so i am supposed to write about storm. my playtest mate recently brought a modern pyromancer ascension deck to our playtest night but nobody want to play with him. little update about myself. i been busy flying around and busying myself with my grandpa's passing. i be flying off to australia in 2 weeks time. i missed one of my best friend's jason lau's wedding while i am in brunei and i am going to miss my good sis's wedding while i am in australia. i also missed my taxi-mate and good friend, fish ceyi's wedding due to it being too close to my grandpa's passing. today one of my mac friends,ziwei and his wife to be, qiuru, whom i knew for very long invited me to his wedding. i guess i am going to miss that too because i am going to my playtest mate and good bro jasonnnnnn's wedding. apparently i agreed to be one of his brother but i was caught up with my my grandpa's funeral that i forgot all about it. too busy already. what to do? i always get in this kind of situation, sandwiched.
ok now back to storm. just like my life i been through quite a number of storm. now just let me go through some of the storm deck ive played. firstly i want to put it clear here. STORM IS A DECK NOBODY WANT TO PLAY AGAINST. ITS A SELF MASTURBATE DECK. THE ONLY TESTING YOU NEED TO DO IS WITH YOURSELF. ok now i said this i am going to be under quite a lot of fire, but thats ok i guess... for someone whos played with the ultimate version of the original storm cards. its like im saying i played with the purest most powerful version of jund with punishing fire and bloodbraid elf. for testing purposes if you think you need to play with an opponent to test your deck then you have failed. the objective of this kind of decks is to eliminate interactions. the little the better. so that you can sculpt your hands, charge some mana, draw some cards and cast your spells. theres a term called "goldfishing" coined just for this kind of decks. it means you playing in front of your goldfish at home, against your opponent, the goldfish. because no matter what you do it wont do anything other than passing the turn back to you. LOLX
most of the storm decks play stuffs like tutors, cantrips, rituals, mana rocks, protections such as counterspells/discards and the defining kill spells. so lets jump into my time machine
UW desire, UB desire
back in 2004 my first gp singapore that year i played astral slide but the desire decks were up there in tier 1 so much so that i played trinisphere and gilded light in my sideboard. desire refers to mind's desire a 4UU storm card that sort of says "i win" unless you flip like 6 lands. sapphire medallion, nightscape familiar(UB) and sunscape familiar(UW) makes your blue spells cost 1 less. then you pay U to play things like snap and cloud of faeries. pay 1 to untap 2 lands. snap cloud of faeries and generate some storm and mana to mind desire to draw brain freeze(UW)/tendrils of agony(UB)
intuition tendrils/long/The Perfect Storm(TPS) father of The Extended Perfect Storm
yay vintage. the land of power and dark ritual and ultra powerful tutors. in year 2006 portal, three kingdoms, starter was being made legal to eternal formats. then people broke grim tutor. heehee then i joined vintage, buying into duals and forces. and i joined ns and met my future playtest partners. when playing this deck, the only objective is just to play 9 spells and have 4 mana and tendrils of agony in hand. plays like intuition for 3x dark rituals, or 2x dark rituals and black lotus, or hurkyl's recall all your moxes, lotus and sol ring and mana crypt and mana vault while floating mana and replay all your 0 mana cost artifacts. my favorite is play demonic tutor, sacrifice lion's eye diamond in response to pay for yawgmoth's will, the most powerful card i have ever held in my hands. all of these protected by free counterspells like force of will and the most powerful discard of its time, duress.
dragonstorm
my playtest partner played this. cantrip to sculpt a good hand then rite of flame and seething song to generate mana to cast dragonstorm with 3 storm look for 4x bogardan hellkites to deal 20damage. or just plain old casting a dragon on the end of your opponent's turn and swing for 5. thats a 10 damage swing! remember kids! lotus bloom or ancestral visions cast off suspend is counted as a spell! later technologies include spinerock knoll, a land which lets you cast a card for free when you deal 7 or more damage that same turn. most of the time a dragonstorm, bogardan hellkite or a lethal grapeshot.
arcane storm
basically just keep casting things like fertile ground, wild growth and stuffs like that on forest and then using arcane spells to splice psychic puppetry to generate lots of mana by using 3 mana to untap a forest which taps for 5+ mana. this allows you to draw your deck and play all your spells and kill your opponent with a lethal grapeshot. nothing much after 5 games with my team i dismantled that deck and left it at home. favorite play is to remand my own grapeshot, leaving the stormed copies of grapeshot and cast grapeshot again for lethal
pyromancer ascension
play pyromancer ascension, get it online by playing spells that are already in the graveyard. it sculpts the hand by using spells to draw and discard into the graveyard, things like izzet charm and desperate ravings and/or mill like thought scour.then once online, any sorcery or instant will be copied. more mana will be generated and more cards drawn and more spells played and eventually getting there with a lethal grapeshot. occasionally also getting there with goblin electromancer.
all these decks require lots of practice to pilot well. but they do not require a living player to sit in front of you. once your opponent is tapped out you are free to do whatever thing you want because there isnt any countermagic that cost nothing other than pact of negation and disrupting shoal which are not regularly played in most lists.
finally it is torturous for them to look at you while you go through the motions and combo off. worse still is you spent 10mins to go through a couple of loops and fizzle. fizzle means you failed to get your combo going and lie flat on the beach. with the sun baking you most of the time you wont make it back alive. some decks dont get fizzled easily, some decks fizzle easily but can still make it back alive while some decks wont ever make it back.
well thats all. good luck for everyone not to get paired with a combo deck. continue to struggle!
