Cedric Phillips on Storm in Legacy

[thefringthing]

http://www.gamestatemtg.blogspot.ca/2012/08/gamestate-highlights-cedric-on-storm-in.html

<3 <3 <3

[Nihil Credo]

I loved that joke about people bringing Land Tax to tournaments. Cedric's surrealist vein is nothing short of amazing.

[obituary 95]

so I would like to remind Cedric that counterbalance is a thing that just wrecks storm decks

[Final Ritual]

Cedric omitted storm's horrific Thresh matchup. If it were that easy to start counting to 10, more pilots would be sleeving up LED and rituals.

The rant was entertaining to watch.

[4eak]

Entertaining, but I think Storm isn't nearly as well positioned as he's claiming. I may be reiterating what others have said above.

Thalia, even despite our attempts to answer it, via proactive discard and reactive white creature destruction (for the most part), is still a real problem.
RUG is a very rough matchup, imho.
Merfolk is seeing a rise (as it should), and this is also a rough matchup for a significant portion of Storm players in my experience.
Counterbalance has been on the rise in the past couple months, bad news for storm.
I believe other combo decks, namely Reanimator, Sneak/Show and Tell, and Dredge have made serious gains in power level (much greater than what PoF offers), to the point that it isn't even clear to me that Storm is the best combo deck at this point.


peace,
4eak

[joemauer]

I think storm decks are pretty well positioned right now because the gauntlet of playable decks is pretty big right now in Legacy. Bigger field is usually good for combo decks of any sorts.

The nightmare matchup counterbalance is making a comeback, but Team America is starting to fade from popularity. So one evil is being replaced by another. I personally would rather play against U/w miracles than Team America, the miracles deck at least has dead cards against us.

[4eak]

Storm certainly isn't awfully positioned, it may even be well positioned. It just isn't the god-like, unstoppable killing machine he's claiming. He makes it sound as if you would be retarded to play anything other than storm at this point, and I don't agree with him.

I'm going to take what he has to say with a grain of salt simply in virtue of the fact that he is very new to the archetype.


peace,
4eak

[Plague Sliver]

Shit mang, cat's out of the bag now :tongue:

[Dark Ritual]

Storm isn't the best positioned deck in legacy right now. Can. thresh isn't a slice of cake, sure if you build your storm deck the right way thresh can be a really favorable matchup. But countertop is coming back with miracles, and I played that MU yesterday. It wasn't pretty, the only reason I drew was because of time running out with myself at 1 life. Counterbalance + FoW + counterspell + spell pierce is quite the hate package to fight through.

[bruizar]

I think that as far as combo goes, SnT/Omniscience decks should probably be the best right now. This deck doesn't die to Karakas nor to Thalia. It has enough counters to beat control and uses REBS to deal with extra blue cards.

Second place I'd be tempted to say that 12post / turbo emrakul is among the strongest decks as it is also not hated out by Karakas or Thalia, and has means to gain insane amounts of life to withstand tempo decks' agression.

Third would be Sneak Attack

Fourth would be Ant split with Dredge

Don't know where Hivemind, Combo Elves, Dream Halls and Spiral Tide rank right now, but in my opinion, reanimator is the worst combo deck.

[Final Fortune]

Entertaining, but I think Storm isn't nearly as well positioned as he's claiming. I may be reiterating what others have said above.

Thalia, even despite our attempts to answer it, via proactive discard and reactive white creature destruction (for the most part), is still a real problem.
RUG is a very rough matchup, imho.
Merfolk is seeing a rise (as it should), and this is also a rough matchup for a significant portion of Storm players in my experience.
Counterbalance has been on the rise in the past couple months, bad news for storm.
I believe other combo decks, namely Reanimator, Sneak/Show and Tell, and Dredge have made serious gains in power level (much greater than what PoF offers), to the point that it isn't even clear to me that Storm is the best combo deck at this point.


peace,
4eak

I don't think Merfolk and Maverick are particularly worrysome, both of those decks have serious weaknesses to Xantid Swarm and Dread of Night out of the SB fwiw, I just think Storm is going to have to start using more cost effective, but less versatile SB cards to target the exact cards that are targeting it instead of generic answers to a range of potential problems.

It's an ok choice in the metagame, the problem tho' is that a majority of decks have a lot of MD hate for it, where something like Dredge comes down to SBs.

[alderon666]

Yeah having to face Thalia + Zenith for Gaddock every other round is annoying. And GW isn't just a faceroll as it used to be, but it is still a positive matchup due to your speed and discard + Burning Wish answers.

Merfolk will get you sometimes with fast clock + Wasteland + Cursecatcher + FoW/Daze (even if they don't have all). But they don't have Brainstorm. When they get a mediocre hand and get hit by discard, they have to naturally draw out of it. And that's much worse than Pondering and Brainstorming into counter like RUG does.

The RUG matchup is bad. All of their cards, even Bolt, is either killing you quickly or stopping you from going off. But it's still winnable. Conditional counterspell can be played around and sometimes they just draw creature heavy hands. But with an average hand, you're in big trouble.

Counterbalance is strange. If they are on the play, with BS + CB + 2 blue lands, you lose. But they also have a lot of dead cards. It basically comes down to landing that CB before you go off.

Other combo matchups are kind of a coin flip. I think that using discard instead of Chants is biggy here. And even when they go off you still have a chance. Griselbees can draw blanks, Emrakul is slow and LED pays for Pacts (LOL).

I think that the deck is well positioned. But it's not as good as Cedric says. The problem is that when GW starts putting bears that lock you up in the MD and other combos start winning on turn 2/3 while playing FoW/Daze, the storm plan don't look so hot anymore.