[Deck] Turbo Depths

[DNSolver]

Sharing here because I can't let the Mox Diamond players win:

Got a 5-0 last night with this. Beat Miracles, Burn, Bug Delver x2, BR Reanimator, all favorable matchups.

4 Depths
4 Stage
3 Urborg
4 Verdant
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Ghost Quarter

4 Lotus Petal
3 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Pithing Needle
4 Thoughtseize
4 Duress

4 Crop Rotation
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Expedition Map

1 Sylvan Safekeeper
4 Vampire Hexmage
2 Green Sun's Zenith

SB:
3 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Rite of Consumption
1 Boseiju
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Karakas

[Mr. Safety]

Sharing here because I can't let the Mox Diamond players win:

Got a 5-0 last night with this. Beat Miracles, Burn, Bug Delver x2, BR Reanimator, all favorable matchups.

4 Depths
4 Stage
3 Urborg
4 Verdant
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Ghost Quarter

4 Lotus Petal
3 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Pithing Needle
4 Thoughtseize
4 Duress

4 Crop Rotation
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Expedition Map

1 Sylvan Safekeeper
4 Vampire Hexmage
2 Green Sun's Zenith

SB:
3 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Rite of Consumption
1 Boseiju
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Karakas

Nice! Glad to see someone still doing well without Mox Diamond; I can't afford them and I only play paper. I'm digging the GSZ package, I've been on that for a little while. Have you considered diversifying your discard to include Cabal Therapy? I suppose at the LGS where I'm familiar with the metagame/decks it makes more sense, but I'd argue for it in an open metagame as well.

What are you solving with Flusterstorm? Is it worth the blue splash? Also, zero basics?

[dd_bray]

Sharing here because I can't let the Mox Diamond players win:

Got a 5-0 last night with this. Beat Miracles, Burn, Bug Delver x2, BR Reanimator, all favorable matchups.

4 Depths
4 Stage
3 Urborg
4 Verdant
2 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Dryad Arbor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Ghost Quarter

4 Lotus Petal
3 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Pithing Needle
4 Thoughtseize
4 Duress

4 Crop Rotation
4 Sylvan Scrying
3 Expedition Map

1 Sylvan Safekeeper
4 Vampire Hexmage
2 Green Sun's Zenith

SB:
3 Flusterstorm
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Rite of Consumption
1 Boseiju
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Sylvan Safekeeper
1 Karakas

Congratulations! Your list is sweet! I like the GSZ plan without trying to make it a silver bullet SB package; how long have you been trying it for?
I've been playing Turbo Depths for years but have lately been struggling with the Miracles match-up way more than I feel like I used to. Can you give your SB/ gameplay strategy for winning the match-up in today's MG for those of us who still fight the good fight w/out Mox Diamond.

[Izza]

I rly dont like the MOX/BoB lists, because I fell in love with the raw turbo list.
SO my question is, why the bluesplit for FS with the "weaker" manabase(No Basic)? I can't think of much that a duress/tought/IoK can't handle. Is it purely for combo?
I'm very interested and digging the GSZ build, I acually had the split the other way around.(2x Safekeeper and 1xGSZ) Mainly because I lack a second GSZ.

Edit:
My SB plan would look like this:
Surgical, Karakas, Safekeeper, Decay and Trophy should be obvious.
Rite is for Miracles/D&T/Mirror and everything with swords or sacoutlet? When Rite comes in, Boseiju follows?
And FS is for Combo(Storm/Reanimator/?dredge?) and to fight StP?

[DNSolver]

@Mr. Safety
Therapy isn't good without Probe.

Zero basics is the biggest problem with this version. If you want to fix this, you cut 2 sideboard cards, put the two blue lands in the board, and put the basics back. You could maybe get by with 1 basic because that would let you GQ yourself as well as copy a basic with Stage.

@dd_bray
Miracles has a hard time beating a Safekeeper if you play it late and don't attack it into Snapcaster Mage. I typically board out fast mana and shave Needles. Board in Decays/Trophy for Blood Moon/B2B. After those, I add another Safekeeper because I have it in the board. Then, at the moment I have 3 Rite + Boseiju so those come in. If you don't have those, board in Sylvan Library / Bob. I also boarded in Flusters.

@Izza
Fluster is an anti-combo card that hits both Storm and Show and Tell (we can already answer Sneak Attack with Needle). There aren't very many other cards to play besides additional discard. You could play that instead if you choose. However, Fluster is also nice for countering Plow when they tap low for Jace / SFM.

If you play Rite, you want them for Miracles, D+T, Lands, 4c Loam at least. They also give you some extra outs to Ensnaring Bridge vs Red Stompy and some other decks. You can beat Edict effects pretty easily out of the blue/black/whatever decks because they are byes, so don't bring them in here.

[umadbroflame]

Hey there,
I just registered just for this thread
I play Legacy for 6 month now, playing Turbo Depths (with Blooming Marsh) and DnT. I collected some storecredit at my LGS and am thinking now if I should upgrade my Turbo Depths List with Fetches and Bayous.
Just for playing the turbo variant of Depths, what are the advantages over the Blooming Marsh build? Do you guys recommend the upgrade?

Thx in advance!

[Mr. Safety]

Hey there,
I just registered just for this thread
I play Legacy for 6 month now, playing Turbo Depths (with Blooming Marsh) and DnT. I collected some storecredit at my LGS and am thinking now if I should upgrade my Turbo Depths List with Fetches and Bayous.
Just for playing the turbo variant of Depths, what are the advantages over the Blooming Marsh build? Do you guys recommend the upgrade?

Thx in advance!

Yes, and the fetches are more important than the Bayous, for a few specific reasons:
1) Verdant Catacombs can find your basics
2) Once you have the Verdant + even 1 Bayou your mana gets significantly more reliable
3) Verdant Catacombs can fetch Dryad Arbor to play around Edict effects
4) Fetches provide free shuffle effects for Sylvan Library

This is my mana base FYI, and it's been rock-solid:

4x Verdant Catcombs
1x Bayou
2x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest
1x Swamp
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Sejiri Steppe
1x Dryad Arbor
4x Dark Depths
4x Thespian's Stage


The arbor maindeck is because I use GSZ, and I'm on 4x ESG/Petal as well.

[solnox]

On a light blue splash.

https://imgur.com/a/AykLYuo

I had been messing with a light U splash for flusterstorm for a while now. I 5-0'd a few weeks ago that didnt get published but I just managed to get another one with this list

Beat Black Red Reanimator, Grixis Delver, Shadow, Strawberry Shortcake (R/W Painter had moon), Moon Stompy in the final round.

U was good vs shadow and B/R here. Being able to flusterstorm a hymn to tourach was excellent. I also got to unmoored ego painters from the shortcake deck.

[jubeininja69]

I think we really need to discuss the elephant in the room: is Mox Diamond now the correct mana acceleration in Turbo Depths? The only lists placing well lately are on the Diamond plan, with most lists playing maindeck removal like Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, or both. Pithing Needle has really fallen off the radar screen as well, possibly due to the lower number of decks using Wasteland.

i think so. turbo depths has now become grindy/slow/medium depths and diamonds helps the deck catch up in tempo.

i never really liked the all-in turbo version. if you didn't kill them in the first 3-5 turns your win % serverly goes down each turn after that.

[Darkgobs]

I think we really need to discuss the elephant in the room: is Mox Diamond now the correct mana acceleration in Turbo Depths? The only lists placing well lately are on the Diamond plan, with most lists playing maindeck removal like Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy, or both. Pithing Needle has really fallen off the radar screen as well, possibly due to the lower number of decks using Wasteland.

I think the paradigm is not completely exposed here, because of the correlation between needle, wasteland and mox:


1) If you choose to play a list with Mox, is it safe to say that you'd better play Wasteland over Needle, because you need thoses extra lands for the discards Mox Diamonds require? That is what I felt while playing the "Mox list". So as far as I understand the dilemma, I would say that if you want to play Mox Diamond, you cannot play 3 Needle, because you need a list with more lands, aka 2-3 Wastelands.

So now the question is: is this assumption wrong? Could a list with Mox AND Needle be viable, or is it too greedy? I'd like it to work, because even though I think the Mox list is amazing, I'm missing thoses Needles sometimes. Maybe something like 3 Mox and 2 Needles might be viable, I don't know yet.


2) this is a central question indeed: are the win% that we win against Miracle, D&T and Lands, etc (with a "mox-wasteland list"), worth the win% that we loose against the others decks, especially Delver decks (with the instant mana sources - Needle list)?

And the answer might simply be: it's a meta-call. If you play with more Miracles/D&T, then go for a "Mox list", If not, well, go for the "IMS-Needle list".
Which brings up two questions:
a) if you don't know the metagame, which list is the safest pick?
b) as I said in 1), is a "middle-list" possible, and if yes, would it be more efficient than the 2 others lists, or than one of the 2 others lists?


I know theses are a lot of questions for one post, but I'd be reaaallly interested to know what you guys think about this! =)

[Mr. Safety]

I've already answered what my approach is: maindeck confidant in the place of additional land tutors (expedition map.) Sideboard cards allow the deck to go from fast combo into grind teritory with additional removal, draw, and hate cards.

Regarding Diamonds, yes, you play your own wastelands to get land count higher and drop needles because its primary role is to name wasteland. My big beef with this approach is that it seems worse than RG lands. The difference is discard, which gives you a different angle (along with redundancy with hexmage for the black splash.) The discard makes you better against other combo decks and is big against blue-based tempo decks.

[Negator77']

I think the paradigm is not completely exposed here, because of the correlation between needle, wasteland and mox:


1) If you choose to play a list with Mox, is it safe to say that you'd better play Wasteland over Needle, because you need thoses extra lands for the discards Mox Diamonds require? That is what I felt while playing the "Mox list". So as far as I understand the dilemma, I would say that if you want to play Mox Diamond, you cannot play 3 Needle, because you need a list with more lands, aka 2-3 Wastelands.

So now the question is: is this assumption wrong? Could a list with Mox AND Needle be viable, or is it too greedy? I'd like it to work, because even though I think the Mox list is amazing, I'm missing thoses Needles sometimes. Maybe something like 3 Mox and 2 Needles might be viable, I don't know yet.

This assumption is wrong imo. I've been doing well with a 4 mox + 28 land list (to support Diamond and the U splash) with 2 needles main and 2 more in the SB for a long time. Just picked up 5-0's #10 & 11 this week since the mtgo league started at the end of September.

[Darkgobs]

This assumption is wrong imo. I've been doing well with a 4 mox + 28 land list (to support Diamond and the U splash) with 2 needles main and 2 more in the SB for a long time. Just picked up 5-0's #10 & 11 this week since the mtgo league started at the end of September.

This is true indeed. But you're also playing only 1 Wasteland in your 75, so there isn't much wombo with Needle (very often naming wasteland) and one-of wasteland.

But indeed, your list includes Moxes AND 4 Needle in the 75, even though I think you are quite an exception. ;-)

[dd_bray]

Shout out and congratulations to both Sharkcaster_Mage and Griselpuff for top 8 finishes in today's legacy challenge!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...nge-2018-12-10

With one decklist being the traditional Turbo build and the other the Mox/Wasteland adaptation, it seems like a good time be beating down with 20/20's regardless of the build.

[Mr. Safety]

Shout out and congratulations to both Sharkcaster_Mage and Griselpuff for top 8 finishes in today's legacy challenge!

https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...nge-2018-12-10

With one decklist being the traditional Turbo build and the other the Mox/Wasteland adaptation, it seems like a good time be beating down with 20/20's regardless of the build.

I saw that as well, pretty cool.

[Darkgobs]

On a light blue splash.

https://imgur.com/a/AykLYuo

I had been messing with a light U splash for flusterstorm for a while now.
[...]
U was good vs shadow and B/R here. Being able to flusterstorm a hymn to tourach was excellent. [...]

Could you please tell us in which other match-up do you board Flusterstom in? And in particular, what do you usually cut for it? I guess Miracle, Combos... what about Delver?

[Mr. Safety]

I am hopefully getting to FNM this week after missing the 1K 12/1. I still want to jam Depths and see if Therapy can do what I want it to do. I have also changed my setup slightly to include maindeck Abrupt Decay x2, a nod to the changing metagame that includes an uncomfortable amount of Ensnaring Bridges. I have cut 1x Elvish Spirit Guide and 1x Cabal Therapy to squeeze them in. That puts my discard at 3 TS/2 CT/2 Duress and my fast mana at 4 Petal/3 ESG. I also have maindeck GSZ x1 + Dryad Arbor, so I already have an additional green source to support the AD's. The 2 copies of Decay in the board are being replaced with Hymns for now, until I can get a feel for what else might be good. A 4th needle, 2nd Ghost Quarter, and 3rd Choke are on the short list as well.

EDIT: Bah, I'll just drop in a list.

4x Vampire Hexmage
3x Dark Confidant
3x Elvish Spirit Guide
2x Sylvan Safekeeper

3x Thoughtseize
2x Duress
2x Cabal Therapy
3x Pithing Needle
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Crop Rotation
3x Sylvan Scrying
4x Lotus Petal

4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Bayou
2x Blooming Marsh
1x Forest
1x Swamp
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Sejiri Steppe
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Dryad Arbor
4x Dark Depths
4x Thespian's Stage

Sideboard
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Choke
2x Sylvan Library
2x Rite of Consumption
1x Karakas
1x Marsh Casualties
1x Golgari Charm
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Abrupt Decay
2x Hymn to Tourach

[Hanni]

I'm not sure if this has already been discussed recently, but is there any reason for playing Abrupt Decay over Assassin's Trophy in the turbo lists? I can understand maybe not wanting the card disadvantage in the gindier Slow Depths lists, but Assassin's Trophy just seems way better for the fast versions.

Uncounterability isn't irrelevant, but most of the problems are in decks without countermagic anyway. Having more ways to deal with problems like Karakas and Maze of Ith seems like it would be way more valuable...

[Mr. Safety]

It's certainly an option. DNSolver streamed with A-trophy recently, I think 1 in the main 1 in the side. It's not clear yet if it's correct to play Assassin's Trophy to deal with Karakas/Maze because we already have Ghost Quarter and tutors for it. Having additional ways to kill problematic lands seems good, and it seems to really do that job in the Lands matchup (so far in my limited opinion, I haven't tested it yet.) We've theory-crafted the crap out of it here, probably a couple pages back when A-Trophy was spoiled. Not many have piped in on actual effectiveness, at least not that I've seen. I haven't bitten the bullet for Trophy's yet, I'm still leaning on Pithing Needle, Decay, and Ghost Quarter.

[Baum]

We usually run a split. The stock slow lists have 3 Decays in the MD and 1-2 Trophy in the SB, Negator's BUG list has 2/2 in the SB. Sometimes, the uncounterability really is important. Also, while it's great to hit lands like Karakas or Wasteland, giving D&T another Plains to cast STP can be a liability at times. That being said, it doesn't sound unreasonable to play more Trophys than Decays.