I played in two Standard tournaments last weekend. I played Turboland. I split in the top four of the Cascade Games Challenge (a $2.5K tournament) and lost playing for Top 8 in the PTQ the next day. My combined record on the weekend was 12-3-1. I highly recommend the deck for the PTQs this weekend as well as any PTQs coming up on Magic Online. The deck cannot lose to Wall of Omens, is a solid favorite against Jund, and is about even or so against Mythic. The only deck that is really mainstream and is a bad matchup is mono-Red.
Creatures (11)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (28)
Spells (17)
Sideboard
The list is a derivative of one that I got from Steven Birklid. Steven worked on Turboland with Cedric Phillips, Gerry Thompson, and Luis Scott-Vargas for the recent StarCityGames.com Open in Seattle. They, in turn, were inspired by the deck that Adam Prosak used to make the top four of his National Qualifier tournament in Arizona.
Ideally, in every game, you would ramp on turn 2 and cast Oracle or Jace on turn 3. It follows that you would want to play the maximum amount of two-mana ramp, and perhaps even include Overgrown Battlement for extra redundancy. The problem is that you don’t really have the room for all of those slots; you still need cards to ramp into, after all. Earlier lists had the third and fourth Rampant Growths, usually at the expense of some Ponders. However, the more games I played, the more I found myself wanting the maximum number of Ponders. Ponder on turn one is pretty good in a deck with a bunch of fetchlands and Rampant Growth anyway, particularly when you are also frequently on the prowl for a four-mana bomb to accelerate into. However, in this deck, Ponder is also quite powerful in the midgame. It improves your Oracles of Mul Daya and helps shuffle for Jace, but it also helps you dig for a Time Warp, Mind Spring, or Avenger of Zendikar when you are looking for something to dump all of your mana into.
All is Dust is primarily a concession to the Mythic matchup; Dust is usually backbreaking against them in game 1 and is your only real way to fight Sovereigns of Lost Alara.
There are only three Time Warps because they come out against Jund and Mythic and it’s hard to justify running four copies of a card you board out against the most popular decks in the format. The card is integral to the plan against control decks, so you need to draw one eventually, but those games go long enough that you usually don’t have to worry about finding one. The fourth copy is in the board so that you can bring it in as needed.
Similarly, there are only three Avengers because you don’t really want to draw two early, and it’s rare that you actively need multiples anyway. Between Ponder, Jace, and Mind Spring, finding Avenger is rarely super difficult. Same for Mind Spring; you only want to draw the second Mind Spring after you’ve already cast the first one, and it’s not particularly impressive unless and until you have six or more mana. However, once you have that much mana, you’re probably going to be busy going nuts with Avenger or Dust or Time Warp. You still need access to some Springs because of how important they are in the mirror and against control decks, but you don’t want a ton of them.
The mana is configured such that you have the maximum amount of green sources on turns one and two, have enough blue sources to Ponder on one as needed as well as support Jace on four, while still running as many Tectonic Edges as possible in order to minimize your vulnerability to Celestial Colonnade and other manlands. If you just looked at the maindeck, you might think that you could shave a blue source for the fourth Edge, but the sideboard contains thirteen blue cards, and one of them is Roil Elemental; you really need as many blue sources as possible. There are only six fetchlands because ramping up to five mana on turn three with Lotus Cobra is only really worth the effort when you are playing Oracle of Mul Daya plus Ponder and you don’t have a Halimar Depths. You only really need a fetchland when you are setting up a powerful turn in the midgame or are trying to ramp to seven for All is Dust or Avenger of Zendikar. Honestly, I abuse fetchlands with Oracle and Jace far more than I do with Cobra.
Matchups:
Jund:
The Jund matchup is pretty good. If they don’t play a Putrid Leech on turn 2, you’re probably going to win, because you’ll start playing threats that they have to answer (Oracle, Jace, eventually Avenger) in the midgame, but if they spend their turns playing removal spells instead of creatures, you can just keep getting them with one- and two-for-ones before closing with Avenger + fetchland or a huge Mind Spring. Instead, if they play out creatures and start racing you, you can proceed unmolested with your engine and set up devastating Time Warps. Without Leech, they’ll need multiple Bloodbraids to stay even on tempo.
Leech on two makes things harder, because with Leech in play they’re far more able to use Blightning to contain Jace and use the rest of their removal to clean up your board while clocking with Leech. Leech plus a Bloodbraid is pretty hard to beat, especially on the draw. You’ll usually need to ramp twice and perhaps play a Time Warp to get to a fast Avenger, and then hope they don’t have Maelstrom Pulse.
Sideboarding: -3 Time Warp, -2 All is Dust, -2 Ponder, +4 Narcolepsy, +3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Since you have the most trouble beating Putrid Leech, you bring in Narcolepsy to put the Leech to sleep as well as a Sphinx of Jwar Isle to park in front of Jund’s squad while you go about assembling Avenger or a second Sphinx. Warp comes out because it’s hard to get value out of it aside from cycling; if you untap with basically anything you’re already pretty far ahead. Cutting Ponder is like slamming a door against a finger, but you need Mind Spring to fight Blightning as well as dig for more sixes and sevens. All is Dust hits the bench because it’s slow and they have Sprouting Thrinax.
Note that if your opponent, like Gavin Verhey, is scum brings in Blood Seeker, that you’ll need the Dusts to fight them. Simply using Jace and Sphinx of Jwar Isle is rarely enough. Indeed, if Blood Seeker picks up in the next week or so, you’ll probably want to cut the sideboard Fog and the third Sphinx for two Rampaging Baloths to fight Jund without having to hit yourself for ten.
Mythic:
The Mythic matchup is pretty well defined by Sovereigns of Lost Alara. If they have it, you’re a solid underdog, and if they don’t, you’re a heavy favorite. Essentially, if they play Sovereigns on turn 4 and hit you with it, you either need to have All is Dust before they untap or string multiple Time Warps together and set up a sequence with Avenger of Zendikar and Jace that allows you to take one more hit before running them over with Plants. If they don’t have Sovereigns, they just have a bunch of midrange beaters that you can easily crush. Aggressively use Tectonic Edge and Jace to keep them off of untapping with six mana and a Sovereigns target. Sometimes they’ll get you with a nut draw and crush you, and sometimes you’ll play Jace on three and bounce their only creature before playing Oracle on four and having them all kinds of dead on five.
Sideboarding: -2 Mind Spring, -3 Time Warp, +3 Roil Elemental, +1 All is Dust, +1 Fog.
(Most of the Mythic players I’ve spoken to board out their Jaces because they need to make room for removal for Roil Elemental as well as Negate. If they leave Jace in, you’ll want to cut the Fog and the fourth Ponder for two copies of Jace Beleren to ensure that you have advantage on Jace. Time Warp hits the bench because having Warp Negated is almost worse than having Dust Negated.)
After sideboarding, you want to be fighting on two fronts: Roil Elemental and All is Dust. They will probably bring in answers for both, but that dilutes their deck considerably and causes situations to occur where they are holding double Negate when you play Roil Elemental on turn four. They’ll certainly still get you with Negate or Bant Charm or Path to Exile occasionally, but you’ve much more of a fighting chance with this plan. Roil Elemental in particular is excellent against Sovereigns draws, stealing either the Conscription target, the mana necessary to cast Sovereigns, or Sovereigns itself.
And, of course, you can always just get them with a fast Avenger draw while they’re trying to fight your sideboard.
Next Level Bant:
Next Level Bant is a very good matchup. They’re not aggressive in the early game, and they can only be aggressive in the midgame with Vengevine and maybe Ranger of Eos. They don’t have any effective way to fight Avenger of Zendikar, and they can’t disrupt your engine. About the only way they can beat you is to have a Hierarch into a three-drop into Elspeth into Vengevine, and even that is a draw you can handle.
Because their best card in the matchup is Elspeth, you want to avoid taking damage on the ground whenever possible. Don’t worry about saving your Khalni Garden tokens for Avenger of Zendikar; once Avenger shows up you’ll be in fine shape. You should look for as many ways to save damage as possible. Don’t just start chumping with Lotus Cobra or Oracle of Mul Daya unless you no longer need them or have no other choice, but using Jace to Unsummon a Ranger of Eos is not an unreasonable play. Simply play lands, play your four drops, and Warp up to Avenger. You probably won’t be able to set up Avenger of Zendikar plus Warp in the same turn unless their draw is super slow or yours is super fast, but you don’t really need it. Just play Avenger and a fetchland, preferably two fetchlands, and they’ll be dead on your next turn. The games play out the same way before and after sideboarding, although you’ll want to be wary of potential Deprives and such.
Sideboarding: You can shave a Ponder or two for Jace Belerens or the fourth Time Warp or the third Dust, but it doesn’t really matter.
Naya:
The Naya matchup is also pretty good. They’re a beatdown deck that is slightly faster than Jund, but one that has far worse removal. They don’t really have any good ways to beat Avenger of Zendikar, nor do they have any disruption. Game 1, therefore, is pretty easy; you just cast a bunch of spells that they can’t really beat. As in the Next Level Bant matchup, you’ll want to watch out for Elspeth/Vengevine draws.
Sideboarding: -2 Mind Spring, -1 Ponder, +1 All is Dust, +1 Time Warp, +1 Fog
It’s rare that you have time to cast Mind Spring against non-Jund Bloodbraid Elf decks, but you need All is Dust to answer Manabarbs. Yeah, you take seven, and that sucks, but they usually need Manabarbs to win and can’t be too picky about the hands it shows up in. Usually they’ll play a guy on three and Barbs on four, and if you can Dust them on five you’ll probably be at between four and eight but they’ll be completely out of gas. That’s a position you can win from fairly easily.
Mono-Red:
The Mono-Red matchup is pretty abysmal. They have burn for your Oracles and Jaces plus an absurdly fast clock. Sure, Goblin Guide will flip a lot of land, but you’ll need something like three Time Warps and two Khalni Gardens to win, and that’s assuming they don’t just hit you with a thousand Ball Lightnings. The sideboard above doesn’t even try to address the Mono-Red matchup on the theory that you can’t beat everything and that you’d rather be prepared for the Jund and Mythic matchups.
However, if you wanted to try to fight the red decks, you’d probably want to shave a Narcolepsy, a Sphinx, one copy of All is Dust, and the two Jace Belerens. If you ran three copies of Grazing Gladehart and two Pelakka Wurms, you’d have a fighting chance against the Red deck if you managed to draw two sideboard cards in both games, or had a fetchland to go with your Gladehart when they had a slow draw. I think that to actually become favored against Red that you’d need seven to eight slots, and it’s just not popular enough right now. In the meantime, four or five cards isn’t quite enough to actually swing the match your way, so I have found it more rewarding to make sure the other matchups are in the bag and hope to dodge the Goblin Guides.
Mirror:
The mirror is defined by the four-drops, Oracle of Mul Daya and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. If you play one of those cards on turn three and your opponent does not, you will probably win. Jace is better than Oracle because if their Oracle bricks, you can use Jace to keep bouncing their Oracle while you get to play your Oracle and keep developing your mana. Once they get up to five or six lands, meanwhile, you can start Brainstorming and perhaps cash in your Jace to bounce your Avenger.
Most games end up being a blowout for someone. One player gets slightly ahead with a Jace or an Oracle, and then they cast Time Warp and all of a sudden they’re way ahead. God forbid they have double Time Warp; they’ll have Avenger and a bunch of 3/4s while you’re stuck on five mana. Cobra is the best ramp effect in the mirror, but you have to mulligan basically every seven card hand without a ramp, especially if you’re on the draw, or you’ll just get annihilated.
Sideboarding: -2 All is Dust, -1 Ponder, +2 Jace Beleren, +1 Time Warp
If you’re behind, All is Dust is not going to bail you out. You’re probably already behind a land or two, and now you’ve spent an entire turn to return the board to parity. Plus, if you had to Dust, the other guy probably had Jace and Oracle going, which means he’s probably seen enough cards that he might be able to just run replacements of both out. Regardless, it’s almost assured that his next turn will be better than yours. Cutting Ponder hurts, but if you draw multiple Warps you almost always win, and you can’t shave an Avenger since you want to ensure you see one fairly quickly. Cutting ramp or a four is out of the question, which just leaves the Ponder. An alternative plan here, as against other Blue decks, is to bring in a couple copies of Deprive, but bouncing a land is a steep drawback, particularly since you’ll usually want to leave Deprive up when they’re getting to four or five mana, which implies that your turn four wasn’t particularly impressive, either. Negate doesn’t hit Oracle or Avenger, and Flashfreeze doesn’t hit Jace, Warp, or Mind Spring, so you’re basically stuck with Deprive if you want counters. I feel that the Jace war is so important that I’d rather have at least seven Jaces before I wanted a counterspell.
Tactical notes:
— If the other guy is an Eldrazi Monument deck, try to trade your Oracles and Cobras with their Bloodbraid Elves and other x/2s if you can afford to; you want to minimize your opponent’s ability to play Monument or Overrun and kill you out of nowhere.
— Against U/W control decks with Day of Judgment and/or Martial Coup, the best plan is to simply ramp up to twelve mana and play Avenger of Zendikar and Time Warp in the same turn. They can only beat you if they manage to Wrath away all of your threats; don’t give them that opportunity.
— On that note, because you’re trying to get up to twelve, Cobra isn’t that awesome against Day of Judgment decks; you want actual lands, not the acceleration. You can board some or all of them out, though obviously playing Jace before they can is pretty good.
— If you are on the play and both you and your opponent have Lotus Cobra, they will never ever block if you play a four-drop before attacking with Cobra.
— As a corollary, you rarely want to block with Cobra when you’re on the draw, but if I’m on the play with a Cobra, I usually block my opponent’s turn four Bloodbraid Elf if given the opportunity. Once your opponent has four mana, you usually have a ton, and you can’t put the extra Cobra mana to good use unless you are going insane with Ponders and Warps, or need the mana for Avenger or Sphinx.
— It is almost always correct to use Jace’s Unsummon ability if your opponent only has one creature in play. As long as you get to stay alive and keep making land drops, you’re probably going to win. If you have absolutely no gas, then, sure, go ahead and Brainstorm, but if you make Jund pick up a Leech and they have to spend their next turn killing Jace rather than replaying their Leech, you get pretty far ahead.
— You will not always want to cast Ponder on turn 1. The most frequent scenario for this is when you have a Lotus Cobra, Oracle of Mul Daya draw with an extra land to play for Oracle, or if you are playing Oracle off of a fetchland and thus have a mana floating. If you wait to pull the trigger on Ponder until Oracle is in play, you can stack your deck such that you’ll draw a spell and get extra lands out of your Oracle.
— The same is true for Halimar Depths. In general, if you don’t need the mana from Depths or a specific card from Ponder, waiting to cast them for more value is rarely wrong. Ideally, you’ll use Explore to get Halimar Depths on three to set up Oracle of Mul Daya on four.
— Try to play Avenger of Zendikar when you can play an eighth land in the same turn, preferably a fetchland. Don’t, however, let them Doom Blade your Avenger with a fetchland activation on the stack.
— Don’t be afraid to mulligan if your hand is slow or if you have all mana. A six- or even five-card hand with three lands, ramp, and a four-drop is better than a slow seven card hand that does nothing.
— Don’t get caught up in a war of attrition. Sure, you’re drawing a bunch of cards, but you can’t exactly go toe-to-toe with a few Bloodbraid Elves if all you have are lands and a couple of extra 2/2s. Just do what Adam Prosak suggested and go over the top of them with Avenger of Zendikar.
Unless you walk into a room that is wall-to-wall Red Decks, you should probably be playing Turboland. As I was saying to Cedric Phillips the last time we talked, “I never actually care what my opponent is doing; I just know he can’t possibly win.”
max dot mccall at gmail dot com