How does this deck win?
Storming Off
Storm is an art form. Storm needs to be practised. Storm is a skill that takes time to develop. You could write an entire novel on the perfect way to play storm and still not cover all of the nuances. At its core, storm is just playing and chaining a large number of spells to get your ‘Storm count’ up and then having an outlet for that number. In modern, that outlet is
Empty the Warrens
, in legacy and until a few years ago in EDH, it was
Tendrils of Agony
. Now we have
Aetherflux Reservoir
. For further reading on Aetherflux vs. Tendrils, Reversemermaid's has great reasoning on why to run it in Grixis Storm. Also Suasion did some incredible maths in his Shimmer Zur Primer that really shows of just how efficient
Aetherflux Reservoir
is.
With this deck, we look at running a large density of wheels and cantrips to allow us to keep up a critical mass of spells during our storm turn.
Essentially you want to draw a butt-ton of cards and then chain an obscene number of spells into an
Aetherflux Reservoir
kill. There are a few ways to draw a lot of cards.
Wheel +
Notion Thief
. This can draw up to 28 cards and while mana intensive (min 4), the cost can be spread over 2 turns. Or
Notion Thief
can be played in response to someone else’s wheel.
Ad Nauseam
. This is one of the main reasons we keep our mana curve really low, ideally we want an average of lower than 2.0. Sometimes you can draw up to 30 cards off an Ad Naus, but even when you don’t the power is still incredible. Remember: Life is just another resource.
Necropotence
is dirty. You can either go for an early ‘pay 30 life and sculpt the perfect hand for your next turn’ or later in the game it can be used to refill your hand in increments.
Expanding on Storm
To begin, We need to look at the cards available to us. Can we make enough mana? Can we draw enough cards? Can we protect ourselves?
Lets break these questions down.
Can we draw enough cards? Show
We need spells to cast, so we need cards. As I have spoken about earlier, there are numerous ways to draw a bunch of cards in this deck. Even a lowly Windafall can get us enough cards to go off.
An end-step Naus is probably the best way to draw the cards that you need, but a main phase wheel to refill is also a great way to make sure that you have enough cards. Side note on wheels, while incredibly powerful, they have some drawbacks. Most importantly, they also refill your opponent's hands! Meaning that they will also have access to new cards, including counters. If someone else is playing a
Notion Thief
then be aware of when someone is holding that mana. Side side note: If two Thiefs are out, then the caster of the draw spell gets to choose which draw is resolved with which thief.
Can we protect our selves? Show
Just like the rest of life, we want to use protection. :LEWD: Having a counter or two can be the make or break of a storm turn. Imagine being sat at the table.
Ad Nauseam
,
Aetherflux Reservoir
and
Dark Ritual
in hand. Cast Ritual... and BOOM! Counterspell has stopped you in your tracks. If you had a
Pact of Negation
, a
Flusterstorm
, ANY counter spell. You probably could have had your ritual, then move into the naus and into the fishbowl. While this deck is very adaptable and a control game-plan can be a necessity at times, our interaction suite is primarily included to protect our own combo turns.
Making sure that you can push through your first spell will make or break your game.
Can we make enough mana? Show
We cant cast spells without mana, so we are going to need to make lots of it. With only 28 lands, we need to look at other ways to produce mana. The first thing to look at is artifact ramp.
We run a full suite of net positive mana rocks. What this means, is that the mana rock produces more mana than it cost to cast. i.e. Sol Ring costs 1 generic mana to cast, but generates 2 colourless mana. We spent 1 to get 2. Casting these rocks also count towards the "Storm Count" (the number of spells that have been cast in a single turn.), which will become relevant further down the line.
"Rituals" are our second way of creating obscene amounts of mana.
Dark Ritual
,
Cabal Ritual
and
High Tide
. On the surface, these generate 3,7 and X amounts of mana respectively. However, we can work around this with a few things. Firstly,
Bonus Round
will make each of these spells really good, suddenly we are looking at 6, 14 and 2X. Throw a
Yawgmoth's Will
into the equation and suddenly we have all the mana we should need. We can use cards like
Candelabra of Tawnos
or
Izzet Signet
to filter some of this into our other colours.
Cost reducers don't technically generate us mana, but they do make our spells much more efficient. Baral, Chief of Complience and
Helm of Awakening
are our two current choices.
Helm of Awakening
reduces the cost of ALL spells by [mana]1[/mana], even your opponents! So be careful when to depolying this tech, as it can work out really badly for you (Flash-Hulk for [mana]U[/mana]). Though the positives of playing
Sensei's Divining Top
or
Sol Ring
for free is a beauty to behold.
Baral does a similar job, but only hits our instant and sorcery spells. He does however offer us a loot effect for when we need to cast some counters. As a side note, this effect will also trigger when looping
Remand
and
Bonus Round
.
As we can see, there are a number of ways that we can generate a large amount of mana, without going infinite.
OK, so now we have the basics down we can begin looking at some of the ways to take advantage of our position.
Building on storm count is essentially chaining spells. Playing one spell into another. Sounds simple, right? Well... yes and no. There are a million and one different ways to play out the hand that you have, but only a handful of ways will lead to victory. Sequencing is key, luck is always a factor and you can always brick a draw or whiff a chain. Some days it will feel like you just can't get past the wall and some days everything will just fall into place.
I'm going to try and explain a few different ways that we can chain spells and how we can use the chain to make some large payouts.
Artifacts can be one of the easiest and best ways to go off. As mentioned in the previous section, we have a critical density of mana positive rocks. Having this many means that when we draw a butt-ton of cards, we are almost guaranteed to hit at least a couple of them. And because of this we can use them as the basis of a storm chain. One example would be:
Chaining wheels and cantrips to dig through our deck can also be a profitable line. Once we start this process we start to rely on luck. We are hoping to hit some more cantrips, wheels or mana engines to help propel us deeper into the deck and thus upping our storm count.
This sort of chain is where you need to really think about how you are going to sequence your spells. Lets have a look at another example.
Hand:
High Tide
,
Night's Whisper
,
Windfall
,
Gush
,
Cabal Ritual
and
Frantic Search
Boardstate:
Underground Sea
,
Island
,
Badlands
. Untapped
Grim Monolith
and
Fellwar Stone
Graveyard:
Flooded Strand
,
Mana Drain
,
Hurkyl's Recall
,
Brainstorm
and
Verdant Catacombs
.
We have played our land for turn.
What order do you play your hand to maximize the potential?
(Note: Cards drawn in this example are intentionally bad draws. This so that I can explain the use of the cards we have in hand and how to maximize their potential, with the given information.)
This is just one scenario where we can begin storming off and it really shows where sequencing can make a huge difference. This will come with time and practice.
Hitting graveyard recursion mid storm just makes everything groovy (insert Evil Dead meme).
Yawgmoth's Will
and
Past in Flames
are out two main recursion spells, with
Timetwister
being a tertiary way to "effectively" get all our used spells back.
With the Yawgmoth style recursion we get to cast everything in our yard again. This is wonderful for such cards as
Lotus Petal
and rituals as it allows us to continue generating mana. Small note on
Yawgmoth's Will
, keep an eye on the number of cards in your yard when storming with this effect. Cards like
Dark Petition
and
Cabal Ritual
have additional checks for numbers of cards in your graveyard. Casting a 2 mana spell to only net 1 kinda sucks.
Past in Flames
is nowhere near as good as YawgWin. It only allows you to cast instant and sorcery spells from your graveyard, but that is still an incredibly potent effect. You can still cast tutors, wheels, counters and that should be more than enough to keep the storm chain going. One added bonus of
Past in Flames
is that it has it's own pseudo protection. The Flashback element of this card can be used to recast after a counter. One of the more intricate asides of
Past in Flames
, is that it only effects Instant and Sorceries at the time of resolution. To expand on this, if we were to cast
Past in Flames
, let it resolve and then cast
Gitaxian Probe
from our hand, it would not have flashback.
Bonus Round
is one of the more recent additions to the deck and WOW is it spicy. For an ongoing effect, it is one of the most powerful. These copies do not count towards storm, but they do serve multiple purposes. They generate card advantage, free mana, pseudo protection, lots of things. For example, post-resolution,
Demonic Tutor
tutors 2 cards to your hand for 2 mana,
Dark Ritual
spits out 6 mana for a cost of 1.
Now, what happens when we cast
Bonus Round
then cast
Yawgmoth's Will
? Firstly,
Yawgmoth's Will
is copied, but that isn't the best part. It allows you to cast
Bonus Round
again! And because of the first cast it is copied. Now, we have had 3 copies of
Bonus Round
resolve, meaning that now, when we cast a spell, it is copied 3 times. That
Dark Ritual
now generates 12 mana,
Demonic Tutor
will find 4 cards. This card is insane.
Remand
and
Unsubstantiate
can create some interesting loops. Once we have had
Bonus Round
resolve, and we can have the opportunity to get it back,
Yawgmoth's Will
,
Past in Flames
or cards like
Relearn
or
Flood of Recollection
. Once these criteria have been filled, we can cast BR, cast our recursion spell, then we cast BR again and this is where the loop begins.
-
Bonus Round
goes onto the stack, and the second copy enters as well.
- Holding priority, we cast
Remand
. The original targets the original
Bonus Round
and the
Remand
copy targets the original
Remand
.
- This allows for the copy of
Bonus Round
to resolve, and both original spells to be returned to you hand, allowing for them to be cast again and the loop to continue.
While this is a spicy line, it requires a large amount of mana and a lot of , which can be problematic for us without an infinite source. See the Dramatic Scepter combos section below for more information on those.
Mind's Desire
is one of the best outlets for storm. As it has the potential to double your storm count, get you a butt-ton of free stuff and just generally an awesome card. For its a hefty cost, but the payout is amazing. The free spells that you cast off of
Mind's Desire
raise your storm count. Note: Storm as a triggered ability will not be copied by
Bonus Round
as the copy is put on the stack, not cast.
After we have built our chain, or most likely halfway through, we need to resolve an
Aetherflux Reservoir
(Fishbowl). Once we have reservoir in play, the spells that we now cast will begin gaining us life. Depending on where we are in the storm turn and what life we started at, this will vary. So we need 151 life to activate Reservoir 3 times, once for each opponent, and survive. If we were to start our storm turn on 1 life, we would need to cast 17 spells to reach a total of 153 life. The first would be Fishbowl, then 16 other spells, gaining 2,3,4,...,15,16 ready to laser. I haven't taken paying life for
Gitaxian Probe
into account here, but using it more than once will make you require an extra spell. Though, that should not be much of a problem.
That is the basics of storm in this deck, but as I spoke about in the beginning, Storm is an art-form and you can the best way to improve your game is to play and practise. In this guide I have barely scratched the surface of the complexity and depth of plays and lines you can take with this deck or any storm deck for that matter.
Dramatic Scepter Combos
One of the cheapest and most efficient ways to generate infinite mana, is with
Dramatic Reversal
and
Isochron Scepter
plus any combination of mana rocks that tap to 3 mana in total. All for the cheap cost of 4 colourless mana.
Each use of Sceptre’s ability counts as a cast trigger for
Aetherflux Reservoir
, allowing for a very compact wincon.
Dramatic Sceptre also works with
Sensei's Divining Top
. Tap the Top, respond by using Sceptre to cast dramatic reversal. This untaps Top to be tapped again. Loop this to draw your deck. Note that once the triggers start to resolve, Top will be the 2nd card that you draw. You can then cast
Aetherflux Reservoir
or
Laboratory Maniac
+ and draw spell.
Another fun way to win with infinte mana, is to cast and bounce/counter Jeleva a large number of times. This will eventually exile your opponent’s libraries, then just pass the turn and let them draw themselves to death.
Doomsday
Probably the most complex and intricate card ever printed in MTG. It is the epitome of a puzzle. Like storm, I could go on for hours about the various different piles and plays to make with this card, but instead I’m going to name the two piles that you should have memorized and then send you over to AlwaysSleepy and Reversemermaid's [url=http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/the-edh-doomsday-primer/]Doomsday Primer[/url] (Yeah… it has its own primer…) as everything written there is relevant to this deck and written in a much better way than I could.
