[Innistrad] - Snapcaster Mage

[Daenyth]

I didn't play snaps this weekend, but from what I've seen of people who did, and what I've tested online, riptide lab is win-more. Using him once is plenty.

Riptide Laboratory breaks the blue mirror match if the game isn't over by turn three.  Its essentially just a better Library of Alexandria.

I wouldn't say that it breaks the mirror, it's not that strong. It does give you inevitability though. Plus, it creates serious problems for Jace since he can attack him with impunity since it would be dumb to bounce him back into your hand.

As far as costing too much, since it's a land it doesn't cost anything. I don't really see how you can argue that it is a negative (barring potential color issues), since all you do is create a threat for free. That is something the opponent has to respect and address. Whether or not it's the correct decision to use it, is a play-decision but that is separate than a card evaluation.

Running a nonbasic land that taps for colorless mana is not free. Perhaps this is a regional thing -- where we play there are a TON of workshop decks. The added value against blue does not outweigh the added vulnerability against workshops, for our area. Agree to disagree and say that running it or not is a meta call?

[forests failed you]

I didn't play snaps this weekend, but from what I've seen of people who did, and what I've tested online, riptide lab is win-more. Using him once is plenty.

Riptide Laboratory breaks the blue mirror match if the game isn't over by turn three.  Its essentially just a better Library of Alexandria.

I wouldn't say that it breaks the mirror, it's not that strong. It does give you inevitability though. Plus, it creates serious problems for Jace since he can attack him with impunity since it would be dumb to bounce him back into your hand.

As far as costing too much, since it's a land it doesn't cost anything. I don't really see how you can argue that it is a negative (barring potential color issues), since all you do is create a threat for free. That is something the opponent has to respect and address. Whether or not it's the correct decision to use it, is a play-decision but that is separate than a card evaluation.

Running a nonbasic land that taps for colorless mana is not free. Perhaps this is a regional thing -- where we play there are a TON of workshop decks. The added value against blue does not outweigh the added vulnerability against workshops, for our area. Agree to disagree and say that running it or not is a meta call?

So, use your Brain.  Don't run Riptide Laboratory in place of a colored mana source, run it in place of a spell.  In that case, it should improve your Workshop match up because it is an additional land in your deck.  I disagree that running Riptide Laboratory is a "meta" call, rather I think that the card Riptide Laboratory is one of the most powerful cards/interactions in the Snapcaster Control deck. 

Against most of the decks in the format, especially blue decks that are maindecking a bunch of Flusterstorms and Mental Missteps, it is actually pretty difficult to deal with Snapcaster with buyback.  It isn't like the majority of other decks play four Mana Drains the way that Vintage Snapcaster Control does.  Also, Riptide Laboratory + Snapcaster Mage can also be used as a Maze of Ith against non-trampling creatures, which gives it added value.  For instance, against Mark Hornung I was able to protect my life total from a grown Quieron Dryad while I set up Jace bounce + Snapcaster Drain on the replay.

If you don't understand why a land that allows you to return Snapcaster Mage which has flash to your hand at instant speed for 1U + Tap, I don't know what to tell you.  Perhaps, it is just because it is fairly different from anything we have seen before in Vintage, and people are hesitant to understand new concepts, ideas, or strategies especially in Vintage; however, I am confident that decks that once people start playing with Snapcaster Mage decks that the inclusion of AT LEAST one Riptide Laboratory will become standard operating procedure.  My article discussing the new DeMars/Vintage Snapcaster Control deck will be up tonight at midnight.  But here is the list:

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Flusterstorm
1 Red Elemental Blast
3 Mental Misstep
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Nihl Spellbomb
1 Tinker
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Fire Ice
1 Echoing Truth
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
4 Snapcaster Mage
1 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Jace the Mindsculpter
1 Gifts Ungiven

1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby

1 Riptide Laboratory

4 City of Brass
1 Flooded Strand
1 Misty Rainforest
2 polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Tropical Island
1 island

Sideboard

3 Ancient Grudge
2 Nature's Claim
4 Leyline of the void
1 Yixlid Jailer
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Flusterstorm
1 Pyroblast

[Kiriyuu]

That deck looks sick!

*Goes to proxy it up to play with/against.*

[Womba]

Looks like you changed the list a bit because I remember some FoFs being played against me...

[madmanmike25]

So far I've seen Snapcaster work with Noxious Revival quite nicely.  When you have multiple Snapcasters getting multiple Revivals targeting Ancestral Recall it can get down right stupid.  Phyrexian mana helps you get more mileage cheaply.  Oh, it's also an instant.  I know many people who Mystical Tutor for Recall, so the whole top-of-the-library aspect really isn't so bad.

[Daenyth]

That list looks really sick.

From what you've written, I think you've convinced me. I stand corrected.

[nineisnoone]

Nice. When we got to discussing the Blue mirror, I was actually thinking a lot about Mana Drain being a better option for the mirror, so I questioned whether or not it would just be better to run Mana Drain instead.

I had never considered the option of running them both. It works very well since Drain gives you mana to play Snapcaster Mage on larger spells too and mana for Lab to bounce Mage back into your hand.

[Demonic Attorney]

Brian,

What is your sense about the damage that splash hate for Dredge could do to this engine?  Obviously someone boarding in 4x Leyline of the Void isn't really going to enjoy an advantage against you, but what about someone who, like your list, runs 1 or 2 Nihil Spellbombs?  Since Dredge is enjoying a period of ascendancy in Vintage right now, I'd expect there will be a disproportionately high representation of Dredge hate in the metagame, and it might come in diverse forms, increasing the possibility of encountering other Blue decks who have the maindeck or SB tools against Dredge to also use to disrupt your Snapcaster engine.

[forests failed you]

Looks like you changed the list a bit because I remember some FoFs being played against me...

Yeah, Paul and Steve mislead me against my better judgment that Fact or Fiction would be nuts.  I didn't actually test it, but believed that their testing would benefit me.  It didn't, Kevin played a list closer to my first list which had two Jace and no FOF and made top eight.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too difficult to convince me that I SHOULD be playing Fact or Fiction, as it is one of my favorite cards of all time.    Especially, since it just got unrestricted.

DA:

Nihl Spellbomb is very good against Snapcasters.  That is why I am playing two in the maindeck.  Don't forget we have three missteps to counter it for value. 

[Cruel Ultimatum]

Looks like you changed the list a bit because I remember some FoFs being played against me...

Yeah, Paul and Steve mislead me against my better judgment that Fact or Fiction would be nuts.  I didn't actually test it, but believed that their testing would benefit me.  It didn't, Kevin played a list closer to my first list which had two Jace and no FOF and made top eight.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too difficult to convince me that I SHOULD be playing Fact or Fiction, as it is one of my favorite cards of all time.    Especially, since it just got unrestricted.

Even though it seems like FoF and snapcaster belong together, I do agree that you cannot play both, since it is going to make your early game so much worse. I am however suprised to not see any preordains.

Also, Do you think vendilion clique could have a place in this deck? It is a card that has been seeing a lot more play lately, works well with your situational cards like fire/ice, echoing truth, blightsteel, and is something else that goes with the riptide lab.

[nineisnoone]

Looks like you changed the list a bit because I remember some FoFs being played against me...

Yeah, Paul and Steve mislead me against my better judgment that Fact or Fiction would be nuts.  I didn't actually test it, but believed that their testing would benefit me.  It didn't, Kevin played a list closer to my first list which had two Jace and no FOF and made top eight.

Unfortunately, it wasn't too difficult to convince me that I SHOULD be playing Fact or Fiction, as it is one of my favorite cards of all time.    Especially, since it just got unrestricted.

Even though it seems like FoF and snapcaster belong together, I do agree that you cannot play both, since it is going to make your early game so much worse. I am however suprised to not see any preordains.

Also, Do you think vendilion clique could have a place in this deck? It is a card that has been seeing a lot more play lately, works well with your situational cards like fire/ice, echoing truth, blightsteel, and is something else that goes with the riptide lab.

I don't see everyone's affinity for Preordain with Snapcaster. In my eyes it's more or less just a filler play that you do when you don't really have anything else to do.

[forests failed you]

I actually made two changes to my list late the night before after having played about fifteen games against Steve's Doomsday deck.  I added two Preordains and two Fact or Fictions.  Other than that I had built the list that Kevin played and made top eight with.  All four of the substitutions turned out to be poor in hindsight, and I should have just kept what I had brewed up before.  As you can see, I have cut all of that garbage from how I would build the list moving forward. 

I'm not really a type one grinder the way I used to be in the days of the SCG P9 series, and pretty much only play magic in large scale events these days.  For Vintage that means Champs and Waterbury, and for other constructed formats GPs, Nats, Pts, SCG invitational, and Worlds--I much prefer preparing for big tournaments where one spends a week or two trying to break the format, to playing formats where you show up and play in a well defined metagame week-in-week-out.  So, I really don't know whether or even how people will prepare or game against the Snapcaster Control deck.  I do think the deck is a really good deck, pretty much any playable deck with four Mana Drains almost always is.  I wanted Preordains so I could cheat a land out of my deck, but in retrospect that was not really the greatest idea.  I played against Workshops four times this weekend, and defeated it three times--the match I won I had ten turns to draw a land to break out from under a sphere and missed all ten times, but I drew both preordains...

So, basically I built the foundation of what a tier one Snapcaster Control deck might look like, and it is up to the weekend warriors to do what they will with it.  I am very much looking forward to seeing whether or not people play the deck, how it performs, and what is going to happen as the post innistrad metagame unfolds!

I do think that there are a lot of viable cards people could be playing in a deck like this, and Clique is certainly worth considering.  I hate Tinker and Blightsteel Colossus, as having those cards in my deck cost me far more games than they won me.  (hardcasting BSC twice and winning with it doesn't count as being useful IMO) I would probably rather have two Cliques or anything else moving forward, but I understand the combo is super powerful and wouldn't fault anybody for playing with.

It seems like a really exciting time to be playing type one, although I fear that if people actually become proficient with the Doomsday deck that it could very easily become dominant.  That deck is unbelievable fast and consistent, though it takes a bit of practice to be able to play it well.  I don't think I have seen a vintage deck that broken and consistent since Flash. 

[Onslaught]

So far I've seen Snapcaster work with Noxious Revival quite nicely.  When you have multiple Snapcasters getting multiple Revivals targeting Ancestral Recall it can get down right stupid.  Phyrexian mana helps you get more mileage cheaply.  Oh, it's also an instant.  I know many people who Mystical Tutor for Recall, so the whole top-of-the-library aspect really isn't so bad.

Agreed. This morning I put together a Gro deck with 2 Snapcaster, and I took out my Regrowth for Noxious Revival to have more Snapcaster targets. Playing Ancestral (easy to find it quickly since I have the whole Imperial Seal, Scroll, Vamp, Mystical, Demonic package), putting it on top with Noxious endstep, and putting it on top endstep again with Snapcaster was really cool.

I've messed around with Noxious Revival in aggro control decks before, and one of the best uses of it was always as an instant speed Time Walk for 2 life. Putting a land on top of someone's deck in a midgame scenario when your Dryad has a few counters on it is almost always game winning. Snapcaster lets you do this ghetto Time Walk play twice in a row...

Edit: Ok I've been playng with this some more, Snapcaster is insane with Noxious Revival. If you have eaten up their hand with Duress effects, Noxious putting something useless on top followed by Snapcaster flashing Noxious to do it again is always enough time for Dryad to get big enough to kill.

Doing something like Ancestral, Noxious putting Ancestral back, Snapcaster flashing Noxious to put Ancestral back again, and then another Snapcaster to flash Ancestral blah blah is a nice cute/rare blowout. Similarly, Snapcaster flashing Noxious to put any kind of value spell on top is cool. For Gro though (or any Duress heavy deck), the real strength is in memory lapsing the top of their deck for a few turns while your 4/4 or 5/5 Dryad finishes them off. On top of all that, you still have the "oops I win" Snapcaster interactions that are valuable to non-Duress decks, like flashing back a Time Walk. He's just so nutty sometimes, I can't believe how much people are sleeping on him.

[Saya]

Surgical Extraction is cool sideboard

[nineisnoone]

Doomsday Deck!?  List? I love Doomsday and want to see it broken. I'm guessing it runs 4x Gush?

What would you rather have as your win condition if you do not run BSC? If you just want to go beats, you could just add 2 Dark Confidants instead or go 4 Jace.

[diopter]

Maybe I'm just not using my brain correctly but I'd understand your endorsement for Riptide Lab a lot better if you didn't make absurd statements like "breaks the blue mirror past turn 3". This is very reminiscent of the Dredge thing.

By the by, your list looks like it has serious consistency issues. Playing against Dryads answers my question though.

---

Noxious Revivals are terrible. Seriously, worst idea I've ever seen, to take a Regrowth variant whose usefulness is already in question, and use it to Regrow a Regrow that just flat out sucks.

[Onslaught]

to take a Regrowth variant whose usefulness is already in question

Only to you 

[Stormanimagus]

@Brian — You are really giving the D-Day deck your blessing eh? It seems like it'll have a really REALLY hard time with many variants of Shops. Spheres make all your stuff virtually uncastable and you don't have enough artifact accel to overcome that. So why do you think it's so good?

-Storm

[Nefarias]

For discussion, here's the other Snapcaster list in the Waterbury Top 8.

4 Dark Confidant
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique

1 Jace the Mindsculptor
1 Tinker
1 Blightsteel Colossus
1 Time Vault
1 Voltaic Key

4 Force of Will
2 Mana Drain
2 Mental Misstep
2 Spell Pierce
2 Thoughtseize
1 Hurkyl's Recall

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Sensei's Divining Top

4 Underground Sea
3 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
5 Fetches
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine
1 Wasteland
5 Moxen
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring

SB:
4 Energy Flux
1 Steel Sabotage
2 Dismember
1 Virtue's Ruin
2 Flusterstorm
1 Extirpate
1 Leyline of the Void
3 Yixlid Jailer

I built it a week before the tournament and mostly only tested against blue decks, which proved to be pretty important since that's all I faced for the first five rounds (2 Oath, BobTPS, 1 GushStorm, Kevin Cron's Snapcaster deck) and 5-0'ed. The Dredge sideboard is definitely terrible, as I got rolled in Top 8 and I'm pretty sure Jailer and Snapcaster is a non-bo. The Shops sideboard may also be terrible, but I don't know yet.

[Phele]

I really like the list posted by Nefarias. Straight UB is so appealing. It seems that Riptide Laboratory could work in this deck pretty good as well with so many Wizards flying around and five of them having a comes intop play..., sorry, entering the battlefield effect. Another option could be to run one or two Trinket Mages. You could include Explosives to accomplish your small mana denial part and especially Scullclamp to get some extra draw out of your Tiagos after attacking or to get rid of a near lethal Bob and to exchange him into cards.

[forests failed you]

Maybe I'm just not using my brain correctly but I'd understand your endorsement for Riptide Lab a lot better if you didn't make absurd statements like "breaks the blue mirror past turn 3". This is very reminiscent of the Dredge thing.

By the by, your list looks like it has serious consistency issues. Playing against Dryads answers my question though.

---

Noxious Revivals are terrible. Seriously, worst idea I've ever seen, to take a Regrowth variant whose usefulness is already in question, and use it to Regrow a Regrow that just flat out sucks.

Clearly, the problem isn't that you aren't using your brain correctly, but rather that you are choosing not to use it at all.  

If you can't understand why buying back Snapcaster Mage every turn in a deck full of tutors, counterspells, and removal would be good in the mid to late game of a blue mirror, then perhaps you should change games and play hungry, hungry hippos or Uno as these games feature mechanics and concepts that will be easier for you to comprehend.  I know this is likely to blow your mind, but Riptide Laboratory generates what Magic players often refer to as "card advantage."  Over a decade ago E.D.T. wrote a great article about this concept that might help clarify some of the basic principles of Magic theory you are clearly struggling with:  

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/fundamentals/3690_Tempo_And_Card_Advantage.html

(I actually re-read the article when I went looking for the link, and it is still an amazing read!  Anybody who hasn't read this should definately check it out, especially diopter).

In regard to your second point, that the deck "looks like it has serious consistency issues":  since your vague statement expresses absolutely nothing of substance I'm pretty sure that your observation on this point is probably just as completely wrong as your previous statement.  If you had said something along the line of:  "I am concerned that without a full suite of 1cc library manipulation effects (Preordain, Ponder, Top etc.) the deck may have problems finding the key spells at the key moments."  If you had said something reasonable and useful to the discussion (instead of what you actually said which was "DERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,") I would have adressed that concern in the following way:

Diaper,
Diopter,

Thank you for your insightful question.  

There are a few reasons that I don't particularly care for Preordain in the Snapcaster Control deck.  The first is that leaving up as many colored mana sources as possible during the opponent's turn is of critical importance, and this is doubly true in the early turns of the game.  The reason is that the deck packs a ton of permission and Mana Drains require lots of U mana.  Basically, I cut the 1CC cantrips for more 1cc counterspells.  Snapcaster + Preordain isn't really fantastic value.  1UU for a 2/1 with Scrye 2 draw a card is basically just worse than a Seagate Oracle.  Sure you are up a 2/1 that replaced itself, but this is hardly exciting.  What is exciting is trading Snapcaster Mage's ability for one of my opponent's cards (that they paid to cast) by flashing back a counterspell and being up a 2/1!  Especially a 2/1 that can later be bounced with Jace, Echoing Truth, or Riptide Laboratory.  (Oh, yes I have multiple times Echoing Truth'd both my Snapcasters...).  So, while the deck doesn't scrye a bunch to find specific cards, this is actually offset by the fact that I have such redundancy in the counterspell department that aside from having lands--most of my cards actually do the same thing!  The interesting thing about the Snapcaster Control deck is that it is the closest thing to a pure control deck I have found to be Vintage playable since Keeper, as Snapcaster Mage actually just affords me the ability to sit back and counter spell after spell after spell and run an opponent out of cards.

Thirdly, I wasn't just playing against some Dryads--they were the reigning Vintage Champion, Mark Hornung's Dryads; but seeing as how you think (falsely) you know better than me, it is only fitting that you also think (falsely) that you know better than him as well.  

Lastly, I don't think that Noxious Revivals sound terrible at all and seems like a pretty reasonable card to test out.  There is obviously utility to getting back Time Walk and Ancestral a bunch of times with Riptide Laboratory; but it is also pretty sick that after sideboard it can just recur your efficient instant speed sideboard cards.  Nihl Spellbombs against Dredge, Nature's Claim against Stax, or Lightning Bolt / Removal against Fish.  Diopter, since I'm 100% positive that you hadn't even considered the full possibilities that this card could aford a control deck because of how you have represented yourself as an individual who lacks understanding of basic tactical concepts in Vintage perhaps me explaining everything to you as though you were a small child makes things a bit clearer.

@ Saya:  Surgical Extraction is a sweet sideboard, straight from the brain of Kevin Cron.

@ Nineisnoone:  I'm sure Steven will have a Doomsday primer coming out sometime soon.  Yes, 4x Gush, with a ton of disruption.  I have an irrational hatred of playing with Blightsteel Colossus, so I wouldn't specifically advocate not playing with it (especially since it can lead to a lot of free wins), but I wouldn't specifically blame somebody for wanting to play with either Wurmcoil Engine or Myr Battlesphere instead.

@ Stormanimagus:  I didn't specifically give it my blessing, as I am not a priest or a cleric (according to Wizards I'm actually a battlemage...), however I do think that it is a very, very, very, powerful deck.  Specifically, Doomsday is particularly good against every single deck that I would build and play, because it is a fast, consistant, and extremely disruptive strategy.  So, obviously if it is going to crush all the decks I like, I'm going to probably overvalue how good it is.  I agree that the deck as Steve played it clearly had issues with Workshops, but I suspect that as the deck becomes more finely tuned that match up could be hedged.  At the very worst a deck that crushes blue decks and has problems with Workshops is far from being a "bad deck" in the current Vintage metagame.  It wasn't just crushing my deck, it was crushing all the blue decks we built.

Here is a link to my Snapcaster Control article that went live last night.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22933_Vintage_AvantGarde_Waterbury_And_Vintage_Snapcaster_Control.html

Obviously the insults go well beyond what is permitted under site rules. Warnings to Diopter and Forests Failed You for flaming. Please, keep it civil. -Eastman

[bluemage55]

The interesting thing about the Snapcaster Control deck is that it is the closest thing to a pure control deck I have found to be Vintage playable since Keeper, as Snapcaster Mage actually just affords me the ability to sit back and counter spell after spell after spell and run an opponent out of cards.

Keeper didn't actually do that; you might have been thinking of BBS.  Keeper generally used its 9 disruption slots only to slow down the opponents long enough to drop a key silver bullet like Morphling, Mind Twist, or Balance.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22933_Vintage_AvantGarde_Waterbury_And_Vintage_Snapcaster_Control.html

After testing out your lists, I definitely have to agree that the synergy between Tiago and Drain is insane.  The mana that Drain gives you fuels the somewhat costly plays with Tiago, and by converse Drain is the best unrestricted flashback target.  The main concern I do have is that the shop matchup and fish matchups seem rather weak (it's also why I understand the inclusion of red for hate).  I'm also curious as to the inclusion of City of Brass?  Were you really unable to get enough consistency using fetches and dual lands?  Finally, no Tolarian Academy in a deck with 10 cheap artifacts and a blue-intensive CA engine?

Btw, your final list appears to be 59 cards, and I assume the 60th should be Riptide Laboratory.

[Onslaught]

Here is a link to my Snapcaster Control article that went live last night.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22933_Vintage_AvantGarde_Waterbury_And_Vintage_Snapcaster_Control.html

Great article (and a highly amusing post). Snapcaster being viable is such a great thing, as it opens up a new archetype that doesn't use Bob or Gush for its engine. I get a little bit giddy thinking about the massive amount of viable decks in Vintage right now. I can think of at least 10 highly distinct blue decks that could be considered top tier (controlish Gush decks such as East Coast Wins, Bob Gush decks, Shay's Champs Gush, Suicide Jace Vault, Snapcaster based decks, Doomsday, Turbo Tezz, Lotus Cobra decks, etc...and tons of other worthwhile fringe builds). Shops are better than ever with Lodestone, there various Fish or GW beats builds are viable, and Dredge is a monster...it's just a great time to be building decks and playing this format.

[Troy_Costisick]

Here is a link to my Snapcaster Control article that went live last night.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22933_Vintage_AvantGarde_Waterbury_And_Vintage_Snapcaster_Control.html

Great article (and a highly amusing post). Snapcaster being viable is such a great thing, as it opens up a new archetype that doesn't use Bob or Gush for its engine. I get a little bit giddy thinking about the massive amount of viable decks in Vintage right now. I can think of at least 10 highly distinct blue decks that could be considered top tier (controlish Gush decks such as East Coast Wins, Bob Gush decks, Shay's Champs Gush, Suicide Jace Vault, Snapcaster based decks, Doomsday, Turbo Tezz, Lotus Cobra decks, etc...and tons of other worthwhile fringe builds). Shops are better than ever with Lodestone, there various Fish or GW beats builds are viable, and Dredge is a monster...it's just a great time to be building decks and playing this format.

Yes, I agree.  It hasn't been this good since 2008!

[nineisnoone]

Here is a link to my Snapcaster Control article that went live last night.

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/vintage/22933_Vintage_AvantGarde_Waterbury_And_Vintage_Snapcaster_Control.html

Nice article. With Snapcaster having Flash, have you considered utilizing Standstill or Remora? Like Landstill but using Snapcasters to beat down (obviously in response to them breaking standstill) rather than man-lands.  That would strengthen your early game and focus more on the Snapcasters for the win, as you stated was your intention.

[Daenyth]

Remora has some hefty anti-synergy with snapcaster (namely choking on your mana base)

[nineisnoone]

Remora has some hefty anti-synergy with snapcaster (namely choking on your mana base)

I haven't played much with Remora, but I always assumed that it was just run out for the first few turns so you can stabilize. Afterwards, you play normal for a bit and drop the odd Remora when you have mana to spare.

Also you could have builds that run Repeal to bounce it for value. Repeal isn't that bad (though not that good either) with Snapcaster.

But, yes, it's admittedly an idea that is a bit of a stretch.

[bisamratte]

This is what I've built around Snapcaster Mage:

4x Island
1x Swamp
2x Flooded Strand
4x Polluted Delta
3x Underground Sea
1x Tolarian Academy

4x Snapcaster Mage
4x Dark Confidant
1x Blightsteel Colossus

1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Pearl
1x Mox Sapphire
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Emerald
1x Mox Jet
1x Mana Crypt
1x Sol Ring
2x Sensei's Divining Top

2x Duress
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Brainstorm
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
1x Dark Ritual
1x Time Walk
1x Merchant Scroll
1x Hurkyl's Recall
1x Demonic Tutor
4x Mana Drain
1x Tinker
1x Yawgmoth's Will
3x Intuition
1x Gifts Ungiven
1x Tendrils of Agony
4x Force of Will

Intuition is pretty nice in this deck. You can make piles like Lotus, Anc, Ywill with Mage in hand. Mage, Mage, Tinker, or Anc, Tinker, Mage and many more winning piles are also possible. Playing the deck feels a little bit like old Gifts.
Still, there might be some changes. A second Hurkyl's could be needed...

[Saya]

I wonder if tinker is needed.Tinker has dis-synergy with snapcaster mage.In my build I don't run tinker,tendrils.Win conditions are only 10 creatures and 3 jaces.Becuz every turn's sober attack or jace+2 leads me victory.I can dominate the board if I play snapcaster suitably.

[Grand Inquisitor]

Remora has some hefty anti-synergy with snapcaster (namely choking on your mana base)

This has not been my experience.  Remora is often misunderstood / misplayed card.  Combined with Snapcaster Mage, the two cards have some interesting synergies:

- Snapcaster's flash allows you to play it on key cards out of the grave during your upkeep with Remora's upkeep payment on the stack.
- A resolved Snapcaster can prove a decent clock, especially if backed up with Bob and Clique, forcing your opponent into your Remora
- Snapcaster's hefty mana cost usually won't conflict with an early Remora since it won't be active anyway.  To the contrary, the midgame that Remora buys you by stalling can make Snapcaster more playable/easier to get active
- With both Snapcaster and Remora you plan on tapping down, making the necessary free/cheap disruption and counters do double duty

The greatest danger is probably that both of the cards are interdependent.  Ie, they don't create powerful plays all their own.  There's a real threat to what I call the 'regrowth' effect in control lists, but this can be heavily mitigated by high enough counts of stuff like Bob, SDT and Preordain.

2c