[Deck] Infiturn

[HPC]

I’ve been trying to get the Time Vault / Mizzium Transreliquat combo working ever since Wizards changed the errata on Time Vault. The inclusion of Academy Ruins from Time Spiral eliminates the problems of having your combo countered, discarded or destroyed and from testing makes the deck extremely resiliant. I’ve been testing extensively and I think the deck has a shot at being a top tier combo. I’d like comments on sideboard and viability.

I've been playtesting this and its ability to slow down other decks until you can just take infinite turns is amazing. There are enough tricks in this deck to handle most situations and Academy Ruins makes the deck extremely resiliant. I’ll post results against Solidarity, Thresh and Goblins when I have a chance.

[Combo]
3 Time Vault
3 Mizzium Transreliquat

[Search]
4 Transmute Artifact
3 Intuition

[Draw]
4 Brainstorm
3 Thirst for Knowledge

[Control]
4 Meddling Mage
4 Tanglewire
4 Swords to Plowshare
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Pithing Needle

[Kill]
1 Cursed Scroll

[Mana]
3 Mox Diamond
4 Ancient Tomb
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
1 Plains
4 Island
3 Academy Ruins

[Sideboard]
4 Disenchant
4 Orim's Chant
2 Pithing Needle
1 Isochron Scepter
1 Winter Orb
1 Cursed Scroll
1 Jester's Cap
1 Trinisphere

[Card Choices]

Academy Ruins: Simply amazing. It turns Intuition into a search card capable of finding your entire combo and protects it against counterspells, destruction and discarding. It allows you to recur Engineered Explosives and Tanglewire as needed as well as your kill condition. It keeps your combo as a constant threat.

Transmute Artifact: Pretty standard. Puts your combo piece directly into play and lets you search for whatever you need. Transmute your Tanglewire as its counters run low and lock up the game.

Intuition: Search for your combo or find whatever you need to stop your opponent. Once you have an Academy Ruins on the board just find your whole combo and win.

Thirst for Knowledge: Many of the artifacts in the deck are situational. Most of the time you only want to hold one Tanglewire, Engineered Explosives, land, or sometimes you need to get rid of Mox Diamonds mid-game. This is why TfK was chosen over Impulse or other hand fixers.

Meddling Mage: Delays your opponent and forces them to find a solution or lose. Blocks lackey and besides the mage turn sideways for a win condition. Infinite turns, combined with Swords and Explosives ensure that they will eventually attack unopposed.

Pithing Needle: Stop annoying things like Wasteland, Vial, Survival, or Sac Lands. Easy to Transmute Artifact for, cheap to play and can be discarded to Thirst if it doesn’t come in handy.

Tanglewire: This card is amazing turn 2 or 3. Gives you time to sculpt your hand while your opponent’s tapped out. Brainstorm, Intuition and Thirst for Knowledge are all instants, so use your mana while your opponent’s locked down.

Engineered Explosives: Your biggest threats for shutdown are Pithing Needle, Chalice of the Void and Null Rod. This eliminates 2 of the 3 and also kills early goblins, vial and a host of other nasty stuff.

Swords to Plowshare: I included this to show how amazing Academy Ruins actually is for this deck. Before Time Spiral this slot was running 4x Orim’s Chant to give me a chance against heavy counterspell decks. Now I’m free to use these slots for creature control.

Cursed Scroll: An artifact based kill condition that you can use all game if necessary. I couldn’t think of a better artifact card for this slot. Although Darksteel Reactor would be a great substitute if you want to assure yourself a win against any deck (*cough* life.dec) and you’d totally get style points :D.

Mox Diamond: Give you an early turn advantage while later letting you turn extra Ruins, Tombs and Sac Lands into painless mana. Also discards to Thirst for Knowledge and sacs to Transmute Artifact.

[Sideboard]
The sideboard could probably use a little more work. Disenchants are there against Null Rod and Smoke Stack. Orim’s Chant is for aggressive counterspell decks and to slow down storm combos. The rest is basically one-ofs to slow down random decks. Blue Elemental Blasts are something I would absolutely consider in a red heavy meta.

[quicksilver]

Hmm, you win condition seems a little weak to me.

Also why not counters? At least force of will. Cards that are really good at protecting your combo as well as slowing your opponent down seem good.

[Alfred]

I honestly CANNOT FATHOM why people wouldn't run 4 each of both of their combo peices? Is there honestly a reason why you aren't running 4 Time Vaults and 4 Transreliquats?

[HPC]

Hmm, you win condition seems a little weak to me.
It's been fine in testing. As an artifact it's searchable and is only necessary if Meddling Mage needs creatures killed before it can attack so it can take care of creatures as well as player damage. Specifically why do you feel it is weak and what would you suggest?


Also why not counters? At least force of will. Cards that are really good at protecting your combo as well as slowing your opponent down seem good.
I've tested Force of Will and most of the time it was a disaster. It just slows you way down by forcing you to ditch draw or search. Pithing Needle, Meddling Mage, Tangle Wire, Engineered Explosives and Swords all slow my opponent down better than FoW does.


I honestly CANNOT FATHOM why people wouldn't run 4 each of both of their combo peices? Is there honestly a reason why you aren't running 4 Time Vaults and 4 Transreliquats?
Academy Ruins allows me to recur combo pieces every turn.

[Alfred]

Academy Ruins allows me to recur combo pieces every turn.

But why aren't you running 4 of each? This still doesn't make any sense to me. With 4 each you are more likely to draw into them.

[Anarky87]

With 4 each you are more likely to draw into them.

And also makes your search/draw more likely to hit either piece you need or both.

[Bane of the Living]

Yea man theres really no reason to be playing only 3 and 3. Its almost like Survival playing only 3 Survival of the Fittest. Makes me wanna vomit. Have you considered Crucible of Worlds at all? Its nice with Mox Diamond and keeps Academy Ruins from being Wasted.

Dont you need/want the red mana for the Mizzium? You should use it, as well as Goblin Welder.

[Complete_Jank]

First off, I think this is the 1,000,000th attempt at posting this deck from what I've seen, and this is by far the worst, sorry, but your deck needs lots of change. I'll point out so major flaws, and what you can do to fix it.

Ok, your biggest problem...
...you lose to a single resolved spell like Extract, Null Rod, Dampining Matrix, Cranial Extraction, or similar. Yea, so what no one playes those right? Wrong, it is out there, not popular, but it happens; but more so, the only thing they need to counter against you is one spell, and answer for Academy. You need more answers, and another win condition. Also, running 4 welders is good, and Welders are win conditions by themselves. I didn't run them, but my deck went another route, as it was designed to go-off before solidarity and other decks.


Something I saw someone post, and was wrong. You don't ever want to use the 1UR activation cost, if you do, you, it won't untap it..

[Lanfeng]

You definitely need some way to win

I know that if my opponent was playing that deck i'd wait for him to show me that he could win and do so.

That really is the main weakness

[HPC]

I think there's some misunderstanding on how the deck operates. This is not a combo deck, it's a control deck.

I'm able to control the board until I can get infinite turns. Having more than 3x of each combo piece is sub-optimal. Taking away 2 spots just to add the combo pieces reduces my effectiveness of controlling the board. If I were playing straight combo I'd play Complete_Jank's "Turbo Turns" deck. The Academy is in there against counterspells and disruption, and if they're wasting resources on my security blanket then they're not stopping the combo or control aspect of the deck.

As to the win, the strategy is to get 1x Time Vault and 1x Mizzium down and use the Mizzium's first ability to take infinite turns and either search for your Cursed Scroll to do direct damage or clear the way for your Meddling Mage to attack via your Swords and Engineered Explosives. Again, I'm not putting 4x of the combo in the deck because Transmute Artifact and Intuition act as combo piece #4-11. Having duplicates of the combo pieces in my hand would be useless because of Academy Ruins.

I like some of the suggestions. 1x Crucible of the Worlds sounds like a good sideboard against decks with Sinkhole or Armageddon.

Force of Will totally loses tempo, but I'll consider 4x Force of Will instead of Orim's Chant in the side.

Blue Elemental Blast is also a consideration.

I took a look at Complete_Jank's "Turbo Turns" deck and liked Echoing Truth. I might consider these in the sideboard instead of disenchant.



...you lose to a single resolved spell like Extract, Null Rod, Dampining Matrix, Cranial Extraction, or similar. ... but more so, the only thing they need to counter against you is one spell, and answer for Academy. You need more answers, and another win condition. Also, running 4 welders is good, and Welders are win conditions by themselves. I didn't run them, but my deck went another route, as it was designed to go-off before solidarity and other decks.

There are lots of "what-if" cards that cause problems for decks; however, this deck performs well against Tier 1 decks. Null Rod is a concern, but you have 4x Meddling Mage game 1 and 4x Disenchant after sideboard. If you can't rely on the combo part of the deck you can always fall back on control.

I just don't think you understand this deck. Extract doesn't stop this deck since there are 5 potential win conditions. Welders would mess up the deck by forcing a third color, and I fail to see how they're superior to Academy Ruins which cannot be counterspelled and produces a must-counter threat each turn.

[dahcmai]

No offense, but they do have a point on having a combo deck with only 3 of each peice. Up it to four. I once was told by an extremely good magic player, "If a card is good enough to put in your deck, it needs to be 4 or it's oviously not good enough to put in your deck." (Pat Chapin if you're wondering)

Anyway, Considering you want the combo as fast as possible you need to increase your chances any way possible and that's the easiest way right there.


Also, there actually are people who still love the card Jester's cap (cough, me) and would laugh to find a combo deck playing 3 of a peice of it's combo.



As an afterthought, you have white, might as well play Hanna's Custody if you're not going with the counter approach.

[Tosh]

I've tested Force of Will and most of the time it was a disaster. It just slows you way down by forcing you to ditch draw or search. Pithing Needle, Meddling Mage, Tangle Wire, Engineered Explosives and Swords all slow my opponent down better than FoW does.

I think there's some misunderstanding on how the deck operates. This is not a combo deck, it's a control deck.
I hope you realize you just contradicted yourself... A control deck that runs enough blue cards as yours does and considered a control deck then it must have Force of Will.
Lets say you're playing solidarity, and they start combo-ing off (in response to lethal damage or when you're tapped out because they're a good player). What do you do? You FoW something... like a reset they spent the rest of their mana on. Right now they announce that they're playing solidarity and by the time you get anything relevant out they can already win. I suggest adding much more counters in order for this deck to work well. Intuition and/or Enlightened Tutor for your combo peices is enough tutoring. Tanglewire is totally out of place in this deck. Put in Counterspell, and Force of Will at the least and this deck may well become successful.

[Complete_Jank]

You win with a combo. Solidarity is not control it is combo as well.

Against every deck, if you aren't running counters, you want to go off as soon as possible, to reduce the number of cards your opponent will see, or be able to disrupt you with. Bounce is better in your deck than engineered explosives, as you are only running two colors anyways. Think about Chain of Vapor and Repeal as well.

I know I am not the typical thinker, but I have created some great decks, and I like running less than 4 of's in my decks, as well as 1 of's in my decks, specially if there is search, but I still run 4 Survivals. Run another 2 DIFFERENT win condition cards. This way if you play Iggy and he drops Leyline before the game starts, you can cast Intuition to get a win condition with out it being removed.

[HPC]

You make a good point about the speed. I've been finding Intuition to be very good when I have an Academy Ruins in play and can essentially search for 3x something, but otherwise it's can be a bit expensive. What are people's thoughts on running:
-3 Intuition
-1 Transmute Artifact
+4 Enlightened Tutor

I'm also considering adding the fourth of each combo piece by:
-1 Pithing Needle
-1 E. Explosives
+1 Time Vault
+1 Mizzium
I like the idea of 1x E. Explosives more now if I plan on running the E. Tutor. It wokrs well with the Ruins too.

I'm still uncertain if a second kill condition is necessary. Previous versions of the deck ran 2x Eternal Dragon to even out land and act as a kill condition. I could consider 1x Dragon and 1x Cursed Scroll Thoughts?

I saw someone mention removing Tangle Wire. I've had extremely good results with it when I'm able to drop it before my opponent's second or thrid turn. Why would you remove it and what would you replace it with?

I've cleaned up the sideboard considerably and now run:
4x Echoing Truth
4x Force of Will
3x Engineered Explosives
1x Defense Grid
1x Trinisphere
1x Portcullis (playing around testing it)
1x Eternal Dragon


BTW, I remember Patrick Chapin. Didn't he make that quote during sometime 10 years ago during Combo Winter and the Urza's blocks?

[Complete_Jank]

Please up date your main post with the changes. I'll remark more on this when I return from my trip in 3 weeks, but untill then.

-2 Tundra and + 2 Islands, +1 Island/+1 Plains, or even +2 Polutted Delta.

You don't need Tundra's that bad. The change makes you stronger against wasteland, which White will only be good against Goblins, out of the decks that run wasteland. You also have 3 Mox Diamonds.

Also, keep the Intuitions, they are good in your deck with the Ruins.

Run only one Pithing Needle, and only one E. Explosives if you even run one.

Remove one Transmute Artifact.

I think the Thirsts could be replaced with something better.

Defense Grids would be better against control that Force of Will, but FoW is better against combo.

Don't run Dragon, it is too slow to be used effectively in your deck.

Anways, try some of this info.

[Cavius The Great]

I think the Thirsts could be replaced with something better.

Removing the TFK is the last thing I would do. Don't you realize they have incredible synergy with Academy Ruins?