This week I got a truly foolish storm deck in a powered cube sealed deck and it lead to some wild games and plays. Given it has been a while since posting anything I thought I would take the opportunity to do a little bit of a deck tech and move into a light bit of story time.
There are a three main ways to build a storm deck in cube setting; using artifacts, using lands, and using rituals. Artifacts is the hardest to do as you compete over some of the most contested cards in the format. Lands is the riskiest as you are either giving your opponents mana (Mana Flares) or relying heavily on a single card ( such as High Tide). No surprise then that my build is a Ritual based one. Black and red both offer rituals but it is in many ways harder to go both of those colours than just one of the Ritual providers. This is simply down to consistency and having the right colours to both go off and while in the process of going off. You typically need a load of filtering tools like Signets and Chromatic Star to be able to make a Grixis ritual storm deck. You can drop the blue but that is a tall order and means you then lean on a few cards that do blue things outside of the colour pretty hard such as Wheel of Fortune or even just a humble Night's Whisper. With all this in mind my Ritual storm decks in cube tend to be Izzet or Dimir. Red has more Rituals and more ways to replay them than black but black is a more natural pair as a combo partner with great Tutors and proactive protection cards like Duress. Not to mention better disruption in general.
Below is my Dimir Ritual storm deck that is as near the nuts as is reasonably plausible in a limited setting.
14 Lands
2 Swamp
6 Island
Polluted Delta
Bloodstained Mire
Undercity Sewers
Darkslick Shore
Gemstone Caverns
Mystic Sanctuary
Chrome Mox
Lions Eye Diamond
Lotus Petal
Black Lotus
Sensei's Divining Top
Ancestral Recall
Careful Study
Mental Note
Brainstorm
Dark Ritual
Cabal Ritual
Profane Tutor
Nightscape Familiar
Orcish Bowmasters
Collective Brutality
Snapcaster Mage
Mana Drain
Brain Freeze
Yawgmoth's Will
Time Twister
Trinket Mage
Spellseeker
Time Warp
Time Spiral
Bolas's Citadel
Echo of Eons
There are obviously a few areas ripe for some improvement. The mana base would have loved a searchable UB land I could bring in untapped and could have been enhanced somewhat significantly beyond that too. It did however perform more than adequately and was never an issue thanks to the raw power of everything else!
There is also obviously room to throw more power at any list and improve it, notably here with things like Mox, Sol Ring and Time Walk. Given quite how much power was already in the list we are well above average already and deserve no such improvements.
I thought I was weak in win conditions, or at least a bit thin. I wanted Sheoldred or Tendrils of Agony over the Bowmasters but having played I am not sure that is right. A two mana instant speed card with the ability to disrupt is a whole load more manoeuvrable! I was just being greedy and unnecessarily so. I wanted life gain and the ability to win with a single Twister effect or relatively low storm count. There was more than enough power and consistency in the deck to be able to aim higher and go thin and lean on the win conditions as was done. Happenstance forced me into making a better list. I might have been correct in my instincts for a lower powered storm deck as I am more used to piloting.
The only actual area of the deck that could reasonably be improved was the various Tutor cards. Any of Entomb, Demonic and Vamp would have been superior to Trinket Mage, Spellseeker and Profane. All told I probably had enough raw draw, redundancy, and card quality to not be too bothered. I should probably have cut one of the weaker Tutors and packed another interactive card or cheaper filler card. Tutors are just quite clunky relative to the rest of the list. A nice cover all bounce spell would have been the first in line for a slot. The Mana Drain was my worst card being hard to hold up, unreliable and fairly off theme. I had a Brazen Borrower in the pool that should have been in its place, or that of one of the tutors. Really Force of Will or Spell Peirce is the most suitable countermagic for this kind of list. Beyond that we are typically a bit better off with black hand disruption.
Story 1!
It is hard to call a Force of Will "the best ever" because it is comfortably one of the cards most conceded to and it is harder to do better than winning the game! I can however be fairly confident I was the recipient of the best ever Force of Will that was not an immediate concession. I was on the play and had both LED and Lotus complete with Bolas's Citadel in hand (I am not sure if you can currently play a spell from hand with LED but that is the rules set we were playing with). It was infact game one match one and so I had no idea what I was up against and figured that a Citadel was going to be real hard to beat! I didn't even play a land from hand before discarding to the LED because I waned to play more off the top. Suffice it to say I walked into a Force of Will and had to pass on turn one with 0 cards in hand and 0 cards in play. It is testament to the quality of the deck that I didn't conceded. I did ultimately lose and fail to have the greatest comeback story of all time but it was at least a game there after. They made a turn four Pest Infestation for six dorks and killed me with them two turns before I would have won. Turns out recovering when your deck is full of draw sevens and fast mana is easier than for most decks!
Story 2
In this anecdote we join the game around turn three or four and I have just tried to resolve a Bolas's Citadel. Although no counterspell, my opponent responds with a Hullbreacher - a pretty serious problem for my deck with minimal removal and a combo based around drawing cards. Never the less I start to play a couple of spells off the top. I am trying to at least find a land so I can make that for the turn and bes tset myself up to try to play through the Hullbreacher problem. Suffice it to say I am not wildly confident at this point. Before I hit my land I hit Ancestral Recall. I am suddenly faced with a poetically intriguing set of choices. I can do nothing, pass the turn and leave the Ancestral on top and harmlessly draw it next turn. I don't love this just doing nothing and pass option, it is the antithesis of what my deck is trying to do! The next option is to cast it and clear it from my deck and giving away three Treasure. My opponent had tapped out to deploy the Hullbreacher and giving him access to three more mana didn't feel at all sensible. Comparably dangerous to just passing the turn given the stage of the game we are at. There is of course a third option. Ancestral is targetted draw and so I could aim it at the opponent and let them draw three rather than giving away treasure and getting access to more mana as the other options did. I was essentially faced with a three way choice in which I had to give my opponent the effect of a Time Walk, a Black Lotus, or an Ancestral Recall! I went with the latter, managed to dodge their Force of Will and went on to win that same turn! Teehee.
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