The not so perfect storm

[Gaagooch]

i am fairly new here, and this is my first post so i am going to try to make it good.  anyways to the point of the post.  Ive played at three real type one tournaments since starting to play TPS and i think i have had a different maindeck list for every single one, its not a large amount of cards, just one or two.  i am currently running two gifts and one time spiral, i have taken spiral in and out numerous times and i have played with one gifts one wish, and i previously played without gifts all together.  i just need peoples opinions on what else i should run in the deck.  i mean there are pros and cons to each card.

time spiral
Pro's:
New Hand
Untap up to six lands
Con's:
Cost six including double blue, needs tolarian academy with at least three artifacts in play to be effective
Gives your opponent a new hand

Gift's Ungiven:
Well to be honest with you i cannot think of either pro's or con's the only thing i don't like is that it cost four, but i can deal with that.  alone it is an amazing card, and it no doubt makes the deck that much better, but i always seem to draw them in multiples, should the first get countered it is great to have a back up plan.  if not i have a card in my hand i don't want and is only used effectively as a pitch to force.

It's not so much that i want to remove gift's ungiven from my deck, i just want to know what everyone thinks as to how many i should run, as it is an amazing card and the more i play it the more and more i like it.  this is really all i have time for now, but let me know if you have a build for TPS you think is worth testing, or just what you think about the deck in general i guess.

[amidtownrocker]

As I see it, if you are able to spiral and untap a good sized Academy in the deal, you are in good shape to most likely win that turn, of course sometimes you wont but with 7 new cards and lots of new blue mana to abuse you have a good shot at it even through the seven new cards you just gave your opponent. The problem lies in that Time Spiral is far less effective if you dont have that Academy. If you dont have it you are only untapping most likely 3 lands or so and in this case an opponents force or drain may definetly hinder your plans.

Gifts on the other hand as I see it is a way to tutor out some of your most broken cards. You get to play some good old jedi mind tricks with your opponent and in the end, with some tutoring or draw, hopefully end up with a card that just screams "I WIN 99.5% OF THE TIME I AM PLAYED" in Yawgmoths Will.  The thing with Gifts is tho, It is not an "I win now card" its a card you most likely cast at your opponents EOT to set up a big turn for yourself. Another thing to point out is that you will have little to no problem casting this card when you compare it to Time Spiral.

With these points I would most likely believe that the Gifts would be better than the Time Spiral.

[Mastaq]

Could you post your current list of TPS so we can better help you?

[Gaagooch]

1 tolarian
3 underground
3 island
2 swamps
3 delta
2 strand
7 SoLo Moxen
1 mana crypt
1 mana vault
1 lotus petal
1 ancestrall recall
1 timetwister
4 dark ritual
4 duress
4 brainstorm
4 force of will
1 mystical tutor
1 vampiric tutor
1 demonic tutor
1 tinker
1 rebuild
1 hurkyl's recall
1 chain of vapor
2 gift's ungiven
1 darksteel collosus
1 time spiral
1 mind's desire
1 memory jar
1 yawgmoth's bargain
1 yawgmoth's will
1 necropotence
2 tendrills of agony

that is my deck as of right now i do not the sideboard completely at this time as it is a work in progress.

[A Black Lotus Buddy]

I would deffinitely lose the Time Spiral and the Hurkyl's Recall from the main.  Add Windfall and Cunning Wish.

Oh, also drop the Strand, add a Delta and replace 2 of your Islands with the 4th Underground Sea and a Sol Ring

[Necrologia]

Time Spiral is infinitely better in TPS than Windfall. Resolving Time Spiral wins you the game. Windfall on the other hand is dead as often as not, netting only a handful of cards. Remember, TPS almost always goes off with 3 lands in play, so Spiral costs effectively the same as Winfall anyway.

Personally I'm not a fan of Gifts in TPS unless you really build around it. At the very least a single Cabal Ritual is solid, seeing as Gifts gets you halfway to threshold all by itself.

Oh, also drop the Strand, add a Delta and replace 2 of your Islands with the 4th Underground Sea and a Sol Ring

7 SoLo Moxen

SoloMoxen = Sol Ring, Black Lotus, and the 5 original Moxen. Going to 4 deltas is obviously optimal, but I'd never go below 2 Islands in TPS. You live off your basics, and going to a single Island makes that all but impossible. This build does seem a little light on land in comparison to a normal build though, so dropping the Hurkyl's for the last Sea might be a good idea.

[Juggernaut GO]

give this list a run, its a house.

4 polluted delta
tolarian academy
4 underground sea
2 swamp
2 island

lotus petal
yawgmoths will
ancestral recall
time walk
demonic tutor
vampiric tutor
mystical tutor
minds desire
mana vault
sol ring
lim dul's vault
necropotence
yawgmoths bargain
windfall
black lotus
lion's eye diamond
3 duress
1 tendrils of agony
4 dark ritual
memory jar
1 chain of vapor
1 rebuild
1 gifts ungiven
timetwister
time spiral
4 force of will
4 brainstorm
Tinker
mana crypt
mox diamond
5 moxes
darksteel colossus  OR a 2nd gifts ungiven, your choice on the metagame.


this deck runs 2 more bombs then the usual tps lists, the mana curve is super tight, I run 2 less lands then other lists but the deck works mint.

[A Black Lotus Buddy]

What about Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond?  They net free mana and adds to the storm count.  Wouldn't these be an auto-include?

[Hatt0ri Hanz0]

Juggernaut-Go: Has that list been doing well for you?
I'm curious about some of your less Conventional Card Choices?

ex.)
3 Duress
Mox Diamond
13 Lands
Lim-Dul's Vault
Lions Eye Diamond

Seems odd, but hows it been working?
It seems that Less than 4 Duress is sub-optional, and I feel that as a card it is more important than 4x FoW
Also the LD Vault seems intresting but out of place.
Alot of Current builds are also running Cunning Wish, and Ive really liked it in testing.

The current list I am trying out is using 2 Volcanics to splash for Wheel of Fortune and Recoup which in slow games where your throwing bombs at their counterwall at a 1:1 speed can be very usefull.

One of the Important things i feel about TPS is SB slots allocated to Mana Drain Decks, often the 4 Duress 4 FoW isn't enough to punch through their counterwall AND additional SB hate. I Have been testing running 2-4 REB in the board to help punch through bombs and have seen other lists running Mis-D which i haven't tested but think has potential for use in the board Vs. Control Metas.

Thoughts....?

[Mark_Story]

chrome mox and mox diamond, are not normally included in TPS because the list is so tight.  Furthermore, you rarely want to be faced with playing a chrome and pitching a bomb.  And TPS land count is quite low so it has trouble getting the mox diamond to stick.  If you are going to use them as storm count raisers, then why not just play something good.   Like cabal ritual, or dark ritual, or a draw seven.  I just don't think that the new moxen are worth the trouble in TPS. 

[Komatteru]

Ok, time for me to speak with some combo authority:

Windfall - This card is utter shit and has been moved to my Long sideboard b/c it's rarely good.  Gifts Ungiven is a house and should be used in multiples over Windfall.

Mox Diamond - Gone.  This card is terrible.

Chrome Mox - Doesn't belong in this deck.  Chrome Mox belongs in decks like Long and Belcher because those decks are more than happy to trade an extra card in their hand for more speed and explosiveness.  That doesn't really work for this deck.  TPS has a low threat density and can't afford to throw stuff away to imprint.  The only cards you can really afford to imprint are Force of Will and Duress, and imprinting Duress for this deck isn't always that good.  In addition, you don't need the speed.  You're looking at winning somewhere between turn 3-5, which means you'll have lots and lots of land available to you.

Cunning Wish - It's ok, but no more than 1 belongs in the deck. When I play TPS (which isn't that often because this deck is a pile, in my opinion as the dirtiest of combo players), I find myself pitching Wish to Force of Will most of the time.  As a 1-of, it adds some versatility, while not cluttering up your deck.

Tendrils - You need to have 2 in the maindeck. You can't Wish for them, so you need to have 2 to be able to find them with the consistency you want.

Red does not belong in this deck. If you want to add red to a combo deck, go play Long.  If you feel the need to add red, you don't understand how the deck works.

Now, Gifts Ungiven is the future of combo.  You need at least 2 of these in the deck, and maybe want 3.  The card is tricky to use effectively, but when you do, it's utterly amazing.

This list might have 1 too many lands (it needs to be tested, and I just threw this together), but here's the list I would probably screw around with:
4x Underground Sea
4x Polluted Delta
2x Island
2x Swamp
1x Tolarian Academy
1x Library of Alexandria

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mana Crypt
1x Sol Ring
1x Mana Vault
1x Lotus Petal
4x Dark Ritual

1x Necropotence
1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Yawgmoth's Will
1x Mind's Desire
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Cunning Wish
3x Gifts Ungiven
2x Tendrils of Agony
1x Time Walk
1x Timetwister
1x Time Spiral
1x Tinker
1x Memory Jar
4x Brainstorm
1x Ancestral Recall

4x Duress
4x Force of Will
1x Chain of Vapor (metagame spot)

Sideboard:
1x Gifts Ungiven
1x Brain Freeze
1x Darksteel Colossus, if you like that
+13 other cards depending on what your needs are, but the above 2 need to be there.  Don't clutter up this board with more than a few Wish targets.  You really don't want to have 4 Gifts in the maindeck, but being able to Wish for one with your lone Cunning Wish is nice if you can't seem to find one, or don't need the Cunning Wish for something else.

Library of Alexandria is insane in this deck.  Try it and you will be amazed. It will win you mad games.  Gifts tackles the biggest problem with this deck: its low threat density.  Gifts allows you to find 2 of those threats and put 2 more into the yard, setting yourself up for an amazing Will.  Don't ever underestimate the power of Gifts'ing for a combination of 4 Moxes and Dark Ritual.

[Phele]

I don't agree with the absolute way you are taliking about this deck. Adding Red isn't stupid per se. You overlook a card that is made for this deck: Recoup. With this little toy added to the mix, you even strengthen the already strong Gifts Ungiven. You talk about giving Will more gas by filling up your graveyard. But just with Recoup you have the possibility to get Will for sure.

Wheel is something I would play every day over Spiral but is not that important as Recoup is. Also I wouldn't overlook the strenght REB and Pyroblast gives you as sideboard utility. It serves as extra counter and removal for two of your biggest enemies: Arcana Laboratory and Meddling Mage. The mana base is just weakened a bit, cause two islands and one swamp should be enough basic power every day. I don't see any reason to compare UBr TPS with Long just for adding a third color splash. It still plays out totally different. It just seems to me that you don't understand how the deck works. You underline that by saysing that TPS is just a pile, overlooking that instead of all the other true combo decks out there it's top8ing every week. Look at Italy: No meta is better prepared for this deck, where hundreds are playing nothing else all the time. And its still one of the biggest contenders over all.

I also absolutly don't understand your deck list: You seem to try out the more controlish way of playing TPS, for what you added a third Gift, of which you never want to see two together on your hand, and by adding library, which in my eyes is horrbile in this deck. You lose a land drop for it and it just gives colorless mana, just for the more than slow route of filling your hand. Play Fact, Skeletal or Deep Analysis over Spiral and third Gift, whey you want to play TPS really controlish. And cut Library and possibly the fourth Underground Sea for extra Fetch Lands. And when your want to go the slow route of playing this deck, with Library and Co, why don't you play at least one artifact bounce. Don't you see all the extra artifact hate, that has just entered the meta: Furnaces, Chalices. What kind of meta call is that?

[Gaagooch]

first off i do have to say that library of alexandria cannot be played in this deck, there are few times when i want to play it, and i never have seven cards unless i cast a draw seven at which point i want a tolarian in play anyways.  time walk is total trash in this deck.  you play it and it now reads, draw a card, untap, reduce storm count to zero, there has never been a time when i wanted to play timewalk and i have tested it.  and chain of vapor is an absolute must in the metagame i am in.  i also do not agree with running 3 gifts and 1 wish, if you run wish i think you need to run 1 gifts one wish, there is no room for 3 gifts and 1 wish.  your list is missing the point of not just playing the moxen but playing them again.  if you cant cast yawg will, then rebuild and hurkyl's recall are houses on their own.  if you have four artifacts in play you tap them all to add mana, then rebuild, replay them all with mana floating then you tendrills for the win.  its so much better than having to rely on just drawing every card you need, draw sevens do not always work.  and darksteel collosus is a big threat, its a two turn clock, when i tinker, depending on board posistion, i usually think is darksteel good here.  because he is a two turn clock that they have to deal with right away.  what deck can? fish, they can swords him, but you being a that 11 extra life gives you lots of extra time to draw goodness.  memory jar sometimes is amazing but normally when i tinker for it i have to wait till my next upkeep to use it.  darksteel simply stated forces your opponent to react instantly.  jar doesnt always win the game, and DSC is the best alternate win condition this deck has.  i mean no doubt you play more control than me, but there are certain cards that have to be run, and your list completly cuts them out.  the list i have is super tight and has performed very well for me, i just have one or two slots that i have been changed intermediately.  those being the two gifts and one spiral.  after testing i think spiral needs to stay and i am not so sure however about two gifts, i think one is enough because if it is needed that badly i can tutor for it, and this will allow me to fit yet another bomb into my deck.

[Komatteru]

Ok, this will be the last time I post on this thread and my last visit to this forum for quite a while (I have much better ways to spend my time).  I also don't feel the need to quote specific people.

RE: Time Walk

If you don't think this is good, you have no idea what you're doing.  For example, this opening right here is quite possibily one of the most amazing things you can ever do: Land, Mox, Time Walk, untap, land, Brainstorm, Duress.  This is not all that uncommon and just wins you the game.  You have 2 lands in play, have Brainstormed (i.e., set up) and disrupted your opponent all before he's taken a turn.  This is completely amazing.  Also, being able to resolve Necro and play Time Walk in the same turn wins you games.  Playing Necro without Time Walk can be a huge liability, especially with this deck, which needs to Necro more cards than Long, for instance, because of its threat density.

RE: Red in TPS

Arguing that the deck needs to have red is like arguing that Slaver needs to run Intuition.  What you're doing is giving the deck crutches.  You don't need Wheel of Fortune and Recoup.  You have enough draw7s, and draw7s come with big consistency issues and problems with fizzling--with this deck in particular.  Draw7s are NOT used for "Ok, whoops, I screwed up or got stopped, lets try this again," and, in fact, draw7s are very limited--it is very rarely the correct time to play a draw7.  An incorrectly timed Draw7 will often lose you the game.

If you fear lots of Arcane Lab, you should be playing another deck.  The concept of packing tons and tons of answers for hate cards goes directly against the whole reason and theory of playing combo in the first place.  Its just terrible to take a deck to a tournament that you know is going to be hated against and then weaken your own deck some more by focusing answers directly towards that hate.  The rise of Arcane Lab does spell problems for this deck, and largely indicates that TPS is not the best deck in the format anymore, nor perhaps even a really good deck to play anymore.  You used to play it because it beat control and Workshop decks, but now that Trinisphere is gone,

TPS can have problems generating enough black mana to combo in general.  Every land on the table that doesn't tap for black gives you one less mana with which to cast your win condition.  You have Dark Ritual, sure, but you will often need to use that mana to cast the other storm producing threats, and it can be difficult to leave BB floating in your pool the entire time when you're trying to play 10 spells.  So, with the addition of red, now you need to keep red mana open (as well as enough black mana to win) while you're comboing out, lest you risk drawing dead cards.  When you've played a land for the turn, and your lone Volcanic Island is tapped because you needed to tap it for blue to cast sometime that was actually in your hand, drawing Wheel of Fortune is functionally no different from drawing a land.  Instead of raising your threat density by adding Wheel and Recoup, you're actually lessening it with conditional threats, which cannot function if you do not have the proper mana available to cast them.  And by forcing yourself to adjust your play to account for the fact that you have conditional threats in your deck that you might want to play, you've just weakened your entire game.

Red Blast has the benefit of being able to nail Arcane Lab, but what do you take out for it?  Clearly, you can't take out business spells, so you need to remove either some Duress or Force of Will (trying to play combo with more than 8 disruption spells is just terrible, and 8 is often too many).  Removing Duress hurts you tremendously more than Red Blast can ever help you.  Duress is a proactive card, while Red Blast is strictly reactive.  Duress disrupts your opponent and gives you information on what you need to do, while Red Blast realistically does neither, unless you use Red Blast to counter a draw spell (which you could have Duressed away).  REB forced you to keep mana open to react to your opponent, which makes your deck weaker.  If you can play a first turn Duress, you can nab Arcane Lab without much difficulty.  If Arcane Lab resolves, you have to wait for your opponent to cast a spell on your end step so you can blast it, which isn't going to happen if your opponent has figured out that you have red (assuming he's not an idiot).  With all that tempo loss, it is likely your opponent has built up the resources to stop you, or just has enough brokenness to make what you do irrelevant.  You can try to counter a Lab with REB, but the Lab is likely to be Forced through, since your not playing many early threats to draw that countermagic out.

RE: Colossus

DSC is terrible in any game that includes Welders.  You can't Tinker it out when there's a Welder on the board, or an immediate threat of a Welder hitting the table.  Drawing it in your opening hand is like mulliganing to 6 right off the bat, which means you're effectively mulliganing 11.7% of your games just because of Colossus, and that doesn't count all the games where you mulligan anyway, meaning you've effectively raised you mull to 6 rate to 20% (est. 9% mulligan rate, which might be a little low).  Add in the fact that mull to 6 often leads directly to mull to 5 (and Colossus will pop up in 10% of your 6 card hands), and you're just shooting yourself in the foot for a card that really isn't that good since a huge percentage of the field can remove it from play without any difficulty in the slightest.

I hate Colossus in general.  I have it in my board, but I hate having it.  It's a stupid card.  You need to have it because there are people who play stupid decks, and Colossus is a card that beats stupid decks, but you certainly don't want to hassle with it in your maindeck.

RE: Library of Alexandria

If you can't seem to understand why this card is amazing in this deck, you need to take a closer look at what this deck does.  This deck wants to dick around for a few turns and play a bit of control and then win.  Understand how important Library used to be to control and how it would still be that way now if getting UU up on turn two weren't the most important thing a control deck has to do now.  This deck has a low threat density and relies on winning by resolving a couple amazing bombs--threat quality instead of quanitity.  This is in between to how control wins--small threats in larger quantities--and how dedicated storm combo (Long, Belcher, Meandeck Tendrils to an extent)--big threats in large quantities--wins.

This deck isn't that big of a colored mana whore that it can't afford to lose one colored land drop and you often need colorless mana to cast your threats anyway.  You have a limited number of off-color mana sources in the form of Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Emerald, Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, and Mana Vault, and the benefit that LoA gives you often outweighs its drawback of not producing blue or black.  When you can draw more stuff, you get to choose what threats you can play, and that's just huge for this deck.  You only need to tap this once to see some benefit, and more than twice is just plain ridiculous.

RE: Other dedicated combo

Realize that there are like 4 people who are capable of playing Long in a tournament well and even fewer who can pilot Belcher properly.  The mere fact that no one save for a handful of people can pilot these decks properly is a big reason why they don't top 8 every week.  Smmenen, the creator of Meandeck Tendrils, has said that that deck is too difficult to play in a tournament and it is not feasible to be expected to find the correct plays with it in 50 minutes for 6-8 rounds.

RE: Artifact Bounce

Maindeck Chalice is not all that common quite yet.  You can't go preaching about "meta game calls" when you have given no specific metagame.  You can't cry about "well, you need answers for Chalice in game 1" when you haven't indicated that chalice is maindecked in enough decks.  You should always be able to win game 1 with this deck, and then board appropriately.  Slaver is by far the most popular control deck in the format (something which has spread to the midwest now), and it is not capable of even putting Chalice in its board, let alone the maindeck.  Stax is a deck that has been weakened severely, and there are really not very many people who should be playing Stax anymore, because it takes a very skilled player to pilot it to victory.  If you manage to dick around long enough where Phyrexian Furnace becomes an issue for you, you've lost anyway.

BTW, not using capital letters makes no one take you seriously.  The board rules call for good punctuation, spelling, and capitalization for the purposes of trying to get you to present your ideas in a manner in which someone might actually think you have something useful to say.

You all miss the whole point of Gifts: it seeks out your threats and gives you two of them.  Its not a control card, it's a win card.  When you Gifts up, for instance, DT, MT, VT, and Ancestral (or whatever), what is your opponent going to give you?  You get Will no matter what in that situation, and either 3 cards or Black Lotus as well.  You can include another Gifts in your 4 cards and just go utterly broken.  Pulling out 4 Moxes can also be amazing.  The card is just plain ridiculous, and if you can't see that, I'm sorry.  The card is fairly difficult to use, and if you think you need red, you probably can't handle playing GiftsPS.

[Gaagooch]

im sorry i didnt know that i was going to get ripped on for every little thing i said.  you must be the best combo player ever, i am so far underneath you in terms of skill that everything you say must be right 100% of the time.  the odds of my drawing a darksteel collosus in my opening hand is less than the odds of me having a brainstorm (to put him back into the deck with), and a fetchland, or other shuffle effect (to shuiffle my deck).  and where i play and who i play with there are maindeck chalices, but that isnt the point of me running hurkly's recall and rebuild.  the point of running those cards is say you are trying to go off, and your opponent counters your one crucial spell.  rebuilding, replaying all your moxen and one and two cc artifacts is an amazingly cheap and effective way to build your storm up, and it will allow you to float mana as well.  and i dont know about you, but i have never played tps to be a deck to mess around for a few turns, i want turn one duress, turn two duress, turn 3 win.  i dont want turn one play library pass, turn two draw off library, then duress, and that basic scenario.  tps is not a control deck it is a combo deck, library of alexandria is an amazing card...in a control deck that can keep its hand restocked all the time, it is sub-par in a combo deck such as tps.  where i play i do see a lot of arcane labs just for the record, but as a way to deal with them we have found that annul gets the job done. 

[Phele]

Ok, this will be the last time I post on this thread and my last visit to this forum for quite a while (I have much better ways to spend my time).  I also don't feel the need to quote specific people.

Ok, I don't have a problem with quoting specific people. Sorry for not following your words without response. Sorry combo authority, please come back and enlighten us. Man, lets talk about the points you are adding or don't post.

On the Red splash: I never said, that Red is an automatic inclusion in TPS, but on the same side, I wouldn't exclude the color splash totally. TPS UBr had it's great tournament results as even the UBg version had in Italy. It has advantages and disadvantages. I agree with you, that you shouldn't play TPS in a meta full of hate. But Arcana Laboratory and Meddling Mage exist in every meta, even if it's not specifically hating you. So don't say there is no use for Red Blasts. Same for Wheel. I never said, that wheel is needed in this deck. But I need the less is a lesson on how bad or good Draw7s are. What I said is, that Wheel is ten times better than Spiral, an addition you proposed. Same for the color problems you get, by adding red. They exist, but they are less problematic then you are stressing. And in the same post you give a manifest for adding Library, a land thats gives you no colored mana just for the benefit of getting one or two cards. Sorry, but these arguments don't work together. Library is bad in this deck for the same reason that Gush is crappy in this deck.

On Death Long: I can't hear it anymore, that the only reason for Long not top8ing is, cause it's so difficult to play and just smmenen+3 can play it correctly. Who said so? Right, Smmenen himself, who invented almost every deck in Vintage, so how can we start an argue on it. But I do: Death Long is just worse than TPS, that's the whole reason. Two of the absolutly best players over here in Germany have tried Death Long many tournaments, where the meta was perfectly made for it. And they never top8ed, while TPS UBr came in secons twice. They knew how to play this damn deck, as I do.

On Gifts: Same again, nobody said that you should by any means exclude Gifts from this deck. I play TPS for almost two years now, and we over here in Europe were the first one who included Gifts in TPS, so why do you act like you were the first and only one, who knows about the use of it. But as said before, you don't want to see twice of them in your hand,  what is more likely, when you play three of them. Two is just the perfect number. If you want play more, play a Gifts deck. And for sure, as Gifts is strong on its own even in the UB build, it gets much stronger with Recoup. Do you really want to discuss that or the use of Recoup on its own in this deck?

On Artifact bounce: I'm so happy for you, that you don't seem to have Workshops in your meta.  I've never played in a meta, where Workshops weren't great contenders and in the moment Chalices seem to be everywhere. For that I would never cut Rebuild or Hurkyl in this deck. But if there's no need for it in yours: Fine.

Sorry for starting some kind of flame war, that was not my main intention. But you can't just come in the post, say something like "Ok , you all have no idea, how to play this deck. Play this list, or play the wrong one." and really expect no contradiction. That just doesn't work.

On topic: There are two extreme ways of playing TPS. The more comboish one with more draw sevens and sometimes an included thirs color. A typical example can be find here:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22266.0

The other way is the slower more controlish route with less or no Draw7s and more on sided draw, usually with just two colors. A good example came in third in Padova, which you can find here one the end of the post:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22356.0

Between this version there exist many variants, you can think about, however your meta is.

Sorry for not always using the right interpunctuation and spelling. English is not my mother language, but I do my best to use it correctly.

[Necrologia]

Okay lets break this down bit by bit.

the odds of my drawing a darksteel collosus in my opening hand is less than the odds of me having a brainstorm (to put him back into the deck with), and a fetchland, or other shuffle effect (to shuiffle my deck)

What happens when you don't have the Brainstorm though? You only run 4, so it's certainly not going to be in your opener ever time. Most likely you'll be forced to mulligan, and seeing as how combo decks tend to mull a bunch anyway, adding cards that are dead in your opening hand is generally a no-no.

Colossus is fine maindeck if for some reason you see no welders and lots of Null Rods packing Scrub Aggro, but if that's the case you could have Berserk Murlodant in that spot and be nearly as well off. Colossus helps you in your good matchups but hurts you in your harder ones. For that reason alone it's going to be sideboard material.

and where i play and who i play with there are maindeck chalices, but that isn't the point of me running hurkly's recall and rebuild.  the point of running those cards is say you are trying to go off, and your opponent counters your one crucial spell.  rebuilding, replaying all your moxen and one and two cc artifacts is an amazingly cheap and effective way to build your storm up, and it will allow you to float mana as well.

Rebuilds are excellent at ramping storm, but their main purpose is, and has always been to combat artifact hate such as Trinisphere, Chalice and the like. With Trinisphere gone, you almost certainly don't need 3 MD bounce spells. 1 or 2 is fine for insurance but anymore is just wasting deck slots. What crucial spell does bounce help, once it's countered? If you played Bargain into Mana Drain, no amount of Storm count is going to save you unless you have tendrils+mana in hand.

and i dont know about you, but i have never played tps to be a deck to mess around for a few turns, i want turn one duress, turn two duress, turn 3 win.

In comparison to other Storm decks, that is messing around for a few turns. Deathlong will Brainstorm turn 1 then play a Draw7 turn 2. Belcher will try and go apeshit as soon as mulligans are resolved. TPS tries to set itself up over the first 2 turns then win turn 3. If you're trying to win ASAP with the deck you will stall. Constantly. It's much better to wait 1 more turn to get that duress off before Necro than it is to drop it now and have it drained. Once that's happened you need to dig for another must counter while your opponent will find himself with the mana to draw into even more counters.

i dont want turn one play library pass, turn two draw off library, then duress, and that basic scenario.

Why not? You'll have seen some more cards and begun disrupting the opponent. TPS lacks enough bombs and acceleration to just wreck people turn 1 with any kind of consistency. TPS's gameplan is to play a few well protected threats rather than just trying to Hulk Smash through a counter wall. This is accomplished by playing a few draw/hand optimization spells, duressing to clear the way, then playing the Bargain/Necro/Will or whatever it is you've draw into. Library helps this plan immensely by letting you find your handful of threats, and giving you some real game vs control.

tps is not a control deck it is a combo deck

Not during the first 2 or 3 turns it isn't. While you're setting up your mana base and digging for a threat TPS plays very much like a control deck. That's one of the reasons that Library is so good in this deck.

@ Phele

So don't say there is no use for Red Blasts. Same for Wheel. I never said, that wheel is needed in this deck. But I need the less is a lesson on how bad or good Draw7s are. What I said is, that Wheel is ten times better than Spiral, an addition you proposed.

Red Blasts are great, but how are you siding them in? Something's got to go out for them, and that means you're cutting the superior Force, Duress, or business. Well that or land which is clearly a bad idea. Wheel is not better than Spiral in this deck. Obviously the deck would run it if it was blue, but it's not. It's a color you have to cut basics for in a deck that needs every land badly.

Time Spiral wins you the game when you cast it. I cannot stress this enough. In this deck Time Spiral might as well be Bargain. It results in you having at least 3 mana up, including both black and blue, in addition to a fresh hand of 7. It's also rather retarded with Academy in play, but if that's out your in good shape anyway. Wheel certainly isn't a bad card, it's just been cursed with a terrible color for this deck.

On Death Long: I can't hear it anymore, that the only reason for Long not top8ing is, cause it's so difficult to play and just smmenen+3 can play it correctly. Who said so? Right, Smmenen himself, who invented almost every deck in Vintage, so how can we start an argue on it. But I do: Death Long is just worse than TPS, that's the whole reason. Two of the absolutly best players over here in Germany have tried Death Long many tournaments, where the meta was perfectly made for it. And they never top8ed, while TPS UBr came in secons twice. They knew how to play this damn deck, as I do.

Anyone who's seriously tried playing the deck agrees that Death Long is insanely hard to play perfectly. Sure, it has one of the highest "oops I win" percentages in the game, but what about the hands with just some rituals, consultation and Brainstorm? Which do you play? In what order?

Deathlong is not just worse than TPS. The best example I can think of is that Deathlong has the edge in the TPS/Long matchup. Force of Will is great, but it force TPS into the control seat. That leaves TPS jockeying for position while Long goes balls to the wall and tries to win nearly every turn. Trying to win is obviously better than trying to not lose.

Please don't take this as a flame, but the odds of you knowing how to play Death Long really well is pretty low. The very first time I saw a long list with 4x LED I became hooked. Wanting to play combo was actually the reason I started to collect power. Despite having played the deck in one form or another for years, I'm still not even close to perfect with it. I'm hardly the best player on the face of the Earth, but any deck that can't be mastered in over a year of playing is _not_ easy to play. I can practically guarantee that some of the games you've lost with the deck could have been won had you been playing the deck optimally. Again, all I can ask is that you take this as a comment on the deck, and not your individual play skill. The difficultly of the deck, or at the very least the perception that the deck is very hard to play, has kept people away from it. And with virtually no one playing it, you can't expect it to top 8 very often.

[Phele]

On artifact bounce: Instead of Trinisphere I see more Chalices and Sphere of Resistance played. For that I keep one artifact bounce main but think about changing it to Hurkyl.

On Red Blast: We are not talking about having four REBs in the sideboard, at max two of them. In my eyes, there are plenty of candidates to be cut, depending on the matchup: The lesser needed bounce, Mana Crypt and Vault, Tinker, Jar, Wheel, Spiral, Cunning Wish, Burning Wish, however you play the deck. By the way: Extra Counters and extra bounce for the hate in form of Misdirection, Rushing River, Echoing Truth has always been in TPS sides, so there is need and space for it to use it.

On Wheel/Spiral: I would at least say, thats a meta call. I don't like wheel that much too, especially with many welders around. But when I play without it or without red at all, I would rather play Fact or Frantic over Spiral. I like this card too, but when I spend six mana in TPS, I want to play Bargain or Desire, which are superior in my eyes.

On Death Long: I don't feel flamed by your comments, necro, at all. They were informative and focussed on the discussion. I just don't agree. But this shouldn't be a discussion on Long. Lets just keep it, that Death Long is the strongest combo contender in the hand of the best players - to which I would never count myself - but almost never appears in any top8.

[Phele]

Sorry for double posting, but i just wanted to up the thread with tournament results that could be interesting for the discussion:

http://www.morphling.de/top8decks.php?id=256

Here we found two entries in the biggest and most competitive tournament in Germany with almost the exact TPS UBr list I am using in the moment. And that in a field full of hate. -But the list still have potential to improve as the other results show:

http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=22875.0

Koen has done both: He included Red, but just for Recoup and cut the lesser usefull Wheel and Burning Wish, and also included three Gifts as JDizzle proposed. A good mix I would say Man this deck is even Cap proved with four win conditions, but also has some strange, probably meta choices. No basic swamp at all and permanent bounce just over cunning wish seem at least discussable to me.

[Gaagooch]

Those are both different from the build I am currently running, but they both intrigue me and make me want to test them out.  I almost already splashed red into the deck for wheel and a recoup option, but i opted not to due to the hate in my meta.  Not the null rod, or green red aggro hate, but the wasteland hate.  We decided that it would just hurt the deck too much but if these decks both performed well at higher levels, then I am relatively confident that they have been tested enough and have been found to be strong enough to use.  Thank you for your help and I'm sorry that rather than this post being somewhat normal I turned it into a flamewar.  I started this post looking for help on my TPS build and instead rejected the help without much sound reasoning.  I think I may be sticking with my build of TPS for this weekend though as I have yet to test with red and expect that the deck will play slightly different with it.  Again thank you for the ideas, and I will be sure to test them out.