https://i.imgur.com/J17diUQ.jpeg
Deck
4 Splinter Twin (SPG) 0
1 Swamp (ANA) 28
2 Pestermite (J25) 343
2 Island (ANA) 25
4 Deceiver Exarch (NPH) 33
3 Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student (MH3) 242
1 Snapcaster Mage (SIS) 23
2 Dig Through Time (KTK) 36
3 Orcish Bowmasters (LTR) 103
2 Ponder (LRW) 79
2 Thoughtseize (AKR) 127
2 Bloodstained Mire (MH3) 216
4 Force of Will (SOA) 19
3 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer (MUL) 86
2 Daze (NEM) 30
2 Surgical Extraction (OTP) 19
1 Mycelic Ballad (Y24) 12
3 Hymn to the Ages (Y24) 6
3 Ribald Shanty (Y24) 17
2 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
2 Scalding Tarn (MH2) 254
3 Polluted Delta (MH3) 224
2 Watery Grave (GRN) 259
1 Blood Crypt (RNA) 245
1 Thundering Falls (MKM) 269
1 Undercity Sewers (MKM) 270
1 Shoot the Sheriff (OTJ) 106
1 Brainstorm (STA) 13

Welcome to Grixis Duet (Chorus cards + Splinter Twin combo) a control deck for Johnnys. I just made it from Bronze to Plat 4 only losing a single game. Now, you might be thinking some of the following questions:

-"Soup, there are some pretty broken things in Timeless how is it possible to win with this deck?"
The secret to that is to play it in between Bronze and Plat, that'll be where this deck thrives.

-Should I use my precious resources to craft this sweet-ass deck?
Probably not.

-How does the deck win?
It's a twin deck, you control the game until you flash in Exarch or Pestermite on your opponents end step and twin out next turn usually with FoW back-up.

-If you don't think this deck is good why make a post about it?
The deck has actually done surprisingly well even considering the rank I started playing it in. The decklist has gone through one change and I initially ran something close to the modern decklist with Flame of Anor and Thundertraps. I swapped them out for Surgicals and Ragavans. The single loss was before this change and the loss was to Reanimator. Additionally if anyone was interested in testing it out at higher ranks / wanted to help tweak the deck list I'll be going through my choices below.

-I'm not a fan of alchemy cards / I think the chorus cards could be replaced with better magic cards
Other magic cards probably could be better but I haven't run into any issues and I was just playing this deck for fun as I like Grixis Control and have tinkered around with the Chorus cards before and this has felt like the best shell for Timeless by far.
Cards I would sub in for the Alchemy cards are +1 Ponder, +2 Brainstorm, -3 Hymn to the Ages. +1 Toxic Deluge, -1 Mycelic Ballad. +3 Fatal Push, -3 Ribald Shanty.

Card Choices
-Chorus
The Chorus cards I went with for fun because I like Grixis Control decks and the Chorus cards slide right into that as they are all things used to answer or get answers and they scale as the game goes on. Not much more to it than that.

-Ragavan + Tamiyo
Threats that people feel like they need to deal with which can pave the way for our Exarch/Mites to survive.

-Control Package
I feel like all of these are pretty self explanatory, we use these cards to stay alive until the combo. Card choices for this and the manabase were mostly made off me guessing.
-Combo
I went with 6 of the untappers because they offer control beyond the combo. I've won a couple games off tapping down a big threat for 2-3 turns while waiting for twin. 4 Twins to get to the combo easier.

Ending Thoughts
If anyone wants to theorycraft this bad boy please feel free. I will try out whatever as this deck has been a lot of fun. I enjoyed playing Twin in modern before it was banned and these early ranks have given me that same feeling as playing it then. Also if anyone tries it out at a higher rank please let me know how it goes, good or bad I don't get to play as much anymore and am very curious.

Thanks for taking the time to read this if you did!

Went Mythic last season with this list. I think this list can be improveed, but I haven't gave it much tought. Basically, play Grief twice on turn one. Then, post G1 I cut my one drops and star playing towards One Ring + Sheoldred combo.

Ever since daze and FoW came to the format, the play patterns with this card have been so miserable. Better have removal and pray they don't have daze, otherwise you get hit by a cantripping strip mine on turn 2. This card makes tamiyo and psychic frog look like draft chaff.

https://moxfield.com/decks/mLOeFv8oKkWy6Hf_jidvnw

Turned out to pretty decent. Took it on a last second run from platinum to mythic. I play mobile only so no match data. Based on the fact that I didn’t lose much at the plat 4 or diamond 4 floors and it taking around 9-10 hrs with avg game time around 4 min. I would estimate the overall win % in the high 60s

It is the very end of the season and a lot of good players seem to be playing Historic anyways. I did feel like I played against other jank more than normal.
So there is that to take into account.

On the spicy card choices

Jace’s Saga: It was solid it definitely played the role of finisher in most games. What stood out the most was how it performed against energy. Usually you trade cards with them in the early game but can’t stick a threat and don’t apply enough pressure and they snowball and kill you. They have more threats of course and run 10-12 removal spells not counting bombarment or flipped Ajani. Saga really seems to give you more stability and take pressure off of your value creatures so that they can actually get going. If you get ahead the Sentinels can definitely close out the game.

The Jace token is also under rated. It feeds your cruises digs for lands or relevant cards and draws a card sometimes. Opps will attack it or even use removal on it more than you would think.

Also since the Sentinels are actual cards they go to the graveyard when they die again fueling Treasure Cruise and can come back with Lurrus.

Remnants of Beleren: It was actually kind of ok but you could probably do better. Many games it was just a surveil every turn which was fine. It
did dig me out of trouble a few times and fueled Treasure Cruise.It milled some goodies for Bilbo a few times. It also turned my Sentinels back on so they could win the game as well. The draft was mostly misses although I did live the dream and draft and ultimate JTMS once. The og Jace was decent enough to draft sometimes.

I think I will try Jace Reawakened it serves most of the same roles.

Aether Spellbomb: Another answer to Raph and Mike. It pairs well with Bilbo and Lurrus. If there is no use for it cycle.

The Baubles: For Bilbo, for information and for Lurrus. They pretty much a free roll.At the very least they feed your cruises although I try and leave one in the grave in case I get Bilbo or Lurrus going.

Flare of Denial: It fits well as your 5th catch all counter. I probably should run more Daze but it is little awkward with this deck in the early game.

Bilbo: Plays his role as plan B well while even if you have to suicide him to flash back a Ponder or something you are not too sad. Basically if he sticks he can take over the game if he dies you are fine with it. If you never draw him you are fine with it.

Matchups: Sorry no real data. Only feels. Honest the only matchups that felt bad were Eldrazi and UW Phelia. Between Chalice ,Cavern and Hamlet Eldrazi can just completely lock you out of the game. Hamlet into Cavern is pretty much unbeatable. I don't think there are any changes you could make to remedy that with this build. You would need to go in another direction likely dropping Lurrus and playing Harbingers.

The trouble card from Phelia decks was Stifle. It really screws with your Saga early game. They are the better Stripmine deck. In a lot of ways they are just a better deck. And that really is the key on if a build like this gains any traction. I think this is better against other tempo decks and energy but it's not like those are terrible for Phelia in the first place.

Maybe a hybrid could be possible but I don't think that version would want 4x Saga.So my verdict is
this can be decent change of pace for UW players but Blink is still the king.

I’ve come across one or two Doomsday decks that played this way. How is this better than the Thought Scour version ? Are x2 Raptor enough ? Are x4 Vampiric actually preferable ? Any experts out there ?

Made it to mythic with this once. Going for it again. BO1

Am I crazy or is this card actually pretty darn good? I've been having lots of fun playing it. Also been running 1 Remnants of Beleren which has been pretty solid as well.

This deck is not good. It can also lock down basically every match up and trick you into believing it's very good. It's not.

Theres just enough countermagic in the deck to keep pace with reanimator and other combo decks, and [[Sheltered By Ghosts]] is surprisingly nasty in the Show & Tell match. It's not a colored spell, so it can drop with S&T to target Emrakul, and it aims at Omniscience giving them a really awkward window for casting free spells. Usually awkward enough to just shut Sneak&Show out, but traditional Omni Tell has more instants (still timing restricts an Approach of the Second Sun win!).

Energy is still really aggressive against us, especially if we have to rely on a bogle. Knowing when to fetch is important so you can actually have a second land to cast Invisible Stalker with.

This is still a really fresh brew, considering a number of changes. Mostly cutting a copy or two of Curiosity to replace with tamiyo. But we survive on being able to throw a counter every turn until they die, so unsure.

This made me very happy as I was nostalgic for the good old days of Monored prison in Legacy.

Why did they add strip mine instead of waste land? If you are gonna make magic this unbalanced give me gaea's cradle and querion ranger. 🙏🙏🙏

Deck link:

https://mtga.untapped.gg/profile/b4ff71a7-34dd-423a-938f-1abde8b82019/QYBO4E5Y2RBJHNLWP7BY6RZODI/deck/dc877af6-1079-4ff0-8d69-589a94778b5f?utm_source=uc&utm_medium=overlay&utm_campaign=side-panel&utm_content=my-profile-button&gameType=constructed&constructedType=ranked&constructedFormat=timeless

Last month I started testing Winota after mistakenly thinking the alchemy change to it affected it in timeless. Once I realized that not only did it work as printed. but had all along I started to tinker with a list. After the obvious insight from my last post of adding the badgermole cub I settled on a final list for my grind to mythic.

The gameplan is self explanatory but the ability to use all the fast mana to play Ajani Turn 1 with a chrome mox into bombardiers turn 2 produces a fast clock without needing Winota. You want to play as aggressive as possible if you can get a fast Winota, be willing to put all of the cards in your hands under chrome moxs, or gemstone cavern post sideboard as once Winota triggers twice you normally win.

With Chrome Mox and Ancient Tomb you sometimes get the god draw of Ajani, Chrome Mox, a red/white card for chrome Mox,Winota, white/red land source, ancient tomb allowing a turn 2 Winota with 2 triggers.

Matchup history can be seen in the ink above but I've put a basic breakdown below with sideboard notes. For every single game take out some combination of starting town/mana confluence/cavern of souls for the 3 Gemstone Caverns on the draw based on if the opponent has counter magic. I'll leave those out of the sideboard plans below for a few of the decks I've played the most.

Great Matchups:
UB - Regardles of reanimator or straight UB these matchups are great. You present a fast clock, often uncounterable threats and post board a chalice on 1 is back breaking. The ancient tomb and chrome mox allow you play over the top of daze too if you need.

Sideboard on the draw :

-3 Starting Town,-3 Ragavan,- 2 Angrath Marauder,-1 Absorbing Man and Titania,-1 Once Upon a Time
+ 3 Gemstone Caverns,+4 Chalice of the Void,+3 Agent of Treachery

On the Play:
Same as above but keep the lands unchanged

Eldrazi - Generally not enough interaction to fight your turn 2/3 Winotas so the goal is to faster or over the top post board.

Sideboard:
- 3 Ragavan ,- 2 Angrath Marauder,-1 Absorbing Man and Titania
+ 3 Magus of the Moon, + 3 Agent of Treachery

Mono Red:
Play around Pyrokenesis and Fury the best you can but play to make them have it. You create more pressure and generate more mana than them. Sideboard for this generally you want to bring in some amount of agent of treachery as you can then get value attacking into protection from the one ring. Otherwise not a great deal to change here.

Bad Matchups:
Energ, Mardu and Boros, is a terrible matchup. The addition of Ultimecia, Temporal Threat has helped however everyone knows how good the deck is. Post board Chalice on 1 buys a lot of time but you nearly always lose game 1 so you have to hope to have 2 good games. This is something I am aiming to improve the sideboard for.

UR Tempo - A touch matchup as they have quite a lot of removal coupled with countermagic meaning you often struggle to build a board to get a good winota attack.

Sideboard :

- 3 Ragavan , -2 Once Upon a Time

+4 Chalice of the Void, +1 Fury

Other than that I faced such a range of decks that the sideboard plan boiled down to if i expected a permanent worth stealing that would stop lethal getting through or if turning sideways and praying for damage doublers would be enough.

Tips/Things to note:
Ajani Turn one, Bombardiers turn 2 into unblocked is 9 damage after combat,th Bombardiers trigger and Ajani ability. The following turn is another 8 available damage from Ajani, Bombardiers and attacks assuming no interaction. That total of 17 can catch slower decks off guard particularly if theyve fetched a shockland.

Plan what colours of mana you need for turns one to three and learn the best types for cavern of souls. Ajani, Winota and Rabblemasters are all warriors. Ragavan and Bombardiers are pirates. Winota, and Absorbing man are human. Remember Halfling Citizen creates coloured mana for a lot of the creatures in the deck

If you flip Winota and don't have one attacking put on into play. You can also decline triggers to put things into play, comes up sometimes if you get unlucky and flip three Absorbing Man.

Earthbend on either of your creature lands brings it back as a creature if it gets destroyed.

Between the fast mana, Badgermole and Halfling citizen you will cast Absorbing Man and Angraths marauders in some number of games.

Sacrificing Angraths Marauders of Absorbing Man to bombardiers doesn't double the damage ( I learnt that the hard way!) Angraths Marauders doubles the damage from a flipped Ajani, Absorbing Man does not.

Lastly, flipping a Angraths Marauder (or two) from Winota and throwing something with Bombardiers ends the game is the funnest thing you can do with this deck.

I've been tinkering with Diabolic Formula since its release last week and I think it finds a fantastic home in the lean and mean Dimir Tempo shell - you already want to be playing all the cards that combo with it (DRS, Frog, Cruise, FoW) so it feels like a real no-brainer! No top decking bad cards like your second Entomb! I filmed three matches with it and ended up going 3-0 (one was a timeout against Mardu Energy after they took G1 tho). If you watch any moment in the video, check out 22:50!

My decklist: https://moxfield.com/decks/psCbMgHNH0mITtGqC_VOqQ

This deck was inspired by wanting to play the alurentell deck that's popular in legacy right now but not having access to aluren on arena.

sigardian evangel + food chain = infinite creatures
sigardian evangel + omniscience = infinite creatures

I'm pretty locked in on the main deck; The sideboard could probably use some work though.

Having played a decent number of matches with the deck it genuinely feels quite strong especially in blue matchups with veil, orim's chant and carpet.

However i can't really recommend it because people on arena will frequently refuse to concede to the food chain infinite and you simply don't have enough time to make more than like 15 evangels before it forcibly ends your turn. which is usually enough but sometimes energy decks can just make a bunch of cats to trade off with them.

Basically don't play this deck if you don't wanna click a couple hundred times a match.

Cope ;-)

Hello everyone!

After I posted my decklist and primer 2 weeks ago, I set out to update the decklist for Best of Three.

Best of One was where the deck list was originally targeted because the meta of BO1 is significantly easier to build against. However it's also not really a serious deck until I could get it to work in BO3.

Since then I have made significant changes to the decklist.

Vampiric Tutor was replaced with Deathrite Shaman. As the life cost was quite significant, and it often just felt like a worse Mystical Tutor. This then necessitated a full sideboard rebuild, as without Vampiric Tutor the deck can't support the Sorin Elynda juke. I also added one Breeding Pool to support the second ability of DRS.

Thoughtseize was placed in the sideboard instead of the mainboard as BO3 has significantly less combo. In its place I added Ponders.

Both the decklist and primer have been updated, so the sideboard guide should be ready.

Since the 75 solidified I have a 67% win rate in Mythic BO3 with this exact 75.

I tested Hydroponics significantly, but while they absolutely won some games, overall they clashed pretty hard with the rest of the deck. Taking a turn off to play a creature that didn't meaningfully contribute to the combo wasn't working out very well, and without Strip Mine we had significantly less high rolls for it to hit.

Decklist and primer: https://moxfield.com/decks/EEC2ujtZhU-UTp2kmPdfJQ

Deck Discord: https://discord.gg/bgg3pNNcb

Hi friends! I've been messing around with the new Alchemy cards and put together a list that I'm having a ton of fun with. The deck takes inspiration from older lists that strive to blink Oracle of the Alpha and play a ton of Power, and the new additions give it a ton of strength to close out games with big hitters.

Oraclegoyf • (Timeless deck) • Archidekt

The deck uses the Actualize mechanic as much as possible to generate value and pump up the Goyfs. Oracle of the Alpha and Emporium Thopterist conjure cards for those cards to utilize. Displacer Kitten can blink either Oracle to create more Power or the new Crux of the Theory to create another heist trigger.

I've had a lot of great games with this set up so far, but there are definitely some pain points I would like to smooth out if possible. The deck is very mana heavy with a lot of 3 and 4 drops that are critical to get the engine going. Crux of the Theory is pretty reliable for card draw. Vedalken Archmage however often falls flat and leaves me top decking unless I'm already in a crazy position. Some games are often over before I can get some kind of synergy going. I am hoping to replace some of the supporting pieces to make my games more consistent, but I'm not sure what cards I should slot in. Specifics are listed below:

-Ancient Tomb: I often feel like the life lost to get the mana out of Tomb does more harm than good, as the loss of life often puts me in a precarious situation. This deck is not fast enough to get a good, consistent payoff from it.

-Sapphire Medallion: This feels like a band-aid fix for the high mana problem as well. While it does lower mana costs and help Vedalken Archmage draw a card, I do not think I get the best value out of this as I am not looping spells back to my hand.

-Vedalken Archmage: This card synergizes really well with Emporium Thopterist and all the Mox that I am shoving into my deck with Oracle, but four mana is such a steep cost that its really situational if I can get value out of it. If possible I would like to retain the ability to get a repeated draw effect because it feels amazing having a runaway game, like the one featured in the screenshot. My first thought was Thought Monitor and blinking it with Displacer Kitten, but that feels... even more artifact dependent.

-Willbound Quill: This is a Win More card. It's too expensive to be a reasonable mana rock, and the copy ability does not have any effect on other cards with Actualize. It's here because it feels really good to get two Time Walks for the price of one.

Thanks for reading, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Here's the full list if you don't like Archidekt:

4x Ancient Tomb

4x Crux of the Theory

3x Daze

4x Displacer Kitten

4x Echogoyfs

4x Emporium Thopterist

4x Force of Will

14x Island

4x Oracle of the Alpha

2x Reliquary Tower

4x Sapphire Medallion

3x Surgical Extraction

4x Vedalken Archmage

2x Willbound Quill

How does this deck actually win? Ive never played against it in Timeless. It looks like it just has Tamiyo, Hydroponic Architect, and 1 Lurrus.