Yes, I'm "that guy". The guy who wants to storm off, draw a million cards, play a million spells, and finish the table off with a combo kill. I'm a spike who likes combo-heavy formats like legacy and vintage, sue me. It's not like I'll play this deck every single time I play commander (I still would like to keep some friends), but I just love combo.
This list comes from Moxnix's deck: Jeleva's Pile of Broken
The Grixis storm archetype can be one of the most powerful strategies in competitive edh. In fact this deck seemed so good in my early goldfishing that I decided not to use any proxies at all to water it down. We allow proxies in my playgroup normally, but I'd like to see how this pile of broken works out and evolves as I slowly but surely acquire more cards for it.
Cards that I would play but don't own:
Losing Seal, Grim, and Candles hurts the consistency of guaranteed combo kill turns, but the deck can still perform at a high level in their absence. Losing Twister means one less wheel effect, thus less explosive starts. Notion Thief also gets sad.
So far the best card that I don't own is Underground Sea, and it's the number one target on my acquireboard. Your life total is an important resource in this deck (see Necropotence and Ad Nauseam) and always bolting yourself to fetch a Watery Grave can be more costly than normal.
The early game strategy revolves around hitting a few land drops, dumping several mana rocks into play, and finding a way to generate a ton of cards/resources to move into the next phase. This is also the stage of the game where you use disruptive cards (like Spell Pierce or Chain of Vapor) as tempo to buy you some time or to protect your overall game plan.
Besides the wheel effects like Windfall, two cards which should always be on your tutor radar are Necropotence and Ad Nauseam. Most of your games are won because of tutoring/ramping into either of these cards, and then comboing off on your next turn.
When you are ready to storm it up, you want access to plenty of mana. Besides any rocks you have played, rituals and High Tide especially allow you to do some ridiculous stuff. It's all then a manner of chaining together card draw, untap effects like Turnabout or Time Spiral, and leading into a big Mind's Desire and/or Yawgmoth's Will. The finish is often elementary at that point, but depending on the given situation/hatecards in play, the lines of play can be quite challenging. This deck is definitely for people who enjoy puzzles.
The other main factor of the deck is Doomsday. I won't go into any in-depth discussion here, but having Doomsday allows us to be more flexible in winning the game and not having to rely on the storm count to kill 2+ other players. There are some spots where this card allows you to win seemingly out of nowhere.
Win conditions;
-Tendrils of Agony
The main storm kill card. In a four-player pod you'll usually need about 50 storm at most to kill everyone. With help from Time Spiral, Past in Flames, Yawgmoth's Will, and especially Remand, it's easy to play this spell twice and double up on your critical storm count.
-Aetherflux Reservoir
The new and improved Tendrils, more or less. I'm not yet comfortable having only two win-cons, but it's conceivable that soon I'll cut Tendrils and just have this Deathstar Cannon. If you don't know why this card is in this deck, you're in the wrong place.
-Laboratory Maniac
The main win-con with Doomsday. Labman also gives us a clean way to win when killing the opponents outright isn't possible due to infinite life combos.
-Future Sight + Helm of Awakening + Sensei's Divining Top
Not a win-con in itself, but allows us to draw our entire deck. Instant win with Labman, and generates a ridiculous amount of storm for Tendrils and friends.
-Notion Thief + Wheel of Fortune/Windfall/Time Spiral
Again, not a pure win condition, but people tend to scoop when they all get mind twisted and you draw 20+ cards. Imagine that.
Another key point here is the commander, Jeleva. Many victories will come without even attempting to cast her. However, she is still the best general for the storm archetype as she is the only Grixis commander with any sort of reach. Nekusar, the Mindrazer or Thraximundar are simply backup, backup, plan C strategies that really aren't going to do anything. If you get completely neutered and resort to these plans, you definitely aren't winning that game.
Sure, sometimes you get owned and Jeleva won't be enough to get you out of the hole either. But her ability still gives you REACH and a way to get GAS out of your command zone. Also you'll often have a key card in your hand that you feel is worth protecting, so you cast Jeleva in order to draw out a hatecard and push your combo through.
NOTE: This deck performs well in both multiplayer and 1v1, but in a 1v1 setting I would swap out the Arcane Denial for another counter and probably find room for a Strip Mine as well.
<3 combo
