My First Time Spiral Sealed Deck Rebuilt

Since the pre-release, I have kept a keen eye and ear to all things Time Spiral, especially regarding new limited formats. As I begin to understand what you can and can not do in the new format, I have begun to acclimate myself to the new viable strategies and to soften my initially staunch support of ueber-tempo aggro builds.

Taking the same card pool that I presented previously, I build the following deck:

Lands

9 Swamp
8 Island

Creatures

Black

1 Mindlash Sliver
2 Deathspore Thallid
1 Faceless Devourer
1 Trespasser il-Vec
1 Cyclopean Giant
1 Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore
1 Evil Eye of Urborg

Blue

1 Screeching Sliver
1 Willbender
1 Coral Trickster
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Errant Ephemeron

Multicolor

1 Dementia Sliver

Spells

Black

1 Sudden Spoiling
1 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Traitor's Clutch
1 Mindstab
1 Phthisis

Blue

1 Bewilder
1 Temporal Eddy

Artifcat

1 Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII

Last cards out: Stormcloud Djinn, Smallpox, Hivestone, Call to the Netherworld

I tried playing this deck against the original build and against a few old Ravnica block decks and had a fair amount of success (I did not lose to the original deck). The list I presented above is fairly unprofessional. It was the list I was using, but I was just playing around, having fun and so it is not tuned for optimal power nor for optimal fun. One drop 1/1's need to be pretty powerful in limited to make the cut and Mindlash Sliver just does not make the cut -- I really should just play Hivestone if I want to have milling/hand destruction fun. Likewise, from what I have heard so far, Smallpox is much too powerful a card to be sitting on the sidelines, though I have no good madness outlets or other ways to break its symmetry.

Since this deck is probably still sub-optimal I just want to highlight a couple points on the path towards moving forward in Time Spiral limited strategies rather than over-analyze its strengths and weaknesses.

First, Phthisis is really good. I like it both playing aggressively and playing slow and controlish. The only suspend cards I can really get excited about right now are the ones that are good both suspended early and hardcast late. While Phthisis and Errant Ephemeron are both on the expensive side to hardcast late, at least late game you have the mana and probably do not have too many other spells you would rather topdeck at that point...removal and big fliers are almost always relevant in limited.
What makes Phthisis especially nice is that when you are playing aggressively, suspending it early can change the way your opponent plays -- always a good thing. Also, if you draw it late, then you are in the late game (obviously). That's usually not a good thing for an aggressive deck. It probably means your opponent has set up some kind of defense and that your attacked stalled a little short. Phthisis helps in both respects by both removing a blocker and probably doing a fair bit of damage (hitting a 4/4 or a 5/5 is not unreasonable).

The reason I really like this card though is that the same strong points hold for a control strategy. Suspending this early might be the only play and if you manage to live the five requisite turns it will definitely help with the stabilization (in fact just its presence on the board with time counters on it might slow some opponents down). Of course, once you have the mana to hard cast it in the late game it obviously plays into the control game plan as well....

Having made these statements about suspend, I guess I should mention Mindstab. The card seems pretty lackluster to me. I put it in this deck to try it out but it really should be switched with one of the cards on the bottom. It is a fine play on turn one, though even then not necessarily great. It is a terrible draw late game and you are lucky if you can get anything more than one random land out of your opponent's hand.

Another trick I like is the combination of Traitor's Clutch with Faceless Devourer. Traitor's Clutch is fairly expensive and not that great as a combat trick but it works well with the monolithic creatures in this deck. Plus, being able to get two uses out of it is pretty nice. Ideally the first clutch would hit the 6/3 eye allowing a 7 point blast of damage. The second one would also be headed the eye's way but if your opponent has a menacing monster on the other side of the board being able to flashback the clutch and eat the creature with the devourer is nice plan B.

The small blue creatures also help this deck significantly. The looter can smooth out any draw, allowing game against dangerous aggro decks, and Willbender can just win games from nowhere if your opponent is foolish enough to play the wrong spell....

Like the "control" deck I drafted in one of my last RGD drafts, this deck configuration has a lot of cards that do not seem too startling at first glance but seem to find ways to play nice together and wriggle out wins. I think there are much better sealed decks out there, but it is interesting that often the synergistic decks play better than the raw power decks -- that is not a choice I typically have the courage to make when playing in a real sealed deck tournament. But I am keeping my eyes open to this strategy in the new Time Spiral format as it has some amount of proven success in the past. I suggest you do the same -- blue is a very deep color, so deep that many of the cards that settle to the bottom are still quite powerful and hold little secrets of synergy, revealed only to those brash enough to look.