Dragonstorm

[ghostfire86]

I have not seen a post on here for the deck so correct me if im wrong and ill send this to the correct thread.

Land (10)
6 mountain
3 taiga
1 tropical island

Creatures (4)
2 bogardan hellkite
1 bladewing the risen
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

Spells (46)
4 lion's eye diamond
4 gitaxian probe
4 rite of flame
4 desperate ritual
4 land grant
4 manamorphose
1 brainfreeze
3 burning wish
3 grapeshot
4 seething song
3 empty the warrens
3 past in flames
4 reforge the soul
1 dragonstorm

Sideboard (15)
1 brain freeze
1 past in flames
1 empty the warrens
1 dragonstorm
1 grapeshot
1 shattering spree
1 noxious revival
4 mindbreak trap
4 ravenous trap

Package Deal
Mana Ecel
Reforge the Soul (Grave Builder)
Past in Flames (Flashback)
Storm (Grapeshot, Brain Freeze, Empty the Warrens, Dragonstorm)

This deck is very straight forward in operation and seldom do i mul past 6 cards. The fastest I have poped this deck is on turn 2 (sorry no turn one performed yet in about 150 matches with this version of the build so far). The average is around turn 5 for combo when against disruption and a blue control.

The previous builds to this deck I was running around 14-15 land, and faithless looting. The deck was almost never consistant and the grave effect vs. mana ramp did not flow well at all. I saw a charbelcher build one day and thought that the ability to cast fast with a lower land count was awesome, but i did not want to go to low. Also there is an edge that I saw Lion's Eye Diamond give to the deck when incorporated with Flames of the past or with Reforge the Soul. This is how Land Grant, Taiga, Tropical Island, Brain Freeze, and Lion's Eye Diamond gained slots. The deck does seem to be much smoother in operations now.

This version of Dragonstorm doesn't really pop with Dragonstorm itself for the average kill. Its really just a side kill that I sometimes make due to such a high grave play that I make. To minimize this the best I can i incorporated Bladewing the Risen for any dragon that got graved. All together they produce 10 damage from the 2 Bogardan Hellkite, and all together 21 damage from haste attack thanks to Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund.:tongue:

The sideboard does seem to need more work but at the moment not sure where to go with it.:mad:

I would like to have better draw in the deck, but the thing i have noticed is that its hard gain card draw without hurting the mana excel and if I incorporate blue or black for the card draw i will have to completely change the build of the mana excel.

[Rock Lee]

I'll be the first to pop the question. What advantages does the deck have over a lower-mana and just-as-stable win ala Tendril/Empty the Warrens? Especially when decks running that archtype are placing highly already?

[ghostfire86]

I'll be the first to pop the question. What advantages does the deck have over a lower-mana and just-as-stable win ala Tendril/Empty the Warrens? Especially when decks running that archtype are placing highly already?

Hmmm lets see....personal prefernces. Unless its your prerogative to help recreate an old archtype deck, why would you only post a non-essential question?

Does the interest of deck developement confuse and appall you? Does the fact that not all decks need to be teir 1 hurt the format in anyway? If your answer to either of these two questions is "yes" then you sadly need to quite MTG and find another hobby.

The fact is that this is a facinating deck to play with a, lets face it, under used creature type and powerful mechanics. Not to mention that its fun to play (something people seem to neglect these days) and combos well. Its managed to contend against control, aggro, and disruption decks fairly well from the plays that I have experienced. You may not want to take it to the GP, but for lower level tourney it would do wonderfully.

Any problems with this answer?

[dragonwisdom]

funny this thread just came up. I just put my dragonstorm's back into my legacy binder thinking that maybe past in flames and reforge would make them playable again.

[dragonwisdom]

lotus petal instead of land grant perhaps

[Burnt-toast]

Have you considered street wraith as a possible option to help filter through yor deck? I notice you use a lot of accelerant and mana ramp like the one land belcher builds and in my version I run a full set of wraiths in there to help get through the deck.

I was literally looking at a dragon storm in a guys trade binder today and started thinking about picking it up.

[Zirath]

Hmmm lets see....personal prefernces. Unless its your prerogative to help recreate an old archtype deck, why would you only post a non-essential question?

Does the interest of deck developement confuse and appall you? Does the fact that not all decks need to be teir 1 hurt the format in anyway? If your answer to either of these two questions is "yes" then you sadly need to quite MTG and find another hobby.

The fact is that this is a facinating deck to play with a, lets face it, under used creature type and powerful mechanics. Not to mention that its fun to play (something people seem to neglect these days) and combos well. Its managed to contend against control, aggro, and disruption decks fairly well from the plays that I have experienced. You may not want to take it to the GP, but for lower level tourney it would do wonderfully.

Any problems with this answer?

That's a fairly hostile answer for a question that was not hostile. He didn't tell you that your deck was a bad pile; he asked what is the advantage to playing this over ANT/TES/Belcher. I have similar feelings about this list since I have a number of questions about how your match ups play out.

Reading your description, I do not get a clear picture of how you handle disruption. How often does disruption cause you to lose? I am testing a similar type of deck but with more rituals and a bigger Wish board and I find disruption can take you out of the game completely or force you into the Past in Flames plan.

How do you deal with hatebears? You said you go off turn 5 normally. Is this fast enough to deal with Thalia + Mother of Runes or Gaddock Teeg or even Canonist?

If you want card manipulation, you will most likely have to add blue. Non-blue storm decks either rely on top decks (Belcher) or draw 4s (Cruel Bargain/Infernal Contract). At the moment, you are a Belcher style deck. If you want to generate stronger draws, I suggest powering your wish board a little bit. You can play Diminishing Returns, extra Past in Flames, Reforge the Souls and a variety of other useful tools. Other Past in Flames storm decks tend to run Banefire or Tendrils of Agony because you can usually go off into it. One benefit of blue is that Brainstorm can "fix" your Dragonstorms. Though as you said, this really isn't a Dragonstorm deck; it's a Past in Flames variant.

How often are you able to assemble Dragonstorm? Does it ever mess up your combo?

Lotus Petal seems like a card you want to have.

Brain Freeze is not a strong plan with Sneak Show being a standard deck at the moment. I can see the Ravenous Traps in the sideboard but I fear that you will not be able to rely on them. In addition, it is an instant. so you may not want it in your sideboard. I think you will find Grapeshot to be sufficient.

[ghostfire86]

That's a fairly hostile answer for a question that was not hostile. He didn't tell you that your deck was a bad pile; he asked what is the advantage to playing this over ANT/TES/Belcher. I have similar feelings about this list since I have a number of questions about how your match ups play out.

Reading your description, I do not get a clear picture of how you handle disruption. How often does disruption cause you to lose? I am testing a similar type of deck but with more rituals and a bigger Wish board and I find disruption can take you out of the game completely or force you into the Past in Flames plan.

How do you deal with hatebears? You said you go off turn 5 normally. Is this fast enough to deal with Thalia + Mother of Runes or Gaddock Teeg or even Canonist?

If you want card manipulation, you will most likely have to add blue. Non-blue storm decks either rely on top decks (Belcher) or draw 4s (Cruel Bargain/Infernal Contract). At the moment, you are a Belcher style deck. If you want to generate stronger draws, I suggest powering your wish board a little bit. You can play Diminishing Returns, extra Past in Flames, Reforge the Souls and a variety of other useful tools. Other Past in Flames storm decks tend to run Banefire or Tendrils of Agony because you can usually go off into it. One benefit of blue is that Brainstorm can "fix" your Dragonstorms. Though as you said, this really isn't a Dragonstorm deck; it's a Past in Flames variant.

How often are you able to assemble Dragonstorm? Does it ever mess up your combo?

Lotus Petal seems like a card you want to have.

Brain Freeze is not a strong plan with Sneak Show being a standard deck at the moment. I can see the Ravenous Traps in the sideboard but I fear that you will not be able to rely on them. In addition, it is an instant. so you may not want it in your sideboard. I think you will find Grapeshot to be sufficient.

To my own opinion the post was an attack of sorts and i treated him/her/it as such. If you have an opinion that one deck is better than another then fine, but do not bring up such opinions of open criticism without sufficient logic backing it. The deck is named Dragonstorm for a reason, not Tendrils or Empty the Warrens. Anyways I digress.

Hatebears hurt this deck a lot unless i can manage fast kills of them with grapeshot. Not at all in this decks favor as a potential opponent.

I assemble Dragonstorm (as an educated guess) 20% of the time. The fact is that with reforge the soul, my dragons are highly likely to end up in the grave. I tried to manage the effects of this with the selection of my 4 dragons. You can only really afford 1 copy of any of the dragons to end up in the grave. Any more than this and there is no point in continuing the option of Dragonstorm.

Ravenous Trap seems to be a better answer for this deck than the use of Surgical Extraction, Relic, or Tormond. I mean this due to the fact that:
1. It is an instant
2. With UB Reanimator, and Dredge casting Careful Study to drop two threats into grave I can clear the whole grave and not just a single selected threat. Bridge, Dread Return, Grave Troll, Iona, Jin-Gitaxis, ect are all potentials in this case.
3. All of these grave clearers can be countered regardless of play. The two exceptions to this would be Extirpate (not running black) and Faerie Maccabre (doesn't help storm count if i can pop).

My Wish list as I posted prior needs work. I have no illusions of this, but do understand that this deck is literally my FIRST attempt at combo of anykind. Red has always been my color of choice and playing underrated decks is what im known for in my playing circle.

To the reference of disruption I automatically go to the past in flames plan when I know my opponent is playing disruption. Also keep in mind that I am playing a technically strong mana base with lands at 10. Even if my ramp is slowed down I can still hard cast some of my stuff without worry about needed ramp (although any and all ramp is preference above all). Switching the land grant to lotus petal helps with the storm count but also means that I am hoping for 1 chance pops that can be controled by experienced players and properly prepared decks.

The main disruption decks that I have played against the most is BW Bob and Rock Variants. The disruption deck that I do fear for this deck is any variant of Pox.

I have been thinking the same about Brain Freeze for a while but am already running a full set of grapeshot between main and side. Unless I just move all grape to main and then have to decide on filling the two slots on sideboard.

I have been wanting to incorporate either black or blue into this for the reason of better draw, manipulation, and control. Each of these two colors provides an assortment of better cards for combo and, in blacks case, more ramp. My true and honest problem has been that I am unsure of what to remove for incorporation. I do agree that blue can and should be the color of choice. Like I stated this is my first attempt at combo and I would like to add to my list of Main Decks.

[Zirath]

To my own opinion the post was an attack of sorts and i treated him/her/it as such. If you have an opinion that one deck is better than another then fine, but do not bring up such opinions of open criticism without sufficient logic backing it. The deck is named Dragonstorm for a reason, not Tendrils or Empty the Warrens. Anyways I digress.

Unless it is a direct attack, you should avoid doing this. It will make you unpopular. I think you are making assumptions.

Perhaps start with something like this:

1 Mountain
1 Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Volcanic Island

Creatures (4)
2 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Bladewing the Risen
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

Spells (46)
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Rite of Flame
4 Lotus Petal
4 Manamorphose
1 Brainfreeze
3 Burning Wish
3 Grapeshot
4 Seething Song
3 Empty the Warrens
3 Past in Flames
1 Dragonstorm

4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm

Sideboard:
1 Grapeshot
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Dragonstorm
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Shattering Spree
1 Flame Slash
1 Silent Departure
1 Past in Flames
1 Reforge the Soul
4 Pyroblast

All I have done is remove Desperate Ritual, Land Grant and Reforge the Soul and replaced it with 4 Lotus Petal, 4 Ponder and 4 Brainstorm. This should give you some added manipulation and slightly more consistent mana.

I rebuilt your Wish board a little. This should give you a start on a stronger board.

Remember that playing cantrips causes you to move away from the Belcher style decks and behave more like ANT/TES. You may want to look at those decks for inspiration.

[slave]

Considering cards like Tormod's Crypt and other graveyard hate are fairly common choices for SB's or a lot of decks;

Do you find that Past in Flames is usually just a dead card game 2 & 3?

I tried for a long while to make a deck based on lots of red rituals, trying to power out Worldfire and Rift Bolt on the same turn. It's a hard combo to make work against blue and/or turn-after-turn discard, and I found Past in Flames was almost always extracted from the GY or one of many GY-hate cards made an appearance.

[bruizar]

If you want to run storm with a creature backup, play show and tell along side it (perhaps with burning wish). That way you have an advantage for when a normal storm deck would collapse under its own, where as you have maindeck dragons that can ride you to victory. It would be more like a storm deck with an extra Tinker -> BSC move that you would see in Vintage.

I would also reduce the number of graveyard dependent cards because they will just make this deck more vulnerable to splash hate against dredge and reanimator. Therefore, I would cut bladewing the risen and perhaps substitute it for other comes into play dragons such as kokusho or more hellkites. I'm not sure if there are any other good dragons out there, but they have to be impactful on their own for show and tell to be good enough. What I see this deck doing at best, is become a hybrid between storm combo and sneak & show.

[Zupponn]

Zirilan of the Claw and Sneak Attack might also be things to look into.
Nicol Bolas then would be an option to really put the hurt on your opponent. Thunder Dragon, Balefire Dragon, Broodmate Dragon, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, and Thundermaw Hellkite would also be great utility cards to look into.