RUG Storm

[Final Fortune]

I wanted to put down TES and pick up this pile in order to experiment with slaughtering a couple of sacred cows in Storm. With LED being able to cast Echo of Eons from your hand and Faithless Looting being able to set up your Storm engine for 1 mana for a turn 2 Wheel of Fate, I figure this synergy has to be pretty broken from a goldfish perspective. While a lot of people dismissed this strategy based on utilizing the graveyard and giving your opponent cards (just Reanimate Griselbrand 4head) I think Veil of Summer shored up those weaknesses and lets the LED/EOE synergy be hyper efficient. Echo of Eons is a resilient card in and of itself, your opponent can't do anything to discard it and if you play it by hand then you can throw bomb after bomb into their counter wall while never having to rely on your life total for anything. If you're short on mana at the start of the game, then you can draw to 8 and discard it for an easy turn 2 draw 7. If you have to take one too many mulligans, then a single 2 card combo can put you into a winning position.

TES and its cousins have really slowed down as of late to have a better midgame. Their main tutor costs 3 now, and even if it can be broken up into multiple turns the nature of Wishclaw Talisman takes away cheap mana lines like the ol' 6 mana for Empty the Warrens and replaces it with a 6 mana draw 7 that has to be protected by a Veil of Summer. I say to hell with that, why pay 6 mana to go off when you can pay 3 or 4 with LED and Faithless Looting? Also have you seen those gag worthy 4 color manabases they are running now? Why bother with Black for a 3 mana tutor and Dark Ritual when you can play with Faithless Looting and Grim Monolith anyway? That's right, Grim Monolith is busted, you get to use it as either a colorless Cabal Ritual or a set up for your following turn to hard cast an Echo of Eons or Wish for Peer into the Abyss along with a Lion's Eye Diamond. Want a deck that can go absolutely balls to the walls with the cheapest threats in the game, but still have a midgame that gives control decks a real fit? Pay 3 to untap that Grim Monolith and pass, let them truly feel the inadequacy of that Daze in their hand as you mana ramp for bomb after bomb while better leveraging your life total as a buffer. Faithless Looting gives the deck card draw and mana acceleration at the same time, with discarding Echo of Eons retaining card parody and setting up for an easy turn 2 win. Should anything go wrong, you can flash back Faithless Looting and set up for your fourth turn win.

What I really like about the deck is that it manages to use the graveyard as a resource without committing to it, a lot of black graveyard removal outright doesn't work vs Veil of Summer, and the rest of the graveyard removal gets dealt with by either super efficient removal spells or circumventing it altogether by mana ramping into hard casting bombs or Lion's Eye Diamond for Peer Into the Abyss. The mana efficiency is so absurd here, that it really feels like you're playing a better version of Long's Burning Desire Vintage deck. There are a lot of cute pressure plays as well, the Fetchlands tend to head fake Daze and just Tropical Island into a Veil demands a counter or LED and Echo can come straight down.

I won't say this deck is straight up better than other Storm variants, it is obviously subject to more angles of hate by being a deck that leans heavily on the graveyard and D7s. But that reliance on the graveyard comes with more speed and stability, as you can either go for broke with LED or try to win incrementally by discarding your win conditions with Faithless Looting for Timetwisters or hard casting your win conditions with Grim Monolith. TES and ANT are stuck in a really weird spot where they have to slow down significantly with Wishclaw Talisman for resiliency, but I think this deck can go off faster than their Infernal Tutor versions while not really having to sacrifice anything for an expanded midgame.

3 Echo of Eons
4 Burning Wish
4 Faithless Looting
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Veil of Summer
4 Autumn's Veil
4 Grim Monolith
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Mox Opal
4 Flooded Strand
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island

1 Tendrils of Agony
4 Empty the Warrens
1 Grape Shot
1 Peer Into The Abyss
1 Echo of Eons
1 Pulverize
1 Reverent Silence
1 Void Snare
4 Hurkyl's Recall


I am sure the deck has been built before, but I think it's time someone championed it. The singletons in the SB are more or less fixed, but I am sure there are a lot of removal options that can be used like Slaughter Pact, Abrase, Rending Volley, Crash or Krosen Grip etc. RUG Storm is a bit of a place holder at the moment, if anyone has name suggestions then leave them below.

[JackaBo]

This is pretty close to the non-Riddlesmith Songof creation lists. Isnt it just worth running Song in addition to the other engines? Autums veil looks like an easy cut.

[FTW]

Song of Creation is very strong and fits into your shell easily.

Grim Monolith seems like the weakest slot, especially when ramping into 1RUG(G), so I would try
-4 Grim
+4 Song

You might like Defense Grid or Hope of Ghirapur over the Autumn's Veil, since they both shut off more problems and can be cast the turn before.

[Vacrix]

If you want EoE to be your main engine, I had quite the time goldfishing lists of 4 Entomb, 4 EoE, and 4 LED. It was one of the fastest decks I've ever seen against lists without any countermagic. Entomb is too good not to play.

Also, Burning Inquiry looks about as good or a supplement to Faithless Looting for what you're talking about. Accounting for randomness is easy as the player playing Burning Inquiry, but because its symmetrical, it can be incredibly frustrating to opponents who think they kept an excellent 6 or 7. Now they don't have lands, they got stripped of countermagic, no creatures etc. Also those turn 1 'fetchland, go' plays which allow the opponent to hide in ambiguity is sometimes quite dangerous given the speed of the format. Seeing whats in their graveyard is a good indication of what you're playing against.

Also, EoE is not really a Wheel of Fate. That it resets the graveyard is one of the best things it does if you want to stop Dredge from gathering too much momentum. This is another good reason to play Entomb because now the tutor sets up the graveyard reset. Ancient Grudge is also worth exploring in lists with Entomb.

[Final Fortune]

Song of Creation is garbage, it doesn't abuse LED as a Black Lotus and the tripple color requirement makes it impossible to accelerate into with rituals effects. It ends up being a cotrol combo deck, which is not what this deck is.

Defense Grid is too easy to play around at 3 mana, and Hope of Ghirapur gets chump blocked by Delver of Secrets,. If I were unhappy with Autumn's Vei,l then I'd replace it with Xantid Swarm. Green Silence is good enough for the job

I tried Entomb and Gamble, since it could look for Lion's Eye Diamond as well. I think Entomb is better in a Griselbrand deck that can use Echo of Eons as a plan B. The real problem with Entomb is that Black doesn't offer anything else, discard is generally bad disruption with Draw 7s and Dark Ritual isn't needed in a deck that doesn't have to use a tutor to turn Lion's Eye Diamond into Black Lotus.

If you want Entomb, then try Quiet Speculation instead. It's a 2 mana tutor for a 3 mana draw 7 that leaves 2 extra copies of Echo of Eons in the graveyard for you to try and try again. You can essentially crack Lion's Eye Diamond with no real risk of a counter spell winning on the spot. I've been messing around with it as a wish target, but I think it has MD potential because it's such powerful counter bait. Burning Inquiry is trash, the only other card on my radar is Careful Study. I think you could make an argument for it and an Island over Faithless Looting and the 3rd Volcanic, if flashing back Faithless Looting doesn't have enough utility..

Edit: Ancient Grudge looks legit, Quiet Speculation's stock just went up IMO.

People who think Grim Monolith is a bad card in Storm need to wake up, it's fucking busted. Hard casting Echo of Eons is totally a thing, the deck can grind out control without having to resort to LED. Smart control players counter that shit, fyi.

I am looking at some changes to the SB to get around the Meddling Mage problem on Burning Wish, 4 Empty the Warrens should do it. I have a bit too much removal I think, and Grape Shot has just been an iffy way to get around Veil.

[FTW]

Song of Creation is garbage, it doesn't abuse LED as a Black Lotus and the tripple color requirement makes it impossible to accelerate into with rituals effects.

You can goldfish it T1-T2 accelerating with mana rocks and Rite of Flame or floating mana through EoEs. If you want to go deep, Manamorphose filters 2x Rite into RRUG or floating LED mana into RUG. But you don't even need Manamorphose.

Song abuses LED as Black Lotus easily. You stack draw triggers and then crack LED to get 3 mana to use on those new cards.. and all the other cards you will draw this turn. You can interact between draws, something you can't do with AN or Peer. With proper sequencing LEDs are all Lotuses.

You can also use the extra land drop on a fetch to abuse Brainstorm as 5cestral.

In non-Song lines it imprints like a boss on Chrome Mox, making that card a lot better.

Unlike AN or Peer, Song doesn't care about life total. You can win at arbitrarily low life with just Song, a topdecked mana rock, and a little luck in the top 4. Don't confuse Song with the bad Modern Cheerios decks. It interacts very well with cards you already want in RUG Storm.

Defense Grid is too easy to play around and Hope of Ghirapur gets chump blocked by Delver of Secrets, if I were unhappy with Autumn's Veil
then I'd replace it with Xantid Swarm.

If they're playing around Grid you're not going off fast enough, for a deck trying to be faster than Wishclaw storm.

Grid or Xantid stops them from playing anything off their fresh 7 cards. Autumn's Veil only stops counterspells, leaving you open to other things (Stifle, Surgical Extraction, Mindbreak Trap, enemy Veil, etc). But I only suggested cutting Autumn if you're adding Song, because it's much worse at defending a 4-mana card. It looks fine for the current build.

Entomb is a legitimate option, I tried a similar approach with Gamble since it could look for Lion's Eye Diamond as well.

Gamble seems much better than Entomb, both for staying in color and at finding other things like LED or Wish. Finding Echo isn't the bottleneck. If it is, you can just put one in the Wishboard instead of adding black.

Burning Inquiry is unnecessary variance when you can just play blue cantrips.

People who think Grim Monolith is a bad card in Storm need to wake up, it's fucking busted.

Depends what you're ramping into. It's great for Peer. You don't need it for most EoE lines into Tendrils (though it does help hardcast in grindy matches). Most of your cards don't need colorless mana.

You don't have Ancient Tomb to accelerate it. On a regular Storm turn it's just filtering 2 colored mana into 3 colorless mana, which is even worse than a +1 mana ritual.

Again, I suggested Grim as a cut if you're adding Song (not in a vacuum). Colorless mana is much worse with Song, and once you have Song + EoE you don't even need Peer. If your main engine is Peer and you play Tomb and Grid, it's a different story.