Remand by Mark A. Nelson
So, I know how I figured out the art of planning in Magic: exclusively playing Splinter Twin in Modern. But I’m trying to figure out where my Splinter Twin success came from and can’t really come up with an answer. I mean, looking back, I thought the way I approached the deck was the floor for playing it properly. Was everyone else in my area just awful? Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that I’m pretty sure were going through my head at all times, some of which were Twin mirror or Blue mirror specific:
- Think about how often you would board out Twin combo, then add some unknown percentage on top of that. That’s how often I played games two and three as a pure control deck, though my weapons occasionally changed. (1-2 Keranos, God of Storms and 1-2 Batterskull, and then I jumped on the Sower of Temptation bandwagon and boarded it in more than everyone else did.)
- This should really go without saying by now but I still need to point it out: The most important skill for succeeding with Blue in Modern is fetchland/cantrip sequencing.
- Let’s say opponent opens on Colonnade into Island. As a Twin player, my first thought was how to get them to shock themselves for red mana. Every point mattered.
- When could I get away with not casting Serum Visions on turn 1? It’s not a secret that cantrips are stronger when you wait on them, but Modern can occasionally be hostile to players trying to extract the most value from your cards. Specifically, I wanted to always cast Serum Visions or Snapcaster Mage into Serum Visions on turn 3 against Jeskai, especially when on the play.
- When do I need to cast Serum Visions to find lands in the midgame but not get punished for going down a mana in the process? My general rule of thumb was to wait until I had only one land left in hand. There were exceptions, of course. If the opponent missed land drops in the mirror, they were going to play proactively (Especially if they went down two or more land drops, this was probably the highest percentage play they could make.), so you would occasionally need to save the mana to combat their efforts. But, if your defenses were more than good enough, you could still just cast the cantrip and continue building an advantage. I feel like I might have seen a lot of players lose their advantage (or the game) by taking themselves off a crucial mana on a potentially fundamental turn.
- What am I looking for with a Serum Visions? Aside from combo pieces in matchups where going off matters, I generally prioritized four categories of cards with my cantrips: Snapcaster Mage, Vendilion Clique, reactive blue cards, and lands. Lightning Bolt greatly increased in priority in concert with a Snapcaster Mage.
- I just wrote multiple blurbs about Serum Visions but it really was that important! You need to create good opportunities to resolve your creatures, and card selection plus intelligent trading are how those opportunities are crafted. The last main ingredient is time, and you’ll require a lot of it. And you need to be cognizant of that time you have to spend setting up, because…
- With all the time you take to set up resolving Snapcaster or Cliques, there’s a lot more at stake when your opponent tries to trade with them. If your Jeskai opponent, say, resolves Electrolyze on a Snapcaster Mage and a VClique, then they actually killed two of your creatures and a lot of the time you spent setting them up, AND they drew a card for their efforts. That is NOT a very good trade for you! If I ever had a Snapcaster and Vendilion Clique in play at the same time, I assure you one of the following two things were true: A. I had at least two counterspells open. B. They were bait for something significantly more important.
- I can’t just be worried about Serum Visions messing up scrying. Almost like how Legacy plays out sometimes, any fetchland activation is the opportunity to start a fight. I could sneak an Exarch or VClique underneath a counterspell and now my opponent had to play scared for the rest of the game. I needed to be extra vigilant about my lands and my opponents’ lands.
- I tried to make my own Cryptic Commands and Remands good and my opponents’ Cryptic Commands and Remands awful. VClique, Pestermite, and Deceiver Exarch were often cast just to clear a Remand. I wanted to have my own Remand available to protect Snapcaster Mage from Cryptic Commands or Spell Snares, but I also wanted a Remand for an opponent that attempted to flashback Cryptic Command. I also had 1-2 maindeck Dispel to get an upper hand in stack fights.
- Food for thought: If your opponent casts something into your Remand, you probably need to think about why they are doing so. I think I was able to get past a few Blue mages because they ended up doing my bidding.
- With Splinter Twin in particular, I had a hard-and-fast rule whenever I Vendilion Cliqued my opponent, regardless of whether or not the combo was in my deck at the time: NEVER, EVER, EVER TAKE CRYPTIC COMMAND. We generally tried to snipe Cryptics with Remands and Dispels, or we forced our opponent to use it for lousy tempo purposes. When V Clique sticks around and starts clocking, that four mana spell becomes a massive liability until the opponent is forced to play it in search of counterplay and get barely anything in exchange at best (and completely obliterated at worst).
- I want to make this very clear though: The ability to leave Cryptics stranded in their hand was because of our inherent flash game. Many decks CANNOT replicate this. For example, Mardu Pyromancer cannot really “play around” a Cryptic Command. You have to brute force it or play discard, and as a result, (at least pre-Teferi), I think it was correct for Mardu to max out on Collective Brutality after board against Jeskai.
- What was I looking to Clique? My general goal was to create a mismatch in the long term, though sometimes taking a removal spell for the short term would generate that long term advantage. My biggest target was their copies of Snapcaster Mage. I would occasionally take Spell Snare if I had at least one Snap, but would generally have preferred to leave it. Anything that answered Keranos or Blood Moon (notably Celestial Purge) had a target on its back. I occasionally took Bolts but usually would leave Path behind. The extra mana was super important for a long matchup where I would inevitably find my Desolate Lighthouse, a card I probably should have mentioned by now.
- I think Clique was actually one of the most important cards in the deck. It gave you the strongest plan B attacker, the information that you needed to sequence properly, and you got to turn their best card into something else, and the rest of their hand into shit. I usually only played two in the maindeck and today I can say that was probably a mistake on my part.
- Another brief aside about Desolate Lighthouse. Everyone knew the card won the mirror. HOWEVER, similar to how players can try to mitigate Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin, you could take advantage of an opponent using mana on Lighthouse to resolve spells, like, I dunno maybe a Vendilion Clique? Exarch tapping down a Lighthouse also caused some tension..
- The follow-up from a resolved Clique might actually be more important than the Clique itself. If your hand was significantly better than theirs, Bolt-Snap-Bolt would let you try to close before they could attempt to improve their position. Even if you weren’t able to add to the clock, the opponent was now on the back foot against your deck that may or may not have had Splinter Twin or Keranos in it, and those cards resolving ended the game on the spot.
- In the mirror, I wanted to have a Pestermite or Exarch in my hand at most stages of the game, just to have an answer for a combo attempt. This also let me quickly turn the corner if my hand developed into something that could combo through any defense they presented.
This is the first stepping stone to a huge breakthrough I made. Eventually, I realized that I could treat almost every matchup like a Twin mirror, and it didn’t actually matter whether or not my Twin approach was correct. Coincidentally, I started winning more games. We’ll get to that soon.