Mine diversity is important too
I play 4 different mine effect other than 4 dictate.(4 dictate 1 jace 1 howling 1 Mikokoro 1 sanitarium)If playing against heavy discard deck i Also try to Milligan mines away from the starting hand
thing is though, Mines are great against discard heavy decks. you main path to victory is slamming one on the table. i'm not sure mulliganing them away is necessarily the right thing to do (especially if you're on the play).
Agreed, there are many hands where I have kept because I hand: Land, Land, Howling Mine. To mully away mine effects is silly. I can only hope he meant to say mully away turns spells in his opening hand......
Mine diversity is important too
I play 4 different mine effect other than 4 dictate.(4 dictate 1 jace 1 howling 1 Mikokoro 1 sanitarium)If playing against heavy discard deck i Also try to Milligan mines away from the starting hand
You play 3 different mine effects and a utility land that you lie to yourself about...
Geier Reach Sanitariumis not a mine effect.It doesn't help us burn two cards a turn so we can keep comboing (a land drop and a warp) and you are only going to continue to confuse the situation by continuing to list it as an engine.
If you want to use it as a utility land so you can force Emrakul reshuffles fine. But stop insisting it is and engine. It is not even a leverage card like Thing in the Ice, Geist of Saint Traft, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. It is just a ulility land. It filters our cards in hand at the expense of mana. We can never net +1 card by activating it.
This has all been discussed on here several times already...
The point of this primer is to spread good information about our deck, please stop propigating misinformation.
I just now, threw a Censor at a guy who tapped out on Turn 4. He's just going to let the time run until he loses for inactivity, because I see he has started another match because he just couldnt handle being countered.
Welcome, to playing Blue in Modern.
And he thinks your the bad guy cause you are punishing him for casting a spell on curve.....
Sounds like you should try Xmage, I only have people quitting on me about one out of five matchups. It helps that I play ranked games and people would rather be patient because quitting is gauranteed to hurt their score, so most of them stick around to see if I stumble mid combo. A few I suspect cause they want to see how the deck works as it is their first time playing against it.
Being only .2% of the worldwide competitive meta but putting up results like we were 2-3% of the world meta leads to players not understanding our deck, and getting upset when we mop the floor with them. I have had this happen to me at every REL tourney I take Turns to. This is a regular occurrence for most of my non local opponents. My local meta have all seen turns for the better part of a year now. There is even a second turns player now. The regular players at my store know exactly how good Turns is and none of them are salty about the bad beats it produces, if anything I'd say they are bored with playing against it. And I now rarely play it at my closest store due to everyone packing turns hate.
IRL if they want to scoop to my first Time Warp, I have no objections. I like free wins at tourneys. Online it can be frustrating to get in any real testing/practice if half your notes read: matchup unresolved due to salty ragequitter.
When your opponents plan is to swing in with beats. Fog them out. I survived pump-infect winter with 2 Angelsong in the main and 3 Pollen Lullaby in the side. When you add in exhaustions and cryptics, it is almost like our whole deck is time walks.
Anyone else getting flak for playing this deck on mtgo?
I played (tried), a few games today with the UG turns deck and everyone I played either conceded after they saw a turn spell or beaked about how it's not a real deck, then conceded before I even started chaining turns.
I have the same issue when I play tron. Is it normal for people to bail when they see a card/deck they don't like?
Don't take it personally. This deck produces salt like no other.
The conclusion I came to was that those people do not like the feeling of total helplessness that comes with watching your opponent win right through your decks best possible hand.
A few months ago I had an epic matchup against a tron opponent at Regionals and he told me that game one he had kept natural tron and two Kharns and decided since he was on the play that he was almost certain to win that hand. I remanded his turn three Kharn. Exhausted next turn. On my turn 4 i planted a howling mine and then on his turn gigadrowsed two tron pieces. He only had enough to cast a couple of maps/stars, passed back to me and I went to combotown.
Game two on the draw again, I Comandeered his turn three Kharn and then started exiling his lands....
After the round was over he admitted that when I pushed through his best possible opening hand with him on the play game 1, he was a caught off guard.
I have also had massive problems playing people online due to tilt. People quitting, telling me that my deck takes "forever" to win (literally 45 seconds through the combo) and commenting that they don't have all day to wait for me to take my infinite turns? Most of this is ignorance and these people should be ignored.
In person I am always polite and I play extremely fast. I got deck checked at random that Regionals and afterwards three judges hovered over the rest of the match (I'm used to one but three made me nervous). Afterwards I asked them why they were so interested in my match and before he answered "you play really fast" then the second one said "After seeing your list we were concerned you were going to slow play your opponent. We aren't anymore". I explained that I hate going to time with it and so I got used to playing it at breakneck pace. Later that day I won a 6 minute hand on turn 11, which is pretty impressive in an REL setting with me playing blue and my opponent asking permission to do anything.
In person I have forced the draw in time with judges watching and my opponent full tilted his way up out of his chair and stomped off. But for the most part people behave much better in person than online. Much. If you stay polite and establish even the smallest amount of rapport most opponents will respect you back.
I also helps induce salt that most competitive players think that our deck is a poor quality Pet Deck. No one likes losing to a "bad" pet deck.... We should do our best to educate them otherwise. Turns is a scary reliable combo deck. Spread the word.
Remand > Condescend at X = 1 > Mana Leak > other 2 cmc counters
Plus it has other uses at not X = 1 ...
I cant even count the number of times I have targeted my own time warp at X=0 or an enemy Abrupt Decay at x=0 just for the scry.
Seems better to me. Is indestructible and can tap for blue in the long game. Also would be useful if you have a splash.
Well, I will no longer be recommending Citadel to everyone. And I like the art on Cataracts more... so I guess this is a bit more than just strickly better, its also prettier. Plus crushing your opponents with an awakened rainbow clad waterfall has additional cool factor since our deck is so thick with blue and has a strong water and ocean subthemes.
yeah thats the thing. Like my foretold/second sun experiment (which I dont like btw) when you are talking half a dozen turns, have 8+ Mana on the board and your opponent is tapped out...you do you, and just win with whatever.
And just win with whatever .... as long as it actually wins you the game right there. Otherwise we should be choosing mana efficient win cons (to squeeze in while we continue to combo) or win cons that win you the game right then. So really we should limit ourselves to cheap things things like Delver of Secrets and Thing in the Ice. And make sure to avoid things like Elspeth, Sun's Champion because she cannot win us the game that turn Compare her to things like Psychic Spiral which, when we cast it after a few warps we basically insta-win.
Also we play it as a singleton not the full set, 90% of the time we see it we see sanitarium mid and late game when we have mines and card quality is kinda important. I always have to discard lands eot, sanitarium gives me an extra card and that's good . Being played it since it got spoilered and never looked back ahah
Most of the time the fact that its indestructible really doesn't matter. By the time we awaken our land their whole board is tapped down, and at that point we might as well be awakening an island. But the real benefit is what happens when they start making sideboard decisions. If the only win conditions I show them are indestructible(Thassa and Darksteel), they always take out removal (not named Path to Exile), while I side in my 3 Thing in the Ice against what is now a removal light opponent. You can think of it as a bait and switch tactic. And any mind games we can play on our opponent are a major benefit for us because most of our non regular opponents will only have a rough idea of how we win.
So yeah primary benefit: not so much
secondary benefit: one of the best cards in my 75
As far as Sanitarium goes, once we hit the mid to late game anyways your complaining about pitching lands? And you feel that sanitarium somehow helps you with this? I have experienced that I almost never have extra mana once I start comboing. In fact mana in this deck is very tight and I often (like 95% of the time) dont have enough for Mikokoro activation, let alone something that doesn't actually net us +1 card
I agree that it can dig deeper for more answers and that in some (very rare) corner cases it will draw you into the card needed for victory. The reason I think it is a "trap" is because on the surface it looks like an "only slightly less good" Mikokoro. Except Mikokoro actually nets us a card, the sanitarium merely increases our card quality. In order for our deck to keep momentum during the combo we must both cast a warp and make a land drop each turn. That is 2 cards. The sanitarium will not help us actually draw extra cards(net quantity), in order to maintain this pace. So unlike Mikokoro which is and engine and will help us to maintain this 2 cards per turn cost of comboing, the sanitarium merely helps us dig a little deeper (improving quality not quantity)
Which if it truly were "only slightly less good" I wouldn't be calling it a trap. Because it requires repeatable mana expenditures (unlike Thassa's scry), I wouldn't even count it as a fraction of an engine. Best case, its a mana sink for when we have nothing else better to do with our mana. I believe we will be better off with a different utility land, even a second Inkmonth or Darksteel Citadel as our third non-blue land.
Well the one thing we have to look forward to is Evaporating Melody. I know I am going to be stealing some Shadows and Goyfs with that card in the future. Pay special attention to the lack of an "until end of turn" clause on that card. Too bad we are going to have to wait another 3 months...
Because it is an instant, It very much reminds me of Ray of Command, which I used to use to steal Serra Angels to block their other Serra for the win. (back when she was one of the best creatures in magic, 2 for 1's were much harder to come by than nowadays)
Right now I have like 40 something sideboard card possibilities, just bought them all, so going back and forth with a few things.
Also have both Hurkyl's Recall & Stony Silence, could do a 3/3 split. If I care about affinity & other artifact based decks that much.
The cards I hate going against most right now are Eidolon of the Great Revel, Thought-Knot Seer, Liliana of the Veil
Do I really need Geier Reach Sanitarium?
- We are all stuck with large maybe boards as this deck still has some searching to do before it finds its best possible build
- I have been running Kataki, War's Wage because of what it does with Exhaustion. Don't get me wrong, Recall can be flashed back with snapcaster, and Stony Silence is a brick wall for some decks to run flat into. But Kataki swings in for damage and accidentally wiping their board when we exhaust them is back breaking for Affinity, Eggs and Lantern. Although I will admit that Kataki basically has no game against Tron and stopping Expidition map is a much better place to be at, we are already favored to win against non edrazi-style tron so this isnt really a problem.
- These are definately problem cards for us. If they aren't the absolute worst three they are in the top 5. Finding ways to defeat our problems is what this deck primer is all about.
- Geier Reach Sanitarium is a trap. You are better off with darksteel citadel or gemstone caverns, even a second inkmoth nexus. anything but that
While researching cards for another deck I came across this long forgotten gem and I immediately thought about how good it might be in our 8-Seas build. Giving away freeislands is already extremely effective against non blue decks. One of the things holding the build back is the inability to spam 12 seas. But with annex we can steal what we cannot flood out.
We are already trying to bottleneck their mana with gigadrowse and exhaustion, Why aren't we splashing red for Stone Rain so an additional line to victory would be to lock them out of having lands all together (or at least set them back really far)
I'm surprised no one is playing Into the Roil, is it just too much mana?
no point in playing it when you have boomerangs and cryptic command i guess
I know there's no "kicker" so to speak on Unsubstantiate but that's also an excellent new card. I know that maybe a couple years ago we used to discuss Into the Roil more often. I don't think it's worth an inclusion on the primer unless somebody sports it in a winning list for a mid-large event.
Edit: Second thought, it might be more useful in a list that runs more than 2x Snapcaster Mage, but only just.
unsub. is played, not often and only as a 1x-2x tho
probably int the roil could be played in the same way as a "pet card" in not that many copies
it can work, but it is not the kind of a card that make turns jump up in tier if you feel me
Into the Roil is EXACTLY the type of card that belongs in the maybeboard/honorable mentions section of the primer. It is just barely not good enough to make me want to play it, but if I insisted on playing it my list wouldn't be a total disaster. The point of that sort of list is for when they print new sets. The "not quite good enough" list will be the first place I look to when trying to find new synergies with said new cards from new sets.
Has anyone considered Cursecatcher? Its tiny beats, a blocker, and early interaction for 1 U. Thoughts?
Or running Familiar's Ruse next to snappy?
I like judge's familiar more because it has flying. And i think now that familiars ruse is an option several of us will be dusting off our old Time-Attack lists from a few years ago.
In fact the ruse also makes we want to go buy some sage of epityr... not a horrible card to "have to" recast
Agreed, there are many hands where I have kept because I hand: Land, Land, Howling Mine. To mully away mine effects is silly. I can only hope he meant to say mully away turns spells in his opening hand......
You play 3 different mine effects and a utility land that you lie to yourself about...
Geier Reach Sanitarium is not a mine effect. It doesn't help us burn two cards a turn so we can keep comboing (a land drop and a warp) and you are only going to continue to confuse the situation by continuing to list it as an engine.
If you want to use it as a utility land so you can force Emrakul reshuffles fine. But stop insisting it is and engine. It is not even a leverage card like Thing in the Ice, Geist of Saint Traft, or Chandra, Torch of Defiance. It is just a ulility land. It filters our cards in hand at the expense of mana. We can never net +1 card by activating it.
This has all been discussed on here several times already...
The point of this primer is to spread good information about our deck, please stop propigating misinformation.
And he thinks your the bad guy cause you are punishing him for casting a spell on curve.....
Sounds like you should try Xmage, I only have people quitting on me about one out of five matchups. It helps that I play ranked games and people would rather be patient because quitting is gauranteed to hurt their score, so most of them stick around to see if I stumble mid combo. A few I suspect cause they want to see how the deck works as it is their first time playing against it.
Being only .2% of the worldwide competitive meta but putting up results like we were 2-3% of the world meta leads to players not understanding our deck, and getting upset when we mop the floor with them. I have had this happen to me at every REL tourney I take Turns to. This is a regular occurrence for most of my non local opponents. My local meta have all seen turns for the better part of a year now. There is even a second turns player now. The regular players at my store know exactly how good Turns is and none of them are salty about the bad beats it produces, if anything I'd say they are bored with playing against it. And I now rarely play it at my closest store due to everyone packing turns hate.
IRL if they want to scoop to my first Time Warp, I have no objections. I like free wins at tourneys. Online it can be frustrating to get in any real testing/practice if half your notes read: matchup unresolved due to salty ragequitter.
Splash either white or green.
Fog
Angelsong
Pollen Lullaby
Dawn Charm
Riot Control
When your opponents plan is to swing in with beats. Fog them out. I survived pump-infect winter with 2 Angelsong in the main and 3 Pollen Lullaby in the side. When you add in exhaustions and cryptics, it is almost like our whole deck is time walks.
Don't take it personally. This deck produces salt like no other.
The conclusion I came to was that those people do not like the feeling of total helplessness that comes with watching your opponent win right through your decks best possible hand.
A few months ago I had an epic matchup against a tron opponent at Regionals and he told me that game one he had kept natural tron and two Kharns and decided since he was on the play that he was almost certain to win that hand. I remanded his turn three Kharn. Exhausted next turn. On my turn 4 i planted a howling mine and then on his turn gigadrowsed two tron pieces. He only had enough to cast a couple of maps/stars, passed back to me and I went to combotown.
Game two on the draw again, I Comandeered his turn three Kharn and then started exiling his lands....
After the round was over he admitted that when I pushed through his best possible opening hand with him on the play game 1, he was a caught off guard.
I have also had massive problems playing people online due to tilt. People quitting, telling me that my deck takes "forever" to win (literally 45 seconds through the combo) and commenting that they don't have all day to wait for me to take my infinite turns? Most of this is ignorance and these people should be ignored.
In person I am always polite and I play extremely fast. I got deck checked at random that Regionals and afterwards three judges hovered over the rest of the match (I'm used to one but three made me nervous). Afterwards I asked them why they were so interested in my match and before he answered "you play really fast" then the second one said "After seeing your list we were concerned you were going to slow play your opponent. We aren't anymore". I explained that I hate going to time with it and so I got used to playing it at breakneck pace. Later that day I won a 6 minute hand on turn 11, which is pretty impressive in an REL setting with me playing blue and my opponent asking permission to do anything.
In person I have forced the draw in time with judges watching and my opponent full tilted his way up out of his chair and stomped off. But for the most part people behave much better in person than online. Much. If you stay polite and establish even the smallest amount of rapport most opponents will respect you back.
I also helps induce salt that most competitive players think that our deck is a poor quality Pet Deck. No one likes losing to a "bad" pet deck.... We should do our best to educate them otherwise. Turns is a scary reliable combo deck. Spread the word.
You are forgetting Condescend
Remand > Condescend at X = 1 > Mana Leak > other 2 cmc counters
Plus it has other uses at not X = 1 ...
I cant even count the number of times I have targeted my own time warp at X=0 or an enemy Abrupt Decay at x=0 just for the scry.
Well, I will no longer be recommending Citadel to everyone. And I like the art on Cataracts more... so I guess this is a bit more than just strickly better, its also prettier. Plus crushing your opponents with an awakened rainbow clad waterfall has additional cool factor since our deck is so thick with blue and has a strong water and ocean subthemes.
And just win with whatever .... as long as it actually wins you the game right there. Otherwise we should be choosing mana efficient win cons (to squeeze in while we continue to combo) or win cons that win you the game right then. So really we should limit ourselves to cheap things things like Delver of Secrets and Thing in the Ice. And make sure to avoid things like Elspeth, Sun's Champion because she cannot win us the game that turn Compare her to things like Psychic Spiral which, when we cast it after a few warps we basically insta-win.
Most of the time the fact that its indestructible really doesn't matter. By the time we awaken our land their whole board is tapped down, and at that point we might as well be awakening an island. But the real benefit is what happens when they start making sideboard decisions. If the only win conditions I show them are indestructible(Thassa and Darksteel), they always take out removal (not named Path to Exile), while I side in my 3 Thing in the Ice against what is now a removal light opponent. You can think of it as a bait and switch tactic. And any mind games we can play on our opponent are a major benefit for us because most of our non regular opponents will only have a rough idea of how we win.
So yeah primary benefit: not so much
secondary benefit: one of the best cards in my 75
As far as Sanitarium goes, once we hit the mid to late game anyways your complaining about pitching lands? And you feel that sanitarium somehow helps you with this? I have experienced that I almost never have extra mana once I start comboing. In fact mana in this deck is very tight and I often (like 95% of the time) dont have enough for Mikokoro activation, let alone something that doesn't actually net us +1 card
I agree that it can dig deeper for more answers and that in some (very rare) corner cases it will draw you into the card needed for victory. The reason I think it is a "trap" is because on the surface it looks like an "only slightly less good" Mikokoro. Except Mikokoro actually nets us a card, the sanitarium merely increases our card quality. In order for our deck to keep momentum during the combo we must both cast a warp and make a land drop each turn. That is 2 cards. The sanitarium will not help us actually draw extra cards(net quantity), in order to maintain this pace. So unlike Mikokoro which is and engine and will help us to maintain this 2 cards per turn cost of comboing, the sanitarium merely helps us dig a little deeper (improving quality not quantity)
Which if it truly were "only slightly less good" I wouldn't be calling it a trap. Because it requires repeatable mana expenditures (unlike Thassa's scry), I wouldn't even count it as a fraction of an engine. Best case, its a mana sink for when we have nothing else better to do with our mana. I believe we will be better off with a different utility land, even a second Inkmonth or Darksteel Citadel as our third non-blue land.
Because it is an instant, It very much reminds me of Ray of Command, which I used to use to steal Serra Angels to block their other Serra for the win. (back when she was one of the best creatures in magic, 2 for 1's were much harder to come by than nowadays)
- We are all stuck with large maybe boards as this deck still has some searching to do before it finds its best possible build
- I have been running Kataki, War's Wage because of what it does with Exhaustion. Don't get me wrong, Recall can be flashed back with snapcaster, and Stony Silence is a brick wall for some decks to run flat into. But Kataki swings in for damage and accidentally wiping their board when we exhaust them is back breaking for Affinity, Eggs and Lantern. Although I will admit that Kataki basically has no game against Tron and stopping Expidition map is a much better place to be at, we are already favored to win against non edrazi-style tron so this isnt really a problem.
- These are definately problem cards for us. If they aren't the absolute worst three they are in the top 5. Finding ways to defeat our problems is what this deck primer is all about.
- Geier Reach Sanitarium is a trap. You are better off with darksteel citadel or gemstone caverns, even a second inkmoth nexus. anything but that
We are already trying to bottleneck their mana with gigadrowse and exhaustion, Why aren't we splashing red for Stone Rain so an additional line to victory would be to lock them out of having lands all together (or at least set them back really far)
Into the Roil is EXACTLY the type of card that belongs in the maybeboard/honorable mentions section of the primer. It is just barely not good enough to make me want to play it, but if I insisted on playing it my list wouldn't be a total disaster. The point of that sort of list is for when they print new sets. The "not quite good enough" list will be the first place I look to when trying to find new synergies with said new cards from new sets.
I like judge's familiar more because it has flying. And i think now that familiars ruse is an option several of us will be dusting off our old Time-Attack lists from a few years ago.
In fact the ruse also makes we want to go buy some sage of epityr... not a horrible card to "have to" recast