[Deck] UW Tempo

Played the deck in a tourney today to get some more knowledge on it for a friend who wants to get into legacy somewhat cheaply (two colors makes this manageable). I top 8ed and lost to mono red goblins of all things. I scraped by a win against combo elves and lost to Aggro Loam tonight which are notable. I got the aggro loam guy down to 2 and 3 in games 1 and 2 before he stabilized in the mid game where I lost to 3 land in a row game 1 and 4 land in a row game 2.

My list is not the perfect gem that the twins are running (which is obviously why I lost lol).


// Lands
3 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
2 Plains
1 Island

// Creatures
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Fathom Seer
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
4 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Daze
3 AEther Vial
1 Basilisk Collar

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Jotun Grunt
SB: 3 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 3 Aura of Silence
SB: 2 Spell Pierce

Changes to note: -2 Spell Pierce. It's a good card but tapping out is necessary more often than not and I wanted my SF Mystics. This drops blue count, which never was a problem. -1 Knight: 1 is not the right number *baiting fight*
STONEFORGE MYSTIC!!! This guy is the fucking nuts. I was always happy to see him. I tried out basilisk collar as a target as it kills goyf and I'm not sure about it. It won me one game that Jitte would not have since all my guys have 1 power compared to goyf who was a 5/6. SFM was an awesome top deck when people were able to answer my cards. It gives you a body and a Jitte for that body.

One thing I noticed is how many games I absolutely hated a basic Island. Specifically 3 games, and it never was worth it. Even when Aggro Loam got waste lock on me (laughable) it wasn't any good. I would rather play another fetch and probably will in the future. Serra Avenger and all the 1 drops for W are just too damn good.

Otherwise it plays like it always has in my playtesting. I've only been playing with it for a year and 2 months though, since the first thread on it was made and the deck itself was made, not the 2 years that the time machine using creators must have, so don't take my advice seriously.

Why don't you run Empyrial Plate instead of Basilisk Collar? It makes a mere Wayfarer big enough to take a Goyf down.

Agreed - basilisk collar doesn't seem optimal. I'd run one of the swords or plate before collar. I think Collar is going to be a great in standard, but legacy it's not up to snuff.

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Why don't you run Empyrial Plate instead of Basilisk Collar? It makes a mere Wayfarer big enough to take a Goyf down.

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Collar gains you life which is pretty significant when racing aggro or putting you out of ToA ranger against tendrils. Though plate does look pretty good if considering you can quickly refill your hand namely with Fathom Seer. +4/+4? Legit.

Collar looks better in a build with more first strike creatures. Kazandu Blademaster + Basilisk Collar looks really sexy. The only thing is you can't save it when they burn it like you can with Jitte. Maybe it could be viable if they print a good 1cc ally. Otherwise you have to run 4 to get the occasional 3/3.

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Originally Posted by Phoenix Ignition

Played the deck in a tourney today to get some more knowledge on it for a friend who wants to get into legacy somewhat cheaply (two colors makes this manageable). I top 8ed and lost to mono red goblins of all things. I scraped by a win against combo elves and lost to Aggro Loam tonight which are notable. I got the aggro loam guy down to 2 and 3 in games 1 and 2 before he stabilized in the mid game where I lost to 3 land in a row game 1 and 4 land in a row game 2.

My list is not the perfect gem that the twins are running (which is obviously why I lost lol).


// Lands
3 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
3 Wasteland
2 Plains
1 Island

// Creatures
2 Jotun Grunt
4 Fathom Seer
4 Mother of Runes
4 Serra Avenger
4 Weathered Wayfarer
4 Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
4 Brainstorm
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Force of Will
2 Umezawa's Jitte
3 Daze
3 AEther Vial
1 Basilisk Collar

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Jotun Grunt
SB: 3 Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 Thorn of Amethyst
SB: 4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
SB: 3 Aura of Silence
SB: 2 Spell Pierce

Changes to note: -2 Spell Pierce. It's a good card but tapping out is necessary more often than not and I wanted my SF Mystics. This drops blue count, which never was a problem. -1 Knight: 1 is not the right number *baiting fight*
STONEFORGE MYSTIC!!! This guy is the fucking nuts. I was always happy to see him. I tried out basilisk collar as a target as it kills goyf and I'm not sure about it. It won me one game that Jitte would not have since all my guys have 1 power compared to goyf who was a 5/6. SFM was an awesome top deck when people were able to answer my cards. It gives you a body and a Jitte for that body.

One thing I noticed is how many games I absolutely hated a basic Island. Specifically 3 games, and it never was worth it. Even when Aggro Loam got waste lock on me (laughable) it wasn't any good. I would rather play another fetch and probably will in the future. Serra Avenger and all the 1 drops for W are just too damn good.

Otherwise it plays like it always has in my playtesting. I've only been playing with it for a year and 2 months though, since the first thread on it was made and the deck itself was made, not the 2 years that the time machine using creators must have, so don't take my advice seriously.

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Are you implying that we should have opened a thread as soon as we discovered the deck?

That would be retarded. We spent 8 month making sure it was good first. We're not like those people who go: I broke the format, yeah! Only to find out 3 posts later that they lose to kgrip or w/e. So that's what we were doing as far as magic goes for those 8 months. Sorry we didn't post it earlier, I guess.

I don't know why you're triumphantly declaring your changes, but they're highly not recommended.

-1 island: this is probably the best of the bunch in your ideas, but having the extra island opens up a lot of possibilities. It lets you obviously play island around wasteland, magus, etc. You definitely want 3 basic lands in the deck, because you want to rape people for playing crap like PTE, blood moon etc. It's a little harder to make it gg when blood moon locks you off half your deck. (I'm talking about blood moons after you get to play at least 1-2 land.)

We already noted that basilisk collar is bad. It's not entirely clear why it's in your list, unless you think we're retarded. Again, I never quite understand: we're not asking you to think of us as Einstein. In fact, you don't even have to concede that we're smarter than you to reach the conclusion that maybe we know better than you do. We've been playing the deck for twice as long as even the amount of time you've been claiming to play the deck.

I don't get why all these silly comments about our attitude come up, but it's actually pretty ridiculous for our word to not be taken much more seriously than anybody else's, as I said, not because you have to agree that we're smarter, but simply because you have to agree we haven't been twiddling our thumbs for the last 2 years.

Mind you, we're not even just claiming to have tested for 2 years. We're also 2 years familiar with the deck. That's why our bet that SFM is best a 2, and collar/plate at 0 is better than your bet. I'll admit that here you have a nonzero % chance of winning the bet because my theorizing capabilities are imperfect. (Whereas both my theorizing and testing would have to simultaneously screw up for you to be right about stuff I've tested.) I still think it's pretty ridiculous that you speak as if I'm more likely to be mistaken than you are, but in the interest of provoking more interesting discussion I'll let this slide.

-2 spell pierce:
If you find a good card to put in the deck, I'll get behind you on this.

-1 knight:
Lol?

Also, citrus-God we have tested plate, as well as theorized about it. At first it was pretty rape, when we tested thresh and stuff. But I think that was an illusion since we 80% tempo thresh anyway.

It's cute to go like: avenger take 10, rawr!

But the main thing that is lacking for plate is that unlike jitte, your opponent has to get hit for it to really do its thing. In matchups where you need a control spell, your opponent just takes 6-8 damage and says "thanks for tapping a blocker."

In matchups where you need damage (landstill) it's better than jitte, but as a control spell it at best abyss' your opponent instead of abyssing to double abyssing, and sometimes it backfires with few cards in hand.

@ Empyrial Plate: It's always worse than Jitte in pretty much any situation I think. I wanted an equipment that would cost a bit less as well. I'm not sure if I'd keep it in or not, for now it stays though since 3 Jittes is too many with 4 tutors and the whole legendary thing. SoFI or SoLS also can't take down big threats. I was expecting Dreadnaught, Iona, and Dark Depths, so Basilisk Collar was a tutorable counter to that. No other equipment that I am aware of can take down such big threats (although depths doesn't die, I know, I know).

@The twins: Sorry, I honestly didn't read and don't care what you guys said, as I know it's snide remarks or something similar. I posted this for the people who are getting into the deck because it is cheap. Legacy is expensive now. If it was other stupid remarks, I'm not going to play the deck anymore, it was for a friend to give better advice, so sleep happy.

EDIT: Also@ Plate, there were maybe 3 games tonight that I just got down to top decking and emptying my hand. Top decking a collar at this point means a Mom can take down a goyf, whereas getting a Plate does me no good.

Another brief report from me, and 4 more rounds of swiss. Didn't mulligan once today.

Round1. Belcher.
Game1. I FoW first turn Belcher, Later on unmorph Fathom Seer, and quickly beat with Jotun Grunt and Jitted Seer. My notes indicate 20-> 18 -> 9 -> 0. I draw second force in between, being sure I can answer the next Belcher.
Game2. I draw a lot of counters, FoWing 2nd turn Belcher, casting Aura of Silence, but not much to beat with. Lonely mom takes some hits, then joined by Avenger, and then by another Avenger. My opponent attempts to go for ETW, but there are too many ESGs and SSGs in his hand, and he gets only 8 tokens, which I easiliy race.
I think this isn't that good of a match up if opponent goes for turn1 ETW.

Round 2. RGW AggroLoam.
Game1. He mulls to somewhat questionable hand, I start with Wayfarer, go for Wasteland plan, a bit later get Fathom Seer with Jitte and he conceded on one land facing 2 turn clock.
Game2. I go turn1 vial, turn2 Wheel of Sun and Moon, turn 3 Fathom Seer, vial in 2 Avengers (met by STP, Lightning Bolt), and he conceded with loam in hand, when he attacked with 3/4 Goyf into vialed Jotun Grunt.

Out of my limited testing, this match is horrible preboard (2-5) and really good postboard (4-0 so far).

Round 3. Merfolk.
Game 1. Turn 1 mom, turn 2 jitte, he FoWs, I FoW back, and Wayfarer under jitte with mom's protection does the job.
Game 2. He mulls to 5, goes turn1 vial, turn 2 jitte, which I Pierce, later on gets another jitte. I've had rather a slow start, but my turn 1 mom was able to hold the jitte useless, Wayfarer got rid of Mutavaults and I just beat in with Serra Avenger and Jotun Grunt.

Jitte and Mom really turn the game around :)

Round 4. ID into second place (equal prizes to top6).

Deck worked like a charm today.

Nice job. Finally you got to play against some Tier 1 opponents (and finally you got to play some games starting with all 7 cards). Also, you continued your streak of not losing any games where you don't mulligan.


Belcher's a good matchup, although your analysis is probably correct. IF they can turn 1 Empty, then they're in good shape. If they can't (which happens in the vast majority of games), they're in bad shape.

From the play, they have above a 50%, I think. From the draw, it's a lot lower, so the overall matchup is pretty solidly in UW Tempo's favor.

Empty is tough to play through FoW. FoW on Desperate Ritual takes away 5 mana effectively (so they'd need 9 mana without LED to get to Empty in their starting 8 (7+Empty). But even if they can play through FoW, FoW on the Empty means they needed a very high storm count to actually win. Also, if they miss with Empty, they don't get a chance to recover because they lost too much fast mana and too much storm count. By the time they can build up another Empty, we probably have a couple of critters out.

Or if their hand doesn't have enough storm+whatever to get Turn 1 Empty, if they wait, the EtW isn't going to get there.

With 1 creature opposing you, you need 8 tokens to win.
With 2 creatures opposing you, you need 10 tokens to win.
With 3 creatures opposing you, you need 14 tokens to win.

@Plate: I haven't tested Plate yet, but thanks for the input.

We haven't really discussed what kinds of opening hands we should keep and how we should play certain hands. I'm still inexperienced with this deck, and I've been playing Landstill for a long ass time. The transition to a creature deck is really fucking weird to me, and the transition to a creature deck that is THIS difficult to play is also foreign. I kept some notes as to what hands to keep and how I should be playing them. And sometimes, it's really hard to make calls for opening plays with certain opening hands. For example

Marsh Flat
Force of Will
Brainstorm
Brainstorm
Stoneforge Mystic
Fathom Seer
Umezawa's Jitte

Against Zoo, on the play.

1. If I don't hit a land and/or Vial with BS, I lose. If I do find a land and/or Vial, I also want to find a strong critter to create presence on the board.
2. I won't have any presence with the board for the first turn, but 2nd Turn may be justifiable if I have a good mix of other cards, assuming I hit land and perhaps a Mom/Wayfarer with BS.
3. FoW can only be used to either protect one of my hopefully topdecked critters or keep a bigger one off the board. Obviously, I want to protect a critter as I can get Jitte online and win, but then I also have to worry about Qasali Pridemage. True, I have Stoneforge Mystic to net another Jitte, but 4 mana investment is heavy for this deck; especially with a hand like this.

Also, if I do hypothetically mulligan, what kind of hand would I want to see against a deck like Zoo?

I dont think you should keep the hand you listed.. because:
- onelanders are bad
-if you don't draw a second land you will die, vial wont win you the game here If you dont draw any other lands..
-SFM + jitte is basicly the same card.. you want one of them, not both.
-fathom seer is for the fow, it has no other meanings this way because you will not be playing it until turn 4-5 or something.. BS, BS, SFM and jitte are first in line.

Allthough, having jitte + brainstorm makes it a rather tough choice. But I say mull.. :)

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Originally Posted by Moonlight

I dont think you should keep the hand you listed.. because:
- onelanders are bad
-if you don't draw a second land you will die, vial wont win you the game here If you dont draw any other lands..
-SFM + jitte is basicly the same card.. you want one of them, not both.
-fathom seer is for the fow, it has no other meanings this way because you will not be playing it until turn 4-5 or something.. BS, BS, SFM and jitte are first in line.

Allthough, having jitte + brainstorm makes it a rather tough choice. But I say mull.. :)

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The question is not how bad the hand is but how bad the mulliganed hand is likely to be in comparison with this one.

Moonlight's advice is not accurate.

I'd keep that hand against any non-WL deck (and against Zoo). It's a slightly soft hand in the Zoo MU (no Mom, no Swords), and you have to draw into parts to make it work, but the six is not going to be better and you have SFM and FoW. Keep in mind on UW Tempo: you only have 17 land, and only 13 land that make W. A six card hand with like Tundra, Wasteland is not better than the seven cards you have including double Brainstorm, Fathom Seer.

I don't even think it's a very tough decision. You obviously want to see a better fuel+air mixture, but you're only going to be able to get that through smart play -- not more aggressive mulligans.


The fact that you have Jitte + SFM isn't remotely bad. You have two brainstorms. SFM even has a built-in shuffle effect, so after the brainstorm, just put the Jitte on the bottom, then cast SFM.


Not that you have to memorize these odds or anything (though it does help a little):

If you fetch Tundra and Brainstorm at the opponent's endstep, you have a 65% chance of making your two drop and being able to cast SFM. If you miss, you have a 51% chance of picking up the two drop during your next turn with the second Brainstorm. Together that's an 83% chance of getting the second land.

If you wait until your second mainphase (to get an extra draw in), you have a 77% chance of making your second land drop. You can't retry that turn, but after your next draw, you get a 52% chance of picking up a second land. Together, that's an 89% chance of getting the second land.

I would cast the Brainstorm at endstep. SFM immediately is too powerful in this situation, cause it unlocks 9 extra lands that don't force me to redraw Umezawa's Jitte.


Either way, if the question is just about keeping the hand vs. not keeping the hand, it's not very close. You get at the lowest an 83% chance of getting out of it in very good shape, compared to a six-card hand which has around a 20% chance of sending you straight to five cards.

I don't have any idea why you'd think keeping that hand is too risky, but then you're willing to ship down to a six card hand.

I think in testing we found the deck was roughly 50% against the meta when it starts with 6 cards vs. the opponent's 7. Against nonwasteland decks, it's clear you keep, but against an unknown opponent you can still resolve the question. It's harder, but I think most of the time by keeping this your shot at winning is >50%.

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Originally Posted by pi4meterftw

I think in testing we found the deck was roughly 50% against the meta when it starts with 6 cards vs. the opponent's 7. Against nonwasteland decks, it's clear you keep, but against an unknown opponent you can still resolve the question. It's harder, but I think most of the time by keeping this your shot at winning is >50%.

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Yeah, that's starting with 6, but that doesn't account for the "go to five" which happens like 20% of the time.

It's *really* hard to win with 5 cards against Zoo. Maybe you have a 20% chance, but that means at the moment you mulligan your 7, your odds to win are like around maybe 35-40%.

The hand has to be quite bad (<40% you think) to justify a mulligan (something like no-land, all-land, 1 land without one drops, etc.) against Zoo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQz0J_lneYc

Might have to wait a bit for it to process if you can't see the cards right now. It will be in high quality when Youtube finishes processing (usually takes about 1h).

Part 2 will be up later (not as interesting, I just smash him), but I'm off to play at Artifex for a few hours and the video is currently being exported.

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Originally Posted by Citrus-God

@Plate: I haven't tested Plate yet, but thanks for the input.

We haven't really discussed what kinds of opening hands we should keep and how we should play certain hands. I'm still inexperienced with this deck, and I've been playing Landstill for a long ass time. The transition to a creature deck is really fucking weird to me, and the transition to a creature deck that is THIS difficult to play is also foreign. I kept some notes as to what hands to keep and how I should be playing them. And sometimes, it's really hard to make calls for opening plays with certain opening hands. For example

Marsh Flat
Force of Will
Brainstorm
Brainstorm
Stoneforge Mystic
Fathom Seer
Umezawa's Jitte

Against Zoo, on the play.

1. If I don't hit a land and/or Vial with BS, I lose. If I do find a land and/or Vial, I also want to find a strong critter to create presence on the board.
2. I won't have any presence with the board for the first turn, but 2nd Turn may be justifiable if I have a good mix of other cards, assuming I hit land and perhaps a Mom/Wayfarer with BS.
3. FoW can only be used to either protect one of my hopefully topdecked critters or keep a bigger one off the board. Obviously, I want to protect a critter as I can get Jitte online and win, but then I also have to worry about Qasali Pridemage. True, I have Stoneforge Mystic to net another Jitte, but 4 mana investment is heavy for this deck; especially with a hand like this.

Also, if I do hypothetically mulligan, what kind of hand would I want to see against a deck like Zoo?

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I should note that I actually had to think a decent amount to get this one figured out. I think Matt's stronger in mulligan decisions than I am. I think this is a valid question, but at the end of the day I still think that application of the standard sort of reasoning will give a clear cut answer on this one.

I don't consider mulliganning with the list to be much harder than with other lists. Actually, due to experience, I don't consider the deck to be that hard to play, but that is probably because there wasn't anyone to tell me I was misplaying when I was learning, so I "felt like" I was doing the right thing. You must keep your eye out for chances to stick a few extra damage down your opponent's throat, manipulations that give you slight advantages etc. The hardest part about the deck is you can't afford to be bad at anything.

I used to be a dedicated landstill player. Control, especially landstill, was one of the easiest archetypes to play ever because you did not need to have combat math mastered.

I was called on being too slow at the SCG 5K when I had to figure out empty the warrens math, but that is just a straight computation. The harder situations involve analysis of probability and statistically expected value, variance, etc.

If you need additional sources of watching Matt and I play the deck, please watch the matches from the SCG 5K LA. I mulliganned rather aggressively, compared to what I usually see people doing.

Hopefully you found this post "supportive." I am trying to encourage support for the deck from reasonably minded thinkers seeking to play the deck.

Nice work guys.

I've watched the SCG video with Jeff, read most of the pages here, and it looks like an awesome Fish deck. I really like Jeff's comment about the fact that you're drawing into more gas when you play less lands overall. Already ordered my playset of 4x Chinese Weathered Wayfarers and ready to give it a go.

My meta has got at least 2-3 goblins, some ichorid, some Tempo Thresh. No zoo or combo. Seems like a deck that's well positioned for this type of field.

2 questions:

1. What do you side 4x BFT in for vs. Goblins? I'm assuming Fathom Seers or Wayfarers but not 100% sure. Goblins has no nonbasics except for Wastelands and Ports...

2. How do you side in the 2x Enlightened Tutor package + Crypt/Wheel/Relic vs. Ichorid?

Cut wayfarers in both Ichorid and Goblins.


If there's really no combo, you can take out the Thorn of Amethyst and Enlightened Tutors for more yard hate and Goblins/Ichorid hate (like Propaganda).

Against Ichorid, you're also boarding in the Grunt and all of your BFTs. BFT doesn't need a target for the sacrifice to work (check the wording), so you can use it to burn bridges.

Ok, the next part is up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7j9AhsmtUg

I'll add some more stuff later. Feel free to post whatever, critiques, questions, suggestions, either here or on Youtube. Also looking for sparring partners to shoot more footage (you know, the kind who don't use their last card in hand to daze a spell when I still have mana up), I'll post the games if they're interesting, even if I lose.

I don't think anybody else has really done these first person VoD-type commentary, so I want to try to see 1) if there's any interest and 2) what I'm doing wrong. The closest to what I'm doing is SCG's casts, but they're not commentated by players, and I think there's more potential for a commentary to be interesting if players with some experience are playing the decks.


Two more matches up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFFumGU8n0o <-- vs. Ichorid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTjeQLewjAY <-- vs. Lands

Exporting game 2 and 3 for Lands, I think I'll finish that later.



So I have 999 posts, I'm OCD like that, don't want to have my 1k post be some lame QFT.

@ Shronkor: Yeah, I made some horrible play mistakes that game 1.

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Originally Posted by Mayk0l

Great movies! Really enjoying the watch.

In game 2 against Bant Aggro, why did you Force of Will the Trygon Predator?
It's not really a threat and Jitte kills it before it can swing.

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Cool, I guess one vote for liking it so far.

@ play: So at the time, I didn't have any artifacts, but also no swords and no flyers. I should have probably pointed this out during the video, but there's some double psychology I noticed during the game:

So he has 1 card in hand when he kgrips my Jitte, then fetches and looks at a new top 3 with the Top. If he has a Trygon, he should have cast it last turn (over staying open for Kgrip), making at almost certain that he topdecked the Trygon Predator, which meant it was his strongest threat in his top 3 cards. Since I have more draw than he does, and I'm just trying to lock out the game, it made sense to play it really defensively instead of waiting for a small threat to become a big threat.

I think it's similar to like turn 1 vs. Zoo you force the Kird Ape. Yeah, you can force something better later, but by then Kird Ape did more damage than the "stronger" spell would have. Also, they probably don't have anything better because they lead their strongest spell (why would you lead Kape if you have Nacatl?). It seemed like he thought that Trygon was his best threat, so I went ahead and countered it.

I had a lot of draw material, but you can always topdeck shit. I wanted to make sure that I could handle his board no matter what I drew, and with just two Swords left in the deck, I didn't want to end up in the, "ah crap, I need to topdeck to stay alive" situation.

It was kinda one of those wash situations, but he's bant aggro, he doesn't have anything scarier than Trygon Predator. Also, TP actively takes away 3 outs from my deck (2 SFM and 1 Jitte left, and those spells trump the rest of his deck). I dunno, I think it was the right play, but it was probably a lot more questionable than I made it out in the audio commentary. I just said, "Huh, I pitched a Daze... interesting."

Just to clean up my notes: I was surprised when I pitched the daze (thinking I should ditch a SP or think about it more), but it was definitely the right play to ditch Daze. He has a lot of lands, so hard to daze him (but SP is still possible), and then I also have another Fathom Seer, so I'm not really looking to miss more land drops.

Great movies! Really enjoying it.

In game 2 against Bant Aggro, why did you Force of Will the Trygon Predator?
It's not really a threat and Jitte kills it before it can swing.