Ah Storm. The posterchild of parasitic archetypes. The deck that makes your cube worse and that leads to silly, uninteractive games and awful draft experiences. But some of us love it. To me, it's the most fun, interesting of all combo archetypes. It's a complex, non-deterministic puzzle that changes everytime. For me, it represents the best and worst of Magic, its artistic beauty and its gameplay flaws.
And I've been thinking, hey, perhaps there's a way.
Here's the thing. I removed Storm from my cube. It was taking a lot of space and it annoyed me to see Tendrils of Agony and other unpickable cards around. But when I did it and started tweaking to fill up the space, I noticed most of the support pieces remained.
And by that I just don't mean draw, man and the like. I mean weird stuff like Oath of Druids to put Palinchron into play.
COMMON CUBE ENABLERS
That's a lot of cards that we often find in cubes and that can be used to support storm. Having Yaghmoth's Will, or Paradox Engine does not harm the cube and creatute fun archetypes elsewhere. The problem, as I see it, is not the core of the deck, but the "payoffs", like the Storm cards themselves and many of the above cards being very high picks.
Most notably, there are mana doublers in this list (Which I don't like but people often run), as well as tutors and draw. Paradox Engine, Earthcraft and mana dorks can lead to a creature-based Storm deck. I believe we only need a handful cards to support the deck in that regard. The problem are the win conditions, which are all creature-based.
The exception is Thousand-Year Storm which lets you win with Lighting Bolts being copied over nad over. You probably already run Lighting Bolt and it's a piece of interaction.
CARDS TO AVOID
Some cards that I believe are highly parasitic, not overly helpful and should be avoided. Here's the thing, if you want to support storm, adding a single ritual won't help and the slot could go to something more impactful than Manamorphse. If you really want to add a bad card that only helps one deck, add Lion's Eye Diamond instead.
POSSIBLE ADDITIONS
Sentinel Tower is interesting in that it can wipe boards for control decks. And it seems fun to do so. I'm not sure how useful it is, but it seems more than workable and worth trying. The cost of 4 is high for a "does not change the board state" card, though.
Aetherflux Reservoir is a combo card. The interesting bit about it is that it works with a far larger amount of combos than storm. Storm supports storm and storm only while Aetherflux can work with recursive flickering, for example. I also wonder if there are lifegain decks that could use it.
Palinchron is an interesting fatty to reanimate or play in control decks but which gives infinite mana when paired with a mana doubler.
High Tide and Mind's Desire are, I think, the two parasitic cards that do the most to the archetype and also are the most fun. High Tide combos with all the free spells, can be copied and is an easy late-pick. Mind's Desire is a good tutor target, and can win the game simply by putting a lot of fatties into play.It's super silly (and fun) but you can run uncastable combos in your main deck (Like Kikki-Jikki+Zealous Conscripts) as your main condition.
It promotes weird combos inside the storm deck and doubles as a tutor.
I list Frantic Search twice because, hey, you can run two copies of it. This helps a lot of decks, it's a very fun, versatile card and it increases the number of "untap" effects to a proper number without having to run.
Twincast effects are fun. They are not great and may feel like worsening a slot. But I like them and the versatility of Expansion/Explosion seems nice enough though it doesn't copy Mind's Desire, just High Tide or draw spells.
Banefire is an example of a win-condition that may work in Storm: Draw your whole deck, produce infinite mana, kill your opponent with a fireball.
Some people are playing Hunting Pack in their green decks and it's hilarous. I'm not buying it, though.
Thoughts?
And I've been thinking, hey, perhaps there's a way.
Here's the thing. I removed Storm from my cube. It was taking a lot of space and it annoyed me to see Tendrils of Agony and other unpickable cards around. But when I did it and started tweaking to fill up the space, I noticed most of the support pieces remained.
And by that I just don't mean draw, man and the like. I mean weird stuff like Oath of Druids to put Palinchron into play.
COMMON CUBE ENABLERS
That's a lot of cards that we often find in cubes and that can be used to support storm. Having Yaghmoth's Will, or Paradox Engine does not harm the cube and creatute fun archetypes elsewhere. The problem, as I see it, is not the core of the deck, but the "payoffs", like the Storm cards themselves and many of the above cards being very high picks.
Most notably, there are mana doublers in this list (Which I don't like but people often run), as well as tutors and draw. Paradox Engine, Earthcraft and mana dorks can lead to a creature-based Storm deck. I believe we only need a handful cards to support the deck in that regard. The problem are the win conditions, which are all creature-based.
The exception is Thousand-Year Storm which lets you win with Lighting Bolts being copied over nad over. You probably already run Lighting Bolt and it's a piece of interaction.
CARDS TO AVOID
Some cards that I believe are highly parasitic, not overly helpful and should be avoided. Here's the thing, if you want to support storm, adding a single ritual won't help and the slot could go to something more impactful than Manamorphse. If you really want to add a bad card that only helps one deck, add Lion's Eye Diamond instead.
POSSIBLE ADDITIONS
Sentinel Tower is interesting in that it can wipe boards for control decks. And it seems fun to do so. I'm not sure how useful it is, but it seems more than workable and worth trying. The cost of 4 is high for a "does not change the board state" card, though.
Aetherflux Reservoir is a combo card. The interesting bit about it is that it works with a far larger amount of combos than storm. Storm supports storm and storm only while Aetherflux can work with recursive flickering, for example. I also wonder if there are lifegain decks that could use it.
Palinchron is an interesting fatty to reanimate or play in control decks but which gives infinite mana when paired with a mana doubler.
High Tide and Mind's Desire are, I think, the two parasitic cards that do the most to the archetype and also are the most fun. High Tide combos with all the free spells, can be copied and is an easy late-pick. Mind's Desire is a good tutor target, and can win the game simply by putting a lot of fatties into play.It's super silly (and fun) but you can run uncastable combos in your main deck (Like Kikki-Jikki+Zealous Conscripts) as your main condition.
It promotes weird combos inside the storm deck and doubles as a tutor.
I list Frantic Search twice because, hey, you can run two copies of it. This helps a lot of decks, it's a very fun, versatile card and it increases the number of "untap" effects to a proper number without having to run
.Twincast effects are fun. They are not great and may feel like worsening a slot. But I like them and the versatility of Expansion/Explosion seems nice enough though it doesn't copy Mind's Desire, just High Tide or draw spells.
Banefire is an example of a win-condition that may work in Storm: Draw your whole deck, produce infinite mana, kill your opponent with a fireball.
Some people are playing Hunting Pack in their green decks and it's hilarous. I'm not buying it, though.
Thoughts?
