Wait a sec, wont possibility storm also hit any Ornithopters in your deck?
Most of the builds I have seen, at least the functional ones, are only using 1 Thopter, tutorable via the uncounterable Tolaria West, or just drawable off of Serum/Sleight. That's one of the oddities of the deck; it's technically a 2 card combo, but one of those cards you can only run 1 of.
The only way I can think of to fix that is to use the horrible Allosaurus Rider. One of the benefits of Rider is that you can use it in tandem with Summoner's Pact. The disadvantage is that it requires so many green cards to use effectively, and green is probably the worst color for this deck.
For now, I'm sticking with Thopter, Tolaria West, and Ancient Stirrings.
The problem with the approach is that one needs to both tutor/dig for the storm and for the thopter during the early turns instead of thinking about ramp and protection. With hive mind at least they play enough pacts to just not worry about getting one in time, so they only need to find hive mind. Also they run a bunch of pacts of negation that double as protection. This deck can not afford the luxury. The argument that storm protects itself is moot: there is no way to kill hive mind in a way that does not give you a copy of a pact (if pact is in hand).
How would you guys deal with a Slaughter Games naming any of your pieces? Considering you only run 1 wouldn't that mean a auto lose?
Let's assume a game 2-3 Slaughter Games. I can't find a single Modern deck that runs this card in the main, so we only need to worry about it after our sideboard kicks in.
There are a bunch of decent sideboard cards to handle a Games, both preemptively and even reactively. In the prevention department, we have the obvious Leyline of Sanctity as well as disruption like Thoughtseize. Leyline is sort of the go-to card for fragile combo like ours, especially because decks that tend to run Slaughter games (like Jund) tend not to run effective answers to Leyline. Even if they do, it is hard for them to reliably draw both the Games and the Maelstrom Pulse in the same match.
Another option, one on the techy side of things, is the underplayed Shadow of Doubt. It's a 2 mana answer to Games. It's a cantrip. It's on color. It also doubles as an effective SB card against Pod and fetches. I admit that it is a bit narrow for our precious sideboard slots, but it is an option.
Another option is just to run some more backup plans in the board. A transformational sideboard is a definite possibility if we already have Breach and Emrakul in the maindeck. Just stick Goryo's Vengeance, Griselbrand, and Fury of the Horde in the board. That would necessitate running Faithless Looting in the maindeck, but that is a small modification to enable a decent transformational board. That said, such a transformation might not be worth it.
Time of Need is perfect for this deck. It finds Emrakul, the Aeons Torn if you have a through in hand and it finds norin. Plus it has awesome flavour… Time of Need: I need help, should I call a scared explorer or a giant spaghetti monster?
Has anyone advanced with this? Added any updates? I haven't tried the builds yet, but I was planning to play a deck like this, gotta get the cards first though, I'm barely new to modern.
The advantage of Squadron Hawk is that it solves the problem of only being able to play 1 combo piece in the deck. The big disadvantage is that it turns the deck into a 7 mana combo instead of a 5-6 mana one. At 7 mana, the deck can't win on turn 4 unless it has a crazy draw. That forces us to wait until turn 5 to cast a Hawk, leaving us totally tapped out as the opponent untaps for his own turn 4/5. That's a bit risky for my taste in a format that can fire off a Snapcaster/Tribal Flames combo, or just swing with a Cranial Plating attached Inkmoth on that turn for the win. So I think we have to keep a strategy that uses a CMC 0 or CMC 1.
The Ritual plan is much more resilient to disruption, because it doesn't open our mana sources to Abrupt Decay and Qasali Pridemage/Harmonic Sliver. But the actual creatures used (Thopter/Rider/Memnite) are much worse for our gameplan than those in the 1 CMC slot.
Has anyone advanced with this? Added any updates? I haven't tried the builds yet, but I was planning to play a deck like this, gotta get the cards first though, I'm barely new to modern.
Currently, I think that the best version of this deck uses Rhys the Redeemed instead of Ornithopter. Rhys lets us run 3 tutors that Thopter just doesn't work with. One of those tutors has the advantage of working with Emrakul for our alternate win off of Through the Breach:
Norin the Wary only works with Time of Need. Rhys works with all three of these tutors, each of which has their own unique benefits and drawbacks. Time of Need is excellent in its ability to tutor for Emrakul or Rhys, depending on how you want to win. Summoner's Pact is nice to grab Rhys the turn you cast Storm, and you can almost always pay the upkeep price the subsequent turn. Wish fetches Rhys at the same manacost as Time, but it also lets us run a toolbox of answers to handle potentially problematic cards like Ethersworn Canonist. The big disadvantage of Wish is its reliance on white mana, which turns the deck from a 3 colored build to a 4 colored one; I don't think that's necessarily a big problem with the Modern manabase, but it's definitely more painful against aggro.
As to an actual list, my card distribution is always changing with each test. I would try something along these lines, with a few of these slots open to change:
It's not a final decklist by any means, but it has a lot of the pieces in place. This version preserves the TfB win condition, which is a distinct advantage that this deck has over Hive Mind. It fits in 6 disruption slots alongside its robust tutor and draw base, and can almost always cast either Storm/Rhys or TfB by turn 4. I would like to include the Wishboard plan in the deck, but not at the expense of mana or draw consistency.
THIS 100X!!! If you don't agree with this then there is no amount of logic that will ever convince you that good, non-oppressive, combos should be allowed. If you don't agree with it then just don't play this game, and you certainly shouldn't feel entitled to make any comment on ban lists ever.
as discussed earlier in this thread, pentad prism would destroy your combo because it is an artifact, thus shares a type with ornithopter.
actually i thought about polymorph too and will test it. its better than through the breach, because its cheaper und you only need your ornithopter instead of the flying spaghetti monster in hand (which we can't tutor for)
Polymorph is not even remotely close to being better than Through the Breach. It forces us to actually protect the Thopter from removal, and we only have 1 shot at doing that or Thopter dies, all the Polys become dead draws, and we now have to somehow recur Thopter. Right now, the Breach/Storm version of the deck is basically immune to all the removal we see in Modern. Path doesn't do anything. Nor does burn. If we add in Polymorph, however, we open ourselves up to that axis of interaction. Heck, even Liliana becomes a problem at that point, and right now she is not a card that we would ever need to worry about. In a different deck it might be fine (although I would still run Through the Breach as an additional win condition even in a Polymorph deck). But in this deck, it just opens us up to additional vulnerability.
Running through the breach is basically pointless in a deck with 1 or 2 emrakuls as the only targets. The thing with polymorph is that it is redundant with possibility storm. It's clearly weaker but it does work as storms 5-8.
Which in turn might allow you to run more protection instead of dig. It so happens polymorph is 4 mana, so pact of negation is right on curve if they try to bolt your thopter. Of course at that point, unlike with possibility storm, they get to untap and wrath. Then again that is also true with through the breach.
I don't know really, polymorph is quite possibly too weak but through the breach clearly doesn't fit the deck.
I strongly disagree. Poly isn't even close to storms 5-8. For one, a cast Emrakul will dodge any active Liliana effects on the board. That means that we aren't punting the Jund matchup on the spot, so in that regard, Poly isn't anything like Storm (or TfB which grants haste). More importantly, Poly forces us to try and protect a resolved Thopter which is an added layer of complexity that seriously hurts this deck. We are currently benefiting from opponents that have dead slots on Beast Within/Galvanic Blast/Boomerang/Spellskite/Bolt/Path/Decay/Flames/Wrath/Verdict because those cards can't interact with our game plan in any way. Adding in Poly gives every deck that runs those cards (Twin, Jund, Pod, Zoo, Affinity, and basically every other tier 1-2 deck in the format) a means of interacting with the combo. This makes our deck substantially weaker. And we can't just add protection because we need the dig to find the lone Thopter. We can't curve into Pact because we will only have 4 mana available on turn 4 and will untap on turn 5 with that same 4 mana.
Poly has the added problem of being too all-in on the combo. If we lose our singleton Thopter, or the subsequent Emrakul, we won't have a second Thopter to fall back on. Now we need to rely on some gimmicky recursion effects to bring Thopter back and try the whole thing again.
Finally, TfB is a way to beat control. Play TfB at the end of the opponent's turn. If they waste resources to counter it, then we can go for the Storm combo on our turn. If they let it resolve, then they drop down to 3-5 life or so and lose the ability to deal with our threats later. Polymorph, however, is very easy for any control deck to react to.
A turn 4 TfB, especially on the play, is a total blowout for every aggro deck in the format except (maybe) Affinity. The same goes for the Midrange matchups. The only means of interacting with TfB are countermagic and discard, both of which also screw over Poly. But TfB is effectively immune to all widely-played removal in the entire format. This gives us a robust alternate win condition or, at the very least, a 3-4 turn effective Time Walk on our opponent.
That is if we stuff 4 emrakuls and 4 griselbrands into the deck so that TtB isn't a dead card 99.99% of the time. Or 4 emrakuls and 4 time of need. At which point we're better off just running goryo's vengeance instead of p.storm...
We are already running 1 Emrakul, and we already want to commit 4 other card slots to alternate win conditions, whether Poly or TfB or something else. So in the TfB version, we are just adding in +3 Emrakul. In the Poly version, we are just adding +3 Dispel/Pact/some protection. The difference being that the TfB version is much more resilient to interaction. The Poly version more or less forces us to run countermagic to protect our Thopter, and we still can't even swing with Emrakul until the next turn.
Also, saying that TfB is dead 99.99% is only true if you are willing to acknowledge that Poly is dead 99.9999% of the time. At least with TfB, we have a 2 card combo and we run 4 copies of both. With Poly, it's a 2 card combo where we are only running 1 copy of our Thopter.
And no, we aren't just better of running GV than Storm. One combo uses the graveyard, bad news in a format of Ooze and DRS. The other combo avoids the graveyard entirely.
As a final note, have you actually tested your hypothetical Poly version? I have tested the TfB version for months and consistency is never a problem. In 80% of my games, you have one combo online and ready to go by turn 4, and the only way to stop you is with discard or countermagic; removal never factors in.
SLAGSTORM: This card was initially Lighting Bolt before it was Pyroclasm before it was back to Bolt before it settled at Slag. Slag gives us a very strong sweeper to slow down opposing aggro decks and relieve early game pressure. 3 damage is a lot of damage and, if cast on turn 3, few decks will have anything standing afterwards. Sure, Finks survives, but if you can force him to persist before your Emrakul swings, that's a huge bonus for us. Slag also doubles as a finisher after we fire off a TfB into Emrakul. Most decks, Affinity being the notable exception, will naturally be at 18 from some combination of Shock/Fetch(/Pod) activations. Slagstorm lets us end the game on the spot without wasting time trying to find another card to finish. I bounce between 3-4 Slag and 3-4 Charm, so pick the ratio that works for you.
IZZET CHARM: I tried out Telling Time in this slot, but ultimately preferred the interaction that Charm lets us have. Mostly, I added Charm because of the Twin matchup, which was pretty bad before I started using it. Charm slows Twin down by at least a turn, which is good news for us because we can threaten a turn 4 win that they have to respond to. Charm also gives us game against Reanimator as countermagic, and can double as more draw if we need it.
DESPERATE RITUAL/PYRETIC RITUAL: A long time ago, I thought that Lotus Bloom and/or Pentad Prism were the best ways to power out a turn 4 combo. I then started testing and quickly realized that the Jund and Pod matchups were problems if we relied on artifact mana. Decay/Pulse/Pridemage is just a lot of hate that we have to fight through on top of finding our combo, relieving pressure from attacks, and trying to control the board. The only way for most decks to interact with the rituals is with discard or countermagic, both of which also work against artifact acceleration. By switching to rituals, I effectively eliminated one set of vulnerabilities that the combo was facing. People play Abrupt Decay because it is good in most matchups. Our deck, however, can now just laugh at Decay. 5 copies seems to be the magic number without getting flooded, especially with our 8 cantrips and 3 charms.
TOLARIA WEST: There was a point where I thought that 3 of these were the way to go, but I sometimes found myself with bad turn early game plays as a result. If you are having trouble finding Thopter, then go back up to 3. If you do so, however, know that every once in a while you will hit a game where you can't do something on turn 2-3 because of the tapped clause. I have definitely missed a Slagstorm because of this card, and I have definitely been unable to drop a turn 3 cantrip into a Remand because of it as well.
Sideboard has been a work in progress, but an all-star in the control matchup has been the brutal Gigadrowse. This card is exceedingly difficult for control to play around. Replicate that baby for 4 at EOT and then combo out on the next turn; there is often nothing that a control player can do to stop this. Spell Pierce is another all-star, whether in fighting against Twin or beating Jund/Pod disruption. Indeed, Pierce is almost maindeckable, but Charm is enough of a replacement that it isn't worth it.
This looks like the best list by far. Have you thought about running electrolyze in the slagstorm spot? It cantrips and still domes 'em (and plays better with remand and the other instants)
EDIT: also, I dont like 5 rituals, I dont think getting out the combo turn 4 should be the goal. turn 5 seems fine, and it lets you run so much more draw/protection. also, you can use the freed slots for more tolarias, I think it is correct to run 4, but to treat them as "spells"
This looks like the best list by far. Have you thought about running electrolyze in the slagstorm spot? It cantrips and still domes 'em (and plays better with remand and the other instants)
I liked Electrolyze in a lot of matchups, but was having some trouble against Gruul Zoo and Affinity, which is why I switched to Slag. Both of those decks can put you at pretty low life totals before we even have a chance of comboing, and both of them recover very well from a TfB powered Emrakul. Affinity especially will be able to have 7+ permanents in play, so it's not uncommon to have active beaters around even after he attacks. Gruul Zoo, on the other hand, can just rapidly curve back into threats. Electrolyze wasn't nearly as potent as Slag in holding back that pressure.
EDIT: also, I dont like 5 rituals, I dont think getting out the combo turn 4 should be the goal. turn 5 seems fine, and it lets you run so much more draw/protection. also, you can use the freed slots for more tolarias, I think it is correct to run 4, but to treat them as "spells"
I hear you on that. I was only playing 5 rituals because I wanted to maximize the explosiveness of the deck (turn 3 TfB is always a day ruiner for an opponent). But ditching one of the Rituals for another control spell is probably equally viable.
Just had an idea, Do we really *have* to play blue? What about straight up G/R. Manlands gives a great way to follow up an breached emrakul.
....
[/DECK]
Possibly go Naya colors so we can add glittering wish? (what is the best through the breach target for glittering?)
The GR plan is interesting because the manlands are very powerful followups to the Emrakul swing. It also gives us other acceleration options that are more permanent than ritual (e.g. Farseek or Search for Tomorrow). A few pages back I was advocating the green builds of the deck because of how awesome Time of Need is for added redundancy with Rhys/Norin and Emrakul. I switched back to blue because I wanted to keep some interactivity, and blue seemed like the best color to do that.
Glittering Wish is a cool idea, but I shied away from it because the big-multicolored creatures aren't always that great. Borborygmos Enraged isn't horrible; he will often hit for 10+ and maybe remove stuff from the board. Progenitus will swing for 10, but has no impact on board state. Nicol Bolas is a scary bullet against control strategies, but is easy to get rid of. Magister Sphinx "effectively" swings for 15, and has the added bonus of ruining a Pod player with 3 trillion life (so long as their combo still isn't active), but it can't win the game on its own. Lots of options, but none really jump out at me.
The other problem with Wish is that it interferes with our Emrakul game plan in long games. Once Emrakul gets shuffled into our deck, it will also shuffle away the wished-for card. That makes our Storm activations worse. This isn't a big concern, because it will only happen over very long games, but it is still something to think about. I'd be curious to see if anyone can come up with better wish targets.
I'm still tweaking the basic land slot and possibly the 4th remand slot.
So it is a Hive Mind/Possibility Storm deck. Emrakul gets cheated in with Zoetic Cavern morph. The big mana engine is Amulet/Summer Bloom. However, Amulet is fine without summer bloom. Turn 1/2 Amulet, bounce land into Prism gives you 5/6 mana on turn 3. Once you have explosive mana, then the fun begins.
The magic mana numbers to win are 6 (hard cast Hive Mind with pact), 8 (Possibility Storm with Morph), 9 (Hive Mind and transmute), 11 (hard cast Possibility Storm, transmute and morph). At 5, you can have a near win with Possibility Storm hard cast and draw/bounce/transmute into Caverns.
It's a lot of fun but the deck has a very steep learning curve because of all of the interactions. If you can figure out the interactions, the deck will do extremely well for a fringe deck.
For example -
Tolaria West --> Pact/Zoetic Cavern/Bounce Land.
Bounce Lands --> bounce Tolaria West or Zoetic Cavern or another bounce land to correct mana colors.
With Possibility Storm in play, all of your Pacts become free cantrips. The 16 instants are a combination of 11 counterspells (4 Remand, 3 Izzet, 4 Pact) or 9 drawing effects (Remand, Izzet, Telling Time). You play the percentages. The deck packs as much counter magic as other permission decks.
Pact of Titan/Remand = Cantrip.
With double Amulet, Emrakul can be hard cast on Summer Bloom.
Pros of Playing -
#1 - The deck wins out of nowhere both late game and early game. You can set up the win by turn 2.
#2 - Requires lots of thinking. There is a lot of synergy built into the deck. Everything interacts with each other for redundancy. Pacts become disposable for Possibility Storm (see above).
#3 - "Cheap" to build. No fetch lands. Pact of Negation is down to $8 so Grove is the only big ticket left, along with Emrakul. Remand is stupidly expensive though.
#4 - Frustrate your opponent since the deck is very non-intuitive and your opponent has to guess. Opponents also have lots of dead cards. Zero obvious creatures. No graveyard use except for flashback Looting. Minimal use of searching (2 Tolaria West). Resistant to Tectonic Edge as the deck can operate on 3 lands due to bouncing. Once Possibility Storm hits play, everything becomes erratic. With two distinct victory conditions, your opponent will have difficulty siding in correct hate.
#5 - Frustrate your opponent's win strategy. Opponents' life totals are almost irrelevant since they die to Pact or annihilation. In all of the games I've played, I've won with 4/4 Titan tokens exactly twice. It's always been Emrakul scoop or Hive Mind.
Cons of Playing -
#1 - Too much thinking involved. You need to know how Hive Mind and Possibility Storm interacts with everything, including stacking Pacts. The deck doesn't "misplay" as much as sub-optimal play. Without practice and knowing your opponent's deck, you can easily find yourself winning on turn 4/5 rather than 3/4. Knowing which hands to keep is a big deal as well.
#2 - Misfires. The deck is fairly consistent because it has 22 lands (7 of which bounce), 4 Amulets and 4 Prisms to support the mana base. That said, it's a combo deck so you can occasionally misfire and simply not draw what you want. You end up sitting there drawing dead. I used to have a dedicated Hive Mind deck and added in the 3 Storms/Emrakul to give it an alternate win condition. Now you have 7 combo outs.
#3 - Shuffle your deck thoroughly. The deck needs to be very randomized.
hey guys, it's nice to see that there's still conversation happening regarding this deck. I have a few updates for you:
My friend built possibility storm with the win con being gitaxian probe > dragonstorm. The deck was extremely fun but there was so many dead draws because of the dragon package. So we switched the win con to gitaxian probe > enter the infinite. Which is just as fun and a slightly better deck. Still not competitive however. But here is the list for reference:
Here is an explanation on a few card choices. Norin the Wary over ornithopter: Norin the Wary lets you run artifact ramp and time of need to support the combo. Time of need gives the deck some needed consistency and the artifact ramp can accelerate you to 6 mana on turn 4 so this is on par with the ornithopter plan.
I have heard some complaints that the artifact ramp is vulnerable to removal but in my experience if they are using their turn to kill your artifacts rather that deploy more threats that's actually okay for you.
I think teferi is better than curse of exhaustion. If you can Eot resolve Teferi, untap, then land Possiblity storm, your opponent is locked out of casting spells for the rest of the game. You can even run it in a grixis teachings list, play as a control deck with a near unbeatable endgame lock.
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Most of the builds I have seen, at least the functional ones, are only using 1 Thopter, tutorable via the uncounterable Tolaria West, or just drawable off of Serum/Sleight. That's one of the oddities of the deck; it's technically a 2 card combo, but one of those cards you can only run 1 of.
The only way I can think of to fix that is to use the horrible Allosaurus Rider. One of the benefits of Rider is that you can use it in tandem with Summoner's Pact. The disadvantage is that it requires so many green cards to use effectively, and green is probably the worst color for this deck.
For now, I'm sticking with Thopter, Tolaria West, and Ancient Stirrings.
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Let's assume a game 2-3 Slaughter Games. I can't find a single Modern deck that runs this card in the main, so we only need to worry about it after our sideboard kicks in.
There are a bunch of decent sideboard cards to handle a Games, both preemptively and even reactively. In the prevention department, we have the obvious Leyline of Sanctity as well as disruption like Thoughtseize. Leyline is sort of the go-to card for fragile combo like ours, especially because decks that tend to run Slaughter games (like Jund) tend not to run effective answers to Leyline. Even if they do, it is hard for them to reliably draw both the Games and the Maelstrom Pulse in the same match.
Another option, one on the techy side of things, is the underplayed Shadow of Doubt. It's a 2 mana answer to Games. It's a cantrip. It's on color. It also doubles as an effective SB card against Pod and fetches. I admit that it is a bit narrow for our precious sideboard slots, but it is an option.
Another option is just to run some more backup plans in the board. A transformational sideboard is a definite possibility if we already have Breach and Emrakul in the maindeck. Just stick Goryo's Vengeance, Griselbrand, and Fury of the Horde in the board. That would necessitate running Faithless Looting in the maindeck, but that is a small modification to enable a decent transformational board. That said, such a transformation might not be worth it.
Combo Piece 1:
Combo Piece 2:
Ramp:
Dig:
Land:
2 Haunted Fengraf
20 RUG Lands
Both Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom allow for turn 4 casting of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn off of Possibility Storm.
The Pentad Prism can even let you Through the Breach your Emrakul, the Aeons Torn turn 3!
Time of Need is perfect for this deck. It finds Emrakul, the Aeons Torn if you have a through in hand and it finds norin. Plus it has awesome flavour… Time of Need: I need help, should I call a scared explorer or a giant spaghetti monster?
Faithless Looting is better than it seems in this deck. You have so many redundant combo pieces and Faithless Looting essentially lets you cycle them away. You can pitch the second Time of Need, the second Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, the second Possibility Storm, excess ramp artifacts, excess land, and pitching a Faithless Looting to a Faithless Looting is almost like getting value.
Haunted Fengraf is for anti discard. I think one or two is good in metas with lots of Thoughtseize because we can only run a single Norin the Wary.
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The advantage of Squadron Hawk is that it solves the problem of only being able to play 1 combo piece in the deck. The big disadvantage is that it turns the deck into a 7 mana combo instead of a 5-6 mana one. At 7 mana, the deck can't win on turn 4 unless it has a crazy draw. That forces us to wait until turn 5 to cast a Hawk, leaving us totally tapped out as the opponent untaps for his own turn 4/5. That's a bit risky for my taste in a format that can fire off a Snapcaster/Tribal Flames combo, or just swing with a Cranial Plating attached Inkmoth on that turn for the win. So I think we have to keep a strategy that uses a CMC 0 or CMC 1.
If it's a CMC 0 creature (Ornithopter, Memnite, or Allosaurus Rider), then we can just run Desperate Ritual and/or Pyretic Ritual to ensure we have the 5 mana on turn 4. If it's a CMC 1 creature (Norin the Wary or Rhys the Redeemed), then we can still achieve 6 mana on turn 4, but it needs to be via Pentad Prism and Lotus Bloom instead of rituals.
The Ritual plan is much more resilient to disruption, because it doesn't open our mana sources to Abrupt Decay and Qasali Pridemage/Harmonic Sliver. But the actual creatures used (Thopter/Rider/Memnite) are much worse for our gameplan than those in the 1 CMC slot.
Currently, I think that the best version of this deck uses Rhys the Redeemed instead of Ornithopter. Rhys lets us run 3 tutors that Thopter just doesn't work with. One of those tutors has the advantage of working with Emrakul for our alternate win off of Through the Breach:
Norin the Wary only works with Time of Need. Rhys works with all three of these tutors, each of which has their own unique benefits and drawbacks. Time of Need is excellent in its ability to tutor for Emrakul or Rhys, depending on how you want to win. Summoner's Pact is nice to grab Rhys the turn you cast Storm, and you can almost always pay the upkeep price the subsequent turn. Wish fetches Rhys at the same manacost as Time, but it also lets us run a toolbox of answers to handle potentially problematic cards like Ethersworn Canonist. The big disadvantage of Wish is its reliance on white mana, which turns the deck from a 3 colored build to a 4 colored one; I don't think that's necessarily a big problem with the Modern manabase, but it's definitely more painful against aggro.
As to an actual list, my card distribution is always changing with each test. I would try something along these lines, with a few of these slots open to change:
2 Steam Vents
2 Forest
1 Island
1 Mountain
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Stomping Ground
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Breeding Pool
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Rhys the Redeemed
Win: 8
4 Possibility Storm
4 Through the Breach
Tutor: 6
2 Summoner's Pact
4 Time of Need
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
Acceleration: 6
2 Pentad Prism
4 Lotus Bloom
Disruption: 5
2 Repeal
4 Remand
It's not a final decklist by any means, but it has a lot of the pieces in place. This version preserves the TfB win condition, which is a distinct advantage that this deck has over Hive Mind. It fits in 6 disruption slots alongside its robust tutor and draw base, and can almost always cast either Storm/Rhys or TfB by turn 4. I would like to include the Wishboard plan in the deck, but not at the expense of mana or draw consistency.
If you do that, you won't be able to cast anything either. Use Curse of Exhaustion instead.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
And if that's the case, it seems both slower, and less explosive than Goryo's Vengeance.
Polymorph is not even remotely close to being better than Through the Breach. It forces us to actually protect the Thopter from removal, and we only have 1 shot at doing that or Thopter dies, all the Polys become dead draws, and we now have to somehow recur Thopter. Right now, the Breach/Storm version of the deck is basically immune to all the removal we see in Modern. Path doesn't do anything. Nor does burn. If we add in Polymorph, however, we open ourselves up to that axis of interaction. Heck, even Liliana becomes a problem at that point, and right now she is not a card that we would ever need to worry about. In a different deck it might be fine (although I would still run Through the Breach as an additional win condition even in a Polymorph deck). But in this deck, it just opens us up to additional vulnerability.
I strongly disagree. Poly isn't even close to storms 5-8. For one, a cast Emrakul will dodge any active Liliana effects on the board. That means that we aren't punting the Jund matchup on the spot, so in that regard, Poly isn't anything like Storm (or TfB which grants haste). More importantly, Poly forces us to try and protect a resolved Thopter which is an added layer of complexity that seriously hurts this deck. We are currently benefiting from opponents that have dead slots on Beast Within/Galvanic Blast/Boomerang/Spellskite/Bolt/Path/Decay/Flames/Wrath/Verdict because those cards can't interact with our game plan in any way. Adding in Poly gives every deck that runs those cards (Twin, Jund, Pod, Zoo, Affinity, and basically every other tier 1-2 deck in the format) a means of interacting with the combo. This makes our deck substantially weaker. And we can't just add protection because we need the dig to find the lone Thopter. We can't curve into Pact because we will only have 4 mana available on turn 4 and will untap on turn 5 with that same 4 mana.
Poly has the added problem of being too all-in on the combo. If we lose our singleton Thopter, or the subsequent Emrakul, we won't have a second Thopter to fall back on. Now we need to rely on some gimmicky recursion effects to bring Thopter back and try the whole thing again.
Finally, TfB is a way to beat control. Play TfB at the end of the opponent's turn. If they waste resources to counter it, then we can go for the Storm combo on our turn. If they let it resolve, then they drop down to 3-5 life or so and lose the ability to deal with our threats later. Polymorph, however, is very easy for any control deck to react to.
A turn 4 TfB, especially on the play, is a total blowout for every aggro deck in the format except (maybe) Affinity. The same goes for the Midrange matchups. The only means of interacting with TfB are countermagic and discard, both of which also screw over Poly. But TfB is effectively immune to all widely-played removal in the entire format. This gives us a robust alternate win condition or, at the very least, a 3-4 turn effective Time Walk on our opponent.
We are already running 1 Emrakul, and we already want to commit 4 other card slots to alternate win conditions, whether Poly or TfB or something else. So in the TfB version, we are just adding in +3 Emrakul. In the Poly version, we are just adding +3 Dispel/Pact/some protection. The difference being that the TfB version is much more resilient to interaction. The Poly version more or less forces us to run countermagic to protect our Thopter, and we still can't even swing with Emrakul until the next turn.
Also, saying that TfB is dead 99.99% is only true if you are willing to acknowledge that Poly is dead 99.9999% of the time. At least with TfB, we have a 2 card combo and we run 4 copies of both. With Poly, it's a 2 card combo where we are only running 1 copy of our Thopter.
And no, we aren't just better of running GV than Storm. One combo uses the graveyard, bad news in a format of Ooze and DRS. The other combo avoids the graveyard entirely.
As a final note, have you actually tested your hypothetical Poly version? I have tested the TfB version for months and consistency is never a problem. In 80% of my games, you have one combo online and ready to go by turn 4, and the only way to stop you is with discard or countermagic; removal never factors in.
Here's the list I am currently using. There are a few quirks in it that I want to explain as well:
4 Steam Vents
4 Island
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Mountain
4 Sulfur Falls
2 Tolaria West
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Ornithopter
Spells: 31
4 Possibility Storm
4 Through the Breach
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Remand
3 Slagstorm
4 Desperate Ritual
3 Izzet Charm
1 Pyretic Ritual
SLAGSTORM: This card was initially Lighting Bolt before it was Pyroclasm before it was back to Bolt before it settled at Slag. Slag gives us a very strong sweeper to slow down opposing aggro decks and relieve early game pressure. 3 damage is a lot of damage and, if cast on turn 3, few decks will have anything standing afterwards. Sure, Finks survives, but if you can force him to persist before your Emrakul swings, that's a huge bonus for us. Slag also doubles as a finisher after we fire off a TfB into Emrakul. Most decks, Affinity being the notable exception, will naturally be at 18 from some combination of Shock/Fetch(/Pod) activations. Slagstorm lets us end the game on the spot without wasting time trying to find another card to finish. I bounce between 3-4 Slag and 3-4 Charm, so pick the ratio that works for you.
IZZET CHARM: I tried out Telling Time in this slot, but ultimately preferred the interaction that Charm lets us have. Mostly, I added Charm because of the Twin matchup, which was pretty bad before I started using it. Charm slows Twin down by at least a turn, which is good news for us because we can threaten a turn 4 win that they have to respond to. Charm also gives us game against Reanimator as countermagic, and can double as more draw if we need it.
DESPERATE RITUAL/PYRETIC RITUAL: A long time ago, I thought that Lotus Bloom and/or Pentad Prism were the best ways to power out a turn 4 combo. I then started testing and quickly realized that the Jund and Pod matchups were problems if we relied on artifact mana. Decay/Pulse/Pridemage is just a lot of hate that we have to fight through on top of finding our combo, relieving pressure from attacks, and trying to control the board. The only way for most decks to interact with the rituals is with discard or countermagic, both of which also work against artifact acceleration. By switching to rituals, I effectively eliminated one set of vulnerabilities that the combo was facing. People play Abrupt Decay because it is good in most matchups. Our deck, however, can now just laugh at Decay. 5 copies seems to be the magic number without getting flooded, especially with our 8 cantrips and 3 charms.
TOLARIA WEST: There was a point where I thought that 3 of these were the way to go, but I sometimes found myself with bad turn early game plays as a result. If you are having trouble finding Thopter, then go back up to 3. If you do so, however, know that every once in a while you will hit a game where you can't do something on turn 2-3 because of the tapped clause. I have definitely missed a Slagstorm because of this card, and I have definitely been unable to drop a turn 3 cantrip into a Remand because of it as well.
Sideboard has been a work in progress, but an all-star in the control matchup has been the brutal Gigadrowse. This card is exceedingly difficult for control to play around. Replicate that baby for 4 at EOT and then combo out on the next turn; there is often nothing that a control player can do to stop this. Spell Pierce is another all-star, whether in fighting against Twin or beating Jund/Pod disruption. Indeed, Pierce is almost maindeckable, but Charm is enough of a replacement that it isn't worth it.
This looks like the best list by far. Have you thought about running electrolyze in the slagstorm spot? It cantrips and still domes 'em (and plays better with remand and the other instants)
EDIT: also, I dont like 5 rituals, I dont think getting out the combo turn 4 should be the goal. turn 5 seems fine, and it lets you run so much more draw/protection. also, you can use the freed slots for more tolarias, I think it is correct to run 4, but to treat them as "spells"
something to the tune of:
4 Explore
4 Time of Need
4 Edge of Autumn
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
4 Through the Breach
1 Rhys the Redeemed
4 Possibility Storm
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Garruk Relentless
4 Raging Ravine
4 Stomping Ground
2 Mountain
1 Mutavault
1 Faithless Looting
8 Forest
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
4 Tectonic Edge
Possibly go Naya colors so we can add glittering wish? (what is the best through the breach target for glittering?)
I liked Electrolyze in a lot of matchups, but was having some trouble against Gruul Zoo and Affinity, which is why I switched to Slag. Both of those decks can put you at pretty low life totals before we even have a chance of comboing, and both of them recover very well from a TfB powered Emrakul. Affinity especially will be able to have 7+ permanents in play, so it's not uncommon to have active beaters around even after he attacks. Gruul Zoo, on the other hand, can just rapidly curve back into threats. Electrolyze wasn't nearly as potent as Slag in holding back that pressure.
I hear you on that. I was only playing 5 rituals because I wanted to maximize the explosiveness of the deck (turn 3 TfB is always a day ruiner for an opponent). But ditching one of the Rituals for another control spell is probably equally viable.
The GR plan is interesting because the manlands are very powerful followups to the Emrakul swing. It also gives us other acceleration options that are more permanent than ritual (e.g. Farseek or Search for Tomorrow). A few pages back I was advocating the green builds of the deck because of how awesome Time of Need is for added redundancy with Rhys/Norin and Emrakul. I switched back to blue because I wanted to keep some interactivity, and blue seemed like the best color to do that.
Glittering Wish is a cool idea, but I shied away from it because the big-multicolored creatures aren't always that great. Borborygmos Enraged isn't horrible; he will often hit for 10+ and maybe remove stuff from the board. Progenitus will swing for 10, but has no impact on board state. Nicol Bolas is a scary bullet against control strategies, but is easy to get rid of. Magister Sphinx "effectively" swings for 15, and has the added bonus of ruining a Pod player with 3 trillion life (so long as their combo still isn't active), but it can't win the game on its own. Lots of options, but none really jump out at me.
The other problem with Wish is that it interferes with our Emrakul game plan in long games. Once Emrakul gets shuffled into our deck, it will also shuffle away the wished-for card. That makes our Storm activations worse. This isn't a big concern, because it will only happen over very long games, but it is still something to think about. I'd be curious to see if anyone can come up with better wish targets.
3 Summer Bloom
4 Pentad Prism
3 Possibility Storm
4 Remand
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Faithless Looting
3 Telling Time
3 Izzet Charm
4 Hive Mind
3 Pact of the Titan
4 Pact of Negation
3 Zoetic Cavern
4 Izzet Boilerworks
4 Grove of the Burnwillows
2 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Gruul Turf
3 Breeding Pool
2 Steam Vents
1 Island
2 Tolaria West
I'm still tweaking the basic land slot and possibly the 4th remand slot.
So it is a Hive Mind/Possibility Storm deck. Emrakul gets cheated in with Zoetic Cavern morph. The big mana engine is Amulet/Summer Bloom. However, Amulet is fine without summer bloom. Turn 1/2 Amulet, bounce land into Prism gives you 5/6 mana on turn 3. Once you have explosive mana, then the fun begins.
The magic mana numbers to win are 6 (hard cast Hive Mind with pact), 8 (Possibility Storm with Morph), 9 (Hive Mind and transmute), 11 (hard cast Possibility Storm, transmute and morph). At 5, you can have a near win with Possibility Storm hard cast and draw/bounce/transmute into Caverns.
It's a lot of fun but the deck has a very steep learning curve because of all of the interactions. If you can figure out the interactions, the deck will do extremely well for a fringe deck.
For example -
Tolaria West --> Pact/Zoetic Cavern/Bounce Land.
Bounce Lands --> bounce Tolaria West or Zoetic Cavern or another bounce land to correct mana colors.
With Possibility Storm in play, all of your Pacts become free cantrips. The 16 instants are a combination of 11 counterspells (4 Remand, 3 Izzet, 4 Pact) or 9 drawing effects (Remand, Izzet, Telling Time). You play the percentages. The deck packs as much counter magic as other permission decks.
Pact of Titan/Remand = Cantrip.
With double Amulet, Emrakul can be hard cast on Summer Bloom.
Pros of Playing -
#1 - The deck wins out of nowhere both late game and early game. You can set up the win by turn 2.
#2 - Requires lots of thinking. There is a lot of synergy built into the deck. Everything interacts with each other for redundancy. Pacts become disposable for Possibility Storm (see above).
#3 - "Cheap" to build. No fetch lands. Pact of Negation is down to $8 so Grove is the only big ticket left, along with Emrakul. Remand is stupidly expensive though.
#4 - Frustrate your opponent since the deck is very non-intuitive and your opponent has to guess. Opponents also have lots of dead cards. Zero obvious creatures. No graveyard use except for flashback Looting. Minimal use of searching (2 Tolaria West). Resistant to Tectonic Edge as the deck can operate on 3 lands due to bouncing. Once Possibility Storm hits play, everything becomes erratic. With two distinct victory conditions, your opponent will have difficulty siding in correct hate.
#5 - Frustrate your opponent's win strategy. Opponents' life totals are almost irrelevant since they die to Pact or annihilation. In all of the games I've played, I've won with 4/4 Titan tokens exactly twice. It's always been Emrakul scoop or Hive Mind.
Cons of Playing -
#1 - Too much thinking involved. You need to know how Hive Mind and Possibility Storm interacts with everything, including stacking Pacts. The deck doesn't "misplay" as much as sub-optimal play. Without practice and knowing your opponent's deck, you can easily find yourself winning on turn 4/5 rather than 3/4. Knowing which hands to keep is a big deal as well.
#2 - Misfires. The deck is fairly consistent because it has 22 lands (7 of which bounce), 4 Amulets and 4 Prisms to support the mana base. That said, it's a combo deck so you can occasionally misfire and simply not draw what you want. You end up sitting there drawing dead. I used to have a dedicated Hive Mind deck and added in the 3 Storms/Emrakul to give it an alternate win condition. Now you have 7 combo outs.
#3 - Shuffle your deck thoroughly. The deck needs to be very randomized.
My friend built possibility storm with the win con being gitaxian probe > dragonstorm. The deck was extremely fun but there was so many dead draws because of the dragon package. So we switched the win con to gitaxian probe > enter the infinite. Which is just as fun and a slightly better deck. Still not competitive however. But here is the list for reference:
20 Land
I'll quickly explain how it wins for those that are new to possibility storm. Cast Possibility Storm. Cast gitaxian probe, it will get exiled and reveal enter the infinite. Put lightning storm on top of your deck while resolving enter the infinite. Cast noxious revival or lightning bolt, it will get exiled and reveal lightning storm. Discard enough lands to kill them.
So anyways... that deck is a blast but not very competitive. If you wanted something that wins I'd give this list a try:
This deck is admittedly not as fast as reanimator but it is more resilient as it isn't affected by graveyard hate including deathrite shaman. Also Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded > Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is a win vs some decks which is nice.
Here is an explanation on a few card choices. Norin the Wary over ornithopter: Norin the Wary lets you run artifact ramp and time of need to support the combo. Time of need gives the deck some needed consistency and the artifact ramp can accelerate you to 6 mana on turn 4 so this is on par with the ornithopter plan.
I have heard some complaints that the artifact ramp is vulnerable to removal but in my experience if they are using their turn to kill your artifacts rather that deploy more threats that's actually okay for you.
Thanks to Rivenor for the signature and XenoNinja for the Avi!
Quotes:
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Hallowed Fountain
3 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Island
1 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Tolaria West
1 Zoetic Cavern
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Izzet Charm
3 Peer Through Depths
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Pentad Prism
4 Silence
4 Idyllic Tutor
1 Lumithread Field
4 Possibility Storm