Turbo Depths at SCG Richmond

This weekend I finished 3rd at SCG Richmond piloting Turbo Depths. Why was I playing legacy though, anyone who knows me knows that it is by far and away my least favorite format! To give some context, I locked in teaming with Charles Azuelos right after our top 8 finish at SCG Pittsburgh. I was super excited for this because Charles is a fantastic elves player but as you may know, modern horizons has a way of ruining decks and an audible was required. Charles wasn't really gravitating towards anything and after watching Abe Corrigan play lands at SCG Philly I thought going over wrenn and six with marit lage was a powerful strategy and started testing depths.

Testing: Leading up to Richmond, Hogaak Depths was by far the most popular flavor of depths. I have never played a match with it, but I imagine the plan is to smash fair decks with hogaak and lean on cabal therapy for combo matchups. I still am not sure where dark depths fits in but perhaps that just speaks to the power of Elvish Reclaimer. When I started looking at lists without hogaak, the lists trimming/cutting Dark Confidant in favor of Reclaimer that Bob Huang and Dave Long played to good finishes in Richmond hadn't really surfaced yet so I took it upon myself to build my initial lists. I started with Petal and Spirit Guide as my "fast mana" over diamond because I had assumed Dark Confidant was strictly unplayable into wrenn, and that going faster was probably better in pseudo-mirrors and against combo. (I was wrong about combo)

This was the final list that I played in Richmond, and i'd like to highlight a few of the conclusions I came to in testing

1. This deck is far more straight forward than slow depths due to playing 4 copies of Pithing Needle in the main deck. It feels like cheating in the delver matchups, if you land a needle naming wasteland and have a discard spell to clear force of will you will almost never lose. The downside to relying on needle is that we cannot play wasteland and only have access to a single ghost quarter, which gives us way less ability to maneuver against decks that play combinations of Wasteland, Karakas, Maze of Ith, and Ghost Quarter, or in situations where our opponents interact with Needle.

2. Into the North is an absolutely deplorable card. Horrible in Masteland matchups, low flexibility in matchups where our tech lands are good. I sided it out in at least 12 of my matches in Richmond because post board we are rarely afforded the ability to tap out to play a dark depths at sorcery speed when we have to worry about Wasteland>Surgical (a line that depths general has an easy time beating). The alternative effect is expedition map which greatly under performed in testing, 3 mana Sylvan Scrying is not where I want to be. I wish I had put time into testing another green source+Libarary or 2 copies of Birds of Paradise in that spot.

3. Dark Confidant is still extremely good. Though it is dicey into Wrenn, it is THE card against plow decks, and in mirrors. Most of the older turbo lists I saw didn't play Bob however, I believe he is well worth investing a petal in when he is good.

4. Turbo depths has a significantly worse side board than slow depths. Petal/Spirit guide over Mox Diamond don't really allow us to use Hymn to Tourach to help combo matchups, and when it came to 3 mana haymakers 1 copy of choke felt like I was pushing it, turbo certainly can't support juicy cards like Lilly, Last Hope, Plague Engineer, not to mention that I don't think Turbo can support Reclaimer in general.

Testing went quite well for the first two weeks, Delver decks felt woefully unprepared, the pseudo-mirror against Hogaak depths felt favorable, and I was smashing Blood Moon and UW decks with the sideboard I had constructed. The week prior to the event I started to lose way more. I started getting submerged more often, Show and Tell started popping up, and the slow depths decks akin to what Bob Huang won the classic with were clowning me. Not feeling comfortable audibling to Slow Depths, I added a Veil of Summer for the Delver matchups and locked in.

Tournament Report: I'm gonna start by admitting that my personal record at this event was 9-6, which does not reflect a very dominating performance. It was not, I lost a lot and was fortunate enough to mostly distribute my wins where they mattered. My tournament went like this:

Round 1 Miracles 2-1

Round 2 Show and Tell 2-1

Round 3 Eldrazi Stompy 0-2

Round 4 Miracles 2-0

Round 5 Nic Fit 2-0

Round 6 Bomberman 2-1

Round 7 Reanimator 1-2

Round 8 Lands 2-1

Round 9 4c midrange 2-1

Round 10 Ant 1-2

Round 11 Slow Depths 1-2

Round 12 Rug Delver 2-1

Round 13 Lands 0-2

Round 14 Rug Delver 0-2

Round 15 4c Delver 2-0

I felt in over my head multiple times in this tournament, in Round 8 I was insanely lucky to win my match against Casey Lancaster on lands after punting the second game by casting a Pithing Needle into a force of vigor that he had accidentally shown me. I felt insanely anxious playing this match, my team was crushing it but I was playing against someone who had a significantly better understanding of the matchup than me, and I started thinking about potentially letting them down, and did not feel confidant in my sideboard plan (side bob into wrenn). This also happened against in round 11 against Dave Long where I forgot to go to my second main phase against his floating mana before making my Lage, this resulted in him making a Lage off of my depths then finding Sejiri Steppe on his next turn.

Fortunately I was able to pull it together for most of the matches I needed to win, the ended up going 3-1 against delver on the weekend only losing to Noah Walker who showed me that Delver can feel like an even match when you know how to keep/mull and cantrip correctly. All of my Delver opponents came prepared by either being 4c with multiple edicts, or packing Submerge, the matchups still felt super favorable and I managed to steamroll my matches in round 15 and the quarter finals.

Though I think I missed my mark in deck building by not working on Reclaimer builds, the deck still mostly felt fantastic, and the explosiveness of my fast mana took people off guard multiple times. I don't want to make any statements about my read on the meta because it feels almost impossible to properly predict the day 1 meta, but I did not expect Lands and Ant in day 2, and assumed i'd see way more Blood Moon floating around. I plan to pivot into slow depths when I start testing for Syracuse because it does not play into the north, and has a much better sideboard, and would love to chat with anyone about depths, you can find me on twitter @brog8264 thanks!