Welcome to Timespiral Remastered

This cube was built for introducing new players to Magic: The Gathering, via one of the best sets of all time (or so I heard before I bought the complete list on a whim). I also heard that Timespiral was one of the most beginner-friendly sets (not). Let's find out.

The important thing is to have fun, and not an optimal draft...

Table of Contents

• What cards are in this cube?:
• Set Cube Layout

Playing the cube

• Draft vs Sealed
• Color pairs and Archetypes

1. Blink
2. Rebels
3. Aggressive Slivers
4. Many Slivers
5. Shadows
6. Storm
7. Morphin' Time
8. Madness
9. Fungi and Saprolings
10. Slivers, again. Or Monsters
11. 5-color Slivers

• Disclaimer: Use your imagination

• Beginner's guide to deckbuilding

Glossary

The following chapters are for Magic newbies who need to understand the rules and the jargon commonly used during Magic the Gathering games.

• Jargon

• Turn structure - short reference

• Evergreen Keywords and Mechanics

• Timespiral Remastered Mechanics

Set Cube Layout

This cube contains:

• 2-3x each common card from TSR

• 2x each uncommon card from TSR

• 1x most rares/mythics from TSR (minus narrow cards and lands, which are OK but not powerful in draft)

• some of the timeshifted cards that are in the timeshifted slot in TSR, like Lavinia, Azorius Renegade , Courser of Kruphix, and Mortify, which I already own. Some more powerful I proxies.

I don't have Abrupt Decay, best I can do is Putrefy.

Gurmag Angler got friends, Sultai Scavenger and Hooting Mandrills joined the delve-Discord.

I also added Vanish into Memory and Whirlwind Denial because they fit the themes, and why not? It's my set cube. Fine-tuning this will be fun.

I probably will draft this with 4 players and five 9-card packs with a mix of 5 commons/2 uncommons/1 rare and 1 timeshifted card per pack.

How to draft and build a deck Draft vs. Sealed Sealed:

Each player gets a 90-card pool (60 commons, 18 uncommons, 6 rares, 6 timeshifted cards) from which they build their 40-card deck. Normally you look at the rares, time-shifted cards and uncommons to decide which colors to play. You might find that two or three colors have more powerful cards and effects than the rest, now you try to design a deck with a plan.

While Sealed (pool) tends to be more beginner friendly, because you don't have to draft a deck, it is also more swingy, because every player opens more rares. A "bad" pool can ruin your day - although there are no unplayable rares in this cube. Sealed is still skill-intensive, and allows you to play two totally different decks, if you find your opponent would be more susceptible to your sideboard aggro/combo deck.

I recommend to try and build at least two configurations and draw some sample hands (you don't need lands for this, just draw 3-5 cards and imagine what your first three-five turns could look like).

Draft:

Each player opens a booster pack(9-card packs for 4 players) and picks one card, then passes their pack to the left, receiving another pack from their right neighbor. When all players picked and passed 9 times, the next round of booster packs is opened. After 5 packs, with alternating passing direction (clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise, ...), each player builds a deck with the 45 cards they drafted. They build 40-card decks (23 nonland cards + 17 lands, typically) and play best-of-three matches against each other. For a 4-player draft, each player can play each other player, for a total of six best-of-three matches, or 12-18 games.

The decks that result from a draft can be much more focused and stream lined than Sealed decks, because you are not only cutting cards you don't want to play, you actively pick cards over others. This also means you often don't have the luxury of a large sideboard (cards you don't play in your mainboard 40 cards).

Deckbuilding

Decks should have 17 Lands (or other mana sources), and 23 spells (creatures and non-creatures). A good number of creatures is 14 or more, but is strongly deck-dependend. Generally try to play only two colors. You may include a third or even a fourth color, but you need ways to find the right lands. If you "splash" (play a third color), limit the amount of lands for this color to 3 or 4, if possible, or else you won't be able to play your main-color spells. Cards to look out for, it you want to play more than 2 colors are: Greenseeker, Gemhide Sliver, Dreamscape Artist, Evolution Charm, Prismatic Lens, Terramorphic Expanse and the two-color Storange lands, for example Calciform Pools.

Color pairs and Deck Archetypes

Two color decks show the most consistency and power in regular drafts. But card pairs make and break TSR Draft. Following are examples for all ten two-color pairs, plus the 5-color Sliver dream.

White Blue

(Suspend and Blink)

Expensive creatures like Ivory Giant and Errant Ephemeron want to be suspended for their suspend cost early. Then, Jhoira's Timebug can accelerate when they can be cast, by removing time counters.

Dreamstalker really likes to "bounce" (return to your hand) permanents with enter the battlefield effects. Bouncing Reality Acid back to your hand allows you to kill multiple creatures.

Aven Riftwatcher is a good blocker and short time attacker in the air. Bounce it back and recast it, or wind it back up with the Timebug, so it doesn't vanish after 3 turns. The bread and butter spell for this archetype is the twice-usable namesake "Momentary Blink". Also usable are creatures that bounce your own creatures, like Whitemane Lion and Stonecloaker, which can also save creatures that are targeted by enemy removal.

White Black

(Rebel Scum and Flanking)

Amrou Scout and Blightspeaker find and cast your other Rebel spells. So you can find and cast Rebel card, like Rathi Trapper, in your deck. Also Bound in Silence is now castable whenever you activate the search abilities. You can now echant your opponents creatures after they cast them, on their turn! Drawing extra cards wins games.

White and black also have good aggressive options, like Benalish Cavalry and Sangrophage, which fit any aggressive deck.

White Red

(Aggro Slivers)

Play many Slivers, stack bonuses and effects, and attack for the win. White and Red have other efficient cards, like Sunlance, or Sudden Shock, which are great in any White-Red deck.

White Green

(Value Slivers)

Generally the same idea as in White-Red. Play many Slivers, build an army, attack for the win. Green brings more value to the table, and Watcher Sliver and Poultice Sliver are more defensive. This makes a victory even more inevitable. Long live the Sliver legion!

Alternatively, just play White and Green spells to protect your big creatures, Calciderm and Imperiosaur win almost all fights in battles, give them flying with Griffin Guide, or Evolution Charm.

Blue Black

(Evasion and Tempo)

Evasive creatures can't be blocked easily. Flying is an evergreen mechanic for this, but in Timespiral, there is also Shadow (This creature can block and be blocked by only creatures with Shadow).

Tempo means that you end the game faster than your opponent can react and stop you. This means cheap creatures and cheap (madness) interaction.

Alternatively, just play all the creature removal: Sudden Death, Assassinate, Pongify, Snapback, Wipe Away, Reality Acid and Feebleness can deal with most or all creatures, so that your big flyer or Gurmag Angler can win.

Blue Red

(Boom! ZAP! SPLOOSH.)

Storm is a small and hard to play archetype that uses spells with Storm as finishers (When you cast this spell, copy it for each spell cast before it this turn.) To increase the number of spells cast, you also play delayed spells like Keldon Halberdier, which can be cast on a latter turn for . Finally, you might want to play Jhoira's Timebug and Shivan Sand-Mage to manipulate and arrange your suspended spells to all hit in the same turn, to then flood the battlefield with Empty the Warrens, for the win. Recurring Suspend-spells like Arc Blade and Reality Strobe can really help to have multiple turns where you can storm out your Storm-payoff cards, like Storm Entity.

But Red-Blue just has many stand-alone spells as well, like Rift Bolt, Pongify, and Foresee, which are good in all decks that want to control the flow of the game.

Blue Green

(Morphs and Suspend)

Play Morph creatures like Fathom Seer to draw cards, Brine Elemental to keep your opponent's stuff tapped, and Veiling Oddity to make an unblockable attack. If you happen to get the time-shifted Secret Plans, you even get extra cards for flipping Morphe creatures. Because your opponent does not know what your Morphed creatures are, you always have to element of surprise. Time for Mind Games.

Or just go for big, dumb creatures by drawing more cards and playing more lands, Harmonize and Phantom Wurm are hard to beat, especially if you Logic Knot your opponents' spells for X=5. Having more mana and drawing more cards is winning games, and Blue/Green does both.

Black Red

(This is Madness!)

Discard your best cards and win!
Gathan Raiders is one of your best enabler card here. It goes into any deck that wants to discard, because it costs to play as a Morph, no needed!
Trespasser il-vec allows you to discard as often as you want, for free. And it gets basically unblockable, too. Discard-enablers are not only in Black-Red, there are also Sliversmith, Cloudseeder, Looter il-Kor and even Greenseeker, if you want to play Blue-Black Madness, or Green-Black Madness.

If you discard a card with the Madness-ability, you can cast it right there. Even on your opponents' turns!

Just be careful to take both cards that allow you to discard cards for cheap or free, and cards with Madness that are enabled by this.

Black-red is my favorite color-combination, I like to call it "destroy target fun" - just play all the removal. Sudden Death and Sudden Shock can not be countered!

Black Green or White Green

(Fungi and Saprolings)

All Fungus creatures accumulate Spore counters, and produce Saproling creature tokens. These are just 1/1s. But...

What if you flood the board with Fungi? Fortify the Fungi. Win! Strength in Numbers also plays well here. Just be careful, or Damnation will be your end.

Black-green also likes to return big creatures from the graveyard. Pit Keeper just to your hand, but Dread Return directly to the battlefield!

Red Green

(Monsters and Slivers)

I don't want to repeat myself, Red-Green also has many Slivers. Alternatively, there are these good stand-alone cards:

Use your imagination!

As a last comment, before I go into the last archetype: Look for synergies between two cards yourself. There are many possibilities. Just notice that the Reckless Wurm has Madness! This means, if your opponent forces you to discard, you know what to discard. Just keep the in hand! Or play one Greenseeker and discard it when your opponent attacks, and kill their 3/3 attacker with the maddened Wurm... Yes, that is possible!

5-color (base-green) Slivers

I am just leaving all other Sliver cards and the available 5-color fixers here.

Building a working deck is left as an excercise for the reader.

Magic Glossary Jargon

Activated ability ":"
Any ability (text) on a permanent or spell that takes the form [cost] : [effect].

Blink/Flicker

"exile a creature/permanent, then return it to the battlefield (at the beginning of your end step)". Good in combination with ETB/LTB effects

Bounce

"return a creature/permanent card to your hand"

ETB/LTB

"enters the battlefield" / "leaves the battlefield".

Destroy/dies

"put a creature/permanent from the battlefield into your graveyard"

Discard

Smallpox

Put a card from your hand into your graveyard.

Echo

An extra cost that you can pay in the upkeep after the creature came into play. If you don't pay it, you have to sacrifce the creature.

Evasion

Creatures that can't be blocked, except by certain other creatures that have an ability. Flying creatures can only be blocked by other fliers or creatures with Reach, like Needlepeak Spider. Shadow-creatures can only block or be blocked by other Shadow creatures.

Land drop

You may play one Land card per turn, as a special action, during your main phase. Other cards also allow you to put additional lands into play, like Greenseeker or Dreamscape Artist.

Sacrifice

Put a permanent you control from the battlefield into your graveyard. Some activated abilites allow you to do this.

Targetting (Shround)

Some spells require targets when you cast them. You have to decide on the target when you cast it. Some permanents can't be chosen as a target, like Calciderm, or the token left by Deadly Grub.

If the spell has no legal target, you can't cast it.

If all targets of a spell become illegal after casting a spell (for example because the target got bounced) , it does not resolve.

Magic turn structure

• Untap step - Untap all your permanent cards on the battlefield

• Upkeep step - Remove time counters, add Spore counters, paying Echo costs, cast Suspended Spells that had their last time counter removed, put cards with Vanishing and no time counters into your graveyard.

• Draw step - Draw your card for the turn.

• Main phase - Only in this phase, you may cast Creatures, Sorceries, Enchantments, Artifacts and play one Land per turn. You have a main phase before and after Combat.

• Combat Phase - further segmented into beginning, declare attackers step, assign blockers step, assign combat damage step, and end of combat. You can only cast spells with Flash, and Instants here.

• End step - your last chance to cast spells with Flash or Instants. Often the point when your opponent casts, before they untap in their next untap step.

Evergreen keywords and mechanics

• Fear/Intimidate - these creatures can only be blocked by Black and/or Artifact creatures, or creatures that share a color with them.

• Flying - these creatures can only be blocked by other creatures with flying, or creatures with Reach.

• Haste - these creatures can tap to attack or activate abilites on the same turn they entered the battlefield.

• Menace - there creatures can only be blocked by two or more creatures.

• Reach - see flying.

Timespiral Remastered mechanics

• "Blinking" - "Exile target [creature/permanent], return it to the battlefield (at the end of the turn)"

• Delve - you may exile cards from your graveyard to pay for this spell. See Gurmag Angler, Tombstalker, or Hooting Mandrills.

• Echo [cost] - an extra cost to pay on the next turn, or you have to sacrifice this permanent

• Flanking - blocking creatures get -1/-1, if they don't have flanking themselves. See Benalish Cavalry.

• Flashback - you can cast this from your graveyard for its flashback cost. See Think Twice.

• Madness [cost] - if you discard this card, you can cast it (now) for [cost]. See Reckless Wurm

• "Rebels" - Permanents with the Rebel-subtype. For example Blade of the Sixth Pride and Dunerider Outlaw.

• Shadow - these creatures can block and be blocked only by other creatures with Shadow. For example Trespasser il-vec.

• "Slivers" - see "Rebels", example: Sinew Sliver.

• Split-second - This spell happens, before any player can cast or activate any other ability. Also makes the spell basically uncounterable. See Sudden Death or Sudden Shock.

• Spore counters, "Saprolings". All Fungus creatures in TSR produce them, for example Pallid Mycoderm.

• Storm

• Suspend X - [cost] - Pay the [cost] to suspend the card in exile with X time counters on it. It can be cast when the last time counter is removed from it. See Errant Ephemeron or Durkwood Baloth.

• Vanishing X - this permanent is sacrificed when the last time counter is removed from it. See Reality Acid.