Time is of the Essence

Deck Help forum

Posted on April 15, 2023, 1:39 p.m. by 9-lives


Time is of the Essence

Modern 9-lives

SCORE: 3 | 2 COMMENTS | 239 VIEWS | IN 1 FOLDER


I need help. I was thinking of running this deck as a mill deck, but I'm not so sure anymore. Lots of my space in this deck is used by mill, but I think I could do better. What would be good with a counter usage type of deck like this?

wallisface says... #2

Suggestions:

  • the deck is 102 cards, which is waay above the ideal 60, and will mean that the deck runs super inconsistently, as well as being much weaker. Your first goal should be getting this down to 60.

  • your mana curve is currently waaaay too high, and will lead to this deck running very clumsily/slowly. Modern decks typically can’t justify running more than 3-4 cards costing 4 mana, and run nothing above this value. You’ve got a whopping 31 cards costing 4-or-more mana, which will just make this deck unplayable. Lower the curve!

  • Your deck is too unfocused. If you’re trying to run a mill deck, you need to be all-in on that plan - importantly not running any creatures/spells that don’t work towards that goal (optimal mill looks something close to this). I would suggest either ditching everything non-mill related, or ditching everything mill related - you can’t go “half-in” on that strategy or you’ll never achieve it.

  • You have a LOT of pointless cards in the deck, in that you’re not supporting them. Mystic Forge isn’t good unless a deck is almost entirely cheap artifacts, which yours isn’t. As Foretolds only real purpose is to cheat on no-mana cards like Ancestral Vision or Crashing Footfalls, which your not doing (i assume your deck is trying to dump extra counters on that card, but that’s a LOT of time & effort for no real payoff). Suspend really wants stuff like Teferi, Time Raveler in play to prevent your opponent recasting the card, but you have no such effect.

  • your bounce cards serve you no real purpose other that giving yourself card-disadvantage.

So in short, you need to lower your card-count to a normal quantity, and drastically lower your curve to something playable. You also need to try any focus your deck around one coherent strategy instead of 5.

April 15, 2023 6:43 p.m.

9-lives says... #3

Thanks, wallisface. Are there any example decks out there that use stuff like Oracle's Vault and As Foretold???

April 15, 2023 8:41 p.m.

wallisface says... #4

Some examples of As Foretold decks are here : example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4. You'll note that the common theme is that As Foretold is only useful for cheating out cards like Ancestral Vision, Crashing Footfalls, and Restore Balance. These decks also use stuff like Electrodominance and Finale of Promise to ensure they're able to cast those no-mana spells reliably.

I don't think there are many Oracle's Vault decks out there because the card is just bad, and requires a lot of support to even remotely do anything - on top of that it's super-slow and super-easy to disrupt. I found this deck that plays it, though the deck itself looks pretty janky, and i'm not convinced it would be any good, especially for the amount of $$$ it costs.

There won't be any decks out there that use both of those cards together, as they're both trying to achieve very different goals (and on top of that Oracle's Vault isn't really very playable).

April 15, 2023 9:06 p.m. Edited.

Oracle's Vault is probably a LITTLE better now that every instant and sorcery has had proliferate stapled to it lol

April 15, 2023 9:47 p.m.

wallisface says... #6

FormOverFunction the recent bout of Proliferate cards certainly give Oracle's Vault a few more options to get setup - though I think it's still a far way from being playable. 4 mana to get this into play, and then another 2 to get the first brick counter on it is a massive ask, especially considering that you'll still need to use various helper cards to get it up to the 3 required counters, and then even after all that you additionally need some way to fix your topdeck to reliably cast something big/impactful. Its just sooo many hoops to jump through that I can't imagine any deck using this being consistent or non-fragile.

April 15, 2023 10:02 p.m.

wallisface for sure. It’d need to be in some sort of Clock of Omens deck or something.

April 15, 2023 11:20 p.m.

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