I have been on u/r twin since the banning of pod earlier this year and I feel that I’ve become quite proficient with the deck; I love the ability the twin combo gives me to pressure my opponents into tapping their mana as I want them to, constantly forced to respect the possibility that I could instantly win the game if they tap out. That being said, the deck certainly has its weaknesses. U/r Twin dogs it pretty hard against anything that passes the lightning bolt test; Roast is the worst card I have ever been forced to play, and while it DOES kill Tasigurs, Anglers, and Most Goyfs it rots in my hand against Restoration Angels and bigger Goyfs. The deck also has a good deal of trouble grinding against bg/x decks as they almost always have at least one answer to the combo when they need it, and since they aren’t forced to play sub-optimal cards like roast they will almost always beat you out with straight card advantage as the cards they’re drawing are just strictly better than the cards you are drawing. Despite these downsides, I have always found the deck’s power level to outweigh its drawbacks and I settled upon this list for the last few weeks.

U/R Splinter Twin:

Sideboard

This is the list I arrived on after almost a year of fine tuning; I have gone through a great deal of changes with fun-ofs until I got what you see here. I started out with three splinter twin and one kiki-jiki, mirror breaker because sometimes my opponents would tap out at the end of their turn to stop me from setting up the combo and I would untap and combo off with seven mana, an exarch/pestermite, and kiki-jiki; It was cute but eventually I went back to the vanilla combo package. I tried out Grixis Twin when it was the exciting flavor of the month, swapping out my roasts for terminates, my electrolyzes for kolaghan’s commands, my peek for inquistion of kozilek, and my non-combo creatures for Tasigur, but I hated how clunky Tasigur felt in my hand when playing him wasn’t the right move and swapping out my cantrips for discard spells made me feel like I was always losing card advantage against other blue decks. I went back to U/R for the next few months and I preferred the flexibility it gave me. I started trying out a singleton spell pierce and I loved the versatility it offered; hitting all non creature spells in the early game more than made up for the drawback of being much less useful in the late game and I found that as long as I sequenced correctly it was great at the end of a counter war, even in the late game. It was around this time that I started seeing Grixis Twin lists where people were leaving Tasigur in the side, keeping their list looking very similar to a U/R list, but upgrading their awful cards (like Roast) with the added power from the black splash and I became very intrigued but unfortunately I had already traded my grixis landbase away. I saw that people were putting Mulldrifter into their Grixis Twin sideboards and liked the idea so much that I tried it in my U/R list; despite the fact that I didn’t have Kolaghan’s Command to fully abuse the evoke ability, I almost always got my value out of it. I would cast it for five, draw my two cards, and my opponent would either waste a piece of removal on it or I would get to connect a few times with a 2/2 flier. To make room for Mulldrifter in my sideboard I cut my sideboard dispel and to compensate for losing a 1-cmc counterspell I went down to 1 mainboard copy of cryptic command (which I found was often too expensive to cast profitably in the current meta) to go up to two main board copies of Spell Pierce, and I have found that the card is often nuts. Almost no one plays around it, so as long as you time them before they become irrelevant you will almost always make a huge trade up in tempo. They also happen to work extremely well in multiples; I’ve found that I am able to combo off against control decks quite often when I have both in hand, because they just can’t compete with the ultra-efficient counterspells.

Unfortunately I still found that I was losing enough to the raw power level of the cards in BG/x and Grixis decks and I kept coming back to the idea of changing my green splash out for black. Thankfully, due to the recent success and spike of the cards in Atarka Red, I was able to trade back into my Grixis landbase and I have come up with this list that I have been testing for this weekend.

Grixis Twin:

1 Blood Crypt

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Cavern of Souls

1 Desolate Lighthouse

1 Ghost Quarter

3 Island

1 Mountain

3 Polluted Delta

4 Scalding Tarn

3 Steam Vents

2 Sulfur Falls

1 Swamp

1 Watery Grave

4 Serum Visions

4 Splinter Twin

1 Cryptic Command

1 Dispel

1 Electrolyze

1 Kolaghan’s Command

4 Lightning Bolt

1 Peek

3 Remand

2 Spell Pierce

1 Spell Snare

2 Terminate

4 Deceiver Exarch

2 Pestermite

1 Grim Lavamancer

4 Snapcaster Mage

1 Vendilion Clique

Sideboard

1 Engineered Explosives

1 Izzet Staticaster

2 Keranos, God of Storms

1 Kolaghan’s Command

1 Languish

1 Mulldrifter

1 Negate

1 Pyroclasm

1 Shatterstorm

1 Spellskite

1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

1 Thoughtseize

1 Vandalblast

I tried to keep my list as functionally close to U/R as possible. Admittedly, I think my mana base needs some work; If I’m not going to be playing blood moon (and I don’t see it as worth it) I probably don’t need four basic islands but they are also useful with helping me cast Teferi out of the board. I swapped out one copy of roast and one copy of remand for two copies of terminate; I feel that terminate will often be killing threats that I would have remanded and I feel good about this swap. I swapped one of my main board spell snare for Kolaghan’s command; the power level on this card is just so high to not include at least one in the main, and it hits Spellskite and cranial plating which are some of my most common spell snare targets anyway. In the side I have Izzet Staticaster for infect and tokens, however I don’t see either of these decks often and I feel I am already somewhat well equipped to handle them; I am leaving this card in the side for now but it is currently the closest to being cut. A second copy of Kolaghan’s Command in the side comes in whenever I need to be grinding out matches, for obvious reasons. Languish is my budget Damnation; It was originally a Rending Volley, because I seem to play against a lot of Restoration Angels, Colonnades, and Twin mirrors but I think I’m well enough equipped to handle those now with terminate. There is a certain affinity player at my store who has arranged his deck to handle twin is extremely experienced in shutting down twin, and the Languish went in in respect to him, as well as other aggressive creature decks. Shatterstorm and Vandalblast come in to replace Ancient Grudge. Thoughtseize comes in as me unfortunately accepting that I need some extra help against certain combo decks like Scapeshift and Ad Naseum (I really dislike Thoughtseize effects, especially in Twin decks when I usually want to be doing other things with my mana turns 1-3). I like only a single copy of Tasigur because of how truly awful he is in multiples, and it leaves room for Teferi which I have found to be nuts. Teferi into Kolaghan’s Command returning my Tasigur and casting it end of turn has been one of the most fun plays I have ever made. Control decks fold to Teferi and that is good enough for me to give it a slot. In my testing the deck has felt extremely strong and well worth the more taxing mana base against burn decks (which Spell Pierce seems to do a good job in covering the lost ground. I wish you all luck this weekend, and thank you for taking your time to read this.

Andy Stone

iceimports.com