised above, just to make sure my conceptual framework is sound.
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Generally I will cut: -1 land, -1 Temporal Mastery, -1 Cryptic/Remand (some form of interaction that appears useless in the matchup), -1 Dictate to make room for whatever I am side boarding.. I don't think you want to ever cut too heavily on time warp effects if you can help it. In creature matchups one of the first cards I would sideboard out to make room for Thing in the Ice is Jace (which you aren't running online atm) but if you own him in paper it is good to remove him for game 2.
As for gigadrowse and exhaustion, I never touch them.. They stay mainboard always.. I think it is wrong to think of them as two separate cards in the deck because they work off of each other. Against any deck in modern being able to cut them off of mana in their upkeep or tap down their creatures in the early game followed up by exhaustion on your next turn is very difficult to play around. Gigadrowse also corners your opponents into playing how you want them to. IE: If you are playing against Mardu pyromancer and you think they are sitting on a discard spell and you are about to combo - tapping down their black sources forces them into either playing a young pyromancer or wasting their turn on faithless looting..
What do you think of:
3x Dispel
2x Timely Reinforcements
3x Terminus
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Stony Silence
2x Chalice of the Void
1x Tormod's Crypt
2x Rest in Peace
The main focus is to have enough interaction against: Jeskai/Graveyard/KCI/Burn as those appear to be my most difficult matchups.. I think the increased number of dispel might help a lot and I have recently started to like Tormod's Crypt since it doesn't hurt us at all (The 1x Rest in Peace is for KCI since Tormods doesn't synergies with stony silence)
But I would love to hear input from the forum
This is interesting, specifically the Dictate cut. Can you elaborate on your thinking here? To me, Dictate seems like our actual best card in almost every matchup. I’ve been cutting one or both Howling Mines against hyperaggro, but have never touched a Dictate in any matchup. (I also went back and reviewed Daniel’s GP Hartford report: he trimmed on Dictate only once out of 13 rounds, shaving a lone copy against Storm.)
However, I’m glad you mentioned cutting a land. I need to start doing this sometimes. It’s basically just something you do against the faster matchups, be they aggro or combo, as far as I can tell.
Completely agreed here. It’s also worth noting that I have definitely missed the Jace when playing online. This deck is able to land him on an empty board a fair amount of the time...but not when he’s excluded from the deck!
For sure, the two cards have wonderful synergy, and together they form the backbone of this deck’s interaction, especially if you aren’t splashing a secondary color. But IMO it’s incorrect to see them as untouchable. Without intending to fall victim to the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, I once again referred to Daniel’s GP Hartford report. He sided out at least one copy of Exhaustion or Gigadrowse in 11 out of his 13 matches (the two exceptions being Jund and Tron), and in many cases he sided out large numbers of both!
There’s a great deal of heterodoxy in how people build and pilot this deck. That’s cool, and that’s part of what attracted me to it. But that’s also why I’m working hard to get the best possible understanding of things like the role of graveyard hate and the minor percentage point advantages to be found in understanding the exact roles of Gigadrowse vs Exhaustion. Even though I’m still very new to Turns, I’m strongly considering bringing it to an SCG Open next month, which is why I’m so hungry for people’s thoughts. Thanks, and keep them coming!
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