So apparently the site didn't shut down after all lol. Anyway, here's my take on the Turns archetype using boros. I'm at work so I'll just link the deck I built, but I would like to clarify something. There's no sundial of the infinite because I think it's too fragile with Karn, TCG all over the place so I opted instead for Angel's Grace which can't be countered. Feel free to critique and give suggestions!
This is a fresh new take on the deck! I don't really have too much to say about it since it looks so different from what I'm used to. As a general rule, though, you do want to be getting some kind of extra value from your extra turns, like having a Howling Mine or getting your Ancestral Vision to tick down. Otherwise, you're spending your extra turn cards as expensive Explores, which isn't great. It looks like your deck can leverage Gideons to get a lot of value from extra turns, but I'm not sure if that's consistent enough to justify the turns package on its own. I'd consider cards like Howling Mine to try to get more value from your turns (and also help you draw into more extra turn spells). Really sweet brew, thanks for posting!
Anybody ever test Silence in their 'Taking Turns' build? Thoughts on its advantages and disadvantages.
Silence seems mostly worse than other options to me. If you're using it on your opponent's turn to prevent them from casting spells, Gigadrowse can do that is also flexible enough to fog when you need it. If you're using Silence on your own turn to protect a Time Warp, it seems mostly worse than Dispel since your opponent still has their counterspell in hand, and can counter your next move on your extra turn. Gigadrowse also protects you from non-Force of Negation counterspells if you tap out your opponent at their end step.
So I was under the impression the site was shutting down and you wouldn't be able to post anymore so I haven't checked in a while!
So it's been a really long time since I've posted but just wanted to share my recent successes with UB Taking Turns.. I really wanted a variant that could beat creature matchups and then have a lot of disruption postboard for non-creature matchups and this is what I've come up with.
Yeah I know what you mean! I really like the idea of Dead of Winter, though I'm not sure if it's maindeck material. Either way, this list looks very solid, and I think it'll do well in a creature-heavy meta.
Hello guys. I haven't played the deck in a long while and I'm thinking about returning to modern now that Hogaak is donezo. I pretty much only have one concern after going through my old list: doesn't Turns just scoop to a resolved Force of Negation on one of it's big turn spells? How do you even combat this?
There are a few reasonable ways to FoN. Splashing black for Thoughtseize effects is one way to go. Splashing white for T3feri would also work. My preference is to run more Commandeer to fight a manaless counter war. If you tap out your UW Control opponent with Gigadrowse at their end step, their only interaction is Force of Negation, so you can probably get away with using Commandeer as a bad counterspell for their FoN to protect your Time Warp. Commandeer is also great if they tap out for an early Planeswalker, which in my opinion is a big reason to run it.
Why Gelectrode and Crackling Drake in the SB? If there's a reason pages back, I'm down to check it out!
Gelectrode is mainly for Humans and Spirits. It deals with Thalia and Mausoleum Wanderer quite nicely, and with help from any Instants or Sorceries, it can take down other problematic cards like Drogskol Captain, Meddling Mage, Kitesail Freebooter, or Gaddock Teeg. It also happens to be ok against Vendilion Clique and Teferi out of UW Control and is another threat against Whir Prison, but those matchups are already good and that's not the reason to have Gelectrode in the board. Crackling Drake is primarily for Jund or Death's Shadow-style decks where the games tend to involve trading resources. Crackling Drake is a fantastic topdeck in that scenario. It replaces itself, so even in the worst case of getting Liliana edicted, you still got some value out of it. In the best case, it kills your opponent in one or two hits. It's also usually a reasonable blocker against many of the creatures in Humans, Spirits, Phoenix, Burn, etc.
Congrats Daniel, awesome finish. Excited for the report.
Decided to finally try a color splash for my deck. 3 fetches, 2 shocks, and a basic plains. New SB, few old favs. What do you guys think?
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Search for Azcanta
4 Dictate of Kruphix
3 Flooded Strand
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Inkmoth Nexus
15 Island
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Plains
3 Gigadrowse
4 Remand
2 Cryptic Command
4 Serum Visions
3 Exhaustion
4 Time Warp
3 Part the Waterveil
4 Temporal Mastery
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sideboard (15)
3 Path to Exile
2 Rest in Peace
2 Spreading Seas
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Dragon's Claw
2 Spellskite
Deck looks sweet! You definitely want to add more UW lands though. Frank Karsten recommends having 13 W lands to cast a 1W spell like Rest in Peace, for example. You get to cheat on that number a bit because you have Serum Visions, but it would still be a good idea to add about 5 more UW lands. I recommend Glacial Fortress and Prairie Stream, but you have lots of options. I also think Dragon's Claw isn't a great way to combat Burn, and would instead suggest Negate, Redirect, or Commandeer. If you're adamant about having an anti-burn artifact, I think Sun Droplet is the better option. One more thing to be aware of is the non-bo of Grafdigger's Cage and Snapcaster Mage.
Hey guys, new poster here, but longtime turns player. I’ve played UW my entire run, experimenting between dictate builds and As Foretold builds. My current, and longest lasting build is a hybrid between the two, with a huge success rate over the last year +, hoping to take it to a major event sometime this year. Right now though, with War of the Spark spoilers, I’m looking at trying out a full dictate/mine build using the new Jace walker. A lot of hate has been put on him, but with the crazy amount of draw power the dictate/mine build allows, I feel it might have the potential to be a quick and efficient way to close games. Any thoughts or constructive criticisms?
It's an interesting idea! I mentioned earlier that I'd envision such a deck having a lot of cantrips, a lower curve, a lot of Mine effects, and a focus on comboing fast without needing a wincon other than new Jace. I have my doubts as to the power level of this deck, but it certainly sounds fun!
Hi everyone. I thought I'd share my hybrid Turns/Control list that I played at GP Calgary to a 10-5 finish and 52nd place. The deck was very good to me on Friday where I won a Last Chance Trial (4-0) to earn 2 byes and on Day 1 where I made it to 8-0 before the cut. I was riding high into Day 2, then I promptly lost 4 matches in a row crushing my dreams of a top 8 finish.
I've been working on this deck for off and on for about a year, but really dedicated myself to it in the last few months, with the rise of UR Phoenix decks. I've had good success locally (I top 4'ed a 4k open in Edmonton a few weeks back) and on MTGO (24-11 in comp leagues, still no 5-0). I could write pages about how the deck works, the other variations I've tried, the different match-ups, lines of play etc. But for now I'm just sharing my latest list.
Also, I want to say congrats to Daniel Wong on yet another great GP finish! I regret not saying hi when I saw you on Day 2. It's because of you that I ever sleeved up Time Warp in modern.
Congrats on your finish and undefeated Day 1! Hopefully we'll get to meet at some other GP, it's always cool to see other people sleeving up Time Warps.
Any thoughts on using the new Teferi? Being able to combo off without worrying about counters and the ability to time warp at instant speed seem pretty good. And for just 3 mana nonetheless
Gigadrowse mostly solves the issue of counterspells, so I don't think we need another card that does that. And Instant speed Warping again sounds like a way to beat counterspells, which we already have. Still, it's great in a control-heavy meta, but that's just not what Modern as a whole looks like right now. I don't think Teferi's -3 is especially useful, but I could definitely be underestimating it.
New Teferi seems really cool. Not sure if I will give him a slot though. Match ups I would want him in I already feel favored in, and don’t think he’s better then what I currently have. Worth checking out. The new Ral, storm conduit in a UR build looks really interesting imo. Might be a reason for me to try UR turns!
Went 2-2 Wednesday night at the LGS. Mono R Phoenix got me round 1. Lost to amulet titan r4. Had some interesting interactions with hive mind and turns. Learned I got to take turns first. Also when PTW awakens, he gets to awaken also. Beat grixis control, and an artifact prison style deck. New sideboard didn’t get a huge test drive, and bad beats against a couple tough match ups. Chocking this one up as 1 of those nights.
New Ral is interesting, but probably a worse 4-mana Walker than Jace the Mind Sculptor or Chandra Torch of Defiance. Ral's -2 is super sweet, but he can't protect himself like Jace and Chandra can, and his +2 isn't actual card advantage like Jace's +0 or Chandra's +1 to exile. Also, those are some interesting Hive Mind interactions that I definitely haven't thought about. Good to know!
I figured that in AFT builds you would play some number of mission briefing to fill a flashback roll that snap gives but also synergize with the suspend spells. Seems like a powerful 1 of.
Mission Briefing is reasonable, but the 2/1 body on Snapcaster Mage is in my opinion generally better than the Surveil 2 from Mission Briefing. The interaction with suspend spells is very cool though. I suppose @Magus_of_Farts can speak more to why Briefing isn't in the deck.
Never had issues with running out of cards, always have plenty of draw. I am considering shifting the 3x Snapcaster Mage to 3x Mission Briefing for the dig as well as being able to use the Ancestral Visions a second time. The win condition of Snappies has been great though and being able to block in addition to the flashback has been extremely beneficial.
I play a mono blue version of the deck (not frequently enough because of work :frown::frown: ) and took it to a side event at the MagicFest Strasbourg last weekend.
I played 2-1 in 3 rounds of Swiss and went against Merfolk (0-2), UW Midrange (2-1) and Burn (2-1). Thanks to 2 maindeck Radiant Fountain and 4 SB Dragon's claw I didn't fear the Burn matchup too much. As it turned out the event was overrun by Burn
Here's my decklist and along with a small report (here).
How is the Phoenix Matchup for you guys? I haven't played against them so far with Turns.
Thanks for posting your decklist and report. Looks sweet! How have the Spreading Seas been? I can see them being strong in the right meta, but I'm not sure if many places have that meta right now. The Phonex matchup has been pretty close to even for me, but a lot of my losses have been due to my own misplays. They don't have a lot of countermagic game 1 (usually 0 - 2 Izzet Charm as the only counters), so you can do things like hold up Cryptic Command with relatively little fear of it being countered. In my experience, if the opponent has a very fast start (like turn 3 flipped Thing in the Ice, or turn 2 two Phoenixes), then the game is incredibly difficult. When their starts are much slower (turn 3 single Phoenix, or you kill their Thing in the Ice), it can be hard for them to kill you before you go off.
Thanks for reply!
I agree with you, Spreading Seas didn't feel very good this time around. It excels if there's a lot of Big Mana decks and 3-color decks. I plan to replace it with Remand, bounce spells or maybe I splash a color for removal like (bolt, push or path). All cards I consider to replace Spreading Seas with are instants (or sorceries), which is also nice for the post board Thing in the Ices.
Round 1 I played my friend and his mono green devotion superfriends home brew deck. Won 2-0.
Round 2 was eldrazi stompy. Won 2-1.
Round 3 we decided to split, we were the only 2 2-0. Not sure what he was playing, he left quick after collecting his winnings. There was a Temur scapeshift, monoblack devotion, and Abzan decks at the event
Thanks you three for the replies! Always good to get more perspectives
Played in a saturday event at the LGS. 8 people showed. I experimented with removing a snap and the 4th remand for 2 boomerang main.
Round 1 2-0 vs RUG scapeshift
Round 2 0-2 vs Bant spirits. 3 aether vials turns 1 and 2 led to disaster. Round 2 i got a few turns going, but couldnt get any extra draw to build anything.
2 dredge decks, 2 burn decks, 2 spirits, scapeshift and my mono U turns made up the line up
Boomerangs were ok, cyclonic rift may be better for the early/late game potential. 2nd snap out feels wrong, but didnt seem to hurt. Just trying to shore up the early game weakness. Spirits was rough. Brought in 2 devastation tide, and a ratchet bomb from the side. Didnt see any of them. Maybe another ratchet bomb would help?
My intuition is that Ratchet Bomb is too slow (cast it on T2, tick it up T2, T3, blow it up X=2 on T4 or X=3 on T5), but I'm not sure. Interaction is definitely necessary, and it might be among the best you can do in mono-U.
Thanks JPoJhonson, after seeing your code, I realized its similarities to the export function of my saved decks, so this was pretty easy!
Like I said, this is mostly just a fusion of Wong's and Stein's lists, but the changes I made are the addition of Minamo, School at Water's Edge in the main (over a basic) and exchanging the Howling Mine with Search for Azcanta, which is a bit risky I think, but I really want to try out, if it works out well. So feedback on my changes and the Lightning Axe in the Sideboard would be nice! Other Sideboard-Options I'm thinking of: Entrancing Melody or even one or two white cards such as RIP.
@JetterBetter: I think Grafdigger's Cage should be fine in those matchups (storm often uses Gifts Ungiven to win, and without all the Flashback, they will probably have a hard time gathering enough resources to get lethal) while also randomly hating on other decks like Creatures Toolbox.
Hey @TheRematcher! Your list looks solid to me. Minamo is a reasonable choice in many metas, since it's mostly better than an Island, but it does make the deck weaker to nonbasic hate like Fulminator Mage or Blood Moon. Just something to be aware of! For Howling Mine versus Azcanta, I prefer Howling Mine because this deck needs card quantity more than card quality, so just drawing more cards is what I'd rather be doing. However, it's still a good idea to try out new things, especially if Howling Mine's downside is particularly bad in your meta (decks like Burn, Infect, Elves, and Dredge are way better when a Mine is in play). One change I'd recommend making is replacing the Hallowed Fountain with Watery Grave because of Surgical Extraction in the sideboard. Unlike the fetchland split which doesn't really matter, paying or not paying 2 life for Surgical can make a huge difference in close games against Dredge or Phoenix. Another thing to consider is more interaction with the stack - a card like Negate, Logic Knot, or Delay - but that's very meta dependent so it's not necessary by any means. I'd also advise against adding white cards like Rest in Peace unless you massively change the manabase. Frank Karsten's article recommends 13 white sources to consistently cast a 1W card like Rest in Peace or Stony Silence, and having 5 fetchlands plus a Hallowed Fountain just won't cut it.
While the scry mode of azcanta is very nice, I usually like it flipping in to an extra land. It helps power into the lands needed to chain turns, or be able to multi spell and try and gain advantages, or dig for the clutch answer. Flipping it is sometimes a chore, we don’t load up the graveyard a ton, and temporal and PTW get exiled on cast, along with snap targets. And it is a “May” flip, so it can stay in search mode
I haven’t looked back since taking the howling mines out. Dictate+Jace+Azcanta to go with remands and cryptic seems to usually have me where I need to be without gassing my opponent up.
I like your take on Search for Azcanta. It really isn't a Howling Mine, but it does have a lot of upsides that Mine doesn't. I suppose they're pretty different cards and it isn't necessarily right to compare them directly.
Also, I just posted a Blue-Black Turns video! It's pretty much my list from GP Hartford 2018 with one sideboard card swapped.
Congrats to you both! I was hesitant to play this deck with all the burn hype without chalice. But I thought chalice would disrupt the bolt strat to much (Mat proved me wrong!).
While I never like to "meta game" modern I was expecting burn in high numbers. Modern being as it is maybe I should have just ran it out there (with chalice).
If I can make Calgary I will take turns.
Grand Prix are extremely open and hard to metagame for. There were 1318 competitors at GP Toronto, and even if 10% of them were on Burn (132 players on the same deck? That's insane!), you'd play against Burn on average 1.5 times out of 15 matches. It's just not worth metagaming against a single deck when the field is as diverse as it is in Modern.
The league went really poorly. I made a few misplays and we had some pretty bad luck in some of our draws. Probably the worst part though is that our sideboard was pretty poorly positioned for the matchups we got! I hope to make another UW Turns deck in the future to better show off what it can do.
I have one more trick that came up several times during the league, which is playing around your opponent's Cryptic Command with Dictate of Kruphix. Normally, we just flash in Dictate at our opponent's end step once we have 3 mana available. However, if we're on the draw and suspect that the opponent has Cryptic Command in hand, this turns out very poorly for us because they'll have Cryptic Command online by then. The opponent can counter the Dictate and bounce one of our lands, putting us very far behind. To play around this, you can cast Dictate during the opponent's draw step. The opponent will only have 3 mana available at that point, and they won't draw an extra card off Dictate that turn because the beginning of the draw step already happened. The opponent will still have options with their Cryptic, but those options are much worse than counter-bounce. Do note that this play is vulnerable to 2-mana counterspells like Logic Knot or Mana Leak, and also vulnerable to Detention Spehere. Still, it's a good trick to know about!
@Timewalkinonsunshine, just finished watching your video last night! You were so incredibly lucky with that Gemstone Caverns lol! I couldn't believe it
So as I mentioned on your video - I think I may take a break from Jeskai after only going 5-3 (then dropped) at Starcity Worcester this weekend
I had a lot of really strong games and from them I think I would make the following changes
I think I would switch to 3 Path, 2 Bolt. My reasoning was that unlike a solid UR build where the 4x bolt are intended to just win quicker.. I found that bolt wasn't really that important to my gameplan and having a clean answer to any creature in the form of Path was more important..
I would definitely get rid of Geist of Saint Traft in the sidebaord as it did nothing for me (like you mentioned in the video, it is just a 2/2 that can be blocked)... That being said I lost to him in two rounds back to back and was so mad that I didn't have an answer lol - I did like Vendilion Clique though however. It kind of ran away with the game a few times because I was able to take their only creature removal interaction and then attack them down quickly... Potential considerations for replacing Geist would be: A second vendilion clique, just doing 2x Crackling drake and dropping Vendilion Clique altogether, or Young Pyromancer
Definitely would change the land base, running more basics and then possibly Prairie Stream, and more buddy lands.. Was also considering running no fetches similar to storm however that would make the idea of a "perfect mana base" a lot more difficult
These are just of my ranting opinions from playing..! Definitely felt more like a control deck that can just spiral out of control into a combo then a straight Taking Turns build.. I would do UR but I feel like against creature decks you just watch them put ten creatures down and pray you can Anger of the Gods in time lol
All of those things seem reasonable. Hope you enjoy your next deck!
A 3 Path - 2 Bolt split seems reasonable, though it's making me wonder at what point is it just better to play straight up UW and have a better manabase.
I definitely imagined Geist of Saint Traft being way better than it was in practice. That's why we playtest though, gotta learn somehow!
I think if you're going straight-up UW, it becomes much easier to make a manabase that's not very painful.
I have a few minor nitpicks about the rules section in the primer. I'll include references to the comprehensive rules because I like rules.
This is important because when drawing multiple cards a turn with Dictate or Howling Mine, you would reveal the first card separate and have the opportunity to cast it BEFORE drawing the remaining cards.
This is only true if you want it to be. There's a lot to unpack here, so I'm going to go through everything step-by-step. First of all, everything I'm about to talk about takes place in the draw step.
Both Howling Mine and Dictate of Kruphix have triggered abilities that trigger "At the beginning of each player's draw step", which means those abilities will go on the stack and resolve during the draw step.
The first card that you will draw in your draw step is the "card for turn". See rules 504.1 and 504.2: "First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack." and "Second, the active player gets priority. (See rule 116, “Timing and Priority.”)".
The key here is that triggered abilities will go onto the stack after you've drawn your card for turn. See rule 603.3: "Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority...".
If the card you've drawn for turn has Miracle, then you have multiple triggers trying to go on the stack at the same time (the Miracle trigger and the Dictate/Howling Mine trigger(s)). Because you have multiple triggers to put on the stack, you choose the order. See rule 603.3b: "If multiple abilities have triggered since the last time a player received priority, each player, in APNAP order, puts triggered abilities they control on the stack in any order they choose...".
If you choose to put the Miracle trigger on the bottom of the stack, then the Dictate/Howling Mine trigger(s) will resolve before the Miracle. You will draw your Dictate/Howling Mine card(s) before casting the Miracle card.
If you choose to put the Miracle trigger on the top of the stack, then you will cast the Miracle card before drawing the Dictate/Howling Mine cards.
Typically, it's strategically better to draw cards before casting the Miracle card because you can draw into Commandeer or a counterspell that can protect the Miracle card. However, if you expect that your opponent will do something like target you with Vendilion Clique in response to the Miracle trigger while you don't have access to interaction, it's better to put the Miracle trigger on the top of the stack so that your opponent will look at fewer cards with Vendilion Clique and have less information.
Now for the super pedantic one:
Logic Knot tries to resolve, but is countered on resolution because it no longer has a legal target, and it's removed from the stack
This used to be true, but with the Dominaria rules update, the spell is not considered to be "countered". It still goes to the graveyard without having any effect, aka "fizzles". The difference doesn't matter in the context of Modern because the only card that cares about this rules change, Multani's Presence, is not Modern legal. Still, I like spreading accurate information!
I also have a suggestion: Tips & Tricks! There are a few things that are good candidates for a Tips & Tricks section that you mention briefly in some parts of the primer, but I think it's good to have a compilation. Here's a few things that would be right at home there:
Because Dictate of Kruphix triggers at draw step, you can flash it in at your upkeep and draw an extra card in that same turn. This is especially useful when you know you will Miracle a Temporal Mastery and have 5 or more mana available at your upkeep.
You can tap your own Howling Mine (among the other permanents you tap) with Gigadrowse at your opponent's upkeep to prevent your opponent from drawing a card for Howling Mine.
You can target multiple Phantasmal Images with Gigadrowse to kill them all.
You can resolve the copies of Gigadrowse through a Chalice of the Void on 1. (This is in the section on Gigadrowse already but deserves a mention)
You can use Commandeer on most counterspells and have them target Commandeer and they will fizzle. This means that you won't have to, for example, pay the mana at upkeep on Pact of Negation. Note that you cannot use Commandeer in this way on counterspells that can't target Commandeer, such as Spell Snare or Warping Wail.
You can use Commandeer as an expensive Force of Will for many noncreature spells, such as Collected Company or Postmortem Lunge. Note that this won't work for symmetric effects like Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, or Living End.
You can use Jace's -1 ability or Cryptic Command to bounce your own Snapcaster Mage and continue your Time Walk chain. Just make sure that you don't run into a removal spell for Snapcaster Mage in response to your bounce!
There's a bunch more cool and non-obvious things, but the other ones I can think of right now are pretty specific to my build (such as using Surgical Extraction on your own instant or sorcery to pump a Crackling Drake). Anyway, great job on the primer! I really appreciate your hard work and I'm sure many other time walkers do too.
1
This is a fresh new take on the deck! I don't really have too much to say about it since it looks so different from what I'm used to. As a general rule, though, you do want to be getting some kind of extra value from your extra turns, like having a Howling Mine or getting your Ancestral Vision to tick down. Otherwise, you're spending your extra turn cards as expensive Explores, which isn't great. It looks like your deck can leverage Gideons to get a lot of value from extra turns, but I'm not sure if that's consistent enough to justify the turns package on its own. I'd consider cards like Howling Mine to try to get more value from your turns (and also help you draw into more extra turn spells). Really sweet brew, thanks for posting!
Silence seems mostly worse than other options to me. If you're using it on your opponent's turn to prevent them from casting spells, Gigadrowse can do that is also flexible enough to fog when you need it. If you're using Silence on your own turn to protect a Time Warp, it seems mostly worse than Dispel since your opponent still has their counterspell in hand, and can counter your next move on your extra turn. Gigadrowse also protects you from non-Force of Negation counterspells if you tap out your opponent at their end step.
Yeah I know what you mean! I really like the idea of Dead of Winter, though I'm not sure if it's maindeck material. Either way, this list looks very solid, and I think it'll do well in a creature-heavy meta.
There are a few reasonable ways to FoN. Splashing black for Thoughtseize effects is one way to go. Splashing white for T3feri would also work. My preference is to run more Commandeer to fight a manaless counter war. If you tap out your UW Control opponent with Gigadrowse at their end step, their only interaction is Force of Negation, so you can probably get away with using Commandeer as a bad counterspell for their FoN to protect your Time Warp. Commandeer is also great if they tap out for an early Planeswalker, which in my opinion is a big reason to run it.
2
1 Howling Mine
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Extra turns
4 Time Warp
1 Part the Waterveil
3 Temporal Mastery
Pseudo extra turns
3 Gigadrowse
3 Exhaustion
Interaction
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Snapback
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Cryptic Command
1 Commandeer
Cantrips
2 Opt
4 Serum Visions
3 Island
3 Snow-Covered Island
2 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
4 Sulfur Falls
1 Temple of Epiphany
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Gemstone Caverns
2 Abrade
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Commandeer
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Negate
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Thing in the Ice
1
2
Deck looks sweet! You definitely want to add more UW lands though. Frank Karsten recommends having 13 W lands to cast a 1W spell like Rest in Peace, for example. You get to cheat on that number a bit because you have Serum Visions, but it would still be a good idea to add about 5 more UW lands. I recommend Glacial Fortress and Prairie Stream, but you have lots of options. I also think Dragon's Claw isn't a great way to combat Burn, and would instead suggest Negate, Redirect, or Commandeer. If you're adamant about having an anti-burn artifact, I think Sun Droplet is the better option. One more thing to be aware of is the non-bo of Grafdigger's Cage and Snapcaster Mage.
It's an interesting idea! I mentioned earlier that I'd envision such a deck having a lot of cantrips, a lower curve, a lot of Mine effects, and a focus on comboing fast without needing a wincon other than new Jace. I have my doubts as to the power level of this deck, but it certainly sounds fun!
Congrats on your finish and undefeated Day 1! Hopefully we'll get to meet at some other GP, it's always cool to see other people sleeving up Time Warps.
Gigadrowse mostly solves the issue of counterspells, so I don't think we need another card that does that. And Instant speed Warping again sounds like a way to beat counterspells, which we already have. Still, it's great in a control-heavy meta, but that's just not what Modern as a whole looks like right now. I don't think Teferi's -3 is especially useful, but I could definitely be underestimating it.
New Ral is interesting, but probably a worse 4-mana Walker than Jace the Mind Sculptor or Chandra Torch of Defiance. Ral's -2 is super sweet, but he can't protect himself like Jace and Chandra can, and his +2 isn't actual card advantage like Jace's +0 or Chandra's +1 to exile. Also, those are some interesting Hive Mind interactions that I definitely haven't thought about. Good to know!
Mission Briefing is reasonable, but the 2/1 body on Snapcaster Mage is in my opinion generally better than the Surveil 2 from Mission Briefing. The interaction with suspend spells is very cool though. I suppose @Magus_of_Farts can speak more to why Briefing isn't in the deck.
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My intuition is that Ratchet Bomb is too slow (cast it on T2, tick it up T2, T3, blow it up X=2 on T4 or X=3 on T5), but I'm not sure. Interaction is definitely necessary, and it might be among the best you can do in mono-U.
Hey @TheRematcher! Your list looks solid to me. Minamo is a reasonable choice in many metas, since it's mostly better than an Island, but it does make the deck weaker to nonbasic hate like Fulminator Mage or Blood Moon. Just something to be aware of! For Howling Mine versus Azcanta, I prefer Howling Mine because this deck needs card quantity more than card quality, so just drawing more cards is what I'd rather be doing. However, it's still a good idea to try out new things, especially if Howling Mine's downside is particularly bad in your meta (decks like Burn, Infect, Elves, and Dredge are way better when a Mine is in play). One change I'd recommend making is replacing the Hallowed Fountain with Watery Grave because of Surgical Extraction in the sideboard. Unlike the fetchland split which doesn't really matter, paying or not paying 2 life for Surgical can make a huge difference in close games against Dredge or Phoenix. Another thing to consider is more interaction with the stack - a card like Negate, Logic Knot, or Delay - but that's very meta dependent so it's not necessary by any means. I'd also advise against adding white cards like Rest in Peace unless you massively change the manabase. Frank Karsten's article recommends 13 white sources to consistently cast a 1W card like Rest in Peace or Stony Silence, and having 5 fetchlands plus a Hallowed Fountain just won't cut it.
I like your take on Search for Azcanta. It really isn't a Howling Mine, but it does have a lot of upsides that Mine doesn't. I suppose they're pretty different cards and it isn't necessarily right to compare them directly.
Also, I just posted a Blue-Black Turns video! It's pretty much my list from GP Hartford 2018 with one sideboard card swapped.
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Grand Prix are extremely open and hard to metagame for. There were 1318 competitors at GP Toronto, and even if 10% of them were on Burn (132 players on the same deck? That's insane!), you'd play against Burn on average 1.5 times out of 15 matches. It's just not worth metagaming against a single deck when the field is as diverse as it is in Modern.
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2 Anger of the Gods
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Commandeer
1 Negate
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Gelectrode
1 Crackling Drake
3 Thing in the Ice
Also shoutout to Mat Stein who also finished 12-3 on UR Turns. Our deck is doing great!
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I have a few minor nitpicks about the rules section in the primer. I'll include references to the comprehensive rules because I like rules.This is only true if you want it to be. There's a lot to unpack here, so I'm going to go through everything step-by-step. First of all, everything I'm about to talk about takes place in the draw step.
- Both Howling Mine and Dictate of Kruphix have triggered abilities that trigger "At the beginning of each player's draw step", which means those abilities will go on the stack and resolve during the draw step.
- The first card that you will draw in your draw step is the "card for turn". See rules 504.1 and 504.2: "First, the active player draws a card. This turn-based action doesn’t use the stack." and "Second, the active player gets priority. (See rule 116, “Timing and Priority.”)".
- The key here is that triggered abilities will go onto the stack after you've drawn your card for turn. See rule 603.3: "Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority...".
- If the card you've drawn for turn has Miracle, then you have multiple triggers trying to go on the stack at the same time (the Miracle trigger and the Dictate/Howling Mine trigger(s)). Because you have multiple triggers to put on the stack, you choose the order. See rule 603.3b: "If multiple abilities have triggered since the last time a player received priority, each player, in APNAP order, puts triggered abilities they control on the stack in any order they choose...".
- If you choose to put the Miracle trigger on the bottom of the stack, then the Dictate/Howling Mine trigger(s) will resolve before the Miracle. You will draw your Dictate/Howling Mine card(s) before casting the Miracle card.
- If you choose to put the Miracle trigger on the top of the stack, then you will cast the Miracle card before drawing the Dictate/Howling Mine cards.
Typically, it's strategically better to draw cards before casting the Miracle card because you can draw into Commandeer or a counterspell that can protect the Miracle card. However, if you expect that your opponent will do something like target you with Vendilion Clique in response to the Miracle trigger while you don't have access to interaction, it's better to put the Miracle trigger on the top of the stack so that your opponent will look at fewer cards with Vendilion Clique and have less information.Now for the super pedantic one:
This used to be true, but with the Dominaria rules update, the spell is not considered to be "countered". It still goes to the graveyard without having any effect, aka "fizzles". The difference doesn't matter in the context of Modern because the only card that cares about this rules change, Multani's Presence, is not Modern legal. Still, I like spreading accurate information!
I also have a suggestion: Tips & Tricks! There are a few things that are good candidates for a Tips & Tricks section that you mention briefly in some parts of the primer, but I think it's good to have a compilation. Here's a few things that would be right at home there:
- Because Dictate of Kruphix triggers at draw step, you can flash it in at your upkeep and draw an extra card in that same turn. This is especially useful when you know you will Miracle a Temporal Mastery and have 5 or more mana available at your upkeep.
- You can tap your own Howling Mine (among the other permanents you tap) with Gigadrowse at your opponent's upkeep to prevent your opponent from drawing a card for Howling Mine.
- You can target multiple Phantasmal Images with Gigadrowse to kill them all.
- You can resolve the copies of Gigadrowse through a Chalice of the Void on 1. (This is in the section on Gigadrowse already but deserves a mention)
- You can use Commandeer on most counterspells and have them target Commandeer and they will fizzle. This means that you won't have to, for example, pay the mana at upkeep on Pact of Negation. Note that you cannot use Commandeer in this way on counterspells that can't target Commandeer, such as Spell Snare or Warping Wail.
- You can use Commandeer as an expensive Force of Will for many noncreature spells, such as Collected Company or Postmortem Lunge. Note that this won't work for symmetric effects like Blood Moon, Chalice of the Void, or Living End.
- You can use Jace's -1 ability or Cryptic Command to bounce your own Snapcaster Mage and continue your Time Walk chain. Just make sure that you don't run into a removal spell for Snapcaster Mage in response to your bounce!
There's a bunch more cool and non-obvious things, but the other ones I can think of right now are pretty specific to my build (such as using Surgical Extraction on your own instant or sorcery to pump a Crackling Drake). Anyway, great job on the primer! I really appreciate your hard work and I'm sure many other time walkers do too.1
Just posted a Jeskai Taking Turns video. I'm pretty happy with the way the deck played out!