Time Spiral Remastered Remastered Draft

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This is a Remaster of the recent Time Spiral Remastered set with additional cards that were left out from original Time Spiral that I felt were integral to maintaining some of the archtypes. Or, just favorite cards that I missed seeing from the original.

Write up for many of the archetypes are courtesy of author A. Mlakar from cardgamebase.com and can be found here ...

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Also an excerpt of Suspend & Saprolings from author Louis Kemner on CBR.com here ...

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Archetypes

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Blink / Fliers

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Here’s another interesting archetype – well, depending on how you look at it. You can approach it as your regular flyers deck, and it will perform well enough. Just counting commons and uncommons, there are 20 flyers in these two colors, which is quite a lot. So the main plan of this deck is to just get as many flyers as you can, plus some removal spells and high-toughness creatures to hold the ground.

However, you can definitely improve it with the subtheme of blinking or bouncing your own creatures. This subtheme is quite subtle. The only in-your-face payoff card is Stormfront Riders, which makes a 1/1 Soldier, whenever a creature is returned to your hand.

The main payoff for returning your creatures are creatures with good enter-the-battlefield effects. Some of the best ones at lower rarities are:

Aven Riftwatcher
Cryptic Annelid
Riftwing Cloudskate

Additionally, you can reuse some of your morph effects like Fathom Seer and Shaper Parasite.

Return effects can also be used as a pseudo-counters for removal. Of course, that only works with instant speed cards, like Momentary Blink, Whitemane Lion, Snapback, etc.

So when you’re in blue and white, you want to draft flyers with a blink/bounce subtheme.

Suspend

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When blue mana is combined with red, it cares less about blinking and more about suspend and morph, creating an unpredictable and resourceful archetype. This deck is eager to suspend most of its best cards for cheap. Better yet, those suspended cards may be cast early when certain creatures are in play. Suspended cards have time counters on them, and the likes of Timebender, Rift Elemental, Jhoira's Timebug, and Shivan Sang-Mage can remove those to cast the suspended cards early (among other benefits).

Timebender is very flexible, either speeding up a friendly suspended card or adding more time counters to the opponent's own suspended cards, delaying them further. Rift Elemental gets +2/+0 each time it eats a time counter, and Shivan Sand-Mage is a red Timebender, except its ability is based on entering the battlefield instead of flipping face up.

As for cards being suspended, Shivan Meteor, Rift Bolt and Arc Blade are all potent burn spells with suspend, and among blue cards, Ancestral Vision is an excellent card to suspend, along with Aeon Chronicler, Riftwing Cloudskate and Errant Ephemeron. Counterspells such as Logic Knot, Delay and Remand also help this deck maintain its tempo edge, and Delay in particular is rather flexible.

Delay will counter a spell, then put that spell into suspend with three time counters. This can be used on the opponent's spells, but it can also be used on a friendly spell that's in danger of fizzling or being countered. Then, friendly creatures such as Rift Elemental, Timebender and Shivan Sand-Mage can remove those time counters to cast the spell sooner. Finally, spells such as Wipe Away, Think Twice, Mystic Confluence, Jhoira's Timebug and Jhoira of the Ghitu herself can round out this deck.

Saprolings

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Time Spiral Remastered made room for an aristocrats archetype -- that is, a deck based on making, then sacrificing disposable creatures for benefits. The black-green deck is built upon Fungus and Saproling creatures, with powerful Fungus creatures such as Sporesower Thallid, Utopia Mycon, Sporoloth Ancient and Thallid Shell-Dweller getting spore counters and then making Saproling tokens.

In black, Deathspore Thallid can help too, and Slimefoot, the Stowaway is a black-green legend that can make Saprolings and drain the opponent's life as creatures die. These Saprolings can attack en masse, block the opponent and get sacrificed, and more. Support creatures, such as Thelon of Havenwood and Thelonite Hermit, are Elves that back up the Fungi and create even more Saprolings. If white mana is splashed in, then Pallid Mycoderm and Mycologist can help too.

A variety of support spells can back up this archetype, such as Dread Return, which can bring back a fallen creature to restock the battlefield. Its flashback cost requires not mana, but the sacrifice of three creatures, and this deck should have no trouble offering up cheap Saprolings and/or other disposable creatures to fuel Dread Return. Minions' Murmurs is a black sorcery that will cost X life and draw X cards, with X being the number of creatures the caster controls. That means this black-green deck can draw many cards from Minions' Murmurs.

Sudden Death, Dismember and Ichor Slick are all decent creature removal spells in black, and in green, Life and Limb can boost all Saprolings and Forests into both card types, with Saprolings tapping for mana and Forests becoming creatures. Muraganda Petroglyphs can grant Saprolings +2/+2 since they have no abilities, and Might of Old Krosa, Evolution Charm and Search for Tomorrow can also round out this archetype nicely.

Madness

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There are 9 cards with madness in Time Spiral Remastered draft. One is Reckless Wurm and the others are all black. So why is this archetype centered in black and red or blue?

Because for a madness deck you need two things. One are, naturally, madness cards. These can be found in black. The other part are enablers, so discard outlets. The best ones are in blue, followed by red. So if you’re drafting with madness in mind, you’ll want to be in black, paired with either red or blue.

The main idea of the madness decks is that you want to get double value. First you get value from your discard outlets. So for example, Cloudseeder, gives you a 1/1 flyer, which is almost a full card of value. The other benefit is that you actually didn’t just threw a card away, but you got a cost reduction instead. Your Dark Withering now costs only one mana.

If you have an instant speed discard outlet, you can also cast cards with madness at instant speed. You might surprise an unsuspecting opponent during their attack step, by casting Lightning Axe and Reckless Wurm. This can be quite a back-breaking pattern.

Outlets & Payoffs

Some of the best discard outlets include:

Bonded Fetch
Cloudseeder
Looter il-Kor
Gathan Raider
Lightning Axe

Pretty much all cards with madness are at least playable. Lots of them are removal spells, or removal spells attached to a body, like:

Big Game Hunter
Dark Withering
Gorgon Recluse
Ichor Slick
Nightshade Assassin

Additionally, Grave Scrabbler is a great value creature. All in all, this archetype looks really fun to play, and it might just have all the tools it needs.

Slivers

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Slivers can be found in all five colors, but most of them are in white, red and green. You don’t necessarily want to be in all three colors. You can just play any two of them, and still have a fine deck. Most likely, you’ll end up in two colors and splash the third one. Naturally, you’ll want to pick as many Slivers as you can.

Gemhide Sliver can be very important, as it provides you both mana fixing and ramp. Alongside it, Sinew Sliver is perhaps the most important common for this archetype, and you’ll want to get a lot of them. It’s a two mana 2/2 that buffs all Slivers, which can be devastating in the right deck.

Might Sliver is similarly very powerful, being another Sliver that works well in multiples. In general you want to pick those types of Slivers highly. Still, you do want to get Slivers with powerful effects, like Poultice Sliver and Harmonic Sliver.

Finally, you might even splash black, as both Sedge Sliver and Necrotic Sliver are very strong. Of course, you might also live the dream, and get the mythic Sliver Legion, which will surely enable some fun games. Besides Gemhide Sliver, you can also use cards like Search for Tomorrow and Edge of Autumn to get to all of your colors.

Last but not least, just remember that these Slivers pump all Slivers, not just those on one side of the battlefield.

Rebels

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The strongest Rebel interactions are commons as both Amrou Scout and Blightspeaker can grab you Bound in Silence. Since they put it directly onto the battlefield, the ability’s cost of 4 mana is pretty low.

There are 16 Rebel cards in the set, so you have quite a selection of them. Besides the ones we mentions, the most powerful ones that you can get are:

Aven Riftwatcher
Big Game Hunter
Outrider en-Kor
Rathi Trapper
Saltfield Recluse

However, when you’re drafting black-white you don’t want to just go all-in on Rebels. Why? Because your only payoffs are Amrou Scout and Blightspeaker. While both of them are very good, there’s no need to have 8+ other Rebel cards in your deck to make them work. Additionally, even players who don’t draft this exact color combination might pick your two payoff cards, as they can work in just about any deck with some small support.

So you want to treat your Rebels as a subtheme. Just pick good quality cards in black and white, and use the Rebel subtype only as a tiebreaker between two cards of a similar power level. This certainly isn’t your traditional tribal deck.

Storm

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There are just three cards with storm in the set:

Empty the Warrens
Grapeshot
Haze of Rage

However, storm is an interesting mechanic, as many players often want to draft it no matter how good is it. So is it any good in the Time Spiral Remastered draft? Possibly, but you’ll need a right combination of cards in some carefully planned game actions in order to succeed.

The card that you’re most likely to win with is certainly Empty the Warrens, and your game plan should be built around it:

• Cast multiple spells in a single turn.
• Cast Empty the Warrens in the same turn and get a ton of Goblins.
• Attack with all of your creatures and use a pump spell for the win.

Multiple Spells

As you can imagine, the hardest part of this plan is the first step. One thing you can do, is try to use suspend cards in a way that they’ll all resolve in the same turn. So suspend Keldon Halberdier 4 turns before your Warrens turn, Rift Bolt one turn before the Warrens turn, etc. This way you’ll have all the mana for that turn available, but you’ll already cast some spells.

Additionally, you can cast Coal Stoker that will effectively cost just one mana for that turn, while giving you a relevant body, and +1 storm count. Similarly, you can use Chromatic Star as a cheap spell that immediately gives you a card back.

Pump Spells

Finally, on your next turn you can use cards like:

Fortify
Haze of Rage
Tromp the Domains

They’ll make all of your Goblins into relevant attackers, which will hopefully be enough for the win. Tromp the Domains is probably the best one, as storm combines nicely with green suspend cards, and there are quite many of them. Search for Tomorrow, for example, helps you both on your Warrens turn, and getting an extra land to make Tromp more powerful.

Other Archetypes

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You might have noticed that we didn’t talk about every two color combination. That doesn’t mean that you can’t play them, it’s just that the themes are less defined.

For example, you can surely play black-green, if you get good cards in those two colors. You might even support a madness theme, as you do get two discard cards in green with Greenseeker and Llanowar Mentor.

Additionally, you might get an old-border card, that you could build around. Let’s say you open a Temur Ascendancy, and you try to draft a 4+ power Temur deck. There are so many weird cards and interactions in this set, that you can totally explore different options.