Table of contents:

• 1. Original Draft Format
• 1. Changes to the original draft format
• 1. Chaos slot
• 1. Closing remarks/Yapping section

1. Original Draft format

Credit: u/oraymw on reddit

Mechanics

The central mechanic of Time Spiral is Suspend X. Instead of casting a suspend spell, you can exile it for a significantly lower cost with X time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, you remove a counter from the exiled card, and when it runs out of time counters, you get to cast it without paying its mana cost, and it enters the battlefield with haste if it is a creature. Suspend is significantly stronger than it looks. The cards seem very expensive on the front side, but you’re essentially packing your deck full of 1 and 2 drops that play more like 6 and 7 drops. If you draw them in the late game, you can just cast them for their mana cost, so they also act as flood insurance. Errant Ephemeron and Durkwood Baloth are the premiere commons with Suspend and they are phenomenal. The Ephemeron is a common dragon that acts like a two drop, and the Baloth plays like a common Tarmogoyf. A key rule of thumb is just to assume that Suspend cards are much stronger than they look. Take them early and often.

The next most important mechanic in the set is Flashback. You can cast Flashback spells from your graveyard by paying their flashback cost and exiling them. They are usually cheaper on the front side and more expensive out of the graveyard, and they essentially let you cast your spell and then get another spell in the late game. Strangling Soot and Thrill of the Hunt are examples of strong commons with flashback. Flashback is an incredibly powerful mechanic because it lets you put spells with impact in the early game into your deck, but they pay you back later on in the game. Pretty much every flashback spell acts like a cantrip, essentially drawing you another copy of the card that you get to cast later. One key flashback spell is Momentary Blink which was incredible when it was first printed and combat damage went on the stack, but it has gotten much worse.

A third key mechanic in the format is Madness. When you discard a card with Madness, you get to cast it for its Madness cost instead of just discarding it. One of the key Madness cards is Dark Withering which is a bad but playable removal spell for its regular cost, but a 1 mana doom blade when you Madness it. There are not a ton of discard outlets in the format, but there are Spellshapers which let you discard cards to get a spell-like effect. Lightning Axe was first printed in this set at common, and it is one of the two best commons right alongside Errant Ephemeron.

Archetypes

Flyers – This deck is fabulous once again, essentially pairing the two best colors. It has lots of evasion, but plenty of powerful defensive creatures. It also has plenty of removal spells for white. This deck is a tempo deck that tries to play some good suspend creatures early and then lean hard on the curve in the midgame, finally pushing through with evasive creatures hitting the board in the late game to close things out.

Suspend – This is another tempo deck that leans on suspend creatures to drop some powerful threats in the mid game. It also gets the storm mechanic, which can give you a few powerful options, but isn’t really a main theme. Essentially it’s just a blue deck that uses decent red creatures in the mid game and uses red removal to control the board while going to town with card advantage and efficient evasive creatures.

Madness Control – This deck gets lots of madness enablers and some powerful madness control cards. It’s the deck that best makes use of Looter il-Kor. The idea behind this deck is managing the board and overwhelming your opponents with card advantage while killing key creatures. Tendrils of Corruption is a powerful removal spell that keeps you alive. Gorgon Recluse is a blocker in this deck that can be nearly impossible for your opponent to deal with and that lets you get in with your evasive creatures.

Suspend Tempo – It should be clear by this point that suspend is really strong, and this is the most suspendy of suspend decks. This deck uses massive and undercosted creatures, but has very little removal. This is the deck that best makes use of Snapback and Temproal Eddy which are the blue bounce spells, and which allow your large green creatures to get in and close out the game.

Aggro/Attrition – The WG deck has the best creatures in the format with a lot of efficient cards in both white and green. It gets both big and small creatures, and fills up the curve perfectly. It also has a huge potential to go wide, and makes good use of the saproling tokens. Thrill of the Hunt allows you to simulate removal and punch through with key creatures to take advantage of your large board. Tromp the Domains is absurd in any deck, but it’s especially good in this deck which can go quite wide.

Aggro – This one uses lots of aggressive creatures with red removal to take advantage of some of the slower and more card advantage oriented decks. Lots of players try to play too many colors what with slivers and multicolor cards and off color flashbacks and domain, so this deck can really punish opponents that stumble. With that said, like any aggro deck, it can suffer from needing particular draws.

Madness Tempo – Similar to dimir, but faster and less consistent, but it also has its own advantages due to multiple great cards with madness in red.

Stompy Suspend – Slow deck with potential for massive turns late game, also has access to great removal suite from red and loads of combat tricks and efficient creatures from green.

Control/Reanimate – One of the least synergistic color combinations in the cube. It can be built multiple ways depending on the rares and uncommons you draft since most of black's common pool is rather inefficient creatures and removal.

Fungi – Tribal focused color combination with saprolings and fungi being the main theme.

X Rebels – Powerful tribal theme that exists only in white color.

Slivers - While its hard to build a 5c deck in this format due to horrible mana fixing, but when you do, this deck can be one of the most powerful in the format due to how fast it gets out of control.

2. Changes to the original draft format

Removed cards:

Flagstones and Swarmyard are probably two of the worst rares in the whole format due to how narrow and useless they are 99% of the time, so they were easy cuts. Gemstone Caverns while powerful, its not as good in the format due to it being a colorless land like 90% of the time. Vesuva will mostly be a tapped basic land as well. Another card im looking to cut in the future is Moonlace due to how narrow it is, but for now it can stay as a sideboard tech against creatures with protection from color.

Replacement cards:

And that's it for the changes, now lets talk about what makes this cube unique.

3. Chaos slot 3.1 Goals

• Replace the original timeshifted bonus slot with something more unique and fun
• Power up worst color combinations in the format
• Introduce unique buildaround cards to the format
• Make the format more fun and powerful

3.2 Themes

Bonus slot is also separated into multiple different themes:

• Staples from different formats such as Faithless Looting, Path to Exile and Blood Artist
• Cards that are callbacks or references to Time Spiral such as Inevitable Betrayal and Magus of the Balance
• Cards that synergise with cards from the set like Anje Falkenrath and Jiang Yanggu, Wildcrafter
• Fun cards like Booster Tutor
• Draft matters cards
• Mana fixing
• Efficient removal and answers to the biggest threats in format

3.3 Powering up worst color combos and archetypes

These are some of the additions to currently existing archetypes like Madness, Rebels and Fungi

3.3 New buildarounds

These are great examples of the cards that can create new archetypes in the cube, such as Storm which is already supported quite well in the base set, "Keywords Matter" and "Activated Abilities Matter".

3.4 Mana fixing

Time Spiral has some of the worst color fixing of any modern set, so one of the bonus slot's goals was to somehow fix it besides just adding multiple land cycles into it. Most mana fixing is either hidden as ramp spells or on efficient bodies like Rootpath Purifier.

3.5 Draft matters

I just love "draft matters" cards so i've decided to add a couple in, i think they are fun additions to the format without being too busted.

3.6 Risky additions

There are a couple of risky but very fun and spicy additions to the bonus slot. I will be keeping my eye on them during the first couple of drafts, if they prove to be incredibly strong in the format as expected they will be cut and replaced with other cards.

4. Closing remarks/Yapping section

I've pretty much finished this cube in paper and its almost ready to be played with (just waiting on a couple cards at the moment). Will update this page with winning decks and changes after first couple of drafts :D