Patience with Power
Why you shouldn’t cast your spells
Time Walk illustrated by Amy Weber
Within such a high powered format as Season 9, games are condensed into fewer turns and even the smallest decisions have amplified effects on the match’s outcome. It’s critical to get the most out of your spells through crafted synergies and careful timing. While everyone knows to construct a deck where cards work well together, timing considerations aren’t as intuitive. From what I’ve seen, the flippant casting of Time Walk has significantly decreased its effectiveness, to the point where it is often being referred to as “just a fancy blue Explore.” With a little bit of patience and delayed timing, it can be so much more.
Time Walk
Let me start by dispelling the Explore misconception being Time Walk’s floor-- while it both lets you “draw” a card and play an “additional” land, Time Walk side-steps Narset’s draw restriction and refunds its mana cost while refreshing all your other mana producers too.
In fact, mana generation is one of the most abusable aspects of Time Walk that gets better with patience. Played with just a few sources, sometimes only a Mox Sapphire and Volcanic Island, the card acts like a Pyretic Ritual that replaces itself. Later in the game, it can easily represent six or so mana. This extra mana lets you overcome the tempo loss of casting a Timetwister for three mana when your opponent gets that draw for free. While “blue Explore” is a good ramp spell, a slight pause can turn it into a game-winning ritual effect.
Another abusable aspect of Time Walk is its combat output. Playing Time Walk without creatures to attack means you are losing out on attack triggers and combat damage. An extra combat can clear planeswalkers the opponent thought were safe, or it can deal the lethal blow to an opponent that thought they would have a turn to deploy blockers/removal. Creatures played on the same turn as it effectively gain haste, adding to the surprise factor and playing around sorcery speed removal spells like Teferi and Angrath’s Rampage. Arcanist builds can make great use of these extra combats, so long as they haven’t used their extra turn as just a cantrip.
Planeswalkers also abuse extra turns. Multiple activations in a row can either save them from combat/direct removal, or ensure that they get more value before they bite the dust. In some cases, multiple activations can turn a game around completely. Nissa, Ugin and Liliana can create a wall of creatures to stabilize the board and protect themselves. Big Karn can shred a hand and threaten to ultimate, or it can level a battlefield to make way for a second copy of itself. Little Karn assembles both Mirage Mirror and Time Vault in one go, and Narset allows Doomsday to combo through an opposing Narset. Turn your Planeswalkers into TimeWalkers.
Card Selection
Using context, search with a purpose and keep all of your impactful spells
Patience extends beyond the power, and will reward you when you practice it with even the most innocuous cards. Opt is a cantrip with minimal selection, but that selection is relevant. While scrying to the top feels good, you can get the card to do more when you are digging for something specific. When you already have what you need in your hand and/or don’t particularly care what card you draw next, don’t cast your cantrip. In the former case, the spell you grab isn’t likely to be cast any time soon and you spent a mana that you could’ve spent playing the more impactful cards in your hand. In the latter case, you are likely to waste your scry value by keeping a card on top.
Probe and Champion of Wits also provide card selection, but their discard clause better illustrates the importance of waiting. If you have a full hand of impactful cards and cast a loot effect, you are either going to have to get rid of a strong card you already had or a strong card that you just drew into. Waiting until you have at least one dud card in hand is what makes loot and rummage effects strong, as the discard doesn’t feel like a cost at all.
Speaking of which, waiting protects your cards from an opponent’s discard effects. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen someone cast a Demonic Tutor only for their selected card to be yoinked by a Despise, Addle, Mind Twist or Wheel of Fortune. A little bit of waiting will let you spend your mana on deploying the impactful cards in hand. Then once you have more mana developed, you can cast the tutor and play the card fetched in the same go. If the opponent discards your tutor, at least you still have the chance to draw your powerful card later. Maybe your opponent can even wheel you into the card you would’ve tutored for!
Discard Effects
Stifle the opponent after developing and/or clear the way towards winning the game
Holding onto discard spells can make them more potent. As described in the previous paragraph, you can catch the opponent’s Demonic Tutor card after they’ve already invested two mana into it. With Mind Twist, you can wait until you have enough mana to discard their whole hand, ensuring that you hit the payoffs/interaction/refuelers that typically remain in their hand. A hellbent opponent also gives you perfect information about the game state, allowing you to take actions with confidence.
With Despise and Addle, you are looking to grab specific cards from the opponent. If you know the particular set of planeswalkers/creatures you are worried about, you can hold Despise until just before the opponent would have enough mana to cast it. This gives them the most amount of turns to draw into the card so that you can get rid of it. Addle is great at stripping interaction from the opponent to resolve your wincons, and double-spelling with it can overwhelm the opponent. If an opponent only kept up one level of interaction, they either have to respond immediately to the Addle while tapping themselves out or the discard will reveal that the coast is clear. Even if the opponent has multiple interactive spells, a mid-to-late game discard spell may bait an opponent into overvaluing their final piece of interaction and trick them into deploying it later than they should. Casting discard spells later into the game usually hits something your opponent was leaning on or building towards.
Patience vs Greed
Waiting has its downsides, so weigh the risks of patience
While I have laid out fair arguments for delaying your spells, there are many reasons to play them sooner. An early Time Walk might catapult you into a snowballing position before your opponent can react. When inevitability doesn’t favor you, you will need to convert draw spells into proactive wincons before it’s too late. Stax pieces like Winter Orb, Stasis, Narset, Karn, and more, punish you for not using your mana and draw while you can. Holding onto discard effects can be punished by the opponent playing fast mana to get something out ahead of schedule. In general, too much “patience” taken to maximize your spells can turn into greed, and the opponent might tempo you out before you can get your value.
My goal with pointing out the flaws in holding onto your cards isn’t to undermine my previous points, but to strengthen this concept: evaluate the pros and cons of patience before casting your spells. A turn or two of waiting can leverage extra combats and mana from Time Walk, make every scry count, and increase the potency of discard spells. However, you may not have turns to wait if you aren’t utilizing your mana efficiently. Every decision matters, so what will you opt to do?
Additional Reading
How to Play Discard Spells in MTG by Martin Juza
Glasses of Urza illustrated by Douglas Shuler
