Looking for something new to play this weekend? What if I told you I had a deck that was a 90 percent favorite versus U/W Control and U/W/r Planeswalkers? What if I told you that deck was also favored against Jund? Would you play it?
No exaggerated numbers. No misled claims. No hype that will let down your expectations. Just lots of testing and extraordinary results.
The three most popular decks this weekend will almost certainly be U/W Control, U/W/r Planeswalkers, and Jund. Find a favorable matchup against the big three, and you’re positioned to do great.
Let me explain myself.
Spells (35)
- 4 Time Warp
- 4 Howling Mine
- 4 Angelsong
- 4 Kaleidostone
- 4 Mistvein Borderpost
- 3 Time Sieve
- 4 Fieldmist Borderpost
- 4 Open the Vaults
- 4 Prophetic Prism
Sideboard
When I saw multiple iterations of this deck doing well in the early batch of PTQs, I thought it was a fluke. But it looked like a fun fluke, so I began to test it.
I was vastly mistaken.
The control matchups are almost unlosable, and you are a slight favorite over Jund. In exchange for good matchups against those decks, you have a rough Polymorph matchup, and very close Mythic and Mono Red matchups. But with some clever sideboarding and playing, you can make even the rough matchups swing in your favor.
But first, I should explain how the deck works.
You spend your first few turns building up an artifact presence. You either have pseudo-artifact lands in the forms of Borderposts, cantripping two-drops in Kaleidostone and Prophetic Prism, or the engine-fueling Howling Mine. Eventually, you can do a number of things. Notably, you can get a Time Sieve into play, redeem all of your cantripping artifacts for an extra turn, then Open the Vaults on that extra turn drawing you a handful of cards and giving you an extra free turn. Meanwhile, the Glassdust Hulks you cycled come back and serve as surprisingly fast kill conditions, and all the while you can Time Warp or just Open the Vaults again to continue your dominant board position.
Usually, you kill them with Glassdust Hulk. But, if your draw comes up right, you can also just overrun them with 5/5 Tezzeret artifacts.
Of course, you need to get to that point. Time Warps speed you ahead, while Angelsong and Wall of Omens buy you time towards what is usually a turn 6 or 7 combo kill.
It’s difficult to explain without seeing the deck in action, but between all of the extra turns you take and cards you draw, getting into a winning position is not very difficult. It’s not hard to set up the kill, even though the number of ways you win may sound a little minimalist. If you return two Glassdust Hulks with an Open the Vaults, it’s usually not too hard to kill them from there.
Fortunately, a lot of the cards in this deck explain themselves. All of the lands and Borderposts are explanatory, as well as the eight cantripping artifacts, Time Warps, Howling Mines, Open the Vaults, and Time Sieve. There actually isn’t a lot of room to make cuts; you can really tweak with around 14 cards from my core: Wall of Omens, Tezzeret, Angelsong, and Glassdust Hulk
Cards I have seen other lists play maindeck are Spreading Seas, Day of Judgment, Jace Beleren, Silence, Pilgrim’s Eye, Sphinx of Lost Truths, See Beyond, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
While I’m one of few players using Wall of Omens in this deck, it is superb. You’re so inherently favored against control that you need to have cards to be ready for beatdown, and cards like Wall help. Furthermore, it helps you towards your ends by cantripping no matter what matchup you’re playing.
Angelsong is more of the same. I will admit that up until recently I had cut the Angelsongs in favor of two Path to Exiles, an Executioner’s Capsule, and a Jace Beleren. (And a corresponding sideboard of -1 Into the Roil, -1 Executioner’s Capsule, +2 Path to Exile.) While I haven’t redone all of my testing data with Angelsongs in the maindeck, I think that Angelsong is better in any metagame where you are not expecting a lot of Polymorph. (As I have been up until recently.) Without tokens to worry about, fogging most decks is going to be better than killing just one of their creatures at instant speed.
Some players eschew Hulk entirely, relying on other kill mechanisms like Tezzeret. I think doing so is ludicrous. First of all, Hulk cycles and digs you deeper early on to start you off. Then, when you’re going off and your artifact count is tight for Time Sieve after the first Open, it lets you keep another artifact like Howling Mine around for your extra turn. Finally, it serves as a way to kill them. The more you draw, the smoother your deck runs early on, the more effective your Open the Vaults are when you’re going off, and the easier it is to kill them. It’s all around incredible.
If Tezzeret survives for a turn, it’s very hard for your opponents to win. He can singlehandedly set up your combo, while also providing you an extra way to win. Furthermore, he gets better with Angelsong in your deck. You can play him, untap two Borderposts, Angelsong, and then effectively put him to task on your turn.
As for the cards I neglected to play, I’m only going to go over the ones that are the closest.
If I were to add more cards, they would probably be Jace Belerens. They dig you deeper and work well with taking extra turns as being personal Howling Mines. Additionally, they legend rule their Jaces. They’re just not better than anything else you’re already doing, unfortunately: there isn’t room. I considered one over an Angelsong, but drawing multiple Angelsongs in the matchups you want them in is great and you would like all four. I could see -1 Angelsong +1 Jace.
After that, the Angelsong plan and Day of Judgment kind of clash, and at that point I’d rather just Path them a lot of the time. Spreading Seas just doesn’t do enough to warrant a slot in such a tightly packed list.
Finally, there’s Silence. Silence seems like a great card in your head, but it often doesn’t turn out that way in practice. Yes, used as an effective Time Walk early on it can be very good. But when you’re trying to go off, you usually need to stop them from doing things (countermagic) on multiple turns in a row. Even if the situation was different, most of the control decks don’t maindeck countermagic anyway, so I feel you’re better off just boarding Negate.
As far as sideboarding goes, all of your cards have specific purposes.
Kor Firewalker is to help out the Red matchup. I haven’t been bringing them in against Jund, but I could see doing so.
Executioner’s Capsule is insane against Polymorph. If you just play one — let alone two — it’s very hard for them to win because you can destroy both Iona and Emrakul with it, plus they’re never going to normally name Black with Iona. It can also double as removal in other matchups.
Negate After boarding, Jund is going to have Thought Hemorrhage plus all of the usual Maelstrom Pulse shenanigans. You want to be able to stop them. Additionally, control decks are going to gain their own Negates after boarding and you want to be able to fight theirs. You also really need them against Polymorph combo.
Against Mono Red, the Time Sieve plan isn’t that good. Instead, you go on the Thopter Foundry plan which is much better. You put a bunch of your artifacts into Foundry, Open them all back, rinse and repeat. It’s very difficult for them to have a chance of beating that plan. Additionally, I bring one or two in against control players in case they have Needle and so I can grind out Planeswalkers, and possibly my opponent if I need to.
Into the Roil bounces Needle (remember, you just need one go around with Time Sieve) or any other problematic permanent, keeps Planeswalkers off their ultimates, bounces 0/1 tokens in response to Polymorph, bounces Iona on White, and sets Mythic back by either bouncing a Lotus Cobra or an Eldrazi Conscripted creature.
Sideboarding guide/how to play each matchup:
U/W or U/W/r Control
-3 Angelsong, -4 Wall of Omens
+3 Negate, +2 Thopter Foundry, +2 Into the Roil
If you think they have Meddling Mage or some creature worth killing, you can bring in one Executioner’s Capsule over the last Angelsong.
This matchup is insanely in your favor. I started my testing by playing ten pre-board games against each deck and started a clean 20-0. You’re basically goldfishing versus each of them, as game one they have no real way to interact. After boarding they’re going to have a set of Negates, but it’s pretty easy to beat those going long if you don’t walk into them. Usually you just stick an early Sieve then set up a turn where you Time Warp, they have to Negate it, then you crack Sieve and Open the Vaults. Also, if you have a Howling Mine running and/or plenty of gas you can just throw threats into their countermagic. Once they stop countering, you can just goldfish as normal. I have only lost 2 sideboarded games, and I have never lost a match.
Jund
-1 Open the Vaults, -2 Kaleidostone,
+3 Negate
If you think they are going to Thought Hemorrhage or Pithing Needle Time Sieve, you can swap out a Sieve for a Foundry, too.
Game 1, you are about a 65-70% favorite. Turn 2 Putrid Leech and Maelstrom Pulse are the worst things for you. As long as they don’t hit Leech on two and Pulse you multiple times, you are usually in good shape to take game 1.
After boarding, it becomes much more even. They gain access to Duress and Thought Hemorrhage and you have to be able to Negate the latter. Otherwise, the game is basically the same.
Mythic
-4 Wall of Omens, -1 Kaleidostone
+3 Executioner’s Capsule, +2 Into the Roil
Before I put Angelsong back in, I was siding out Howling Mines. With Angelsong in your deck, though, I think you want to cut Wall instead. Wall doesn’t block anything relevant as a lot of their creatures are easily 4 power or larger, and Conscription is what decides a huge portion of games. On the draw, I think you want to sideboard out a Fieldmist Borderpost instead of a Kaleidostone.
Mythic is a very close matchup. You are right about at the 50% line game one. It almost always comes down to if they hit an Eldrazi Conscription, as even if you can chain Angelsongs your permanents are still getting annihilated on the second attack. Postboard it depends a lot on what they have, but if they’re bringing in Negates, Oblivion Rings, and Pridemages, as Matt Sperling was, then the matchup becomes pretty rough. If they go too far into controlling mode you can try and grind them out by boarding in Thopter Foundry, but you also can’t afford to lose your combo angle. While not a terrible matchup, I’m also not terribly happy to face Mythic. It’s always close.
Mono Red Burn
-4 Howling Mine, -3 Time Sieve, -2 Tezzeret the Seeker, -1 Open the Vaults,
+4 Kor Firewalker, +3 Thopter Foundry, +3 Executioner’s Capsule
I haven’t been bringing in Negate against them because their burn seldom seems to matter and Firewalker plus Foundry deal with Devastating Summons fairly nicely. With that said, you can just trade some Angelsongs in for Negates.
Howling Mine is very dangerous for them to have access to, and Time Sieve is too difficult to pull off under pressure and without Mine. A much better plan is to just grind the game out with Thopter Foundry and Open the Vaults. Game 1 is definitely winnable if you have a turn two Wall, though I have found it hard to win otherwise. After boarding, though, the matchup seems to turn and become much better, falling into the land of favorable — around 55-60%.You need the Capsules to kill Dragonlords.
Mulligan aggressively: you don’t have a lot of time to dig.
Polymorph
-4 Wall of Omens, -4 Howling Mine, -3 Angelsong
+3 Executioner’s Capsule, +3 Negate, +3 Thopter Foundry, +2 Into the Roil,
Game 1 is bad. Really bad. With Angelsongs instead of targeted removal, your only hope is to race them — and they’re a faster combo deck with permission. It’s really hard to beat Spell Pierce, too.
The longer this matchup goes, the more it typically seems to favor you. (Though they do have Jace; without a way to legend rule it or attack it you need to be careful not to just lose.) So, the way you’re going to win after boarding is to force the game to go long. You take out Howling Mine because they’re going to beat you if you let them have more cards. Executioner’s Capsule is incredible against them because it kills both of their possible Polymorph targets, is an artifact, and probably won’t be Iona’d. Just sneak it into play when they’ve tapped low, and you can watch the game drag on for a long time. You can either eventually combo kill them or grind them out with Thopter tokens.
There you have it. A guide Turbo Open the Vaults. I think the deck is very well positioned right now, and is an excellent choice for this weekend if you can take a day to learn the ins and outs of it. If you have any comments or suggestions, I’d love to talk about this deck with you in the forums or via e-mail at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com. If you already have a deck picked out, that’s great — stick with it. But if not, give this a try. I think you’ll be impressed.
If you live in the U.S. have fun at your National Qualifiers this weekend!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else