Temporal Control

The deck I used to get to Masters this month. While it's a Temporal Distortion deck, this is really just so you have enough mana to activate the two copies of Moondial in the deck + Merchant. Activating moondial is equivalent in card advantage to casting Wisdom of the Elders, so as long as you're activating moondial each turn, it's exactly like drawing an extra 5 mana Wisdom each turn.

Mulligan:

This deck is very mana hungry. In mulligans, you want to prioritize hitting your first 4+ power, while hopefully still having some early game plays. Generally, I look for the following for a "good" hand:

1. 3+ power (including Seek Power and Eilyn's Favor)

2. 1 - 2 "early card selection/advantage" (Strategize, Wisdom of the Elders, Recon Tower, and Find the Way)

3. 1 - 2 "Early interaction" (Essentially any of the removal, but I'll value Vanquish and Eilyn's Choice lower. Always mulligan assuming aggro, as you can usually draw into things to deal with other archetypes).

4. 1 - 2 "Mid game payoffs" (Auralian Merchant, Moondial, and Stronghold Visage)

5. As few 6+ mana spells as possible.

General Gameplan:
Against essentially every other deck, you're playing the role of the control deck. You're trying to balance three separate goals you need to be accomplishing:

1. Hitting power consistently

2. Keeping the board clear/minimizing taking damage

3. Grinding out card advantage, usually via things like Moondial, Channel the Tempest, Sword of the Sky King, and your board wipes.

Of goals 2 and 3, which you prioritize more depends on which archetype you're facing --- against aggro, keep the board clear at all costs. Against control, sometimes you'll want to leave small amounts of damage on board to activate Moondial instead.

When evaluating whether to kill creatures or not, take into account how many Stronghold Visage's you have. Each one gains you 2 life per turn, so think about the "net damage" you're taking each turn. If you aren't taking any net damage (say you have two Strongholds out, and they have <= 4 damage on the board), often it'll be right to just activate Moondial and pass. Wait for them to overcommit, then wipe the board.

Cards that have felt stronger than I've expected:

Recon Tower: This accomplishes three goals depending on the matchup:

1. Helps hit your early power (like I said, this deck is power hungry), and "effectively" draws 3 cards (for a ton of power)

2. Helps pop aegis

3. Sometimes just does 1 damage

Using Guard Tower solely for the 1 damage is generally only good vs Praxis and Skycraggro. Of course, once you have Temporal Distortion out, you'll generally have enough spare mana that you can ping their face for damage. One copy of this card feels great. In midrange and control matchups, I always love drawing one early. That being said, I'd imagine drawing multiples would feel pretty bad. It might be that since we have 8 ways to remove dead cards from our hands (4 strategize and 4 merchants) that running 2 is fine, but I haven't tested it yet (especially since I'm using essentially the same argument to run 2 find the ways).

Find the Way:
I generally appreciate seeing at least one copy of this over the course of a game. It's definitely on the weaker side generically, but because we're so incredibly power hungry I think it's better than it normally is in this deck.

Auralian Merchant: This card is stupendous. Being able to "hide" our Lumen Reclaimer and Temporal Distortion is great, as is being able to consistently tutor for Moondial. This means there are two slots left in our Merchant.

I've been generically pretty happy with Cirso's Choice as an anti-aggro card that's also just generically good to keep in my hand (once you have Temporal Distortion active, having another way to get aegis on demand is pretty nice).
I'll generally use it as a "counter spell", in that I'll use the fast-speed aegis to intercept high value spells specifically. If you just run this out normally, you risk the aegis being popped by something like Vara's Choice or Torch instead of Azindel's Gift or Obliterate.

I've felt Passage of Eons has been pretty meh.
I'm mostly running it to clear out multiple Xenan Obelisks or Mask of Torments, and while it helps plenty in that situation, I feel like it could easily just be another Disjunction. The silence on it hasn't been bad, but generally I find the 4 Desert Marshals to be plenty of silence.
Having this slot be some relic hate seems clear to me.

Moondial:
This really should be the signature card of the deck.
Moondial lets me outgrind essentially anyone.
Having more consistent access to it via Merchant has been great.

Disjunction:
This is mainly a hedge against this deck's weakness to relic weapons (and sometimes annoying relics).
Most matchups you'll just pitch this to strategize or merchant.
I'm usually not unhappy to see it, as late game it can be great to rebuy Sword of the Sky King.
That being said, I don't prioritize keeping it around unless I expect the opponent to have relic weapons, or specific problematic relics (Xenan obilisk, and the new one that does damage when you draw cards).

Excavate:
Note that this card is card disadvantage, and the entire point of this deck is card advantage.
For that reason, you should only use this if you really need to, or you'll net card advantage off of using it (so rebuying Channel the Tempest mostly).
That being said, the single copy has felt pretty good.

Cards that have felt weaker[/card]:
Passage of Eons:
As I mentioned before, 6 power is a LOT for this effect.
I could see replacing it with a disjunction, although it would require more testing first.

Eilyn's Choice:
This card has felt consistently meh.
The only times I ever feel good about casting it are to deal with opposing Icaria's, and Channel the Tempest.
That being said, I don't think there are any better choices to replace it with.

Cards I could see adding[/card]:
The Great Parlimant: I don't think this would be bad in this deck at all, but I think it might be overkill.
This deck generally is a lock to win much before it actually wins, and while you could try speeding this up I don't really know what you'd remove for it.
I'd imagine this would be best in the Merchant, and don't really see how you'd make room for it.

A New Tomorrow: It's a fun enough card, and an older version of the deck ran it.
That being said, I think it's overkill as well.
If you're going to run it, throw it in the Merchant for sure.

Auric Runehammer:
This would be a bigger change to the deck, but I've been thinking it might be good.
It plays well with Stronghold Visage and disjunction, and is good vs aegis (one of our current weaknesses).
That being said, there are plenty of units it "misses" (notable among them Icaria), and it's rather easy to accidentally kill it with Moondial's nightfall trigger.

Scourge of Frosthome:
I've seen some people run this, and I've never been impressed.
Maybe it's because I run desert marshal, so whenever I've encountered this I've been able to deal with it pretty easily (I don't think it ever survived to my turn unsilenced when my opponent played it).
It not fitting into our market strategy is additionally a rather big downside of it as well --- we already have 5 8 cost spells, which can be annoying at times.