MTG Salvation

If your opponent has no clock, sandbag the land and cantrip most likely. If your opponent is dumb enough to think you are digging for land and counters it, then you successfully dummy checked them and can now play the third land and storm at 5 spells for 10 goblins which should be enou h.

I began golfishing with the deck in the last two days and I updated my sideboard based on a better understanding of the rough matchups :



Eventually, I'd bump to 3 Blood Moon and 0 Swan Song, but not for now.

Cheers!

Quote from w1ldgooze »

Mark Rosewater has declared that he doesn’t ever see Storm coming back in a Standard-legal set.
On Blogatog, he uses the"Storm scale" - a scale of 1 through 10 where 10 is Storm - when he answers questions about the likelyhood of the return of a mechanic in a Standard-legal set.
1= will definitely see again, 10 = never say never, but this is pretty close to never.
The Storm-scale does not affect the reprinting of cards in supplemental sets such as Modern Masters and the Magic Online-only set Vintage Masters.

for everyone hoping for an upgrade.. it wont be a finisher

This has been known for years.

Quote from mykatdied »

If your opponent has no clock, sandbag the land and cantrip most likely. If your opponent is dumb enough to think you are digging for land and counters it, then you successfully dummy checked them and can now play the third land and storm at 5 spells for 10 goblins which should be enou h.

Yeap, a pretty good play right there.

Over the weekend, I played a small modern event, 8 players. Packing UR Gift Storm, SB the usual suspects but with
1x unburial rites
1x Iona
1x Elesh Norn
1x Gifts Ungiven (2x mainboard)

Round 1 vs Burn (lost 1-2)
Game 1: A flurry of burn, on top of eidolon of great revel by turn 3? Yeah all the too familiar pain.
SB:
+1 Unburial Rites
+1 Gifts Ungiven
+1 Iona
-1 Pyromancer's Ascension
-1 Goblin Electromancer
-1 Gitaxian Probe

Game 2: He stuck on 1 land for first 2 turns. On his end of turn 3, i ritual + Gifts Ungiven, binning Iona and Unburial Rites. 4th land drop on my turn, manamorphose into unburial rites into Iona naming Red. (Yeah take that!!!)

SB Game 3:
-1 Iona
-1 Unburial Rites
-1 Gifts Ungiven
-1 Grapeshot
-1 Past in Flames
-3 Gitaxian Probe
+3 Empty the Warrens
+1 Goblin Electromancer
+2 Echoing Truth
+2 Lightning Bolt

Game 3: I expecting he'd side in path to exile, so i sided out the iona package.
As always it is with burn, the game plays are fairly simple and short.
Opp turn 2: Eidolon of forking revels
Me: Bolt
Opp turn 3: Eidolon of lol-u-playing-storm-gg-easy

Round 2 vs UB Mill (Won 2-0)

Game 1: He almost milled me out, while i barely able to setup; having only 1 pyromancer's ascension with only 1 counter. In the process, he surgical extraction twice; targeting grapeshot and goblin electromancer (instead of past in flames). He's on 15 life. I've 2 lightning bolts in the graveyard. My only outs is to find another pyromancer ascension (2 are already in graveyard). I casted 2 cantrips to find the copy needed, and got it with 3 more cards remaining in deck. Lining up my rituals and manamorphose to properly enable both ascension, i got them both to active. With that, and past in flames casted, i hurled 2 lightning bolts that were injected with steroids. What's funny was while i was done thinking and went off to cantrip, he went "Oh bro u wanna suicide is it?" My friend watching the game chuckled and said instead "dude u're gonna die man... hahaha"

SB:
+1 iona
+1 Unburial Rites
+1 Gifts Ungiven
-1 Pyromancer ascension
-1 Faithless Looting
-1 Desperate Raving

Game 2: He began milling, and immediately surgical extracted my pyromancer ascension (not tht i mind). he continued to mill a few more times, and lookie lookie i've got unburial rites and iona in my graveyard without me even trying. On my turn, it's manamorphose and unburial rites into Iona naming blue. GG easy

Round 3 vs Jund (Won 2-0. I hate playing against Jund....)

Game 1: He mulled to 5, which increases the likelihood of me being able to pull this off
Opp 2nd turn dropped a bob, luckily i've bolt to take care of it. I've no engine in play, and eventually staring down at 4/5 Goyf and the RG manland. On the final turn, I try to go off, on the back of a EOT Gifts Ungiven (And also pray hard that he bin the wrong cards). He handed me both rituals, and that gave me much hope. I managed to go off and took him down from 18 life, with no engine in play. Quite a feat!!

SB:
+1 Iona
+1 Unburial Rites
+1 Gifts Ungiven
+2 Empty the Warrens
-1 Faithless Looting
-1 Goblin Electromancer
-1 Pyromancer Ascension
-1 Past in Flames
-1 Grapeshot

Game 2: Jund being on the play is a nightmare for me to play against.. He ripped my hand apart. I sandbagged cantrips and ritual as much as i can, trying to make it redundant for his discards. Eventually i managed to serum vision, scry 2 found me gifts ungiven, which left second from top. I haven't enough mana to cast it, so i rather keep it in library until i'm ready, instead of possibly being discarded.
The plan worked out, I EOT gifts for Iona and Unburial Rites, while staring down at 2 4/5 Goyfs. I cheated Iona into play, naming Black. He attacked with both goyfs, I immediately threw iona in front of one, trying to mask the fact that if he has a lightning bolt i'll be dead. Thankfully he doesn't have one, but cast another. I'm still facing a very fast clock. I attacked with Iona on my turn, putting him down to 11 from 18, while i was at 12.
On my turn, I drew empty the warrens. With some sandbagged rituals and cantrip, i put 8 goblin tokens into play. The only way to lose is if he has pyroclasm. I swung in with Iona, with goblins holding the fort.
He doesn't have an out. Iona won me another game singlehandedly.

It's rather unfortunate I faced burn in round 1 though. Also the players are all my friends, so they knew i'll be playing storm. But that's also why i always try to innovate my deck, so even if they know I'm playing storm, they can't tell exactly what tech i'm bring in. Could it be Kiki resto, or young pyro tokens, or unburial rites? hahaha... let them guess

Will play with the list for the first time on Thursday. Looking forward to it. Expecting Affinity, mirror match, Living End and Ad Nauseam. The later I know (because it's my deck, I mean I played it full time for 9 months, I know the ins and outs completely), but want tips of Affinity especially, any control matchups (Grixis, Emeria and UWR), the Coco decks and the mirror match. I read the primer and the last pages, but insights about piloting the decks in each of theses matchups would be appreciated.

Cheers!

Just saw the new spoilers for today. As someone who doesn't play, but has interest in storm, how does Harness the Storm look for this deck? At first glance it seems decent.

Just saw the new spoilers for today. As someone who doesn't play, but has interest in storm, how does Harness the Storm look for this deck? At first glance it seems decent.

That card is interesting. It seems like a worse past in flames almost, but you also get to flashback the spell later, I think mostly all it really does is double our handsize but it may be worth testing for that. It seems a bit too slow, and with no immediate impact, but I would be interested to try it. Maybe its really good, I assume it isnt, but it might be.

The only use I can think of for it is the sideboard against a control deck or something similar that doesn't have a fast clock and tries to drag the game out. But something like Defense Grid is probably better in those matchups.

I don't like the card very much for a few reasons:
1) it's 3CMC. I don't want to be using all my third turn to play this card. I want to use T3 to get all the pieces in place for a T4 kill.
2) It's an enchantment, which means it's not discounted by Electromancer and neither does it contribute towards activating Ascension.
3) You still have pay the costs for the copy. Yeah they don't get exiled, but that's not really ideal.

I've seen the PiF comparison in a few places and I don't think that's really accurate. PiF is the big finisher in the deck; you play out your hand and then play PiF to effectively re-draw your entire yard. You can also flashback PiF if it gets countered, is discarded, or you just need to flashback a bunch more spells that you drew off of all your flashbacked cantrips.

Finally, what would you take out to make space for it? The deck (Finkel's version) is very precisely tuned; in a perfect world I'd really only want to swap out the cantrips for better cantrips.

I think it could be good if you have a redundant hand, which happens pretty often. Like, ritual into this, next turn cast another rit and have 6 red mana floating to go off.
What I'm saying is that it's very possible for this card to make turn 3 kills much more consistent. Needs a lot of testing though, and I'm sure ChucklingAtom will do a lot of it, and I certainly plan to.

Another card I want to talk about from the new spoilers is Epiphany at the Drownyard. Doesn't seem too good, but I think it has a little potential.

Quote from FlamingMew »

I think it could be good if you have a redundant hand, which happens pretty often. Like, ritual into this, next turn cast another rit and have 6 red mana floating to go off.
What I'm saying is that it's very possible for this card to make turn 3 kills much more consistent. Needs a lot of testing though, and I'm sure ChucklingAtom will do a lot of it, and I certainly plan to.

Another card I want to talk about from the new spoilers is Epiphany at the Drownyard. Doesn't seem too good, but I think it has a little potential.

The sequence you laid you isn't possible on T3, as you won't have enough mana to pay for the spell cast out of the graveyard. In any case, 6 red mana on turn 3 isn't really going to let you do anything broken, especially when you have to pay for the cards you're casting out of your yard. Without free copies of manamorphose you're not going to have enough blue to get anywhere most of the time.

On top of that, if I'm going to be ritualing out a card on turn 2, I need it to be something like Blood Moon that completely destabilizes the game in my favor.

Did not see that you had to pay the cost of the targeted card in the grave. That significantly changes my thoughts on its power. Will still test with it though.

I think it probably isn't very good, but I do think it gives a boost to the mono red version of the deck. It will be interesting to see how it helps in the control/grindy matchups since it makes each draw better, unless you draw it. I will probably play a couple games with it, but I dont expect it to find a place in the maindeck and will maybe at best have a sideboard slot. I agree if we are ritualing out something it needs to finish the game, or tilt it heavily in our favor, and this does not quite do this. Cool card, though, I like the idea behind it.

What about t2 ritual + harness and then t3 same ritual?

The problem is you need four mana to cast both rituals. You would only have three on turn three.

I might go to another GPT with PiF this weekend, but i would try to test something with 2x Empty The Warrens and Blood Moon main deck. Any suggestions on the shell?

Thinking about it more, this card is just slow. You have to kill people fast in Modern or you're just dead. Storm especially does anywhere from 2-8 points of damage to itself over the course of the game, which means that as soon as your opponent puts any reasonably sized body on the table you have very little time to combo off and kill them.

If modern was a slower, grindier format I think this card would be very serviceable as a way to build up an incremental advantage over many turns. But that's not the format we're going up against at this time.

Let's talk about the new card, eh?

Pros
Doesn't exile, so no nonbo with pif
Copies add to storm count, unlike ascension

Cons
3 mana
Another engine
Have to pay for copies

So, do the pros outweigh the cons?

No, the cons heavily outweigh the pros

Edit: Just realized how good Rise from the Tides can be. 7 mana is pretty achievable once we go off, even if we have to hold one blue floating for it.
The only drawback I can see that's obvious is that PiF can dilute it's effectiveness significantly.

Rise the tides is generally a slower empty the warrens, better topdeck late game, but they also come in tapped so no chumping. Also probably won't see play in my opinion.