Why isn't there more Storm combo in the US?

[MGB]

Storm is too linear a strategy. If you play enough hate and have a clock, you can have a 60%+ win percentage vs Storm with any deck, basically.

BUG Delver, RUG Delver, Death n Taxes, and the like all have very good answers for Storm combo backed up by a quick clock. Miracles has a two card combo (Countertop) that says "I win" vs. Storm. Other combo decks like Elves, Reanimator, and Show n Tell are as fast, or faster than Storm.

I just don't think that Storm is a good strategy in Legacy any more. It's like the Goblins of combo decks - once well positioned and powerful, but the rest of the format has surpassed it with newer printings.

[SaberTooth]

I play storm in legacy. It's my favourite deck (the deck that i enjoy most), but why you want to play storm when you can play griselbrand decks and win more even without thiking too much?

[Lemnear]

Storm is too linear a strategy. If you play enough hate and have a clock, you can have a 60%+ win percentage vs Storm with any deck, basically.

BUG Delver, RUG Delver, Death n Taxes, and the like all have very good answers for Storm combo backed up by a quick clock. Miracles has a two card combo (Countertop) that says "I win" vs. Storm. Other combo decks like Elves, Reanimator, and Show n Tell are as fast, or faster than Storm.

I just don't think that Storm is a good strategy in Legacy any more. It's like the Goblins of combo decks - once well positioned and powerful, but the rest of the format has surpassed it with newer printings.

Lmfao

You act as if card like Abrupt Decay (Counterbalance), Dread of Night (D&T) or Cabal Ritual (RUG's softcounter) do not exist or as if Hatebears or turn 3 Craterhoof are faster than storm can combo in average. You also miss that ANT gives a fuck about it's life total as long as it's bigger than Zero. What about actually dipping a nose into the archetype before trying to be smart? It's not that the last BoM's didn't have quite some storm decks in their top 8/16/32

[Tammit67]

Storm is too linear a strategy. If you play enough hate and have a clock, you can have a 60%+ win percentage vs Storm with any deck, basically.

Isn't that like every deck? Sure the hate against storm is effective, but if you board enough against any deck you can swing matchups.

BUG Delver, RUG Delver, Death n Taxes, and the like all have very good answers for Storm combo backed up by a quick clock. Miracles has a two card combo (Countertop) that says "I win" vs. Storm. Other combo decks like Elves, Reanimator, and Show n Tell are as fast, or faster than Storm.

Every deck finally has a way to interact, this is true. That doesn't mean storm is completely helpless though.

I actually lose more to cannonist postboard out of miracles than counterbalance preboard out of miracles

[Richard Cheese]

This thread has become "why is storm good/bad right now", when the question is why it's not getting played in the US. I think it's just a cyclical effect from having well-publicized, large tournaments happening almost every week. The top SCG grinders, the ones that show up to almost every tournament, seem to prefer decks like xUx Delver, Miracles, and Stoneblade. My guess is that it's because these are all very flexible, have few terrible matchups, and don't often lose to variance, but the reasons don't really matter. If you go to a large event in the states, you have a pretty reasonable expectation of seeing some or all of those decks at the top tables, so most people are either going to try to emulate their success or play something to specifically beat that meta, and storm combo just doesn't really fit well into either of those categories.

Also, as some people have already mentioned, storm sees plenty of play at local events in the US, but it comes and goes more than being a staple, because small metas are much easier to sideboard for.

[Zombie]

BUG Delver, RUG Delver, Death n Taxes, and the like all have very good answers for Storm combo backed up by a quick clock. Miracles has a two card combo (Countertop) that says "I win" vs. Storm. Other combo decks like Elves, Reanimator, and Show n Tell are as fast, or faster than Storm.

I just don't think that Storm is a good strategy in Legacy any more. It's like the Goblins of combo decks - once well positioned and powerful, but the rest of the format has surpassed it with newer printings.

Elves is as fast as ANT, no more. And even then ANT packs discard where Elves packs grindy draw engines and stuff. ANT is definitely the favourite game 1. It's not nightmarish, but certainly not even. G2/3 Elves tends to morph into some weird prison/tempo/beatdown concoction that does have a nice Storm matchup. But it's not really about the combo then, it's about disruption and turning dudes sideways.

[CabalTherapy]

This discussion could have been copy-pasted from mtg salvation.
I am really not sure if you guys know what you are talking about. JACO's and MGB's posts are hilarious.

[nevilshute]

I think this thread has started to go off the rails a bit. The question was never "is storm a good deck?". It quite obviously is, at the very least, a fine deck and has shown through the years a resiliency to all the hate coming its way (for people with short term memory I'd like to point to the fact that the BoM in Paris in November had 3 storm decks in the top 8).

Further, to the people in this thread making statements regarding storm not being good anymore:

If you accept the premiss that storm is played significantly more in Europe than in the US then are all the Europeans playing storm just stupid? Why are they choosing a suboptimal deck? Or is everyone else stupid for not playing "good enough" anti-storm strategies. I really don't think so.

Some people in this thread have offered some good insights into why there seems to be this disparity between the amount of storm pilots in the US compared to Europe. I, at least partly, feel like my initial question was answered

[Higgs]

Yep, by looking at the discussion it seems that less people believe in the deck in the States. Could be why.

[Mystic Snake]

Is it the same reason why rug is far more played in the US than in Europe where people think it is almost dead because of bug strategies...?
I guess it is all about everyone's habits that each deck is played or not.
Same question about miracles which is a part of the metagame much more than in the US, where only Joe lossett is a regular of the deck...

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[heathen]

I can only speak for myself, but I stopped playing Storm for a number of reasons.

First, where I play (Denver) the Legacy scene is small and we very rarely get any kind of big event (no SCG Open around here since 2012). So, if you consistently play one deck, or one style of deck, people remember it and make their game one decisions accordingly. Automatically giving my opponent's that edge in every match feels like a fairly significant issue.

Second, the sideboard answers to Storm are just so potent, and no one likes losing to Storm so I think people over-compensate their sideboard plans (again, at least locally here where they can know they will face Storm and thus not feel like the sideboard space is wasted). Playing those awful games 2 and 3 really wore me down.

Third, and again I'm just speaking for myself, I began to think that I'm just not good enough at the game to play Storm truly well. After devoting a fair amount of time to it I did feel comfortable with it and developed some degree of skill, but I don't think I'm good enough to play it on the level of a truly good Storm player. Thus, in every match I'm battling my opponent AND myself. I love Storm but it can really punish small mistakes, and for a sub-par player like me that really hurt my results.

Fourth, I never found a variety of Storm that truly felt great for me. I started out with ANT, which I liked but often felt too slow. So I switched to TES and didn't like the sketchy manabase. TES definitely made me think that I'm not that good of a player. I briefly flirted with Doomsday, but that REALLY showed me I wasn't up to the task. I also tried some tweaked lists of my own, but again I felt like I simply wasn't a good enough player to truly do well with them.

Finally, after playing unfair and somewhat uninteractive Magic in Legacy for so long, I've decided I want to try playing a bit more fair and try being a bit more interactive. I don't think I'll set the world on fire with a fair deck, but it's appealing to me right now.

[Tormod]

Storm comes and goes in my meta. We have known storm players that will shelve their decks when the hate is strong and bring play other decks. The same hold true for graveyard combo decks like dredge and re animator. They never really go away, they just come and go.

Fair decks are popular. I've seen an increase in shardless bug and miracles.

[sjmcc13]

I think the lack of storm in the US (not sure how this relates to Europe though) is due to a combination of several factors affecting its playability.
A few of them being :

1. Fair" and "Unfair" deck propaganda.
   Fair and unfair were a horrible choice of labels. People have a tendency to associate "Unfair" with cheating, and avoid such decks. Conventional decks for creature based ones, and unconventional decks for other decks that use a different axis of attack. All that labelling decks as unfair does is make people who do not want to interact in other ways feel better (it is not your fault your zombie deck lost, even though had you been running some discard you could have disrupted him enough to pull out a win), and justify the game being slowly turned into nothing but drop creatures turn them sideways seems to be the only valid interaction in Wizards likes.
2. The american educational system
   the US educational system is NOT designed to produce free thinking intellectuals. It is designed to create drones who do what they are told, and believe what they are told to believe. Or simply put it is designed to create conformists. This means that they are more likely to disregard decks that have negative connotations and pick up decks with positive ones. This means that they will tend to go towards whatever decks are being hyped or advertised.
3. The Stores/stratagey articles
   Stores are going to hype the decks that make them the most money, The only expensive card in ANT's Main deck that is not played all over the place is LED. Seriously once you have the mana base the rest of the deck can be built under $200, probably under $100 if you shop around enough. Why would a store hype ANY when there is ore money to be made selling Canadian Threshold which runs Goyf, FoW, and Stifle on top of a mana base that costs more then ANT on its own. Or Deathblade with Jace, Fow, SFM, Jitte and Batterskull. There is more money to be made on the other decks, especially if they market those cards to higher demand levels.
4. Bad and vocal players
   I do not know what the levels are like in Europe, but I have run into allot of bad players over the years I have been playing MTG, and the vocal ones complaining about decks being bad/wrong/unfun has a tendency to discourage players from trying them. I have seen people become convinced that storm was a bad deck that should be hated out after losing to it once, with not effort of thought put into analysing what he could have done to win, or to protect against that type of deck in the future or shore up his defences against that type of strategy. (Though this is also a guy who in a previous game when I was playing a Std aggro deck saw me evaluating how to tap mana in my main phase to play something and immediately tried to cast silence because he had 0 understanding of priority and the stack and did not realize I had to pass it first) though to make matters worse it was not storm that won that game but a bad and unreliable infinite combo (required 3 specific cards, and doubles of 2 of them) of them that would have killed him with any burn card and a draw spell that had I drawn into.
   
   I have run into to many people who just want to play fat, turn it sideways and complain about any other type of deck. Which is a mindset I never understand because to me the amount of different strategies and axis of attack is what makes magic so fun of a game (I am also someone who the more complex a deck the more I wan to play it for the challenge, and Yes I own every card for Doomsday, and have built it a couple times) I have never lost to a deck and said that deck should not exist, I always took it as a learning opportunity to see what my deck needs. I do not care if you are going to run Stasis, because if I do not have an answer in the deck/board then I will next week.
5. Instant gratification culture
   To many people want low investment and high reward, given the choice between a simple deck, and a complex one they will pick the simple one every time even if the complex deck is more powerful. I have seen people take a deck, loose 1 tournament and give up allot over the years. This is also present in people saying thing like why play X when I can just Show and Tell down a Grizzlebrand. to many players are skill averse,In my experience most new players never actually read the rules, and rely on someone else to explain them t them who in turn does not know the rules properly since they never read them, and it has been there since the beginning as the confusion back in the day over banding was due to not reading the rulebook (I still remember the gu who taught me to play getting the rule wrong, and only knowing because I picked up a rulebook the furs chance I got), and it is not limited to Magic almost every D&D group I have played in has had 1-3 players who refused to read the basics of the rules.

[ESG]

This is the most laughable post I've seen in a while. There is no conspiracy by stores to hype decks. People play what they want to play or, in some cases, what they can afford. And the U.S. education system has nothing to do with how people select Magic decks. I'm laughing out loud! I can't believe someone is blaming the U.S. education system for people not playing Storm.

You would learn a lot more if you actually asked people why they play the decks they do.

[Higgs]

The pro-circuit in the States and SCG qualifier ladders etc. could be another reason why people prefer picking up more straightforward, factory standard delver/SFM decks over fun decks like Storm and TinFins. I don't think in Europe people play Legacy to build up some points for a given tournament circuit or to earn cash like a pro card player, but people play Legacy just because they love the format.

[Sloshthedark]

This is the most laughable post I've seen in a while. There is no conspiracy by stores to hype decks. People play what they want to play or, in some cases, what they can afford. And the U.S. education system has nothing to do with how people select Magic decks. I'm laughing out loud! I can't believe someone is blaming the U.S. education system for people not playing Storm.

You would learn a lot more if you actually asked people why they play the decks they do.

Aside U.S. education system I know nothing about, those points are not unreasonable for me...

1. true
2. - sound a bit stupid
3. bit exaggegerated legacy is too expensive, but shapes metagame and functional in Mtg in overall
4. true
5. true

[MGB]

What's funny is that ESG's post is basically a reinforcement of sjmcc13's point about the US educational system.

[ESG]

What's funny is that ESG's post is basically a reinforcement of sjmcc13's point about the US educational system.

I don't see how you could infer that. People have free will, but most of them do not have unlimited money. It has nothing to do with mindless conformity. If someone wants to get into Legacy, that person is going to build the deck or decks that he or she finds interesting and powerful. I know plenty of people who love Storm and would never grow tired of it. I also know plenty of people who played Storm for a while and are off of it now, for various reasons. I don't see how you guys can make a value judgment about people who play or don't play Storm. You're exalting Storm players and slamming everyone else.

There are bad players in every format, and some of them -- shock of shocks! -- even play Storm. I've been handed free wins by at least three different Storm players over the years who either miscounted mana or storm.

[Richard Cheese]

Only one AdNaus deck in the top 16 this week?

THANKS OBAMA.

[afb0032]

Only one AdNaus deck in the top 16 this week?

THANKS OBAMA.

Thank you very much for my new sig quote!