Hey man, I love the list, and I've been wanting to get into grixis storm for a while now.

My only problem is that as a student I don't currently have the largest budget at the moment.

I was wondering if you had a budgeted storm list already made? Or if you could make some suggestions for the 100+ cards? Thanks!

Budget Jeleva

There's a budget Jeleva, it's pretty far from optimal but 4000$ -> 500$. That's about as bare-bones as the deck can go, updating is easy just get cards in this list that aren't in the budget one.

I have or am able to get almost all of these cards except for a few of the more expensive ones I do not already own is there any way to make substitutes for the following: abu duals, candelabra, fluterstorm, force of will, grim tutor, imperial seal, mana drain, timetwister. Sorry if that is a lot of cards they are just a bit out of the price I am wanting to pay on a deck at the moment I fully understand the deck will not be quite as good without a lot of these cards, but would like to try something out that is similar to your list any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

ABURs -> just twiddle around with different lands. Sunken Hollow is probably worth playing, Volc should be Shivan Reef if you want a second UR land, it could also just be Urborg, Sunken Ruins or just another basic Islans. Badlands just becomes Blood Crypt.

Fluster, Drain, FoW -> Anything that reads "counter target spell" and isn't 3 mana.

Twister -> Time Spiral

Candles, Grim, Seal -> Lim-Dul's Vault, and if your meta supports it throw in Praetor's Grasp to keep up tutor density, otherwise just throw in another counterspell or a rock or a cantrip or something. Candles could be Turnabout or Seething Song, but those are kinda bad so yet another rock or cantrip would be better.

Why so many tutor? Why there is no haste card? how do you attack with jeleva? someone might handle your jeleva 1st before attack

And also, whats the main win con of this deck? I see the other jeleva deck have many high manacost card that really powerful if you cast it without mana cost from jeleva.

Jeleva is a the tertiary plan for the deck. The deck operates without ever casting jeleva.

You win through fish bowl laser or doomsday/lab man generally.

EREM, this is a combo deck and it aims to win the game without ever having to cast Jeleva at all. If you have to cast Jeleva you're in a losing scenario and she's there just in case you run out of cards. If she hits a tutor or a wheel effect off of someone's topdeck that can often times stabilize the game for you. The reason there are so many tutors is because the wincons are so finely tuned that usually 1 tutor can allow you to win the game on the spot or set up 1 turn in advance.

This is a storm deck and it has 2 wincons:

1) Casting a bunch of spells in the same turn with Aetherflux Reservoir in play so that you can gain enough life to shoot your opponent(s) for 50 damage. This can easily be done with the combination of Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter and a mana rock such as Sol Ring in order to cast an infinite number of spells, which also turns Mind's Desire into a wincon of sorts.

2) Assembling a 5-card pile with Doomsday that almost always involves casting Laboratory Maniac and drawing from an empty library within the same turn. This is the most complicated wincon in all of Magic, but a typical 5-card pile for this deck will be Gitaxian Probe, Gush, Lion's Eye Diamond, Yawgmoth's Will, and Laboratory Maniac in that order. However, there are a myriad many possible Doomsday piles and it's highly dependent on the board state and your knowledge of your opponent's deck.

All of that having been said, there is so much more nuance to this deck than I or reversemermaid could explain in a couple of paragraphs. I've been playing almost this exact list for about 3 months and I'm just now starting to get a hang of the deck. It's by far one of the hardest decks to master, but one of the most fulfilling.

I recently got an astonishing turn 4 win where I was able to cast Mind's Desire twice in the same turn, once for a storm count of 8 and again for a storm count of 27. Between exiling Time Spiral and Ad Nauseum I was able to show off to my friend and go from 9 life (with Aetherflux in play) to about 1000 life in the same turn.

I love that you keep this so up to date as it makes it easier for me to see what I'm always striving for. I was curious as to what you thought about reality shift in comparison to pongify / rapid hydridization. My meta has devolved into a race to hulk combo recently and I feel like the extra mana for an exile might just be good enough.

I feel like creature removal is the wrong way to approach Hulk decks, using Nihil Spellbomb or Tormod's Crypt or throwing Counterspell back in would be what I'd do if I played against Hulk more. In addition to that depending on the Hulk pile Pongify still gets the job done.

That being said Reality Shift is an okay card if you play against decks where the exile is relevant but aren't graveyard-abusing enough to make a Crypt effect worth it.

Can you put a basic description together at the beginning that explains a) what "storm" is, b) how this deck works. I've started reading an page of all the commanders listed in tiers and your Jeleva deck is listed as a tier 1 top cEDH deck. From reading, I've recently understood that combat damage is not the way to win...apparently! Again from reading, I've seen many decks with many commanders essentially all winning from Laboratory Maniac. Many decks too seem to have Ad Nauseam in them. I don't actually understand about 90% of the interactions this deck list and comments discuss. Could someone spare the time to briefly explain how this deck works, what it's trying to do and hopefully explain that cEDH isn't just a tedious race to the most consistent Laboratory Maniac win con, in the process.

EREM seems to be as baffled as me. I bought the pre constructed Jeleva deck years ago and got into commander. I love the format now. But my Jeleva deck like all my decks are built from the notion of explaining the commander's abilities ie. lots of expensive sorceries. But it's rubbish partly because my cards are cheap and partly because it's slow and almost entirely random. So I never play it, instead I play other commanders that deliver commander damage and build creature board presence. But from reading the tier list decks and particularly this one, I'm beginning to understand that you don't actually attack in cEDH, instead you just get infinite mana, or turns or something like that and just 'win'. The game is about doing that in turns 1-4 more consistently than everyone else. A game I feel you could play by yourself!

If you'd see cEDH in action you'd see that cEDH is actually really interactive. Decks usually run more interaction than casual decks and while games usually end turn 5-ish they still contain a great amount of action and interesting plays. Just look at 60 card kitchen table casual vs. modern or legacy, just because the games are fast doesn't mean that they're boring or that no-one gets to do anything. There's also the thing that in EDH all the tutors are legal and players having 40 life makes creature beats a worse plan than slotting some combo in your deck. That being said there are a lot of decks that try to stop and slow down other decks through hatebears or just having more counterspells and card draw than others. If you dislike using combos as your wincon on a fundamental level cEDH probably isn't for you, but if you can look past that you'll see that it's actually a really fun format capable of much more than "durr race to a t2 infinite combo".

As for this deck, if you really have no idea what you're looking at I suggest checking out Moxnix's youtube channel, in his videos he mostly plays against non-competitive people in MODO and his list is pretty different from mine, but it's still good enough to see how Jeleva storm works. Moxnix's Channel: Moxnix's channel

If you just want to see cEDH gameplay Laboratory Maniacs has some great cEDH gameplay: Laboratory Maniacs' channel

Hello, I heard on Reddit that you were the man to come to with grixis storm questions.

I saw that you rated Jeleva slightly above Kess but recommended bringing Kess along if you know the meta or are playing with less than a four pod. However, I wanted to know your opinion when running a sub-optimal deck where they are more likely to be cast.

For example, if I'm less likely to hit a tutor off Jeleva, wouldn't I want Kess so that when I did find it I could immediately reuse it?

But as a counterpoint, wouldn't it be better to wheel for free especially if it's windfall or time spiral instead of WoF rather than wheel twice?

In a non-optimized list you'd just have to test which performs better, though I wouldn't dismiss Jeleva only because a deck lacs some of the more expensive cards, after all a lot of the power of Jeleva comes from your opponents' decks since 3/4ths of exiled cards are not yours.

In a competitive meta and with an optimized list I do think that Jeleva is much better. Not needing to spend mana and being more live early game makes the deck better at what it wants to do while Kess is more about lategame value.

You raise some good points. I'll definitely test with both as I learn the deck. Are you planning to test with Kess at all?

I'll pay extra attention to Jeleva's role and what she does in games where I cast her, and depending on that I'll test Kess. In the few games I've played since Kess got spoiled I've done that, and honestly the early game burst of gas and value has been so relevant I'm starting to doubt Kess as the commander more and more.

I switched to Kess as my commander to test a few games, making no changes to the main deck (I run an Urborg, and the Pongify slot changes sometimes depending on the meta, usually Demonic Consultation) and so far I'm actually liking it better. Outside of the combo turn I have gotten extra value out of cantrips and tutors, and one game I got to recast a Mind's Desire during my combo turn.

Jeleva is also good at what she does, but my meta is full of removal, so it's kind of risky to play her. I think it really depends on how your group plays, but they seem to be on equal footing, with Kess being more backbreaking in a lot of cases, but a little less explosive.