[Deck] T.E.S. - The EPIC Storm

[Plague Sliver]

Lemnear, great goldfish scenarios. I'll have to get more solo practice in.

I used to goldfish assuming a T2 hatebear or assume I'd be at 16 life by T3.

[Togores]

@ lem.
How would you board vs patriot then?

[Lemnear]

@ lem.
How would you board vs patriot then?

Considering you took the OP list, your boarding is ok. I just wanted to intervene with the idea of "opponent might board in REB's -> automatically board out Ponders" which I had the impression was the message

[Togores]

At the start i boardef out 2 cabal rit and mox. Then g3 having seen both reb. I thought was better to side 2 ponders. And will stick with the ponder plan.

[Lemnear]

Noticed that the 2 example-scenarios I wrote down within a Minute are poorly worded. Sorry guys. I hope you get the idea non the less :)

[satyr]

Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster.

I've played this deck for a couple of years, and have top 8'd nearly every tournament I've played with it. I'm still on the 4/3 therapy/silence split since combo is fairly rampant in my local meta, and silence has been a great tool to get me over the top. It's the kind of meta where in a 40 man event belcher/oops decks somehow manage to durdle their way into the 4-0 bracket. I'm keen to incorporate the cabal rituals (which is something I've been thinking about doing recently anyway, to help chaining and ritualing out of thalias) but need to cut one more card to squeeze in the second ritual. I'm playing Bryant's last stock revision. What are your thoughts? A chrome mox? A ponder?

Massacre isn't a card I've been keen on recently because D&T is so plains light. What are people's thoughts on toxic deluge or even nausea? I ended up discarding the idea of virtue's ruin because I want to hit revokers, and pyroclasm hasn't been amazing because people tend to keep their moms in against me. The revoker/thalia combination seems more problematic than decks playing meddling mages and canonists.

[Lemnear]

Hi guys, long time lurker, first time poster.

I've played this deck for a couple of years, and have top 8'd nearly every tournament I've played with it. I'm still on the 4/3 therapy/silence split since combo is fairly rampant in my local meta, and silence has been a great tool to get me over the top. It's the kind of meta where in a 40 man event belcher/oops decks somehow manage to durdle their way into the 4-0 bracket. I'm keen to incorporate the cabal rituals (which is something I've been thinking about doing recently anyway, to help chaining and ritualing out of thalias) but need to cut one more card to squeeze in the second ritual. I'm playing Bryant's last stock revision. What are your thoughts? A chrome mox? A ponder?

I'm confused. Are you trying to make Silence + Cabal Ritual work? What is the meaning of "last stock revision" if it's not the OP list and finding space for the 2nd CR is an issue? 5:30am, non-native speaker problems for me. Sry

Massacre isn't a card I've been keen on recently because D&T is so plains light. What are people's thoughts on toxic deluge or even nausea? I ended up discarding the idea of virtue's ruin because I want to hit revokers, and pyroclasm hasn't been amazing because people tend to keep their moms in against me. The revoker/thalia combination seems more problematic than decks playing meddling mages and canonists.

aside from the fact that we discussed the topic already a few pages back, you might have not thought through how you want to ever resolve BW -> Deluge against a deck with Wasteland + Thalia and still being able to spare lifepoints casting the 3cc sweeper. Nausea can not hit Meddling Mages, Delver, SFM, Cannonists, Aegis of the Gods or whatever bear/threat appears with 2 thoughness. Counter + hatebears is our real problem out of Patriot/Blade.dec's SB and not D&T, a deck which you should simply race and not tinker how to break free from Thalia with Cabal Rituals

[satyr]

It's the revision before the current OP list that still had 3 silences and 4 therapies. I'm trying to make a build with 3 silences and 4 therapies work, but after moving an infernal tutor to the board, I need to cut a card for a second cabal ritual, and I'm having difficulty choosing what I cut.

I don't think aegis is a problem that needs removal. We have warrens. I've never had problems with decks running meddling mages or non death and taxes builds running ethersworn canonists. Both decks are usually light on hard counters or any other form of disruption, and on the draw a silence walk on their turn 2 gives you 2 turns to assemble something that can win. They usually don't play more than 2 canonists, and you can play around meddling mage if you board well. If I'm worried about delver beats I have grapeshot. What I have difficulty dealing with are D&T draws of revoker and thalia on the draw game 2 if I mull to sub-optimal hand. While I appreciate that toxic deluge is terrible to cast, nausea is looking attractive because pyroclasm is not necessarily a guaranteed wipe.

[Jaycounet]

Hello

went to a small tournament this week end

succeed to make a draw against MUD !
no special stuff here just presure him with goblins the first game and take time to loose after 40 minutes lol ^^ (block all his creture with my goblin one by one he finish at 35 life :p)
and early goblin turn 1 make the second game quicker and win for me
and he couldnt win in aditional turn and me netiher because of chalice at 1

second match win against junk
nothing special early token game 1 for the win (he put shaman + jitte for the next turn but i kill his shaman with grapeshoot to attack again with goblins)
try to do the same the second game but took pernicious dead and canonist + dark confidant I had a burning wish in hand with enough mana open to get massacre but completly forgot that i've add this card in the side the same morning.
3rd game ad nauseam turn 1 for the game

third match shardless
2 times turn 1 goblin with finger cross to not getting golgari but it was ok

4th match rug Delver
succed to get enough mana to pass daze and pierce for 14 token turn 5 with no pressure
second game wass impossible got turbo mana + tutor i check his hand with 3 fow 1 pierce 1 daze 1 and stifle i couldn't win this one
3rd turn 2 for natural tendril without nothing special in his hand just duress daze turn before

5th match angain bug
turn one 14 token was enough
second game was just funny i've made the best missplay ever for the first time i ve try to not probe and instead i brainstorm
for info my hand was (land petal ponder empty brainstorm probe land) my brainstorm show me led led land I was so exited to make token shoot again
i just put back card for brainstorm (normally empty in the 2) and lotus led led crack lotus for ponder crack led and led to play empty from my top deck but ah ah in my exitment just forgot to put back empty who was in my hand ^^ and put back 2 land instead ... no hand loose
last was one turn 1 empty make the game

Really love this deck :)

have a nice week

[Lemnear]

It's the revision before the current OP list that still had 3 silences and 4 therapies. I'm trying to make a build with 3 silences and 4 therapies work, but after moving an infernal tutor to the board, I need to cut a card for a second cabal ritual, and I'm having difficulty choosing what I cut.

the list before the current in the OP didn't run Silence either, just saying. The Problem is that Silence needs more gold-lands that means less fetches aka slower t.hold and a slower deck overall which is a problem of you are already struggling against D&T

I don't think aegis is a problem that needs removal. We have warrens. I've never had problems with decks running meddling mages or non death and taxes builds running ethersworn canonists. Both decks are usually light on hard counters or any other form of disruption, and on the draw a silence walk on their turn 2 gives you 2 turns to assemble something that can win. They usually don't play more than 2 canonists, and you can play around meddling mage if you board well. If I'm worried about delver beats I have grapeshot. What I have difficulty dealing with are D&T draws of revoker and thalia on the draw game 2 if I mull to sub-optimal hand. While I appreciate that toxic deluge is terrible to cast, nausea is looking attractive because pyroclasm is not necessarily a guaranteed wipe.

You don't see the Problem. Silence can not beat a combination of counterspells + discard or counterspells and hatebears. Postboard Deathblade runs at least 3 FoW and a few Flusterstorms in addition to their discard + Snapcaster.Nausea isn't a guaranteed wipe if they run canonist and costs 4RB to Wish for and cast against Thalia. If you can not find a T1 combo against D&T, you can still Wish for Massacre and sit on it for a while as your D&T opponent won't overload the board anymore, resulting in more time. There is a difference in Masscacre costing 1 mana to cast against Thalia and Nausea costing 3. Mind that neither Nausea or Grapeshot can kill Canonist. You just lose to it without decent removal.

Edit: fantastic Jay! GZ

[seilaquem]

Hello, everybody,

I´ve been lurking around for quite some time and played the deck for about a year and a half. I had been thinking about moving for ant, but didn't want to buy my polluted deltas. but now i got them, i still play tes 'cause it's faster =)

loved the change off to silence, although i love the card =/, cause now it's equiped w/ a better manabase (cya, city of brass =X). also, the cabal rituals really made the cross between tes and ant i longed for.

anyways, last week i scored my second t4 playing the deck, after playing UWR delver for a while, to "learn to play fair".

reporting:

mono black control 2x1
sneak and show 2x1
merfolk 2x1
BUG delver ID (it was a friend of mine, and we thought we could make it through the T8. big mistake =X)
jund 2x1

lost to burn on t4 1x2 (pyrostatic pillar game 1 was really hurtful =/)

anyways, loving the deck the way it is, just hope to get to play silence again anytime soon, though I dont really miss the "painland"

i would like to thanks every1 here for the comments and idea exchanges, and bryant cook for writing such great articles and primer.

[paeng4983]

Will we see this in TES, or any storm deck in general?

[bennotsi]

Will we see this in TES, or any storm deck in general?

Copying a spell does not retrigger storm, so what is so important that you want to spend 2 mana and a card to copy it?

[Lemnear]

Will we see this in TES, or any storm deck in general?

Fork and Twincast are available since ages and never saw play in storm because of their cost. What use did you have in mind for this one?

[wonderPreaux]

Last night I tried out Lemnear's Pyromancer variant, here are my first impressions:

I like the manabase: all the fetches and such are very consistent, I never felt color-screwed w/o Gemstone Mine because 3 colors is pretty easy to manage.
The Pyromancer plan is pretty narrow: I don't see it being useful in anything other than a few delver matches and miracles. historically, this sorta parallels the past where siding multiple EtW was a thing, so I'm not too surprised overall.

Last night I actually did get to play against Miracles, against Joe Lossett, and I lost 1-2. game 1 I just won turn 1, game 2 I used some discard only to get caught by Counterbalance with FoW backup on my Pyroblast. I tried to land a Pyromancer, but he had Wear/Tear on top and a SDT to keep it there. Game 3 I had to mull to 5 (though that may have been a mistake, i'm not sure) and was taken apart by Counter-Top, never even saw Pyromancer.

I don't actually think Pyroblast is that good against Miracles, they can just hold up a counterspell on your turns, and then play Counterbalance later when they actually have the mana to defend it. Pyroblast really only seems good in conjunction with a lot of discard, which both the stock build and the build I'm testing have cut down on slightly. Though, I've also lost quite a few games waiting on Abrupt Decays that never showed up while Clique beat me to death, so I'm not sure if the reactive answers are good at all, it might be good to swap 1-2 of the Pyroblasts for Duress or something. Especially since discard is more proactive to synergize with Pyromancers. Generally, Joe Lossett's build is quite tough, given some of his tech choices and high level of experience.

I'll be trying again with this build, Wednesday night, maybe tonight

[Asthereal]

If they have Top, Counterbalance, Force and a blue card to pitch, you will probably just lose anyway. Try not to let that distract you from what are good cards and what aren't. I mean, if you had Decay instead of the Blast, you would have destroyed Counterbalance, but lost to the counterspells taking care of your combo turn.

Decay is the better card to get rid of Counterbalance and hate bears, but Pyroblast is easier on the mana base, and it can help counter Force of Will and its brothers. So the Blast is more versatile and easier to cast. The current lists by Bryant and Lemnear have very limited access, or none at all, to mana of any colour. This improves our average game, because we get to run more fetch, which dramatically improves our cantrips. The downside is that we don't/hardly get to play cards like Decay with the current setup. If the meta shifts back to Canadian Thresh as the dominant Delver deck, we will have to use Silence again, which will force us into Rainbow lands again, allowing us to use Decay again as well, moving back to something similar to the original list. It's a meta thing, but right now Blasts should be a tad better than Decays.

[wonderPreaux]

If they have Top, Counterbalance, Force and a blue card to pitch, you will probably just lose anyway. Try not to let that distract you from what are good cards and what aren't. I mean, if you had Decay instead of the Blast, you would have destroyed Counterbalance, but lost to the counterspells taking care of your combo turn.

Decay is the better card to get rid of Counterbalance and hate bears, but Pyroblast is easier on the mana base, and it can help counter Force of Will and its brothers. So the Blast is more versatile and easier to cast. The current lists by Bryant and Lemnear have very limited access, or none at all, to mana of any colour. This improves our average game, because we get to run more fetch, which dramatically improves our cantrips. The downside is that we don't/hardly get to play cards like Decay with the current setup. If the meta shifts back to Canadian Thresh as the dominant Delver deck, we will have to use Silence again, which will force us into Rainbow lands again, allowing us to use Decay again as well, moving back to something similar to the original list. It's a meta thing, but right now Blasts should be a tad better than Decays.

I do agree some configurations or hands from miracles are pretty unbeatable, my main gripe about Pyroblast compared to discard or Abrupt Decays is that sitting there with a red up for Pyroblast means I can't be aggressively trying to discard cards, resolve wishes, play Pyromancers, etc. Discard is the aggressive play, and Decay can go ahead and remove the Counterbalance after the fact. With Tropical Island, and the longer average game against Miracles, I think it's pretty feasible to have a green mana.

I do concede that in the games I lost to Miracles, their setup was above average, or my opener was pretty bad (it's hard to hit a critical mass of business when you have to mull to 5 :P), so I'll test a bit more before trying different configurations.

[Lemnear]

As long as Miracles plays Brainstorm to hide their Counterbalance from your discard, run at least 3 of them to topdeck, run several Cliques or have access to Enlightend Tutor as an response to Thoughtseize, discarded alone doesn't get the job done properly. I don't see a problem on tanking with a Pyroblast until they drop CB or cast their Clique in your upkeep so you can blast it for a HUGE tempo swing and combo right after that.

[Dr Brian Pepper]

So out of the pratice games ive been playing I included a Goblin war strike, and its really over performed. I always get hands where I only have a wish in my hand after I empty, and they die next turn

[Lemnear]

So out of the pratice games ive been playing I included a Goblin war strike, and its really over performed. I always get hands where I only have a wish in my hand after I empty, and they die next turn

Usually I empty my hand as well as the warrens if going for Goblins. This deck has no space for cute and situational win-more cards