Zada Storm Primer
Modern is a format that allows you to play pretty much whatever deck you want. After playing the format for a while, I got bored of playing good decks, and started trying to come up with crazy ways to win. Then along comes
Zada, Hedron Grinder
, and the brewing began.
The deck started out as a bad
Chord of Calling
deck where I would Chord for Zada and use pump spells to pump all my creatures and kill my opponent. The thing was, most of the creatures needed to be dorks so i could flood the battlefield, but mana dorks work poorly with
Chord of Calling
. After doing some research I found the wisps cycle of spells, and I was off to the races. For there I sculpted the deck to what it is now, and without being disrupted, you can kill pretty consistently by turn 4.
Playing the Deck
Now before I explain how to play the deck, I am going to split the cards into 3 categories:
Mana Dorks:
These cards are used to ramp you, and become more valuable when you have a replicator in play.
Wisps:
All of these spells when targeting a replicator give us insane bang for our buck.
Triton Tactics
has a start because although it doesn't draw any cards, it generates a lot of mana, as well as helping to build storm once we have drawn most of our deck.
Replicators:
These cards are used to copy the Wisps, and spread them out among all of our (and potentially the opponents) creatures to draw lots of cards and generate lots of mana.
Now that that's all cleared up, here's how the deck functions:
Early Game
Early we are looking to play out our Mana Dorks, and maybe use a couple of Wisps to find a Replicator. One we generate enough mana to cast a Replicator, we try to go off. Ideally you will have at least 3 creatures on the
battlefield (2 Mana Dorks + a Replicator).
Winning the Game
You start off by casting a Wisps card targeting your Replicator. This will copy it, and let you draw a card for each copy of the spell. In those cards you hopefully find either and Untap Wisp, or a Mana Dork + a Haste Wisp. You use a combination of Untap and Haste spells to be able to play more Mana Dorks, and continue to generate mana with old and new ones. Once you get going you usually won't miss, due to all the redundancy in the deck.
Once you have drawn most of your deck, there are some pretty good methods to building storm without drawing yourself out. Using cards like
Triton Tactics
, you can generate a lot of mana, and cast a bunch of Mana Dorks. You can also use the Wsisps as cantips, rather than drawing in bulk, by casting dorks, and either Hasting them for 1 card, or untaping them for 1 card. I personally don't usually have trouble hitting 20 storm. Alternatively, casting
Spellskite
into
Laboratory Maniac
is usually a safe way to win, if you don't have the resources left to build your storm high enough.
Turn 3 Kill
Although this isn't common, getting a turn 3 kill does happen a decent amount of the time if you don't get interrupted and have a good hand. You'd want to get a hand something like this:
Turn 1:
Hand: Noble Hierach,
Sylvan Caryatid
,
Zada, Hedron Grinder
,
Botanical Sanctum
,
Mana Confluence
,
Cerulean Wisps
,
Crimson Wisps
Botanical Sanctum
-->
Noble Hierarch
Turn 2:
Hand:
Sylvan Caryatid
,
Zada, Hedron Grinder
,
Mana Confluence
,
Cerulean Wisps
,
Crimson Wisps
, Drawing
Birds of Paradise
Mana Confluence
-->
Sylvan Caryatid
+
Birds of Paradise
Turn 3:
Hand:
Zada, Hedron Grinder
,
Cerulean Wisps
,
Crimson Wisps
, Drawing
Botanical Sanctum
Botanical Sanctum
-->
Zada, Hedron Grinder
-->
Crimson Wisps
targeting Zada (Draw 4) -->
Cerulean Wisps
targeting Zada (Draw 4, untap team) -->
Sylvan Caryatid
-->
Expedite
targeting Zada (Draw 5 give Caryatid Haste) -->
Triton Tactics
(Untap team) --> etc.
Like I said earlier, once you start going off, you don't often fail if you have an untap card. However, the deck is susceptible to removal, as they can either kill dorks or your Replicator. Use extreme caution if your Replicator is
Ink-Treader Nephilim
as a well timed
Lightning Bolt
can turn into a 1 mana board wipe.
Hopefully you like this janky deck, and will give it a +1. It helps when people can see the deck and give me suggestions for it. I'm always looking to improve this awful combo and hope people like it.
