[Deck] ANT (Ad Nauseam Tendrils) Storm Combo

[taconaut]

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds similar to what I'd had in mind; maybe it's not making as much sense as it should because I haven't played it out myself. Are you running Rain of Filth?

I am not running Rain of Filth, though it's possible I'd like it more than the Preordain. I'm not as big on how it plays with PiF, though it does seem sweet for cabal rituals/tutor chains w.r.t. threshold/additional rituals.

[Jonathan Alexander]

People need to stop bringing up Rain of Filth's interaction with Past in Flames. It's not better or worse than Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox and Sensei's Divining Top, all of which see play as well.

[thefringthing]

As much as I hate to agree with that Spongebob avatar guy about anything, Ingot Chewer is indeed dope vs Eldrazi and MUD.

[nevilshute]

I find myself being hot and cold on RoF. It's the most variance heavy ritual which I think annoys me a bit

[taconaut]

People need to stop bringing up Rain of Filth's interaction with Past in Flames. It's not better or worse than Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox and Sensei's Divining Top, all of which see play as well.

I think it's different in a few ways, though, specifically:

- Lion's Eye Diamond: This has no initial mana investment, and gives you three mana of any color regardless of what your boardstate is. Also, it contributes to the Infernal Tutor interaction, which is comparable to enabling threshold (which Rain of Filth does) though I think it's a stronger interaction overall.

- Lotus Petal: also has zero upfront cost, makes mana of any color, and doesn't get rid of your lands.

- Chrome Mox: I think this is actually the most comparable of the four you mentioned, which is why it also tends to only be a zero- or one-of. However, this can, like the other two artifacts, be played out ahead of time if necessary, and can also contribute to hellbent for IT (though less effectively than LED, obviously, because a land can still clog your hand). Personally, I like Chrome Mox better than Rain of Filth, because it makes my Ad Nauseams better (I know And isn't super popular on this board, but I like it a lot) and it doesn't leave me landless if something goes wrong during the combo.

- Sensei's Divining Top: I think this isn't in the same category as rain of filth, but I agree that this is another personal preference choice. I was running one for a while and have since cut it, but I did have some good games with it as well. Maybe this is what I should play instead of Preordain? That seems to be a reasonable swap.

To me, the biggest differences are the initial mana cost and the all-in nature of the card. That being said, I can totally see it being defensible as a one-of; there are plenty of times I could have used an extra pseudo-Dark Ritual (or potentially better, with 4 or more lands) and I've played it in Doomsday, it's just that in ANT I don't really like binning all my lands unless I really think that turn is the only one that will matter (which sometimes it is).

[Jonathan Alexander]

I wasn't arguing for Rain in general (although I do think it's very good), I was just pointing out that the lack of interaction with Past in Flames is no reason to dismiss the card. What you have listed now are perfectly fine reasons to not play Rain. It's definitely not as important to the deck as Lion's Eye Diamond is, but it has a very unique and powerful effect that shouldn't be dismissed for non-reasons. It's also not always correct to run Rain, and I currently don't run it either.

[Togores]

Bom results ~300 players
2 bauseam in top 8
One lost against eldrazi. Who won the finals against belcher.

ULIANA Damien - Ad Nauseam Tendrils - Top 8 Legacy

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Preordain
1 Past in Flames
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Dark Petition
1 Rain of Filth
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island

Sideboard 15
1 Tropical Island
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Disfigure
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Rebuild
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Massacre

(Cabal rituals missing)

My aprentice who lost to eldrazi


MORAL Carlos - Ad Nauseam Tendrils - Top 8 Legacy

4 Polluted Delta
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Island
2 Undferground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Swamp
1 Bayou
1 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Preordain
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Dark Ritual
3 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Infernal Tutor
2 Past in Flames
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ad Nauseam
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Gitaxian Probe

Sideboard 15
4 Abrupt Decay
3 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Tropical Island
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Massacre
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Cabal Therapy
2 Xantid Swarm

[ScottW]

What a mixed bag. Two copies in the top 8 and Eldrazi winning 1st is bittersweet. Looking forward to the coverage archive.

What do you mean "apprentice"? Are you helping him learn the deck? Interesting lists; both have 2 Island. Are you running this also, Togores? Did you play? If so, any stories?

[Togores]

I didnt played.
The prices are like the shitt and getting like this bom points instead if some decent prices is awfull. Also the vintage event was like not worth. All this made me not go. I love to play vintage and there are enought events that I can go to another to play modern + legacy + vintage.

He del moral is a friend of me. He is a pro player who started to play ant like 6 month ago. And I trained him on the right path. He plays 2 islands. Is fine. Bur I just dont like to waste a sb card in a land. Today after the event I spoke to him and he told me his sb was a bit meh. But still did the job ^^

Also having 3 basics is bettee vs eldrazi for casting hurkills immo.

[Ronald Deuce]

Two Stormers also made top 8 in the latest League (FWIW). Both ran Rain of Filth, double Petition, 3-3 discards, and 14 lands.

[quadich]

Hi,

I didnt get around to test the deck too much lately but i am looking to sleeve it up for an event next week. However reading through this thread made skeptical whether thats a wise choice. Thus i have a couple of questions hopinh that you can help me (some/most of it was implicitly answered on the previous pages but i am the kind of guy who needs to be hit with a stop sign to actually stop):

1. Did the meta really shift that heavily towards non blue decks?
If so, isnt this actually something to make storm more viable?

2. How bad is the Eldrazi match up post board? I get that its still abyssmal, but i keep wondering whether the permanent hate we bring isnt enough, especially since they cant dig for lock pieces. How often does the Eldrazi deck get hands that just blow us out?
Is said Eldrazi matchup by itself enough to justify not playing the deck?

Also most importantly: which version of storm would be the best choice? In the past i have been playing the grindier builds, since they do so well against miracles.However i get the feeling that if the meta actually is leaning that heavily on hate permanents rather than counterspells that the classical infernal tutor + LED into ad nauseam is alot more viable now. If that was true wouldnt TES be the way to go?

I would really appreciate any help,cause i am somewhat clueless :).

[nevilshute]

1) there seems to have been a switch but you'd have to do some data mining to really know. Legacy's still primarily blue though would be my guess Storm is still positioned decently but does now have a tier 1 predator that it didn't a few months ago.

2) Eldrazi is still a terrible matchup postboard so much so that some of us have started to ignore it when building a SB. You need several of the following to happen: win the dice roll, have turn 1-2 kills, have them mulligan into oblivion, have them keep a good hand vs non-combo (g1). Bringing in stuff like 3 Hurkyl's can wreck them but you will often still lose and so it doesn't make enough of a difference. I have found empty the warrens to be strong vs them.

I think there is something to be said for moving away from grinding versions currently. No, I don't think that means TES is then a better choice as I think that deck is inherently too fragile for my taste. But, you know, personal preferences.

[OlegtheSuper]

1 empty the warrens
2 tendrils of agony
1 dark petition
2 past in flames
4 infernal tutor
4 lotus petal
4 lion's eye diamond
1 sensei's divining top
4 gitaxian probe
4 ponder
4 brainstorm
4 dark ritual
4 cabal ritual
1 thoughtseize
2 duress
3 cabal therapy

1 volcanic island
1 badlands
1 tropical island
2 undergroumd sea
1 island
1 swamp
4 polluted delta
4 scalding tarn

Sideboard
1 chain pf vapor
2 flusterstorm
1 ad nauseam
3 dread of night
3 abrupt decay
2 krosan grip
3 ingot chewer

Won gpt Prague yesterday, got 2 autowins in main event.

2-0 Omnitell
1-2 UB The Thing
2-0 D&T
2-0 Reanimator
2-0 Miracles

Top 4
2-0 UG Infect

Final
2-0 UB The Thing

Chewers for Eldrazi(vintage tech). The reason to play them is when eldrazi gets 2 thorns/spheres it could be hard to cast hurkyl's recall or decay.

[Sloshthedark]

He del moral is a friend of me. He is a pro player who started to play ant like 6 month ago.

I remember an older guy with glasses who played Ant with beta/guru lands around 2012 with the same/similar name... thought it was him

[Jonathan Alexander]

Has anyone else tried no green, 10 discard total? I haven't played Storm in a while and I won't be able to until at least next. Also has anyone besides Oleg tried out Chewers? How did you like them? (This question obviously goes to Oleg as well, but multiple perspectives would be nice.)

[OlegtheSuper]

Has anyone else tried no green, 10 discard total? I haven't played Storm in a while and I won't be able to until at least next. Also has anyone besides Oleg tried out Chewers? How did you like them? (This question obviously goes to Oleg as well, but multiple perspectives would be nice.)

My test\tournament games vs eldrazi were like you have to deal with every single hate piese as fast as possible to have a possibility to construct your hand. Usualy i sb like +3 recall, +3 decay, +1 chain(was super good). Recall won me games vs eldrazi, but it doesn't compare much with previous plan. You want to use recall in the turn befor win because recall just returns not destroys, and you'll get all thorns on the next turn.
I haven't tested chewers in real games vs eldrazi only in theory.

[UseLess]

Has anyone else tried no green, 10 discard total?

It sounds interesting, but I'm kinda curious about how you would deal with Miracles then, or more specifically counterbalance. Completely ignoring the card almost makes that matchup an auto-loss whenever they resolve it. Sure, you might be better against Eldrazi, but if you give in vs miracles all that you gain in another matchup, what is the point really?

[Jonathan Alexander]

Actually, 10 discard was a plan against Miracles, not Eldrazi. I liked it, Kai briefly tried it and concluded it didn't break the matchup. I don't mind being dead to a resolved Counterbalance. The way lists have shifted, it's very hard playing a long game against them anyway.

[Ronald Deuce]

Went 2-1 yesterday at the local running the same list I ran before. Beat S&T and BRUG Delver, lost to the Menace.

R1: Show and Tell (2-0)
G1: Slow start from both my opponent and me. We kicked at each other's hands for about 4 turns. A Sneak Attacking Emrakul took me down to 1 and wiped my lands. He didn't find anything to keep the pressure on, though, and I topdecked into a combo. I ran a Tutor into a counter, breaking LED and discarding PiF, and he didn't have a second piece of hate to stop the recurred combo.
G2: I think I had to Ad Nauseam down to 1 here, but I got there. He had countermagic here as well, but I think he tried to prevent a loss by countering a ritual instead of waiting to see whether I had backup business like I did in game 1.

Past in Flames was great here, so for the time being it's replacing my second Dark Petition in the mainboard. It really does add a ton of resilience to the combo, though its vulnerability to graveyard hate is really important to keep in mind.

R2: Eldrazi MUD (0-2)
G1: I comboed pretty quickly here, but he Warping Wailed my Tutor and I'd used up everything.
G2: Turn one, 12 Goblins right into a Mindbreak Trap.

Surprisingly, no Chalices or Thorns showed up in this match. I'd been expecting Mindbreak Trap, but I gambled that it was better to go quickly than to wait for a discard because that wouldn't have stopped topdecked prison pieces.

R3: BRUG Delver (2-1)
G1: I think I comboed off of Ad Nauseam when he only had Bolts and a Surgical in hand.
G2: This was another game in which I think the opponent pretty much had an unbeatable hand: 2x Force, 2x Surgical, Spell Pierce, Other Blue Card (Brainstorm?). He didn't have any creatures and was stuck on one dual for colored mana, but when he countered an attempted Duress, I scooped. I think he could've wiped all (or at least 3/5) of my hand disruption by Extracting the Duress, so it was just a matter of time.
G3: This game was a horror show, and I still feel bad about how it went. Opponent had Surgical and Flusterstorm in hand, and I had three LEDs, PiF, Tutor(?), Ad Nauseam, and cantrips. I Brainstormed Ad Nauseam to the top of my deck, then I played out three LEDs, cracking them for each color and cantripping into Ad Nauseam. He didn't respond. I started digging, going down to 1 to look for an out because I knew he would've shut me down next turn. Kind of nasty draws, netting both Empty and Tendrils in the top few cards, but I still had some mana together, so all was not lost. I played out Rituals and cast Tendrils for 16, putting him at 4. He again did not respond. I cast Past in Flames, at which point he Extracted Tendrils. I played mana rituals, then recast Ad Nauseam to try to find a way around his Flusterstorm. I couldn't find anything, so I just played out mana and cast Empty for an irrelevantly huge number of goblins. I passed turn, and he scooped after his draw. It was only then that I realized that he'd been tapped out the entire time.

I'm sold on running 2x PiF now because it'll get us there when the opponent's got disruption. And when I think the opponent has disruption, even when he doesn't

Still doesn't get us through "six cards that hose storm"-type hands, though. I've been thinking about a singleton Defense Grid for the control matchups.

Five tutors are also pretty necessary unless we run extra Storm spells, I think.

[CabalTherapy]

Another quick report: Went 4-0 yesterday which puts me to 20-0 in the last five tournaments on Tuesday with ANT. I know this sounds wrong but I have some eternal witnesses.
I played Sloshstorm once again (2 Pif, 2 Toa, 1 Etw, 1 Grim, 6 discard, 1 Top, AdN SB). SB looked like this: 3 AD, 2 Grip, 1 Pyroblast, 1 Toa, 2 Flusterstorm, 2 Pyroclasm, 1 Bayou, 1 AdN, 1 Extirpate, 1 Truth.

Round 1 Omnitell hybrid with Griselbrand and Sneak Attack
Game one was a tough one, I discard him his only cantrip early on but fail to find more juice while he finds BS and plays it in response to my second discard spell: 3rd land, Emrakul, 1 Omni, 1 SnT, 1 FoW... Great. I think for a while and take the Fow nonetheless, altough taking one of the other cards would have been a possibility as well and then force him to counter my combo leaving us both hellbent. I have 2 LED and Infernal with Toa in the grave afterwards and decide to go the yolo-route with Infernal > PiF > Infernal > LED> UUU and BS into nuts. The nuts were a LP, which I used to flashback a Duress. Still having PiF and Toa in the grave I managed to assamble a kill some turns later with Critual and LED. I kept a random hand for the next game but he had his combo quite fast with Griselbrand. In the next game, he plays Leyline and apparently has multiple FoW in hand but no land. I try to go off quickly with AdN, which met a FoW. Some turns later I can Grip the Leyline and Duress him. He showed me 3 Forces and we played some draw-go until he forced me to go off by taking an Intuition with Cunning Wish. I had LED, Ritual, Critual, Infernal, Infernal, BS. I went for both Rituals, Infernal copying BS, BS into Extirpate taking his FoWs and then winning with Tendrils for 20.

Round 2 ANT
Easy game one, where I outplayed him with my cantrips and left him suprised by flashing Infernal as my only card in hand after Probe > 2nd LED after playing it. The next one was very controlish. I kept a decent hand with PIf already there and we both had a Flusterstorm but he a Top and starting to discard my hate cards (Fluster, Extirpate). I was afraid that he had a Fluster on top pushing it with the Top but apparently not. After some turns I had the classic PiF loop without IT but ToA from hand.

Round 3 Maverick
He went down to 5 cards: 2 lands, 1 random, 1 Gaddock, 1 Thalia... I started and found two discard spells for his bears on turn 2. He wasted me twice but I had the better draws and won with a Pif loop. I cannot remember the second one but I lost this one to some bears and Wastelands. The deciding was better. He played Dryad Militant and I went for AdN on my second turn which failed miserably going down to 3 and taking his Thalia. I played some Rituals and Tendrils for 12 on the next turn from my hand while he placed some Revoker (LED) and Ooze onto the battlefield. I found a Pyroclasm for the Militant and Revoker and abused my Top a bit. He went up to 9 and in my last turn I managed to create storm 4 with Tendrils for the kill.

Round 4 Jund
Nothing special here. I mulliganed to 5 but prepared the kill on top of my library. He had one more draw: Hymn... Alright, I recharged some turns later and killed him with Toa for 16 after his Confidant drained his life. In the next one, I lead with Island having BS, 3 Rituals, fetch, Probe in hand. He played a land and passed the turn. I drew AdN and he conceded to it.