Magic the Gathering (MTG) - Tech Talk - Taking Turns

With Magic Fest Los Angeles underway, let's look at a strategy that is not normally seen.

Taking Turns by Daniel Wong

Creature 2
4 Snapcaster Mage
Planeswalker 2
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Spell 31
1 Commandeer
2 Cryptic Command
4 Dictate of Kruphix
3 Exhaustion
3 Gigadrowse
1 Howling Mine
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Panoptic Mirror
1 Part the Waterveil
4 Serum Visions
1 Snapback
3 Temporal Mastery
4 Time Warp
Land 23
1 Cascade Bluffs
1 Flooded Strand
1 Gemstone Caverns
3 Island (335)
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Snow-Covered Island
3 Steam Vents
4 Sulfur Falls
1 Temple of Epiphany
Sideboard 15
2 Abrade
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Commandeer
1 Crackling Drake
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Gelectrode
1 Negate
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Thing in the Ice

Taking Turns is a control deck that has a different gameplay comparing to other control decks in the sense that rather to play many removals/counter magics, the deck want to actually cast spells with extra turn effects as well as drawing a bunch of cards in the process.

For the most when playing this deck, you are a control deck at heart but you have a proactive plan at playing cards like Time Warp, Temporal Mastery, Jace, the Mind Sculptor as well as Howling Mine to draw extra cards.

The cards that you are casting during your opponent's turn is casting cards like Dictate of Kruphix in order for you to get the extra card first, countermagic to slow down your opponent's gameplan. Gigadrowse is one of the more unusual cards because you are playing this to tap your opponent's lands to prevent your opponent to casting cards for one turn cycle as well as to play a card like Exhaustion to prevent your opponent's lands & creatures from untapping on their turn. These plays are done to prevent opponents from interacting with you on your turn.

Win conditions are very essential when playing as a control deck otherwise you are not going to close out a game if you are not playing any way to winning the game so let's look at them now.

You are either going to using Snapcaster Mage as a way to slowing chip at your opponent's life total or taking extra turn to Ultimate Jace, the Mind Scupltor to control your opponent's draw or exiling your opponent's library to have them unable to draw a card from an empty library or casting a Part the Waterveil with its alternative cost to turn a land into a 6/6 creature to beat your opponent's life total to zero.

Another feature that I saw as for those who are watching the stream is the CardBoard.Live CFB.

What this feature does for the viewers is when two players are in the feature match, you will actually be able to see the decklists the players are playing for the event as well as the profile of those players if any.

For now I will stop here. Hopefully I have given an outline of how Taking Turns operates.