RUG Storm

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

Song of Creation is another deck, I am not adding Rite of Flame (Tinder Wall is better fyi) and Manamorphose to cast a 4 mana enchantment on T2 when I could be casting a Veil protected D7 on T1 instead. There are just so many other things that you could be doing more consistently for 4 mana in a Storm deck, live action role playing Episode 1 of Goblin Slayer being one of them.

I've put in way too many games with Grim Monolith to go back to rituals, the threat of that thing building up a manabase demands a counter.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

Song of Creation is another deck, I am not adding Rite of Flame (Tinder Wall is better fyi) and Manamorphose to cast a 4 mana enchantment on T2 when I could be casting a Veil protected D7 on T1 instead.

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You don't have to play Song.

But it's not an either-or thing. Both work together. Song and EoE, not instead of. 7+ functional copies of Echo make it even easier to cast Song. The decks aren't that different. Manamorphose isn't essential, just one option.

In racing matchups I get turn 1-2 Song often and win the same turn. In other matches you can build up protection. 4 mana to draw 30 cards is good. If it resolves, it wins much faster than making Goblins. It works with low storm count or in topdeck mode. It's a great backup when Echo and Wish get disrupted, or to have a line that ignores gravehate.

Maybe you don't want it anyway, but you're majorly underrating what the card can do.

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I've put in way too many games with Grim Monolith to go back to rituals, the threat of that thing building up a manabase demands a counter.

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Without a way to untap, Grim's just delayed ramp not a manabase. It sets you up for a slower kill. Like any Ritual, they can just counter the thing you ramp into: Peer or Echo. How often do you untap it and use it again?

Would Tomb help the Grim plan and also help hardcast your expensive engine cards?

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Originally Posted by FTW

You don't have to play Song.

But it's not an either-or thing. Both work together. Song and EoE, not instead of. 7+ functional copies of Echo make it even easier to cast Song. The decks aren't that different. Manamorphose isn't essential, just one option.

In racing matchups I get turn 1-2 Song often and win the same turn. In other matches you can build up protection. 4 mana to draw 30 cards is good. If it resolves, it wins much faster than making Goblins. It works with low storm count or in topdeck mode. It's a great backup when Echo and Wish get disrupted, or to have a line that ignores gravehate.

Maybe you don't want it anyway, but you're majorly underrating what the card can do.




Without a way to untap, Grim's just delayed ramp not a manabase. It sets you up for a slower kill. Like any Ritual, they can just counter the thing you ramp into: Peer or Echo. How often do you untap it and use it again?

Would Tomb help the Grim plan and also help hardcast your expensive engine cards?

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I've tested Song of Creation Storm and found it lacking, RUG Storm came about as removing the slowest parts of that deck and focusing on the fastest parts. What I realized is that Echo of Eons is two draw engines, one for 6cc and the other for 3cc. Without Grim Monolith, the one for 6cc isn't achievable and thus the other for 3cc suffers. Song of Creation simply wasn't necessary, and the viability of a Storm Engine is more about how you get to casting that Storm Engine than it is about winning after you resolve it. I have no doubt Song of Creation can close out a game, I just don't think casting it is fast, efficient and reliable with protection.

Defense Grid is bad because it's a 2cc disruption spell in a deck that wants to go off on the first turn, and it's not reliable in a deck that needs to go off on the third turn. The deck has two gears, and the disruption needs to compliment both speeds.

Autumn's Veil is good enough game 1, and in game 2 Surgical Extraction can be mitigated by bringing in Empty the Warrens, hard casting Ech of Eons and using Burning Wish for other engines - that is why Echo of Eons should never be in your SB, it's one less 3 mana line in your MD and only a 5 mana line in your SB if you actually dodge removal. Think of Autumn's Veil as disruption for your disruption post board, Autumn's Veil draws out counters and then Veil of Summer shuts them out.

I untap Grim Monolith a lot vs Islands, without Ad Nauseam a Storm deck has a lot of time to reload on mana and threats. I think Grim Monolith is such a strong part of Storm right now that people are going to be shocked when they wake up to it, I started playing with it in the Companion metagame and was really surprised when my opponents started to counter, discard and destroy it. You can't just counter the spells that Grim Monolith plays when they come with a 2U Flashback. Once this deck has 3 mana, it can untap Grim Monolith, flashback Faithless Looting and Timetwister. If you cut Grim Monolith, then you are all in on Gamble for Lion's Eye Diamond. I want a midgame, and tutoring for LED is not where it is at.

This deck is about going off at ludicrous speed and grinding out games, which is why I love it. They have to mulligan for you like you are playing Belcher or Reanimator, but you don't have to necessarily play it that way. There could be other legitimate approaches though, for instance removing Grim Monolith, playing with Gamble and SBing Carpet of Flowers could be the best of both extremes. Once you cut Song of Creation, you have way more possibilities to abuse Echo of Eons.

Ancient Tomb could be a Storm Deck in and of itself, I considered a Peer Into The Abyss and Echo of Eons deck with Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith, Dark Ritual for acceleration and Defense Grid and Hope of Ghirapor as disruption. The problem was fitting in the kill conditions, I had to use 3 Tendrils of Agony and Intuition to get kills off of Echo of Eons chains and it has manabase structural problems with Brainstorm (Careful Study was my only cantrip). The interesting thing about Ancient Tomb, Grim Monolith and Dark Ritual is that it opens up the 2xTendrils of Agony kill easily. The format is open for brewing with Storm, people are sleeping on it.

@FF: what if I want to go completely all in and as fast as possible and instead of MOpals and Monoliths I do +8 Spirit Guides and Gamble over Looting? They should not change the outcome of the Wheels (still +1 mana), they are obviously worse midgame, but I think they are better on Turn 1 when Monolith and Opals are not online yet. They should give more early game lines and they helps casting protection and BW/Gamble (while still being able to cantrip off a land in the same turn)

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Originally Posted by Jax-

@FF: what if I want to go completely all in and as fast as possible and instead of MOpals and Monoliths I do +8 Spirit Guides and Gamble over Looting? They should not change the outcome of the Wheels (still +1 mana), they are obviously worse midgame, but I think they are better on Turn 1 when Monolith and Opals are not online yet. They should give more early game lines and they helps casting protection and BW/Gamble (while still being able to cantrip off a land in the same turn)

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Either Faithless Looting or Careful Study is necessary, you can't rely entirely on Lion's Eye Diamond in order to discard and pay for Echo of Eons.

Spirit Guides are worse Mox Opals, in a deck with 12 cantrips and 16 0cc artifacts Metalcraft is a reliable mechanic. Gamble for Lion's Eye Diamond ironically makes Metalcraft more consistent, it replaces Grim Monolith because it's a proxy Black Lotus.

The trick is speeding up without sacrificing durability, you can do that with adding cards like Tinder Wall or SBing an Echo of Eons.

This is my "Gotta Go Fast" build,

3 Echo of Eons
4 Burning Wish
4 Gamble
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Careful Study
4 Veil of Summer
4 Autumn's Veil
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Mox Opal
4 U/G Fetch
4 U/W Fetch
2 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
1 Island

You want to be able to build up a manabase in order to take advantage of discarding Echo of Eons with Gamble or Careful Study. You have the 4th Echo of Eons in the SB for the 5 mana line, and you can SB in 4 Carpet of Flowers for grindy post-board games.

The threat of your speed is more important than being fast. Force them to mulligan, and then grind them out. Also try to chain your threats, very often I will Gamble for another Echo of Eons when I already have a Lion's Eye Diamond on board and an Echo of Eons in hand because it leaves me with a second Timetwister in the graveyard in case the first gets countered. Turn 2 has some really safe plays, if you take the time to build up your manabase with 2 lands and Metalcraft then you can easily set up a bomb -> bomb tempo.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

What I realized is that Echo of Eons is two draw engines, one for 6cc and the other for 3cc. Without Grim Monolith, the one for 6cc isn't achievable and thus the other for 3cc suffers.

This deck is about going off at ludicrous speed and grinding out games, which is why I love it. They have to mulligan for you like you are playing Belcher or Reanimator, but you don't have to necessarily play it that way.

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Ok, I see what you're trying to accomplish and why you have Monolith and Looting. Your ability to switch gears with the same set of cards is useful, instead of having to rely on drawing into the right backups. Your design makes much better use out of Echo.

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I think Grim Monolith is such a strong part of Storm right now that people are going to be shocked when they wake up to it.... You can't just counter the spells that Grim Monolith plays when they come with a 2U Flashback.

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I assumed the main use was for Peer, like most recent storm brews. Any counter on Peer sets them back a lot. If the main use is doubling up on Echo, then yeah, that's a lot more redundancy to push through blue. Because Peer doesn't have the deck restrictions AN does, you can play the full 4 Echo, so then I guess building to optimize Echo is the natural evolution while you still have access to Peer if you need it.

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I started playing with it in the Companion metagame and was really surprised when my opponents started to counter, discard and destroy it.

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I wonder if that was because of Zirda's dominance more than their fear of it in storm. Players would have gotten used to killing Monolith on sight just in case you were going infinite.

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Defense Grid is bad because it's a 2cc disruption spell in a deck that wants to go off on the first turn, and it's not reliable in a deck that needs to go off on the third turn. The deck has two gears, and the disruption needs to compliment both speeds.

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It's much weaker on T2 into a T3 line, but acceleration mitigates this. I can T1 Grid off Rite/Petal, or T2 it and then LED+Echo the same turn. It's much stronger in lines like that. Rituals are worse for you, but what about Tomb?

There's also just the threat of going off fast. Let's say they have FoW. Do they let Grid through banking on leaving 3 mana open to stop your turn 3? What if you have LED+Echo and blow them out that turn? What if they can't afford to skip turns to hold up FoW while you develop your plan? Chances are it'll draw out the Force. If they're on Pierce instead, then they have to counter because they won't have it T3. I've benefited from both sides of this: I've had the opponent let Grid resolve and blown them out that turn, and I've had Grid bait counters when I didn't have it.

Another thing I really like about Grid is its ability to just shut off everything. You don't have to worry about anything they draw in the new 7, including problems like Stifle and Mindbreak Trap that slip through Veil.

Ancient Tomb would work in a Monolith build and also help hardcast Echo, flashback Looting, untap Monolith, and play your expensive Wish targets. Have you tried Tomb in RUG (without Ritual and Peer)? It sounds like your structural issues came from being in black, not Tomb itself.

Because you're really heavy on the Echo engine, what's your play against Surgical on Echo? Have you considered Silent Gravestone as cheap GY protection that also turns on Opal? Gravestone also randomly hoses fast lines from BR Reanimator. That was a SB trick I used in Jeskai Breach to both protect my combo and disrupt decks like that.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

This is my "Gotta Go Fast" build

4 Careful Study

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Why Study over Looting, even in a fast build? Do you need to cast it off Tropical enough that the blue cost matters more than potential flashback grind?

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Originally Posted by FTW

Ok, I see what you're trying to accomplish and why you have Monolith and Looting. Your ability to switch gears with the same set of cards is useful, instead of having to rely on drawing into the right backups. Your design makes much better use out of Echo.




I assumed the main use was for Peer, like most recent storm brews. Any counter on Peer sets them back a lot. If the main use is doubling up on Echo, then yeah, that's a lot more redundancy to push through blue. Because Peer doesn't have the deck restrictions AN does, you can play the full 4 Echo, so then I guess building to optimize Echo is the natural evolution while you still have access to Peer if you need it.



I wonder if that was because of Zirda's dominance more than their fear of it in storm. Players would have gotten used to killing Monolith on sight just in case you were going infinite.



It's much weaker on T2 into a T3 line, but acceleration mitigates this. I can T1 Grid off Rite/Petal, or T2 it and then LED+Echo the same turn. It's much stronger in lines like that. Rituals are worse for you, but what about Tomb?

There's also just the threat of going off fast. Let's say they have FoW. Do they let Grid through banking on leaving 3 mana open to stop your turn 3? What if you have LED+Echo and blow them out that turn? What if they can't afford to skip turns to hold up FoW while you develop your plan? Chances are it'll draw out the Force. If they're on Pierce instead, then they have to counter because they won't have it T3. I've benefited from both sides of this: I've had the opponent let Grid resolve and blown them out that turn, and I've had Grid bait counters when I didn't have it.

Another thing I really like about Grid is its ability to just shut off everything. You don't have to worry about anything they draw in the new 7, including problems like Stifle and Mindbreak Trap that slip through Veil.

Ancient Tomb would work in a Monolith build and also help hardcast Echo, flashback Looting, untap Monolith, and play your expensive Wish targets. Have you tried Tomb in RUG (without Ritual and Peer)? It sounds like your structural issues came from being in black, not Tomb itself.

Because you're really heavy on the Echo engine, what's your play against Surgical on Echo? Have you considered Silent Gravestone as cheap GY protection that also turns on Opal? Gravestone also randomly hoses fast lines from BR Reanimator. That was a SB trick I used in Jeskai Breach to both protect my combo and disrupt decks like that.




Why Study over Looting, even in a fast build? Do you need to cast it off Tropical enough that the blue cost matters more than potential flashback grind?

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I agree that Defense Grid warrants a counter spell just as much as Veil of Summer, the issue I have is that it's slow and I don't want to have to commit Lotus Petals into my disrupton and get 241ed by Daze. Autumn's Veil is for counter spells, which are the most important thing to worry about for game one. For game 2, I tend to use Autumn's Veil to resolve Veil of Summer through counters and disregard their hate. The deck has exploitable weaknesses that the disruption can't solve, Leyline of the Void and Faerie Macabre for example, so you have to rely on hard casting Echo of Eons and Burning Wish in those situations. It's not an archetype ending weakness, Oops, All Spells survives the same problems.

I think Ancient Tomb is another deck, losing colored land drops for colorless land drops slows down the cantrip engine. Careful Study is faster than Faithless Looting because you can play it off of any land, every card choice in that deck is to optimize its speed.

Silent Gravestone is probably worse than Carpet of Flowers at playing around hate, it's preferable to go around obstacles rather than remove them.

I put in a lot of gold fishing last evening, I think 3 Volcanic and Faithless Looting is just better than Island and Careful Study, you really don't want a single colour producing land for your average gold flsh and the Flashback is always useful for grinding out a match.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

I put in a lot of gold fishing last evening, I think 3 Volcanic and Faithless Looting is just better than Island and Careful Study, you really don't want a single colour producing land for your average gold flsh and the Flashback is always useful for grinding out a match.

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+1 to 3rd Volcanic.

When you untap after turn 1 Volcanic, any of these topdecked cards are live: Brainstorm, Ponder, Gamble, Looting, Wish (with a 2nd mana source). Basically anything you could need to dig into gas/answers is castable off the Volcanic. My build has similar tools and has the smoothest time recovering with access to both red and blue.

Faithless looks much better than Careful Study.

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Originally Posted by FTW

+1 to 3rd Volcanic.

When you untap after turn 1 Volcanic, any of these topdecked cards are live: Brainstorm, Ponder, Gamble, Looting, Wish (with a 2nd mana source). Basically anything you could need to dig into gas/answers is castable off the Volcanic. My build has similar tools and has the smoothest time recovering with access to both red and blue.

Faithless looks much better than Careful Study.

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Yup, ironically the biggest change that benefitted the speed of the deck was boarding 1 Echo of Eons. I think you board it for game 1 and then bring it in for game 2, where you have to slow down in order to avoid running into graveyard hate. I am probably sticking with the Grim Monoliths even though the Gambles have been fun, unfortunately Carpet of Flowers has been very meh in the SB.

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

Yup, ironically the biggest change that benefitted the speed of the deck was boarding 1 Echo of Eons. I think you board it for game 1 and then bring it in for game 2, where you have to slow down in order to avoid running into graveyard hate.

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Yeah, that's why I have 1 in my board. 7 functional copies of Echo + Gamble means you D7 a lot.

I tried out some changes with Looting and the 4th Echo main. It's a good line to set up grinds, but less explosive than having it in the wishboard.

When you D7 in your other build, are you doing it to win that turn or to set up more resources to assemble a win later?

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Originally Posted by FTW

Yeah, that's why I have 1 in my board. 7 functional copies of Echo + Gamble means you D7 a lot.

I tried out some changes with Looting and the 4th Echo main. It's a good line to set up grinds, but less explosive than having it in the wishboard.

When you D7 in your other build, are you doing it to win that turn or to set up more resources to assemble a win later?

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Both, it depends entirely on the mana you have floating and the hamd you draw into. If you hard cast or Burning Wish for an Echo of Eons, then you are generally setting up for a win on your next turn. A lot comes down to going off with an untapped Grim Monolith or no land drop, but Gamble builds are way more aggressive because of their ability to break LED.