Friday, April 4, 2014

Satan's Time Warp

Some people play magic to express themselves, we call them Johnnys. Some play for the experiences, we call them Timmys. Some play to win, we call them Spikes. Some play to make others miserable, we don't name these people(at least not in polite conversation) but if you are one of those people do I have the deck for you.

There has been a deck that has made the rounds called Turbo Time Warp. This deck involves playing out a few Howling Mines or Howling Mine effects and then starting turn 5 playing a Time Warp effect every turn, and I mean EVERY turn. You usually win in some meaningless way like Laboratory Maniac, or Jace Beleren, or Snapcaster Mage swinging. It really doesn't matter how you win at that point. But what if you refused to win or at the very least made sure it took the full 50 minutes to do so? What if you took every turn forever and ever and ever and ever. Well here's the first pass at Satan's Time Walk:

4 Temporal Mastery 4 Time Warp 4 Walk the Aeons 4 Howling Mine 4 Rites of Flourishing 4 Cryptic Command 4 Remand 4 Serum Visions 3 Sleight of Hand 2 Elixir of Immortality 4 Hinterland Harbor 4 Misty Rainforest 1 Forest 2 Breeding Pool 12 Island SB: 4 Hurkyl's Recall SB: 3 Fog SB: 4 Dispel SB: 4 Spell Pierce
The idea of the deck is to take all the turns for the rest of the MATCH. Note that you aren't actually slow playing as long as you progress the game by cryptic commanding a Permanent at least once per deck cycle. You make sure to pad out your life total to a large number by using Elixer a bunch and once you are comfortable in the fact that your opponent has no permanents and you have 50 life you pass the turn and watch the slow mill roll.
As for the reasoning behind the construction we have a lot of redundant effects. These can be broken into a few categories: hard Time Walks, soft Time Walks, dig, the engine, the "wincon" and lands. Here is a description of each category.

Hard Time Walks


This unholy triumvirate forms the core of the deck. Starting on turn 5(turn 4 if you are lucky) you cast one of these every turn for the rest of the game. Miracle Mastery is one of the best power plays for the deck since it can push you to the combo a full turn faster. Be careful and count out how you see the next few turns going before you buyback a Walk the Aeons.

Soft Time Walks


These two form a portion of our early game plan. With them you stall until turn 5. Remand keeps the gas flowing while keeping your opponent of their spell for turn usually. Cryptic can easily convert into a close enough approximation if the modes are selected carefully. Your opponent has scary attacks and you need to build the combo? Tap draw. Your opponent is setting up to keep you off spells with a fistful of countermagic? Bounce a land and draw. If your opponent ever runs out a relevant spell when you can use one of the other tempo modes effectively? Pump the fist, counter, and blow them right out. Please note these ARE NOT to replace a Hard Time Walk. Do not pass the turn if you can help it.

Dig


These are pretty self explanatory, if you think you need to survive the early game take a soft Time Walk, if you are missing one half of the combo look for that half, if you are mana short take a land, it's simple.

Engine


These two represent the engine of the deck. They turn every hard Time Walk into a "draw a ton untap everything". Once you have 3-4 of these in play you pretty much will never "whiff". You just Time Walk forever. But how do you win?

The "Wincon"


The deck's wincon doesn't really look like much of a wincon what it is there for is to make sure you don't draw your whole deck. You use it a bunch of times play things like Cryptic Command enough times to bounce your opponent's entire board, and with it you gain enough life to prevent your opponent from winning when you pass back. You then bounce whatever they played maybe take some more turns and pass back. There are two Elixers in order to protect from Thoughtseize and other things trying to stop your fun. This is the lowest density of wincons for this style of deck which quite possibly makes it the optimal build of the deck, although the aim is certainly misery not victory.

Lands
With as much velocity(speed at which cards are seen/drawn) this deck has you need to be careful not to crack fetches if you need lands and to crack fetches immediately when you don't need lands. Hinterland Harbors are the best land for the job because this deck can't afford to take a tempo hit, which is why a card like Temple of Mystery takes a back seat.

Sideboard
Each of the sideboard cards should be pretty obvious, counters for combo and control, Fog for aggro and other creature based strategies, and Hurkyl's Recall for Affinity specifically. Walk the Aeons is the weakest of the hard Tme Walks and the second elixer can be removed for matchups where it isn't needed. The Sleight of Hands are the weakest of the two dig cards, these can be your first board outs, Finally, against aggro Remand is awful and can be cut. I feel the sideboard will often be rather unimportant because if you did your thing in game one I don't envision a game two occuring.

Wrap Up
I am not sure I will reach the state of misanthropy required to run this deck anytime in the near future, but if any of you get a chance to try it out I'd love to hear it and if you'd like to write a report on I would love to feature you for the blog. If anything this deck will make for some good stories and I'd love to hear them. Good luck and happy griefing!

8 comments:

  1. I'd like some more match-up specific commentary. Like for example, if they're a Tron deck with an Eldrazi, you're basically looking to draw.

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    1. I found the perfect alternate wincon. One copy of Forbidding Watchtower.

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    2. Forbidding watchtower does have the requisite amount of rudeness, but if you dont want the mana base hit blinkmoth nexus serves this purpose pretty reasonably as well. Mikikoro, Center of the Sea was another suggestion since you dont even need to pass back. The issue with both of these cards is that it does speed up the clock a bit much for my taste, but not being able to beat tron IS a potential problem.

      One other amusing buster to tron is emrakul :)

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  2. Hey Poggydude. Just two little misspelled cards in the decklist

    2 Elixer of Immortality => Elixir of Immortality
    4 Hinterland Harbors = Hinterland Harbor

    I use to take the decklists and put them into the Cockatrice loader. If they are misspelled they wont reconize the card. Just making sure everything is perfect.

    Keep the good work.

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    1. Also. You forgot the Snapcasters in the deck! I really belive it can be a great adittion to it.

      And the SB: Hurkyll's Recall => SB:Hurkyl's Recall

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    2. I am sorry about the cockatrice issue, I did try to make it easier by formatting the sideboard correctly, and was able to fix my misspellings for the next people who try to upload, thanks for the heads up!

      Snapcaster WOULD be a strong addition to the deck probably, the issue is that it speeds the deck up to the point where it almost isn't even miserable to play against which was the goal for this build. Snapcasters, jace beleren, and laboratory maniac are all cards that help make this deck faster(not always better but sometimes it is better to add a more substantial wincon)

      Here's an example of a build that uses jace, I cannot comment on the quality of the videos but it will give you another perspective on this archetype: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/article.asp?ID=11695

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  3. First ragequit with the deck ;'D

    http://i.imgur.com/3BJ1TRm.png

    ReplyDelete