Pauper Vine Storm is a combo deck that aims to point a lethal Rolling Thunder at the opponent's face. This is accomplished through powerful cards like Gush to net cards and enable rituals like Inner Fire. It then use the synergy between Tolarian Winds and Sprouting Vines to draw through the deck. After casting multiple copies Inner Fire and netting more cards, a lethal Rolling Thunder ends the game.
History
The Storm mechanic has had a colorful history in the game of magic. In pauper, it was most present in cards like Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens, and Temporal Fissure. Eventually, after the banning of all of these cards, storm based combo decks fell out of the format. An individual by the name of INS and a colleague of his eventually created what is now called Vine Storm. This helped revive spell based combo decks in the format. While Vine Storm may not be as strong as its predecessors, it still allows for intricate combo turns.
Why Play Vine Storm?
If you enjoy playing intricate and off the radar combo decks, then this is the deck for you. Pauper Vine Storm has the capability to go off as early as turn 4, but has more reliability the longer you wait. It gets to use powerful cards like Gush as well as great cantrips like Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm. Vine Storm has play styles similar to decks like Legacy High-Tide, where we try to set up a critical turn to go off. If any of these are things you look forward to in a game of magic, then Vine Storm may be right up your alley.
How it Works
The main engines behind pauper Vine Storm are the cards Gush and Inner Fire. These allow for the deck to net large amounts of cards and mana to combo off. The deck aims to set up a turn where it can build up a high storm count with cards like Gush and Inner Fire to cast Sprouting Vines. This gets the majority of the lands out of the deck while increasing our hand size. It then castsTolarian Winds to discard the majority of the lands in the deck and draw into gas to combo off. Here is an example of an ideal situation:
start off by tapping two Islands for 2 blue mana and then cast a Gush. Play your land drop for the turn and cast your second copy of Gush floating two more mana. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that you drew 1 Ash Barren, 2 lotus petal and 1 gush. (Storm = 2, 4 blue mana in pool, 12 cards in hand)
Cast Lotus Petal and then crack it for red mana. Use that to cast Inner Fire to generate 10 red mana. (Storm = 4, 1 blue mana in pool, 10 red mana in pool, 10 cards in hand)
At this point, you will cast 2 Lotus Petal leaving them un-cracked. (Storm = 7, 2 Blue, 1 Green, 8 Red floating, 8 cards in hand, 2 lotus petal in play)
Once Tolarian Winds has resolved, you will be drawing 15 cards. You've dumped 15 dead cards, and will most likely win from this position. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that you drew into the remaining copies of Manamorphose, Inner Fire as well as your one copy of Rolling Thunder. Assuming your opponent is at a reasonable life total, this should be the game.
Cantrips are a huge part of any combo deck, and this deck is no exception. Since our goal is to assemble multiple combo pieces and draw a lot of cards, we need to be as consistent as possible. The following cantrips are a great way to accomplish this task.
Preordain - One of the benefits that this card brings to the table is the ability to use it effectively without needing shuffle effects. This deck is limited on how many shuffle effects it can play, so reducing the need for them is great. Preordain helps make 1 land hands viable, and is great during the combo turn itself.
Brainstorm - This card brings a lot to the table. However, in order to play it to it’s fullest potential, your list must have ways to shuffle. This includes playing cards like Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic Expanse, Augur of Bolas, and Ponder. It is important to note that this card is very skill intensive, and learning to play it properly is crucial to the decks’ success. Not only is it a cantrip, but it can help put back combo pieces like Rolling Thunder, redundant copies of Inner Fire, and even combo with Sprouting Vines. This is a multi purpose all star and a must include in the deck.
Ponder - This is a solid cantrip. Being able to function as an additional shuffle effect for brainstorm is amazing, and the card is all around powerful. There is a reason it is banned and restricted in other formats.
Dig Spells
Dig Spells
Another option to consider in your card selection suite are dig spells.
Augur of Bolas - While there are spells like Impulse and Peer Through Depths in the format, Augur is arguably the best "dig spell" in the format. Augur is a 1/3 body that can block critical creatures. As a result this can end up buying us multiple turns in the game. Because Augur has the ability to do this, it should be played over Impulse and Peer Through Depths for your 2 mana "dig spell".
Card Draw
Card Draw
Card selection is important to this deck, however card advantage is crucial as well. Cards like Inner Fire and Tolarian Winds both rely on you having a large hand size to function properly.
Gush - This is a crucial card to the deck. You should play four of these. Not much else to be said other than gush is a hell of a card. There's a reason an entire book was written about it after all.
Accumulated Knowledge - On the surface, this card seems like an odd inclusion. However, it is a needed requirement for the deck to be able to function properly. One of the key things to note about this deck is that there are two phases to the combo. The first phase is setting up Tolarian Winds and Sprouting Vines to draw a substantial amount of cards, and the second is using the cards you've drawn to actually kill your opponent. A key concept that needs to be noted here is the idea of a "ceiling". After you've drawn your cards off Tolarian Winds, your hand size is often at fixed ceiling for the rest of the turn. This can be problematic because it means that the amount of mana we are netting off of Inner Fire is also at a fixed number. Accumulated Knowledge helps increase the ceiling by netting us cards during the second half of the combo turn. As a result, this is sort of acting as Gush by increasing our hand size and netting cards during the second half of the combo. An upside to Accumulated Knowledge is that it allows for us to go long in the control matchups and hit our needed land drops. It can also be used as bait for counter spells from the opponent.
Rituals / Color Producers
Rituals / Color Producers
In addition to all the ways to find cards, you need a way to cast them. Rituals serve this job quite well, as they generate all the mana needed to draw through your deck. The rituals in this deck are primarily red based, and serve to help you cast a giant fireball in addition to comboing off.
Inner Fire - This is a crucial card to the deck. If you’re going to draw through your deck and then throw a fireball at your opponent’s face, you’re going to need a way to generate copious amounts of mana. This is the best card in the format for that job. You should play 4 of this card.
Manamorphose - This is one of the best color filters / producers in the deck. It turns red mana into green and blue mana while replacing itself. In a sense, it is a free spell that helps us combo off. This should be a 4 of.
Lotus Petal - This is a key card to the deck. It provides mana of any color and is crucial to enabling fast kills, and allowing the deck to function.
Mana Base
Mana Base
This is a blue heavy deck, however you need to be able to cast red and green spells during the combo turn. The following cards get red and green mana to allow you to combo off.
Ash Barrens - A great fetch land and shuffle effect for this deck. Being able to get your red source immediately can be crucial in certain circumstances. Additionally, it has the benefit of being able to shuffle your library during the actual combo turn.
Evolving Wilds - A solid shuffle effect and mana fixer. While it is less powerful than Ash Barrens during the combo turn, it allows you to keep 1 land hands that Ash Barrens would force you to mulligan.
Basic Lands - Since Sprouting Vines needs to fetch basic lands, we need to play some number of them. In current lists, that number is 12. What is recommended is 11 basic islands, and 1 basic mountain. It is not recommended that you play any forests in the deck, as the only spell that is green is the card Sprouting Vines. The rest of the deck is primarily blue splashing red and it's not worth ruining our mana base to have a forest. Instead it would be better to get green mana off of cards like Manamorphose or Lotus Petal.
Win Conditions and Protection
Win Conditions and Protection
Being a combo deck you have to have some way to kill the opponent. This section will address possible win conditions as well as ways to protect the combo before going off.
Rolling Thunder - This is our win condition for the deck. An upside to this card is that it deals with hate cards like Standard Bearer and Coalition Honor Guard by allowing you to target them for 1 and the opponent for a million.
Conjurer's Bauble - In case your win condition ends up in the graveyard, this allows you to put it back into the deck. Additionally, it can get back things like Inner Fire if you need to increase the amount of mana you dump into your fireball. At the very least, it’s a one mana cycle that has very little drawback.
Gigadrowse - As a combo deck you need a way to make sure your combo goes off uninterrupted. Gigadrowse allows you to tap out your opponent on their end step allowing you to go off without fear on the next turn. While you do have to be on parity in terms of land drops in order for this card to be effective, it can allow you to win games that were not feasible otherwise. Additionally, it can act like a fog effect by tapping down possible attackers. An all around needed card for the deck.
Combo Pieces
Combo Pieces
This is a storm combo deck that aims to storm off and draw it’s entire library. Let’s talk about the cards that make this possible.
Tolarian Winds - On the surface this seems like a powerful card. However it has to built around to maximize its effectiveness. Playing it in conjunction withSprouting Vines and Gush allows you to cast a 2 mana Wheel of Fortune that often nets 14+ cards. It can also be viewed as Ad Nauseam in ANT or TES based on how it functions. It is important to note that there are rare cases where you can cast one copy, hold priority, and then cast the other copy hoping to find Sprouting Vines to cast in response to the one on the stack. This is addressed in the tips and tricks part of the primer, and can be a crucial line in winning games that were thought to be lost.
Sprouting Vines - This card looks pretty innocent on the surface. However, the synergy that it has with Tolarian Winds actually makes it quite an impressive card. It is important to note that since this is an instant, you can cast in on your opponent’s end step. This can sometimes net upwards on 7 or more lands depending on how your opponent’s turn went. Additionally, you can use this in conjunction with Brainstorm to net cards, or go for a natural kill if you have multiple Inner Fires in hand along with your fireball effect.
Cards to Avoid
There are a number of cards that you should not be playing. Often times these cards show up in searches of the deck, however you should avoid playing them despite what other lists indicate. I myself have played these cards and feel they are quite outdated or hurtful to the deck. If you are considering playing this deck, it is highly recommended you avoid playing these cards as they will weaken the deck.
Cards like Manamorphose, Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds, and Lotus Petal do a better job than this card in terms of mana fixing. Chromatic Star costs you a mana, and in the early game it does not help you set up your game plan. This card takes up slots that you can be using for better cards and is not what this deck wants.
Cards like Manamorphose and Lotus Petal do a better job than this card in terms of mana fixing. Basic forest hurts the deck overall, and is not needed. While it may feel weird not having it in the deck, we don't want to rely on it for casting spells. There is a multitude of combinations that will get us all three colors in this deck that we don't need it. Basic Forest makes gush worse, it only casts a single spell in the entire 75, and it weakens the deck overall. We should focus on being a Blue - Red deck first and foremost, and leave the green solely in Sprouting Vines. In terms of the combinations of cards that get us all 3 colors, here is a list of them:
with this in mind, don't play a forest in the mana base. It's not worth making your deck more inconsistent, and it's not worth cutting a better card from the mana base.
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
A powerful ritual on it's own and ban worthy in modern. The main reason we should not be playing this card is that it is not needed. Inner Fire does a better job than this card and playing it is incorrect in current builds. The bottom line is that it doesn't add enough mana to warrant playing it, and it is often a dead card.
A powerful ritual on it's own and ban worthy in modern. The main reason we should not be playing this card is that it is not needed. Inner Fire does a better job than this card and playing it is incorrect in current builds. The bottom line is that it doesn't add enough mana to warrant playing it, and it is often a dead card.
One tricky part of this deck is determining how the storm count relates to the number of basic lands you have in the deck. Let's set up a scenario where your deck plays 12 basics, 4 Evolving Wilds and 2 Ash Barren for its mana base. It is the middle of your combo turn, and your hand is the following:
- 2 Tolarian Winds,
- 2 Sprouting Vines,
- 2 Gigadrowse,
- 2 Evolving Wilds,
- 3 Islands.
Your total hand size is 11 cards. You have no permanents on the battlefield, and have already played your land drop for the turn. You have 2 blue floating, 10 red floating, 1 green floating, and the storm count is 7. At this point, you might think that it would be a good idea to cast Gigadrowse for 1 blue mana to add to the storm count. However in doing so, you are actually preventing yourself from digging deeper into your deck off Tolarian Winds. When you cast Gigadrowse the storm count becomes 8, then you cast Tolarian Winds into Sprouting Vines with the storm count now being 10. If you do the math, you'll realize that have 3 basics in your hand, which indicates that you only have 9 basics in your deck (12 basics total). While Gigadrowse did add 1 to the storm count, it didn't net you a land. Therefore you reduced your hand size by one, and thus reduced how much you can dig through your deck. This is something that is very important to keep in mind when playing the deck, as every card you see matters. On the flip side, if the storm count was at 6 instead of 7, casting Gigadrowse may have been appropriate as it netted you 1 more card off of Sprouting Vines.
There are times where you might draw your second copy of Inner Fire with a less than ideal number of cards in hand while going off. This might be off a Manamorphose, or a cantrip that you cast. Rather than cast Inner Fire for a less than optimal amount and then cast the combo, it is better to sequence things in a different order. In this case, cast Inner Fire holding priority. Then castSprouting Vines first to fill your hand with lands. Your inner fire will then resolve netting a substantial amount of mana. You can then cast Tolarian Winds and combo off.
There are times where you have to go for the combo and don't draw Sprouting Vines. Instead of having both halves of the combo, you happen to have 2 copies of Tolarian Winds along with dead cards. You might want to concede thinking that you fizzled however, you do have one option that grants you possibility of going off. Let's say that you have 2 Tolarian Winds, 1 Gigadrowse, 1 Gush, 2 Evolving Wilds, and 5 Islands. Your total hand size is 11 cards. You have no permanents on the battlefield, and have already played your land drop for the turn. You have 3 blue floating, 10 red floating, 1 green floating, and the storm count is 6. You can cast your first copy of Tolarian Winds and then while holding priority, cast your second copy. Your hand is now 9 cards, and you will get to draw 9 more. The second copy is now on the stack. If you happened to draw Sprouting Vines in those 9 cards, you can cast it before the second copy of Tolarian Winds resolves. This will allow you to fill up your hand, and therefore allow you to keep going. If you drew into a Brainstorm, you can use it to put cards from your hand back into your library to prevent discarding them to the Tolarian Winds that is on the stack.
If you have a Brainstorm on the turn you combo off, you can use it in conjunction with Sprouting Vines to net cards. Let's say that the storm count is at 10. You have 3 basic lands in hand, and have a total of 9 basics left in the deck (12 basics total in your 60 card MB). You can cast Sprouting Vines to up the storm count to 11. Since you have 3 land cards in hand, you will have 2 copies of Sprouting Vines that fail to find anything. Rather than let them fizzle, you can cast Brainstorm in response to the 10th copy, drawing 3 cards, and putting back 2 basic lands from your hand. The 10th and 11th copy of Sprouting Vines will resolve, getting the two lands you back with Brainstorm. This will make Brainstorm an Ancestral Recall as it netted you 3 cards for one mana. You can then cast the cards you drew off Brainstorm if possible, and then cast Tolarian Winds. This is a very powerful play, and it is important to take advantage of it when given the opportunity.
Your cantrips are very important. Always make sure to get the most out of them, and don't waste them. If you Preordain into two good cards and have a second Preordain in hand, save it until both cards are drawn. Only cast it if you feel that you have to race, or that you don't have the time to wait. One thing to note when playing Brainstorm is the timing of the card. If you are under no immediate pressure, it is often best to hold onto the card until you know what you need based on the matchup. The worst thing that can happen is being brainstorm-locked early on when you didn't have to cast it. There are a ton of specifics about Brainstorm that I could discuss, but this thread is on Pauper Vine Storm, and not how to play Brainstorm.
Sometimes, you will be forced to go off with only one half of the Sprouting VinesTolarian Winds combo, or sometimes having neither in hand. When you play the deck, it is very important to always look at the capability of your hand each turn, as well as noting how far you have dug through your deck at any given moment. Understanding how deep your hand can dig is very relevant when considering whether or not to combo off. For example, if you are playing against a deck with a reasonable amount of counter magic that it tapped out, it is worth considering if you should go for the kill even if you only have one half of the combo. If your hand can dig say 5 cards deep, determining whether or not this is enough, or if the game gets worse for you the longer it goes, are all important things to consider.
There are multiple things that you are looking for when you're trying to start the combo. In addition to having the combo of Tolarian Winds and Sprouting Vines, you are also looking for ways to generate red mana in cards like Lotus Petal or lands like Evolving Wilds to get a mountain, as well as how to get to a minimum of 5 mana to cast Tolarian Winds and Sprouting Vines. Understanding the role of each piece is crucial in determining whether or not you have the capability to combo off, as well as deciding if you should go for the combo if not under immediate pressure. Keep in mind that not every hand will be perfect. Knowing what your hand is capable of, as well as what it is missing, is very important.
Learning how to sideboard is Getting an idea on the possible cards that your opponent could bring in is a crucial part of this deck. For example, if you're playing against a white deck, there is the possibility that they may bring in effects that prevent damage like Circle of Protection: Red or Prismatic Strands. To combat this, you would side in a Flaring Pain.
Sideboarding
Knowing how to sideboard properly is a key part to playing any deck. I'll first address possible sideboard options that the deck could play, and what matchups they could be good in. After that, I'll list what my current sideboard is, and how I would sideboard for various matchups. Hopefully this will make the learning curve for the deck less steep, and will help create a starting point until the deck can further expand. I'm going about it this way due to the fact that the deck has not seen much play despite it having a lot of potential. Thus, I have had nothing to reference causing me to have to do most of the fine tuning and development myself along with some help from friends.
Possible Sideboard Cards
This section will be addressing various sideboard cards that the deck could use. Good or bad, hopefully this section will allow some insight into possible sideboard options for your Pauper metagame.
This is a must have card in the sideboard. Losing to things like Circle of Protection: White or Prismatic Strands is something that we just don't want to have occur. Having flashback is highly relevant due to the fact that we can discard it to Tolarian Winds and still be able to cast it.
The main role of Dispel is to allow us to fight opposing counterspells. Additionally, it is great for fighting sideboard cards from your opponent as well and even has uses against matchups like burn. If you expect your opponent to bring in things like hydroblast and pyroblast, then this is worth considering.
This is great for fighting various red spells that might cause us trouble. Not only is this a great sideboard card for decks like burn, goblins or RDW, but it also can act as removal against potent creatures like Kiln Fiend and Nivix Cyclops.
Another option to help us fight those pesky blue decks. Sometimes your opponent might have too many answers for us to fight through with counters such as Dispel. Gigadrowse allows us to beat multiple forms of permission and disruption by tapping out our opponent. Keep in mind that you do have to be on parity in terms of land drops for this card to be effective.
A nice card for grindy matchups. The flashback matters and it often is good against decks that use counter magic. If you are expecting hand disruption this card can allow you to rebuild your hand before going off.
This helps filter cards while slowing down aggressive decks. Most decks take out their removal post board so this is a good card to catch them off guard. We already play it mainboard, so having more in the sideboard can be useful in the aggressive matchups.
This section will be addressing various decks in the pauper metagame. It will address both favorable and unfavorable matchups and how to sideboard against them.
Looking into the Future, and Paper Pauper
Looking into the Future
This section will address addition of cards or removal of cards that could change the deck entirely. This includes bannings, cards to look out for in the future, as well as possible changes with paper commons that are not currently legal on Magic Online.
Additions
At the moment, it is very obvious that the deck is built to throw a giant fireball at our opponent's face. However, if we ever get another card card that could act as a win condition without costing a million mana, then one of the deck's restrictions will be lifted. One example of a card that could have an effect like this is Psychic Spiral. While this is not a common, we do have the ability to dump around 40 cards of our deck into our graveyard. This could allow us to mill our opponent rather than throwing a giant fireball at them. It does open us up to graveyard hate, but it would still be a big addition to the deck. Another card is Spiraling Embers. While this is a common, our deck cannot use it that effectively. We rarely get 20 plus cards in our hand, and it won't win that many games. If there is ever a card like it that is viable, than we may be able to work with it.
Bannings
With the introduction of cards like Foil into the format, some have argued that the card Gush will eventually get banned. Speculations aside, if and when this comes to fruition it will mean the death of Vine Storm as an archetype. There is no way this deck can function without the card Gush. If Gush goes, so does Vine Storm.
Paper Commons
One of the biggest commons for this deck is Merchant Scroll. However, this is not legal online at the moment and thus can only be used in paper tournaments if allowed. It has the ability to tutor up several of the needed combo pieces, and would be a welcome addition.
Additionally, the card Mystic Remora would be a great sideboard option for the deck. It helps draw cards against aggressive decks, or forces them to slow down and not cast spells. Either of these is usually favorable for you. It has uses in control or midrange matchups, and is an overall powerful card.
References
Here are some references that are helpful and or interesting.
(8/21/16) Note: Updated the primer. Added some more info, and reorganized some things. Saved the previous iteration of the primer for reference.
(8/26/16) Note: I'm going to be adding info on side boarding for the deck into the primer. Thanks to Paranoyy for helping with the sideboard development and match up analysis.
(9/1/16) Note: I've added some things to the side boarding tab. It's not complete yet, but I don't see the harm in adding some information. I will be finishing the rest of the side boarding very soon.
(9/9/16) Note: I have finished about 75 percent of the side boarding guide, as well as updated my personal list. Once that is done, I feel that the primer will be in decent shape.
(10/1/16) Note: I've added an additional section to the primer in "Looking into the Future and Paper Commons". I will finish the side boarding guide when time is available.
(12/17/16) Note: I've updated certain areas of the primer. This includes deck lists and card choice info. More will be done in the future.
(3/5/17) Note: Added some sections and removed some stuff that was outdated.
(5/17/18) Note: Fixed Some broken images, updated some stuff.
(12/17/18) Note: Updated the primer. Fixed broken images and Removed a lot of the cards that are outdated. Presented a clean and up to date list that I have had the most success with.
Hi Raptor! Finally someone that talks about this deck, I have just a question: which list is the most competitive? I played the second one, without Rite of Flames and with the addition of Mystical Teaching and Seething Song but I never really win a game ; I think major fault is mine and not about the deck, but it seems to be a less optimized list compared to the other 2..
In terms of which list is most competitive, I'd say that is up in the air at the moment. The deck has been around for a while but has yet to put up any major results, so it's hard to know which shell is the best. Hopefully this thread will allow for more discussion about the deck, so it can be better tuned. In terms the teachings list that you addressed, I've noticed that it is much slower than the rite of flame version when it comes to the combo turn, but it has more staying power. If you want a list that is all in on the combo and aims to kill as early as turn 4, then I'd recommend the rite of flame version. One thing I would also recommend is to watch I-N-S pilot the deck. His game play offers some good insight into the deck, and helped me learn some tricks with it. I'd also suggest jamming a bunch of goldfish games with the deck as well. This will let you get a better understanding of how capable the deck is at going off at various stages in the game.
Here is one list I'm working on currently. The mainboard blasts are actually not as bad as I thought they would be, and help a lot in the blue match ups.
I have just 2 questions: Instead of Pyroblast, Dispel can do the same thing in a counter-war but can also help versus lot of deck like aggro stompy or affinity; why you choose Pyro in the main?
and the second question is: why Izzet Boilworks in SB?
It is more of a meta game choice than anything else. Drake combo decks are quite frequent in my area, as well as mono blue delver. Having a way to stop Peregrine Drake, as well as dealing with disruption like Spellstutter Sprite and Counterspell felt quite good. The fact that it puts blue players on edge is also nice, since they have more to fear against a deck that main boards pyroblast. I'm sure dispel has more reach against non blue decks, but I always felt that those were a bit easier since it's more about pulling off the combo, and not about having to deal with disruption and pull of the combo, at least for game 1 anyways. Pyroblast might be a bit narrow, but if the metagame shifts, then dispel or arcane denial would most likely be the choice. Izzet Boilerworks is in the sideboard for match-ups where I might want to have the ability to go long. If I'm playing against a teachings deck, I want to be able to stay close on parity when it comes to land drops. Boilerworks helps me accomplish this.
So, if anyone wants to have some fun at playing Magic, then you need to play a combo deck, at least one time!
I love combo decks in Pauper that are not Familiar/Drake combos. Why? Because they are so clunky and hilarious to play even when you fail to combo out. Sure, 99% of the time they are not going to win you any tourney but you will enjoy that time, for sure.
Been doing some solo games and you only need 2 or 3 to understand that Brainstorm is SO BAD! It get´s you locked down so easily! With that in mind I only want scry effects, so I play 4 Preordain and Impulse. I don´t like Ponder either because I don´t want to shuffle what I send to the bottom. So, for now, I´ve taken out the Brains, Gigadrowse and one Tolarian-Sprout in order to make room for a playset of probes and impulses.
So, with this build (mono islands) I´m tracking my turns and allways try to combo on turn 4, wich I´ve done in several times (more than 50% of the time). But whe are talking about game situations soooo narrow that even a simple Daze would ruin you. On the other hand, I think that in most of the real matches you can´t whait more than 4 turns and not die for it.
So, if anyone wants to have some fun at playing Magic, then you need to play a combo deck, at least one time!
I love combo decks in Pauper that are not Familiar/Drake combos. Why? Because they are so clunky and hilarious to play even when you fail to combo out. Sure, 99% of the time they are not going to win you any tourney but you will enjoy that time, for sure.
Been doing some solo games and you only need 2 or 3 to understand that Brainstorm is SO BAD! It get´s you locked down so easily! With that in mind I only want scry effects, so I play 4 Preordain and Impulse. I don´t like Ponder either because I don´t want to shuffle what I send to the bottom. So, for now, I´ve taken out the Brains, Gigadrowse and one Tolarian-Sprout in order to make room for a playset of probes and impulses.
So, with this build (mono islands) I´m tracking my turns and allways try to combo on turn 4, wich I´ve done in several times (more than 50% of the time). But whe are talking about game situations soooo narrow that even a simple Daze would ruin you. On the other hand, I think that in most of the real matches you can´t whait more than 4 turns and not die for it.
Have anyone done more testing with this deck?
I've been playing around with it. I can agree with you that Brainstorm feels pretty bad sometimes. Either you draw 3 good cards and have a evolving wilds, or you get brainstorm locked. You need to have fetch-lands to make the card good, however things like evolving wilds slow the deck down. I like the package of 4 ponder 4 preordain 2 peer through depths, but I can understand why you don't like ponder. In terms of trying to always combo on turn 4, I don't think that's the right thing to do. There are plenty of matches where you can wait later to combo. I've had multiple games where it's impossible for me to combo out on turn 4, so I don't think forcing it each game is a good strategy. What list are you playing at the moment? It would be nice to see more takes on the deck.
I´m just forcing myself to combo off on turn 4 because I´m playing solo matches and feel like aggro/burn decks will give you 4 turns or so. But if I´m on a real match I will allways wait as much as possible.
I feel like allways want to be on the draw (extra card) and Impulse allows you to go for and dig what you need while at the same time move away what you don´t need. On the other hand Gitaxian Probe is a "free" cantrip, one of the most precious things for this deck. Not just because it gives you a card, but it also ticks up your storm number and that is not something to bypass (I´ve found that with Storm = 8 you can get it done, but you still have enough lands in your deck to draw and get stucked. Usually with 10/11 Storm you are allways going to have what you need to keep going).
On the other hand, Rite of Flame is giving me a hard time. I never feel it´s a bad card (It´s a good ramp spell giving you +4 red the fourth copy, it summs storm for only 1 mana while allways gives you more than what you have spent and in many times it has been my heroe giving me those extra mana I needed to go off). But, on the other hand, I would NEVER pick it with an Impulse over any other cantrip or combo piece unlees I´m searching for a mana source desperately. I still have to playtest without it in order to have a feeling of a deck with more cantrips and less ramp.
2.The things that don't work or are subpar are several.
a. First of all, if you are about to combo and want to save blue mana from Islands (for cantrips but also for e.g. post-boardDispel), you'd rather cast Rite of Flame first to use it to pay Inner Fire as much as you can. In doing so, though, you are one card down for IF. This matters because, in order to go off successfully, this deck needs to retain hand size as much as possible (IF, Tolarian Winds) *and* mana. This sequence makes the first go down by 1 every time, though. Even Lotus Petal would pose the same problem.
This is very true. Hand size can be an issue with the deck. I tried words of wisdom to help accommodate this issue, but I'm not sure if it's the best way to go.
b. Playing a manabase with Mountain and Forest does not allow you to play double Gush or turn four, which is the best avenue to maximize the power of the deck (yes, Gush is indeed the backbone of it all to my disbelief). Running Evolving Wilds also implies a loss of mana usage in those setup turns where you could cantrip to sculpt your hand. Last but not least, Mountain and Forest lower the power of Gigadrowse, which is realistically your only tool to slow down linear decks and protect yourself (albeit only partially) from blue decks' disruption.
I agree that a forest is a bad way to go with the deck. If the deck could play 17 islands and make the mana work, I think it would be great. The list that I play usually has 1 mountain and 3 fetches. I've done this for a number of reasons. First, as you said, brainstorm is really bad without fetches. If you can make brainstorm work, then the majority of combo decks would want to play it. The fetches are there to help make brainstorm work, as it can be a great asset in making the deck work. It is important to note that there is a trade off going on here. You have less lands to get off sprouting vines, and you do have one land that Gigadrowse can't use. The main reason why I have the mountain in the mana-base is to allow the deck to have more slots. When I initially played the deck, I ran 4 stars. However, they felt really bad, and didn't let you recover or get ahead when you wanted to. I decided to cut them and instead use 3 fetches and 1 mountain as a sort of replacement for them which would allow me to get 4 more slots for other cards. I'm not sure if it's the right way to go, but that was the thought at the time.
c. Kaervek's Torch is a bad win condition. Even if you manage to chain the Fire + Vines + Winds sequence, netting you 10-12+ fresh new cards, you will start using your mana to proceed churning through the deck. In goldfishing practice, there have been times when I used the full four IFs plus Rites of Flame and found myself barely with 17-18ish mana, thus unable to one-shot kill an opponent at full life.
I totally agree. If the deck could get a new win condition, that would lift a big restriction off of it, and allow for more innovation in the deck.
d. This deck can't structurally be but a turn four combo deck. I think the imperative should be to find a maindeck configuration that allows to get to turn four with IF plus Gush as consistently as possible. That could imply firing IF with those Islands, though, in case Rite of Flame isn't there.
I can see that being a good starting point.
These are the things I came up with:
Mana-fixing: Chromatic Star and Chromatic Sphere would be the perfect cards that'd allow to play a manabase made entirely out of Islands and to start going off on turn four from Islands only, allowing the aforementioned double Gush. They are preventive, so you can cast them and have them sitting there early on. They also turn into green, helping in taking the stress off Morphose in enabling Vines. Another important feature is that they can convert mana from red produced by IF and Rites, which is crucial for those spots where you e.g. cast a Winds using your last blue mana and are only left with red mana and. It's very important to be able to filter mana from that point on, otherwise you just brick.
Brainstorm: I want to be able to play my cantrips fluently mid-combo, but before that stage as well. Without fetchlands, Brainstorm loses a lot of its power and puts you at risk of BS-locking yourself. Yes, the cards put on top may be shuffled away by Preordain, Impulse and even Ponder, but you don't always have those ready. The trick with Vines on stack is cute, but not really quintessential to grant success whilst going off.
Given I want the deck to behave like this:
t1: Island, Preordain/Star/Sphere. This turn must not be wasted. By playing 12 one-drops, the statistical chances of doing something are decent.
t2: Island, Peer/Impulse/Star+Cantrip/other. You keep sculpting your hand.
t3: Island, other cantrips (instant/sorcery speed) or Gigadrowse.
t4: Island or Gush, replaying Island, attempt to go off if coast is clear + right cards in hand. (Against Daze decks this would turn into turn five, but that is putting even more salt in the wound).
I think all of these are valid points, and all pinpoint areas that the deck could use improvement in. Hopefully the deck can get something to address these issues in the future.
That said, this is the list I came to:
17 Island
4 Chromatic Star
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Manamorphose
4 Preordain
4 Impulse
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Inner Fire
4 Rite of Flame
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
3 Gigadrowse
---------------
I assume you meant to add 4 gush somewhere? Maybe take out 4 spheres and add 4 gush. I think that would make the deck solid.
Unfortunately, the Rite of Flame + IF "inconvenience" is still there. It would be solved by cutting Rites altogether, but at that point the deck would only rely on IF as its way to generate mana and it simply wouldn't be enough. Regarding the combo kill: Spiraling Embers is an option I thought about to not need twenty+ mana like Torch does, but I believe it wouldn't work. It would work under the same conditions of IF, with the difference that you can use IFs more freely to net a surplus of some mana mid-combo, whereas Embers would require to get to a spot where cards in hand are 20+, which is nighly impossible to pull off given that Winds and rituals always put you down a card for every one of them that gets cast.
I tried embers in the past, and unfortunately it bombed really hard. Something like spiral seems to be the way to go.
Unfortunately, I believe that without Grapeshot the deck has to rely on hoping that Psychic Spiral gets downgraded to common in future EMAs reprints for the deck to become more reliable.
The deck, however, is interesting. I thought about the possibility of adding Goblin Electromancer, as it would work as a mega-ritual for all the key spells of the deck (which, conveniently, feature colorless mana in their casting cost). However, making Electromancer work would require red lands (to go Electromancer > Ritual out of nowhere), thus defeating the playability of Gush and consequently the strength of the IF/Vines/Winds engine.
Building combo decks is hard these days, damn!
For sure haha. I thought about your input yesterday, and I came up with a list that uses merchant scroll. I think that scroll has a home in this deck and helps hold it together. here is a list that I made during testing. I know scroll is not legal on mtgo, but if it ever becomes legal, I think the deck can use it quite well. I'm not sure if 4 is correct. I liked 3 copies, but I have limited testing so I'm not sure.
I'm going to hop on this too. Innovative deckbuilding and ideas is my drift. Any thoughts on Goblin Electromancer? Yes, it's vulnerable to removal, but the payoff is that if it's sticks, that's a lot of tight maneuvering shaved off. He's good in Modern Storm, which is a format with arguably more removal and disruption than Pauper, and we don't have a lot to do before turn 3-4. Goblin speeds the deck considerably, which helps against Drake and super aggro decks. Also playing a Kiln Fiend like card (Nivix Cyclops survives Bolt) can give us a secondary win condition by giving us a "storm" outlet in case Kaervek isn't enough.
How does this do against Drake, Delver and Affinity?
I'm going to hop on this too. Innovative deckbuilding and ideas is my drift. Any thoughts on Goblin Electromancer? Yes, it's vulnerable to removal, but the payoff is that if it's sticks, that's a lot of tight maneuvering shaved off. He's good in Modern Storm, which is a format with arguably more removal and disruption than Pauper, and we don't have a lot to do before turn 3-4. Goblin speeds the deck considerably, which helps against Drake and super aggro decks. Also playing a Kiln Fiend like card (Nivix Cyclops survives Bolt) can give us a secondary win condition by giving us a "storm" outlet in case Kaervek isn't enough.
How does this do against Drake, Delver and Affinity?
Game one against drake is not too bad. If they don't know what you are playing- which they often do not- they will tap out for a mull drifter and then you can go for the kill. The deck has a lot of sorcery speed draw, so if you can find a window you will be fine. Gigadrowse is also solid against the deck because it plays a high number of bounce lands. For games 2 and 3, they will bring in their blast effects, so it is mostly knowing how to board and maneuver around those cards, and finding a window. It is possible for them to kill you with the combo at any time once they get to 5 mana, so that is something to keep in mind. In the games I've played they rarely go for it on turn 5 if I have some blue mana open game one, but they will jam it asap in g2 and g3. From the games I've played, it feels like a 50/50 matchup.
Affinity game one is all about racing. You need to dig for the combo and go off before they have you dead. Sometimes they get the nut draw which is hard for any deck to beat in general, but when they don't, or of they stumble on mana in the early game, you usually have enough time to kill them. Game 2 and 3 they will bring in their blast effects, so you need to find a window or go off with dispel backup. I've played this matchup a number of times and it has gone both ways. G1 sometimes I kill them turn 4, or sometimes they kill me on turn 4. Game 2 I go off with dispel backup, and then sometimes I'm forced to go off without it and they have the counter. I never found it to be an unwinnable matchup by any means, I usually bring in some number of dispels and hope they get there.
Delver is where things get dicey. Mono blue delver is by far the worst matchup for the deck. They have daze, CS, spellstutter and a fast clock with delver. It is a very tough matchup for the deck, and it always feels like you are the dog. The deck struggles to pass the "delver test" as it were, but I suppose that is what a lot of decks in the format have to deal with. I rarely win this matchup, and I feel lucky to get a game. Things have to really go your way to win the matchup. Maybe I'm not playing the matchup correctly, but that is how the matchup feels when I play it.
Other variants of delver are not as bad. The new grixis delver is okay, since the mana can be wonky at times allowing you to go off without needing gigadrowse. UB angler delver is also not as bad as you can play around them having CS and Deprive. If they don't have double blue, I often go for it as they rarely play other counters outside of CS and deprive main board. If they land an early delver, and then an early angler, things might get dicey, but otherwise you have enough time to assemble what you need. I have not played against UG delver though, so I can't really comment on how that matchup goes. I'm guessing it's not as bad as mono U, but worse that UB and grixis, but I would have to test to see.
EDIT: on a sidenote, how do you feel about apathy as a sb option?
Here is a new variant that I am trying. I'm trying out different cantrips and seeing how they fair. so far probe has not been too bad. I think the deck needs scroll to be viable though.
It has been okay so far. It does open the deck up to gy hate, which can be unfortunate. I don't think this is too much of a problem though, since I would rather they spend mana on gy hate than on a discard or counter spell.
I took a hiatus from MTG for about half a year, but I missed this deck. So I've been playing lately, and messing around with the deck's construction. I decided to check out the forums to see if anyone else has been working on the deck, and came across this thread. It's also been a couple years since I've logged in to MTGSalvation at all (due to the vast amount of stupid trolls), but I thought it was worthwhile to log in again and post here because, Raptor_56, I appreciate how hard you're trying here.
I'm currently on maindeck AK and 4 Brainstorm as well. This is my list:
I have been running this on MTGO, and also testing (through solitaire) Ash Barrens in place of the fetches as a potential alternative if/when it becomes a thing in Pauper. So far, my conclusion is that it has a large amount of upside for fixing Brainstorms in the middle of a combo turn, as well as enabling turn 1 BS into turn 2 upkeep shuffle. Its primary downside is that it leads to more mulligans--though that becomes less dangerous in an AK build. I think an 18 land build surely can support 4 Ash Barrens, and it makes the deck a lot more consistent beyond the mulligan.
On sideboarding:
I run Arcane Denial and Condescend out of the board for times when I want to take the Rites out against some of the slower match-ups. I like using a Denial on my own spell for +1 CA and I like that Condescend goes well with Brainstorm. I'd like to maximize BS's potential if possible.
I actually learned about Outwit from here, and I'm glad I tried it out. I like niche sideboard cards that work very well in a small number of match-ups. You can count on it against a UB deck with Duresses and Curses, which are the only things you need to counter, and then it's obviously good against Burn.
Other than that, most of my board is pretty typical stuff. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that there is a thread somewhere on this deck. Cya round!
I took a hiatus from MTG for about half a year, but I missed this deck. So I've been playing lately, and messing around with the deck's construction. I decided to check out the forums to see if anyone else has been working on the deck, and came across this thread. It's also been a couple years since I've logged in to MTGSalvation at all (due to the vast amount of stupid trolls), but I thought it was worthwhile to log in again and post here because, Raptor_56, I appreciate how hard you're trying here.
I'm currently on maindeck AK and 4 Brainstorm as well. This is my list:
I have been running this on MTGO, and also testing (through solitaire) Ash Barrens in place of the fetches as a potential alternative if/when it becomes a thing in Pauper. So far, my conclusion is that it has a large amount of upside for fixing Brainstorms in the middle of a combo turn, as well as enabling turn 1 BS into turn 2 upkeep shuffle. Its primary downside is that it leads to more mulligans--though that becomes less dangerous in an AK build. I think an 18 land build surely can support 4 Ash Barrens, and it makes the deck a lot more consistent beyond the mulligan.
On sideboarding:
I run Arcane Denial and Condescend out of the board for times when I want to take the Rites out against some of the slower match-ups. I like using a Denial on my own spell for +1 CA and I like that Condescend goes well with Brainstorm. I'd like to maximize BS's potential if possible.
I actually learned about Outwit from here, and I'm glad I tried it out. I like niche sideboard cards that work very well in a small number of match-ups. You can count on it against a UB deck with Duresses and Curses, which are the only things you need to counter, and then it's obviously good against Burn.
Other than that, most of my board is pretty typical stuff. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that there is a thread somewhere on this deck. Cya round!
Nice to hear from the creator himself. ^^ I like your list, it looks sweet. I like the addition of rolling thunder. I think it might be better than torch in the sideboard, since it deals with stuff like standard bearer and what not. In terms of Ash Barrens, I think it would be good as a singleton. I think a good mana base would be 13 islands, 1 mountain, 3 evolving wilds, 1 ash barren. I would like the deck to ideally have 18 lands for the mana base, so if we could get one more open slot, then we might be able to make it work. Glad to hear you're still trying out the deck.
On a side note, how do you feel about this as a sideboard?
I have been trying this out for a while and it feels okay. (EDIT: I replaced a torch with a rolling thunder in the board since that seems better) I think the deck needs a base for the sideboard, and it would be great to hear your input.
Yeah Rolling Thunder is essentially 1 more mana (which is almost negligable) to deal with Standard Bearers, and occasionally you can Gush-->Inner Fire and just kill 3 things to survive. The counter-resistance from Torch is useless, so I dumped it back in Spring before I took my hiatus.
Okay, onto your sideboard: Honestly, I like all of the cards in it. It's easy to see that they each hold a purpose, and there is pretty clear overlap between some of the different cards (beyond just the hydros and BEBs being functionally similar). I think a bigger question is: what are your board plans? Because I think there are good arguments for whichever anti-aggro cards you want to bring, but my personal struggle is knowing what I can feasibly cut for those Withdraws. You know? That was always a big problem with the deck (at least, for me) earlier in the year.
Anyways, I also want to point out that I have tested Withdraw and Lethargy Trap after seeing those cards in this thread, and there were some times that they put in work. Right now, I'm kind of in a place where I want to know whether I can take out Rites or a TWinds or something else against those aggressive decks, the ones where you have to stall them a turn or 2 to win on the draw. I think that's where you either want a Withdraw/Trap/Gigadrowse to stall a team and take a time walk or two, or you want cantripping stall tactics that can add up to a turn or 2 while cycling into some combo fuel. Frankly, I don't know what's right. I think you have a good plan with what you're doing, so long as you aren't diluting your combo too much when you bring it in. That's the problem I've been having, anyways.
I bring this in against heavy aggro decks. A prime example of this is mono green stompy. If you can bounce two creatures, you often get to time walk them. They have to spend their next turn setting things up, and they don't get to advance their board. It can also be used defensively which is nice as well. I often take out two gigadrowse for this card, as I have found that the card is not good against aggressive decks. I would rather pay two mana early on to buy time and spend the rest of the time digging, rather than have a turn where I can't use 4 mana to dig because I have to hold it up for gigadrowse.
I bring this in against any deck that has hand disruption, burn, or a curse I care about. In terms of the matchups, this includes decks like MBC, orzhov, RB midrange and teachings. It really depends on the deck I am facing in terms of boarding. For decks like MBC, I bring all 3 in, but against decks like burn or teachings I will often bring in 1 - 2 at most. I would have to go more in depth for each matchup, but I usually end up taking out gigadrowse, rite of flame, vines, winds, or a petal. It all depends on the matchup.
This also includes REB and BEB, but those are a bit redundant with the other blasts and they do the same things for the most part. These are for red and blue decks, or decks that might have blasts out of the board. I will often take out one ritual effects, and then add them in if I am against a blue deck. If I am against burn or anything non blue, I just take out 3 gigadrowse and I am good to go.
This is for token decks, elves, or anything that goes wide. I usually board out 2 gigadrowse, and see what I can do. I like to keep one drowse in on occasion, but if I feel it will be bad, then all three will go.
This is for the control matchup, or any game that will go super long. I want more land drops, and this gives me more land drops. I like it a lot. I will board out a ritual effect for it, since it usually makes up for it if i get it out.
This is for any matchup where there are problematic permanents. This includes decks like blitz, mill etc. A good catch all and pretty versatile. Really depends on the matchup for me to figure out the boarding.
This is mostly here as another win con that deals with some hate. I'm not sure I really need it, but until I can think of a better card to put in it's place I guess it will stay. In all honesty I think you might be right with just playing it main board and going from there. Against decks like mill, it is nice to have two cards that kill them to prevent a blowout or something. But that is not likely to happen anyways. If it was cut, what would you put in it's place?
Thanks for the board plans. I tend to board like you do: I move Gigadrowses out for more match-up relevant interaction/stall cards, and when I bring in extra stuff I take out Rites and then start shaving combo pieces.
It's definitely safer to board a second win-con, especially against mill with Jace's Erasure. I think it's fine. Right now, I'm eschewing a boarded back-up win condition because I just want to test with more sideboard cards in the practice room. I think it's probably better to have the backup so you have a lower chance of getting wrecked against mill, but vs most of the other decks I don't think it's necessary to have a 2nd win con. My reasoning is that I'm playing 4 Brainstorm and 2 Conjurer's Baubles, and I don't board any of those out (especially vs mill--but in general I've completely quit boarding out baubles).
If I wanted to replace Rolling Thunder, the card I would most likely pick is Gorilla Shaman. That's one of those cards that I just don't own, but Affinity can be such a pain in the neck that I could see rolling 2-4 mox monkeys and just killing their dreams with it (especially with ritual support). Or, if not mox monkey, I'd want some other card that's so devastating in a particular match-up that it makes up for sometimes just losing to mill or duress+bojuka bog when I don't have a second win condition. If I play anything where product is on the line, I'll be putting the spare Rolling Thunder back into the board.
I'm going to do some more testing with Withdraw and Repeal and see where my head's at for aggro match-ups. It was really helpful to see how you're boarding; I'm going to take it into serious consideration while I try to pin down what works.
Double posting here because edits are harder to notice.
I think we need a more cohesive plan against aggro than just bringing in some stall tactics. Fog and bounce effects typically buy about one turn, but bringing in more than 3-4 of them starts to dilute the combo--and then there's also the fact that casting a tempo spell means not casting a spell to sculpt a better combo hand. So I think we either need stall tactics that double time walk (like Moment's Peace or a legit board sweeper) or we need a different plan in general. I'm considering the idea of something like Gurmag Angler coupled with bounce spells: put a road block out there, force them to trade board position for damage, and bounce the unblocked attackers. Withdraw would be really good for that: if they swing with 3 guys and they're tapped out, Angler can eat one while Withdraw bounces the other 2. Or if they try to kill your Angler, you Withdraw one of their guys and then use the soft part of Withdraw on your own Angler. Obviously Angler goes into another color and requires delving, but the point is to have a good blocker out there--it could be anything. I'm cool with winning on turn 8 against aggro if I've taken over the board for most of the game.
Anyway, that's where my head's at after a few dozen more games.
Double posting here because edits are harder to notice.
I think we need a more cohesive plan against aggro than just bringing in some stall tactics. Fog and bounce effects typically buy about one turn, but bringing in more than 3-4 of them starts to dilute the combo--and then there's also the fact that casting a tempo spell means not casting a spell to sculpt a better combo hand. So I think we either need stall tactics that double time walk (like Moment's Peace or a legit board sweeper) or we need a different plan in general. I'm considering the idea of something like Gurmag Angler coupled with bounce spells: put a road block out there, force them to trade board position for damage, and bounce the unblocked attackers. Withdraw would be really good for that: if they swing with 3 guys and they're tapped out, Angler can eat one while Withdraw bounces the other 2. Or if they try to kill your Angler, you Withdraw one of their guys and then use the soft part of Withdraw on your own Angler. Obviously Angler goes into another color and requires delving, but the point is to have a good blocker out there--it could be anything. I'm cool with winning on turn 8 against aggro if I've taken over the board for most of the game.
Anyway, that's where my head's at after a few dozen more games.
If you want early blockers, would something like sea gate oracle not work? what about calcite snapper?
Out of curiosity, what is the consensus on thought vessel in the sb? that card seems interesting. I don't think we need it, but I'm gonna throw it out there anyways.
On the topic of thought vessel,Library of Leng is just way better.
On the topic of a plan against aggro, I think outracing them is the right plan, using simian spirit guides and eot word of wisdom to increase your pace.
"One mistake I see people make sometimes is to play less than four of their combo card, because it’s “slow” or “doesn’t do anything outside of the combo.” I remember seeing a lot of lists with three Splinter Twins, for example. This is just stupid—if you can’t accept having dead Splinter Twins in your hand, then play a different deck. The amount of games you’ll lose because you didn’t draw any of those is much greater than the number of times you’ll get Twin-Flooded (also look at Estratti, he has six!)."
You can consistently turn 4 combo with Simians and a tight list, but sometimes racing aggro gets complicated by them having Pyroblast or Dispel or Duress, especially vs anything red or Affinity. These are commonly played cards that don't hurt aggro's tempo much (if at all), but can completely shut down a combo turn before it gets going. This is why I would argue that Affinity is a rather poor post-board match-up.
As far as hand size goes, I tend to just put artifacts on the table or pitch Rite of Flames when I go over 7.
On the topic of thought vessel,Library of Leng is just way better.
On the topic of a plan against aggro, I think outracing them is the right plan, using simian spirit guides and eot word of wisdom to increase your pace.
"One mistake I see people make sometimes is to play less than four of their combo card, because it’s “slow” or “doesn’t do anything outside of the combo.” I remember seeing a lot of lists with three Splinter Twins, for example. This is just stupid—if you can’t accept having dead Splinter Twins in your hand, then play a different deck. The amount of games you’ll lose because you didn’t draw any of those is much greater than the number of times you’ll get Twin-Flooded (also look at Estratti, he has six!)."
Thoughts?
I can see where he is coming from. The issue that I am having with the deck is that I'm low on slots. If I add vines and winds I'm forced to cut two cards. I have seen a lot of lists cut gigadrowse or only have one copy. While I understand that this allows for you to go off easier, it does forfeit game one to blue decks, which is something I don't really enjoy.
I'm trying barrens as a one of to see how it goes. I tried 3 with this list and it kept screwing me over. If I play 17 lands, I find that barrens tends to screw me over with mulligans more than I would like. It helps when going off, but I'm not sold on the card yet. I feel that some lists use is better than others.
History
The Storm mechanic has had a colorful history in the game of magic. In pauper, it was most present in cards like Grapeshot, Empty the Warrens, and Temporal Fissure. Eventually, after the banning of all of these cards, storm based combo decks fell out of the format. An individual by the name of INS and a colleague of his eventually created what is now called Vine Storm. This helped revive spell based combo decks in the format. While Vine Storm may not be as strong as its predecessors, it still allows for intricate combo turns.
Why Play Vine Storm?
If you enjoy playing intricate and off the radar combo decks, then this is the deck for you. Pauper Vine Storm has the capability to go off as early as turn 4, but has more reliability the longer you wait. It gets to use powerful cards like Gush as well as great cantrips like Ponder, Preordain, and Brainstorm. Vine Storm has play styles similar to decks like Legacy High-Tide, where we try to set up a critical turn to go off. If any of these are things you look forward to in a game of magic, then Vine Storm may be right up your alley.
How it Works
The main engines behind pauper Vine Storm are the cards Gush and Inner Fire. These allow for the deck to net large amounts of cards and mana to combo off. The deck aims to set up a turn where it can build up a high storm count with cards like Gush and Inner Fire to cast Sprouting Vines. This gets the majority of the lands out of the deck while increasing our hand size. It then castsTolarian Winds to discard the majority of the lands in the deck and draw into gas to combo off. Here is an example of an ideal situation:
Hand: Gush, Gush, Tolarian Winds, Sprouting Vines, Inner Fire, Manamorphose, Lotus Petal
In Play: Island, Island, Island, you have one land drop for the turn.
Line of Play:
Sample Decklist
11 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Ash Barrens
Card Selection / Draw [20]
3 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
3 Ponder
4 Accumulated Knowledge
2 Augur of Bolas
4 Gush
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
3 Lotus Petal
Combo pieces [8]
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
1 Rolling Thunder
1 Conjurer's Bauble
Protection [3]
3 Gigadrowse
3 Hydroblast
2 Dispel
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Augur of Bolas
1 Flaring Pain
2 Electrickery
1 Deep Analysis
3 Gut Shot
You can also see a list that I 5-0'd with the following links.
Mothership Link: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mtgo-standings/pauper-constructed-league-2018-12-26
GoldFish Link: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/pauper-urg-65088#paper
Roles of Each Card
Cantrips
Cantrips are a huge part of any combo deck, and this deck is no exception. Since our goal is to assemble multiple combo pieces and draw a lot of cards, we need to be as consistent as possible. The following cantrips are a great way to accomplish this task.
Preordain - One of the benefits that this card brings to the table is the ability to use it effectively without needing shuffle effects. This deck is limited on how many shuffle effects it can play, so reducing the need for them is great. Preordain helps make 1 land hands viable, and is great during the combo turn itself.
Brainstorm - This card brings a lot to the table. However, in order to play it to it’s fullest potential, your list must have ways to shuffle. This includes playing cards like Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds / Terramorphic Expanse, Augur of Bolas, and Ponder. It is important to note that this card is very skill intensive, and learning to play it properly is crucial to the decks’ success. Not only is it a cantrip, but it can help put back combo pieces like Rolling Thunder, redundant copies of Inner Fire, and even combo with Sprouting Vines. This is a multi purpose all star and a must include in the deck.
Ponder - This is a solid cantrip. Being able to function as an additional shuffle effect for brainstorm is amazing, and the card is all around powerful. There is a reason it is banned and restricted in other formats.
Dig Spells
Another option to consider in your card selection suite are dig spells.
Augur of Bolas - While there are spells like Impulse and Peer Through Depths in the format, Augur is arguably the best "dig spell" in the format. Augur is a 1/3 body that can block critical creatures. As a result this can end up buying us multiple turns in the game. Because Augur has the ability to do this, it should be played over Impulse and Peer Through Depths for your 2 mana "dig spell".
Card Draw
Card selection is important to this deck, however card advantage is crucial as well. Cards like Inner Fire and Tolarian Winds both rely on you having a large hand size to function properly.
Gush - This is a crucial card to the deck. You should play four of these. Not much else to be said other than gush is a hell of a card. There's a reason an entire book was written about it after all.
Accumulated Knowledge - On the surface, this card seems like an odd inclusion. However, it is a needed requirement for the deck to be able to function properly. One of the key things to note about this deck is that there are two phases to the combo. The first phase is setting up Tolarian Winds and Sprouting Vines to draw a substantial amount of cards, and the second is using the cards you've drawn to actually kill your opponent. A key concept that needs to be noted here is the idea of a "ceiling". After you've drawn your cards off Tolarian Winds, your hand size is often at fixed ceiling for the rest of the turn. This can be problematic because it means that the amount of mana we are netting off of Inner Fire is also at a fixed number. Accumulated Knowledge helps increase the ceiling by netting us cards during the second half of the combo turn. As a result, this is sort of acting as Gush by increasing our hand size and netting cards during the second half of the combo. An upside to Accumulated Knowledge is that it allows for us to go long in the control matchups and hit our needed land drops. It can also be used as bait for counter spells from the opponent.
Rituals / Color Producers
In addition to all the ways to find cards, you need a way to cast them. Rituals serve this job quite well, as they generate all the mana needed to draw through your deck. The rituals in this deck are primarily red based, and serve to help you cast a giant fireball in addition to comboing off.
Inner Fire - This is a crucial card to the deck. If you’re going to draw through your deck and then throw a fireball at your opponent’s face, you’re going to need a way to generate copious amounts of mana. This is the best card in the format for that job. You should play 4 of this card.
Manamorphose - This is one of the best color filters / producers in the deck. It turns red mana into green and blue mana while replacing itself. In a sense, it is a free spell that helps us combo off. This should be a 4 of.
Lotus Petal - This is a key card to the deck. It provides mana of any color and is crucial to enabling fast kills, and allowing the deck to function.
Mana Base
This is a blue heavy deck, however you need to be able to cast red and green spells during the combo turn. The following cards get red and green mana to allow you to combo off.
Ash Barrens - A great fetch land and shuffle effect for this deck. Being able to get your red source immediately can be crucial in certain circumstances. Additionally, it has the benefit of being able to shuffle your library during the actual combo turn.
Evolving Wilds - A solid shuffle effect and mana fixer. While it is less powerful than Ash Barrens during the combo turn, it allows you to keep 1 land hands that Ash Barrens would force you to mulligan.
Basic Lands - Since Sprouting Vines needs to fetch basic lands, we need to play some number of them. In current lists, that number is 12. What is recommended is 11 basic islands, and 1 basic mountain. It is not recommended that you play any forests in the deck, as the only spell that is green is the card Sprouting Vines. The rest of the deck is primarily blue splashing red and it's not worth ruining our mana base to have a forest. Instead it would be better to get green mana off of cards like Manamorphose or Lotus Petal.
Win Conditions and Protection
Being a combo deck you have to have some way to kill the opponent. This section will address possible win conditions as well as ways to protect the combo before going off.
Rolling Thunder - This is our win condition for the deck. An upside to this card is that it deals with hate cards like Standard Bearer and Coalition Honor Guard by allowing you to target them for 1 and the opponent for a million.
Conjurer's Bauble - In case your win condition ends up in the graveyard, this allows you to put it back into the deck. Additionally, it can get back things like Inner Fire if you need to increase the amount of mana you dump into your fireball. At the very least, it’s a one mana cycle that has very little drawback.
Gigadrowse - As a combo deck you need a way to make sure your combo goes off uninterrupted. Gigadrowse allows you to tap out your opponent on their end step allowing you to go off without fear on the next turn. While you do have to be on parity in terms of land drops in order for this card to be effective, it can allow you to win games that were not feasible otherwise. Additionally, it can act like a fog effect by tapping down possible attackers. An all around needed card for the deck.
Combo Pieces
This is a storm combo deck that aims to storm off and draw it’s entire library. Let’s talk about the cards that make this possible.
Tolarian Winds - On the surface this seems like a powerful card. However it has to built around to maximize its effectiveness. Playing it in conjunction withSprouting Vines and Gush allows you to cast a 2 mana Wheel of Fortune that often nets 14+ cards. It can also be viewed as Ad Nauseam in ANT or TES based on how it functions. It is important to note that there are rare cases where you can cast one copy, hold priority, and then cast the other copy hoping to find Sprouting Vines to cast in response to the one on the stack. This is addressed in the tips and tricks part of the primer, and can be a crucial line in winning games that were thought to be lost.
Sprouting Vines - This card looks pretty innocent on the surface. However, the synergy that it has with Tolarian Winds actually makes it quite an impressive card. It is important to note that since this is an instant, you can cast in on your opponent’s end step. This can sometimes net upwards on 7 or more lands depending on how your opponent’s turn went. Additionally, you can use this in conjunction with Brainstorm to net cards, or go for a natural kill if you have multiple Inner Fires in hand along with your fireball effect.
Cards to Avoid
There are a number of cards that you should not be playing. Often times these cards show up in searches of the deck, however you should avoid playing them despite what other lists indicate. I myself have played these cards and feel they are quite outdated or hurtful to the deck. If you are considering playing this deck, it is highly recommended you avoid playing these cards as they will weaken the deck.
Chromatic Star
Cards like Manamorphose, Ash Barrens, Evolving Wilds, and Lotus Petal do a better job than this card in terms of mana fixing. Chromatic Star costs you a mana, and in the early game it does not help you set up your game plan. This card takes up slots that you can be using for better cards and is not what this deck wants.
Forest
Cards like Manamorphose and Lotus Petal do a better job than this card in terms of mana fixing. Basic forest hurts the deck overall, and is not needed. While it may feel weird not having it in the deck, we don't want to rely on it for casting spells. There is a multitude of combinations that will get us all three colors in this deck that we don't need it. Basic Forest makes gush worse, it only casts a single spell in the entire 75, and it weakens the deck overall. We should focus on being a Blue - Red deck first and foremost, and leave the green solely in Sprouting Vines. In terms of the combinations of cards that get us all 3 colors, here is a list of them:
1. lotus petal + mountain
2. lotus petal + manamorphose
3. mountain + manamorphose
4. ash barrens --> mountain + lotus petal
5. evolving wilds --> mountain + lotus petal
6. ash barrens --> mountain + manamorphose
7. evolving wilds --> mountain + manamorphose
with this in mind, don't play a forest in the mana base. It's not worth making your deck more inconsistent, and it's not worth cutting a better card from the mana base.
Anticipate
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
Impulse
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
Peer Through Depths
This card shows up in lists from time to time. Do not play it. There are better cards in the format like Augur of Bolas and 1 mana cantrips. It is a downgrade compared to these cards.
Words of Wisdom
This is a card I used to play for a bit. Don't play it. It is much worse than Accumulated Knowledge, and giving the opponent any cards is undesirable.
Seething Song
A powerful ritual on it's own and ban worthy in modern. The main reason we should not be playing this card is that it is not needed. Inner Fire does a better job than this card and playing it is incorrect in current builds. The bottom line is that it doesn't add enough mana to warrant playing it, and it is often a dead card.
Rite of Flame
A powerful ritual on it's own and ban worthy in modern. The main reason we should not be playing this card is that it is not needed. Inner Fire does a better job than this card and playing it is incorrect in current builds. The bottom line is that it doesn't add enough mana to warrant playing it, and it is often a dead card.
Tips and Sequencing
- 2 Sprouting Vines,
- 2 Gigadrowse,
- 2 Evolving Wilds,
- 3 Islands.
Your total hand size is 11 cards. You have no permanents on the battlefield, and have already played your land drop for the turn. You have 2 blue floating, 10 red floating, 1 green floating, and the storm count is 7. At this point, you might think that it would be a good idea to cast Gigadrowse for 1 blue mana to add to the storm count. However in doing so, you are actually preventing yourself from digging deeper into your deck off Tolarian Winds. When you cast Gigadrowse the storm count becomes 8, then you cast Tolarian Winds into Sprouting Vines with the storm count now being 10. If you do the math, you'll realize that have 3 basics in your hand, which indicates that you only have 9 basics in your deck (12 basics total). While Gigadrowse did add 1 to the storm count, it didn't net you a land. Therefore you reduced your hand size by one, and thus reduced how much you can dig through your deck. This is something that is very important to keep in mind when playing the deck, as every card you see matters. On the flip side, if the storm count was at 6 instead of 7, casting Gigadrowse may have been appropriate as it netted you 1 more card off of Sprouting Vines.
Sideboarding
Knowing how to sideboard properly is a key part to playing any deck. I'll first address possible sideboard options that the deck could play, and what matchups they could be good in. After that, I'll list what my current sideboard is, and how I would sideboard for various matchups. Hopefully this will make the learning curve for the deck less steep, and will help create a starting point until the deck can further expand. I'm going about it this way due to the fact that the deck has not seen much play despite it having a lot of potential. Thus, I have had nothing to reference causing me to have to do most of the fine tuning and development myself along with some help from friends.
Possible Sideboard Cards
This section will be addressing various sideboard cards that the deck could use. Good or bad, hopefully this section will allow some insight into possible sideboard options for your Pauper metagame.
Flaring Pain
This is a must have card in the sideboard. Losing to things like Circle of Protection: White or Prismatic Strands is something that we just don't want to have occur. Having flashback is highly relevant due to the fact that we can discard it to Tolarian Winds and still be able to cast it.
Dispel
The main role of Dispel is to allow us to fight opposing counterspells. Additionally, it is great for fighting sideboard cards from your opponent as well and even has uses against matchups like burn. If you expect your opponent to bring in things like hydroblast and pyroblast, then this is worth considering.
Hydroblast
This is great for fighting various red spells that might cause us trouble. Not only is this a great sideboard card for decks like burn, goblins or RDW, but it also can act as removal against potent creatures like Kiln Fiend and Nivix Cyclops.
Gigadrowse
Another option to help us fight those pesky blue decks. Sometimes your opponent might have too many answers for us to fight through with counters such as Dispel. Gigadrowse allows us to beat multiple forms of permission and disruption by tapping out our opponent. Keep in mind that you do have to be on parity in terms of land drops for this card to be effective.
Izzet Boilerworks
A great sideboard card for the control matchups. If you expect the game to go long, having a way to hit more land drops is always great.
Electrickery
A nice card against decks like elves, delver, or anything that tries to go wide.
Gut Shot
This card is good against Tribe Combo, Delver, and Elves.
Deep Analysis
A nice card for grindy matchups. The flashback matters and it often is good against decks that use counter magic. If you are expecting hand disruption this card can allow you to rebuild your hand before going off.
Augur of Bolas
This helps filter cards while slowing down aggressive decks. Most decks take out their removal post board so this is a good card to catch them off guard. We already play it mainboard, so having more in the sideboard can be useful in the aggressive matchups.
Serrated Arrows
This helps fight against delver decks and tribe combo.
Gorilla Shaman
This is mostly for affinity to get free wins.
Matchup Analysis
NOTE: THIS SECTION IS CURRENTLY IN THE WORKS
This section will be addressing various decks in the pauper metagame. It will address both favorable and unfavorable matchups and how to sideboard against them.
Looking into the Future, and Paper Pauper
Looking into the Future
This section will address addition of cards or removal of cards that could change the deck entirely. This includes bannings, cards to look out for in the future, as well as possible changes with paper commons that are not currently legal on Magic Online.
Additions
At the moment, it is very obvious that the deck is built to throw a giant fireball at our opponent's face. However, if we ever get another card card that could act as a win condition without costing a million mana, then one of the deck's restrictions will be lifted. One example of a card that could have an effect like this is Psychic Spiral. While this is not a common, we do have the ability to dump around 40 cards of our deck into our graveyard. This could allow us to mill our opponent rather than throwing a giant fireball at them. It does open us up to graveyard hate, but it would still be a big addition to the deck. Another card is Spiraling Embers. While this is a common, our deck cannot use it that effectively. We rarely get 20 plus cards in our hand, and it won't win that many games. If there is ever a card like it that is viable, than we may be able to work with it.
Bannings
With the introduction of cards like Foil into the format, some have argued that the card Gush will eventually get banned. Speculations aside, if and when this comes to fruition it will mean the death of Vine Storm as an archetype. There is no way this deck can function without the card Gush. If Gush goes, so does Vine Storm.
Paper Commons
One of the biggest commons for this deck is Merchant Scroll. However, this is not legal online at the moment and thus can only be used in paper tournaments if allowed. It has the ability to tutor up several of the needed combo pieces, and would be a welcome addition.
Additionally, the card Mystic Remora would be a great sideboard option for the deck. It helps draw cards against aggressive decks, or forces them to slow down and not cast spells. Either of these is usually favorable for you. It has uses in control or midrange matchups, and is an overall powerful card.
References
Here are some references that are helpful and or interesting.
Attempts to make Vine Storm work before the storm banning
Attempts at making sprouting vines work
Initial post about the deck on Reddit showing the first functioning list of the combo after the banning
Discussion of the deck on Reddit
Video Tutorial by i-n-s
Stream of the Deck by i-n-s
(8/21/16) Note: Updated the primer. Added some more info, and reorganized some things. Saved the previous iteration of the primer for reference.
(8/26/16) Note: I'm going to be adding info on side boarding for the deck into the primer. Thanks to Paranoyy for helping with the sideboard development and match up analysis.
(9/1/16) Note: I've added some things to the side boarding tab. It's not complete yet, but I don't see the harm in adding some information. I will be finishing the rest of the side boarding very soon.
(9/9/16) Note: I have finished about 75 percent of the side boarding guide, as well as updated my personal list. Once that is done, I feel that the primer will be in decent shape.
(10/1/16) Note: I've added an additional section to the primer in "Looking into the Future and Paper Commons". I will finish the side boarding guide when time is available.
(12/17/16) Note: I've updated certain areas of the primer. This includes deck lists and card choice info. More will be done in the future.
(3/5/17) Note: Added some sections and removed some stuff that was outdated.
(5/17/18) Note: Fixed Some broken images, updated some stuff.
(12/17/18) Note: Updated the primer. Fixed broken images and Removed a lot of the cards that are outdated. Presented a clean and up to date list that I have had the most success with.
In terms of which list is most competitive, I'd say that is up in the air at the moment. The deck has been around for a while but has yet to put up any major results, so it's hard to know which shell is the best. Hopefully this thread will allow for more discussion about the deck, so it can be better tuned. In terms the teachings list that you addressed, I've noticed that it is much slower than the rite of flame version when it comes to the combo turn, but it has more staying power. If you want a list that is all in on the combo and aims to kill as early as turn 4, then I'd recommend the rite of flame version. One thing I would also recommend is to watch I-N-S pilot the deck. His game play offers some good insight into the deck, and helped me learn some tricks with it. I'd also suggest jamming a bunch of goldfish games with the deck as well. This will let you get a better understanding of how capable the deck is at going off at various stages in the game.
13 Snow-Covered Island
1 Evolving Wilds
2 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
Spells[37]
4 Preordain
4 Ponder
2 Peer Through Depths
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Gush
3 Sprouting Vines
3 Tolarian Winds
2 Gigadrowse
2 Pyroblast
1 Kaervek's Torch
4 Lotus Petal
1 Chromatic Star
1 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Pyroblast
4 Accumulated Knowledge
1 Dispel
1 Arcane Denial
1 Gigadrowse
1 Izzet Boilerworks
3 Hydroblast
1 Electrickery
1 Flaring Pain
1 Kaervek's Torch
It is more of a meta game choice than anything else. Drake combo decks are quite frequent in my area, as well as mono blue delver. Having a way to stop Peregrine Drake, as well as dealing with disruption like Spellstutter Sprite and Counterspell felt quite good. The fact that it puts blue players on edge is also nice, since they have more to fear against a deck that main boards pyroblast. I'm sure dispel has more reach against non blue decks, but I always felt that those were a bit easier since it's more about pulling off the combo, and not about having to deal with disruption and pull of the combo, at least for game 1 anyways. Pyroblast might be a bit narrow, but if the metagame shifts, then dispel or arcane denial would most likely be the choice. Izzet Boilerworks is in the sideboard for match-ups where I might want to have the ability to go long. If I'm playing against a teachings deck, I want to be able to stay close on parity when it comes to land drops. Boilerworks helps me accomplish this.
I love combo decks in Pauper that are not Familiar/Drake combos. Why? Because they are so clunky and hilarious to play even when you fail to combo out. Sure, 99% of the time they are not going to win you any tourney but you will enjoy that time, for sure.
Been doing some solo games and you only need 2 or 3 to understand that Brainstorm is SO BAD! It get´s you locked down so easily! With that in mind I only want scry effects, so I play 4 Preordain and Impulse. I don´t like Ponder either because I don´t want to shuffle what I send to the bottom. So, for now, I´ve taken out the Brains, Gigadrowse and one Tolarian-Sprout in order to make room for a playset of probes and impulses.
So, with this build (mono islands) I´m tracking my turns and allways try to combo on turn 4, wich I´ve done in several times (more than 50% of the time). But whe are talking about game situations soooo narrow that even a simple Daze would ruin you. On the other hand, I think that in most of the real matches you can´t whait more than 4 turns and not die for it.
Have anyone done more testing with this deck?
I've been playing around with it. I can agree with you that Brainstorm feels pretty bad sometimes. Either you draw 3 good cards and have a evolving wilds, or you get brainstorm locked. You need to have fetch-lands to make the card good, however things like evolving wilds slow the deck down. I like the package of 4 ponder 4 preordain 2 peer through depths, but I can understand why you don't like ponder. In terms of trying to always combo on turn 4, I don't think that's the right thing to do. There are plenty of matches where you can wait later to combo. I've had multiple games where it's impossible for me to combo out on turn 4, so I don't think forcing it each game is a good strategy. What list are you playing at the moment? It would be nice to see more takes on the deck.
I´m just forcing myself to combo off on turn 4 because I´m playing solo matches and feel like aggro/burn decks will give you 4 turns or so. But if I´m on a real match I will allways wait as much as possible.
I feel like allways want to be on the draw (extra card) and Impulse allows you to go for and dig what you need while at the same time move away what you don´t need. On the other hand Gitaxian Probe is a "free" cantrip, one of the most precious things for this deck. Not just because it gives you a card, but it also ticks up your storm number and that is not something to bypass (I´ve found that with Storm = 8 you can get it done, but you still have enough lands in your deck to draw and get stucked. Usually with 10/11 Storm you are allways going to have what you need to keep going).
On the other hand, Rite of Flame is giving me a hard time. I never feel it´s a bad card (It´s a good ramp spell giving you +4 red the fourth copy, it summs storm for only 1 mana while allways gives you more than what you have spent and in many times it has been my heroe giving me those extra mana I needed to go off). But, on the other hand, I would NEVER pick it with an Impulse over any other cantrip or combo piece unlees I´m searching for a mana source desperately. I still have to playtest without it in order to have a feeling of a deck with more cantrips and less ramp.
This is very true. Hand size can be an issue with the deck. I tried words of wisdom to help accommodate this issue, but I'm not sure if it's the best way to go.
I agree that a forest is a bad way to go with the deck. If the deck could play 17 islands and make the mana work, I think it would be great. The list that I play usually has 1 mountain and 3 fetches. I've done this for a number of reasons. First, as you said, brainstorm is really bad without fetches. If you can make brainstorm work, then the majority of combo decks would want to play it. The fetches are there to help make brainstorm work, as it can be a great asset in making the deck work. It is important to note that there is a trade off going on here. You have less lands to get off sprouting vines, and you do have one land that Gigadrowse can't use. The main reason why I have the mountain in the mana-base is to allow the deck to have more slots. When I initially played the deck, I ran 4 stars. However, they felt really bad, and didn't let you recover or get ahead when you wanted to. I decided to cut them and instead use 3 fetches and 1 mountain as a sort of replacement for them which would allow me to get 4 more slots for other cards. I'm not sure if it's the right way to go, but that was the thought at the time.
I totally agree. If the deck could get a new win condition, that would lift a big restriction off of it, and allow for more innovation in the deck.
I can see that being a good starting point.
I think all of these are valid points, and all pinpoint areas that the deck could use improvement in. Hopefully the deck can get something to address these issues in the future.
I assume you meant to add 4 gush somewhere? Maybe take out 4 spheres and add 4 gush. I think that would make the deck solid.
I tried embers in the past, and unfortunately it bombed really hard. Something like spiral seems to be the way to go.
For sure haha. I thought about your input yesterday, and I came up with a list that uses merchant scroll. I think that scroll has a home in this deck and helps hold it together. here is a list that I made during testing. I know scroll is not legal on mtgo, but if it ever becomes legal, I think the deck can use it quite well. I'm not sure if 4 is correct. I liked 3 copies, but I have limited testing so I'm not sure.
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
Lands
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
13 Snow-Covered Island
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Lotus Petal
Other combo pieces
4 Gush
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
2 Gigadrowse
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
How does this do against Drake, Delver and Affinity?
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
Game one against drake is not too bad. If they don't know what you are playing- which they often do not- they will tap out for a mull drifter and then you can go for the kill. The deck has a lot of sorcery speed draw, so if you can find a window you will be fine. Gigadrowse is also solid against the deck because it plays a high number of bounce lands. For games 2 and 3, they will bring in their blast effects, so it is mostly knowing how to board and maneuver around those cards, and finding a window. It is possible for them to kill you with the combo at any time once they get to 5 mana, so that is something to keep in mind. In the games I've played they rarely go for it on turn 5 if I have some blue mana open game one, but they will jam it asap in g2 and g3. From the games I've played, it feels like a 50/50 matchup.
Affinity game one is all about racing. You need to dig for the combo and go off before they have you dead. Sometimes they get the nut draw which is hard for any deck to beat in general, but when they don't, or of they stumble on mana in the early game, you usually have enough time to kill them. Game 2 and 3 they will bring in their blast effects, so you need to find a window or go off with dispel backup. I've played this matchup a number of times and it has gone both ways. G1 sometimes I kill them turn 4, or sometimes they kill me on turn 4. Game 2 I go off with dispel backup, and then sometimes I'm forced to go off without it and they have the counter. I never found it to be an unwinnable matchup by any means, I usually bring in some number of dispels and hope they get there.
Delver is where things get dicey. Mono blue delver is by far the worst matchup for the deck. They have daze, CS, spellstutter and a fast clock with delver. It is a very tough matchup for the deck, and it always feels like you are the dog. The deck struggles to pass the "delver test" as it were, but I suppose that is what a lot of decks in the format have to deal with. I rarely win this matchup, and I feel lucky to get a game. Things have to really go your way to win the matchup. Maybe I'm not playing the matchup correctly, but that is how the matchup feels when I play it.
Other variants of delver are not as bad. The new grixis delver is okay, since the mana can be wonky at times allowing you to go off without needing gigadrowse. UB angler delver is also not as bad as you can play around them having CS and Deprive. If they don't have double blue, I often go for it as they rarely play other counters outside of CS and deprive main board. If they land an early delver, and then an early angler, things might get dicey, but otherwise you have enough time to assemble what you need. I have not played against UG delver though, so I can't really comment on how that matchup goes. I'm guessing it's not as bad as mono U, but worse that UB and grixis, but I would have to test to see.
EDIT: on a sidenote, how do you feel about apathy as a sb option?
3 Merchant Scroll
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
2 Gitaxian Probe
Lands [17]
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
13 Snow-Covered Island
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Lotus Petal
Win-con [2]
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
4 Gush
2 Gigadrowse
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
Here is a new variant that I am trying. I'm trying out different cantrips and seeing how they fair. so far probe has not been too bad. I think the deck needs scroll to be viable though.
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
Lands [17]
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
13 Snow-Covered Island
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Lotus Petal
Win-con [2]
1 Kaervek's Torch
1 Conjurer's Bauble
4 Gush
3 Gigadrowse
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
It has been okay so far. It does open the deck up to gy hate, which can be unfortunate. I don't think this is too much of a problem though, since I would rather they spend mana on gy hate than on a discard or counter spell.
Edit: fixed a typo
I took a hiatus from MTG for about half a year, but I missed this deck. So I've been playing lately, and messing around with the deck's construction. I decided to check out the forums to see if anyone else has been working on the deck, and came across this thread. It's also been a couple years since I've logged in to MTGSalvation at all (due to the vast amount of stupid trolls), but I thought it was worthwhile to log in again and post here because, Raptor_56, I appreciate how hard you're trying here.
I'm currently on maindeck AK and 4 Brainstorm as well. This is my list:
1 Mountain
12 Island
4 Lotus Petal
4 Rite of Flame
4 Inner Fire
4 Manamorphose
4 Preordain
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Gush
3 Tolarian Winds
3 Sprouting Vines
1 Ideas Unbound
2 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Rolling Thunder
2 Gigadrowse
4 Arcane Denial
2 Condescend
3 Outwit
1 Flaring Pain
3 Repeal
I have been running this on MTGO, and also testing (through solitaire) Ash Barrens in place of the fetches as a potential alternative if/when it becomes a thing in Pauper. So far, my conclusion is that it has a large amount of upside for fixing Brainstorms in the middle of a combo turn, as well as enabling turn 1 BS into turn 2 upkeep shuffle. Its primary downside is that it leads to more mulligans--though that becomes less dangerous in an AK build. I think an 18 land build surely can support 4 Ash Barrens, and it makes the deck a lot more consistent beyond the mulligan.
On sideboarding:
I run Arcane Denial and Condescend out of the board for times when I want to take the Rites out against some of the slower match-ups. I like using a Denial on my own spell for +1 CA and I like that Condescend goes well with Brainstorm. I'd like to maximize BS's potential if possible.
I actually learned about Outwit from here, and I'm glad I tried it out. I like niche sideboard cards that work very well in a small number of match-ups. You can count on it against a UB deck with Duresses and Curses, which are the only things you need to counter, and then it's obviously good against Burn.
Other than that, most of my board is pretty typical stuff. Anyways, I'm really happy to see that there is a thread somewhere on this deck. Cya round!
Nice to hear from the creator himself. ^^ I like your list, it looks sweet. I like the addition of rolling thunder. I think it might be better than torch in the sideboard, since it deals with stuff like standard bearer and what not. In terms of Ash Barrens, I think it would be good as a singleton. I think a good mana base would be 13 islands, 1 mountain, 3 evolving wilds, 1 ash barren. I would like the deck to ideally have 18 lands for the mana base, so if we could get one more open slot, then we might be able to make it work. Glad to hear you're still trying out the deck.
On a side note, how do you feel about this as a sideboard?
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Hydroblast
1 Flaring Pain
2 Dispel
2 Withdraw
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Repeal
1 Rolling Thunder
I have been trying this out for a while and it feels okay. (EDIT: I replaced a torch with a rolling thunder in the board since that seems better) I think the deck needs a base for the sideboard, and it would be great to hear your input.
Yeah Rolling Thunder is essentially 1 more mana (which is almost negligable) to deal with Standard Bearers, and occasionally you can Gush-->Inner Fire and just kill 3 things to survive. The counter-resistance from Torch is useless, so I dumped it back in Spring before I took my hiatus.
Okay, onto your sideboard: Honestly, I like all of the cards in it. It's easy to see that they each hold a purpose, and there is pretty clear overlap between some of the different cards (beyond just the hydros and BEBs being functionally similar). I think a bigger question is: what are your board plans? Because I think there are good arguments for whichever anti-aggro cards you want to bring, but my personal struggle is knowing what I can feasibly cut for those Withdraws. You know? That was always a big problem with the deck (at least, for me) earlier in the year.
Anyways, I also want to point out that I have tested Withdraw and Lethargy Trap after seeing those cards in this thread, and there were some times that they put in work. Right now, I'm kind of in a place where I want to know whether I can take out Rites or a TWinds or something else against those aggressive decks, the ones where you have to stall them a turn or 2 to win on the draw. I think that's where you either want a Withdraw/Trap/Gigadrowse to stall a team and take a time walk or two, or you want cantripping stall tactics that can add up to a turn or 2 while cycling into some combo fuel. Frankly, I don't know what's right. I think you have a good plan with what you're doing, so long as you aren't diluting your combo too much when you bring it in. That's the problem I've been having, anyways.
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Hydroblast
1 Flaring Pain
2 Dispel
2 Withdraw
1 Lethargy Trap
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Repeal
1 Rolling Thunder
[NOTE: I am currently using the list with AK's in it, so I will be referring to that as my main board.]
The boarding plans that I have currently go along the lines of this:
1. Withdraw
I bring this in against heavy aggro decks. A prime example of this is mono green stompy. If you can bounce two creatures, you often get to time walk them. They have to spend their next turn setting things up, and they don't get to advance their board. It can also be used defensively which is nice as well. I often take out two gigadrowse for this card, as I have found that the card is not good against aggressive decks. I would rather pay two mana early on to buy time and spend the rest of the time digging, rather than have a turn where I can't use 4 mana to dig because I have to hold it up for gigadrowse.
2. Outwit
I bring this in against any deck that has hand disruption, burn, or a curse I care about. In terms of the matchups, this includes decks like MBC, orzhov, RB midrange and teachings. It really depends on the deck I am facing in terms of boarding. For decks like MBC, I bring all 3 in, but against decks like burn or teachings I will often bring in 1 - 2 at most. I would have to go more in depth for each matchup, but I usually end up taking out gigadrowse, rite of flame, vines, winds, or a petal. It all depends on the matchup.
3. dispel, Pyroblast, Hydroblast
This also includes REB and BEB, but those are a bit redundant with the other blasts and they do the same things for the most part. These are for red and blue decks, or decks that might have blasts out of the board. I will often take out one ritual effects, and then add them in if I am against a blue deck. If I am against burn or anything non blue, I just take out 3 gigadrowse and I am good to go.
4. Lethargy Trap
This is for token decks, elves, or anything that goes wide. I usually board out 2 gigadrowse, and see what I can do. I like to keep one drowse in on occasion, but if I feel it will be bad, then all three will go.
5. Izzet Boilerworks
This is for the control matchup, or any game that will go super long. I want more land drops, and this gives me more land drops. I like it a lot. I will board out a ritual effect for it, since it usually makes up for it if i get it out.
6. Flaring pain
I think we know why this is here. not much to be said about it, it is a must have sb card.
7. Repeal
This is for any matchup where there are problematic permanents. This includes decks like blitz, mill etc. A good catch all and pretty versatile. Really depends on the matchup for me to figure out the boarding.
8. Rolling Thunder
This is mostly here as another win con that deals with some hate. I'm not sure I really need it, but until I can think of a better card to put in it's place I guess it will stay. In all honesty I think you might be right with just playing it main board and going from there. Against decks like mill, it is nice to have two cards that kill them to prevent a blowout or something. But that is not likely to happen anyways. If it was cut, what would you put in it's place?
It's definitely safer to board a second win-con, especially against mill with Jace's Erasure. I think it's fine. Right now, I'm eschewing a boarded back-up win condition because I just want to test with more sideboard cards in the practice room. I think it's probably better to have the backup so you have a lower chance of getting wrecked against mill, but vs most of the other decks I don't think it's necessary to have a 2nd win con. My reasoning is that I'm playing 4 Brainstorm and 2 Conjurer's Baubles, and I don't board any of those out (especially vs mill--but in general I've completely quit boarding out baubles).
If I wanted to replace Rolling Thunder, the card I would most likely pick is Gorilla Shaman. That's one of those cards that I just don't own, but Affinity can be such a pain in the neck that I could see rolling 2-4 mox monkeys and just killing their dreams with it (especially with ritual support). Or, if not mox monkey, I'd want some other card that's so devastating in a particular match-up that it makes up for sometimes just losing to mill or duress+bojuka bog when I don't have a second win condition. If I play anything where product is on the line, I'll be putting the spare Rolling Thunder back into the board.
I'm going to do some more testing with Withdraw and Repeal and see where my head's at for aggro match-ups. It was really helpful to see how you're boarding; I'm going to take it into serious consideration while I try to pin down what works.
(Edited for clarity.)
I think we need a more cohesive plan against aggro than just bringing in some stall tactics. Fog and bounce effects typically buy about one turn, but bringing in more than 3-4 of them starts to dilute the combo--and then there's also the fact that casting a tempo spell means not casting a spell to sculpt a better combo hand. So I think we either need stall tactics that double time walk (like Moment's Peace or a legit board sweeper) or we need a different plan in general. I'm considering the idea of something like Gurmag Angler coupled with bounce spells: put a road block out there, force them to trade board position for damage, and bounce the unblocked attackers. Withdraw would be really good for that: if they swing with 3 guys and they're tapped out, Angler can eat one while Withdraw bounces the other 2. Or if they try to kill your Angler, you Withdraw one of their guys and then use the soft part of Withdraw on your own Angler. Obviously Angler goes into another color and requires delving, but the point is to have a good blocker out there--it could be anything. I'm cool with winning on turn 8 against aggro if I've taken over the board for most of the game.
Anyway, that's where my head's at after a few dozen more games.
If you want early blockers, would something like sea gate oracle not work? what about calcite snapper?
On the topic of thought vessel,Library of Leng is just way better.
On the topic of a plan against aggro, I think outracing them is the right plan, using simian spirit guides and eot word of wisdom to increase your pace.
I've noticed that you both only run 3 of each combo piece. I did the same until I read PV's article on combo (http://www.channelfireball.com/home/pvs-playhouse-combo/). The most relevant part is:
"One mistake I see people make sometimes is to play less than four of their combo card, because it’s “slow” or “doesn’t do anything outside of the combo.” I remember seeing a lot of lists with three Splinter Twins, for example. This is just stupid—if you can’t accept having dead Splinter Twins in your hand, then play a different deck. The amount of games you’ll lose because you didn’t draw any of those is much greater than the number of times you’ll get Twin-Flooded (also look at Estratti, he has six!)."
Thoughts?
As far as hand size goes, I tend to just put artifacts on the table or pitch Rite of Flames when I go over 7.
I can see where he is coming from. The issue that I am having with the deck is that I'm low on slots. If I add vines and winds I'm forced to cut two cards. I have seen a lot of lists cut gigadrowse or only have one copy. While I understand that this allows for you to go off easier, it does forfeit game one to blue decks, which is something I don't really enjoy.
EDIT:
I tried your idea, and this is the list I got.
4 Brainstorm
4 Preordain
3 Words of Wisdom
4 Gush
combo pieces / protection (12)
4 Tolarian Winds
4 Sprouting Vines
2 Gigadrowse
1 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Kaervek's Torch
13 Snow-Covered Island
1 Snow-Covered Mountain
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Ash Barrens
Rituals(16)
4 Lotus Petal
4 Inner Fire
4 Rite of Flame
4 Manamorphose
I'm trying barrens as a one of to see how it goes. I tried 3 with this list and it kept screwing me over. If I play 17 lands, I find that barrens tends to screw me over with mulligans more than I would like. It helps when going off, but I'm not sold on the card yet. I feel that some lists use is better than others.