Is there going to be an update to the main primer anytime soon? There hasn't been anything added since late 2015, and there's been a ton of metagame changes as well as additions to the deck that probably should be included (like Fatal Push!). It would be really sweet to see what the next update to it would include
I personally think Censor will be a good addition to the deck. It has similar function to Mana Leak early game, and once it gets past turn 4 or so you can just pitch it at instant speed for a fresh card. Doesn't have quite as much effectiveness as a leak (as you can usually work to make Leak relevant late game with maneuvering), but I think the cycling makes it a pretty solid card.
Any advice for Bant Eldrazi match-up? Playing the classic delver list with Young Pyro. What are some good sideboard options and Main Deck strategy for Bant Eldrazi? I just lose every Game 1 to this match up.
Blood Moon, Fulminator Mage, Ceremonious Rejection, Thoughtseize, Damnation come to mind here as sideboard choices.
Thoughtseize could be played maindeck over Brutality/Electrolyze or instead of some counterspells if you expect to see many Eldrazi Decks.
Jesus dude, I picked up this deck a few weeks ago and have been playing at local events, I have only lost 3 matches so far and 2 of them have been to Tron, and they never feel close.
How in the actual hell do you beat this deck?
Tron is difficult. Blood Moon is not really effective against them (only Eldrazi Tron) and Land destruction is often not enough. I just board in "hardcounters" for their usual colorless stuff (Countersquall, Ceremonious Rejection) as well as Surgical Extraction and Thoughtseize. Vendilion Clique is also nice. Try to get a quick clock going with a minimum of 1-2 counters/discard spells as backup to handle their first threats.
I find Blood Moon to be very strong vs. Tron generally. How has it felt weak to you? In my experience, it gives you at least a 3-turn grace period to beat their face in with undercoated critters, and even keeps Mana Leak relevant for huge tempo gains.
I don't like Moon in decks like Grixis Control because they don't present a strong clock consistently enough to win before the opponent starts casting fatties through Moon. But in Delver, where we may have 7 power onboard by turn 3 or so, forcing them to make it to turn 5-7 without interacting with us is a huge deal.
Blood Moon slows Tron down for sure but they can still play their threats faster with map ramping (especially Wurmcoil Engine) and/or have spheres for mana fixing to interact with us. Blood Moon hurts our deck too and i've found it difficult to have delver + tasigur + moon on turn 3. You need a really good hand for such a start (those 3 cards + 1 fetchland + 2 other lands + a thought Scour at least) and if you stumble on your land drops/have to fetch suboptimal for Moon or get a hand with only shocks/fastlands/wrong fetchlands moon will punish you too the longer the game goes and Tron will just cast their stuff with enough lands. Sure if you can got fetch--> island --> delver --> fetch swamp, thought scour, tasigur --> land, Blood Moon Tron will have a hard time beating that.
I've found counterspells/Discard + Surgical to be a better way beating Tron because it goes along with Delver's overall gameplan and those cards are also useful in our combo MU's whereas Moon is "mostly dead" outside of ramp and Eldrazi. Of course thats just a opinion based on my own experiences which, as we all know, must not be true for other players as well.
Blood Moon is better vs. Eldrazi decks because it shuts down their manabase completely and they need colorless lands for casting most of their stuff.
In my opinion, Blood Moon is very live as a late topdeck against several medium/difficult matchups for us. Aside from the obvious Bant Eldrazi hosing (which I feel is the best reason to run Moon because that matchup is pretty bad), Moon makes it very difficult for Jund or Abzan to cast Liliana of the Veil. If you are having trouble in either of those matchups, especially Jund, note how many of your losses are due to a Lilly resolving, and you'll start to see that that is the most important card in the entire matchup to answer. It also is an answer to creature lands out of those decks which can strain your removal depending on how many threats they've run out over the course of the game.
In general, Blood Moon needs to be viewed as a time-buyer, not an "I win the game" card. It will win you some games if the opponent didn't expect it, but more often than not it gives you time to build a hand that can both present a clock and protect it. So you are correct in that it's not game over against Tron if it resolves, but you're gaining a ton more time to get a threat going and get your hand lined up to answer their threats once they do start coming online.
Hey everyone, I took the list that I posted a while back to a tournament for a box of Modern Masters 2017. I ultimately ended up 4th and won a pack of MM17 (with Goblin Guide inside) and the new duel deck.
Excellent report, I also have moved towards the 3 Push, 3 Terminate split as the Delve creatures are getting much better as Fatal Push continues to warp the format away from Tarmogoyf.
What's your opinion of the 2-2 spilt of Tasigur and Angler as opposed to a 3-1 split?
Hey everyone, I have been playing around with my final cantrip slot and was wondering what you guys think. What are the pros and cons of Thought Scour, Merchants Scroll, and Peer Through the Depths? Right now I am running eight mancer and I think peer through depths works well, but I'd like to hear what you guys think.
Here's my opinions:
Thought Scour
Pros- You get early velocity and ability to move through your deck. Feeds your graveyard for PiF. Fills up the 1 drop slot, which is nice because we have a bolus of 2 drops. You can use it aggressivly to mess up opponent's scrys. Also, if you are digging hard for a card and have the ability to cast a PiF, Scour is effectively a draw 4 (2 cards from the milling, the actual draw, and then the Scour you can recast later)
Cons- Very weak to graveyard hate. No selection on the cantrip
Merchant Scroll
Pros- Its like a swiss army knife, you can grab Gifts, Remand, and other sideboard bullets. I think the biggest pro of Scroll is that it gives you extra copies of Echoing Truth out of the sideboard; because this deck cannot draw all of its cards like the Ascension variants could, you have to find a Truth in the top half of your deck or so in order to beat a Leyline or a Grafdigger's Cage. Having Scroll in the deck increases these odds tremendously. Also, gives you some pretty nifty SB options (like Hurkyl's Recall)
Cons- Pretty slow/durdley. Drawing multiple copies usually is not helpful. Especially bad in more aggressive metas. Also fills the 2 drop slot, which we're overloaded on. Can't grab a ritual or a PiF
Peer Through Depths
Pros- Really great cantrip with an electromancer out. Can grab Gifts, Rituals, PiF, etc. Also is instant speed so you have some good interactions on the oppoonent's turn
Cons- My biggest problem with Peer is that it can't grab lands or electromancers, which half the time we need to help get our draws smoothed out. Scroll can't do this either, but it can grab what it does grab more reliably than Peer. Also pretty slow without an electromancer
To conclude, I don't think that any of these options are wrong persay, it just depends on your preference. I played a 2 Scroll version for quite a while, but felt that I was really missing those additional 1 mana cantrips, so now I'm on 2 Scour 1 Scroll with 7 mancers. I think having a single scroll is excellent for the versatility, but I also really like the Scour for early velocity.
The key to beating burn is to get lucky. Our matchup really hasn't gotten any better especially with the advent of 4 maindeck searing blaze. You're trying to race them. There really isn't much you can do other than hope to goldfish faster. It's worth noting that remand can be quite useful (on the play) to let you prevent an Eidolon for a turn or to gain tempo against Rift bolt. If you're running Merchant Scroll with Echoing Truth/Repeal that makes it a little bit better because you have outs to Eidolon. But it's still a miserable matchup.
There are a couple things we have going for us over the previous iterations: Baral blocks Goblin Guide quite well, Spirebluff saves us a fetch-shock, and Probe isn't pulling us even lower. Eidolon still sucks, but Gifts storm has more game against burn than Ascension did/does IMO. Still not great though, I definitely agree with you
I've got my deck together at last and I've started goldfishing with it - could anyone advise me on what hands I should be keeping and what I should be mulling?
In general there's 3 things I think about with my opening hands:
1. Mana- At the low end, you can keep hands with 1 land and a Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand, at the high end you can keep up to 4 lands (I'll sometimes keep a 5 lander if I'm against control because you need to hit as many land drops as possible against them). Keep in mind by the third turn you want to have at least RRU so you can go off with an Electromancer or a Baral from your hand.
2. Combo Pieces- How far away from you from comboing off? You're looking for a Baral, Gifts (or way to grab one like Scroll), and some form of a ritual. Does your hand lend itself more towards a natural PiF loop or a Gifts loop? In general, you don't want to keep hands that both lack a cost reducer (Baral or Electromancer) and a cantrip for digging (Serum or Sleight). You need your engine card to go off generally, so it's not advisable to keep hands that struggle to find one. If you're missing all 3 pieces, you should ship the hand
3. Velocity- This was more apparent in the Ascension version of the deck, but I still feel it's applicable here. Velocity refers to how far you can move through your deck in the first few turns of the game. For example, a hand of manamorphoses, rituals, and a PiF might look exciting, but the deck can brick very hard if you're light on cantrips and need to find a final piece to go off. In that scenario, if you need a Baral and your Morphose draw bricked, you're now at the mercy of the top of your deck to find an out, which is a losing proposition. Cantrips smooth out your draws and give you access to more cards earlier in the game, so you end up setting your hand up much better for your combo turn while also feeding your graveyard for PiF and filtering your draws. Gifts Storm has hands where velocity isnt quite as important (such as Gifts loop hands that can win through disruption by using counters), but in general the more cantrips you see, the better.
A few other quick notes:
- Grapeshot in your opener is good in certain situations. One is if your hand can do a natural PiF loop, as you have the potential to kill without Gifts. The other is to do a mini combo to wipe someone's board of creatures or to kill a hatebear (think wiping Elves out or killing a Thalia to free up your mana). Don't keep a hand just because it has Grapeshot in it though, you have the ability to Gifts loop or just cantrip into it for the kill, so it's really not necessary to have in an opener.
- Be aware of matchups that you need more lands in vs more spells. Control is a miserable matchup if you're stuck on 3 lands the whole game, so be wary of one landers, even with cantrips, against them. The absolute best way to beat control is to cantrip into a ton of land drops, it makes it very hard to them to decide what to counter and when its safe to tap low, and requires they have many more answers than they generally can draw
The reason you want Empty against any BGx variant is because it's much harder to get the Grapeshot kill with small numbers of resources; their discard and ability to keep Baral off the table, plus Liliana straining resources permanently, makes the Grapeshot kill rough if that's your only win condition.
You need to bring in all of your Empties against BGx. You can play around the charms or Anger by simply not blowing all your cards on a single Empty. Emptying for 6-8 goblins and keeping some extra cards for later turns is usually good enough.
I also don't bring in Bolt against Jund, hitting Scooze is too narrow, especially considering we should be moving to an Empty plan post board so we can get under the grave hate.
You still should always leave at least 1 Grapeshot in no matter what plan you're moving to. Empty is also really good against Death's Shadow decks because it can buy you a ton of time, which is usually all you need to generate enough resources for a kill
I agree I don't think Leyline is where we want to be in the board, it has too much of a diluting factor if we bring it in, and really isn't worth having unless you bring in 3 or 4 copies, which I don't think is where we want to be.
I don't like bolt against Death's Shadow because it doesn't usually kill goyf or shadow. I agree with theChucklingAtom that moon is too slow. My sideboard plan against Death's Shadow is:
+2 Empty the Warrens
-1 Grapeshot
-1 Remand (this can also be your worst cantrip if you play anticipate, thought scour or only run a single remand in which case don't cut the remand)
I'm assuming you're maindecking Echoing Truth with the Scrolls then right? Death's Shadow has been boarding in Ethersworn Cannonist, so you definitely want access to a bounce spell
What do you think about the Death's Shadow Jund Matchup ? It can be very difficult, but I think we have a chance. Especially Empty plays a major role here. It is easier to set up lethal, even with a small storm count.
I don't have 3 Blood Moons yet, so I play Leylines instead for the moment. My boarding would be something like this:
I agree with the way you boarded; Empty is very good against decks packing alot of discard, which DS definitely has, and it also blocks the shadows and goyfs well while also threatening a crackback to kill because of how low they put them. I would probably run an additional one in the side so you have access to 3 total after boarding, you could probably cut either a Dispel or Roil
I don't bring in my Moons against DS because either: 1. They make you discard because they almost never keep a hand without a discard spell, or 2. They've already played out a threat faster than you can Blood Moon them, which isn't all that helpful. I'd much rather try to Empty for 6 or 8 early to buy some time, and then be able to kill them with a Grapeshot or another small empty later because their life is so low.
I also don't care for the white splash, I think you can cover most of your bases by running additional Empties out of the board and then running a couple of Merchant Scrolls with an Echoing Truth coming out of the side. I gave more explanation page or two back on that choice with my list
I like that list a lot. I completly forgot about snow-covered basics. I need to go pick up one. I assume some of you manabase is because of card availability.
I would run shattering spree over vandalblast though. It doesn't get countered by chalice on one which is great against RW prison or Lantern.
Thanks! Yea I would be running a 3rd Spirebluff and a 4th Tarn over two Reefs (or possibly a reef and a strand) if I had them in paper. And I haven't had the need to yet, but there are circumstances where the Snow Covered Island would be nice for Gifts (grabbing Mountain, Island, Snow Covered Island, ritual if you needed an untapped land and were at 1 life for example).
Good call on the Shattering Spree, I'm gunna move towards that
I've gone 7-1 at my shop the past two days playing 2 Scroll and 1 extra remand in place of the Scours, along with 8 electromancers. Just having a couple Scrolls feels excellent for the versatility.
My sb is pretty similar to our original lists, only major difference is a split of Hurkyl's Recall, Shatterstorm, and Vandalblast in place of the the 3 Shatterstorm. The ability to grab Hurkyl's with a Scroll is great, and playing the 3 seperate copies gives you a good Gifts pile turn 3 against Affinity if you need to answer them. I'm not a fan of splashing for white, as long as you bring in Echoing Truth you've got a virtual 3 copies with the scrolls (which is important because you can't really draw the whole deck in this version, so having additional ways to access truth is important).
It almost feels like Peek could even be better than Thought Scour if we're looking for more 1 mana cantrips. Cantripping and looking at the opponent's hand seems like it could be better than milling two random cards and cantripping with minimal extra support(only feeding PiF).
Now I'm not saying that Peek would necessarily be better than Scroll, Peer, or Anticipate, just something to think about potentially.
I feel really bad for SaffronOlive, he didn't play exactly the correct lines but he still played good enough to win, and yet so many people were crapping on him for not playing it perfectly. As if all those people commenting could have found the perfect lines
We were all in the same spot when learning how to play storm correctly; learning optimal lines and how to draw to your outs takes alot of practice, I'm sure everyone here can attest to that.
As the storm players of the community, I think it's important to be supportive of players new to the archetype or out of practice. All that being jerks to others playing the deck will do is make the community more angry at storm players, which we don't need (especially considering there's a good amount of people that get frustrated getting stormed out to start with). I'm not saying that the commenters were any of us, I'm just speaking as a PSA for us all
In my opinion, Blood Moon is very live as a late topdeck against several medium/difficult matchups for us. Aside from the obvious Bant Eldrazi hosing (which I feel is the best reason to run Moon because that matchup is pretty bad), Moon makes it very difficult for Jund or Abzan to cast Liliana of the Veil. If you are having trouble in either of those matchups, especially Jund, note how many of your losses are due to a Lilly resolving, and you'll start to see that that is the most important card in the entire matchup to answer. It also is an answer to creature lands out of those decks which can strain your removal depending on how many threats they've run out over the course of the game.
In general, Blood Moon needs to be viewed as a time-buyer, not an "I win the game" card. It will win you some games if the opponent didn't expect it, but more often than not it gives you time to build a hand that can both present a clock and protect it. So you are correct in that it's not game over against Tron if it resolves, but you're gaining a ton more time to get a threat going and get your hand lined up to answer their threats once they do start coming online.
Excellent report, I also have moved towards the 3 Push, 3 Terminate split as the Delve creatures are getting much better as Fatal Push continues to warp the format away from Tarmogoyf.
What's your opinion of the 2-2 spilt of Tasigur and Angler as opposed to a 3-1 split?
Here's my opinions:
Thought Scour
Pros- You get early velocity and ability to move through your deck. Feeds your graveyard for PiF. Fills up the 1 drop slot, which is nice because we have a bolus of 2 drops. You can use it aggressivly to mess up opponent's scrys. Also, if you are digging hard for a card and have the ability to cast a PiF, Scour is effectively a draw 4 (2 cards from the milling, the actual draw, and then the Scour you can recast later)
Cons- Very weak to graveyard hate. No selection on the cantrip
Merchant Scroll
Pros- Its like a swiss army knife, you can grab Gifts, Remand, and other sideboard bullets. I think the biggest pro of Scroll is that it gives you extra copies of Echoing Truth out of the sideboard; because this deck cannot draw all of its cards like the Ascension variants could, you have to find a Truth in the top half of your deck or so in order to beat a Leyline or a Grafdigger's Cage. Having Scroll in the deck increases these odds tremendously. Also, gives you some pretty nifty SB options (like Hurkyl's Recall)
Cons- Pretty slow/durdley. Drawing multiple copies usually is not helpful. Especially bad in more aggressive metas. Also fills the 2 drop slot, which we're overloaded on. Can't grab a ritual or a PiF
Peer Through Depths
Pros- Really great cantrip with an electromancer out. Can grab Gifts, Rituals, PiF, etc. Also is instant speed so you have some good interactions on the oppoonent's turn
Cons- My biggest problem with Peer is that it can't grab lands or electromancers, which half the time we need to help get our draws smoothed out. Scroll can't do this either, but it can grab what it does grab more reliably than Peer. Also pretty slow without an electromancer
To conclude, I don't think that any of these options are wrong persay, it just depends on your preference. I played a 2 Scroll version for quite a while, but felt that I was really missing those additional 1 mana cantrips, so now I'm on 2 Scour 1 Scroll with 7 mancers. I think having a single scroll is excellent for the versatility, but I also really like the Scour for early velocity.
There are a couple things we have going for us over the previous iterations: Baral blocks Goblin Guide quite well, Spirebluff saves us a fetch-shock, and Probe isn't pulling us even lower. Eidolon still sucks, but Gifts storm has more game against burn than Ascension did/does IMO. Still not great though, I definitely agree with you
In general there's 3 things I think about with my opening hands:
1. Mana- At the low end, you can keep hands with 1 land and a Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand, at the high end you can keep up to 4 lands (I'll sometimes keep a 5 lander if I'm against control because you need to hit as many land drops as possible against them). Keep in mind by the third turn you want to have at least RRU so you can go off with an Electromancer or a Baral from your hand.
2. Combo Pieces- How far away from you from comboing off? You're looking for a Baral, Gifts (or way to grab one like Scroll), and some form of a ritual. Does your hand lend itself more towards a natural PiF loop or a Gifts loop? In general, you don't want to keep hands that both lack a cost reducer (Baral or Electromancer) and a cantrip for digging (Serum or Sleight). You need your engine card to go off generally, so it's not advisable to keep hands that struggle to find one. If you're missing all 3 pieces, you should ship the hand
3. Velocity- This was more apparent in the Ascension version of the deck, but I still feel it's applicable here. Velocity refers to how far you can move through your deck in the first few turns of the game. For example, a hand of manamorphoses, rituals, and a PiF might look exciting, but the deck can brick very hard if you're light on cantrips and need to find a final piece to go off. In that scenario, if you need a Baral and your Morphose draw bricked, you're now at the mercy of the top of your deck to find an out, which is a losing proposition. Cantrips smooth out your draws and give you access to more cards earlier in the game, so you end up setting your hand up much better for your combo turn while also feeding your graveyard for PiF and filtering your draws. Gifts Storm has hands where velocity isnt quite as important (such as Gifts loop hands that can win through disruption by using counters), but in general the more cantrips you see, the better.
A few other quick notes:
- Grapeshot in your opener is good in certain situations. One is if your hand can do a natural PiF loop, as you have the potential to kill without Gifts. The other is to do a mini combo to wipe someone's board of creatures or to kill a hatebear (think wiping Elves out or killing a Thalia to free up your mana). Don't keep a hand just because it has Grapeshot in it though, you have the ability to Gifts loop or just cantrip into it for the kill, so it's really not necessary to have in an opener.
- Be aware of matchups that you need more lands in vs more spells. Control is a miserable matchup if you're stuck on 3 lands the whole game, so be wary of one landers, even with cantrips, against them. The absolute best way to beat control is to cantrip into a ton of land drops, it makes it very hard to them to decide what to counter and when its safe to tap low, and requires they have many more answers than they generally can draw
You need to bring in all of your Empties against BGx. You can play around the charms or Anger by simply not blowing all your cards on a single Empty. Emptying for 6-8 goblins and keeping some extra cards for later turns is usually good enough.
I also don't bring in Bolt against Jund, hitting Scooze is too narrow, especially considering we should be moving to an Empty plan post board so we can get under the grave hate.
You still should always leave at least 1 Grapeshot in no matter what plan you're moving to. Empty is also really good against Death's Shadow decks because it can buy you a ton of time, which is usually all you need to generate enough resources for a kill
I'm assuming you're maindecking Echoing Truth with the Scrolls then right? Death's Shadow has been boarding in Ethersworn Cannonist, so you definitely want access to a bounce spell
I agree with the way you boarded; Empty is very good against decks packing alot of discard, which DS definitely has, and it also blocks the shadows and goyfs well while also threatening a crackback to kill because of how low they put them. I would probably run an additional one in the side so you have access to 3 total after boarding, you could probably cut either a Dispel or Roil
I don't bring in my Moons against DS because either: 1. They make you discard because they almost never keep a hand without a discard spell, or 2. They've already played out a threat faster than you can Blood Moon them, which isn't all that helpful. I'd much rather try to Empty for 6 or 8 early to buy some time, and then be able to kill them with a Grapeshot or another small empty later because their life is so low.
Thanks! Yea I would be running a 3rd Spirebluff and a 4th Tarn over two Reefs (or possibly a reef and a strand) if I had them in paper. And I haven't had the need to yet, but there are circumstances where the Snow Covered Island would be nice for Gifts (grabbing Mountain, Island, Snow Covered Island, ritual if you needed an untapped land and were at 1 life for example).
Good call on the Shattering Spree, I'm gunna move towards that
My sb is pretty similar to our original lists, only major difference is a split of Hurkyl's Recall, Shatterstorm, and Vandalblast in place of the the 3 Shatterstorm. The ability to grab Hurkyl's with a Scroll is great, and playing the 3 seperate copies gives you a good Gifts pile turn 3 against Affinity if you need to answer them. I'm not a fan of splashing for white, as long as you bring in Echoing Truth you've got a virtual 3 copies with the scrolls (which is important because you can't really draw the whole deck in this version, so having additional ways to access truth is important).
Here's what I've been running:
4 Goblin Electromancer
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Pyretic Ritual
4 Manamorphose
4 Serum Visions
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Gifts Ungiven
2 Merchant Scroll
3 Remand
2 Past In Flames
2 Grapeshot
1 Empty the Warrens
3 Polluted Delta
1 Flooded Strand
3 Shivan Reef
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
2 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Mountain
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Blood Moon
2 Empty the Warrens
1 Defense Grid
1 Dispel
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Vandalblast
1 Shatterstorm
1 Echoing Truth
Now I'm not saying that Peek would necessarily be better than Scroll, Peer, or Anticipate, just something to think about potentially.
We were all in the same spot when learning how to play storm correctly; learning optimal lines and how to draw to your outs takes alot of practice, I'm sure everyone here can attest to that.
As the storm players of the community, I think it's important to be supportive of players new to the archetype or out of practice. All that being jerks to others playing the deck will do is make the community more angry at storm players, which we don't need (especially considering there's a good amount of people that get frustrated getting stormed out to start with). I'm not saying that the commenters were any of us, I'm just speaking as a PSA for us all
That's just my two cents