I love storm. I played it for a long time, but eventually had to put it down.
Sure, it's powerful and proactive, but at least in the US meta, all the free wins have dried up. People know how to sideboard against storm now - 2 types of interaction - and the answer cards like Flusterstorm and Rest in Peace are much better. If the meta were right, I would certainly go back to storm, but right now the meta is filled with 50-50 matchups (at best) like all the flavors of Delver, Miracles, Sneak and Show, and even Death and Taxes can be difficult for ANT. Plenty of grinders pick up storm, and some fall in love with it, but I think most have done a similar EV calculation and figured out that non-storm decks are better.
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A lot of great posts that I agree with so far. It is a deck that is rewarding with lots of practice, but a lot of people want to play traditional magic and attack/block in the US, or just automatically assume that it is hard and that they would never be able to play it. There is a lot of negative stigma as others have mentioned about playing storm/playing against storm in certain metas as well. It upsets a lot of people to sit down, be done with the match in 10-15 minutes, and not have a chance to play their expensive deck. If people actually care what others think of them, then this can discourage individuals from potentially even trying the deck.
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There is a small gag about me taking forever to resolve my Ponders when I play AnT. So both me and my opponent will have plenty of time to admire my Japanese/chinese cards. :P
On a more serious note, I can understand the frustration of losing to a slow roll lethal tendrils of agony as I quadruple check my mana and storm count.
This actually prompts the other side of the OP's question: Why is there comparatively little Delver in Europe? Or why is the meta there less hostile to Storm?
I get what you're saying, but I probably wouldn't call attacking/blocking "traditional" magic, at least not in eternal formats ever since mid-late 90's. Sure, Weissman-style control ran Serra Angel and/or Morphling, but those creatures engaged in creature-to-creature combat a comparatively small proportion of the time and usually just mopped up when winning was a formality.... but a lot of people want to play traditional magic and attack/block in the US
I started with ANT before Mystical got banned and haven't given up on storm since. Tried TES, it was OK. But I'll never stop playing SI.
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I've put down storm for elves in recent weeks. Turn 1 probe revealing flusterstorm, spell snare, force of will, brainstorm is incredibly frustrating. It is one of those decks everyone hates to lose to so they pack hate.
This wasn't as much of a problem before but the hate has become more effective and, the major point, flexible. Meddling mage, flusterstorm, enlightened tutor, thalia, grafdigger's cage, rest in peace, surgical extraction, snapcaster mage, clique + karakas, venser...
Every deck is trying to attack you from 2+ angles. It feels like in order to do well at an event, my decisions don't matter as much as my opponent's draw step. At the same time, I watch Royce Walters and Bryant Cook crush events in the northeast US with TES and it boogles my mind how they end up doing well consistently.
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There is more than enough Delver, but the metagame is more hostile towards the matchplan of slamming Turn 1 Delver and riding it to victory which should be obvious if you look at the sheer number of Miracles, Shardless, D&T, and GWx Midrange in Europe, which have all a more than solid matchup against Daze + Wasteland + Delver.
North American players looks like prefering the Delver-mirror and a few trumps to battle opponents Insectile Aberation for the already named reasons. In Europe there are much fewer supported tournaments with companies like WotC or SCG as backers and much less players who can make a living of grinding in the various Formats supported by those
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Is this really true that there isn't much storm combo in the US? In the PA / NJ meta where I play I see a decent amount of storm. I don't really watch scg much anymore, but I've always assumed that was an overblown myth, but I've never looked at the data to see if that's true.
Seems like at our local meta almost everyone plays storm combo at one point or another, but almost nobody seems to stick with it long term. Can't speak for everyone, but for me it feels very all-or-nothing, and it's much more like puzzle solving than a typical game of Magic. Sometimes that's exactly what I'm in the mood for, but usually it's not. For big events I almost never take storm because I'm just not that good at it, and one misplay tends to put me in a shitty mindset and lead to a bunch more.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
I just don't think Storm is all that appealing an option for most people. It's a good deck, but not all that well positioned. There are tons of dead draws (relative to Delver decks), and no 'value' plays, unlike Delver, CounterTop, and Shardless variants. Even when playing combo, it's much easier to assemble Show and Tell plus your kill card of choice, and decks like Sneak and Show typically fare very well heads up against Storm (because they have very broken openers, play Force of Will, Flusterstorm, Spell Pierce, etc.). I don't see a whole lot of incentive to play Storm given the other available option at the moment, as the metagame is currently constituted. If there wasn't like 70% blue decks in most tournaments here it might be more feasible. Storm is always present, but often gets swallowed up in a sea of Delver and Stoneforge decks.
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Then again, sometimes you have a killer hangover and you just need to break the emergency glass on Belcher.
I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel
"Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."
I also think Miracles is heavily underplayed in the US. RUG is a good deck but it is a bit overplayed here.
A lot of good replies in this thread. I spent the first couple years I played Legacy playing almost exclusively combo (primarily Storm and High Tide but I tested plenty of other decks as well). Eventually I needed a change, and in the case of High Tide especially the time has passed and the deck just isn't well positioned anymore. The favorable matchups are largely extinct due to the death of aggro decks since the printing of Batterskull/Delver/Terminus et al. My local metagame is a giant circlejerk of Delver decks (75% at times) and that matchup is never really better than 50/50 and is not particularly fun to play against in my experience. When combo does appear it's usually Sneak or ReAnimator both of which are poor matchups. I would rather play midrange decks (or combo that has a grinding plan B, see Food Chain) in this kind of meta and have been relatively successful doing so. I'd like to go back to combo, but when I face a field of almost entirely blue decks and can look forward to enormous amounts of post-board hate attacking me from numerous angles, I just don't see the point.
comments like that can easily cause a thread to go off-tangent. Imagine in an alternate universe where Joe Lossett did not play Miracles and stream, or an universe in which Jose Lossett is not an American, THEN, where would Miracles be in the U.S.? Hence, I would say US has maxed out on the number of Miracles players.
Now, back to Storm, according to PV's article, Storm and Miracles are the highest in terms of difficulty http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...se-hard-decks/ . As you know, Americans are exactly known for the patience. Dosen't help when Adam Prosak left the competitive scene for R&D.
Storm isn't easily to play, but please don't quote that terrible article. Claiming that Sneak and Show is harder to play than D&T and being above-average in terms of difficulty when a mouthbreather can pay and jam down a flying spagetti monster to win the game is downright insulting to everyone's intelligence.
RUG is the least of Storm's worries, in theory it should thrive in a RUG a heavy meta game as opposed to any other aggro control heavy meta game because Lightning Bolt is hardly a concern compared to discard or bears.
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