Much Abrew: Fires Turns (Modern, Magic Online)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, the new Fires of Invention "take all the turns" deck came out on top. As such, we're heading to Modern today to see if Fires of Invention is enough to make some less traditional extra-turn spells like Savor the Moment not just playable but good! The idea of the deck is simple: we stick a Fires of Invention and use it to immediately cast an extra turn spell for free. Then, on our extra turn, our goal is to cast another extra-turn spell while also playing something to draw us cards, like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Howling Mine, or Dictate of Kruphix. Eventually, we'll be drawing so many extra cards that we're almost assured to hit another extra-turn spell each extra turn. And as we take all of the turns, we will kill our opponent with Jace, the Mind Sculptor or Chandra, Torch of Defiance rushing toward their ultimates. Can Fires of Invention make a new style of turns deck work in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
Just a quick reminder: if you enjoy the Much Abrew About Nothing series and the other video content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.
Much Abrew: Fires Turns
Discussion
- Record-wise, we had a sort of strange league. We started off 2-0, not dropping a single game, but then the wheels stopped turning, and we dropped our final three matches, giving us a 2-3 record. The good news is that we can actually learn quite a bit about the deck from our losses.
- Loss 1: UB Aggro Mill. Modern is a big format, and sometimes you run into strange decks that happen to be really bad matchups. One of the best ways to beat a turns deck is to have a deck that can apply pressure and back it up with counterspells. One of the downsides of Fires Turns is that we only have a few spells that really matter, and since they are expensive, we are often stuck playing just one each turn. This means that a counterspell or two on a Fires of Invention or Time Warp can swing the entire game in our opponent's favor. The UB Aggro Mill deck not only had a ton of counters in Stubborn Denial and Drown in the Loch but backed them up by playing one-mana 5/5 fliers (Jace's Phantasm) and two-mana 5/4 fliers (Vantress Gargoyle). While we did manage to steal a game from them, the matchup felt horrible for what our deck is trying to accomplish.
- Loss 2: Tron. This loss, another three-game match, illuminated another potential problem with the deck: we can sometimes run out of relevant cards. When it comes to actually killing our opponent, we have two copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and one Chandra, Torch of Defiance. If those cards happen to be at the bottom of our deck (or get killed), we risk milling ourselves out thanks to cards like Howling Mine and Dictate of Kruphix. Perhaps I mismanaged our resources, but we ran into the same problem against UB Aggro Mill, where we managed to stabilize but did so too late to win the game before we ran out of cards. Adding an extra finisher or two (maybe Part the Waterveil or even just Snapcaster Mage) could go a long way toward fixing the issues.
- Loss 3: Goblins. Sometimes, there isn't much to learn from a loss. Against Goblins, we got the good ol' double-mana-screw match. In game one, we couldn't draw lands in an absolute sense, while in game two, we drew only blue sources and ended up having game-winning sweepers and removal in hand thanks to the lack of red mana to cast them.
- Maybe the most impressive card in the deck was Mystic Sanctuary. One of the unique aspects of Fires Turns is that none of our extra-turn spells exiles itself as it resolves, which leaves them in the graveyard. This means that suddenly, all of our fetch lands and copies of Mystic Sanctuary are essentially extra-turn spells since we can use Mystic Sanctuary to put a Time Warp or Savor the Moment on the top of our deck to use the following turn. This greatly reduces the deck's fizzle rate since formerly dead cards (lands) are actually extra-turn spells. While Fires of Invention is nice, Mystic Sanctuary is the real reason why Fires Turns felt much more powerful than older versions of the Taking Turns deck.
- Some of the numbers in the deck are a bit weird, especially the two Simian Spirit Guides, which are sort of awkward with Fires of Invention since they add mana but not a land to the battlefield. While the shell felt solid in general, despite our middling record, it also felt like some of the weird support cards around the fringes of the deck could possibly be improved with better options.
- So, should you play Fires Turns in Modern? While I really would like to see another finisher or two in the deck, I think the answer is yes. The deck felt very powerful, and apart from the Aggro Mill match (which I think is just a bad matchup), our losses can mostly be attributed to weird flukes (Tron drawing Emrakul, the Promised End to ruin our day, the mana screw against Goblins) rather than our opponent's deck being better than our deck. The deck felt very powerful, and with a bit more luck (or possibly better play), we could have easily went 3-2 or 4-1. If you like taking all the turns, the additions of Fires of Invention and especially Mystic Sanctuary very likely make Fires Turns the best taking-turns deck for Modern moving forward!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
