Updating Temur Reclamation for MTG Arena Treasure Constructed
Hello again! This weekend we are going to be playing Treasure Constructed! This format is just like BO1 ladder, except that at the beginning of each of your turns, you get a Treasure Token. I am really looking forward to this week, as I love doing powerful things.
Unlike last time I examined one of Arena’s unique events, where I ran down the steps you should take to create your own deck, this week, I’ll be going over what I personally will be playing.
Why Temur Reclamation?
I chose to simply port/edit an existing deck in Standard that I felt would fit the format. First question I asked myself was: “what’s the most powerful thing I can do with extra early mana?” and I quickly determined that Growth Spiral was the card that I wanted to exploit the most. Sure, the temporary burst in mana is nice for single-turn combos, but turning that turn 1 treasure into a long-term advantage by casting ramp spells is really where I feel the action’s at.
The next question is what Growth Spiral deck? The two obvious options are Temur Reclamation and Gates. However, having played Niv-Mizzet, Parun plenty of times previously, I immediately gravitated towards casting that bad boy on turn 3. The most awkward thing about the Temur Reclamation deck is the actual Wilderness Reclamations. These enchantments don’t have obvious synergy with getting treasures early, but all of the things that you want to do with those treasures (Growth Spiral, Expansion // Explosion, Chemister’s Insight) all also synergize beautifully with Wilderness Reclamation.
Now that I’m all-in on this plan, how do I best port it to this unique format?
We start with Ross Merriam’s list from the most recent SCG Team Open:
Adjusting for Unique Rules
Now, Ross’s deck is mostly built as a control deck with a combo finish. This was all well and good for him in a large BO3 tournament, but for this weekend’s event, I’m going all-in on the combo.
Because I cannot realistically predict the metagame, I can’t really decide what answers I should play to stop my opponents. As a result, I’m making the following changes:
-4 Shivan Fire
These 6 card swaps push us to be more focused on versatility and proactivity. A big reason you cannot normally play 4 copies of Niv-Mizzet (besides it being legendary) is that he’s slow and clunky and you frequently die before resolving him. I doubt this will be true when he is accelerated out reliably on turn 4.
Since we’re more focused on combo-killing them ourselves (Niv-Mizzet + instants and sorceries counts as a combo in my book), we don’t need our answers to be as permanent as the damage based removal that Ross ran, as we have no intention of playing a very long game. Thus, the versatility of Blink of an Eye is extremely potent in a deck like this, especially if an opponent uses a bunch of treasure to play a giant thing ahead of schedule.
Playing the Deck
For those of you who haven’t played a deck like this before, all you need to know is: put a stop on your end step. On MTGArena, you have to reset your end step stop each turn, and if you don’t, you won’t get the chance to use all the extra mana you get off your Wilderness Reclamation triggers. For the most part, you’re focused on jamming your spells every single turn and leveraging all your extra mana to find more spells to find Niv or Explosion and quickly blast your opponent out of the game.
If you’re a more controlling player, I imagine you could edit this list to include more removal, etc. once you have a better plan of what your opponents would be playing. Additionally, Primal Amulet is another powerful card to accelerate out on turn 2, which I intend to explore in more detail when I can actually play the games. Basically, I think this event will be a lesson in using mana to make more mana to use cards to draw more cards and eventually, you have so much mana and so many cards that the game ends.
Conclusion
Hopefully you enjoyed this brief foray into my plans for the weekend. I hope we are all able to find success with this, and don’t hesitate to reach out to me with lists you’re successful with! If I get enough responses, I intend to compile them and publish them next week in another short write-up. Tweet at me @suddenoats and hopefully you’ll be listed here on flipsidegaming.com next week.
Until then, remember: cards are meant to draw more cards.
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