Hello guys,
First glad to see this site updated. With dack imo going to be at a low with golem restricted what would be your shell for time vault/tinker/blightsteel.dec?
Mash it into a UW standstill build for a quick kill? Or is mentor the best win con in that? Open to most lists
Something with lots of Tezzerets and keys?
There was TurboTezz some years ago, with Grim Monoliths. Quite explosive.
There's a few different flavors of Tezzeret.dec. Thoughtcast is powerful, but using artifact lands is a very steep cost. You can add Turbo elements (extra copies of Key, Tezzeret, and usually multiple Tops, and some number of Grim Monolith). There's the standard Blue Control shell with Jace, usually 1 copy of Tezzeret, and 1 Key. Finally, there's several variations of "Steel City Vault" with different names (X City Vault) which go ham with draw7s, tons of artifact acceleration, and different directions you could go from there, such as Goblin Welders.
If you're looking for something different than Tezzeret.dec, you could try older decks like Gifts Ungiven or Control Slaver. A lot of people find it hard to play decks like those in the world of Gush, though. Bob-Jace decks were very powerful in the era between 2011 and 2014, despite Gush being a thing, but that was before the printing of Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor. Those decks typically run the Unholy Trifecta of Tinker, Time Vault, and Yawgmoth's Will. I have a hard time believing that isn't still a powerful strategy, even if it isn't in vogue right now. Honestly, pretty much anything can work well with Tinker and Time Vault. I hope this helps.
@DeaTh-ShiNoBi For a time vault deck right now, I feel like a grixis contol list featuring pyroblasts and Duress/Thoughtseize could perform in the right meta. As I type this however, there is already a deck out there that sort of fits that bill...painter. The cool thing about painter vs a more traditional grixis key deck (aside from sweet pyroblast tricks) is that the individual pieces in painter do way more than time vault and voltaic key on their own.
I am not putting down vault/key at all, but I think it needs ways "not to lose" while you dig for the individual pieces...this can be accomplished with heavy permission and some well meta'd MB slots...sulfer elemental, extra hand disruption, abrupt decay (if you are on green) and one of my personal favorites..pithing needle.
I've been playing vault key in an esper build with mentors. White gives you mentor and swords, plus some good shops and storm hate options, blue for the standard draw and counterspell package, black for DT, vamp and yawgs will. I run 1x big jace, 1x tezzeret (seeker). Only 1 key, this isnt a turbo build, I try and control the game and find an opening then explode with mentor or vault.
I like black over red because of extra card selection from the black tutors, and will. Will is insane with mentor out, and its good to give you another shot at vault key too.
Red may have been better before shops got hit, but i played black because i think will is more fun than dack and I had picked up a beta tutor so I just had to play it, but with LSG getting hit I think esper stock goes up.
I feel like Vault/Key is one of those things that is best tossed into a deck with another plan A., or at a minimum a very powerful plan B. It's such a low investment, especially in any build where Key already has other advantages, that it's easier to just toss in and oops your way into infinite turns.
I played it in Painter at a local event a few weeks back and it worked out well. It's also in Belcher, which has such absurd velocity that it's not hard to find the combo. Both are stone dead to Null Rod, though.
