Love Storm, but no money. Is possible still to play?

[Tanith]

So folks... I love playing storm. I thought I hate it, but after playing Pyromancer Ascension on a modern tournament for the first time some weeks ago, I realize I just love combo... I'm afraid to love it more than control
Jokes apart, I was looking for some lists to play without Lion's eye Diamond and Underground sea, both completely necessary to run any storm deck.
Checking TC Decks, i found this:

-"Cheap storm"
[deck]
Instants [15]
3 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Manamorphose
4 Seething Song

Sorceries [27]
1 Ideas Unbound
1 Infernal Tutor
3 Faithless Looting
3 Past in Flames
3 Preordain
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Rite of Flame
4 Sign in Blood
4 Tendrils of Agony


Artifacts [6]
2 Chromatic Star
4 Lotus Petal

Lands [12]
1 Irrigation Ditch
1 Island
1 Volcanic Island
2 Gemstone Mine
3 Geothermal Crevice
4 Sulfur Vent

SB:

3 Ancient Grudge
2 Duress
1 Grapeshot
1 Karakas
3 Pyroblast
4 Pyroclasm
1 Repeal[/deck]

But I've been told this could work also:

-Instants [12]
4 Brainstorm
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual

Sorceries [26]
2 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Past in Flames
4 Ponder
4 Tendrils of Agony


Artifacts [8]
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal

Lands [14]
1 Badlands
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Volcanic Island
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta

SB:
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Dread of Night
1 Ad Nauseam
2 Chain of Vapor
3 Burning Wish
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infest

But with the following changes:

-4 Lion's eye diamond
-4 Infernal tutor
+4 Brainfreeze
+4 Seething song

Any ideas, thoughts, opinions please?

Note: sorry for the tags, I still dunno how to put deck tags or cards tags, where can I found them?

[Humphrey]

2 Usea and 4 LED is pretty cheap compared to other legacydecks. Budgetversion needs to cut the deltas though

[Tanith]

I have other decks, but now I'm a really difficult position and cannot pay Undeground sea and Lion eye's diamond sadly :( Got some other blue fetches though... and watery graves :D

[HammafistRoob]

Sadly, you NEED all of the expensive cards to play 3 color storm. A cheaper alternative would be Solidarity, which is a good deck but takes tons of practice to master. The only money cards you'd need is FoW, Reset, and at least 6 blue fetches. Or if you just want an awesome, cheap combo deck you can play Elves!

[danyul]

It would have to be a powered down build of Elves. That deck runs G.Cradle$ and duals/fetches too.

[HammafistRoob]

It would have to be a powered down build of Elves. That deck runs G.Cradle$ and duals/fetches too.

/Facepalm/
I somehow managed to forget Cradle is skyrocketing(booze?). The mono green build with a few Crop Rotation is still very fun and very playable.

[Dice_Box]

I am not fan of a "cheap" strom deck. Storm hate is common and if you do not have the explosiveness LED gives you you risk increased exposure to the hate. What I do like is your choice of dual lands. I personally do not play blue but all those cards fit nicely into other decks. LED does not. In short building this is not a bad plan as it decreases the onset of decks you may wish to make in the future.

As for a good Cheap deck, RDW and Burn are good choices if not very resilient ones against combo. The base Elf deck is less than 200 as well but as Dan said, when you start reaching into DRS and GC lists, you jump the price.

[Dark Ritual]

If you want a cheap storm deck, you probably have to look to the perfect pauper storm prebannings with some number of tendrils added for grapeshots/EtW. Be aware that wasteland will actually violate you so hard your anus might never recover though. You could also try familiar storm from pauper as well, although that's also fairly fragile to legacy as well. If you wanted you could go for candleless high tide:

4 Brainstorm
3 Cunning Wish
3 Flusterstorm
4 Force of Will
1 Intuition
4 High Tide
3 Meditate
1 Pact of Negation
4 Turnabout
4 Merchant Scroll
3 Ponder
4 Preordain
4 Time Spiral
3 Flooded Strand
12 Island
3 Polluted Delta

Core SB cards:
1 Brain Freeze
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
1 Meditate
1 Pact of Negation
1 Ravenous Trap
1 Snap
1 Surgical Extraction

Credit goes to Flrn for the list as posted in the old Egosum spiral tide thread on the 14th of February in the year 2013. The above list has my gold stamp of approval.

[Lemnear]

You just can't run Tendrils of Agony in Legacy without LED and Infernal Tutor like you can't play control without FoW or Duals (Taking Shocklands as substitude and die to the excessive extra damage)

If you still want to play "Storm" try Belcher without LED's but that still leaves you with the need for Burning Wish which I expect is also out of reach for you. :/

In the end I feel you're asking for an impossible task like competing in Vintage without Power, Duals or Bazaar of Baghdad...

[Tanith]

Thank you guys for the answer, seems impossible to run Storm without LED. Nice idea about playing Hide Tide, @Dark Ritual. Hope those Candelabra of Tawnos not to be 100% necessary.
Maybe one idea could be trying Hide Tide and with time, build a proper Storm deck. We will see. :)
Again, thank you guys for the help :)

[Dice_Box]

If you can't get Candles, grab Deserted Temple.

[Mr Miagi]

Just cash out for those 200-300$ (or whatever the price is in us) and buy some LEds and u'r done. Or sell some other staples you have (EDH or legacy staples or whatever crap you have and dont play).

Or.. you know get a part time job or any small job you can get, work for few days/week and .. BUY the LEDs (or duals) you need.

[Final Fortune]

I think Belcher sans Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond for the Miracle Draw 7 and whatever addittional acceleration like Chancellor of the Tangle or Grim Monolith could work, maybe Serum Powder works in order to avoid the draw them into a counter spell problem.

Hypothetically,

4 Serum Powder
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
4 Rite of Flame
4 Pyretic Ritual
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Land Grant
1 Stomping Ground
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal

That gives about 7 spaces to fill with chaff like Gitaxian Probe, Street Wraith, Grim Monolith, Seething Song, Manamorphose, Wild Cantor, Chancellor of the Annex, Leyline of Anticipation, Guttural Blast, Autumn's Veil, Pyroblast or whatever you feel is appropriate.

[Zombie]

The sane plans are, IMHO, to build a monogreen budget Combo Elves list - the deck budgetizes really well, and can be upgraded with all the goodness gradually. Candleless Spiral Tide or just straight Solidarity are also solid options and most importantly interesting decks to play.

Of course it's possible to build Burn or all manner of glass cannon combo decks, but I at least just don't like them. If you intend to play Mulligan: The Goldfishing, why even play Magic in the first place? Dredge is also an option, Manaless is cheap and you can gradually acquire pieces for LED Dredge.

[Megadeus]

id go with high.tide. it is a resilient deck that is powerful, and minus candles it is pretty cheap and still powerful. plus the only huge money cards in candleless list is force of will and blue fetches whichare format staples

[Lemnear]

How did a thread aimed for advice for running STORM on a budget turn into "Play Burn or Mono Green Priest/Archdruid Elves"?

[mini1337s]

I think Belcher sans Burning Wish and Lion's Eye Diamond for the Miracle Draw 7 and whatever addittional acceleration like Chancellor of the Tangle or Grim Monolith could work, maybe Serum Powder works in order to avoid the draw them into a counter spell problem.

Hypothetically,

4 Serum Powder
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Empty the Warrens
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Chancellor of the Tangle
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Tinder Wall
4 Rite of Flame
4 Pyretic Ritual
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Land Grant
1 Stomping Ground
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal

That gives about 7 spaces to fill with chaff like Gitaxian Probe, Street Wraith, Grim Monolith, Seething Song, Manamorphose, Wild Cantor, Chancellor of the Annex, Leyline of Anticipation, Guttural Blast, Autumn's Veil, Pyroblast or whatever you feel is appropriate.

Agreed, aside from High Tide, this is about as close to storm as you can get without LED. The biggest problem is that storm relies on casting Infernal Tutor or Burning Wish, cracking LED in response, and using that mana for a win-con.

I've played against Budgety High Tide decks that ran Snapcaster Mage, Cloud of Faeries, and Snap, but I find that that deck "feels" different than ANT or TES.

[Zombie]

How did a thread aimed for advice for running STORM on a budget turn into "Play Burn or Mono Green Priest/Archdruid Elves"?

Slot a single Tendrils in there somewhere, and Elves is a Storm deck. :P

You play rituals, cantrips and some huge draw spells and then tutor up a win condition that counts previously played stuff to determine the quantity of murder visited on the opponent.

Seriously, though. He wanted storm on a budget. Storm without LEDs is just bad. Budget Tide and Elves have a similar fundamental style of play, don't suck horribly despite being suboptimal and scale up nicely with extra card availability.

Of course only proxy testing will tell - I love engine combo decks, but infinitely prefer ANT and Elves to TES despite the similar basic functionality. It's entirely possible he won't like Elves or Tide, so he'd have to grab the LEDs.

[Tanith]

Ja, despite all the ideas of combo elves, high tide or belcher are really good, and a good way to introduce myself to combo in Legacy, think my aim is to run ANT. So definitely need those LEDs. I guess I will keep playing Miracles and try to win tournaments to put my hands on those sweet LEDS :)

Note: the idea of tendrils with elves is awesome too, never think on that :)

[Zombie]

Lol, please don't do it. Natural Order => Craterhoof is much superior in Elves :P
LSV's winning list from way back in PT Berlin did win with Grapeshot, though.

Good luck with the ANT project. Selling some of the Miracles stuff might be a good idea to help with the LED budget? Similarily, trade your white duals for black ones. In the end ANT doesn't have that many expensive cards in it apart from the mana.

EDIT: I'd also proxy up some lists for ANT/TES/Elves/SpiralTide/Solidarity, just to be sure. This game costs astronomical amounts of money, and misinvestment can leave you playing something you don't like. I went through that process with TES and Nic Fit - loved how the lists looked, but when I tried playing them they just weren't the decks for me.