Iterations of Storm

Ok, so we had GP Ghent won by Storm. Upon briefly analysis of the winner's list you can see he doesn't like Thalia. He has 6 discard spells that can deal with it in the maindeck, and 3 Burning Wish that can get Pyroclasm. On game 2/3 he has access to 4 Dread of Night, that is basically the best answer ever against Thalia + Mother of Runes and/or Aven Mindcensor.

GP Ghent Winner UBR Past in Flames/Ad Nauseam

I really liked that list, I took it to a 51-player tournament and got a top 8 split out of it. It performed as expected, had speed similar to TES and was very resilient to hate. Especially hatebears...

Then yesterday we saw this deck making top 8.

Top 8 StarCityGames.com Legacy Open tournament in Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States on 2012-08-05

It uses a different angle of attack, having Tendrils of Agony as a business spell. There are basically 3 paths to victory on game 1:
- Natural Storm: play 9 spells (hopefully your opponent helps you out here trying to counter stuff) and then play Tendrils of Agony.
- Mini-tendrils/Double Tendrils: cast a bunch of spells and then Tendrils for 8-12. On the next turn do it again. Or just play a lot of rituals and Tendrils for 8-10 and then another for 10-12 on the same turn.
- Past in Flames: cast a lot of rituals, cast Past in Flames, cast all of the rituals again and then cast Tendrils.

And then he had a tranformational sideboard to evade graveyard hate and add speed to the deck.

The plan look very interesting against control decks, maybe RUG and other decks where you can play cantrips, fill your grave and then win. But against GW Maverick that deck looks hideous. On game 1 a resolved Thalia is basically GG, on game 2/3 you have speed/Dread of Night package/bounces.

Considering the amount of GW we saw in the stream and in the top 8, how the hell did this guy made top 8 with a deck that loses game 1 to Thalia?

And how valid is this strategy in the metagame? Could we improve this deck by changing the discard package to be better against hatebears? Is the lack of Burning Wish on game 1 that much of a problem?

Looking at his list, he can win on turn 2 against GW basically every game where he opens either Infernal Tutor or Past in Flames + Tendrils. He might also be able to win some games with just Tendrils on turn 2. On the play, he's a heavy favorite to just going KO maverick before they get a turn 2. On the draw, he'll get hit with a Thalia or Teeg probably above 50% of the time and just lose. It's worth noting that Thalia doesn't actually prevent you from winning, it just makes it dramatically less likely. I've killed opponents in tournament play with Thalia on board with Tendrils in hand plus Past in Flames follow up. Post board, he has 3 removal spells for teeg/canonist which stop him from winning and 4 dread of night to deal with Thalia/Mindcensor/Mom which prevent his set up.

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Originally Posted by emidln

Looking at his list, he can win on turn 2 against GW basically every game where he opens either Infernal Tutor or Past in Flames + Tendrils. He might also be able to win some games with just Tendrils on turn 2. On the play, he's a heavy favorite to just going KO maverick before they get a turn 2. On the draw, he'll get hit with a Thalia or Teeg probably above 50% of the time and just lose. It's worth noting that Thalia doesn't actually prevent you from winning, it just makes it dramatically less likely. I've killed opponents in tournament play with Thalia on board with Tendrils in hand plus Past in Flames follow up. Post board, he has 3 removal spells for teeg/canonist which stop him from winning and 4 dread of night to deal with Thalia/Mindcensor/Mom which prevent his set up.

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Ok, I see your point.

But on my experience the dicard package of 4 Cabal Therapy, 2 Duress and 1 Inquisition is overall just as good against blue decks. But it has a very good advantage when fighting hatebears.

How about the 4 Tendrils and 4 Past in Flames. How do you like that?

This deck is pretty close to the storm deck 'Grinding Station.' I've played it a couple times and it is extremely strong, but I think it may be a little slow for the current metagame. Being able to stomp regular blue decks consistently is really awesome.

In my chats with Jona, the inventor of the deck, I came up with the following list:

4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Duress
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Ritual
1 Rain of Filth
2 Past in Flames
4 Tendrils of Agony
2 Empty the Warrens

1 Swamp
2 Island
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Badlands

Sideboard:
1 Thoughtseize
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
4 Infernal Tutor
3 Burning Wish
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Wipe Away
2 Sensei's Divining Top

I didn't board anything vs. blue, but against non-blue, I boarded:

-3 Tendrils of Agony
-2 Empty the Warrens
-2 Thoughtseize
-1 Duress
-2 Past in Flames
+1 Ad Nauseam
+4 Infernal Tutor
+3 Burning Wish
+2 Sensei's Divining Top

And depending on what hate I expected (if any,) I could board out Gitaxian Probe instead of my discard. The transformation is really cool because the cards you board out are immediately accessible with Burning Wish. Post-board, Wish was awesome. If for some reason I knew my blue opponent wasn't playing Spell Snare, I would probably board in the Wishes for ToA, EtW and PiF.

The deck is really tuned to crush blue and blank spell snares, while still beating discard and aggro (at least in game 2 + 3.) Jona used to play with Burning Wish maindeck, which allowed for a much easier Maverick matchup. If I were to pick up the deck again, I might move the wishes back to the main deck.

Over in the TES thread we've been discussing Karakas as an option against Maverick (and Sneak Show/Reanimator/Hypergenesis).

My input for this thread is that Silence is sweet, especially whenever people are playing Spell Snares.

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Originally Posted by thefringthing

Over in the TES thread we've been discussing Karakas as an option against Maverick (and Sneak Show/Reanimator/Hypergenesis).

My input for this thread is that Silence is sweet, especially whenever people are playing Spell Snares.

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Right now I think there's so much combo and Thalia on the format that discard spells seem overall better than Chants. Against blue decks you can at least jiggle around to overcome a hand full of counters, but how the hell are you going to beat turn 2 Thalia/Emrakul with Silences?

You aren't beating 4 FoWs like I've seen Chants do, but discards will give you an overall chance to beat anything. Plus knowing your opponent's hand is a huge advantage, it allows you to play around shit like Surgical Extraction. And most importantly it allows you to not play around Daze or Spell Pierce.

Well, there's still multiple Duress and Gitaxian Probe maindeck in Bryant's list, so it's not like having Silence precludes you from ever knowing your opponent's hand.

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Originally Posted by alderon666

Right now I think there's so much combo and Thalia on the format that discard spells seem overall better than Chants. Against blue decks you can at least jiggle around to overcome a hand full of counters, but how the hell are you going to beat turn 2 Thalia/Emrakul with Silences?

You aren't beating 4 FoWs like I've seen Chants do, but discards will give you an overall chance to beat anything. Plus knowing your opponent's hand is a huge advantage, it allows you to play around shit like Surgical Extraction. And most importantly it allows you to not play around Daze or Spell Pierce.

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A common play against Maverick is to play Silence/Chant on their second turn to stop Gaddock Teeg or Thalia from entering play. You can also just do turn one Ad Nauseum. Both of these plays beat Thalia.

Is a turn two Emrakul that scary if we just combo out the turn thereafter?


Little side story: I was playing TES on cockatrice against Enchantress. The enchantress player brought in Thalia(which I now know is bad in that deck).
Game three I kept a powerful hand that just needed a wish/tutor to go off quick. The enchantress player starts with a Turn zero Leyline of Sanctity. We draw go for a couple of turns me drawing more rituals and him looking for a land. Turn three Thalia comes down, and then I draw an Ad Nauseum :/. I play a LED for one mana and he then plays Sterling Grove. I decide its now or never time. With three lands in play I play three Rite of Flames and a Dark Ritual into Ad Nauseum while popping my LED for blue leaving me with one black & three blue floating. I flip half my deck including Deathmark and Echoing Truth(on grove) which I cast with the floating mana. End up casting Past in Flames and Ill-Gotten Gains to recast Echoing Truth on Leyline and Grapeshot him for a trivial number.
^this is how you beat Thalia.

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Originally Posted by thefringthing

Well, there's still multiple Duress and Gitaxian Probe maindeck in Bryant's list, so it's not like having Silence precludes you from ever knowing your opponent's hand.

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Against GW I want always a turn 1 discard spell. Discard a Thalia/Zenith/Gadock on turn 1, be it on the play or the draw is so much cheaper than actually trying to answer it.

Saying you'll just go off before Thalia comes into play is dreaming. The deck is a 2.5-3 turn deck. The deck still packs a bunch of cantrips, protection, redudant business that will stop you from going off in time.

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"Considering the amount of GW we saw in the stream and in the top 8, how the hell did this guy made top 8 with a deck that loses game 1 to Thalia?"

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I disagree.

Its not hard to play through Thalia in a build like this, it should only take an extra turn to set up and play through. The bigger problem for a deck like this is a main deck Teeg which locks the deck out. There should be at least two burning wishes in the main deck.

The deck is grinding station without burning wish. I know Jona's last iteration of the deck had some wishes in there, although they were iffy because of spell snare at the time. Now, spell snare isn't really a card as it's getting replaced by pierce in most if not all canadian thresh lists so I don't see a reason for not including the card.

You can play through thalia, it's just a little harder to do so without deathmark and such and no wishboard game 1. Because if you do include wish in the list, then the deck can play through anything game 1 and beyond. I would cut at least 1 PiF and 1 tendrils from the above list for wishes, relegating 1 PiF and tendrils to the SB. Then I would probably cut some third card for a third copy, not sure what card. The deck is quite solid though, against blue it's so fun when you just raw tendrils them from hand almost every game. I also like when they know your gameplan is to tendrils them from hand, they let everything resolve leaving you with 8+ mana floating and then you cast past in flames. Obviously they must counter the card and then you tendrils them :tongue: pretty sweet feeling.

As for whether the UBr ANT is better or grinding station I cannot say. It's pretty close, both are pretty resilient decks. Personally I would go with UBr ANT right now. Grinding station is such a cool deck though. These are the 2 decks I'm considering for Kansas City next weekend, undecided as of yet.

you can still SB into Grinding station-like configuration I dislike absence of IT so I enjoy - UBr 2 Pif Main, 2/2 or 3/1 Toa/EtW +Iggy SB