Acutally, considering everyone and their mother is going to sleeve up Antonio's list, Grixis may be very well positioned against a standard UR list. I really want someone to combo off to be met with Rakdos Charm in response.
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Current Decks
Modern
No idea because my favorite decks keep getting banned or having the rules changed against them
The decks I played against were not necessarily your standard metagame decks, I'll admit. The turnout for the FNM was pretty small so there was quite a bit of jank.
Round one I played against a creature-based storm deck with burning tree emissary, priest of urabrask, rituals, and storm entity. The deck was sweet and hilarious, but was pretty bad. It was a quick 2-0. Here I liked that the mana base could function on basic lands, as it helped me cast everything on time and take as little damage as possible. Tasigur was also a brick wall for his burn and creatures.
Round two I played against my buddy's Naya Midrange brew that is essentially designed to beat up on Abzan. Tasigur was absurd the whole time, paired with removal. The deck operated a lot like Abzan in the sense that it plays super efficient creatures like huntmaster, pridemage, voice, and friends. The shackles and sower were key cards here, and leads me to believe they would be equally impressive in the Abzan matchup. The same goes for Keranos and Batterskull.
Round three I played against a 4-color gifts deck. Game one I essentially tempo'd him out of the game, it went long, and he ended up drawing into the fatty he wanted to reanimate against me, and had no way to pitch it. Game two, I locked him out with a turn 3 blood moon.
Although these matchups aren't likely what you want to think about when you sleeve up a deck, Each round proved one thing. Round one proved the manabase can function on basics just fine if you need to conserve your life total. Round two showed how solid Tasigur is in creature matchups, especially paired with removal. Round three simply proved the deck can support blood moon in the sideboard. And to top it all off, all three rounds proved that even though the black splash is a metagame call, you can still fight through the jank in the early rounds of a large tournament you may be likely to see. As an early test run with the deck, I believe it was quite successful and warrants further testing against more conventional matchups.
Thanks for the breakdown! I think I am going to try to pick this up and give it a go. I hate pure net-decking so I don't want to just copy Antonio or anyone else, but I think I'll use your grixis list as a jumping off point because I agree that the black splash is pretty sweet. I will tune it for my local scene of course but I like tasigur and Terminate and Darkblast seems great too against mana dorks.
Do you guys have any advice for someone just picking up the deck?
Based on the way it played, play it like you would any other Twin deck. The main plan is tempo, try to play as proactive as you can while also remaining able to react. Tasigur works really well for that plan. On turn 5, it's very easy to play him and leave up mana for cryptic command.
that version of twin u prefer in that meta? Grixis or some type of UR
meta:affinity(choke in SB), Delver, storm, UWR, Esper, Elves, MartyrProc, TitanBloom, DnT, some Trybal decks (monow knights, 5color sleevers), bogles
rarely: abzan, GreenWave and RG tron.
some time im loose to affinity and dever if they too fast. abazan 40-60, with any other 70-30. doesnt tested with elves, bogles and titanbloom, they just in project but i want to prepare to it.
im realy like a tempo deck(my maindeck like an Antonio right now), but some techs what i see on protour is good. like Jelger's BlueMoon twin, Patrick's Grixis(but with some tweaks), and a Humble Defector! whats a bomb!
God I love Blood Moon, gotta get the white-bordered ones for extra trolling!
Messed up on so many levels and i love it. I just pictured it with the troll face in the moon with the flavor text saying "you mad bro?" and couldn't stop laughing.
There we go.
UR way to go, guys.
Blood Moon, destroying dreams since forever.
I have a hard time getting them to stick with Abzan so i stopped putting them in the SB, but with a friend saying he is gonna start playing UWR control i might end up sliding them back in.
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Standard: No Time
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
Just a little note. Actually twin did not fare that well in the Pro Tour. The winner of pro tour got there because his draft results helped in the total points.
In the modern portion,of the top 20 decks, there is only 1 twin deck. of the top 64, there are only 6 twin decks compare to the 12%- 13% of the field who brought twin to the event. So Twin kinda under performed?
Also luck played quite a big part as well. There are 3 abzan, 2 burn, 2 twin and 1 bloom titan in the top 8 and the 2 twin decks got the luck not to fight against the 2 traditional abzan list ( kinda our bane) in the top 8 which run all the discards and more removals namely abrupt decay which the abzan deck piloted by Jacob Wilson which Jelger Weigersma face in the quarter finals is a anti abzan abzan deck which does not run any main deck discards, lotv and only have path as the removal which makes it weak to combo decks like twin.
But it was really nice to see the twin games. Antonio game against Lee Shi Tian burn was really exciting and who would expect 1 little exarch with 1 power would be the one to close that game out. Grats to the winner!
The more I think about the deck, the more I'm confused about what to play.
Here are my thoughts :
Grixis twin
Tasigur, the Golden Fang is a great card. We've seen all week end long that he's just great, providing a reliable source of card advantage and has a large body granting a nice board presence against midrange decks.
But is Twin a good home for him ? I don't know. Playing Thought Scours only to get him on the table seems very bad. I tend to prefer the lists that don't play this one mana cantrip. If you end up playing Thought Scour after you've played Tasigur your opponent is likely to give you back Thought Scour for each activation of Tasigur since it is the least impactful card. I don't see how paying 4 mana to get back this card is a great investment.
Splashing black surely weakens the decks. It's a fact : you end up playing life you would't have payed in straight UR. Is this what we want to do when people play Siege Rhino and Burn decks ?
But it also brings nice things to the table : Terminate or other black removal being the best ones.
On Blood Moon : it certainly is possible to play Blood Moon in Grixis, Dickmann did it so it must be manageable though it is not as easy as in UR builds. The card that gets very complicated to play is Cryptic Command. Getting 3 blues might be challenging for the deck and I don't want to refrain myself from playing the greatest blue spell ever.
UR twin
The purest version of the deck : you hardly take damage from your lands and mana is not an issue.
It struggles against midrange-ish decks since we don't have greats ways to deal with large creatures. It certainly is possible though thanks to niche cards like Harvest Pyre (a hidden delve spell).
We don't have a very good plan B. Sure you might be able to steal a few games with attacking 2/1's but in a world where Lingering Souls and Siege Rhino are sitting on the Modern Throne, I don't see it happening very often.
The deck can play Blood Moon very easily. And we've seen that this card is one of the greatest weapons of UR tempo decks.
UR splashes for G traditionally for Grudges. Ancient Grudge is THE best card against Affinity. And this deck is on the rise. Sure Bolt and other removals are fine but a 2 for 1 enshrined in a single and easy to cast card is the way to go.
You can play Tectonic Edges without hurting the mana base essentially denying your opponent's mana coupling it with Spreading Seas and tappers like Pestermites and Exarchs.
I can see also arguments for playing Temur Twin but it doesn't bring that much to the table. I think we can do better than splashing for Tarmogoyf (removals don't get better with G and the mana base hurts and playing Blood Moon is tricky).
Jeskai builds looks interesting but I don't think playing Angels and Paths solve the problems of the deck. Path is a natural non-bo with Remands and Angel might look fine but does not fare well against other midrange cards. And Geist is unplayable in a format where 30% of the players play either Liliana or Finks/Loxodon Smiters.
My heart screams Grixis because it has swingy cards and Tasigur is a brand new card and we all want to play with new cards, especially when they're that powerful but my head says UR as it is the most reasonable choice.
Wait and see I guess.
As someone who might try out Twin later down the line again I must say that I would choose UR Twin all the time.
I have to agree with a statement that the commentators made. Twin isn't great against Abzan period but it's probably great against everything else.
And the top 8 matches really showed that.
Amulet? No problem.
A GW creature deck like the one from Jacob Wilson? No problem.
GR Tron? No problem.
I think that Blood Moon is just that good against certain decks and the UR version is the fastest and most consistent version.
I think with a splash you may make your Abzan matchup better but you lose percentages against everything else since your are just not as streamlined anymore and cannot punish other decks as heavily for play mistakes.
hi, first, sorry for my bad english. I played temur twin yesterday and ended 4-0 (8-0 in games), played against affinity, "midrange" scapeshift, uwr control and affinity (not the same player) The deck was awesome and felt really powerfull and consistent, im sad that there's no much abzan in my meta to test, but well :P. Tarmogoyf is really impressive, as always. what do you think?
I realize that if you are in one of those scenarios where you need to draw Twin to win, you would rather have Defector because it can draw you two cards on that final turn for (essentially) free... I don't think it is good enough in U/R. Grixis maybe, but I'm against Grixis at the moment.
Combo in one turn? I'm not sure how you mean that. If you cast pestermite, then immediately cast twin, I don't think you can just start tapping pestermite for dudes.
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Modern UB Tezzerator UBW Gifts B 8Rack
Legacy RB Goblins
So I was just observing Dickmann's twitter and he says multiple times that he would have rather been playing just straight UR as opposed to the black splash for tasigur etc. How does everyone feel about that sentiment? Seems he made the observation that tasigur is only good against Junk and that's about it.
Nearly top 8'd a pptq in syracuse with grixis twin. I highly recommend it. It can be engineered to still run blood moon (I chose not to) and while everyone here who is pro-RUB makes the point that you have access to better removal, I think access to 1 mana discard spells is the actul appeal of black. Having IoK and Clique MD with thoughtseize in the side is a big boon for the rchetype, you get to see their hand and you get to disrupt it. Discard makes me feel the deck is actually better in the mirror than strait UR, contrary to what most advoctes of UR have been saying.
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When people call for a ban on treasure cruise: "But I don't WANNA draw 3 cards!"
I run Olivia alongside Defectors. Its pretty fun. I run a discard package as well.
While Olivia iz great she can't carry a Twin the way Inferno Titan or Thundermaw can. I run her bc of the synergy with the Defectors but the jury is still out on whether they're worth it. Drawing 4 and using Olivia is great. Defector with a twin is just stupid. I don't think you can run the defectors in the traditional builds though, it really isn't quite good enough.
I always have been an advocate of the straight UR version and it won't change.
Straight UR is more streamlined, the mana base is better, it is less painfull which is very important against a fair % of the field,
it allows you to play tectonic edge, desolate lighthouse, blood moon and vedalken shackles without any problem.
You don't play big dumb dude, so you don't tap out early to get blown out by anything or have to protect threats when you don't want to.
Also the deck doesn't loose power by staying UR only. Tasigur is fine but I think he is million times better in the abzan deck.
Tarmotwin was good last year because people hadn't still figured out what's going on with the deck or how to play against it.
For the abzan MU, I think the tempo route is the better one and UR is better at following this line as you don't play threat into their sorcery speed removal or liliana's edict,
plus mana denial (tec edge, spreading seas, blood moon) is very good against them to turn remand and sometimes exarch/pestermite into instant timewalks.
TL;DR : I think UR runs a lot smoothly than the other versions. You don't sacrifice power by staying UR and the better manabase allows you to play silver bullets.
The other thing is you punt percentage points to twins best matchups like tron In order to make yourself better against some of the bad matchups overall. This has its ups and downs but since you can tune ur quite a bit the want to even splash is much less than it would be
All this ur talk makes me want to put aside my buddy the lur goyf and try ur at this weeks Fnm or I'll try my rug twin mana denial deck for fun then switch. Just going to be interesting as the tempo plan probably feels really different.
Round one I played against a creature-based storm deck with burning tree emissary, priest of urabrask, rituals, and storm entity. The deck was sweet and hilarious, but was pretty bad. It was a quick 2-0. Here I liked that the mana base could function on basic lands, as it helped me cast everything on time and take as little damage as possible. Tasigur was also a brick wall for his burn and creatures.
Round two I played against my buddy's Naya Midrange brew that is essentially designed to beat up on Abzan. Tasigur was absurd the whole time, paired with removal. The deck operated a lot like Abzan in the sense that it plays super efficient creatures like huntmaster, pridemage, voice, and friends. The shackles and sower were key cards here, and leads me to believe they would be equally impressive in the Abzan matchup. The same goes for Keranos and Batterskull.
Round three I played against a 4-color gifts deck. Game one I essentially tempo'd him out of the game, it went long, and he ended up drawing into the fatty he wanted to reanimate against me, and had no way to pitch it. Game two, I locked him out with a turn 3 blood moon.
Although these matchups aren't likely what you want to think about when you sleeve up a deck, Each round proved one thing. Round one proved the manabase can function on basics just fine if you need to conserve your life total. Round two showed how solid Tasigur is in creature matchups, especially paired with removal. Round three simply proved the deck can support blood moon in the sideboard. And to top it all off, all three rounds proved that even though the black splash is a metagame call, you can still fight through the jank in the early rounds of a large tournament you may be likely to see. As an early test run with the deck, I believe it was quite successful and warrants further testing against more conventional matchups.
Do you guys have any advice for someone just picking up the deck?
"If it was easy, everyone would do it."
"If it was easy, everyone would do it."
meta:affinity(choke in SB), Delver, storm, UWR, Esper, Elves, MartyrProc, TitanBloom, DnT, some Trybal decks (monow knights, 5color sleevers), bogles
rarely: abzan, GreenWave and RG tron.
some time im loose to affinity and dever if they too fast. abazan 40-60, with any other 70-30. doesnt tested with elves, bogles and titanbloom, they just in project but i want to prepare to it.
im realy like a tempo deck(my maindeck like an Antonio right now), but some techs what i see on protour is good. like Jelger's BlueMoon twin, Patrick's Grixis(but with some tweaks), and a Humble Defector! whats a bomb!
so welcome any advises)
Modern
Messed up on so many levels and i love it. I just pictured it with the troll face in the moon with the flavor text saying "you mad bro?" and couldn't stop laughing.
I have a hard time getting them to stick with Abzan so i stopped putting them in the SB, but with a friend saying he is gonna start playing UWR control i might end up sliding them back in.
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
In the modern portion,of the top 20 decks, there is only 1 twin deck. of the top 64, there are only 6 twin decks compare to the 12%- 13% of the field who brought twin to the event. So Twin kinda under performed?
Also luck played quite a big part as well. There are 3 abzan, 2 burn, 2 twin and 1 bloom titan in the top 8 and the 2 twin decks got the luck not to fight against the 2 traditional abzan list ( kinda our bane) in the top 8 which run all the discards and more removals namely abrupt decay which the abzan deck piloted by Jacob Wilson which Jelger Weigersma face in the quarter finals is a anti abzan abzan deck which does not run any main deck discards, lotv and only have path as the removal which makes it weak to combo decks like twin.
But it was really nice to see the twin games. Antonio game against Lee Shi Tian burn was really exciting and who would expect 1 little exarch with 1 power would be the one to close that game out. Grats to the winner!
As someone who might try out Twin later down the line again I must say that I would choose UR Twin all the time.
I have to agree with a statement that the commentators made. Twin isn't great against Abzan period but it's probably great against everything else.
And the top 8 matches really showed that.
Amulet? No problem.
A GW creature deck like the one from Jacob Wilson? No problem.
GR Tron? No problem.
I think that Blood Moon is just that good against certain decks and the UR version is the fastest and most consistent version.
I think with a splash you may make your Abzan matchup better but you lose percentages against everything else since your are just not as streamlined anymore and cannot punish other decks as heavily for play mistakes.
At least that's what Im thinking.
2 huntmaster of the fells
3 pestermite
3 deceiver exarch
1 scavenging ooze
1 vendilion clique
3 snapcaster mage
3 splinter twin
4 serum visions
4 lightning bolt
1 electrolyze
1 flame slash
2 cryptic command
3 remand
2 spell snare
1 gitaxian probe
3 sulfur falls
1 breeding pool
1 stomping grounds
1 desolate lighthouse
1 hinterland harbor
3 island
1 mountain
1 forest
4 misty rainforest
4 scalding tarn
Sideboard
1 pyroclasm
1 batterskull
3 molten rain
1 dispel
1 thrun, the last troll
1 dismember
1 spellskite
1 combust
1 ******erflux
1 negate
1 engineered explosives
I realize that if you are in one of those scenarios where you need to draw Twin to win, you would rather have Defector because it can draw you two cards on that final turn for (essentially) free... I don't think it is good enough in U/R. Grixis maybe, but I'm against Grixis at the moment.
Legacy:
GRISELBRAND
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
"If it was easy, everyone would do it."
Also kills their dorks opposing pestermites, good against affinity. Also kills every creature in infect.
While Olivia iz great she can't carry a Twin the way Inferno Titan or Thundermaw can. I run her bc of the synergy with the Defectors but the jury is still out on whether they're worth it. Drawing 4 and using Olivia is great. Defector with a twin is just stupid. I don't think you can run the defectors in the traditional builds though, it really isn't quite good enough.
The other thing is you punt percentage points to twins best matchups like tron In order to make yourself better against some of the bad matchups overall. This has its ups and downs but since you can tune ur quite a bit the want to even splash is much less than it would be
All this ur talk makes me want to put aside my buddy the lur goyf and try ur at this weeks Fnm or I'll try my rug twin mana denial deck for fun then switch. Just going to be interesting as the tempo plan probably feels really different.
Modern:
RUGScapeshift[RUG...Occasionally with goyfs
RUGTarmotwinRUG(RIP)
Legacy:
UWxuwr miracles and stonebladeUWx
Commander:
UWRShu Yun/Ruhan SmashUWR
Please continue the Twin development and discussion in the new thread here:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/tier-1-modern/592023-ur-splintertwin-and-tarmotwin
Big thanks to DBZ for his work in this thread for years!