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    Ruby Storm

    Tony has really been helming this deck for quite some time and his efforts have really mainstreamed the deck more with competitive players.

    epic primer
    podcast

    Fun Vintage Cards



    The Legacy Equivalent



    How?





    Ruby Storm:


    Why would I play this?
    You enjoy storm combo, but are tired of ANT/TES/High Tide. You enjoy playing with Lion's Eye Diamond and killing with Tendrils of Agony. You like being able to manage your storm and mana with only two dice.

    Why shouldn't I play this?
    Decks with ponder and brainstorm offer a little more consistency. Decks with black provide you with some hand disruption.

    Let’s look for reasons to play a traditional storm deck like ANT or TES:

    1) Optimized for its combo. Brainstorm/Preordain/Ponder for consistency, Ritual effects, Lotus Petal, LED for mana generation.
    2) Duress/Thoughtseize/Cabal therapy for protection.
    3) Fetch lands to help with deck manipulation and mana fixing.
    4) Black/Red for tutor + past in flames/empty the warrens.
    5) Blue/Green additionally for sideboarding

    If you want to forego most protection, then you must play a speed game. Decks for that include:

    1) Belcher
    2) Oops
    3) Spanish Inquisition

    All of these are pretty rough to play against FoW decks, but you can still steal some wins and they are fun to play. IMHO they get a little boring as once you’ve mastered the lines of play there’s not a ton else to do.

    Somewhere in the middle is Ruby Storm (mono red storm).

    What are the benefits?

    1) Mono colored deck. Ability to play lots of basic lands.
    2) Not too many 1 drops to help consistency and optimize draws. (not as weak to chalice x=1)
    3) Ability to play some non-basics that aren’t for consistency. (Ancient Tomb and Sandstone Needle that provide quicker kills.
    4) Raw power cards, the cards while on their own aren’t at necessarily the same power level, together have great synergies.
    5) Ability to play red cards that are typically too mana intensive for multicolored decks.

    What does a decklist look like?

    It changes a lot, but since the Gitaxian Probe banning, I have settled on this:

    // 60 Maindeck
    // 12 Artifact
    4 Lotus Petal
    4 Ruby Medallion
    4 Lion's Eye Diamond

    // 10 Instant
    4 Manamorphose
    4 Seething Song
    2 Desperate Ritual

    // 14 Land
    4 Ancient Tomb
    6 Mountain
    4 Sandstone Needle

    // 24 Sorcery
    3 Rite of Flame
    4 Burning Wish
    3 Past in Flames
    4 Act on Impulse
    3 Reforge the Soul
    2 Hazoret's Undying Fury
    4 Bonus Round
    1 Fiery Confluence

    // 15 Sideboard
    // 6 Artifact
    SB: 4 Defense Grid
    SB: 2 Silent Gravestone

    // 9 Sorcery
    SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
    SB: 1 Grapeshot
    SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
    SB: 1 Past in Flames
    SB: 1 Fiery Confluence
    SB: 1 Hazoret's Undying Fury
    SB: 1 Rite of Flame
    SB: 1 Reforge the Soul
    SB: 1 Shattering Spree



    Let me discuss the card selection choices:
    4 Ruby Medallion: Allows you to cast multiple spells in a single turn. Makes all of the red mana acceleration extremely powerful.

    4 Lotus Petal: free mana acceleration

    4 Lion’s Eye Diamond: Great acceleration and has a lot of synergy with Past in Flames, Act on Impulse, and Burning Wish.

    4 Seething Song: nets 2 mana like dark ritual, but with a Ruby Medallion it will net +3 red mana. Also can filter colorless into red mana. Pretty silly with Bonus Round, Ruby Medallion, and Hazoret's.

    4 Manamorphose: Mana Fixing + Cantrip. With Ruby Medallion or Bonus Round it also functions as mana acceleration.

    2 Desperate Ritual: 1 to make up for the Rite of Flame in the SB, a 2nd because it can help you get to 3 mana for seething song and also filter ancient tomb mana into red. (also synergizes well with Hazoret's, Ruby, and Bonus Round.)

    3 Rite of Flame: A good mana acceleration spell. Gets better with multiples and is pretty strong with Bonus Round. 1 in the sb.

    4 Burning Wish: Tutors for 1R or just R with a Ruby Medallion out. With Bonus Round it can enable many turns that will end the game quickly. Allows for a SB with dedicated targets to dealing with different situations for mostly comboing off.

    2 Hazoret's Undying Fury Can steal games. Another business spell for the deck. Extremely powerful with Bonus Round. (1 in the board)

    3 Past in Flames (1 in the sb): Yawgmoth’s Will is banned and this card is actually better in this deck (most of the time). With Ruby Medallion the cost is the same as Will and there are many times when you will cast this multiple times. Has great synergy with Lion’s Eye Diamond.

    4 Act on Impulse: 3 cards for 3 mana is pretty good. 3 cards for 2 or 1 mana is borderline vintage-power level. With Bonus Round you can flip 6, or 12, or 24 (depending on how many Bonus Rounds have been cast. Can be used to play around Surgical Extraction as your win conditions can’t be hit by it when in Exile. Has a lot of synergy with Lion’s Eye Diamond.

    4 Bonus Round: This is one of the cards that is a good reason to play this deck. Other storm decks can't cast this reliably, but seething song and lands like sandstone needle allow this deck to do so. Consider it another enabler of manamorphose. It is extremely good all of the instant/sorcery ramp spells and most of your sorcery cards are game over when used with this. Also worth noting that once it resolves you can cast your spells through cards like Chalice of the Void and even Trinisphere (since the copies can still ramp you).

    3 Reforge the Soul: Wheel of Fortune for 3RR. Can be miracled for R. Very good against discard decks and to help a bit vs counter magic. This card is one of the reasons to play this deck.

    1 Fiery Confluence: Can kill on its own with 2 Bonus Rounds or Bonus Round + Past in Flames. Gets around Leyline of Sanctity. Also can function as a sweeper and artifact killer.

    6 Mountain: 10 red sources minimum, see below for other 4.

    4 Ancient Tomb: Functions as a +1 ritual effect the turn you play it and can also enable turn 1 Ruby Medallion or Defense Grids. Also can start with Lotus Petal into Seething Song for some dirty turn 1 plays.

    4 Sandstone Needle: Helps smooth out some draws and allows you to play draw go a bit better. Comes into play tapped is obviously not great, but providing double red twice compensates.

    Sideboard:

    SB: 4 Defense Grid: Flex slots, Blue Decks (noted can come down turn 1 with Ancient Tomb/RoF).

    SB: 2 Silent Gravestone: Protects you from surgical extraction and for those matchups also hates on snapcaster mage. Also has a draw effect which is not negligible.

    SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony: Wish Target, easiest way to kill with low storm counts.

    SB: 1 Grapeshot: Wish Target, can sweep the board and function as a win condition. Gets under Gaddock Teeg.

    SB: 1 Empty the Warrens: Wish Target, easy to steal games. Many people with this deck also play more maindeck as most decks can’t interact well with lots of turn 1/2 goblins.

    SB: 1 Reforge the Soul: Flex slot, Functions as a wheel of fortune here.

    SB: 1 Past in Flames: Wish Target, needed at times to combo off.

    SB: 1 Fiery Confluence: Flex slot, Wish Target, can also kill on its own with 2 Bonus Rounds. Gets around Leyline of Sanctity. Also can function as a sweeper and artifact killer.

    SB: 1 Hazoret's Undying Fury: Hail Mary if you're too fearful to wish for Reforge against blue and don't want to go for goblins. Also extremely good if you have bonus round + wish + led. (get RoF + Hazoret's, flip 8 cards and hope to hit anything (most cards are legit outs here)).

    SB: 1 Rite of Flame: Can be used early on (turn 2 to get an ramp spell), or to get it mid combo during a Bonus Round sequence.

    SB: 1 Shattering Spree: Need another artifact hate, could be a number of different cards.



    Potential card choices for main or sb.

    SB: 1 Pyroclasm: Flex slot, Wish Target, cheap sweeper effect

    Simian Spirit Guide: On color ramp and helps play around soft counters like daze, spell pierce, and to a lesser extent flusterstorm. Can also start off some mana chaining after a resolved Reforge the Soul

    SB: Kozilek's Return: Flex slot, used for DNT matchup since it's an instant and can also get around Mother of Runes

    SB:By Force or shattering spree: Flex slot, Wish Target, good against Chalice decks.

    SB: Sadistic Sacrament: Flex slot, can be used against combo, in particular ANT which usually has no outs after this (assuming the card isn't in their graveyard or hand).

    SB: Gamble Flex slot, good interaction with Bonus Round. Can be used to grab a past in flames if you have enough mana. (not completely sold on this one in this build. got a lot worse after probe banning.

    SB: Goblin War Strike Flex slot, can help close out a game quicker.

    Helm of Awakening
    Gamble
    Empty the Warrens
    Reforge the Soul
    Simian Spirit Guide
    Hazoret's Undying Fury
    Faithless Looting
    Overmaster
    Goblin Lore
    Shreds of Sanity
    Desperate Ritual
    Commune with Lava
    Epic Experiment
    Gifts Ungiven

    and more for SB
    Defense Grid
    Blood Moon
    Chandra, Torch of Defiance
    Goblin War Strike
    Scab-Clan Berserker
    Tormod's Crypt
    Telemin Performance
    Faerie Macabre
    Surgical Extraction
    Pithing Needle
    Pyroblast
    Red Elemental Blast
    Boil
    Boiling Seas
    Anarchy
    Blood Sun

    How to play the deck
    I'd recommend first goldfishing quite a bit. First of all, it's fun. Secondly, it's quite important to know how to sequence your spells with this deck.

    First I think the biggest issue for players with this deck is that they want to treat it like a belcher deck. What I mean by that is that players want to go off as soon as possible. While that is entirely possible (turn 1 kills are possible with this deck), you wouldn't expect TES or ANT to try to go off on turn 1 (even though they are still capable). They tend to play a little slower to sculpt their draw vs blue decks and discard cards that would be a threat. With this deck you can roughly do the same by generating more mana.

    For example: A deck like ANT can't really generate enough mana without thresshold to brute force their way through 2+ counterspells. TES is slightly faster, but generally there aren't enough business spells to force through.

    A big point I want to make is that when ANT casts past in flames, they can usually cast a few rituals and a discard spell or two, but it's quite hard to cast the cantrips as it's a lot harder to generate blue mana in those situations. With this deck, you are likely to cast all of your cantrips and act on impulses. It makes almost any past in flames a must counter, even if it doesn't look like there is anything menacing in the graveyard.

    Aim for somewhere around a turn 2-3 with this deck for when you first try to go off.

    You should also be comfortable counting mana quickly.

    Quick reference:
    Rite of Flame. (First is +1, 2nd is +2, 3rd is +3, 4th is +4)
    Seething Song. (+2, but with a Ruby it's +3, 2 rubies is +4)
    Manamorphose. (with Ruby it's +1)
    Ancient Tomb and LED. More obvious but +1 and +3 respectively.

    Counting mana with Bonus Round:

    with 1 bonus round:

    RoF: +3, +5, +7, +9
    Seething Song: +7 (with Ruby +8)
    Desperate Ritual: +4 (with Ruby +5)
    Manamorphose: +2 and draw 2 (+3 and draw 2 with ruby)

    with 2 bonus round:
    Rof: +7, +11, +15, +19
    Seething Song: +17 (+18 with ruby)
    Desperate Ritual: +10 (+11 with ruby)
    Manamorphose: +6 and draw 4 (+7 with ruby and draw 4)

    MATCHUPS

    Lands

    They are generally a bit too slow here and not interactive enough on game 1. Be aware of Tabernacle and Glacial Chasm. Tendrils will kill through Chasm.
    POST SB:
    Lands tends to bring in some disruption in the form of Thorn Effects, Chalice effects and sometimes Leyline of Sanctity. Occasionally there is a Trinisphere.

    Bring in abrades, possible a shattering spree. Bolts are less than stellar in this matchup so it's an easy swap.

    Keep in mind guttersnipe (if you play it), and Fiery Confluence get around Leyline of Sanctity


    Grixis Delver

    This matchup is a bit of a skill tester. Clock, discard, counterspells, wasteland, and bolt maindeck. If they don't hit a threat fast then just slow roll them. (which is mostly just delver). Be aware that bonus round is symmetrical so lightning bolt can deal quite a bit. (3/6/12/24). don't go crazy if they have a land open. they only play 4 force, 4 daze, x spell pierce as their main interaction with counters. This deck doesn't really have a hard time with soft counters. Just remember that if your hand is average and they have delver + force + waste + another counter, it's okay to lose. You don't have to change the decklist, that's what their deck is designed to do. That draw will beat most decks.

    Game 2/3. you can expect a bunch of stuff coming in. flusterstorm, surgical, marsh casualties (for gobbos), abrade, null rod, grafdigger's cage etc. i think just bringing in the usual grids + gravestones are good here, but consider removing some more bonus rounds than usual. the extra mana could be useful here. if you have a ton of this in your local meta, consider running some abrades in the sb.

    the discard they have on you is pretty good, but you also have 3 reforge and can easily miracle back into the game.

    *sometimes* these decks run stifle. if they do they can stifle the miracle trigger, storm triggers, and bonus round triggers.

    [/B]Rug Delver[/B]

    RUG's strategy is to play a lone threat and stall the game out with countermagic until they can deal 20.

    RUG threats:

    Delver of Secrets
    Nimble Mongoose
    Tarmogoyf
    Lightning Bolt


    Protection

    Force of Will
    Daze
    Spell Pierce
    Flusterstorm
    Spell Snare
    Stifle


    These counterspells are all problematic for Ruby Storm. Your option here is to push your way through with raw power. You can refill both players hands with reforge, but each one of your cards as you enter late stage become absolute must counters. Eventually they just run out or don't have the mana to keep up with you.

    Disruption

    Wasteland


    In addition to the countermagic, wasteland can be strong against your Tombs and Needles.

    Strategy
    If you have a line where they are tapped out and you can pay for daze (if they have an island in play), go for it. If not, you might want to wait until you can overwhelm them in a single turn.

    If I can't resolve an Empty, then I try to resolve a Ruby Medallion as soon as possible. RUG delver relies a lot on its soft counters. Ruby Medallion allows you to cast your spells for less, and generate enough mana to pay for Spell Pierce and Daze easily.

    You generally have around 3-5 turns from when their threat was deployed, but it could be less if you are actively using Ancient Tomb.

    Sideboarding

    Defense Grid is very strong here. Your sweepers are also great. Thirdly, you can consider running the Scab-Clan Berserker if he's in your 75.
    Boil could also be a strong sb card since it only costs 2R with Ruby and can be played on their end step, which should force them to interact with you.

    Beware of Surgical Extraction. It can be okay to side out a Past in Flames here, possibly 2 if you think they are really pushing on the graveyard hate.
    Also beware of Lightning Bolts, as they become very dangerous when paired with your own Bonus Rounds.

    Fiery Confluence should be sided in with a Kozilek's Return. If you don't ever want to wish for Pyroclasm, side that in as well. Delvers threats die to these cards, except for goyf, which tends to get sided out in the storm matchup.

    OPPONENTS SB CARDS

    Surgical Extraction
    Grafdigger's Cage
    Flusterstorm
    Spell Pierce
    Rough // Tumble
    Abrade


    Will update these over time, and will ask for some feedback from others.


    Miracles

    Miracles is a matchup where we are the favorite game 1, and I feel like the deck has a pretty fair shot of winning games 2/3.

    Key cards game 1:
    Ruby Medallion is pretty big here, as it allows you to beat their soft counters. Miracles relies on counterspells and sometimes counterbalance to keep them in the game long enough to win or stall you out with jace. Ruby Medallion makes so many cards must deal with threats that it can be overwhelming. It also allows you to jam multiple spells easily in a single turn.

    Past in Flames is able to keep the game going long even when the opponent has exhausted most of your spells for the first time. Because this latest version has 3 maindeck PiF and 1 sb PiF, if the spell is not dealt with game 1, it's almost always game over if you are mid to late game. Games 2 and 3 you will want to protect yourself with defense grid and silent gravestone to avoid surgical extractions.

    Reforge the Soul is very important for the matchup, as it allows you to refresh your hand (and theirs). Fortunately they have a limited number of ways of interaction, but all of your spells are redundant and you'll get there by brute force. Keep in mind with Ruby Medallion the miracle effect is only R.

    Act on Impulse and Hazoret's are both must counter cards, but they have a bit more randomness involved so I wouldn't consider them as important. Both are great topdecks. AoI especially midgame (with a Ruby out).

    Sideboarding:

    Miracles players will tend to leave in a few removal spells (terminus) so they have an out to empty the warrens. They will bring in more counterspells. Flusterstorm, spell pierce, and blue elemental blast (hydroblast) are all possible. Surgical extraction should be expected as well. Your main way of interacting is with 4 grid and 2 gravestone. Feel free to cut 2 bonus round, 2 led, 2 desperate ritual, 1 past in flames for 4 grid, 2 gravestone and 1 additional wincon.)

    Moon Stompy
    Elves
    ANT
    TES
    Death and Taxes
    Stoneblade
    GrixisControl
    Sneak and Show
    Eldrazi


    Turbo Depths
    NicFit
    Food Chain
    Bug Aluren
    Maverick
    Aggro Loam
    Reanimator

    UR delver
    Tron/Post Eldrazi
    Burn
    Dredge (LED)
    Last edited by mistercakes; 05-05-2021 at 09:33 AM.
    -rob

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