Been playing storm since pyro ascension, really fun deck. I feel that i only lose when sboarding wrong. I like to have 3 copies of the same effect so I always end up with my solution. I really like merchant scroll maindeck, even against hatebears, taxes, etc...
I have good results with the standard list. Remand with baral in play is vicious, so is the scroll. Dismember for 4 life feels so good.
Dont like either noxious revival and apostle's, I rather use 8 dudes.
Its all about redundance, the real challenge is to shuffle properly, after u just goldfish really efficiently, so I prefer having virtually 6 copies of gifts, or extra remand, or that echoing truth post board.
What about strategic planning?
wow, that shows how balanced the deck is. Infraction issued for trolling and ignoring mod requests. --CavalryWolfPack
Lol, you still have to pilot it, but you can consistently win the match if your bear/Hand/Gy is unchecked. All decks are powerfull, storm is just more redundant, but fragile to disruption.
Just love gifts ungiven to get at least 3 answers, its raw power.
Is blood moon critical to the sideboard? I had been avoiding the purchase for budget reasons. Honestly I have been getting my butt kicked with this deck due in part to a meta primarly composed of burn, grixis shadow/delver, and GBx.
went 3-1 yesterday, list with 8 reducers, 3 grape, 1 empty, 2 scroll, 2 remand, 5 fetches, 4 spirebluff, 3 reef, 2 steam vents, 4 basics.
Pieces of the puzzle is good. Scroll is so good g1, and so comfortable to side out, dont see why not playing. Same goes to remand. I like bounces for side, wipe away, e truth, repeal(verygood), 1 copy each. Dismember, bolt, pyroclasm(Anger is better) 1 swan song has been enough, i also cut the moons. Shatterstorm, by force, shattering spree to hate damn artifacts. And 1 quicken, because i am a douche, lol.
I beat:
GDS, the guy was new to format, but empty main saved my ass, then repeal g2 bounce a 10/10 DS was gg
TURBOFOG, 3 leyline mainboard, surgical and *****, lost g1, but then the bounce and pieces of the puzzle made the difference
8RACK I lost, not good draws at all, but it was 2-1 thanks to empty and scroll, really dodgy.
JESKAI FLASH, didnt put a clock, thats a big mistake...
End up 4th/16, earned a foil fatal push, not bad.
Waiting for that sweet moment I'm going to quicken a grapy onto opponents combo, so sweet...
Why 17 lands? Pieces main might be good. Chalice on 2 needs 4 mana to happen, kinda a slow and very remandable, but i think repeal is as good and 1cmc to bounce chalice.
I don't like noxious, as blessings, whats the point of having 2 cards that dont add redundancy at all, specially if you can have another reducer instead. I play scroll because its an extra copy of gifts. If you gifts for pif/rit/rit2/morph you pretty much win the ******* game. Or gifts 3 4copies of a solution, etc... Same for 18 lands.
Blood moon buys you 2-3 turns and is generally a stall tactic that relieves the pressure of racing while piecing the combo post-board. You could run a 3rd pieces to more proactively gas up. Wipe away can bounce lands, and can be used to time walk your opponent if you're paying attention to game cues. Also, Keranos has been pretty sweet for me for attrition type matches.
Short answer, it's nice but not completely necessary.
Why 17 lands? Pieces main might be good. Chalice on 2 needs 4 mana to happen, kinda a slow and very remandable, but i think repeal is as good and 1cmc to bounce chalice.
I don't like noxious, as blessings, whats the point of having 2 cards that dont add redundancy at all, specially if you can have another reducer instead. I play scroll because its an extra copy of gifts. If you gifts for pif/rit/rit2/morph you pretty much win the ******* game. Or gifts 3 4copies of a solution, etc... Same for 18 lands.
Uh no offense but from what you just typed I imagine there isn't much spot removal in your meta. Our bears are just about the most fragile things in modern, the only thing that doesn't get them is gut shot, and nearly every deck worth its weight in modern is running upwards of 5-6 removals maindeck, even burn from our perspective since our bears are toughness 3 and below.
Noxious lets you gift for a bear, although it has other nice interactions like turning 2 manamorphoses into 3 manamorphoses, gifting for answers (wipe away/noxious/answer #2/anything else), retrieving a gifts that was countered at end of opponent's turn, re-using a PiF instead of having to flash it back if you need more loops, saving your grapeshot from surgical extraction, hitting your third land drop for suresies by retrieving a prior fetch... wow. No wonder nearly every top 8 list is running 1, huh?
Apostle's blessing is not so staple. Emma Handy says its too cute. Caleb doesn't run em. About half of the top 8 lists do. So who's right? The answer is your opponent. If they're removing every other bear you play, and that turn costs you the game, then you might want to consider blessing. Everyone knows (or at least everyone who knows how to fight storm knows) that the best time to remove a bear is at a timing where they would waste the most cards; PiF or gifts on stack; first ritual on stack. Then your rituals or pay off resolves and you're bearless and can't continue. You lose time, you lose cards, and if you have an extra bear that's nice but you're still set back pretty far.
Now if that extra bear had been a blessing, you'd already have won the game. Yes, its a one dimensional card. That's why the only person who can tell you if you need blessing or not isn't a player here, or caleb, or emma, or me. Its your opponent(s).
Is blood moon critical to the sideboard? I had been avoiding the purchase for budget reasons. Honestly I have been getting my butt kicked with this deck due in part to a meta primarly composed of burn, grixis shadow/delver, and GBx.
Blood moon is actually fairly cheap right now compared to what it had been - but it's ONLY useful if you're playing the version with fetchlands. Without fetches you can't guarantee access to blue mana, and blood moon becomes a liability instead of an asset.
If you're wanting budget friendly you probably aren't playing fetches, and blood moon is a bad card for you. Burn's just a terrible matchup, and for the other two I'd suggest Pieces of the Puzzle to help with the discard.
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Top 16 - 2012 Indiana State Championships Currently Playing: GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Some comment about facing decks that have a decent amount of removal:
Decks packed with much removal are very easy MUs when you know how to face them, but they may seem difficult at first simply because of a wrong approach. One common mistake many non experienced storm players make is playing a creature when you should be holding it in hand and making landdrops/sculpting hand, and once you have like 4 rituals in hand, 7 lands on the table and you've resolved a gifts and have somewhere a past in flames, then you play your creature and start going off in resp to their removal, and they just die. Even if they have counters, counterspells in modern are bad and you just can get over them with past in flames and your remands.
One good example for this are jeskai type decks. I've read many people saying it's a very bad MU because it has tons of removals, and this is simply not true. It's a super good MU, you only need to know to be patient. Obviously if you play your dudes in the first turns they will get insta killed, or if you gifts while they have counterspell mana up, it will get countered. Just wait for the exact moment, the key word is patience. You are not in a hurry.
This is also valid for the death shadow MU, but this MU is hard because they usually land an enormous undercosted creature in turn 2/3 and suddenly you can't wait eternally and need to act, and on top of that they actually have hard counters for 1 mana. Overall the perfect balance and combination to beat this deck. It's hard, but the approach should be usually the same: sometimes they can't find a threat in the first turns, or you get to remand their delve dude, or whatever... and you get to win that g1 because you didn't send your dudes to death in those first turns in which you didn't waste your time playing dudes and just made sure to hit landdrops and to develop your hand, and your opponent didn't get to use their removal and simply did nothing useful.
I sculpted my hand.... and died to an EOT snap and EOT resto angel. If you think Jeskai has no pressure you're dead wrong. Sometimes they gamble a turn 3 geist. If you're not ready on your turn 3 to win, you're as good as dead.
Getting to 7 lands against Jeskai, that's funny. If your jeskai opponent is a goldfish then sure. If they actually drop their flash creatures end of turn like a functioning MTG player then your scenarios aren't so rosy.
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BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
If you want to have 50/50 games post sb against the only tier 1 that beats you, shadow, you need blood moon. I honestly don't see any reason not to want to improve your worst MU among the tier 1s.
No reason from a game play stance. I simply have a budget that allows for X on cards per month, and getting a pair of Blood Moon would eat up most of it. Lately, I've been preferring to buy staples with wide applications like fetchlands, paths etc. That being said, if the improvement is drastic with moons, it then makes more sense to buy them in order to win more and subsequently get my staples from store credit through placing.
All control decks have a very slow clock, and you still have remands for it. 2 power flash creatures aren't a clock at all. If I do not have any trouble beating any kind of control deck and you do, either I've been incredibly lucky in dozens of games or I am doing something you aren't. And because I consider I've played enough games to dismiss luck as a key factor... I'm sorry, but if you consistently lose against any contro deck (jeskai, uw, ub, grixis...) you're probably doing something wrong. Either wrong approach, wrong sideboarding, wrong timing on your plays, or a combination of all 3. Obviously personal experience and skills are super important, I remember once asking bennyhillz (the best UW player online) about his win % against storm, since UW has been for me the easiest deck to beat and I was curious about the difference, and he was like 50-50 against storm while I am 90-10 against UW. Huge differences simply due to being better with your deck than the average opponent with his.
My general advice for any MU you might consider ''bad'' is that you should be trying to find out what you're doing wrong and work hard on trying to correct it rather than just assuming ''I'm dead to X and Y'' and that's it. Do something about it, change your plays, change your sideboard, change something, and be patient. You can always improve. But whatever.
Dude you shouldn't flame a guy because he has a different opinion than you. There's absolutely no way the matchup is 90-10 in your favor, and any good control player can make it tough for you to win. Experience definitely plays a huge part, but it's not everything. Their good draws are sometimes pretty challenging
And humility is a virtue for the record
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I think his point was that the control players he has played against didn't have tight play so he consistently crushes, but more experienced players can bring a "bad" match up to parity.
Hey y'all. I'm brand new to this deck and I've been jamming it on MTGO. Coming from playing UW Control in paper, but felt like doing more unfair things online. I've been playing with the most recent fetchless list that Caleb Scherer posted. Deck has been absurd in just practice, I think I've only dropped maybe 3 matches out of 10 or so played. Haven't found many matches super tough, with Shadow being the toughest. Have we reached a solid consensus on Remand? I'm not playing it, but I do still know people advocate for it.
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I run fetchless and still use Remand. Having some interaction is important in my opinion, and it's a good card against GDS, and other common big mana decks where the extra turns helps. The remand + grapeshot plan stays awesome and never feels win-more. I like the lines it opens up.
How's strategic planning working for you? I'm still on Peer through Depths.
Planning has been really fantastic. It's (usually) 1 mana look at 3 cards that fuels our primary gameplan via the graveyard. I might pick up some remands and try those as well. I haven't tried Peer myself yet but I don't know if I want to given how happy I am with Planning.
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All control decks have a very slow clock, and you still have remands for it. 2 power flash creatures aren't a clock at all. If I do not have any trouble beating any kind of control deck and you do, either I've been incredibly lucky in dozens of games or I am doing something you aren't. And because I consider I've played enough games to dismiss luck as a key factor... I'm sorry, but if you consistently lose against any contro deck (jeskai, uw, ub, grixis...) you're probably doing something wrong. Either wrong approach, wrong sideboarding, wrong timing on your plays, or a combination of all 3. Obviously personal experience and skills are super important, I remember once asking bennyhillz (the best UW player online) about his win % against storm, since UW has been for me the easiest deck to beat and I was curious about the difference, and he was like 50-50 against storm while I am 90-10 against UW. Huge differences simply due to being better with your deck than the average opponent with his.
My general advice for any MU you might consider ''bad'' is that you should be trying to find out what you're doing wrong and work hard on trying to correct it rather than just assuming ''I'm dead to X and Y'' and that's it. Do something about it, change your plays, change your sideboard, change something, and be patient. You can always improve. But whatever.
I'm a big fan of improvement. But I'm also a big fan of telling it like it is. Your scenarios all paint the control player as a goldfish. At the end of the game where you win, you need to chain a bunch of spells with or without a bear against an opponent that is basically playing removals, countermagics, flash threats and cantrips to sculpt their hand. If you're going long, 7 lands on the board long, its quite likely they're ready for you. They play the game on your turn.
So yea, I'm all for improvement, but your words don't exactly provide for that. You've basically typed a wall of text that can be summarized as "git gud". Well, thanks. I'm gitting guder with every game I play, same as you. So are my opponents.
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BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Let me reiterate my position: I'm totally fine with differing opinions, I think that's a really good thing because it helps all of us think critically and get better overall. What I think we all need is constructive debate, however. We don't want to drive anyone away, as the number of storm pilots are low to start, and we're all working towards the same goal here as a community.
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Modern UR Storm URB Grixis Delver W Death and Taxes
Basically anything with Scalding Tarn
Is blood moon critical to the sideboard? I had been avoiding the purchase for budget reasons. Honestly I have been getting my butt kicked with this deck due in part to a meta primarly composed of burn, grixis shadow/delver, and GBx.
Blood moon is actually fairly cheap right now compared to what it had been - but it's ONLY useful if you're playing the version with fetchlands. Without fetches you can't guarantee access to blue mana, and blood moon becomes a liability instead of an asset.
If you're wanting budget friendly you probably aren't playing fetches, and blood moon is a bad card for you. Burn's just a terrible matchup, and for the other two I'd suggest Pieces of the Puzzle to help with the discard.
Thanks. I didn't realize it had fallen further, so I just bought one this morning. I am running fetches, but that's just because I own a set of Flooded Strand and a Polluted Delta.
EDIT: I think one reason I'm potentially looking at other decks is that I absolutely hate rolling over to silver bullet anti-storm cards. However, as I think about it now this seems more like my not knowing how to sideboard than anything else.
Blessing is the best redundancy. You don't lose resources invested in a critical turn to a kill spell with a 2nd reducer in hand. It's also storm count
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wow, that shows how balanced the deck is.
Infraction issued for trolling and ignoring mod requests. --CavalryWolfPack
Just love gifts ungiven to get at least 3 answers, its raw power.
went 3-1 yesterday, list with 8 reducers, 3 grape, 1 empty, 2 scroll, 2 remand, 5 fetches, 4 spirebluff, 3 reef, 2 steam vents, 4 basics.
Pieces of the puzzle is good. Scroll is so good g1, and so comfortable to side out, dont see why not playing. Same goes to remand. I like bounces for side, wipe away, e truth, repeal(verygood), 1 copy each. Dismember, bolt, pyroclasm(Anger is better) 1 swan song has been enough, i also cut the moons. Shatterstorm, by force, shattering spree to hate damn artifacts. And 1 quicken, because i am a douche, lol.
I beat:
GDS, the guy was new to format, but empty main saved my ass, then repeal g2 bounce a 10/10 DS was gg
TURBOFOG, 3 leyline mainboard, surgical and *****, lost g1, but then the bounce and pieces of the puzzle made the difference
8RACK I lost, not good draws at all, but it was 2-1 thanks to empty and scroll, really dodgy.
JESKAI FLASH, didnt put a clock, thats a big mistake...
End up 4th/16, earned a foil fatal push, not bad.
Waiting for that sweet moment I'm going to quicken a grapy onto opponents combo, so sweet...
I don't like noxious, as blessings, whats the point of having 2 cards that dont add redundancy at all, specially if you can have another reducer instead. I play scroll because its an extra copy of gifts. If you gifts for pif/rit/rit2/morph you pretty much win the ******* game. Or gifts 3 4copies of a solution, etc... Same for 18 lands.
Short answer, it's nice but not completely necessary.
Uh no offense but from what you just typed I imagine there isn't much spot removal in your meta. Our bears are just about the most fragile things in modern, the only thing that doesn't get them is gut shot, and nearly every deck worth its weight in modern is running upwards of 5-6 removals maindeck, even burn from our perspective since our bears are toughness 3 and below.
Noxious lets you gift for a bear, although it has other nice interactions like turning 2 manamorphoses into 3 manamorphoses, gifting for answers (wipe away/noxious/answer #2/anything else), retrieving a gifts that was countered at end of opponent's turn, re-using a PiF instead of having to flash it back if you need more loops, saving your grapeshot from surgical extraction, hitting your third land drop for suresies by retrieving a prior fetch... wow. No wonder nearly every top 8 list is running 1, huh?
Apostle's blessing is not so staple. Emma Handy says its too cute. Caleb doesn't run em. About half of the top 8 lists do. So who's right? The answer is your opponent. If they're removing every other bear you play, and that turn costs you the game, then you might want to consider blessing. Everyone knows (or at least everyone who knows how to fight storm knows) that the best time to remove a bear is at a timing where they would waste the most cards; PiF or gifts on stack; first ritual on stack. Then your rituals or pay off resolves and you're bearless and can't continue. You lose time, you lose cards, and if you have an extra bear that's nice but you're still set back pretty far.
Now if that extra bear had been a blessing, you'd already have won the game. Yes, its a one dimensional card. That's why the only person who can tell you if you need blessing or not isn't a player here, or caleb, or emma, or me. Its your opponent(s).
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
Blood moon is actually fairly cheap right now compared to what it had been - but it's ONLY useful if you're playing the version with fetchlands. Without fetches you can't guarantee access to blue mana, and blood moon becomes a liability instead of an asset.
If you're wanting budget friendly you probably aren't playing fetches, and blood moon is a bad card for you. Burn's just a terrible matchup, and for the other two I'd suggest Pieces of the Puzzle to help with the discard.
Currently Playing:
GBStandard - Golgari Safari MidrangeBG
RBWModern - Mardu PyromancerWBR
RLegacy - Good Old Fashioned BurnR
Clan Contest 3 Mafia - Mafia Co-MVP
I sculpted my hand.... and died to an EOT snap and EOT resto angel. If you think Jeskai has no pressure you're dead wrong. Sometimes they gamble a turn 3 geist. If you're not ready on your turn 3 to win, you're as good as dead.
Getting to 7 lands against Jeskai, that's funny. If your jeskai opponent is a goldfish then sure. If they actually drop their flash creatures end of turn like a functioning MTG player then your scenarios aren't so rosy.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
No reason from a game play stance. I simply have a budget that allows for X on cards per month, and getting a pair of Blood Moon would eat up most of it. Lately, I've been preferring to buy staples with wide applications like fetchlands, paths etc. That being said, if the improvement is drastic with moons, it then makes more sense to buy them in order to win more and subsequently get my staples from store credit through placing.
And humility is a virtue for the record
UR Storm
URB Grixis Delver
W Death and Taxes
Basically anything with Scalding Tarn
Gotta read between the lines sometimes
UWAzorius ControlUW
GWRBKiki-ChordGWRB
Legacy Decks
WDeath and TaxesW
Pauper Decks
UDelverU
WURBGAffinityWURBG
GBTortexGB
How's strategic planning working for you? I'm still on Peer through Depths.
UWAzorius ControlUW
GWRBKiki-ChordGWRB
Legacy Decks
WDeath and TaxesW
Pauper Decks
UDelverU
WURBGAffinityWURBG
GBTortexGB
I'm a big fan of improvement. But I'm also a big fan of telling it like it is. Your scenarios all paint the control player as a goldfish. At the end of the game where you win, you need to chain a bunch of spells with or without a bear against an opponent that is basically playing removals, countermagics, flash threats and cantrips to sculpt their hand. If you're going long, 7 lands on the board long, its quite likely they're ready for you. They play the game on your turn.
So yea, I'm all for improvement, but your words don't exactly provide for that. You've basically typed a wall of text that can be summarized as "git gud". Well, thanks. I'm gitting guder with every game I play, same as you. So are my opponents.
BGW Elves BGW|BW Tokens BW|WBR Sword&ShieldWBR|BUG DelverBUG|UWR Kiki UWR | UR Storm UR
UR Storm
URB Grixis Delver
W Death and Taxes
Basically anything with Scalding Tarn
Thanks. I didn't realize it had fallen further, so I just bought one this morning. I am running fetches, but that's just because I own a set of Flooded Strand and a Polluted Delta.
EDIT: I think one reason I'm potentially looking at other decks is that I absolutely hate rolling over to silver bullet anti-storm cards. However, as I think about it now this seems more like my not knowing how to sideboard than anything else.
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