SHORT STORY TIME!

During the Time Spiral Block, we were treated to some very offbeat designs. In the original Time Spiral set, a cycle of rare sorceries with no mana cost and a suspend cost were printed to emulate certain old spells, all of them more or less famous in their own right. We got

And the reason for the season,

While Ancestral Vision and Wheel of Fate have relatively niche uses, Restore Balance, Living End, and Hypergenesis were the namesakes of many powerful decks over the years. Value Vintage players have, naturally, also gravitated to building decks around these powerful sorceries.

So what’s this deck’s deal?

Hypergenesis is a symmetrical effect that allows both players to put resources from hand directly into play, accelerating the rate of play and bypassing mana cost. In a normal match up, say, UW Control vs. Burn, one would expect that if Hypergenesis were to resolve somehow, it would be rather anemic, a pile of lands and one or two 2/2 creatures. Not exactly exciting or game winning stuff. Additionally, it is problematic to cast. It demands 3 turns when suspended after all; this is not a quick gameplan at a cost of three.

So, Hypergenesis is two things. One, it is a deck that seeks to bypass the speed and casting cost restriction of suspend. We can do this via discarding the card off of, say, Frantic Search and recasting via Arcane Proxy

We can do this by casting from hand for free with As Foretold or Electrodominance

Or, if you guessed from the name of this website, we’re gonna Cascade into it with Shardless Agent or Violent Outburst

These spells allow us to exchange the speed and mana cost problems of Suspend by taking a turn six spell into a turn 2 or turn 3 spell. Other cascade decks can "go off" as early as turn 1; this ain’t it.

Next we need to generate an asymmetry, because doing what Burn, Midrange piles, or UW Control would do is again anemic and would be a waste of time. We need raw muscle and power. We can achieve this by threats like Chancellor of the Annex which attack the stack directly and delay the opponent.

We can precision attack the board with Alpha Deathclaw, Angel of Despair or Ashen Rider

We can attack life totals directly with Bogardan Hellkite, or emulate Balance with Realm Razer and Tyrant of Discord

Why, we’re even able to play the greatest midrange threats with things like Cursed Mirror and Quicksilver Gargantuan

All of these threats and more allow us to violate parity and accelerate the game state to a near or total victory when we are able to successfully execute the combo. This is very appealing as it condenses and accelerates rates of play, preserving clock time in tournaments and helping to negate a large portion of the opponent’s strategy before the game begins. This is the power of something like Channel Mirror - a sister to the Hypergenesis Strategy - or Oops! Variants.

(On a number of occasions, I have lumped everything as slow as Hypergenesis to as fast as Oops! as Oops! All Spells variants. Conceptualizing the deck that way helps.)

Online Play vs. Paper Play

This part can be chalked up to superstition so I won’t hang out on this topic for too long, but just from experience winning and losing both on MTGO and in Paper, it becomes wise to plan around the MTGO shuffler and reduce lands and increase anti-variance creatures. This plan appears less effective in real paper play and it would be wiser to increase lands to no more than 23 and no less than 21. Superstition over.

I want to build this from the ground up! What should I consider?

Good question, person I made up to ask it! We need to start with mana. While as of this writing we’ve yet to address the bad behaviors of Value Vintage builders and brewers, bad mana bases is the top of the list. Hypergenesis really wants to enable going off on turn 2. This decreases the opponent’s ability to capitalize on Hypergenesis or combat Hypergenesis.

Mana is "Good" or "Bad" contextually to some degree, that is, the mana base you build needs to meet the demands of the deck you are building, and as you build and hone your list, it will change. At least it should. You can decide to do it badly; the Shardless Agents thank you for your service.

So what’s that look like here? After all, we don’t get Ancient Tomb or Sol Ring to accelerate; we can’t even use Crystal Vein as our cards cost 1GX! That’ll never work. And that’s right, so we’d steer away from cards that ruin our Cascade and cards that are too expensive, either for the format or for the list. Instead we’re looking to have a sol-style land on T1, and an upright land on T2. Ideally that land is a rainbow land to compensate for the sol-land limitations.

Consider, for example, being on the play, and this assembly: Forest, Island, Mountain

With this we can cast Violent Outburst or Shardless Agent on curve and deliver a killing blow. This is suitable but has some weaknesses. For example, if our opponent has a rough start on the draw with Prairie Stream tapped, we can no longer capitalize on that weakness because they will have another draw step and, critically, Spell Pierce or Minor Misstep mana available.

Now this is an acceptable risk, but from that same sequence: Sulfur Vent, Irrigation Ditch, or Havenwood Battleground, or even Geothermal Crevice + Tendo Ice Bridge, Archaeological Dig, Aether Hub, or Gemstone Mine, or even Forsaken City

We get to capitalize on a weak but otherwise healthy start from the opponent and evade most counter magic. Yes we are weak to Daze and Foil, but realistically nothing is perfect, everything has risk, and so on. The point here is that we get to capitalize on a weak start and are rewarded for doing so if we’re playing these acceleration lands.

So why aren’t we on Spirit Guides?

This is a very fair question. I’ve tested this for over a year now extensively and I want you to imagine the following opening hand:

This hand goes off on turn one! What could go wrong?

[Not pictured due to graphic content: The ham sandwich your opponent used to ruin your day]

The problem here is that after we deliver the payload turn one, we have three threats, a 2/2, a 6/6 with menace and a 5/5 flier that punishes destruction removal. Even so, burning these threats out, the worst possible way to remove them, means we’ve mind twisted ourselves and have nothing to show for it but perhaps Island. Our draws are anemic compared to almost any deck; we’re Oops! Congratulations are in order; you’ve managed to build around the most expensive one-shot mountain and forest and to show for it you’ve lost the game on turn one.

Mind you, that’s an ideal hand. It has a chance of winning. Each land or guide in the grip makes it worse, as does each guide with a non-blue land and a Shardless Agent. We’re asking to lose.

Okay, fine, I have mana, and I balanced it to cast Violent Outburst and Shardless Agent. How do I make them die?

This is the fun part. There’s loosely value-genesis, burn-genesis, and balance-genesis. I’m an advocate of the third but let’s go through each.

Value-Genesis:

The plan here is to find things that have more than one of the following: enters/attacks/dies triggers and exploit them. We want to draw lots of card, make lots of tokens, destroy more than one permanent, etc. Torsten, Founder of Benalia shines here; Bonny Pall, Clearcutter as well.

Burn-Genesis:

The plan here is to take the opponent’s life total, and turn it to zero on the stack. If necessary, attacks are permissible. We want big burn spells and big sleigh attacks. Think:

Balance-Genesis:

What if we stole the haste enablers, added a protection plan, and generated value differently while trying to deploy a brutal combo that resembles balance? This is the way I advocate for piloting the deck, using Realm Razer and Tyrant of Discord to remove the hand, lands, and threats from play and deliver a lethal attack as soon as possible.

Okay so do we get any value out of the list?

I’m glad you asked! We have the ability to play pre-game pseudo draw, which sounds weird until you realize I mean:

These cards emulate card advantage, are our "smoothers" which enables us to keep a wider range of hands, protect against hand attack, and can aid in sculpting a post-hand attack or post-counter scenario. These cards help beat the variance inherent to this type of strategy. Secret heroes of the deck really.

Alright, good, and sideboarding?

This is probably the most difficult thing because, at the end of the day, you need to read how your opponents play to figure out the best defensive line, or make a blanket guess. Right now I am actively experimenting in transformational sideboarding but this is in infancy mode right now, and we just don’t have access to Sneak Attack or Monster Manual.

Right now I prefer an assemblage of anti-blue and anti-lockpiece tech. Primarily

Touch the Spirit Realm for lock pieces that prevent us from going off, like Damping Sphere or Disruptor Flute

And for blue, Shifting Ceratops + Skylasher

I do normally pack some amount of “3 mana” countermagic like Runescale Stormbrood, Mystical Dispute, or Ricochet Trap

And I am also known to add additional cascaders like Bloodbraid Elf

How does it play, though?

I’m not going to go over a lot of match ups, because realistically we’re playing Oops! All Spells (Cascade Edition.) This shouldn’t be hard: get to three mana, deploy.

Non-Blue:

Lather, Rinse, Repeat. If you sniff out permanent based hate, bring in your lock breakers. If you see or sniff out hand attack, bring in your Bloodbraids. Humans is by far the worst of this; you can perceive humans as a tiny version of what we do but they also pack permanent based exile removal, value engines, and even hand attack + direct damage into synergies that make life miserable.

Humans is why Realm Razer + Tyrant of Discord seems most appealing, as that minimizes the impact of the Humans decks.

Control:

UW Family:

Try to go very, very fast if you aren’t packing counter magic. They win in a long game and you almost never lose if you can get under their spell pierces. Watch their mana like a hawk; if they are having mana difficulty capitalize on it and pressure it, it can make the difference. Also pay attention to your cascade delivery mechanism and their marquee permanent.

Miracles, for example, has Teferi and that defeats the purpose, we have to rely on pushing them. Standstill will attempt to tap out ASAP to produce their marquee permanent. Bant Reclamation has a low density of powerful countermagic and also has to tap out to deploy unless they delay until turn 7+. Violent Outburst is powerful in the match up, Shardless Agent notably can be deployed as a 2/2 to harass them. Sphinx of Foresight can also assist as well as a hardcasted Doomskar Titan or other 4-6 mana threat.

Spirits, Merfolk, and other Blue Tempo

Pray they play Aether Vial.

Failing the opponent simply deciding a that a two of do-nothing budget sinkhole rules, we must rely on speed and power from Skylasher, Shardless Agent, and Shifting Ceratops. Develop your mana and play as the worst fair deck you’ve ever seen.

So what do we side out?

Generally speaking, trim your smoothers. If you decide to play the one-of Bloodbraid Elf and you are on a CMC=3 problem solver like Mystical Dispute or Cursed Mirror or Touch the Spirit Realm, there’s your first cut. For the Blue Tempo Piles, cut your non-Realm Razer, Non-Tyrant of Discord threats as much as possible so that your cascaders can hit both Skylasher or the Combo, which causes tilt.

I want to crib your notes, let me see!

Here you go. This is the rolling MTGO list. I’m not changing the name it makes me very happy.