The world of Time Spiral Block Constructed is a strange one right now. Most of the people who actually know anything about the format know what they do because they’re testing for the Pro Tour. That leaves only Magic Online as a tool for learning about Block Constructed, but the latest round of software updates has corrupted every replay file. You can see what decks people are playing, but getting past turn 4 without having the replay bug out on you is rare.
Luckily for me, I guess, I am not qualified for the Pro Tour. Because of this, I have no real reason to hold decklists back, and the only ones that I don’t feel comfortable talking about are ones that friends and teammates have specifically asked me not to leak.
Still, the stock decks of Block Constructed can be found easily enough by simply looking through Frank Karsten’s archives on MagictheGathering.com, so this column won’t be focusing on them. Instead, I’ll be talking about a card that is the backbone of a handful of decks. The decks might not be Tier 1 (though there was a while where some of us thought that they were), but they’re competitive if you’re looking for something a little bit different.
Each deck in today’s article is built around Gauntlet of Power, which has become affectionately named The Big Love Glove among the people I play with. Each deck seeks to do something different but still degenerate with the mana provided by the Glove, from massive Disintegrates to armies of Pegasus.
Creatures (10)
Lands (23)
Spells (27)
- 4 Disintegrate
- 4 Gauntlet of Power
- 4 Lotus Bloom
- 3 Prismatic Lens
- 4 Sulfurous Blast
- 2 Word of Seizing
- 2 Pyrohemia
- 4
Sideboard
This deck doesn’t pay much attention to the creature pump aspect of the Love Glove. Who really cares if your Akroma is a 6/6 or a 7/7? All that matters is the number of cards that take advantage of the mana boost. You can pump your Akroma twice as much as before, you can double the damage dealt by Pyrohemia, and, of course, you can easily send a Disintegrate for fifteen to someone’s face.
Against aggressive strategies, such as White Weenie and Scryb/Force, your goal is to use your ten board control cards to stay ahead on life. You do not have a good answer to Soltari Priest, but it will also make sure that your Pyrohemia never decides that it’s time to head to the graveyard. Eventually you’ll drop one of your massive men into play via the Glove or a Lotus Bloom, and then you’ll hope to race any threat you couldn’t deal with. A Hellkite or Akroma should really kill them in just one turn, so even Soltari Priest shouldn’t be impossible to stop.
Against control decks you hope to resolve a Glove when they can’t do anything about it. Once a Gauntlet is in play, your massive mana should allow you to fight though just about any resistance that they can throw your way. If you don’t manage to get a Glove into play, then you’ll have to be a little bit more careful about what you’re doing. Tossing a Hellkite into play on their endstep is usually a good idea, but you have to make sure that you’re not about to meet your demise at the hands of a 9/9 Draining Whelk. Akroma can show up in face-up form as early as turn 4, and then they’ll need to have either Damnation or two Sudden Deaths to deal with her. When all else fails, you can rely on your Urza’s Factories to pull through for you.
The sideboard cards are fairly straightforward. Sulfur Elemental is the best man for the job of stopping Soltari Priests. Due to the large number of Pyroclasms in your deck, it’s best to sandbag the Elemental as long as possible, though if it’s going to kill three one-drops then it’s probably not worth saving for the Priest. Fortune Thief is for decks such as Mono-Green Aggro and Scryb/Force, with the added benefit that they will not be boarding in Serrated Arrows against your Dragons and Angels. The Fury Charms are essentially Shatters, since you will not often need the time counter or trample abilities.
Spells (33)
- 4 Gauntlet of Power
- 3 Haunting Hymn
- 4 Lotus Bloom
- 2 Phthisis
- 3 Phyrexian Totem
- 3 Prismatic Lens
- 3 Sudden Death
- 3 Tendrils of Corruption
- 4 Damnation
- 2 Enslave
- 2 Null Profusion
Sideboard
The Black Gauntlet deck is, admittedly, the least tested of the bunch. It plays similarly to the Red Gauntlet deck in that it is using the Glove solely as a Mana Flare. In the place of ten Pyroclasm effects, this deck runs Damnation, Sudden Death, and Tendrils of Corruption. After using its creature sanction and / or hand disruption, some finisher will come across the table a few times and end the game. With a Glove in play, the Nosferatus are essentially unkillable, as the toughness boost gets him out of the range of Sudden Death and the protection abilities are much easier to pay for.
Your best matchups are aggro decks, as long as you make sure to mulligan your slow hands. This is a very slow deck, so a slow hand against White Weenie will likely see you dead before you can start to stabilize. Hands with mana acceleration are the ones you want to see most, while Damnation and Tendrils are also extremely effective against most attack decks. You just need to make sure that you have a plan if they follow your Damnation with a Spectral Force or a Calciderm. Once your creature control has cleaned up, and it should, it doesn’t really matter what finisher you decide to use.
Control decks are much harder to take down, since you have so many creature control cards that are useless against them. Sudden Death is still good as a way to kill Teferi, but Phthisis and Enslave are both atrocious, while Tendrils and Damnation are unexciting. Your best card here is Phyrexian Totem, since there is a legitimate chance that it will come out underneath their counter wall, and they won’t have much to put in its way, assuming that you don’t run it into a Hellkite. Even if you do get a Glove into play, there isn’t a whole lot that you can do with the mana besides attempt to cast two Hymns in one turn.
The sideboard primarily attempts to shore up the control matchup. Psychotic Episode and Stupor are both fast disruption cards that you hope to use to clear their hand out for the big guns. Extirpate can stop them from chaining Mystical Teachings or potentially remove all of their win conditions if you can snag enough of them with your discard spells. The Serrated Arrows are your standard anti-aggro sideboard card, there to kill two to three creatures for the low cost of one card.
This is the first deck on the list that gets good usage out of both halves of the Gauntlet effect. Scryb Ranger and Call of the Herd both enjoy the boost that the Glove gives them, but Jolrael and Wurmcalling are particular fans of the Gauntlet. Jolrael plus Gauntlet means you have one extra land attacking and it means that your man-lands are even more frightening than normal. Wurmcalling plus Gauntlet implies at least two 3/3s the turn after you play the Glove, though you could always just fire a 12/12 in there if you truly wanted to.
Your aggro plan is to get to the big guys as fast as you can. Call of the Herd is a fine answer to men like Sinew Sliver and Knight of the Holy Nimbus (if you’ve got the mana). Scryb Ranger and Magus should help you get a Spectral Force into play as quickly as possible, and if they don’t have a Temporal Isolation then he’ll likely go the distance on his own. If you draw into a Glove, then there isn’t much that they can do to stop you from winning. Jolrael, Wurmcalling, and Hunting Wilds all become spells that will end the game nearly immediately.
You also have a number of tools against control decks. Search for Tomorrow and Hunting Wilds are both spells that likely deserve counters despite the fact that they aren’t real threats. Magus of the Library comes down under their counter wall and will provide you with a non-stop stream of cards until they can deal with it. Scryb Ranger is a hard-to-stop threat that also allows you to crank out more guys and abuse your Library, if you’re fortunate to draw them together. In addition to all this, you have real threats to follow a Damnation, from Spectral Force to a simple Wurmcalling for a 5/5.
The Wall of Roots in the sideboard is a straight swap for Magus of the Library against aggro decks, since he’s a much better speed bump and still gives you extra mana. Serrated Arrows is your other aggro card, and there isn’t much to say about it that you don’t already know. Seal of Primordium is an all-purpose answer to Lotus Blooms, Sacred Mesas, Teferi’s Moats, and even opposing Gauntlets. Finally, Scragnoth is the Old School answer to Blue decks everywhere, providing you with one more man that control decks will have a harder time dealing with.
Creatures (20)
- 4 Defiant Vanguard
- 4 Amrou Scout
- 4 Knight of the Holy Nimbus
- 1 Zealot il-Vec
- 1 Big Game Hunter
- 3 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
- 3 Voidstone Gargoyle
Lands (25)
- 25 Plains
Spells (15)
Sideboard
At the beginning of our block testing, we thought that this deck could be the real deal. It was crushing 8-man Queues on Magic Online and doing well in playtesting. The strength of the deck came from its ability to play like a decent version of White Weenie in the early game, while shifting from that plan to the Sacred Mesa plan in the late game. Sacred Mesa is easily abusable in this deck; both Crovax and Gauntlet turn the already-awesome token maker into a massive threat. The one-of Rebels are there to answer different problems: Big Game Hunter kills guys like Spectral Force, while the Zealot can take out an otherwise-problematic Fortune Thief.
Your aggro matchup plays a tiny bit like a White Weenie mirror match. Knight of the Holy Nimbus and Amrou Scouts hold down the fort for a little while, until the big guns can come out. Gauntlet of Power will likely give them a boost too (though this isn’t a problem against Blue/Green decks), but the boost that it gives you is dramatically more powerful. The Glove allows them to play two 3/3s in one turn, but it lets you tap a land to put a 2/2 flyer into play. If you get Gauntlet plus Mesa online, the game will be over just one or two turns after you start cranking out a Pegasus horde. Things are even better than this against Scryb/Force type decks, since you don’t have to worry about the Glove backfiring on you.
Control decks will be in an awkward position to play correctly against you. They have to deal with a handful of weenies coming at them in the early game, and they also have to deal with the fact that you are packed to the brim with cards they will have a hard time stopping if they make it into play. A Damnation turn can easily be followed by a Gargoyle naming Teferi, Hellkite, Damnation, or anything else. Similarly, tapping out might mean that they run into a Crovax, Love Glove, or Sacred Mesa. As if that weren’t bad enough for them, they need to play around Mana Tithe too.
The sideboard is entirely reactive cards. Disenchant is good against all sorts of random cards, such as the ones I mentioned above. Serrated Arrows gives you extra breathing room against cards like Soltari Priest and its friends. Rebuff the Wicked is there to protect your big threats against control, stopping whatever plan they had to deal with your Gauntlet or your Mesa. Evangelize is for the green aggro decks, where Gauntlet will let you play it with Buyback fairly easily, taking their Elephants and Elementals. Just make sure that you don’t start casting it after you’ve played three Temporal Isolations.
Blue Gauntlet?
I don’t have a good list for a Blue Gauntlet deck, which is kind of sad. I would have liked to be able to give you a good deck for each color, but the fact is that there’s nothing too degenerate you can do in this color. Spell Burst lock is about the best thing that I can come up with, and that just seems unworkable. You could try making a Fish-style deck with Riptide Pilferer and Lord of Atlantis, but that seems like a worse aggressive deck than any of White Weenie, Scryb/Force, Red/Green Aggro, and Slivers.
Two weeks from now, we’ll see what Yokohama has to say, but until then, hopefully these decks give you something a bit different to play around with. I like the White Gauntlet deck, personally, though I’ve heard good things from friends about all of them.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.
Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM