Thinking about attempting an Esper list to benefit from Thoughtseize/Inquisition as well as the strength of path to exile and the strong white sideboard hate cards... Timewalkinonsunshine, any chance you could assist in creating a mana base that reduces the damage of shocks and whatnot? That definitely is your specialty with that article about colored mana based on turn percentage..
I like playing around with the deck and want to see if three colors is viable... it would be that or grixis..
Sure, let's get mathy! Before we start, it's important to keep in mind that adding a second splash color isn't free, and that with the power of additional cards comes the cost of a more painful, slightly less consistent manabase (and potentially more vulnerability to Blood Moon). There's just no way around that. That said, let's do our best to minimize the pain and maximize the consistency.
Let's start by figuring out exactly what we're trying to cast. Thoughtseize and Inquisition are most often played on turn one, but in my experience trying to optimize for that is too difficult. It means that cards like Drowned Catacomb or Sunken Hollow don't count towards your ability to play Thoughtseize or Inquisition because they can't produce black mana on turn 1, and therefore your manabase would need an absurd number of shocks and fetches. Instead, it's better to treat hand disruption as a turn 2 play, which opens up our turn 3 for Dictate or Snapcaster-Thoughtseize or whatever, so we'll treat Thoughtseize and Inquisition as if they cost 1B for the purposes of manabase calculations. For white sideboard cards Rest in Peace and Stony Silence, they more or less need to be cast on turn 2 to be effective, since Dredge or Hardened Scales opponents can really take advantage of every turn they have without hate cards in play. Therefore, we want to support both 1B and 1W on turn 2.
According to Frank Karsten's article, it takes 13 colored mana sources to reliably (92.4%) cast a 1C spell on turn 2. However, we have several cantrips in our deck, which I'm assuming are 4 Serum Visions, that can help us draw into a colored mana source for turn 2. Karsten specifically mentions that in a deck with 15 or 16 colored sources, each Serum Visions counts as 0.55 colored sources. Since we're going to run slightly fewer than 15 sources, our Serum Visions will count less. Perhaps 0.4 sources each, or 1.6 sources between the four of them. This means that we can run about 11 or 12 colored sources and somewhat reliably have 1W or 1B available on turn 2. It'll be much easier to target 11 sources, so even though we lose some consistency relative to 12 sources, let's aim for that.
The manabase you proposed has 10 white sources (1 Temple of Enlightenment, 4 Flooded Strand, 2 Polluted Delta, 2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Glacial Fortress) and 10 black sources (4 Flooded Strand, 2 Polluted Delta, 1 Watery Grave, 3 Drowned Catacomb). An easy way to up this to 11 each is just adding one more fetchland, either cutting an Island, or just going up to 23 lands. Personally I'd recommend 23 lands, as hitting land drops is generally quite important. As for other changes to the manabase, I think that having a Prairie Stream and a Sunken Hollow over the second Hallowed Fountain and the first Drowned Catacomb is a good idea. While the Battle for Zendikar lands do come into play tapped on turns 1 and 2 and make it harder to cast a turn 2 Thoughtseize or Rest in Peace, I think the upside of having a late-game colored source on a fetchland that doesn't hurt you (beyond the 1 life from the fetchland) is quite helpful. I also think it's important to have more than one fetchable splash land of each color in the event of Field of Ruin or Ghost Quarter or other land destruction. The rest of the manabase seems pretty reasonable, and it does look like 7 is the fewest number of fetchlands we can have to still consistently have our colored sources by turn 2. We also need to keep in mind our number of fetchable lands, since we do tend to play a ton of lands and we are more likely to run out of fetchable lands in typical gameplay than your average deck. Our ratio is 7 fetchlands to 11 fetchables, which should be fine since drawing an unusable fetchland will mean that we have seen all 11 fetchables. So in the end, our manabase looks something like this:
This manabase is more painful than I'm especially happy with, but it'll do a good job of supporting the two splash colors while still not being too painful or inconsistent. Also worth noting is that if budget or other concerns are not an issue, I think it's better to do a 2-2-2-1 split on blue fetchlands rather than 4-3 just because you can get caught in a rough spot if your Whir of Invention opponent triple or quadruple Stone Rains you with a Sorcerous Spyglass or Pithing Needle.
For what it's worth, the deck still feels very blue! Blue-red is much more tempo-y than other builds though (at least the way that I built it), so you do need to assess if you're the beatdown more often than with more controlling builds.
Oh, without doubt. The soul and core of the deck is still as blue as they come. Speaking of which, your build is very cool. Gelectrode is spice.
I had a chance to watch your debut video. Great work! Your voice suits the job very well, and you’re top class when it comes to explaining the less than obvious lines in a thorough but coherent manner. The amount of these that you saw over the course of the league was very impressive, and your talent as a pilot is obvious. That said, it almost seemed as though you were the victim of your own next-level insights in places, with one or two misclicks which surely would not have happened if you weren’t trying to explain complex lines while playing. No worries here; these will surely lessen with time as live commentating becomes second nature. (I’m a replay guy so I’m fortunate enough to not have this issue, otherwise you’d probably see 10x as many brain farts and misclicks from me!)
It must also be said that fortune was truly not with you over the league as a whole. After basically every match I was thinking “damn, pretty rough beats there, unlucky”. Not much you can do about that! But your build’s potential is clearly huge. Did this league make you rethink any slots, or was this just one among many testing sessions?
Thanks! Yeah, that league didn't go exactly how I wanted, but that's Magic for you sometimes. The upside is that I felt like I had a shot in every match, which is usually how this deck feels! I think the Izzet Staticaster in the sideboard was unnecessary, so she'll come out in favor of some other interaction. Maybe Pyroclasm, maybe a third Gelectrode, not quite sure.
You guys are awesome! I have been enjoying your golgari content every week! Helps supplement my lack of being able to play
That being said I went to a super FNM tonight and played UR... couple of notes
I tried the single blood moon in the maindeck and it over performed. I played two matches against two different spirit players (one UW and one Bant) and won both rounds because of it. I may have gotten lucky but they were really low on basic lands and had mostly caverns and unclaimed territories..
Also.. I tried crackling drake and agree that it is really strong.. but I sort of want to experiment with young pyromancer sideboard.. my thought is that he puts a very fast clock into play that goes wide so it isn't necessarily weak to spot removal that they may have left in.. And also, since it goes wide with tokens, if you fizzle and pass back to a creature matchup you can easily just chump block... Just a thought (will let you know once I have tested it some)
Young Pyromancer has a lot of potential to be fantastic. Looking forward to hearing back on how testing him goes! And our experience with Blood Moon must have been very different. It underperformed for me, and it strikes me as particularly bad against a deck with Noble Heirarch and Aether Vial. It also creates an awkward tension in our own manabase of needing a lot of blue mana for Gigadrowse, Cryptic, Snapcaster, etc.
Just posted a new video testing out maindeck Blood Moon, Nexus of Fate, and Mission Briefing, with a sideboard Madcap Experiment / Platinum Emperion combo! Spoiler alert: I wasn't very impressed by the new cards. Blood Moon and Nexus of Fate both underperformed for me, and I think I played against decks where Platinum Emperion isn't actually impressive (Grishoalbrand, Scapeshift, and Storm all have combos that can kill the Platinum Emperion followed by killing you) so it just didn't do it for me. Also, six sideboard slots is a lot, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what to take out. I'm sure I didn't execute perfectly, but based on this experience I have my doubts that these cards are worth it.
As for Mission Briefing, it was about as good as Snapcaster most of the time. I'm still not 100% convinced that the first Mission Briefing is better than the fourth Snapcaster, but I think if you want 5 or more copies of that effect in your deck, Mission Briefing is great. Thanks zcowan for the suggestion!
Totally agree! That's kind of my thought process on white sideboard hate cards also.. like if you are going to sideboard in a Stony Silence - chances are they are already bringing in artifact/enchantment hate anyhow..
So I started testing UB a little more also, I think with that I like to run more counter magic.. The list I have been practicing for that actually goes up to 3 Cryptic Command, 4 Gigadrowse, 2 Fatal Push, 1 Collective Brutality mainboard and it has been nice.
I was thinking that after I graduate in a couple weeks I may get a microsoft since i currently have a mac and might stream UW Taking Turns.. would be cool if we could get all three variants covered on youtube to test in the meta more! This is hands down my favorite deck and it's a shame it doesn't see as much screen time as like Humans and Mardu and all that boring stuff lol
I see what you mean about Stony Silence-esque cards. And awesome, more content creators would be amazing! I just want to comment that I know it's possible to run Windows on a Mac, with a virtual machine or with Boot Camp. I don't know the technical details of what kind of hardware you'd need to both do that and stream at the same time, but just want to make sure you're aware of options that don't require buying a new computer.
Hi Daniel, are you sure again abour UR Turns? It's my favourite version, but isn't better mono u again? Thank you
I'm not sure I 100% understand what you're saying. Are you saying that mono-U is better than UR? I think that UR is better because it has better tools to fight the deck's weakness to disruptive aggro decks like Humans or Spirits in the form of interactive spells like Lightning Bolt, Abrade, and Anger of the Gods. Those matchups still aren't great for us, but they're much more winnable when you have access to hard removal like that.
@Timewalkinonsunshine I didn't notice at first that you are absent Remand.. I definitely see what you mean now about the deck being far less control-based in the early turns.. I'll have to try that out..
You should definitely test adding 1-2 Mission Briefing though! From what i've played so far, reducing to 3 Snapcaster doesn't take away from having that added pressure; but mission briefing is good because it digs for flashback. In one of my games I played against elves I was able to cast Mission briefing - surveil a bolt - and then bolt their creature.. I can see that sort of interaction happening often and being extremely useful.
Also, side note - not sure if you saw but apparently someone just placed well in a smaller Starcity tournament running a similar UR list to yours but added one mainboard Blood Moon and one in the side.. Not sure if you tried it yet. I was on the fence at first but it is a card that can just win games on the spot as people have mentioned.
Thanks again to you guys for always keeping the conversation going! Hope to see more on the youtube soon! (FROM BOTH OF YOU.... Grim Flayer *cough cough*) lol jk
Thanks! My feelings on Remand haven't changed much. I don't think it's well positioned right now because of its ineffectiveness against cards that cost 0-2 mana, and specifically the cards Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial. If more people were tapping 3+ lands at sorcery speed like Tron does, then I'd add it back for sure, but as it stands I think the format is too fast for Remand.
I have a few concerns about Mission Briefing, but they're relatively mild. Mainly, I'm not convinced that Surveil 2 is better than a 2/1 body often enough to fully justify running Briefing over the 4th Snapcaster. It's great in the scenario you described, but I feel like in a worst-case scenario where your opponent is presenting a fast clock, have a 2/1 available to chump block (or sometimes trade) seems better. This could definitely be a case of me overestimating the downsides and underestimating the upsides, so I'll give it a shot in testing.
Jeffrey Fernandes' UR turns, 6th place at an SCG IQ. The list is really interesting, and definitely super similar to my build from GP Atlanta. Maindeck changes look like -1 Steam Vents / -1 Gemstone Caverns / -1 Gigadrowse / -1 Commandeer ; +1 Island / +1 Field of Ruin / +1 Blood Moon / +1 Opt ; sideboard changes are -1 Abrade / -1 Pyroclasm / +1 Blood Moon / +1 Anger of the Gods. I like the idea of maindeck Blood Moon, which is often quite powerful, but I don't actually like it out of the sideboard. Most opponents bring in cards like Nature's Claim for our Mines and Dictates, so our opponents are often set up to destroy a Moon post-board. It's also kind of strange to me to have both Field of Ruin and Blood Moon in the same list (Field gives your opponent a basic that makes your Blood Moon much less effective), though I guess it's only one of each so you probably won't have both at the same time. You also don't need to Field if Blood Moon is coming down, so it's less of a nonbo than something like Path to Exile and Blood Moon. I might try testing out a single Blood Moon main, but I don't think I'll add any sideboard. Thanks for the heads up about this list, and thanks to Jeffrey Fernandes for taking a whole lot of turns!
Alright so in testing I played each variant against: Elves, Burn, Humans, UW, Jeskai, Storm, and Mardu.. sadly I don't own Spirits completely yet..
In that I would rate UR as being the best version currently as Bolt makes the deck a lot more aggro as you have mentioned. You are definitely able to close the game out quickly when you start chaining snapcaster mages and lightning bolts. I only had 3 snapcaster because my fourth is lost in an EDH deck somewhere so I used a 3/1 split with mission briefing and it actually worked really nicely. The surveil mechanic is definitely powerful, and being able to dig for things is always good in this deck. My only concerns with this version are: 1) Red lacks a guaranteed creature removal similar to path or fatal push. Pyroclasm/Anger of the Gods/Bolt all rely on the creatures having 3 toughness or less; and 2) You can't run Chalice of the Void anymore really.. I think that card is so good in this deck
In second place I would put UB. Fatal push is really strong and I like having Thoughtseize/Inquisition as sideboard options. A lot of the decks in the format right now are easily crippled by hand removal which is proven by the success of GB Rock (@GrimFlayer)
Lastly, White splash has the best sideboard options but that doesn't make it good right now. From testing path is really bad.
That's kind of what I have going right now.. Working on an excel spreadsheet of sideboard options. Tried experimenting with Geist and there seems to be some promise there
Thanks for posting! Definitely some good insights here. I agree that Chalice was super strong in non-red builds, but I've found that playing with Bolt makes us much more of a combo-tempo deck than a combo-control deck like we used to be. So even though we're losing a powerful card, its effect of locking the opponent out of their best spells isn't as necessary anymore, since we can just use our Bolts to kill the opponent.i
That's a pretty rough collection of matchups in general, so the fact that you came out feeling optimistic about any variant is a great sign.
Red, eh? A few months back I was pretty convinced UR wasn't where we wanted to be; but times change, and perhaps I was even wrong back then.
If so, that'll be a bitter pill to swallow. I hate red.
For what it's worth, the deck still feels very blue! Blue-red is much more tempo-y than other builds though (at least the way that I built it), so you do need to assess if you're the beatdown more often than with more controlling builds.
OMG it's the dream come true haha! Awesome to have more MTGO content creators on youtube for taking turns!
So I am off for school break and spent the last couple days with a friend doing some more heavy play testing..
If you guys would like, I have a pretty detailed breakdown for color splashes that him and I have been working on that I could share here..
Just been working on UB/UR/UW variants with different sideboard options.. Luckly I have a lot of cards in paper so it was easy to do a lot of testing
That's awesome! Go ahead and post what you have, I think it'll be super helpful
I was thinking about trying out some of the maindeck Thing builds—perhaps with Mission Briefing—that I saw a few pages back, but the most recent posts ITT have me wondering whether splashing a color has become obligatory. I sure hope not, but at the same time I don’t wish to deny reality. Any thoughts?
Finally, I’d like to get some more Turns content up on the YouTube channel and at this point I wouldn’t mind taking someone else’s list for a spin, or at least using it as a starting point. Anyone been crushing it lately with a monoblue list? Can’t justify buying into a splash color at the moment.
Apologies for the wall of text! Hope you’re all doing well.
Hey Grim_Flayer! In my opinion, the splashes are stronger in an open meta than any mono-blue list. Like you said, there's a lot of hostile decks like Infect or Hardened Scales, and mono-U doesn't have great tools to deal with them. Of course, mono-U is still powerful to do well in a local meta that has more favorable matchups, but I don't think it's the best choice for taking into Magic Online.
That said, your post and your channel inspired me to start making some content, so here's a Competitive Modern League with UR Turns. I'm open to suggestions on improvement (both in terms of deck construction or gameplay, and in terms of video creation), so let me know any feedback!
-I think you mentioned not liking the drake in the sideboard really? Was wondering what you would recommend for a replacement in that spot? I was thinking something like counter flux might be nice as a one of against storm matchups?
I was actually more disappointed that I didn't draw it enough! Crackling Drake is best against Jund-style decks because games against those decks tend to go long (they basically need both sufficient disruption and a Tarmogoyf to kill you fast enough), and topdecking a 10+ power flier that draws you a card is fantastic. Even in one of the worst case scenarios where the Drake gets Liliana -2'd, you still drew a card and bought yourself more time until the Lili ult, which is still a good deal in my book. Of course, it's not great in every matchup, such as against Devoted Druid combo where blocking doesn't do much and the games don't go long enough for Drake to get swole. If your meta is full of decks where you'd want to block or attack with a giant flier, Crackling Drake is a great choice. On the other hand, if your meta is full of things like Ad Nauseam, KCI, or Devoted Druid where blocking just doesn't matter, then having more access to interaction on the stack in the form of counterspells is probably better than Crackly Drackly. Just be aware that Counterflux isn't always a slam dunk against Storm, since if they have enough mana, they can just Remand their spell that you're trying to counter, then cast it again with a higher storm count.
-I see you run Abrade, Pyroclasm, and Anger of the Gods in the sideboard. Was wondering your rationale for the diversity of mass removal? Is it to get around Meddling Mage naming one of them?
Meddling Mage was one consideration. Another was that I wanted a split between artifact destruction, a very cheap sweeper in Pyroclasm, and a more powerful but harder to cast sweeper in Anger of the Gods. Given the presence of Dredge, I wanted to favor Anger of the Gods over Pyroclasm since Pyro does almost nothing against them (I don't even bring it in) whereas Anger can be potentially game-winning if they've committed too many Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts to the board. Given the Aether Vial decks like Humans and Spirits, Abrade is great because it gives you the flexibility to kill the creatures if they have a normal-looking hand, or the Vial if they've kept a risky one-land Aether Vial hand. Abrade is also a great way to kill Cranial Plating, but those are seeing less play with the rise of Hardened Scales.
-Do you think cutting to 3 snapcaster or 2 in place of Mission briefing would be appropriate or viable? It gives the same flashback utility to bolt but improves on flipping thing when you sideboard them in.. Plus I have been finding that the surveil effect is super useful in this deck.
Not with this build. This build leans hard on Snapcaster's 2/1 body to win the game over many attack steps, and having access to the full 4 is important. On the other hand, previous builds I've played that relied on Part the Waterveil more than Snapcaster can afford to Surveil 2 instead of get a 2/1 body. Just be aware that in the worst case, I'd rather have a 2/1 than Surveil 2, since at least Snapcaster can chump block in a pinch (or trade with Goblin Guide and the like, a play I've certainly made many times).
-Have you tried Chandra, Torch of Defiance? She seems useful in this meta right now. If you are going for creature removal/fast clocks she seems useful as her minus can also kill creatures of 4 toughness and her ultimate is far quicker to reach then Jace.. (I understand he is infinitely better in his drawing and top of deck manipulation) but I could see a 1/1.. Just wondering if you have had any thought on her
I haven't really thought about Chandra, Torch, but I can see why she's powerful. I think to make the best use of her, you really need to leverage both her +1 RR ability and her +1 exile ability well. With how mana hungry this deck is, an extra two red mana is very helpful, and many of our cards interact well with her +1 exile ability. It's kind of a shame that Cryptic Command and Gigadrowse are bad cards to exile, but you'd be pretty happy to cast basically every other spell in the deck. The biggest downside, though, is I think one that she shares with Jace. If you're behind on board on turn 4, which happens often with this deck, it's not always wise to slam a planeswalker since it will probably die to your opponent's creatures, even when you use your walker's minus ability to take one of the creatures out. I'm also not sure that her upsides outweigh Jace's interaction with Temporal Mastery, which is incredibly powerful in this deck. My intuition is that Jace is more powerful, but Chandra, Torch of Defiance's upsides are real enough that she's worth trying out.
I'm still not convinced that Shadow of Doubt is strong enough to justify inclusion. In particular, I'm worried that it's too narrow, even in the matchups that you'd bring it in.
For example, Storm can easily have a sequence of turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 cantrip, turn 3 cost reducer, 2x Ritual, Empty the Warrens for 8 tokens, or many other ways to go off that don't involve Gifts Ungiven or fetchlands and therefore don't care about Shadow of Doubt. Scapeshift can easily use Primeval Titan instead of Scapeshift, and even though you stop one of the triggers "for free", you still have to deal with a 6/6 Trampler that will trigger again when it attacks. Tron can use Ancient Stirrings to assemble Tron and not care about Shadow of Doubt at all, or cast Sylvan Scrying on turn 2 on the play before Shadow of Doubt is online. Eldritch Evolution decks can play a value midrange game and win without Evolution. Death's Shadow will probably see your hand with an Inquisition or Thoughtseize before Shadow of Doubt comes online, and they'll know to play around it.
I realize that all of these examples are cherry-picked ways to play around Shadow of Doubt, and anyone can construct similar arguments to argue against any card's conclusion. But I think the two main issues are that these examples are realistic ways that games play out, and that even in situations where you do "get 'em" with Shadow of Doubt, I don't think it's actual powerful enough to change what would have been a loss into a win. It's certainly possible that I'm just not recognizing the upside enough, but I'm not convinced that Shadow of Doubt can justify its place in the sideboard over all of the other options we have available. Of course, testing is 100% a better way to draw conclusions than just speculating like I'm doing, so if you want to try it out then definitely go for it.
And I sure as heck won't lose to effing Silence again!
I'm gonna have to apologize in advance for my negativity, but I don't think that's a healthy mindset for making sideboard decisions. There are a lot of "gotcha" cards in Magic like Silence that are incredibly narrow and incredibly powerful in those narrow situations. You should NOT be preparing for your opponents to play those cards unless it's actually realistic (like Rest in Peace when you're on Dredge, for example). As a personal example, in GP Atlanta one of my opponents cast Choke against me in both sideboard games. Yes, I could have boarded Hibernation or Annul to beat that particular card in that particular situation. But at what cost? Sideboard slots are incredibly valuable, and I have better things to board against the rest of the field than those ridiculously narrow answers to answers (unless the field is tons of Elves and Bogles or something, but it's not). I'm not going to do anything to change that situation, because if I have to lose one match every 2+ years or so to Choke, so be it.
Note that my context is very open metas like Grand Prixs. For a local store meta, you might run into Doug again and Shadow of Doubt will be great. Or maybe you just have tons of Scapeshift and Tron in the meta, so it just makes sense to have Shadow of Doubt regardless of whether or not people are playing Silence. But if you plan on taking your deck to a large event like a Grand Prix or SCG Open, I promise you the chances of ever seeing a Silence are tiny. You should prepare for what you're likely to face in the future, not what you happened to face once in the past.
what are your thoughts about putting trickbind/disallow on sideboard for spirits matchup?
I don't think that Trickbind or Disallow do much of anything against Spirits. You'd much rather kill something than just counter a Mausoleum Wanderer activation or a Spell Queller trigger, and counterspells are generally bad against low to the ground decks with Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial.
@charlieguide, thanks for the writeup, especially the sideboard guide! This is a pretty cool take on mono-U. I agree with @zcowan that the idea of sideboarding out all Thing in the Ice and leaving Part the Waterveil as the only wincon leaves me kind of uneasy. I also think that Thing is good against Storm because it lets you deal with Empty the Warrens tokens by bouncing them. Keep testing and let us know how your list evolves!
Daniel Wong doing great at GP Atlanta, 7-1 after day one I believe with a UR variant, was on camera at around 2:54:00 during day 1 coverage: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/331011234
Bolt snap bolt doing a lot of work against mardu pyro. That spicy cracking drake tech doesn't seem to be working well in actual games though
Alright so here is a question for everyone! @TimeWalkinOnSunshine maybe you could give some insight...
So i've been playing the deck for a while now, and I love brewing and thinking of ways to make the deck even crazier. So lately I've been thinking.. what if we stole the idea of cost reducers from Storm and ran Baral (and possibly go UR for Goblin Electromancer).. My idea is that you run more counter magic (possibly negate/mana leak mainboard and take advantage of Baral's looting..
Any ideas? Seems like a fun diversion from the main build of the deck
I agree with Grim_Flayer that this overall sounds weaker. In particular, blanking removal spells (or making your opponent point removal at Snapcaster Mages that already got you value) is a big draw to the current builds of the deck, and adding Baral and/or Electromancer means that the opponent's removal is now very bad for us. The advantage is a potentially faster kill (T2 Baral, T3 Dictate, T4+ Warp), so I could imagine such a build being strong in a meta full of uninteractive linear decks. It also sounds like tons of fun when you get those fast kills! If you want to have fun with it then by all means give it a shot, but go in with the understanding that it's probably not as competitive.
So I had another good night playing Modern with Taking Turns Thursday at my LGS. I won my first game 2-0 versus U/W control, then tied my second game 1-1 versus a W/B hate bears eldrazi deck. My third game was a tie (1-1) versus U/R control with no blood moon, but we rolled to break the tie after the game as it meant one of us could move to top 8 (I won the tie breaker). My final game was versus a Thought Scour, Tasigur, the Golden Fang graveyard type deck. I ended up winning 2-0.
we rolled to break the tie after the game as it meant one of us could move to top 8
Don't do that again. It's explicitly against the tournament rules, and the infraction procedure guide has this to say about it:
4.3. Unsporting Conduct — Improperly Determining a Winner
Disqualification
Definition
A player uses or offers to use a method that is not part of the current game (including actions not
legal in the current game) to determine the outcome of a game or match.
A player who receives an offer and does not immediately contact a tournament official is
considered complicit in the offer and will receive the same penalty.
Examples
A. As time is called, two players about to draw roll a die to determine the winner.
B. A player offers to flip a coin to determine the winner of a match.
C. Two players arm wrestle to determine the winner of the match.
D. Two players play rock-paper-scissors to decide if they should play the match or draw.
E. Two players compare the converted mana costs of the top cards of their libraries to
determine the winner of a game at the end of extra turns.
F. Two players reveal cards from the top of their libraries to see “who would win” after
extra turns.
Philosophy
Using an outside-the-game method to determine a winner compromises the integrity of the
tournament.
Matches that result in a draw due to time are expected to be reported as such and are not
excluded from this penalty if the players use an illegal method to determine the outcome.
Just for the KCI topic: always get your first chalice on 0 against them. They often run Explosives, and Mox Opal is what allows them to go off stupidly efficiently.
Hmm... the more I think about it, the less effective Chalice seems against KCI. It's a speed bump for sure, but not a lock. Engineered Explosives can effectively always kill all of our Chalices because it's fairly simple to cast Engineered Explosives X=whatever using only colorless mana, and it will enter with zero counters. My instinct is that Chalice X=1 is probably the most effective number to slow them down, given how many one drops there are, but Chalice doesn't seem like a card you can count on to achieve a lock in this matchup. Chalice X=0 only hits Opal, which doesn't sound good enough to me.
Alright so a report of yesterday:
...
So some overall thoughts from the day:
I definitely want to make room for a third Chalice in the sideboard (probably cutting disenchant as there were very few times I needed something removed off the board. This kind of combo deck can play around graveyard removal if you take it carefully enough.
I may try to fit in a few Spreading Seas into the mainboard to try. I know Seba does that and likes them a lot. I think color denial is really strong now and would allow for good tempo against Mardu.
They need to do something about KCI. We had three rounds that went to turns because of the deck and they clogged up an additional 20-30 minutes each time because their rounds take so long. Just not a fun thing for the modern format, and I am thankful I didn't play against the deck yesterday
Thanks for the report and detailed writeup! Glad to hear that Chalice was carrying its weight, even if it's not good against everything.
Maindeck :
2 echoing truth and 2 path to exil against aggro deck like Humans, Hollow one, death's shadow, affinity, burn.
1 monastery mentor for kill differently and faster.
1 nexus of fate : an other good extra turn for us, we can use it multiple times in one game.
1 day's undoying : for re-build our game after casting an extra turn.
What do you think about this list for the next GP modern in august ?
It's been a while since I've seen an As Foretold build! I agree with zcowan that Terminus over Elspeth might be a good idea. Sounds unintuitive because high CMC miracle cards play poorly with As Foretold itself, but it turns out they're great with Jace and sometimes you just get lucky. Also, regarding your manabase, you have 8 "easy" white sources (2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Prairie Stream, 4 Flooded Strand, 1 Plains) and 5 "slow" white sources (3 Tolaria West, 2 Field of Ruin) for 13 white sources total. That number is kind of deceiving though because in an ideal world, you're using your Tolaria West to transmute for Ancestral, and using Field of Ruin to attack the opponent's relevant lands rather than try to fix your own mana. If you feel like you're having trouble casting your white spells, replacing one or both Field of Ruin with more "easy" white sources (eg Glacial Fortress) would probably help. Frank Karsten's article on how many colored mana sources you need to consistently cast your spells is a good read for background information. Good luck in the GP!
Let's start by figuring out exactly what we're trying to cast. Thoughtseize and Inquisition are most often played on turn one, but in my experience trying to optimize for that is too difficult. It means that cards like Drowned Catacomb or Sunken Hollow don't count towards your ability to play Thoughtseize or Inquisition because they can't produce black mana on turn 1, and therefore your manabase would need an absurd number of shocks and fetches. Instead, it's better to treat hand disruption as a turn 2 play, which opens up our turn 3 for Dictate or Snapcaster-Thoughtseize or whatever, so we'll treat Thoughtseize and Inquisition as if they cost 1B for the purposes of manabase calculations. For white sideboard cards Rest in Peace and Stony Silence, they more or less need to be cast on turn 2 to be effective, since Dredge or Hardened Scales opponents can really take advantage of every turn they have without hate cards in play. Therefore, we want to support both 1B and 1W on turn 2.
According to Frank Karsten's article, it takes 13 colored mana sources to reliably (92.4%) cast a 1C spell on turn 2. However, we have several cantrips in our deck, which I'm assuming are 4 Serum Visions, that can help us draw into a colored mana source for turn 2. Karsten specifically mentions that in a deck with 15 or 16 colored sources, each Serum Visions counts as 0.55 colored sources. Since we're going to run slightly fewer than 15 sources, our Serum Visions will count less. Perhaps 0.4 sources each, or 1.6 sources between the four of them. This means that we can run about 11 or 12 colored sources and somewhat reliably have 1W or 1B available on turn 2. It'll be much easier to target 11 sources, so even though we lose some consistency relative to 12 sources, let's aim for that.
The manabase you proposed has 10 white sources (1 Temple of Enlightenment, 4 Flooded Strand, 2 Polluted Delta, 2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Glacial Fortress) and 10 black sources (4 Flooded Strand, 2 Polluted Delta, 1 Watery Grave, 3 Drowned Catacomb). An easy way to up this to 11 each is just adding one more fetchland, either cutting an Island, or just going up to 23 lands. Personally I'd recommend 23 lands, as hitting land drops is generally quite important. As for other changes to the manabase, I think that having a Prairie Stream and a Sunken Hollow over the second Hallowed Fountain and the first Drowned Catacomb is a good idea. While the Battle for Zendikar lands do come into play tapped on turns 1 and 2 and make it harder to cast a turn 2 Thoughtseize or Rest in Peace, I think the upside of having a late-game colored source on a fetchland that doesn't hurt you (beyond the 1 life from the fetchland) is quite helpful. I also think it's important to have more than one fetchable splash land of each color in the event of Field of Ruin or Ghost Quarter or other land destruction. The rest of the manabase seems pretty reasonable, and it does look like 7 is the fewest number of fetchlands we can have to still consistently have our colored sources by turn 2. We also need to keep in mind our number of fetchable lands, since we do tend to play a ton of lands and we are more likely to run out of fetchable lands in typical gameplay than your average deck. Our ratio is 7 fetchlands to 11 fetchables, which should be fine since drawing an unusable fetchland will mean that we have seen all 11 fetchables. So in the end, our manabase looks something like this:
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
4 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Prairie Stream
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Watery Grave
1 Sunken Hollow
2 Drowned Catacomb
Young Pyromancer has a lot of potential to be fantastic. Looking forward to hearing back on how testing him goes! And our experience with Blood Moon must have been very different. It underperformed for me, and it strikes me as particularly bad against a deck with Noble Heirarch and Aether Vial. It also creates an awkward tension in our own manabase of needing a lot of blue mana for Gigadrowse, Cryptic, Snapcaster, etc.
Just posted a new video testing out maindeck Blood Moon, Nexus of Fate, and Mission Briefing, with a sideboard Madcap Experiment / Platinum Emperion combo! Spoiler alert: I wasn't very impressed by the new cards. Blood Moon and Nexus of Fate both underperformed for me, and I think I played against decks where Platinum Emperion isn't actually impressive (Grishoalbrand, Scapeshift, and Storm all have combos that can kill the Platinum Emperion followed by killing you) so it just didn't do it for me. Also, six sideboard slots is a lot, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what to take out. I'm sure I didn't execute perfectly, but based on this experience I have my doubts that these cards are worth it.
As for Mission Briefing, it was about as good as Snapcaster most of the time. I'm still not 100% convinced that the first Mission Briefing is better than the fourth Snapcaster, but I think if you want 5 or more copies of that effect in your deck, Mission Briefing is great. Thanks zcowan for the suggestion!
I'm not sure I 100% understand what you're saying. Are you saying that mono-U is better than UR? I think that UR is better because it has better tools to fight the deck's weakness to disruptive aggro decks like Humans or Spirits in the form of interactive spells like Lightning Bolt, Abrade, and Anger of the Gods. Those matchups still aren't great for us, but they're much more winnable when you have access to hard removal like that.
I have a few concerns about Mission Briefing, but they're relatively mild. Mainly, I'm not convinced that Surveil 2 is better than a 2/1 body often enough to fully justify running Briefing over the 4th Snapcaster. It's great in the scenario you described, but I feel like in a worst-case scenario where your opponent is presenting a fast clock, have a 2/1 available to chump block (or sometimes trade) seems better. This could definitely be a case of me overestimating the downsides and underestimating the upsides, so I'll give it a shot in testing.
Jeffrey Fernandes' UR turns, 6th place at an SCG IQ. The list is really interesting, and definitely super similar to my build from GP Atlanta. Maindeck changes look like -1 Steam Vents / -1 Gemstone Caverns / -1 Gigadrowse / -1 Commandeer ; +1 Island / +1 Field of Ruin / +1 Blood Moon / +1 Opt ; sideboard changes are -1 Abrade / -1 Pyroclasm / +1 Blood Moon / +1 Anger of the Gods. I like the idea of maindeck Blood Moon, which is often quite powerful, but I don't actually like it out of the sideboard. Most opponents bring in cards like Nature's Claim for our Mines and Dictates, so our opponents are often set up to destroy a Moon post-board. It's also kind of strange to me to have both Field of Ruin and Blood Moon in the same list (Field gives your opponent a basic that makes your Blood Moon much less effective), though I guess it's only one of each so you probably won't have both at the same time. You also don't need to Field if Blood Moon is coming down, so it's less of a nonbo than something like Path to Exile and Blood Moon. I might try testing out a single Blood Moon main, but I don't think I'll add any sideboard. Thanks for the heads up about this list, and thanks to Jeffrey Fernandes for taking a whole lot of turns!
For what it's worth, the deck still feels very blue! Blue-red is much more tempo-y than other builds though (at least the way that I built it), so you do need to assess if you're the beatdown more often than with more controlling builds.
That said, your post and your channel inspired me to start making some content, so here's a Competitive Modern League with UR Turns. I'm open to suggestions on improvement (both in terms of deck construction or gameplay, and in terms of video creation), so let me know any feedback!
Meddling Mage was one consideration. Another was that I wanted a split between artifact destruction, a very cheap sweeper in Pyroclasm, and a more powerful but harder to cast sweeper in Anger of the Gods. Given the presence of Dredge, I wanted to favor Anger of the Gods over Pyroclasm since Pyro does almost nothing against them (I don't even bring it in) whereas Anger can be potentially game-winning if they've committed too many Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts to the board. Given the Aether Vial decks like Humans and Spirits, Abrade is great because it gives you the flexibility to kill the creatures if they have a normal-looking hand, or the Vial if they've kept a risky one-land Aether Vial hand. Abrade is also a great way to kill Cranial Plating, but those are seeing less play with the rise of Hardened Scales.
Not with this build. This build leans hard on Snapcaster's 2/1 body to win the game over many attack steps, and having access to the full 4 is important. On the other hand, previous builds I've played that relied on Part the Waterveil more than Snapcaster can afford to Surveil 2 instead of get a 2/1 body. Just be aware that in the worst case, I'd rather have a 2/1 than Surveil 2, since at least Snapcaster can chump block in a pinch (or trade with Goblin Guide and the like, a play I've certainly made many times).
I haven't really thought about Chandra, Torch, but I can see why she's powerful. I think to make the best use of her, you really need to leverage both her +1 RR ability and her +1 exile ability well. With how mana hungry this deck is, an extra two red mana is very helpful, and many of our cards interact well with her +1 exile ability. It's kind of a shame that Cryptic Command and Gigadrowse are bad cards to exile, but you'd be pretty happy to cast basically every other spell in the deck. The biggest downside, though, is I think one that she shares with Jace. If you're behind on board on turn 4, which happens often with this deck, it's not always wise to slam a planeswalker since it will probably die to your opponent's creatures, even when you use your walker's minus ability to take one of the creatures out. I'm also not sure that her upsides outweigh Jace's interaction with Temporal Mastery, which is incredibly powerful in this deck. My intuition is that Jace is more powerful, but Chandra, Torch of Defiance's upsides are real enough that she's worth trying out.
Happy to help! Hopefully I'll be able to give Turns a spotlight again at GP Portland
For example, Storm can easily have a sequence of turn 1 cantrip, turn 2 cantrip, turn 3 cost reducer, 2x Ritual, Empty the Warrens for 8 tokens, or many other ways to go off that don't involve Gifts Ungiven or fetchlands and therefore don't care about Shadow of Doubt. Scapeshift can easily use Primeval Titan instead of Scapeshift, and even though you stop one of the triggers "for free", you still have to deal with a 6/6 Trampler that will trigger again when it attacks. Tron can use Ancient Stirrings to assemble Tron and not care about Shadow of Doubt at all, or cast Sylvan Scrying on turn 2 on the play before Shadow of Doubt is online. Eldritch Evolution decks can play a value midrange game and win without Evolution. Death's Shadow will probably see your hand with an Inquisition or Thoughtseize before Shadow of Doubt comes online, and they'll know to play around it.
I realize that all of these examples are cherry-picked ways to play around Shadow of Doubt, and anyone can construct similar arguments to argue against any card's conclusion. But I think the two main issues are that these examples are realistic ways that games play out, and that even in situations where you do "get 'em" with Shadow of Doubt, I don't think it's actual powerful enough to change what would have been a loss into a win. It's certainly possible that I'm just not recognizing the upside enough, but I'm not convinced that Shadow of Doubt can justify its place in the sideboard over all of the other options we have available. Of course, testing is 100% a better way to draw conclusions than just speculating like I'm doing, so if you want to try it out then definitely go for it.
Note that my context is very open metas like Grand Prixs. For a local store meta, you might run into Doug again and Shadow of Doubt will be great. Or maybe you just have tons of Scapeshift and Tron in the meta, so it just makes sense to have Shadow of Doubt regardless of whether or not people are playing Silence. But if you plan on taking your deck to a large event like a Grand Prix or SCG Open, I promise you the chances of ever seeing a Silence are tiny. You should prepare for what you're likely to face in the future, not what you happened to face once in the past.
@charlieguide, thanks for the writeup, especially the sideboard guide! This is a pretty cool take on mono-U. I agree with @zcowan that the idea of sideboarding out all Thing in the Ice and leaving Part the Waterveil as the only wincon leaves me kind of uneasy. I also think that Thing is good against Storm because it lets you deal with Empty the Warrens tokens by bouncing them. Keep testing and let us know how your list evolves!
I'm currently writing a deck tech / tournament report that I'll post in the next day or two, but in the meantime, here's my list:
1x Howling Mine
4x Dictate of Kruphix
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Time Walks
4x Time Warp
1x Part the Waterveil
3x Temporal Mastery
Almost Time Walks
4x Gigadrowse
3x Exhaustion
Other Spells
4x Serum Visions
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Cryptic Command
1x Commandeer
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Polluted Delta
1x Flooded Strand
3x Island
4x Snow-Covered Island
3x Steam Vents
4x Sulfur Falls
1x Temple of Epiphany
1x Cascade Bluffs
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1x Gemsmtone Caverns
2x Abrade
1x Pyroclasm
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Commandeer
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Crackling Drake
1x Vendilion Clique
3x Thing in the Ice
Hmm... the more I think about it, the less effective Chalice seems against KCI. It's a speed bump for sure, but not a lock. Engineered Explosives can effectively always kill all of our Chalices because it's fairly simple to cast Engineered Explosives X=whatever using only colorless mana, and it will enter with zero counters. My instinct is that Chalice X=1 is probably the most effective number to slow them down, given how many one drops there are, but Chalice doesn't seem like a card you can count on to achieve a lock in this matchup. Chalice X=0 only hits Opal, which doesn't sound good enough to me.
Thanks for the report and detailed writeup! Glad to hear that Chalice was carrying its weight, even if it's not good against everything.
It's been a while since I've seen an As Foretold build! I agree with zcowan that Terminus over Elspeth might be a good idea. Sounds unintuitive because high CMC miracle cards play poorly with As Foretold itself, but it turns out they're great with Jace and sometimes you just get lucky. Also, regarding your manabase, you have 8 "easy" white sources (2 Hallowed Fountain, 1 Prairie Stream, 4 Flooded Strand, 1 Plains) and 5 "slow" white sources (3 Tolaria West, 2 Field of Ruin) for 13 white sources total. That number is kind of deceiving though because in an ideal world, you're using your Tolaria West to transmute for Ancestral, and using Field of Ruin to attack the opponent's relevant lands rather than try to fix your own mana. If you feel like you're having trouble casting your white spells, replacing one or both Field of Ruin with more "easy" white sources (eg Glacial Fortress) would probably help. Frank Karsten's article on how many colored mana sources you need to consistently cast your spells is a good read for background information. Good luck in the GP!