Sex.dec: Time Walking and Smashing Face

[LotusHead]

PhantomTapeWorm piloted Sex.dec, an Eternal Witness-Timewalk recursion deck, at an SCG P9 serious about 6 months ago (maybe longer).  On SCG.com, someone wanted to break Recollect from Ravnica, perhaps in a Sex.dec  build or whatnot.

A few months ago, I proxied up his build online, and added Mana Drains (I love Drains) instead of other chaff.  My build was fun, crazy and still had Birds of Paradise (not Vintage worthy, I found out again.)

Anyways, in playing the build on MWS online, I eventually faced someone who built/developed my deck based on our few games (Ixxixxi is the name, I have no idea where he's from and is the only one who doesn't assosiate me with Auriok Salvagers).  His version spouted 6  basic lands instead of my revolutionary 4 basic lands (2 Island, 2 Forest, 4 wastables plus Moxen/Wearbears).

I was impressed with his build (which ran only 4 Eternal Witness beatdown for the kill), and I adopted his build of my build of PhantomTapeWorm's build.  (CSSAmerican fits into this chain of events somehow.).  I re-instated the Wearbears, and tested Mark of Eviction (from another Sex.decish built), found it lacking (read:sucking) unless I was already winning.  Sunscape Familiar (which I now own) fits a slot once tested through Helm of Awakening (which helps my opponent way too much).

Behold, for discussion/critique/suggestions/innovations I present:

Uh...Sex.dec (I didn't invent the name) presented in MWS format for those who use it. 

This deck is very skill intensive, and very enjoyable to play.  It is not more broken than any other deck, but can compete with the other decks (especially if the sideboard gets tweaked more)




// Lands
    2  Forest
    3  Island
    3  Polluted Delta
    4  Tropical Island
    2  Windswept Heath<==----Edit
    1  Tundra

// Creatures
    4  Eternal Witness
    4  Werebear
    1  Sunscape Familiar

// Spells
    4  Accumulated Knowledge
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Black Lotus
    4  Brainstorm
    2  Echoing Truth
    4  Force of Will
    3  Intuition
    1  Mox Emerald
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mystical Tutor
    1  Nostalgic Dreams
    1  Sol Ring
    1  Time Walk
    1  Mox Pearl
    4  Mana Drain
    1  Regrowth
    1  Engineered Explosives
    1  Merchant Scroll
    1  Fact or Fiction

// Sideboard
SB: 1  Engineered Explosives
SB: 1  Naturalize
SB: 3  Seeds of Innocence
SB: 2  Tormod's Crypt
SB: 1  Stifle
SB: 2  Extract
SB: 2  Energy Flux
SB: 1  Tranquility
SB: 2  Misdirection


The goal is to counter anything relavent, resolve a few Eternal Witnesses and/or Wearbears, and resolve a whole lot of Time Walks.  Built in is a way to recur infinite Time Walks (2 Witness, UUGG3 mana availiable, Time Walk and Echoing Truth), but infinite Time Walks is not neccessary to win.

Explanation of card choices:

Mana Base:
    2  Forest                    Basic lands are Tech. Witness has GG in casting cost. Deck could survive with 1 Forest due to presence of 4 Wearbears.
    3  Island                      Basic Lands are Tech.  The more the merrier.
    3  Polluted Delta           Fetches Tropical Islands, Islands and the lucky Tundra
    2  Wooded Foothills     Fetches Tropical Islands, Forests and do help with Brainstorm shuffling tasks.
    1  Tundra                      Exists for your lucky Sunscape Familliar (your Blue and Green spells cost 1 less to play)
    4  Tropical Island            This deck runs only Blue and Green spells.  Could be 3 Trops and 1 more basic/fetch if thats your style...

    1  Black Lotus                 SoLoMoxen (SOl ring, LOtus, MOXen for those who don't know). This deck is powered and
    1  Mox Emerald               benefits fromt he full suite of jewelry.  Intuitions/AK, etc.
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Sol Ring

// Creatures
    4  Eternal Witness          Recurs Ancestral Recal, TimeWalk, FoW, Drain, Brainstorm, Fetchlands, other Witnesses, etc
    4  Werebear                 Taps for green mana, beats for 4 with threshhold (threshold is easy in this deck)
    1  Sunscape Familiar        My tech for the deck.  Could be Mark of Evicition, Demonic Tutor, Echoing Truth #3, etc.  If it appears, a Tundra, Mox Pearl, Pollutted Delta or Black Lotus can provide mana for it.  Basically, Intuition/AK engines that cost 1U and U are cool.  Eternal Witnesses that cost GG is cool.  Recuring infinite time walks for  U: Time Walk, GG: Eternal Witness, U: Echoing Truth on said Witness.  Wearbears that cost G is cool. And it blocks Goblin Lackeys.

// Spells
    4  Accumulated Knowledge     Draws cards, is part of Intuition/AK draw engine.  Could be something else for those who don't like AKs.
    3  Intuition                            With Witness X4, Regrowth and Nostalgic Dreams, Intuition can fetch anything out of the deck.  Complete goodness. I often run 4 maindeck.  WereBears beat for 4 with Threshhold.
    1  Ancestral Recall                     D.U.H.
    4  Brainstorm                          D.U.H.

    4  Force of Will                       D.U.H.
    4  Mana Drain                        This deck benefits from Drain Mana (Intuition, AK, Explosives, etc).  Could be Duress if you like Demonic Tutor and hate keeping UU open.

Tutor/Tools/Answers:
    1  Mystical Tutor                     Finds Time Walk (important), Ancestral Recal (important), Regrowth, Force, even Brainstorm.  Pitches to Force of Will.
    1  Nostalgic Dreams               for GG: Discard some cards, you regrowth some cards.  I keep only 1 in the deck, cuz it can be way broken, but 2 is too many in my oppinion.
    1  Time Walk                        This deck casts Time Walk for a lot of attack steps.  Witness and Werebears, oh my.
    1  Regrowth                         Tutors for a card in your graveyard.  Finds Ancestral and TimeWalk.
    1  Engineered Explosives       Deals with small problems (Welder, Gorilla Shaman, opponent's moxen, Tormod's Crypt, etc.)
    1  Merchant Scroll                Down to one.  Finds Ancestral (important), Echoing Truth (for the win/answers) and FoW/Drain (a form of Time Walk).  Can even get Mystical Tutor for the Time Walk for the win. This build had 3 Merchant Scrolls at one point.
    2  Echoing Truth                Deals with Akroma, Welders, whatever.  Is used to bounch Eternal Witness to get Time Walk/Ancestral/AK for 4/etc).  With 2 Witnesses in play, can bounce Both of them, which in turn get back Time Walk and Echoing Truth to repeat and attack.
    1  Fact or Fiction                Was Merchant Scroll #2.  I aquired a DCI Foil one recently.  That's all. Could still be Merchant Scroll.  Decent handfiller and combo's with the deck's 6 regrowth effects nicely.

// Sideboard                                   All Meta's are different. Side as you wish.  Some explanations:

SB: 1  Engineered Explosives       1 Maindeck is nice, so 1 in the board is nice too.
SB: 1  Naturalize
SB: 3  Seeds of Innocence         Holdover from original Sex.dec build. Nice against Stax
SB: 2  Tormod's Crypt               Nice against Gifts/Welder/Will.dec
SB: 1  Stifle
SB: 2  Extract                         Nice against decks with few win conditions.  Combo's with Eternal Witness.
SB: 2  Energy Flux                   Attempts to deal with Stax even more, useless against MetalWorkers.
SB: 1  Tranquility
SB: 2  Misdirection                   Will probably  be Claws of Gix in the future, or Spawning Pit for the Oath matchup.

Cards tested and discarded:
Burning Wish: Neat, but I like a stable mana base better.  Time Walk is not vital to deck. Casting AK for 3/4 a couple of times is just as good.
Gifts Ungiven: Only gets so good when Intuition/AK is already present and Tendrils/Tinker is not maindeck.  Or black mana or red mana. 
Mark of Eviction: Sorry.
Demonic Tutor: Neat, but I like a stable mana base better. If I am splashing black for 1 card, it better win me the game. However,   Sunscape Familiar(the one white card in the deck) cuts all my spells casting costs in half.  It could likely give me a tempo boost as all my spells are green and blue. 20 cards in the deck are affected by Sunscape Familiar (not counting FoW or sideboard cards)
Tinker/Colossus: I hate having Colossus in hand.  In my other deck (Oath Salvagers), I could be thrilled to have Colossus in hand, because I can then certainly Oath up a Salvager. Not so in this deck.  Not needed.  If I have a threat out (Werebear/Witness) and resolve Time Walk, then I am on my way to winning already.

This build playes a standard control role which is stay alive long enough to get a threat on the board, a full hand and 5-7 mana sources on the field.  This is the same game plan as all non-prison/ decks.

Matchup analysis will have to wait, but I play this deck in a field of Vroman Stax builds (scary, but doable), Gifts/Duress builds, Oath/Duress builds, Dragon, Control Slaver, Workshop Aggro, and so forth.  Many of these builds maindeck Tormod's Crypt (haters!) which is why I am confidant that Time Walk isn't vital to winning in this deck.

Enjoy and discuss! 

[Jacob Orlove]

One quick note: since you run Tundra, Windswept Heath is strictly superior to Wooded Foothills.

[Kowal]

Down and dirty truth/details:

When I gave Marc the idea to build the deck in the first place, he was jizzing all over the place about it because it was something new.  Nobody but him -really- took it seriously.  And with good reason.

This deck, though amusing, is extremely flimsy and inflexible.  It wants to be a masturbatory combo deck, but lacks the speed and protection necessary.  In addition, it's almost as poor at combatting hate as Dragon.  No need to do matchup analysis--  here's some straight from the long since abandoned Team Short Bus boards:

Control Slaver:  Depends on who draws more gas in the opening turns.  A high concentration of moxen is necessary to overwhelm and overpower.
Gifts Ungiven:  Hopeless.  Need some serious help here, as the deck is just way too slow with too many random bad cards.
Stax:  Permanent count is high, but even one Sphere of Resistance or Chalice of the Void is hugely bad.  We need to maindeck some hate to beat this.
5/3:  Pretty favorable.  If they can keep us low on land they can win, but if they can't assemble the crucible with the land hate, it's cake.
Oath:  On the play it's pretty favorable, but I mean come on, if you can't beat Oath what the hell can you beat?

Your new build does nothing to address the issues we were facing with Stax and Gifts, which are needless to say the only really prevelant archetypes right now.  Also, you're only running one Nostalgic Dreams, which was where the power of the deck was.  The Eternal Witness looping was just the backup plan.

Eot Intuition for Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Nostalgic Dreams.
Take Time Walk (or Nostalgic Dreams if they're suicidal)
Untap, Time Walk, Nostalgic Dreams for Ancestral, Time Walk, Dreams.  Ancestral.  Time Walk.  Nostalgic Dreams for Ancestral, Time Walk, Regrowth...

[cssamerican]

I agree with Kowal that the deck isn’t what you want to be playing if you want to win a tournament; however, it is somewhat competitive and extremely fun to play. So, if you are like me and play for fun rather than prizes it is a decent deck to play.

Your build has drifted in a direction so different than mine it hard for me to make any kind of direct comparison; therefore, I think I will ask broader questions as to the decisions that made you arrive at your build.
1.) Why have you removed black from your deck? I would think the allure of having three top quality tutors in a deck like this would be too good to pass up. (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Imperial Seal)
2.) Is the only reason why you aren’t running the Tinker-Colossus combo because you hate having a Colossus in hand?
3.) Why have you added Mana Drain to the deck? I have always felt that this kind of deck wanted to tap-out too frequently to hold back resources for reactive disruption. Not to mention, it would seem difficult to ensure your land drops would allow you use Mana Drain while at the time ensuring you could cast many of your green based spells.

I have been trying to get Sunscape Familiar to work ever since Josh Silvestri suggested it to me; however, I have failed to get it to work effectively. If you have made it work in your deck congratulations on that, I am just wondering how do you get it in play early enough for it to make an impact?

The best tool I have found to combat Stax for this deck is the combination of Seeds of Innocence and Hidden Guerrillas. Versus UBAStax I also bring in a single of Darkblast just to prevent recurring Duplicants. Versus 5-color I bring in a single Reverent Silence as a way to remove those nasty enchantments.

Versus Gifts I will bring in Root Mazes and Carpet of Flowers; however, I also run maindeck Chalices, which help out a lot in that match-up.

Oh and by the way, [card]Reverent Silence[/card] >>> [card]Tranquility[/card] in this deck.

[Liam-K]

I'm pretty sure the whole idea logically eventuates in Gifts.  The plan A is find your cards, recur time walk a lot, attack a lot.  Gifts does that except it does it faster and better.  It maxes out at 3 time walk turns (ok technically 4, but that's rare as balls), but it only needs 2 to win most of the time anyway.

However, that's not to say porting the system to a Gifts engine wouldn't be a worthwhile endeavor.  There's still a lot to learn about gifts decks and there could be a new angle hidden somewhere in here.  I'm not entirely ready to say Gifts cannot support masturbatory time walk abuse as a means of building up a crushing advantage when there's no ywagwill/tinker to be had.

[Sgt. Pepper]

Question: have you tried out Dark Confidant in this deck? I don't know if their's any room for him (it would probably lead to cutting the Intuition-AK engine), but seems rather good since he's another beater too make Time Walk more dangerous, provides card advantage, and is another permanent against Stax. 'The Great One' has been appearing into more and more decks lately, so he can't be all that awful me thinks.

I also second the idea of maindecking Chalice of the Void to help with the Gifts match which, according to Kowal, is terrible. You also don't have a lot of 1cc cards so a Chalice for 1 is also possible (though you will lose the Recall recursion engine if you do).

[Methuselahn]

Anyways, in playing the build on MWS online, I eventually faced someone who built/developed my deck based on our few games (Ixxixxi is the name, I have no idea where he's from and is the only one who doesn't assosiate me with Auriok Salvagers).  His version spouted 6  basic lands instead of my revolutionary 4 basic lands (2 Island, 2 Forest, 4 wastables plus Moxen/Wearbears).

I was impressed with his build (which ran only 4 Eternal Witness beatdown for the kill), and I adopted his build of my build of PhantomTapeWorm's build. 

For reference, Dan Moeckly here in Minnesota goes by that mws handle occasionally.  If you want to see his decklist and a decent tournament performance, go here on tmd.

[LotusHead]

Your build has drifted in a direction so different than mine it hard for me to make any kind of direct comparison; therefore, I think I will ask broader questions as to the decisions that made you arrive at your build.
1.) Why have you removed black from your deck? I would think the allure of having three top quality tutors in a deck like this would be too good to pass up. (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Imperial Seal)

Mana Base Stability was chosen over splashing for tutors.  Tutors are great, but this deck CAN draw so many cards that tutoring can be unneccessary. Witnessess can simply recur Ancestral or AK for 4, etc. Intuition can get missing pieces into your grave, which is really where you tutor from.  Having 5 basic lands in the deck rules versus Waste.dec.  Stable Stable Stable.

2.) Is the only reason why you aren’t running the Tinker-Colossus combo because you hate having a Colossus in hand?

It's true, I hate having Colossus in hand in this deck.  Many decks run some bounce to return DSC to your hand (Rebuild, Echoing Truth).  Bouncing Witnesses back to hand hurts less, and bouncing Werebears back is weak sauce.

3.) Why have you added Mana Drain to the deck? I have always felt that this kind of deck wanted to tap-out too frequently to hold back resources for reactive disruption. Not to mention, it would seem difficult to ensure your land drops would allow you use Mana Drain while at the time ensuring you could cast many of your green based spells.

When I see a list with Intuitions, AKs and Force of Will, I naturally see Mana Drain.  Many decks run Force and Drain as their only counterspells.  With 3 maindeck Islands, getting UU availiable is not unreasonable.  If someone wants to splash black for Tutors and Duress, go for it.  I like Drains.  If a player is comfortable playing with just 4 Forces, the go for it.  I feel more comfortable with 8 counterspells.

If you have a Mana Drain in hand, it affects your play decisions (Hmm, cast something or Drain something? Do I have Intuition or Brainstorm in hand?).  If you don't have Drain in hand, then you don't have to worry about keeping UU up, unless you want to bluff. 

I have been trying to get Sunscape Familiar to work ever since Josh Silvestri suggested it to me; however, I have failed to get it to work effectively. If you have made it work in your deck congratulations on that, I am just wondering how do you get it in play early enough for it to make an impact?

The Sunscape Familiar either shows up, or it doesn't.  If it does, great.  The rest of your deck will benefit greatly.  It is by no means neccessary.  This took over the slot that Demonic Tutor held. (and Tundra for Swamp).

Thanks for questions/comments.  My internet access is a bit limited at the moment, but I would be glad to elaborate more on this deck.

quotes fixed.