Bizarro Stormy (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Griselbrand)

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Hey guys, love the look of this deck! Good work to everyone brewing and testing it. I'm currently playing JBlinder's Living Wish-Tin Fins, but have played a lot of Griselbrand decks (Griselstorm with Magus of the Will, BR reanimator, etc).
I want to get in on this Magus of the Mind shenanigans, but I sadly don't have Underground Seas or Volcanics. I have Bayous, Badlands, Tropical Island, Scrublands, Polluted Deltas, LEDs, etc. Could I get by somehow with Watery Graves and other duals? Are there any versions of the list that lean more B/R (Faithless Looting, Burning Wish)? I only play casual local legacy so nothing super competitive. Thanks in advance!

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I don't see why not - it obviously won't be optimal, but not backbreaking. One of the problems is that you're usually going to want to be fetching for USea first or second pretty much every game, so you'll definitely feel the life loss sometimes. That said, this deck is much less life-total dependent than Tin Fins is as you're less likely to need to draw to a low life total with Griselbrand since you have access to Magus of the Mind.

I know Acclimation has played around with a couple of shocks for splash colors too.

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Originally Posted by Acclimation

You can definitely get away with playing a couple of shocklands, as the deck isn't as dependent on life total as other Griselbrand decks. Since you have Bayou and Trop, you can get away with a manabase like this one:

4 Delta
2 Underground Sea
1 Tropical Island
1 Badlands
1 Swamp
1 Island
4 Fetches of a mix of Misty/Mire/Verdant (2 Misty/1 Mire/1 Verdant a good start)

And just plug in shocklands where you need to. It's probably a bit better if you could run Volcanic, since Volcanic/Bayou is a bit better combination than Trop/Badlands, but it's only a marginal difference.

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Originally Posted by .dk

I don't see why not - it obviously won't be optimal, but not backbreaking. One of the problems is that you're usually going to want to be fetching for USea first or second pretty much every game, so you'll definitely feel the life loss sometimes. That said, this deck is much less life-total dependent than Tin Fins is as you're less likely to need to draw to a low life total with Griselbrand since you have access to Magus of the Mind.

I know Acclimation has played around with a couple of shocks for splash colors too.

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Great to hear thanks! The green mana is just for sideboard cards right? I'm going to have to read through all the discussion on card choices and such now. Got my Corpse Dances and Maguses otw in the mail but should have everything else other than the U lands and maybe a couple SB cards.

How many cards do you generally see with your first Magus activation?

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Great to hear thanks! The green mana is just for sideboard cards right? I'm going to have to read through all the discussion on card choices and such now. Got my Corpse Dances and Maguses otw in the mail but should have everything else other than the U lands and maybe a couple SB cards.

How many cards do you generally see with your first Magus activation?

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Yeah, I haven't run any green or white cards maindeck in Bizarro Stormy before.

And as for your other question... I would recommend reviewing the primer. There are some good guidelines on Magus activations vs. Griselbrand drawing, etc. I try not to activate Magus for <6 if I don't have to - sometimes it's a hail mary though, and your only option is to Magus for a small number and hope to hit gas.

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Originally Posted by .dk

Yeah, I haven't run any green or white cards maindeck in Bizarro Stormy before.

And as for your other question... I would recommend reviewing the primer. There are some good guidelines on Magus activations vs. Griselbrand drawing, etc. I try not to activate Magus for <6 if I don't have to - sometimes it's a hail mary though, and your only option is to Magus for a small number and hope to hit gas.

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Thanks again! Great work on the primer, very informative.

I'm leaning towards trying the Burning Wish variant as I think it gives you some nice lines to just storm off with a Shallow grave'd Griselbrand+21 cards and BW for Tendrils. Plus the general utility that BW brings, but like you guys have said it does warp your deck construction. But I think I should try the more standard MA version first.

Seems the consensus on LEDs is 3, is the 4th often just redundant?

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Thanks again! Great work on the primer, very informative.

I'm leaning towards trying the Burning Wish variant as I think it gives you some nice lines to just storm off with a Shallow grave'd Griselbrand+21 cards and BW for Tendrils. Plus the general utility that BW brings, but like you guys have said it does warp your deck construction. But I think I should try the more standard MA version first.

Seems the consensus on LEDs is 3, is the 4th often just redundant?

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If you're just trying to learn how the deck plays, I would play a more stock list with Mastermind's Acquisition. phazonmutant's or Acclimation's are both great places to start.

The 4th LED is fine, but I don't think any of us have actually found it necessary. It's not part of your combo set-up like it is with many ANT and TES lines (infernal tutor), and usually comes up after you've already got a Griselbrand or Magus on the battlefield. If you're looking for less reliance on the reanimation part of the deck though, and want to open up more storm lines, then the 4th LED and 3-4th Cabal Rituals to go alongside Past in Flames would be interesting. We've discussed some sideboard plans like that in the past, although I can't recall how much (if any) testing we put into them.

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Originally Posted by .dk

If you're just trying to learn how the deck plays, I would play a more stock list with Mastermind's Acquisition. phazonmutant's or Acclimation's are both great places to start.

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Play phazonmutant's list, he's doing something right.

I think if you want to play with BW it's better to get some reps in with the deck without them, as it adds another layer of complication on an already complicated deck.

That being said, this is from someone who built DDFT over ANT as his first Legacy deck because "if I'm going to play a storm variant, I might as well play the most complicated one and get good", so feel free to start where ever your heart desires.

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Originally Posted by .dk

The 4th LED is fine, but I don't think any of us have actually found it necessary. It's not part of your combo set-up like it is with many ANT and TES lines (infernal tutor), and usually comes up after you've already got a Griselbrand or Magus on the battlefield. If you're looking for less reliance on the reanimation part of the deck though, and want to open up more storm lines, then the 4th LED and 3-4th Cabal Rituals to go alongside Past in Flames would be interesting. We've discussed some sideboard plans like that in the past, although I can't recall how much (if any) testing we put into them.

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If I remember correctly, 4th LED was one of those things we cut when we made room for Probe, because we thought it was unnecessary. I think it's fine to run 4th LED, but 3 seems to be a good number.

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Originally Posted by Acclimation

If I remember correctly, 4th LED was one of those things we cut when we made room for Probe, because we thought it was unnecessary. I think it's fine to run 4th LED, but 3 seems to be a good number.

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Yeah, that's right - I remember now. It's of marginal importance, I think. Particularly with Probe, since you do have the ability to cantrip a bit more.

Thanks for the explanations guys. Appreciate it. I'm drawn to BW because I started on Burning Reanimator a few years ago. But I agree that I should play "stock" bizarro first.

I feel like the 4th LED(from Wish-Fins and Other LED reanimator experience) helps your explosive G1s but can easily be trimmed for SB cards in G2 or G3.
Since I'll be on shocks I might keep the 4th LED and cut 1 probe to ease the lifeloss a bit. Could that make sense?

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Thanks for the explanations guys. Appreciate it. I'm drawn to BW because I started on Burning Reanimator a few years ago. But I agree that I should play "stock" bizarro first.

I feel like the 4th LED(from Wish-Fins and Other LED reanimator experience) helps your explosive G1s but can easily be trimmed for SB cards in G2 or G3.
Since I'll be on shocks I might keep the 4th LED and cut 1 probe to ease the lifeloss a bit. Could that make sense?

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Yes and no - it's kind of a double whammy vs. Force of Will decks. Probe lets you know if the coast is clear, and LED makes you go all in if you're using it as a discard outlet. So then you're left not knowing as well as more prone to being vulnerable.

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Originally Posted by Acclimation

Nice showing! Glad to hear you are enjoying the deck!

My one comment about your list would be that 2 Magus is definitely overkill, as flipping into one does nothing (no haste to activate), and you're generally better off going for Griselbrand before a Magus.

List looks a lot like the ones we were playing before we shaved a bunch of slots for Gitaxian Probe. Was it team unified Legacy? Or Unified Constructed?

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I agree with the Magus. I always boarded one out. I could make some room for Git Probes. Perhaps a Cabal Ritual, Magus, Mastermind's Acquisition.

The event was standard, modern, and legacy. We thought it was unified, but it was actually just team trios. No need to worry about who gets to play what card. That would have been nice to know! haha

1-2 at a weekly, but the losses all felt like my fault so at least that's good. Maindeck was the same as phazonmutant but with -1 bloodstained mire, -1 probe, +1 LED, +1 chrome mox. Chrome mox was an attempt to be slightly faster against prison decks and other combo after what happened last week, but it didn't come up. I'm not sure what to make of the meta here, lots of weird decks.

Sideboard was as follows:
1 Tropical Island
1 Carpet of Flowers
2 Chain of Vapor
2 Silent Gravestone
1 Thoughtseize
1 Xantid Swarm
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Echoing Truth
1 Ground Seal
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Massacre
1 Tendrils of Agony

Round 1: BUG Leovold (with Life from the Loam and True-Name?)

Game 1: Thoughtseize sees two polluted deltas, brainstorm, ponder, strix, DRS, force, takes force.
He plays DRS, I untap and kill him.

I assume he's on pile. Boarding:
-1 Mox
-1 Griselbrand
-1 LED
-1 Gitaxian Probe
-1 Therapy (Should have been brutality)
+2 Silent Gravestone
+1 Ground Seal
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Tropical Island

Game 2:
Keep 6 with some cantrips, some discard, and a reanimation spell. Thoughtseize sees true-name, snapcaster, ponder, 3 lands. Take true-name. Play a gravestone, die to snapcasters and leovolds as I proceed to not find anything to reanimate but do find three more reanimation spells.

Saw some soft permission so -1 Collective Brutality, +1 Carpet

Game 3 keep the following 6:
Swamp
Tropical Island
Lotus Petal
Entomb
Shallow Grave
Thoughtseize

Led with Thoughtseize, see brainstorm, brainstorm, edict, null rod, tropical island, polluted delta, wasteland. There are two lines I see here:
* Take brainstorm, between his draw for the turn and second brainstorm he has 4 draws to find either force+blue card or surgical extraction
* Take null rod, next turn play gravestone and go for it the turn after

I'm not sure which line is correct, but I didn't know what weird cards he was playing so I went with option A. He brainstormed, third draw was a surgical extraction. Griselbrand is gone, but at least I still have magus, right?

The next turn I played gravestone, he found a snapcaster to snap surgical shallow grave in response. Get beaten down by leovold, snapcaster, and a DRS but it felt pretty academic at that point.


Round 2: Lands. Nothing much here, good matchup for us. The guy's deck was beautiful though, all foil and japanese and promo and whatnot. Prettiest deck I've ever seen.

Boarding:
-2 Collective Brutality
-1 cabal therapy
-1 griselbrand
-1 LED
+2 chain of vapor
+1 hurkyl's
+1 echoing truth
+1 thoughtseize

Game 2 was interesting because he ghost quartered one of my lands on his end step which let me get an untapped swamp to entomb and win a turn earlier than I would have otherwise been able to.


Round 3: BUG death's shadow
Game one kept a hand that was a little sketchy, would have been great with a blue source. Did not find a blue source, should have mulliganed.

Didn't really know how to board at this point, haven't encountered shadow in legacy before.
-1 Griselbrand
-1 LED
-2 Cabal Therapy
-1 Collective Brutality
+2 Silent Gravestone
+1 Ground Seal
+1 Thoughtseize
+1 Carpet of Flowers

Kept a hand with ground seal, some lands, griselbrand, and some reanimation effects. He played 4 gitaxian probes, cycled 3 street wraiths, and passed.

Landed ground seal, we passed the turn back and forth a few times. Drew the 2 silent gravestones, which was a little unfortunate.

Ended up with like 4 reanimation spells in hand and no way to discard griselbrand, so it took another few turns until I had rituals to hard cast him. Notably at one point I was at 8 cards, but didn't realize until after I played the land. I think that mistake cost me the game. Hard cast, got countered, but now he's in the graveyard!

Unfortunately the extra turns drawing rituals allowed my opponent to find an angler, which turned the 3 stubborn denials in his hand from dazes into negates. D'oh.

Had I gotten griselbrand in the graveyard earlier I could have started firing off two reanimation spells a turn to burn through the counters, but by the time I was able to start casting those it was too late.

All in all the deck seemed powerful if a bit awkward, there were a couple games where I drew 4+ reanimation effects and no entombs/creatures, but I guess that happens with all two card combos. It also punishes you very hard if you slip up.

Takeaways and thoughts:
* Discarding to hand size in the midgame is still a line, don't rush to play the land you just drew before stopping to think.
* Still not sure how I feel about ground seal. Drawing a card and being harder to remove are great, but it's harder to resolve against delver, between 2 mana making it slower against daze, and needing to fetch a nonbasic to cast it.
* Abrupt decay has the same problem of needing a nonbasic, which makes it worse against prison decks with wasteland
* Collective brutality still feels a little slow, especially because you can't use it as both a way to discard a creature and kill a DRS.
* The fourth LED was probably superfluous, will be swapping it for the fourth gitaxian probe.

Finally read through the whole thread, lots of great discussions.

Started gold-fishing a bit last night. Magus sure is nuts once you can get him going for ~8-10 cards. I realized you need to be careful about decking yourself on turns when you have to activate Magus a 2nd time. I had a 2nd activation leave me with like 5 cards in my deck haha. Sometimes 21 Grisel cards +MA and mana is enough to win without magus, does keep me curious about burning wish versions.

Has anyone ran into people using Pithing needle on Magus/Grisel yet? Necrotic Ooze could be some tech for that (Props to JBlinder for that). Sometimes the Ooze can be both creatures at once.

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Has anyone ran into people using Pithing needle on Magus/Grisel yet? Necrotic Ooze could be some tech for that (Props to JBlinder for that). Sometimes the Ooze can be both creatures at once.

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Yeah, you kill them with the other dude or break Needle and then kill them.

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Finally read through the whole thread, lots of great discussions.

Started gold-fishing a bit last night. Magus sure is nuts once you can get him going for ~8-10 cards. I realized you need to be careful about decking yourself on turns when you have to activate Magus a 2nd time. I had a 2nd activation leave me with like 5 cards in my deck haha. Sometimes 21 Grisel cards +MA and mana is enough to win without magus, does keep me curious about burning wish versions.

Has anyone ran into people using Pithing needle on Magus/Grisel yet? Necrotic Ooze could be some tech for that (Props to JBlinder for that). Sometimes the Ooze can be both creatures at once.

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Dude, what? If you're close to decking yourself off of Magus, you had better be winning at that point. Like... you did something way wrong if your deck is in your hand or exiled via Magus and you can't win.

And if they needle one, kill them with the other. Or a PIF into tendrils.

Actually wait, are you saying that you think you are decking yourself with too large of magus activations? Magus doesn't draw cards, it exiles them. You won't lose to a magus activation for larger than your library size.

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Originally Posted by .dk

Actually wait, are you saying that you think you are decking yourself with too large of magus activations? Magus doesn't draw cards, it exiles them. You won't lose to a magus activation for larger than your library size.

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Oh yeah I had the win once I did the 2nd magus activation, I was just worried that exiling more cards than your library would be a loss like drawing. Glad to hear it doesn't work like that.

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

Oh yeah I had the win once I did the 2nd magus activation, I was just worried that exiling more cards than your library would be a loss like drawing. Glad to hear it doesn't work like that.

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120.4 A player who attempts to draw a card from a library with no cards in it loses the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)


Magus doesn't draw cards

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Originally Posted by .dk

120.4 A player who attempts to draw a card from a library with no cards in it loses the game the next time a player would receive priority. (This is a state-based action. See rule 704.)


Magus doesn't draw cards

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Thanks for answering all my stupid questions!

I was thinking of the Helm+RiP/Leyline situation but I guess your opponent just dies on their draw step, not to the Helm itself. Or is it because Helm mills, even if cards go to exile?

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Originally Posted by hovercraft

your opponent just dies on their draw step

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Small primer update from this discussion on Magus of the Mind:

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Magus of the Mind - Magus is really the card that sets this deck apart from Tin Fins. For those that haven’t cast Mind’s Desire before, this card is a draw spell and a ritual wrapped into one. Magus of the Mind DOES NOT exile itself after activation. Combine this with the possibility of flipping more haste-granting reanimation and we're chaining Mind's Desire effects for the cost of U. Drawing upon current Vintage deck building, this is akin to Paradoxical Outcome in that it is not restricted, draws cards, and generates mana. However, we get to run far more than 4 of these effects given that we are running 4+ reanimation spells as well as Past in Flames to flash them back.

Also... since there have been a fair number of questions about this, let's clearly explain one way Magus differs from Griselbrand. Magus DOES NOT draw cards - it exiles them from your library. This means that Leovold, Notion Thief, Chains of Mephistopheles, and Spirit of the Labyrinth have no effect on Magus activations. Furthermore, this also means that, according to rule 120.4, you do not lose the game by exiling your entire library with Magus of the Mind. So feel free to go overboard on activations - you simply run out of additional cards to exile.

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