[Psuedo-Article] Ill-Gotten Pains

[Vacrix]

Ill-Gotten Pains - A Combo Player's Perspective on Post-Ban Storm Combo

Ad Nauseum really added nausea to the format. It facilitated ANT, one of the most format warping headaches since the advent of HulkFlash in late 2007. Before the days of Ad Nausuem, storm combo players had to toil over long spell chains in Solidarity and Spanish Inquisition, or convoluted decision trees like in TES, DDFT, and NLS. Not surprisingly, combo was a rare matchup in most metagames. Now, the problem with ANT was not that it was a great deck, but that it could be. It wasn’t idiot proof like HulkFlash. Rather, ANT was worth nerfing simply because it raised the frequency of storm to an unnatural level. It’s akin to a ban on automatic weapons on the basis that not everyone should have one. Ad Nauseum turned storm into a “press the button, get bacon” combo deck; players no longer had to actually learn how to cook their bacon. Mastering the decision tree took mere minutes when juxtaposed with pre-Ad Nausuem combo and the rewards were just as delicious. Yet it was never a great deck for the same reason. Ad Nausuem wasn’t just a crutch for storm combo; it was a fucking wheelchair. The layman simply had to resolve one overpowered draw engine and, if they had half a brain, not shoot their foot off. Yet players still managed to whiff. Even the legendary Saito did not pilot ANT optimally at the finals of GP Madrid, killing himself with Ad Nausuem when he already had the win in hand. Put simply, ANT was a step up from Belcher; ANT players put up results if they were good pilots. Naturally, the players who were already familiar with storm combo had no trouble picking up something as simple as ANT. Such players had the experience to pilot ANT optimally; new players attracted to Ad Nauseum’s raw power were the ones who didn’t bother to learn how to play the deck well because they didn’t have to. The deck practically played itself and because many ANT players approached the deck in this way, the format was warped as a result. A large surge in storm combo and bad storm combo players allowed Counterbalance to quickly rise to the top of the metgame and in a higher frequency, to the detriment of the storm combo players who weren’t actually playing ANT (Hi…). So the metagame adjusted right? People adapted their boards to include more and more combo hate everything from Ethersworn Cannonist to Mindbreak Trap. No problem, Legacy can handle it guys! Lollipops for everyone!

I’m sure you are wondering, what about Entomb, man? Reanimator was certainly on the same level as ANT, on average protecting a turn 2 win; you could still whiff a match by being a moron and you could still kick an aggro player in the balls. Then again, Entomb was really the straw that broke the camel’s back. It introduced another overpowered combo deck to Legacy, but Wizards had written the fate of Mystical Tutor back in 2001 when they printed Entomb:
A grave is the safest place to store ill-gotten treasures.

Mystical Tutor was really the cause of this clusterfuck, not Ad Nauseum or Entomb. Ad Nausuem was a great engine, but without Mystical Tutor, the deck lacked the consistency that allowed the good players to fuck shit up. In fact, Mystical Tutor was even more crucial post-board than it was pre-board, fetching out removal for pesky hate bears. Naturally, Wizards would ban such a card because they prefer decks that interact to those that don’t. Without Mystical Tutor, storm combo could revert to being the skill you mastered with monks in mountains of Nepal. Besides, storm combo has always been criticized for its masturbatory tendencies. How many people do you really want wacking off in your metagame anyway?

Now, ANT and Reanimator are certainly still playable decks; however, the wacking off they do will be more like free porn, riddled with virus’s and inconsistencies. So I won’t bother to talk about them since the subject has been beaten to death in various threads and most players have already switched to TES or DDFT anyway. Rather, I’d like to discuss the future of Legacy storm combo with the options storm players still have available.

- Solidarity -
Oh Solitarity! The deck that literally strokes itself! Unfortunately, this David Gearheart masterpiece doesn’t see much play anymore. High Tide combo is fundamentally weak in Legacy at the moment because you need to hit land drops to go off. The virtue of Tendrils storm combo is exactly the opposite; it foregoes land drops in favor of accelerants like the infamous Dark Ritual. Then again, we might see Solidarity make a comeback. Quite recently I suggested switching from the conventional mono-blue builds to a green splash in favor of tech like Krosan Grip and Moment’s Peace. In my testing, Moment’s Peace as been a phenomenal double timewalk against aggro like Goblins and Zoo. Tangle is another piece of tech that’s conceptually the same; however, it has the advantage of not sinking your mana during the second turn. It’s a much better choice in a Goblin heavy meta where you will likely only be able to use your Tropical Island once. Krosan Grip is obviously a strong choice for dealing with Counterbalance. I became much more optimistic about this deck after Autumn’s Veil was spoiled in M11. Most people are referring to it as a green chant, but that is far from an accurate comparison. Orim’s Chant is pretty much a Duress that protects your entire spell chain, with the underwhelming advantage of stealing a combat phase if you are willing to expose your mana base with double Tundra. The fundamental problem with Chant in Solidarity is that it doesn’t allow you to control the stack. You have to fight over Chant’s resolution so it just functions as an instant speed Duress. Veil makes the stack your bitch much like Mindbreak Trap. Not too long ago, Solidarity players started playing Mindbreak Trap in their boards. Trap allows you to fight through multiple countermagic with a stack like the following:
Me: High Tide
Opp: Spell Pierce
Me: High Tide
Opp: Force of Will
Me: Reset
Opp: Force of Will
Me: Mindbreak Trap

Force of Nill! Spell Tears! Mindbreak Trap allowed the deck to manipulate the stack to play around quite a bit of countermagic. The problem with this strategy is that it requires the opponent to play 3 countermagic. Sometimes you were forced to go off in response to one of Merfolk’s creatures just so you would have enough spells to get Mindbreak Trap to work. Veil works on the exact same concept, all for the cost of one green. You can play the exact same stack as I previously mentioned with Veil in place of Mindbreak Trap. When Veil resolves, all of the opponent’s countermagic do not have legal targets because Veil is protecting your spells. This gives the Solidarity player immense control over the stack essentially switching the X>/=3 clause on Mindbreak Trap to a more enticing X on Veil. Now, you might be thinking, well then I will just not play the 2nd counterspell and wait for my opponent to play Veil, and then counter it. Solidarity player do not have problems with one piece of countermagic. We can just keep responding to your countermagic until we can eventually resolve that spell either by playing Remand on our own spell and recasting it or Forcing it, or eventually casting Veil. There are only a few notable disadvantages to Veil. Unfortunately, it prevents you from targeting your own Brainfreeze with Remand. Also, run green and have a Tropical Island in play while you are going off. Still, I am very optimistic about this turn of events. Further, I have noticed a trend. It seems that Wizards has been trying to cut down on the ban list. I’m hoping that Frantic Search is the next card on their list. It would make Solidarity far more consistent, replacing the underwhelming Turnabout with a free untap spell that also acts as a filter for unnecessary land during the combo turn. The question is, does Wizards want Solidarity to be tier one again? From what we saw happen to ANT and Reanimator, you might be quick to say hell no. Yet, I am still optimistic. The premise behind the Mystical Tutor ban was NOT that combo should not exist but rather that it should not be easy to play. Solidarity is one of the hardest decks to play and would continue to be if Frantic Search were unbanned, especially when aggro is fundamentally a turn faster than it was when Solidarity was actually a good deck.

U/g Solidarity
Land
2 Flooded Strand
4 Misty Rainforest
11 Island
2 Tropical Island

Cantrip
4 Brainstorm
4 Opt
4 Impulse
4 High Tide
4 Reset
4 Peer Through Depths
3 Cunning Wish
3 Turnabout
3 Meditate
2 Brain Freeze

Protection
4 Force of Will
2 Remand

SB:
1 Echoing Truth
1 Meditate
1 Turnabout
1 Rebuild
1 Brain Freeze
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Krosan Grip
3 Moments Peace
3 Autumn’s Veil


- Spanish Inquisition –
Yeah, you’ve never heard of this deck. Imagine Belcher that doesn’t win on turn 3 with goblins. That’s SI. It runs a unique draw 4 engine, Cruel Bargain and Infernal Contract, generally considered to be outclassed since the advent of Ad Nausuem. Skilled pilots, including myself, have reported win percentages ranging from as low as 50% turn 1 kill to as high as 70% turn 1 kills. Basically, SI is like bringing a gun to a wrestling match; you will probably fuck up your opponent unless he brought the infamous Overshield known as Force of Will. However, it has the unique advantage of investing particularly few resources to a spell chain simply because it chains draw 4’s together much like how Solidarity chains together cantrips and Meditates. This advantage allows the deck to mulligan better than any other deck in the format while also allowing it to explode out of thin air after a great topdeck. In fact, one might say that it’s the conceptual opposite of Solidarity, sacrificing its consistency and land drops in favor of immense, unmatched speed. It’s been the unrivaled fastest deck in the format since its arrival in early 2006. Even HulkFlash and Belcher, have not been able to put up such impressive results as a goldfish. Again, SI suffers from being exactly that, a goldfish. At least, that is the case with the conventional speedy glass house lists. During the deck’s development, Emidln released his own B/u variant of SI that dropped the classic Ill-Gotten Gains loop in favor of Meditates and cantrips. This list is still great against non-Counterbalance control and is an excellent contender for those still interested in playing storm combo. In addition to this old news, Autumn’s Veil is a virtual green chant that allows SI to protect the IGG loop and long spell chains in other version such as the Pact list, which usually has more green mana than it needs, most notably for playing around Daze and occasionally Spell Pierce. Now that combo has been reduced to a significantly smaller portion of the metagame, I look forward to playing this deck in an aggro heavy metagame.

Quasi-Spanish Inquisition
Lands
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea

Creatures
3 Phyrexian Walker
4 Shield Sphere

Business
4 Infernal Contract
3 Cruel Bargain
3 Meditate
3 Tendrils of Agony

Cantrip
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Protection
4 Cabal Therapy

Acceleration
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Dark Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal

SB
1 Meditate
4 Dark Confidant
4 Rebuild
2 Island
2 Wipe Away


Pact Spanish Inquisition
Business
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Slithermuse
3 Diabolic Intent
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Infernal Contract
4 Cruel Bargain

Acceleration
1 Eternal Witness
4 Xantid Swarm
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Bayou
1 Dryad Arbor

SB:
4 Carpet of Flower
4 Autumn's Veil
3 Dark Confidant
2 Bayou
1 Oxidize
1 Deathmark

- The Epic Storm –
Is still Epic post-ban, and can still Grapeshot the deniers. Some people are mindlessly dismissing the deck as no longer competitive now that Mystical Tutor is gone. Since the upkeep trick with Ad Nausuem and Lion’s Eye Diamond is no longer possible, Mystical Tutor was already a much weaker card in the deck. In fact, the creator Bryant Cook has been siding Mystical Tutor out frequently post-board and still puts up some impressive results. The deck still has a versatile game plan. It has access to Empty the Warrens to apply pressure quickly and can protect its tutor loops with Orim’s Chants and Duress’s. I actually expect TES to be a much stronger choice post-ban simply because its relatively easy to pilot when compared to some of the other storm lists and can still fight through hate with Burning Wish. Also, I’m sure that all the hatebears will be seen in a much lower frequency meaning that TES won’t need to rely on Mystical Tutor as much to fight through hate, not that it did in the first place. I haven’t yet seen Bryant’s latest list but this is what Waikiki has been playing, from the StormBoards:

The Epic Storm
Lands
4 Gemstone Mine
4 City of Brass
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
1 Scalding Tarn

Protection
4 Duress
2 Orim's Chant
1 Silence

Business
4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
2 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony

Cantrip
3 Ponder
4 Brainstorm

Acceleration
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
3 Chrome Mox
2 Cabal Ritual

Sideboard
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
10 Open Slots

I’m sure lists like this one will develop further until they are reoptimized. I’d like to draw a comparison between this deck another with a similar play style. SITES is an SI variant, which is pretty much TES’s crackhead brother. It has a higher potential of winning on the first turn due to its great draw engine, and obviously mulligans much better. It basically foregoes protection and resilency for speed. It still has access to Burning Wish and can therefore play through hate but has enough speed to go off before hate comes down, consistently getting either the kill on turns 1 or 2 with Tendrils, or dropping more than 20 tokens.

SITES
Business
1 Tendrils of Agony
3 Empty the Warrens
2 Infernal Tutor
4 Burning Wish
4 Cruel Bargain
4 Infernal Contract

Acceleration
4 Crimson Kobolds
3 Kobolds of Kher Keep
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Badlands
1 Bayou

SB:
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Balance of Power
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Deathmark
1 Meltdown
1 Shattering Spree
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
3 Xantid Swarm
3 Autumn’s Veil

- Next Level Storm –
Arguably Emidln’s greatest brainchild. NLS had it all. There isn’t a storm deck to date that had as many options as NLS did. Sensei’s Diving Top and cantrips allowed the deck to slowly sculpt a winning hand against control, while the deck also packed the Ad Nausuem draw engine, Doomsday packages, and could Burning Wish into Empty the Warrens or a Tendrils kill. This deck was extremely resilient and was arguably the strongest storm combo deck in the format before Mystical Tutor was banned. Mystical Tutor really hurt. One of the versatile parts of the deck was being able to fetch an engine, removal for hate, acceleration, protection… In short, the deck is suboptimal at this point when you could be playing something stronger. From what I understand, even Emidln has gone back to playing DDFT again simply because the ban didn’t hit DDFT as hard. I don’t have a post-ban list and I don’t think anyone is playing it anymore.

- Doomsday Fetchland Tendrils –
Another brainchild of Emidln. Before Ad Nausuem was printed, the bolder storm players executed lethal Doomsday piles, often protected by Orim’s Chant. This was made possible by sculpting a hand with Sensei’s Diving Top, cantrips and Mystical Tutor. Eventually, the originals list were adapted to become what we now know as NLS, adding Burning Wish and Ad Nauseum into the mix. More recently, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn was printed, leading Emidln and the StormBoards team to develop a Doomsday Pile that destroys Counterbalance. The combo consists of reducing your library to 5 via Doomsday, and then either passing the turn or cantripping into Shelldock Isle--> Emrakul. As long as Doomsday resolves under a Counterbalance, you should have no problem winning. This Doomsday pile was pioneered in Emidln’s Rev614, pretty much the reverse of DDFT, using the Emrakul pile and Show and Tell to beat control, and utilizing the more conventional DD piles to race aggro. It also has access to Burning Wish as well as Lim-Dul’s Vault to set up the kill. Another notable feature that separates this list from TES is that it plays a discard protection suite instead of Chant effects. This allows for a much more stable mana base against the growing popularity of Tempo based control like New Horizons. This list has plenty of filtering power through Tops and cantrips, allowing it to play around hate, and more recently, Counterbalance. I believe that this is easily the best choice for the ambitious storm combo player. Doomsday Piles are certainly not easy to play, but they are rewarding if you spend the effort. Also, this list is fucking sexy:

Doomsday Fetchland Tendrils
Business
4 Burning Wish
3 Lim-Dul's Vault
3 Doomsday
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Meditate
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

Cantrip
4 Brainstorm
4 Sensei's Divining Top

Protection
4 Duress
2 Thoughtseize
1 Wipe Away

Acceleration
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

Land
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Shelldock Isle

SB
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Doomsday
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Thoughtseize
1 Deathmark
1 Pulverize
4 Pithing Needle
1 Rushing River

- Belcher –
What you say? This isn’t storm combo! Well, not exactly, but technically it plays Empty the Warrens. Anyway, the deck recently got a few options that might make it a little better. Pyretic Ritual is a Desperate Ritual without splice ability, effectively another mana source that adds R to your mana pool. It could easily replace some of the cyclers the deck often runs like Street Wraith and Manamorphose. The other card everyone is already running is Grim Monolith. Monolith acts as an accelerant that can also ‘store mana’ if you have a profitable untap phase. I doubt players will gravitate toward this deck simply because its bad. Often you find yourself playing Empty the Warrens and winning on turn 3. I consider it a very bad version of TES for the layman who doesn’t want to bother to learn how to play make Infernal Tutor hellbent. However, I do think that Goblin Welder is a much stronger choice post-board. Especially with +4 artifacts in the deck, you now have a few more resources to help you sneak Belcher into play.

Belcher
Lands
1 Taiga

Creatures
4 Tinder Wall
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide

Spells
4 Land Grant
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
3 Empty the Warrens
4 Burning Wish
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Seething Song
4 Rite of Flame
4 Manamorphose
4 Grim Monolith

Sideboard
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Pyroclasm
1 Simplify
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Reverent Silence
3 Shattering Spree
3 Goblin Welder
4 Xantid Swarm

- Next Level IGGY –
IGGY Pop? Yes, it’s being revived. Gocho is responsible for this madness, discovering a scandalous love affair between Dream Salvage and his slutty mistress Ill-Gotten Gains. The classic IGG loop via Infernal Tutor + Lion’s Eye Diamond --> Ill-Gotten Gains --> Repeat --> Tendrils of Agony is present in the deck, as well as the option to play Ill-Gotten Gains, returning some rituals and Dream Salvage which effectively draws you as many cards as the opponent discards. The goal with this combo is to chain Dream Salvages together until you can IGG loop, all protected with 7 maindeck Chant effects? Sounds great right? To make things better, the loop is not as vulnerable against graveyard hate as was the original IGGY Pop. When you play IGG, discarding your hand is the effect of the spell. Therefore, the opponent can only remove things from your graveyard before or after IGG has resolved. If you remove things before IGG has resolved, you are likely only removing accelerants, if you remove them after then you risk the storm player just playing more Dream Salvages into IT + LED. It is obviously still vulnerable to graveyard hate but is not completely hosed. It’s a fairly easy list to play and is a great contender for the next popular storm combo deck.

Next Level IGGY
Business
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Dream Salvage
1 Tendrils of Agony

Acceleration
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual

Cantrips
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

Protection
4 Orim's Chant
3 Silence

Mana
4 Lotus Petal
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
1 Island
1 Swamp

In short, Storm combo players still have plenty of options to choose from. Some are saying Storm combo is dead. I say that its more alive than its ever been, breathing fresh air of elitism once more. Unfortunately for the layman, most of the lists I mentioned are very difficult to play, especially when compared to ANT. Learning to pilot a new list will not be easy, but it the rewards are great. A reduction of storm combo in the metagame will likely result in less combo hate and less decks that combo hates. Though this might not be necessarily be the case in every metagame, I believe that the legacy metagame as a whole will see fewer combo players simply because these ANT players will not bother to learn how to execute the more complicated spell chains. Personally, I am very happy with this ban. I anticipate that the metagame will become more diverse than it has ever been and less like the rock-paper-scissors environment that we have seen lately between ANT, Zoo, and Counterbalance. Also, neither of the decks I play, Solidarity and SI, were affected at all by the ban as far as deck structure is concerned, and I’m looking forward to smashing face in aggro heavy metagame. I hope you’ve enjoyed a combo players perspective on the how the format is changing. Also, this was my first attempt at ever writing a Legacy article; be gentle, and good day!