Brudder's Brews (#2): Paradox Storm Revisited

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Four Color Infinite Combo Multiplayer Storm

Lilbrudder

Land (27)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Breeding Pool
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Forest
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Island
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Scalding Tarn
• 1x Steam Vents
• 1x Tropical Island
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Underground Sea
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volcanic Island
• 1x Watery Grave
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Sorcery (16)

• 1x Dark Petition
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Gitaxian Probe
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Merchant Scroll
• 1x Ponder
• 1x Preordain
• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Timetwister
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wheel of Fortune
• 1x Windfall
• 1x Winds of Change
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Instant (26)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Ad Nauseam
• 1x Brainstorm
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Chain of Vapor
• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Dramatic Reversal
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Flusterstorm
• 1x Force of Will
• 1x Impulse
• 1x Intuition
• 1x Lim-Dul's Vault
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Manamorphose
• 1x Mental Misstep
• 1x Mystical Tutor
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Pact of Negation
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Spell Pierce
• 1x Swan Song
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Creature (6)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Notion Thief

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence

Commanders (2)

Artifact (20)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Astral Cornucopia
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Isochron Scepter
• 1x Lion's Eye Diamond
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Mox Opal
• 1x Paradox Engine
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Tormod's Crypt
• 1x Voltaic Key

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Welcome to Brudder's brews (#2): Paradox Scepter Storm Revisited

Today I have with me LabManiac_Sigi, who is a long time Paradox pilot who has helped me a great deal in refining this deck since it was first created. Sigi has the Midas Touch and it is always a pleasure to collaborate with him. His list can be found here

Today I would like to provide you all with a "state of the deck" type update that explains recent changes and how they are designed to combat the current meta. All these sections and more can be found in the decklist.

Why Play Paradox storm?

You may like paradox storm if you like playing objectively powerful cards that synergize with one another. The defining feature of paradox storm is balance. There is not a metric it does poorly and there are several where it is the best. This allows considerable versatility:

When Barbechenue piloted the deck in the cEDH tourney, Barbe leaned on experience as a midrange/stax player and played paradox storm like a control deck. Using its recursion to double up on removal spells Barbe simply outanswered the table and had some truly epic Vandalblasts. As far as I know, Barbe did not cast ad nauseam a single time in the tourney and made top 16 with less interaction than we currently have.

Sigi has played the deck since it was first created and he plays it like a traditional storm deck, and is having success against a variety of different matchups.

I play the deck as a fast combo deck with a storm finisher and have found it to be one of the faster combo decks in the format.

With some of the more recent changes, a person can play any of the above strategies with this deck and have success. The reason is balance. This deck can win off a main phase ad nauseam at a very high rate. This is still true even with a fatter curve (1.67) than early versions, because we have such a high concentration of main phase ad naus tech to get us to the required 3-5 post Naus mana we need to end the game. We can steal everyone elses resources with Notion Thief+any of our wheels better than any deck in the format because we have access to the three best wheels, I personally (:smugstatue:) have the best Notion thief combo card, and we have the best ramp. We abuse yawgwin like a red headed stepchild hooker. We can assemble dramatic scepter faster than any other deck (on average) due to our powerful ramp and tutorpackage. We can play a slow reactive gameplan and then storm off with paradox engine when the time is right. We have answers for everything and no one effect can shut us down.

Another reason for the versatility of this deck is that unlike its Arcum and Sissay "counterparts," Thrasios Paradox Storm plays no "combo only" or "dead" cards. Even our win conditions (Tormod's Crypt & Aetherflux reserviour) have standalone value and every card in the deck serves multiple roles. Less combo only slots means more flexibility in our card choices.

Potential Swaps

As I have mentioned, we have plenty of flexibility in how we fill out the last 5 or so slots. For instance, If you are in a Tymna hate bears/Raz Reanimator/creature heavy meta you can slot in cheap board wipes and like Pyroclasm Toxic Deluge in addition to Fire Covenant and Cyclonic Rift to repeatedly blow out the table with little to no consequence for our own gameplan. Another option is play more creatures like Baral, Chief of Compliance, which can block Tymna and live to tell the tale. Rule of Law and Null Rod effects got you down? You can slot in cards like Natural State and Into the Roil or add Bloom Tender+Freed from the Real to go infinite without any artifacts or spells. In a meta where racing is the best policy, up that turn 1 ramp, and add some Waste Not for good measure. If you are dealing with alot of instant speed disruption you could supplement the core counterspell package with Dispel, Red Elemental Blast, and Delay . Or you could instead add more cantrips, which gives the deck more card selection and flexibility and play a slower gameplan. This style of paradox storm is based off a dominant strategy in vintage called turbo Xerox, that replaces lands with cantrips to maximize card selection. This deck allows us to play fewer lands and still hit our land drops. Sigi's brew is still in the hyperexperimental stage, but has considerable promise:

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Turbo Xerox Experiment

Commander / EDH LabManiac_Sigi

82 VIEWS

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In short, we have nothing but powerful and aggressively costed options at our disposal. There is not a meta that exists, where Paradox storm won't be one of the more powerful decks. It is the lovechild of layered and focused combo as it has many overlapping paths to victory and no single combo only peices.

Recent Adjustments

With the rise of decks like Razaketh Reanimator, Blood Pod, and Hermit's Breakfast Paradox Scepter Storm has had to make a number of adjustments. These include increasing our turn 1 ramp, replacing narrow tutors with more universal tutors, decreasing our dependence on ad naus and storm lines, and becoming more interactive. Our card choices reflect this more balanced approach:

-Fabricate

+Dark Petition

Fabricate is slow and limited. It was a relic of my original drafts where manual paradox engine storm wins were my plan B option (whereas now it is my plan c/d). Dark petition can do that while also being useful to our other lines to victory. The consistency petition offers way outweighs the downside of 2 extra cmc off ad naus.

-Transmute Artifact

+Intuition

Transmute is even worse than fabricate most of the time as it forces us to blow up the very ramp we need to power engine or scepter. It's also double blue, whichmakes the card frequently dead in hand. Intuition simply offers way more flexibility in how we approach the table and being instant speed matters a great deal. There is also the triple demonic tutor for 3 mana if we follow intution up with yawgwin. No big deal...

-Everflowing Chalice

+Tormod's Crypt

Chalice was merely a necessary evil. It was a free untap off ad naus into engine with some minor utility as a ramp peice. Crypt gives us a free untap, while also serving as some much needed gravehate. What made this switch permanent was Sigi's discovery thatCrypt is also a backup win condition via timetwister and windfall/Wheel of fortune loops. This triple value marks a nice upgrade over the old placeholder Lightning Bolt as our backup to Reservior. Sigi also showed me how to use swan song to do the same thing (albeit slower). Yalpe discovered we can also win with deathrite shaman and timetwister loops. As such we have numerous options if our primary path to victory gets exiled.

-Lightning Bolt

+Cyclonic Rift

Without the need for a backup win condition bolt provides we can replace it with a catchall bounce spell that doubles as a powerful board wipe. With our ramp package overloading rift is quite doable early in the game and unlike bolt rift is never irrelevant.

-Bloom Tender

+Llanowar Elves

Bloom tender has always been kind of bad for this deck. While many can point to times where she tapped for 4 colors and won a game paradox storm simply lacks the colored sources for her to shine without warping our gameplan around her (i.e. casting vial smasher...I just threw up in my mouth a little). In short, she is a trap card. Llanowar Elves has far less upside but gives us turn 1 ramp and is expendable, meaning we don't feel bad about saccing him to Culling the Weak.

-Tainted Pact

+Notion Thief

I long resisted adding notion thief as I was blinded by my love of main phase ad nauseam's but eventually the versatility the card offers the deck was too much to pass up. Simply put, this is not a great time to be a devoted Ad Nauseam deck as the meta has shifted towards creatures that can wreck our life totals. Notion thief reduces our dependence on ad naus and artifact based wins while also weaponizing our trio of wheels. Tainted pact is a self replacing card and instant speed for just 2 mana. At times it is great, but the temptation to dig just a little deeper has lost games and exiling 10 cards and being forced to put a combo peice we don't want in hand to prevent autofolding feels bad man.

-Jace, Vryn's Prodigy  

+Winds of Change

This one is likely going to be a headscratcher for some, and to be perfectly frank, JVP is the far more consistent option. The reason I (personally) am playing winds of change is it is wonderful Ad naus tech, that can help us be successful with a fatter avg cmc. It also makes notion thief shenanighans mana efficient enough to go off on turn 3 at a reasonable clip. Also JVP is slow (2 drop with summoning sickness) and the deck already has 3 other recursion spells so its hardly a necessary card.

Interaction package

In early versions of paradox storm, this was always the weakness of this deck. However,this is no longer the case.

Our counterspell package is fairly standard. We devote a relatively modest 8 slots to this effect as counterspells are not great with Paradox Engine. Nonetheless we play the ones best suited to our aggressive gameplan

Force of Will; Pact of Negation; Mental Misstep; Swan Song; Flusterstorm; Spell Pierce; Pyroblast and Mana Drain

Our spot removal package is also small, but contains the three best possible spells.

Chain of Vapor; Nature's Claim; Abrupt Decay

Where this package shines is its trio of one sided board wipes. While all grixis decks can play these cards they cannot utilize them as effectively as we can, since they cannot match our concentration of ramp (Green Boii!). Rift and blast also function as reasonably costed spot removal spells. This allows us to slow the table without having to sacrafice our own board position.

Cyclonic Rift; Vandalblast; Fire Covenant

Our last two slots have various other functions within the deck but also do good work as interaction pieces that target the current meta wonderfully

Notion Thief; Tormod's Crypt

In total this amounts to 16 slots for interaction, which is very respectable in a vacuum. However, since we have the best recursion spells at our disposal, and many of our interaction pieces check multiple boxes, the cost of our interaction package is minimal (deckslot wise), while our ability to play the long game is much better than what our numbers would suggest.

What this affords us is the ability to play reactively and proactively at the same time. In other words, we can disrupt the table while also getting ourselves in a position to end the game.

Flex Slots

I always strive to create "meta free" decks. All this means is that my decks try to run as many objectively powerful cards as possible that can deal effectively with a wide range of different decks. This is why you never see cards like Trickbind in my lists. It is far to narrow and specific to a handful of strategies. However, as your playgroup adapts to your gameplan adjustments will be needed. Here are the cards least essential to the deck:

Talisman of Indulgence: Our worst 2 mana rock alot of the time. I don't love this card but its faster than a signet and we need a fairly high density of rocks.

Vandalblast: In the right meta, this card is flat out devastating. However, not every deck needs this effect.

Gemstone Caverns: I love this card as it enables explosive starts, but its clearly the first cut when basic lands matter.

Llanowar Elves: Our worst 1 drop dork is still really good and one can justify running more, but if you must trim your dork count, he is the one to go.

Merchant Scroll: Our worst tutor. Its working well for me now but its hardly essential.

Winds of Change: This is my spice include. It is great on an ad naus turn and makes Notion Thief wins efficient enough to occassionally serve as our Plan A. Outside of those two roles it is as close to a dead card as this deck runs unless your ballsy enough to cast this turn 1 to disrupt everyones carefully chosen hands. Truly red at its finest...

Notion Thief: Another favorite of mine, but hardly essential. He's better for us than most decks because we can get him out earlier than anyone else (on average) and he improves our wheels significantly. For main phase ad naus purists, Thief is chunky and needs to go.

You are proably thinking Astral Cornucopia...bruh? No dead cards? Please...

Cornicopia is great. Y'all crazy! 0cc for naus. Free untap for engine. Easily turned into ramp that you can use the turn it comes into play, with double counter upside. This is probaby the one deck where this card is not a hot pile of garbage. Getting to 3 mana on turn 2 then using a counterspell or removal on your opponents turn or simply top deck tutor at end step to win the game the following turn is lit. I know many of you want to run candlesticks instead. Do yourself a favor and save that card for your high tide decks as it is significantly worse than cornicopia for this deck.

Sans Red Options

While I personally think sans white is where it is at having two functional commanders in your deck along with bomberman may be more appealing to you. As such, I have two builds that may interest you.

The first is a brew by pawelkata that examplifies the traditional 4 color storm shell. This is a devoted ad naus deck with a ridiculous avg cmc of 1.49. It also has bomberman and angels grace/ad naus in addition to the lines offered by sans white. His playgroup has nicknamed this brew the "salt mine" for good reason.

The next alternative is a wide divergence from the storm gameplan. Paradox Scepter Bomberpod utilizes more creatures to make Tymna beats a reality also has a sick Birthing Pod line into bomberman. This deck has boatloads of turn 1 ramp and can attack opponents from many different angles. If Paradox Engine ever gets the ban hammer, this could be a possible alternative given how uninportant engine is to this brew, which is more of 2 card combo infinite mana deck. Please feel free to make this deck your own, just as pawelkata did with sans red storm.

Closing Thoughts

Alrighty that is enough for now I think. If you like this deck but are like me and lack the funds and playgroup to play it in your local meta, please join the Play EDH server on the Discord and play a proxied version for a minimal expense. If that is not an option or you have a local playgroup that does not allow proxies, please reference LabManiac_Dan's excellent budget deck series on paradox storm.

Cheers,

Lilbrudder

TL;DR Paradox Scepter storm has continued to evolve into a much more balanced deck. It has more interaction, better card quality, and more paths to victory than previous iterations. Given these changes and recent shiftings in the meta, it is stronger than ever and very underplayed at the moment.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	6 years
Legality	This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 17 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	1.67
Tokens	Bird 2/2 U
Folders	Competitive, decks to get, Saved Decks, cEDH
Based on	Paradox Scepter Storm: cEDH Primer Lilbrudder EDH