Telling Time is fine, but it really looks to fighting for the same space as Censor, which is much more flexible.

More flexible? Okay. Much more flexible? Once you're past a certain turn Censor is 90% Reach through Mists, and you don't want to see 3 Censors before that turn.
I could get behind running 2 Censor 2 Time. List update pending.

A great early game card that becomes Reach through Mists after turn 5 isn't a bad thing; that's a great thing.

Sure, but even in the earlygame the card is a bit situational and you don't necessarily want to see it in multiples. And the card it competes with is really important in you setting up your gameplan early and getting card selection; something Censor is a lot weaker about.

I guess time will tell whether I like the 2+2 approach or fully come around on Censor.

Censor will always be a Reach through Mists after your opponent falls for it the first time.

So, what card exactly are you trying to counter, on the draw, on turn 3....that you don't have an Anguished Unmaking or Never // Return or Cast Out for?

I'd much rather use the almighty Telling Time to find those answers and fix my draws!

If my opponent is playing around it, that's usually pretty okay, too. Most decks can't hold their 3-drops until turn 4 or their 4-drops until turn 5. That's a massive tempo loss for them, even if we assume they can identify it in our hands and are properly playing around it.

Thats not the point.

Massive tempo loss for YOU since your holding up 2 and their holding up 1.

In random lobbies, people will ALWAYS fall for it the 1st time, the 2nd and 3rd time will be a cycle for U. So my question is, why make that investment?

Versus another control deck...with public decklist...the card is doodoo.

EDIT: And trust me, I've drafted a Stymied Hopes in Theros and I was so amazed at the hopes of playing it...I pulled 3 of them. I quickly realized in practice how horrible it really was.

This card is better than Stymied Hopes because it always replaces itself at instant speed.

And we can afford to durdle. We're a counter deck. Durdling is our entire gameplan.

Gotta agree with vert on Censor, i think running all 3 censor is gonna be a must. It prevents your opponent dropping that turn 3 liliana or t4 gideon on you but more importantly with it being 2 mana allows you to more easily cast alongside another spell the same turn. The other reason is you want as much early interaction we can have vs aggro and this is excellent agaisnt those decks wanting to curve out and goes along way in improving those matchups.

In regards to telling time I'm almost certainly cutting all of them, I've really gone off the card throughout the season not to mention looking at my brews i can't find anything I would cut to fit them in given the power level of the new cards. It's also worth noting that the temor tower list (link below) that won a GP only ran 1 anticpate and in place had earlier interaction in horribly awry and was the one that had the best success vs mardu vehicles.

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=15017&d=290871&f=ST

Also, who tries to draft a counter deck to begin with? I mean Jeez.

Gem, as the control deck you basically forfeit all of your tempo in the early games anyways; and your goal is to kill theirs. If the opponent casts a 2-drop on turn 3 because they play around Censor, you already slowed them down in a sense. Furthermore, it's not like you're only relying on Censor, but have multiple things to do (like, cast a removal spell or Telling Time). Heck, if worst comes to worst you spend 1 mana you held up for Censor to cycle it away.

My reasoning for the card being more situational is that by far not all of the decks curve out perfectly and I can picture quite some occasions where you'd just want a Telling Time instead (which, remember, Censor is competeing for slots). Two examples:
-Control mirror. Nobody plays spells before turn 5-6 except some occasional EOT carddraw/filtering. Here's where I'd rather have Telling Time EOT than cycling Censor.
-Aggro match-up; your opponent plays two cards a turn (2-drop + 1-drop turn 3, 2-drop+2-drop turn 4). Instead of countering one of the drops using Censor, I'd prefer Telling Time to look for the good cards in this matchup (sweepers, removal, lifegain) instead of countering a cheap spell using Censor.

There are quite some match-ups in which Censor is better as well (preventing a t3 Tutelage/Fevered Visions/Liliana instead of having to draw into your Unmakings is HUGE). Big point here: Censor is good on one, maybe two turns in all of these matchups. I agree that advantage is quite big when compared to the advantage Telling Time has over Censors cycle, but there are too many more instances where you have that little advantage that might make the difference that it's impossible to make a definite call on which of the two cards is better/which balance of them you should run.

If your opponent tries to play around Censor by delaying his good card a turn, you can just cycle and at his endstep. Next turn you'll have mana for your hard counter/instant speed removal anyways, your opponent will be between a rock and a hard place.

Gem is talking about Telling Time like it's an amazing card, when it actually isn't. It's a bad card that we had to run before due to a lack of better options. I'm 100% fine with cutting it, although 3 Censor/1 TT might be the best ratio.

As for Pull, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Glimmer is not the card you're looking to replace with it. Pull is fighting for a spot with Confirm (although I'll concede that you can cut the 3rd Glimmer for the second Pull/Confirm IF you want to run 2 Pulls and 1 Confirm or 2 Confirms and 1 Pull).

I don't disagree that Censor is great early and meh late.

Why I believe you should run 3 is because you need all the copies to consistently have it early. Besides, there will be odd corner cases where it will counter a 6-drop on turn 6 and you'll LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH.

Yeah, I see Pull as basically another 6 drop. I want to be playing it late to completely refill in matches where I desperately need to refill.

I think I'm 2 Glimmer / 2 Confirm / 1 Pull right now.

Strongly disagree on that notion. Card selection, as provided by Telling Time, is incredibly important in control decks because you need to line up the correct answers to the opposing threats - not just the answer you have in hand.
Top-level control decks run Anticipate for exactly that reason, and while I agree that Anticipate is better than Telling Time most of the time, this doesn't change the fact that card selection is mandatory. I am okay with cutting one Telling Time because Cycling does provide a little bit of card selection as well, but it's not enough to fully get rid of Telling Time.



Countering a 6-drop is something Scatter/Shrivel/Confirm can do as well.
I understand your reasoning for all three copies, I'm not on board with it yet for the reasons I posted before. Maybe playing the card absolutely proves me wrong here, though.


Agree on your notions about Pull; we never want to cast it before turn 5, ideally turn 6.

Uh, except you're not exactly disagreeing with me. Early game card selection is super important to a control deck, and I never said otherwise. In fact, it's so important that we had to use a bad card like Telling Time (Which is a lot worse than Anticipate, or Azorius Charm, or Think Twice) for that role. The role TT fulfills is mandatory, but the card itself isn't, when we have other options to do the job, which wasn't the case before, but it is now.

how ****'ing great were Portent and Ponder doe?

Reprint those, Magic.

Portent would be busted in this game.

I think that is kind of the point though.

That early game selection is very important to the deck, to the point where we are running a meh card (TT). The thing is though, I honestly am not sold on the idea of us having other options. Censor is definitely a lot more flexible, but in regards to that particular role (early game selection) it is even worse than the meh card we are already running. I don't know if the added flexibility of the counterspell side of the card is worth losing out on the better card selection early on.

This is why I am currently thinking a 2/2 split is the best answer. We would still have 2 copies of TT for that early game filtering (and 2 copies of Censor to provide the same effect if needed), while still trying to keep as many copies of Censor in as we can to up the chances of getting them early when we really need the tempo advantage from the counterspell side.

I don't think Censor can completely replace TT, as much as I hate to say it. Although I do think the addition of Censor means that TT is no longer an automatic 3 of for us.

LOL how do those cards only cost 1?
I can just picture Vert always putting lands on the top of my deck and tapping out in his main phase cuz he knows I'm drawing nothing