[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[thefringthing]

Is anyone (other than this guy) sleeving up Leylines of the Void in the hopes of having any game at all against BR Reanimator?

[Miscanthus]

Is anyone (other than this guy) sleeving up Leylines of the Void in the hopes of having any game at all against BR Reanimator?

I've been trying out Faerie Macabre a bit lately. It's been ok in limited testing so far, and pretty funny when they cast Stronghold Gambit on you...

[Jonathan Alexander]

Exactly. It's not D&T itself, it's that I used to have to face D&T a few times a tournament as my bad matchup, and now it's one of my good ones because they can't interact with me at all until turn 2.

When has it ever been a bad matchup? In five years of playing Storm, I have exactly one tournament loss against it (might have one or two on Magic Online as well, not sure).

I just have problems with its consistency. It's like if I don't throw down and combo on T1-T2, they just keep playing hatebear after hatebear and I can't break through. I've brought back a singleton Massacre just because it's the only way I know to beat T1 Mom, T2 Thalia, T3 Other Thalia + Canonist/whatever. Try as I might, I can't get my T1-2s high enough to feel like I've really got a good shot at the matchup.

Both Dread of Night and Daze solve this very easily. Don't think of Daze as countermagic that you're trying to use as protection in your combo turn, think of it as a Chant effect specifically for the non-blue matchups.

Yeah, the problem is the massacre plan is fucking terrible against T1 Plains + Vial, T2 Karakas + Thalia. Even worse if they play the vial off of not plains. But once they've got thalia+karakas+vial on 2, dread of night or sulfur elemental or something similar is the only thing that saves you.

Massacre has always been bad against Death & Taxes. If you want something specifically for them, go with Dread of Night. If you want something less narrow, play Daze.

Is anyone (other than this guy) sleeving up Leylines of the Void in the hopes of having any game at all against BR Reanimator?

Pascal and I had them back in 2013 to go with Helm of Obedience as an alternate win-con. Helm actually had decent value back then because of how common Rest in Peace was (a maindeck card for Miracles at the time). I didn't like it all that much, but Pascal did. I think Surgical is better. Tormod's Crypt and Cage are also somewhat reasonable if you're really concerned about the matchup.

[Jeff]

When has it ever been a bad matchup? In five years of playing Storm, I have exactly one tournament loss against it (might have one or two on Magic Online as well, not sure).

I guess you're just better than me? I don't know. I've been siding Dread of Night against D&T for several years now, and while it's busted as all hell a lot of the time, sometimes you still just get beat. It's not like our average combo turn is before they can play a 2 drop. I've lost a lot of games to turn 2 revoker naming LED when I had an LED heavy draw and couldn't adjust in time, or to a turn 2 Canonist that turned into more damage while I looked for a second Dread of Night.

It probably wasn't a "bad matchup", but it definitely was a "matchup that can force me to have something or I lose". There was a period of time, 3 or 4 years ago, when you could reasonably expect to have a few byes in the field, and D&T was one of those byes, and then they got better and it just isn't anymore. At least for me. I'm glad you have such success against it. I find Dread of Night not killing Cannonist, Thalia2, or Prelate to mean it's not the be-all and end-all anymore. I've definitely lost games where I had a Dread of Night and it didn't matter.

[thefringthing]

Pascal and I had them back in 2013 to go with Helm of Obedience as an alternate win-con. Helm actually had decent value back then because of how common Rest in Peace was (a maindeck card for Miracles at the time). I didn't like it all that much, but Pascal did. I think Surgical is better. Tormod's Crypt and Cage are also somewhat reasonable if you're really concerned about the matchup.

What would you cut from your Grinding Station sideboard if you were going to play graveyard hate?

[Jonathan Alexander]

I guess you're just better than me? I don't know.

Sorry, didn't mean to be cocky.

There are definitely ways to lose games against Death & Taxes, but they used to be extremely low on relevant cards G1, so you already had a huge edge there. Then you got to bring Dread of Night after sideboarding and had an even better matchup after sideboarding - whenever you have double Dread, they have a very hard time even establishing any board presence. That being said, I have always run at least three Dread of Night up until GP SeaTac, which obviously makes the matchup better than with lists just running something like 2 Massacre 2 Chain.

What would you cut from your Grinding Station sideboard if you were going to play graveyard hate?

My combo slot is Flusterstorm, but I wouldn't cut them for graveyard hate. I don't think graveyard hate is really worth it. BR Reanimator is not an abysmal matchup by any means, it's not that popular and there's not much outside of that matchup you really want graveyard hate for. Flusterstorm on the other hand is also hugely beneficial against Miracles and Show and Tell strategies, while being decent in the Storm mirror (better than Surgical for sure) and against RB Reanimator. (Daze is not bad against BR either, by the way.)
If you're looking for something against blue Reanimator, Xantid Swarm is your friend.

[thefringthing]

"One Weird Card, Discovered By A Scrub": A Guide To The Spiciest Storm Tech


Do you dip Scotch bonnet chiles in sriracha as a snack? Do you like it when your opponents have to read your cards? If so, it's your lucky day. I've scoured not only mtgtop8.com's database of 13-player Lithuanian Legacy tournaments from 2008 but also the bottom of a shoebox of cards I forgot I even owned to bring you the finest, secretest, spiciest Storm tech on the planet. These ten cards range all the way from okay to awful. I’ve personally sleeved up at least five of them. Now you can too.

1. Rushing River

No one’s ever going to have to read your Abrupt Decay. That’s why you need stuff like Rushing River. It’s a three-mana bounce spell that lets you trade a land for a second bounce. It might work against Chalice of the Void or Counterbalance, assuming your opponent doesn’t also have a either a Thorn of Amethyst and a Lodestone Golem or fistful of countermagic.

2. Crystal Vein

Need a way to very occasionally speed up your combo by a turn while also making your manabase suck? Singleton Crystal Vein has your back. Someone once asked me to lend him one of these at a Grand Prix because I seemed to him like the kind of guy who would have a Crystal Vein in a box somewhere. He was correct. Check out the spray tan on that guy in the art.

3. Sphinx of the Final Word

People will tell you that Miracles is the best deck in Legacy. That’s absurd. All you have to do to beat Miracles with your Storm deck is somehow resolve a ritual, then another ritual, then have two more blue mana kicking around somewhere, then cast this guy. Then just make sure he doesn’t die any time in the next four or five turns to the Terminus your opponent kept in their deck to ruin any Goblin token related plans you may have had. I can tell you from experience that flipping this with Ad Nauseam is pretty strong.

4. Ingot Chewer

What’s the most playable Evoke creature, you ask? Not Mulldrifter. Not Reveillark either. It’s a 3/3 Shatter guy. Joins Rushing River in the category of ways to compulsively avoid playing Abrupt Decay. In this fantasy card game with wizards and dragons, you definitely want to be playing this, uh… mole-worm? Yeah.

5. Teferi's Realm

Against Eldrazi and Death & Taxes, this costs too much to cast. Against Miracles, you end up with a draw because of the time it took to explain what “Enchant World” and “phasing” mean. Easily the best art on the list.

6. Telemin Performance

Sometimes you get them. Sometimes you get their Griselbrand. Sometimes you get their miser’s Simian Spirit Guide.

7. Ignorant Bliss

I want to see someone play this. And then I want to see them get the delayed trigger Stifled.

8. Brainspoil

Some people play Burning Wish in their Storm deck. It turns out, however, that Ad Nauseam is an instant. These days, if you want to wish for Ad Nauseam, all you need is one copy of Dark Petition in your sideboard, spell mastery, and nine mana. Once upon a time, however, you had to either trim an Infernal Tutor from the maindeck, shell out your lunch money for the next couple of years on a Grim Tutor, or sleeve up a Brainspoil. And as a bonus, you can two-for-one yourself to destroy an unenchanted creature for only seven mana! And it can’t be regenerated! That’s value.

9. Time Reversal

You know how every time an expensive blue card that looks kind of like Timetwister or Time Walk if you squint really hard gets spoiled, everyone runs around shouting about emergency banned list updates? Me neither. Anyway, somebody played this card in a tournament once. I assume the store only had white border copies Diminishing Returns.

10. Tranquil Domain

I’m only 60% sure I’ve even seen a list that had this in it. Maybe it was in a dream. I do know I paid more than zero dollars for a playset of them.

[Ronald Deuce]

"One Weird Card, Discovered By A Scrub": A Guide To The Spiciest Storm Tech

Do you dip Scotch bonnet chiles in sriracha as a snack? Do you like it when your opponents have to read your cards? If so, it's your lucky day. I've scoured not only mtgtop8.com's database of 13-player Lithuanian Legacy tournaments from 2008 but also the bottom of a shoebox of cards I forgot I even owned to bring you the finest, secretest, spiciest Storm tech on the planet. These ten cards range all the way from okay to awful. I’ve personally sleeved up at least five of them. Now you can too.
1. Rushing River
No one’s ever going to have to read your Abrupt Decay. That’s why you need stuff like Rushing River. It’s a three-mana bounce spell that lets you trade a land for a second bounce. It might work against Chalice of the Void or Counterbalance, assuming your opponent doesn’t also have a either a Thorn of Amethyst and a Lodestone Golem or fistful of countermagic.
2. Crystal Vein
Need a way to very occasionally speed up your combo by a turn while also making your manabase suck? Singleton Crystal Vein has your back. Someone once asked me to lend him one of these at a Grand Prix because I seemed to him like the kind of guy who would have a Crystal Vein in a box somewhere. He was correct. Check out the spray tan on that guy in the art.
3. Sphinx of the Final Word
People will tell you that Miracles is the best deck in Legacy. That’s absurd. All you have to do to beat Miracles with your Storm deck is somehow resolve a ritual, then another ritual, then have two more blue mana kicking around somewhere, then cast this guy. Then just make sure he doesn’t die any time in the next four or five turns to the Terminus your opponent kept in their deck to ruin any Goblin token related plans you may have had. I can tell you from experience that flipping this with Ad Nauseam is pretty strong.
4. Ingot Chewer
What’s the most playable Evoke creature, you ask? Not Mulldrifter. Not Reveillark either. It’s a 3/3 Shatter guy. Joins Rushing River in the category of ways to compulsively avoid playing Abrupt Decay. In this fantasy card game with wizards and dragons, you definitely want to be playing this, uh… mole-worm? Yeah.
5. Teferi's Realm
Against Eldrazi and Death & Taxes, this costs too much to cast. Against Miracles, you end up with a draw because of the time it took to explain what “Enchant World” and “phasing” mean. Easily the best art on the list.
6. Telemin Performance
Sometimes you get them. Sometimes you get their Griselbrand. Sometimes you get their miser’s Simian Spirit Guide.
7. Ignorant Bliss
I want to see someone play this. And then I want to see them get the delayed trigger Stifled.
8. Brainspoil
Some people play Burning Wish in their Storm deck. It turns out, however, that Ad Nauseam is an instant. These days, if you want to wish for Ad Nauseam, all you need is one copy of Dark Petition in your sideboard, spell mastery, and nine mana. Once upon a time, however, you had to either trim an Infernal Tutor from the maindeck, shell out your lunch money for the next couple of years on a Grim Tutor, or sleeve up a Brainspoil. And as a bonus, you can two-for-one yourself to destroy an unenchanted creature for only seven mana! And it can’t be regenerated! That’s value.
9. Time Reversal
You know how every time an expensive blue card that looks kind of like Timetwister or Time Walk if you squint really hard gets spoiled, everyone runs around shouting about emergency banned list updates? Me neither. Anyway, somebody played this card in a tournament once. I assume the store only had white border copies Diminishing Returns.
10. Tranquil Domain
I’m only 60% sure I’ve even seen a list that had this in it. Maybe it was in a dream. I do know I paid more than zero dollars for a playset of them.

I sincerely want to test Slaughter Games against Miracles. I also wish I could sig this whole post.

Don't think of Daze as countermagic that you're trying to use as protection in your combo turn, think of it as a Chant effect specifically for the non-blue matchups.

For sure; the problem is that I've played several games in which I couldn't empty my hand because I had something like a land or a cantrip in hand that I couldn't shed. I don't want to stress LED further by running responsive stuff (esp. if it often means we need to put a land in hand). Of course, the Chrome Mox might help.

Have you found Daze to work ok alongside Ad Nauseam? I worry that adding 2-cmc cards might cause problems there. Apologies if these are questions/concerns you've addressed previously; I'm just wondering what you think after testing in this metagame.

[Sloshthedark]

"One Weird Card, Discovered By A Scrub": A Guide To The Spiciest Storm Tech

Actually 6/10 in my Storm binder... would add

Plague Spitter
Ground Seal
Culling Scales

which I have all registered in a tournament at one point, but the definitely most advanced is the DDFT tech - Edge of Autumn

[rlesko]

"One Weird Card, Discovered By A Scrub": A Guide To The Spiciest Storm Tech


Do you dip Scotch bonnet chiles in sriracha as a snack? Do you like it when your opponents have to read your cards? If so, it's your lucky day. I've scoured not only mtgtop8.com's database of 13-player Lithuanian Legacy tournaments from 2008 but also the bottom of a shoebox of cards I forgot I even owned to bring you the finest, secretest, spiciest Storm tech on the planet. These ten cards range all the way from okay to awful. I’ve personally sleeved up at least five of them. Now you can too.

1. Rushing River

No one’s ever going to have to read your Abrupt Decay. That’s why you need stuff like Rushing River. It’s a three-mana bounce spell that lets you trade a land for a second bounce. It might work against Chalice of the Void or Counterbalance, assuming your opponent doesn’t also have a either a Thorn of Amethyst and a Lodestone Golem or fistful of countermagic.

2. Crystal Vein

Need a way to very occasionally speed up your combo by a turn while also making your manabase suck? Singleton Crystal Vein has your back. Someone once asked me to lend him one of these at a Grand Prix because I seemed to him like the kind of guy who would have a Crystal Vein in a box somewhere. He was correct. Check out the spray tan on that guy in the art.

3. Sphinx of the Final Word

People will tell you that Miracles is the best deck in Legacy. That’s absurd. All you have to do to beat Miracles with your Storm deck is somehow resolve a ritual, then another ritual, then have two more blue mana kicking around somewhere, then cast this guy. Then just make sure he doesn’t die any time in the next four or five turns to the Terminus your opponent kept in their deck to ruin any Goblin token related plans you may have had. I can tell you from experience that flipping this with Ad Nauseam is pretty strong.

4. Ingot Chewer

What’s the most playable Evoke creature, you ask? Not Mulldrifter. Not Reveillark either. It’s a 3/3 Shatter guy. Joins Rushing River in the category of ways to compulsively avoid playing Abrupt Decay. In this fantasy card game with wizards and dragons, you definitely want to be playing this, uh… mole-worm? Yeah.

5. Teferi's Realm

Against Eldrazi and Death & Taxes, this costs too much to cast. Against Miracles, you end up with a draw because of the time it took to explain what “Enchant World” and “phasing” mean. Easily the best art on the list.

6. Telemin Performance

Sometimes you get them. Sometimes you get their Griselbrand. Sometimes you get their miser’s Simian Spirit Guide.

7. Ignorant Bliss

I want to see someone play this. And then I want to see them get the delayed trigger Stifled.

8. Brainspoil

Some people play Burning Wish in their Storm deck. It turns out, however, that Ad Nauseam is an instant. These days, if you want to wish for Ad Nauseam, all you need is one copy of Dark Petition in your sideboard, spell mastery, and nine mana. Once upon a time, however, you had to either trim an Infernal Tutor from the maindeck, shell out your lunch money for the next couple of years on a Grim Tutor, or sleeve up a Brainspoil. And as a bonus, you can two-for-one yourself to destroy an unenchanted creature for only seven mana! And it can’t be regenerated! That’s value.

9. Time Reversal

You know how every time an expensive blue card that looks kind of like Timetwister or Time Walk if you squint really hard gets spoiled, everyone runs around shouting about emergency banned list updates? Me neither. Anyway, somebody played this card in a tournament once. I assume the store only had white border copies Diminishing Returns.

10. Tranquil Domain

I’m only 60% sure I’ve even seen a list that had this in it. Maybe it was in a dream. I do know I paid more than zero dollars for a playset of them.

How does ground seal not make this list!?

[CabalTherapy]

How does ground seal not make this list!?

Been there, done that:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=19635&iddeck=149468

[rlesko]

Been there, done that:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=19635&iddeck=149468

How did it treat you? I am thinking it could be good vs all these deathrite / therapy / surgical decks that seem to be getting popular as well as snapcaster mage

[CabalTherapy]

How did it treat you? I am thinking it could be good vs all these deathrite / therapy / surgical decks that seem to be getting popular as well as snapcaster mage

I tried it when everyone was playing BUG Delver locally. It's basically a cycle that may do some work but definitely not worth running since it's simply too narrow and weak.

[thefringthing]

For real though, the temptation to cut all the Abrupt Decays and Dazes and just run Teferi's Realms maindeck is real.

[rlesko]

I tried it when everyone was playing BUG Delver locally. It's basically a cycle that may do some work but definitely not worth running since it's simply too narrow and weak.

I honestly may give it a try and see how it goes. Seems like surgical extraction is seeing a resurgence and every blue deck seems to be playing deathrite / cabal therapy / snapcaster mage. Could be my sideboard for grixis / 4c delver

[Sloshthedark]

Been there, done that:
http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=19635&iddeck=149468

funny singleton? weak ;) ... http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=57807

[Dr_D]

funny singleton? weak ;) ... http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckd...p?DeckID=57807

What matchups is notion thief good in?

[thefringthing]

What matchups is notion thief good in?

0th Place at Test deck on 7/28/2013

I played some test games with the Jon Alexander's Grinding Station against Eldrazi. Lost every post-board game. I'd Daze a Chalice very consistently and then just die before I could go off.

[Ronald Deuce]

I played some test games with the Jon Alexander's Grinding Station against Eldrazi. Lost every post-board game. I'd Daze a Chalice very consistently and then just die before I could go off.

I have similar problems whenever I go the grindy route. A lot of that on my part has to do with inexperience, but I feel like there's a marked lack of flexibility in builds with multiple Tendrils, even against slower decks for which a grindier approach follows the prevailing wisdom. I've played plenty of games against Miracles in which I had double-Tendrils in hand, but there was no way to find added mana sources before CounterTop cleared the way for Monastery Mentor and his bros to bring the noise. There's no way around it—Tendrils does what it does, and that's unqualifiedly awesome, but it doesn't find other cards we need, it doesn't push through hate, and it costs four mana and a number of other spells to work its magic.

I don't have experience running Daze in Grinding Station, but I don't think Daze sounds like it's the problem. From what little I've played and seen, it feels to me like Grinding Station is perhaps in a worse spot than more Ad Nauseam-oriented AnT builds against Eldrazi. Speed appears to be the key, and even with the simple switch of one Petition for another Past in Flames, I've seen a marked decrease in T1-2 combos in a more speed-oriented AnT build. (As an aside, after switching out my singleton Petition for a Chrome Mox and going down to four tutors, I've had no problems and better Ad Nauseas. I guess I'm finally learning.)

Even considering various posters' positive experiences with Daze (which I don't mean to dismiss), I'm skeptical, but I feel like there's a more fundamental problem we face against Eldrazi, which is that they're really fast to put down a lock and follow that with hand disruption and overwhelming damage.

Is it worth it to try variegated hate-cards, or should we just go for speed? I haven't faced Eldrazi in a couple of months, but at this point, I'd cut a Past in Flames, a Preordain, and two Duresses for Empty, a fifteenth land, and two Hurkyl's Recalls.

[acidhead]

I don't think that it's a good plan to replace spot-removal with a "opponent choose which sort of cards phase out". Regarding Ground Seals: The meta is so full with Deathrite Shamans and Surgicals that it is tempting to use them. I will give them a try but I'm not convinced.

I went 6-3 in mkmseries prague and won a small tournament with this list. I'm really pleased with it and would only fiddle on some sideboard cards.

Deck: ANT

//Maindeck
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Grim Tutor
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
1 Badlands
1 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Swamp
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

//Sideboard
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bayou
2 Disfigure
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Extirpate
1 Flusterstorm
1 Karakas
1 Krosan Grip
1 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Tendrils of Agony

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