Hello, first of all i have to make clear that, even though i played my fair share of games with Doomsday lists, iam not an expert at this strategy. Iam primerely a Storm player, but Doomsday has always been a deck i liked to proxy from now and then and play a few games and i just love the near endless possibilities and the feeling that most of the time there is a win possible, you just have to figure out the puzzle.

My question to the experts here is: Why is Quicken not seeing any play in Doomsday lists?
A end of turn Quicken, ritual, Doomsday seems incredibly powerful to me. This has multiple uses such as:

1. One of the biggest problems i encountered with Doomsday is when you cast Doomsday and then have to pass the turn. This gives the opponent am amount of room and time for reaction, iam not comftable with at all. He can spent his whole turn sculpting a hand full of answers, he could just kill you if he has a beater on board since you paid half your life, or he could fire off a draw 7. Of course you dont want to just play Doomsday and pass without any interaction in hand to at least fight over those possibilities, but wouldnt it be better to avoid those situations most of the time?
2. You get to untap all your mana for the turn you want to go for the win. This allows you to build a pile with more protection since you might be able to free up the spot a lotus for example takes a lot of the time.
3. It draws you into the pile as your turn-draw. This allows for safe feeling of casting Doomsday and then drawing into it in the same turn (for example with gush) wihtout having to spend a draw spell.

Quicken also is not a dead card in your hand if you cant use it for a Doomsday. Its still at least a cantrip (even though iam aware a 1mana draw 1 is terrible, but at least it isnt nothing in a dire situation) Its blue so it still pitches to FoW and Misdirection and its cheap.
Still you want to get as many uses out of Quicken as possible and use it to its full potential. Maybe the card would allow for more sorceries in the deck (DP? ive been thinking about a 2/2 split betweed DP and Doomsday since drawing multiple Doomsdays feels terrible a lot of the time, but thats for another discussion...i might be very wrong on that one)

I still think the safest and most direct way is to cast Doomsday and then Gush right into the pile, however Quicken might transform the other unpleasant option of passing into something closer to the gush route.
Since casting a Quicken just as a cantrip is pretty bad i assume that you want to keep the count as low as 1 or 2 copies in the deck.

Iam fully aware that im probably not the first one to think about that and that there is probably a good reason for why this isnt seeing any play - please enlighten me. But who knows, maybe it plays out fine (i havent tested with it a lot)

i havnt played much doomsday myself so all i have is what ive seen others playing it and what ive seen playing against itt. the only problem i see with quicken is you turn a one card combo into a two card combo, but it could still be very powerful, going eot doomsday, gets countered so then you untap and cast a second doomsday. it seems like a good idea but im not sure, all i can say is test it out.

The biggest question is probably what to cut? Preordains maybe, but the two cards fill a very different role.
Also what other sorceries are playable but not great that would get pushed by instant speed? Perhaps its the storm player speaking in me, but end of turn draw 7s and then untapping with a full grip seems sweet. Dont know how useful it is though, if your mainplan is Doomsday and you dont need to find a bunch of restricted cards to go off.

you can quicken duress. its kinda cute.

Dabbled with it. The biggest issue I had was it getting Misstepped as when you cast it with BBB up, it's not really a mystery what you're up to and you lose a lot or tempo. Also, really bad against shops.

I have never thought of quicken, but it seems a pretty decent idea against heavy control players. EOT quicken into doomsday. countered? i play my turn and doomsday again.

Or just EOT quicken + duress (to prevent topdecked tutors). And what about adding tinker to have EOT tinker into BSC/jar? Awesome. Treasure cruise gets closer to ancestral (and cannot be mistepped/missdirected). Even demonic or walk improve a bit if they can be played in EOT. It also synergyzes well with y.will and t.cruise/dtt, filling your grave.

I won't go crazy and play a full playset, but playing 1/2 seems decent. The worse scenario is to have it countered or just cycle it for a reasonable U.

@xouman it seems like you envision it in a Doomsday list with maybe more of a focus on a Tendrils kill (Tinker/Jar). Maybe a Doomsday/Storm hybrid? All of that seems reasonable to me, however it needs testing ofcourse.

@ChubbyRain said:

Dabbled with it. The biggest issue I had was it getting Misstepped as when you cast it with BBB up, it's not really a mystery what you're up to and you lose a lot or tempo. Also, really bad against shops.

Yeah it seems horrible against shops thats true,
Whats the problem with it getting missteped? itsnot like you have to cast a ritual into nothing after that. If you already have enough mana on board to keep up BBB and U, i dont see why you would even need to go for the end of turn play. in that case just go for it in your own turn and maybe use the quicken to draw into the pile (if you really have nothing else)

@Evoclipse said:

Whats the problem with it getting missteped? itsnot like you have to cast a ritual into nothing after that. If you already have enough mana on board to keep up BBB and U, i dont see why you would even need to go for the end of turn play. in that case just go for it in your own turn and maybe use the quicken to draw into the pile (if you really have nothing else)

Getting it misstepped is totally fine. 90% of the time you are going to use a CC1 spell after resolving doomsday , so quicken just gets that counter.

Against decks without countermagic quicken it's not relevant, but against blue decks I'd be happy to play doomsday in opponent's EOT. Besides you are untapping all your mana, having more available for duress/fluster

@Evoclipse said:

@ChubbyRain said:

Dabbled with it. The biggest issue I had was it getting Misstepped as when you cast it with BBB up, it's not really a mystery what you're up to and you lose a lot or tempo. Also, really bad against shops.

Yeah it seems horrible against shops thats true,
Whats the problem with it getting missteped? itsnot like you have to cast a ritual into nothing after that. If you already have enough mana on board to keep up BBB and U, i dont see why you would even need to go for the end of turn play. in that case just go for it in your own turn and maybe use the quicken to draw into the pile (if you really have nothing else)

I'm sorry, I'm confused on why we are playing Quicken in the first place if not to cast Doomsday on our opponent's end step...

@xouman said:

@Evoclipse said:

Whats the problem with it getting missteped? itsnot like you have to cast a ritual into nothing after that. If you already have enough mana on board to keep up BBB and U, i dont see why you would even need to go for the end of turn play. in that case just go for it in your own turn and maybe use the quicken to draw into the pile (if you really have nothing else)

Getting it misstepped is totally fine. 90% of the time you are going to use a CC1 spell after resolving doomsday , so quicken just gets that counter.

Against decks without countermagic quicken it's not relevant, but against blue decks I'd be happy to play doomsday in opponent's EOT. Besides you are untapping all your mana, having more available for duress/fluster

But you passed the turn with 4 mana up...A Misstep on the EoT Quicken is a substantial tempo loss bordering on your opponent casting Time Walk for 0 mana and 2 life.

@ChubbyRain i see what you are getting at. The reason to play Quicne is ifcourse to cast Doomsday EoT, however if the Quicke gets then coutnered, you are definetly suffering a big tempo loss. It might still be fine, since you are untapping right after that, but i see the problem. The more i theorize about the card in a Doomsday shell i think it actually might feel like a slightly worse Gush. It Produces mana (by letting you untap immediatly), draws into the Pile (by starting your turn right after pulling the trigger on Doomsday and still is pitchable to countermagic. It is considerably worse of course but interesting enough it seems to fullfill a similiar role as Gush.

I would like to hear from Doomsday experts on that topic as well as other oppinions on the playability on Quicken in Vintage in general. If you read the card innitially it just seems so full of possibilities and utility, but sadly doesnt see any play. I guess MM is to blame for that partially.

@ChubbyRain said:

But you passed the turn with 4 mana up...A Misstep on the EoT Quicken is a substantial tempo loss bordering on your opponent casting Time Walk for 0 mana and 2 life.

Again: if my quicken is going to be countered, then my ancestral/probe (involved in 90% of the piles) would be countered too. Playing quicken is far less explosive, but safer when having less counters.

So then you can say "play a fluster/duress in place of quicken". It works, too. But imagine the scenario where you have doomsday and 2/3 duress/flusters. You'll need more than 4 mana to play all, but if playing quicken=>duress you can save 1 mana for next turn. Not a dramatic improvement, and probably is not worth it (or everybody would play it), but it can work.

@xouman I was thinking more along the lines of your opponent then countering your Doomsday on your turn after you wasted the previous turn leaving up mana for a Quicken that never resolved. However, if the Doomsday resolves, you should be including appropriate protection in your pile. My top two cards if I had Gush were often Ancestral and Misstep/Thoughtseize/Flusterstorm depending on known information/game circumstances.

So since Doomsday is already really strong against Blue decks, how does Quicken help against Shops?

Like you've got x mana to spend each turn whether it's during your own turn or your opponents. How does waiting until your opponents end step do you any good? No one plays Mana Drain anymore so tapping their lands is non issue; might as well just main phase the Doomsday and defend it with a Flusterstorm.

The biggest problem with Quicken is that the deck is packed too tightly as is. There are a bunch of fringe cards in the typical Gush-based Doomsday deck that you already must choose from:

Gitaxian Probe 1-4
Treasure Cruise
Dig Through Time
Imperial Seal
Merchant Scroll
Time Walk
Preordain #4
Additional removal/bounce (Trygon Predators, Nature's Claim, Rushing River)
Additional disruption (more flusters/missteps/thoughtseizes)

I wouldn't play a single quicken over anything mentioned as long as the above cards are legal.

As is, we typically see lists that err towards heavier control and less Gushbonding (where things like Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise increase in value while Imperial Seal and Probes decrease) or lists that err towards a stronger Gushbond/Will plan (additional Probes, sometimes additional Rituals, max preordians, Time Walk, Scroll, Seal).

A bit more on Quicken. How is U+BBB, cast Doomsday at EOT better than BBB+(U/2 life) on my turn? Hint: it's worse than Gitaxian Probe, and you wouldn't consider Quicken before maxing Probe. If you're looking at Quicken as "if my Quicken resolves, then my Recall will resolve too", I think you're vastly underestimating the playskill and patience of most Vintage players.

@ChubbyRain said:

really bad against shops.

Matt here outlined it perfectly. I don't know if I'd consider myself an 'expert' but I'm definitely pretty far up there, and I can tell you this deck is still phenominal against blue decks, to the point where you don't need to have gimmick cards like Quicken in order to be effective. Everything you do to 'improve' the deck needs to improve it against LOLDrazi or LolDraziShop, which Quicken doesn't do.

@emidln said:

A bit more on Quicken. How is U+BBB, cast Doomsday at EOT better than BBB+(U/2 life) on my turn? Hint: it's worse than Gitaxian Probe, and you wouldn't consider Quicken before maxing Probe. If you're looking at Quicken as "if my Quicken resolves, then my Recall will resolve too", I think you're vastly underestimating the playskill and patience of most Vintage players.

Thats pretty good reasoning, thank you very much! I was always wondering why it doesnt see much play, but nobody could give me good enough reasons until now.