As Water Through Cracks

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Primer RUW (Jeskai, America) Storm

Ashen0ne

Instant (24)

• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Desperate Ritual
• 1x Dovin's Veto
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Force of Negation
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Frantic Search
• 1x High Tide
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Narset's Reversal
• 1x Opt
• 1x Path to Exile
• 1x Pyretic Ritual
• 1x Reset
• 1x Snap
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Unsubstantiate

Sorcery (18)

• 1x Bonus Round
• 1x Echo of Eons
• 1x Fabricate
• 1x Faithless Looting
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Grapeshot
• 1x Mana Severance
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Past in Flames
• 1x Personal Tutor
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Portent
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Reshape
• 1x Rite of Flame
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Windfall

Artifact (23)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Azorius Signet
• 1x Basalt Monolith
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Cloud Key
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Helm of Awakening
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Izzet Signet
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Proteus Staff
• 1x Rings of Brighthearth
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Creativity
• 1x Talisman of Progress

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Thousand-Year Storm

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Jace, Wielder of Mysteries
• 1x Narset, Parter of Veils
• 1x Tezzeret the Seeker

Commander (1)

Land (28)

• 1x Adarkar Wastes
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x Fiery Islet
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Hallowed Fountain
• 1x Inventors' Fair
• 7x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reflecting Pool
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Sea of Clouds
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Tundra
• 1x Volcanic Island

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Maybeboard

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Transmute Artifact

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"Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

-Bruce Lee

Jeskai Storm has been a goal of mine ever since I first got into storm. That particularly journey began with Yidris and eventually evolved into a far more complex (at least for me being only a fairly new arrival to the magic scene) Jeleva Slim storm deck. The transition from cascade storm or “easy mode” storm as I took to call it into full manual was a difficult one and I practiced Doomsday piles and winning storm lines for hours on end just gold fishing by myself. (I rarely have time to get online and play so while I am starting to explore that it’s a fairly recent endeavor.)

Both Yidris and Jeleva have one very major advantage over Jeskai, however. Black in their color identities. This gave them access to all of the best tutors. Specifically it gave their decks access to direct to hand tutor which is where Jeskai has always been weak. It’s difficult to stay fueled and keep going when nearly every tutor we can run in these colors only goes to the top of the deck.

Enter Elsha of the Infinite and it seemed all of my wants in a Jeskai storm commander has been answered. Suddenly Mystical Tutor , Enlightened Tutor , Personal Tutor were all as good as to hand tutors because the top of our deck is simply an extention of our hand. And if the card you had to go get happened to be a sorcery? Doesn’t matter because our commander gives anything off the top Flash.

This deck, while primarily a storm deck, is designed to function much like the quote above suggests. There are several notable combos that, once utilized, accelerate the deck into the storm game far more quickly.

Some Noteable Win-Conditions

Helm of Awakening + Sensei's Divining Top draws us our entire deck for free with our Commander in play. It also gives Elsha of the Infinite prowess triggers equal to however many cards you decided to draw. Crash through an opponent and remove them from the game with a single devastating punch.

One of our slipperiest methods of going for the win is utilizing Bonus Round and a tutor that can fetch us instants or sorceries. Mystical Tutor and Personal Tutor are the ideal choices for this because they’re cheap and they both can grab the spells we want anyway. The first selection is a littler flexible. If we’re running short on mana we can grab Pyretic Ritual or the other various rituals we have in the deck. Cast it from the top, it’ll be copied by bonus round for a total of 6Symbol:R. Now we’ll resolve the second copy of our tutor and go get Past in Flames , using 4 of our 6 red to cast it from the top.

If our remaining is all we have (hopefully not but hey it happens) we can use it to recast Pyretic Ritual not for another 6, bringing our total to 8. We’ll use 3 of that to recast Bonus Round and now all of our spells are copied 3 times. That’s a total of 4 resolutions for every spell cast!

Hopefully at this juncture you’ve got at least left. As long as you’ve got at least that we can work with it. We’re gonna recast our top of deck tutor from before, only now we’ve got the spell and 3 copies to resolve. This is where things get tricky because anything we cast from the top has to resolve before the other copies of our tutor resolve, and if we don’t cast what we place on top it’ll just get shuffled back in. If we’ve only got left after recasting the tutor we’re going to go get Frantic Search first. Then use our last and 2 of our floating to cast it. This will not only allow us to dig deep for more rocks/rituals but it also untaps 3 of our lands in the event we don’t find anything to help fuel us.

2nd copy of our tutor resolves and now if we’re still hurting for mana we’ll go and get High Tide so we can make the most of our last 2 lands. If we found enough rocks or other mana sources to continue we’ll instead skip straight to Merchant Scroll . This is important because it’s one of the only means by which to bring anything straight to hand. You’ll want to use it to grab Dramatic Reversal , Unsubstantiate , and whatever other blue instants you may need. (Counters are wise if you’re worried about protecting yourself here.

With those in hand we can proceed through our final copies of our original tutor. Get whatever you think may be necessary. Even Enlightened Tutor If you haven’t found Aetherflux Reservoir or Blind Obedience yet as either of those are gonna be our win condition with this route.

Now cast Dramatic Reversal and it’ll copy 3 times from bonus round. While maintaining priority you’ll then cast Unsubstantiate which will also copy 3 times. 1st copy will target the original Reversal, the second will target the original Unsubstantiate and bring both back to your hand. The 3rd and final copy now will hit one of our remaining 3 Reversal copies and you’ll still be left with 2 resolutions so that you can untap all your rocks, tap them for mana, and then untap them again.

Congratulations! You’ve not got infinite mana without any single card entering any zone other than your hand. Keeping looping that until you’ve either got enough life with Aetherflux to nuke everyone or until you can drain them out with Obedience.

TLDR Win Conditions

Helm of Awakening + Sensei's Divining Top = Draw entire deck

Bonus Round + Mystical Tutor (or other top of deck tutor)

Requires , and to start in the worst case scenario.

Line works as follows: Bonus Round -> Mystical Tutor

Fetch Pyretic Ritual , cast from the top floating

Fetch Past in Flames , cast it. floating

If necessary use remaining to cast Pyretic Ritual again. Otherwise do Bonus Round first so you net more mana.

Flashback Mystical Tutor , 4 copies of the spell go on the stack.

Fetch Frantic Search or Snap to take advantage of untaps. High Tide to ramp our

Once your mana is settled fetch Merchant Scroll , cast it from the top.

Use it’s 4 copies to get Dramatic Reversal , Unsubstantiate , Enlightened Tutor , and Force of Negation (or other various protection spell)

Use Enlightened Tutor to get Blind Obedience , Aetherflux Reservoir , and whatever else you may need.

Loop Dramatic Reversal and Unsubstantiate to gain infinite mana.

Win

Top Ranked	Achieved #6 position overall 4 years ago Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Primer 4 years ago
Date added	4 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 44 - 0 Rares 17 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.03
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U
Folders	My builds, Edh decks, Commander, Take Note, Interesting Decks