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UW Taking Turns

Modern

Mark_Of_Iures


Sideboard

Enchantment (4)

Sorcery (3)

Creature (2)


Disclaimer: this is an opinion!!! Please explain your reasoning if you believe I'm wrong. I'd love to discuss!!*

Before I get into the explanation... YES THERE IS A FREAKING MIND STONE IN THE MAIN BOARD. It generally smooths out a lot of your mana and ramps you to cryptic command or time walks faster. It feels better than you might think. Especially vs decks that disrupt your land base.

In my experience the main thing this deck suffers from is being unable to get off the ground before being run over by faster decks. The reason usually comes down to the one thing all modern decks need to be able to do. Do something turn one. This deck needs to be casting a cantrip turn one to get the game rolling. You need to be digging into your deck to make sure you have access to a howling mine effect card right off the bat, or setting up future land drops, or sandbagging answers. Turn two is dedicated to impacting the game with disruption such as remand, or thing in the ice. Turn three is usually where things get the most dicey. In most cases you want to be casting a dictate of kruphix to get the combo rolling. Since this can be done during your opponents end step this usually isn't the end of the world. Turn 4 is generally a Cryptic command turn. If you're in the drivers seat and can cast a CC on this turn it usually sets you up to combo the next turn. (This is obviously the ideal scenario, but essentially the target for all games)

With this in mind the reasons for not running some of the normal cards are as follows:

  • gigadrowse. not exactly a fast enough tempo card. If you're casting this later than turn 2 it's likely your hand isn't strong enough to win the game fast enough in matchups where this card is good. And in the matchups where giga is bad it's REALLY bad.

  • Ancestral Visions. This card is simply too slow to run on it's own. As mentioned above you want to start digging immediately to find cards to stall out the game and put together the combo. It can be powerful in combination with As Foretold, but again As Foretold is just really hard to cast turn 3. You have to put your shields down completely to cast As Foretold turn 3. Waiting to cast it is even more slow. Even after you cast it three cards isn't enough to combo off in most cases. In my opinion this is why the howling mine effects are better for this deck

  • As foretold. Kinda went into this above. Card is just so hard to justify casting early enough for it to be effective. The biggest thing about a T3 howling mine effect is that it effectively makes a Cryptic Command a Time Walk, and then you can essentially start going off t4 instead of t5.

  • opt. Opt is at a superior speed to sleight of hand, however, the fact that you don't actually get to choose the top card of the deck and instead just draw a card after scrying in my opinion makes it worse.

  • JtMS. This card, while extremely powerful even in Taking Turns still just feels like a "Win More" card. It's extremely difficult to cast this card t4 against aggro match-ups, and after turn 4 is when you want to be taking extra turns not trying to cycle through more cards to find answers.

Things I've learned about playing the deck:

  • Almost never want to start with time walk effects in your opening hand. It's extremely painful to have temporal mastery's for instance in your opening hand. YOU WANT THEM THINGS ON THE TOP OF YOUR DECK SO THEY COST 2 CMC VS 7!! :P

  • Dictate in your opening 7 feels real good if the hand works. It's just a big load off your back vs trying to find the card before you'd want to play it t3

  • a 1-2 land hand isn't terrible if you have 1-2 cantrips to find them lands!

  • thing in the ice isn't your only win-con in the deck. Throw that guy out there and just make them answer it. If you're against control and they can't path or counter they sometimes just get beat down before you even combo off if you happen to cantrip or silence them a few times and eat through all the ice counters.

  • Game one can go a lot of ways, but it's usually important to not let your opponent know what you're playing right away. It can be pretty easy for your opponent to to play around cards like exhaustion if they know it's likely coming.

  • It's also important to realize that exhaustion doesn't need to be played before the lands are tapped. If you play exhaustion during your main phase, and your opponent taps out during your end step, they still don't untap.

  • hand disruption is good against this deck lol

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Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

22 - 10 Rares

12 - 1 Uncommons

7 - 4 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 3.05
Tokens Soldier 1/1 W
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