[Deck] Spanish Inquisition (B/x Storm Combo)

[mistercakes]

Thanks for the report. It looks like a standard LGSI build. Saint runs 4 ad nauseam 4 Belcher.

Congrats on 3-1.

[Karhumies]

Thanks for the report. It looks like a standard LGSI build. Saint runs 4 ad nauseam 4 Belcher.

Congrats on 3-1.

Sorry, had only 48 cards in MD. Too tired, it's past midnight. The last 12 are
4 Ad Nauseam
4 Goblin Charbelcher
4 Mox Opal

Edited the list accordingly.

[Silent Requiem]

Nice finish.

I've not tested SAINT; how would you rate it compared to SI?

[Karhumies]

Nice finish.

I've not tested SAINT; how would you rate it compared to SI?

Compared to Pact SI:

1) Easy decision-making: more linear mulligans and lines of play, lack of off color mana (no ESG, SSG, EtW or Slithermuse)

When mulliganing, you are looking for 5 mana + Ad Nauseam, 7 mana + Infernal Tutor into Ad nauseam + way to empty your hand (back-up 6 mana IT into GCB), 4 mana + GCB, bonus if LED for activation manas. You don't need to think about D4 chains and off color mana floating too much.

2) Ad Nauseam is a stupidly powerful card, especially in a nonblue meta. I frequently drew 10-15 cards with it with 100% kill rate. 5 out of 6 kills were AdN into dead opponent, 6th was Land Grant + GCB + LED. It "does not brick mid-combo" like D4 chains.

3) Land Grant works in a nonblue meta. My FLGS meta had 10 nonblue, 1 blue with stupidly low levels of storm hate other than spot discard, chalice and cmc2 permanents (typically without mana acceleration). I planned to go faster on t1/t2 on play or t1 on draw and I did.

4) The deck does not recover as well if disrupted. There are no topdeck D4s. Ramping up to 4-5 for AdN or GCB needs more mana sources, and IT is stupidly expensive without LED. It's literally a glass-cannon Belcher.

5) I love Mox Opal as a black mana source over SSG/ESG

6) No paying Daze with SSG/ESG, though

7) No losing to Pact triggers.

Additional notes:
Two times I mulled into 5 and had a t1 kill off Ad Nauseam.
Post Ad Nauseam, I always went for Tendrils kill if I could to not reveal my deck. Best effort was storm 20 t1 on the draw.
In this meta, the Cabal Therapies would actually have been better as 0 mana spells or Probe.

In other words, the deck was a meta choice which paid off.

[Silent Requiem]

Compared to Pact SI:

1) Easy decision-making: more linear mulligans and lines of play, lack of off color mana (no ESG, SSG, EtW or Slithermuse)

When mulliganing, you are looking for 5 mana + Ad Nauseam, 7 mana + Infernal Tutor into Ad nauseam + way to empty your hand (back-up 6 mana IT into GCB), 4 mana + GCB, bonus if LED for activation manas. You don't need to think about D4 chains and off color mana floating too much.

2) Ad Nauseam is a stupidly powerful card, especially in a nonblue meta. I frequently drew 10-15 cards with it with 100% kill rate. 5 out of 6 kills were AdN into dead opponent, 6th was Land Grant + GCB + LED. It "does not brick mid-combo" like D4 chains.

3) Land Grant works in a nonblue meta. My FLGS meta had 10 nonblue, 1 blue with stupidly low levels of storm hate other than spot discard, chalice and cmc2 permanents (typically without mana acceleration). I planned to go faster on t1/t2 on play or t1 on draw and I did.

4) The deck does not recover as well if disrupted. There are no topdeck D4s. Ramping up to 4-5 for AdN or GCB needs more mana sources, and IT is stupidly expensive without LED. It's literally a glass-cannon Belcher.

5) I love Mox Opal as a black mana source over SSG/ESG

6) No paying Daze with SSG/ESG, though

7) No losing to Pact triggers.

Additional notes:
Two times I mulled into 5 and had a t1 kill off Ad Nauseam.
Post Ad Nauseam, I always went for Tendrils kill if I could to not reveal my deck. Best effort was storm 20 t1 on the draw.
In this meta, the Cabal Therapies would actually have been better as 0 mana spells or Probe.

In other words, the deck was a meta choice which paid off.

Thank you for that very interesting feedback. Since my meta seems to be heavily blue, your comments regarding resilience are particularly helpful.

[mistercakes]

Sounds fun.

[Kodieyost]

Hey guys, new to both this forum and this deck. Long time control player, I've recently been transitioning into combo across all formats and this deck piqued my interest.

I've been goldfishing for a few days with PSI, 2 GCB 1 ToA in my list, 1 slithermuse 1 skullwinder, playing Land Grantd

I came across a really interesting opening hand this evening, I'd like to get some feedback.

LED
Land Grant
Lotus Petal
Skullwinder
Dark Ritual
Culling the Weak
Tendrils of Agony

Now, it's got ZERO play to it. There is only one line that I can see, and that's the one which leads to T1 Tendrils for 16.

Would any of you keep this hand? and would anyone just wait for something off the top to make the hand GG instead of near-lethal?

In goldfishing, I would've elected to keep, and hold off for a piece of gas off the top in the hopes I draw a Pact, LG, or some other piece of free storm Count.

In practice, the top card was an Infernal Tutor, which makes it GG by cracking LED and going hellbent after producing 5 mana, picking up the IGGY loop.

Anyone have general rules of thumb for mulligan/keep they could pass on?

[Silent Requiem]

Hey guys, new to both this forum and this deck. Long time control player, I've recently been transitioning into combo across all formats and this deck piqued my interest.

I've been goldfishing for a few days with PSI, 2 GCB 1 ToA in my list, 1 slithermuse 1 skullwinder, playing Land Grantd

I came across a really interesting opening hand this evening, I'd like to get some feedback.

LED
Land Grant
Lotus Petal
Skullwinder
Dark Ritual
Culling the Weak
Tendrils of Agony

Now, it's got ZERO play to it. There is only one line that I can see, and that's the one which leads to T1 Tendrils for 16.

Would any of you keep this hand? and would anyone just wait for something off the top to make the hand GG instead of near-lethal?

In goldfishing, I would've elected to keep, and hold off for a piece of gas off the top in the hopes I draw a Pact, LG, or some other piece of free storm Count.

In practice, the top card was an Infernal Tutor, which makes it GG by cracking LED and going hellbent after producing 5 mana, picking up the IGGY loop.

Anyone have general rules of thumb for mulligan/keep they could pass on?

Any hand is looking for an initial mana source, accelleration, and business of some kind. As a general rule, any opening seven that I draw that does not have all three of those things gets thrown back. Drawing six, scry 1, is pretty much as good as drawing seven so you lose very little by trying again.

Things get more difficult after that, however.

At six cards or lower, I'm willing to consider trying to draw into busines if I have an initial mana source and strong accelleration. My build (fetchlands rather than Land Grant) is reasonably good at this because I can 'fake' being a fair deck while dropping Verdant Catacombs. If you start passing the turn without playing anything, they will suspect something is up. If you actually play any of your permanants, they will know something is up.

I will typically only mull below five cards if the hand I have drawn has dead cards that effecively puts me below five cards anyway (Tendrils of Agony, Slithermuse, etc).

[Karhumies]

Any hand is looking for an initial mana source, accelleration, and business of some kind. As a general rule, any opening seven that I draw that does not have all three of those things gets thrown back. Drawing six, scry 1, is pretty much as good as drawing seven so you lose very little by trying again.

Things get more difficult after that, however.

Typically, Tendrils is the weakest business spell we have in the opening hand. We generally want to tutor it or draw into it. When you take a "maybe, just maybe?" opening hand with Tendrils and replace it with IT, BW, EtW, GCB, AdN, possibly even Slithermuse, IGG, PiF or D4, that hand will quite frequently transform into sure keep.

[Silent Requiem]

Typically, Tendrils is the weakest business spell we have in the opening hand. We generally want to tutor it or draw into it. When you take a "maybe, just maybe?" opening hand with Tendrils and replace it with IT, BW, EtW, GCB, AdN, possibly even Slithermuse, IGG, PiF or D4, that hand will quite frequently transform into sure keep.

The difference is probably just semantics, but coming from Solidarity (where the spell chains are so long), it just didn't occur to me that the win condition might be considered a 'business' spell. That said, there have been one or two opening hands where I could hit 9 storm + tendrils from my opening hand. These usually involve Ill-Gotten Gains or Skullwinder.

[Kodieyost]

Awesome, thanks guys.

Any unintuitive spell chain sequences you guys have handy? I goldfished for 4-5 hours yesterday for my tournament tonight and I've come across some plays I didn't initially see.

Also: thoughts on 2 ToA/2GCB in mb? I find I win most often with GCB so I figure I must be missing some basic sequencing.

Edit: loved playing tonight. Played against Lands and BR reanimator before I dropped to play modern (modern has prize support, $12 in store credit for 3-1 in modern today!)

Went T1 belcher for GG against lands.... except he crop rotation -> glacial chasm. Stacked my library from Belcher and went for GG two turns later with ToA for 22. Stacked Cabal Ritual into contract drawing into all the things I'd need to get 9 storm. Stacking under belcher was kind of difficult at first, but got there.

Reanimator was harder, he didn't get anything strong done, had a T2 Iona set up so I had to force going off on my T1 with double Pact for ESG and DRS for chrome mox. Got belcher into play with both lands in deck, Left LED in play and when he took damage to put Iona into play I cracked belcher and got there. G2/3 I got obliterated by T1 side of insanity and then G3 I got hit by T2 Iona.

Overall deck is super fun, not sure why not to play ad nauseum instead of the d4's though

[Silent Requiem]

The ToA/GCB split is a playstyle choice. At one pount Vacrix was playing 4 GCB to free up sideboard space, and I currently only play ToA so that I can run real lands. 2:2 is a good starting point, but feel free to experiment.

And if you like winning with Belcher, and want to play Ad Nauseam, check out SAINT. We had a tourney report just a few posts above yours.

[Kodieyost]

Do you ever miss the free wins with GCB on t1? Multiple games have went land grant -> dryad arbor into play, land grant -> bayouto hand, lotus petal -> culling the weak -> charbelcher + LED, or some variation of such. Do you lose speed by ditching the GCB? What exactly is gained?

I've been playing and the more games I get under my belt, the more consulted lines I see and end up getting there much more often than I did even two days ago. It seems like roughly 50% of the time, I'm going for tendrils at the end of a gain - which means the rest of them end in a charbelcher with perpetual resources left to go for GG.

[Silent Requiem]

Do you ever miss the free wins with GCB on t1? Multiple games have went land grant -> dryad arbor into play, land grant -> bayouto hand, lotus petal -> culling the weak -> charbelcher + LED, or some variation of such. Do you lose speed by ditching the GCB? What exactly is gained?

I've been playing and the more games I get under my belt, the more consulted lines I see and end up getting there much more often than I did even two days ago. It seems like roughly 50% of the time, I'm going for tendrils at the end of a gain - which means the rest of them end in a charbelcher with perpetual resources left to go for GG.

It's not about not liking Belcher. My meta is 75% blue, and being able to drop real lands feels too important. Were that not the case, I would happily run some number of Belcher.

[Karhumies]

Do you ever miss the free wins with GCB on t1? Multiple games have went land grant ->

Against a real opponent playing blue, Land Grant -> show a hand without initial mana source other than LG as a cost -> Pierce/Daze/FoW is probably the biggest reason to play some lands. Opponent t1 spot discarding us on the play can also be rough without actual lands.

[Kodieyost]

Ah gotcha, so you're playing a slower version to overcome the blue spells.

I feel like I would just pick up and play ANT if I wanted to be a T2-4 combo deck with a good control MU. I picked this up because it has the highest T1 win chance, which forces my opponent to have the FoW or die. My apologies for the confusion!

Do you play slithermuse?

Edit: also, do you guys side LG out against a Blue opponent? I've been siding out some mix of:

4 Pacts, wild cantor, DRS, 4 culling the weak, 1 GCB 1 IGG 1 LED 1 chrome mox 1 dryad arbor

But I can't decide if I like xantid swarm or autumns veil more. I've been torn. I like veil for the most part but swarm let's me keep CtW

[mistercakes]

this was his list from the previous page:

This was my list:

1 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Dark Petition
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Infernal Contract
4 Cruel Bargain
1 Slithermuse
1 Eternal Witness

1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Wild Cantor
2 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Summoner's Pact
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Lotus Petal
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Culling the Weak
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
1 Dryad Arbor

Sideboard

4 Swamp
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
1 Past in Flames
2 Empty the Warrens

i don't think he's really sacrificing much. unless if land grants are adding that much storm (1 and sometimes 2) are that important for you, he's probably correct to run the verdants. it also lets him side into the discard package with more lands. vs the non blue decks you still have the very fast speed, but vs blue you can deal with some disruption.

[Kodieyost]

I edited to add a second question.

My list is almost identical, 4 land grant for 4 fetch, 2 GCB for 2 SSG, playing bayou etc.

On the play against an unknown opponent, do you just go for it? Often times I'll dump my hand into a Storm 5 -> Slithermuse if I can, but I just lose to a FoW there hard core.

Edit: so you find that Additional wincon in gcb is just not good in Blue metas?

[Silent Requiem]

this was his list from the previous page:
i don't think he's really sacrificing much. unless if land grants are adding that much storm (1 and sometimes 2) are that important for you, he's probably correct to run the verdants. it also lets him side into the discard package with more lands. vs the non blue decks you still have the very fast speed, but vs blue you can deal with some disruption.

You have summarised my thoughts almost exactly.

My list is almost identical, 4 land grant for 4 fetch, 2 GCB for 2 SSG, playing bayou etc.

On the play against an unknown opponent, do you just go for it? Often times I'll dump my hand into a Storm 5 -> Slithermuse if I can, but I just lose to a FoW there hard core.

Edit: so you find that Additional wincon in gcb is just not good in Blue metas?

Against an unknown opponent I'll almost always go for it on turn one (assuming my hand allows it), unless I'm on the play and waiting one turn (typically to drop a second land) significantly improves my odds.

There are two advantages to this. First, a turn 1 fizzle often becomes a turn 2 win after you untap, but you'll never survive their intervening turn if they have the ability to do significant damage. So you want to go early if you want to keep the possibility of a second chance open. Second, your best shot against blue game 1 is if they kept a marginal hand (not knowing what you were playing) and you go off before they can use cantrips to correct that mistake.

This deck is fast. It gains very little from waiting in most cases, as every permanent you play out is one less storm for your combo turn. If you are not leveraging your turn 1 win rate, there are more resilient combo decks that you could be playing.

As for GCB, it can be a very, very good win condition against blue. If you look at the original primer, you will see that the PSI sideboard was Carpet of Flowers, Xantid/Autumn's Veil, and your remaining Belchers. If you can generate the mana, Belcher is our best win condition agains blue because it requires no combo chain.

But that primer was written back when 'blue' meant High Tide, Counter Top, UW Control, and a few tempo decks. Carpet was brokenly good against decks that want to play out loads of Islands, so mana was not a problem. Now - at least in my meta - 'blue' mostly means Delver decks that can operate on a single Island, and even that often gets Dazed back to their hands once they have dropped a threat. Carpet becomes very weak against those decks, which means playing actual lands, which means dropping Belcher.

SI is so highly tuned that the card choices are deeply interconnected. I didn't drop Belcher because it was bad, but because the ripple effects of one build decision rendered Belcher unplayable (in my deck).

[Final Fortune]

The problem with Goblin Charbelcher is Land Grant, when you don't get to resolve your Goblin Charbelcher because your "Land" was discarded or countered it doesn't matter if it's a better kill condition than Tendrils of Agony.

The D4 chains may fizzle from time to time, but that's the nature of probablistic win conditions in Storm and I think a lot of people are underestimating how often this deck can and does kill with a single or double Tendrils of Agony after sculpting a hand and building Threshold with a D4 and having lands that weren't countered, discarded, Stifled or Wastelanded in play.

I use the old lists with Swamps and Kobolds because they're just better vs any deck that is going to put up a fight.