So It's been a while since I've been active on here. I used to be much more active in the MTG community, but now only dabble now and then on Cockatrice, especially with new sets. But I wanted to post a new deck I've been playing with that is recently viable in my opinion due to recent unbannings as well as new cards being printed.
For whatever it's worth, I've been pretty successful in brewing and creating decks in the past. My old handle was Badd Business for anybody who is an hold hat on here, but I don't have the login to that account anymore. I was one of the originators of Nykthos green, was playing Tribal Humans in 2015, and was playing Death's Shadow tempo back in 2012. Given, these decks weren't as powerful as the current iterations, but I do enjoy brewing and have had some good success in the recent past. Most of all, I've always had an infatuation with UG turboland variants. The new sets and recent unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor have possibly made this a viable deck (albeit very different than original) in the current format.
The Strategy
In short, the strategy of this deck is to land a t3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor or God Eternal Kefnet, untap, and then essentially lock in the win via time-walk effects. Kefnet allows you to copy a time walk effect for super cheap and thin simply win the game by beating the opponent to death while chaining time walks and getting way far ahead.
Synergies & Resilience
Part of the fun of this deck, and part of what makes it work is that there is a lot of internal synergy between the cards, all of which are individually viable and strong on their own. Here are some of the interactions...
Utilizing Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Halimar Depths, and Serum Visions to help trigger Temporal Mastery Miracles, to trigger Coiling Oracle triggers, or to hit the copy effect of Kefnet to win the game.. In short, this deck uses a lot of library and deck manipulation to stack the top of the library. This helps us ramp, helps enable getting the right cards at the right time, and prevents drawing dead or duplicates at the wrong time.
Using Etneral Witness to buy-back time walk effects. Witness is useful, especially w/ primal command. But it also offers more inevitability late game, can chump block, and also has a nice synergy with Jace's -1 effect. By using Jace's -1 effect on your own Eternal Witness, you can bounce it to buy back any card in your own graveyard, ideally a time-walk effect, which can buy you many turns in a row depending on Jace's loyalty and your mana availability.
Using reshuffle effects to get rid of miracles and duplicate Kefnets. Jace is not only killer if you can untap with him and time warp or drop a temporal mastery, he's also extremely relevant for simply reshuffling extra copies of Kefnet, or other dead cards in your hand. Similarly, Vendilion Clique serves as helpful disruption, while also doubling as a cantrip effect to replace those dead draws you don't need.
Nearly the entire deck cantrips. This isn't quite the same as a synergy, but it's an interesting effect of the deck which provides a ton of inevitability. There are very few cards in here that do not effectively draw you another card when cast. All time walk effects essentially draw you a card at the very minimum. All creatures except Kefnet himself cantrip in a sense (coiling oracle, witness grabs a card from the grave, etc). Jace Cantrips. All the mana ramp effects cantrip, making them better late-game draws than traditional ramp effects. You get the picture.
Fill out the rest of the lands with whatever you want of course - just keep in mind that colorless lands don't work well since you want to cast Coiling Oracle or Growth Spiral as early as turn 2.
As for the sideboard, including a creature toolbox to use with Primal Command is pretty relevant here, and can present a lot of matchup benefits for us. Primal Command on its own solves a lot of matchup issues as it can gain life, can remove graveyards, tuck problematic permanents, and is essentially a time walk effect on its own already.
Other Thoughts
The deck could be flexibly built for a metagame. You could include a few counters if you really wanted to help fight against other combo decks or the control matchup. You also could opt to include a few bigger finisher type creatures or planeswalkers such as Ugin or Wurmcoil Engine since this deck does get a lot of mana out at a rather quick pace.
This is by no means final and a lot more development could be used here. I will however say, Kefnet is a very underrated card in modern, and demands a kill spell almost immediately in here. Even after the kill, you can drop it again soon after due to it's recursion ability.
This kind of deck will never work in the current metagame. A metagame that plays main deck extractions.
No one is going to let you resolve a T3 Jace. And even if you do, you'll have to resolve a kefnet AND have it survive another turn. This is 5 turns with ZERO interactions with your opponent (and expecting them to not interact with you either).
Where are the cryptics? The mana leaks/spell snares/remands? You need these.
I've tested those. You can probably fit in a few remands for safe measure, but the deck does not want to be a reactive control deck, that's just not the strategy here. The idea is to proactively drop bombs that need to be answered immediately or lose. Can the opponent not let a kefnet or Jace resolve? Of course, but you have tons of draw and redundancy to draw into another. Not to mention you can just recur it via eternal witness, or EOT clique an opponent to resolve your Jace / Kefnet. Or follow up their counter of jace with a primal command into a witness chain.
Generally speaking, if you play vs an opponent that is being proactive and tapping out, you can easily resolve these threats. If you're playing against an opponent that is reactive, you can run them out of counters or just get enough mana on board to play around their counters. Not to mention, you still get to apply some loose pressure with coiling oracles, witnesses, or Cliques.
Cryptic Command can be played in here, but it starts to crowd the 4cmc mana spot, plus you don't really want to be holding up 4 mana EOT since you want to be dropping bomb spells that are only cast at sorcery speed. The two strategies just don't align.
It's not perfect, and there is certainly room to improve, but playing reactive is less important than most people would realize / believe in here. IF there was lots of uber-fast combo in the format, it would be more needed, but there isn't, and many of the current cards in here can help in that type of matchup already without having to be reactive.
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For whatever it's worth, I've been pretty successful in brewing and creating decks in the past. My old handle was Badd Business for anybody who is an hold hat on here, but I don't have the login to that account anymore. I was one of the originators of Nykthos green, was playing Tribal Humans in 2015, and was playing Death's Shadow tempo back in 2012. Given, these decks weren't as powerful as the current iterations, but I do enjoy brewing and have had some good success in the recent past. Most of all, I've always had an infatuation with UG turboland variants. The new sets and recent unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor have possibly made this a viable deck (albeit very different than original) in the current format.
The Strategy
In short, the strategy of this deck is to land a t3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor or God Eternal Kefnet, untap, and then essentially lock in the win via time-walk effects. Kefnet allows you to copy a time walk effect for super cheap and thin simply win the game by beating the opponent to death while chaining time walks and getting way far ahead.
Synergies & Resilience
Part of the fun of this deck, and part of what makes it work is that there is a lot of internal synergy between the cards, all of which are individually viable and strong on their own. Here are some of the interactions...
4x Coiling Oracle
4x God-Eternal Kefnet
2x Eternal Witness
2x Vendilion Clique
4x Serum Visions
4x Growth Spiral
4x Explore
Time Walk Effects
2x Time Warp
2x Primal Command
4x Temporal Mastery
4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Land
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Halimar Depths
2x Khalni Garden
Fill out the rest of the lands with whatever you want of course - just keep in mind that colorless lands don't work well since you want to cast Coiling Oracle or Growth Spiral as early as turn 2.
As for the sideboard, including a creature toolbox to use with Primal Command is pretty relevant here, and can present a lot of matchup benefits for us. Primal Command on its own solves a lot of matchup issues as it can gain life, can remove graveyards, tuck problematic permanents, and is essentially a time walk effect on its own already.
Other Thoughts
The deck could be flexibly built for a metagame. You could include a few counters if you really wanted to help fight against other combo decks or the control matchup. You also could opt to include a few bigger finisher type creatures or planeswalkers such as Ugin or Wurmcoil Engine since this deck does get a lot of mana out at a rather quick pace.
This is by no means final and a lot more development could be used here. I will however say, Kefnet is a very underrated card in modern, and demands a kill spell almost immediately in here. Even after the kill, you can drop it again soon after due to it's recursion ability.
No one is going to let you resolve a T3 Jace. And even if you do, you'll have to resolve a kefnet AND have it survive another turn. This is 5 turns with ZERO interactions with your opponent (and expecting them to not interact with you either).
Where are the cryptics? The mana leaks/spell snares/remands? You need these.
Generally speaking, if you play vs an opponent that is being proactive and tapping out, you can easily resolve these threats. If you're playing against an opponent that is reactive, you can run them out of counters or just get enough mana on board to play around their counters. Not to mention, you still get to apply some loose pressure with coiling oracles, witnesses, or Cliques.
Cryptic Command can be played in here, but it starts to crowd the 4cmc mana spot, plus you don't really want to be holding up 4 mana EOT since you want to be dropping bomb spells that are only cast at sorcery speed. The two strategies just don't align.
It's not perfect, and there is certainly room to improve, but playing reactive is less important than most people would realize / believe in here. IF there was lots of uber-fast combo in the format, it would be more needed, but there isn't, and many of the current cards in here can help in that type of matchup already without having to be reactive.