| Spells | Lands |
|---|---|
| Card Selection 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Gitaxian Probe 2 Preordain 2 Dig Through Time 1 Sensei's Divining Top Interaction 4 Force of Will 2 Duress 2 Thoughtseize Mana 4 Dark Ritual 4 Cabal Ritual 4 Lotus Petal 2 Rain of Filth Action 4 Dark Petition 1 Past in Flames 1 Tendrils of Agony | 4 Polluted Delta 4 Scalding Tarn 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 2 Island 1 Swamp |
| Sideboard | |
|
3 Xantid Swarm 3 Abrupt Decay 3 Massacre 2 Flusterstorm 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Empty the Warrens 1 Tropical Island |
|
Considering I started building this at 5:30pm, and the tournament started at 7:00pm, there are obviously several things I'll change before playing it again, but it was a perfectly good place to start. I know tournament reports are usually pretty boring but it's hard to explain how the deck actually plays out without one. I've tried to include conclusions about the deck's construction as they came up during the rounds. Here's how things went.
Round 1
U/B Countertop Control
This was a regular at our shop who has an extensive legacy collection and never plays established decks, so I had no idea what to expect. I mulled to five (seeing no lands) and had to keep 3 lands, Dark Petition, Force of Will. We started off both with undergrounds, fetches, brainstorms, thoughtseizes, and forces, mostly just generically good blue and black cards. Around turn 5 or 6 he brainstormed, then cast Counterbalance/Top back to back, which I was unable to respond to. We played draw go for a while, he eventually stuck a True-Name Nemesis and started threatening my life total slowly.
The turn before he killed me I manage to bait a counterspell and a top flip with two Dark Rituals, respond with Rain of Filth, then sacrifice all of my lands, play a few Lotus Petals, and cast Dark Petition for a natural Tendrils kill.
Game 2 he mulliganed, then I led on a turn 1 Divining Top. He played a turn two counterbalance, but I just spun the top every turn until I had the kill and a decay, cast decay EOT, then untapped and killed him with Force backup in case his last card in hand was Counterspell. That hand wouldn't have beaten Flusterstorm, but thankfully he didn't have it.
Surprisingly, both hands won with natural tendrils kills, no Past in Flames. It helped that he did some damage to himself both times with probes and thoughtseizes, but I was still impressed with the deck's ability to combo off without the traditional pieces.
Round 2
Shardless BUG
Game 1 went the way all Storm vs Shardless matchups go: he didn't draw Hymn to Tourach, so I won.
Game 2 I faced graveyard hate for the first time. I kept a one lander with a preordain, shipped two nonlands to the bottom, didn't find a 2nd, and got wastelanded. Fortunately for me he'd kept a two lander with one being the wasteland, and he couldn't find a second for a while. He eventually played a Nihil Spellbomb and had to choose between leaving my yard alone so he could pop it in response to hurt Cabal Ritual and Dark Petition, or nuking the yard early to draw a card and look for land and keep me from casting the Dig Through Time he knew about. He decided to blow it early, I discarded the dig to hand size, then eventually found a land, cantripped into a second, and used rain of filth to get my cabal rituals to threshold, then cast Dark Petition for Past in Flames.
I was surprised by what the Dig Through Time did for the decision with the Nihil Spellbomb. I think he made the wrong choice, but it's still interesting that the digs are able to force people to behave differently with regards to graveyard hate. He also aggressively used Deathrite on his turn to keep my yard small instead of holding it back to snipe something in response to a spell, which didn't end up being relevant but could've been.
Round 3
4 Color Delver
Game 1 I made a terrible keep, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Force of Will, Gitaxian Probe, 3 fetches. He leads on a delver, I probe and see double force double blue card, never draw anything but land and rituals after that point and quickly die to the delver. Uninteresting from a deck design standpoint.
Game 2 I keep a hand with Dark Ritual, Force, Dark Petition, Brainstom, Brainstorm, Ponder, land. I fetch up a land and ponder into a second land and a second dark petition, take the land and pass. He probes me, sees that I've got a slow developing hand, plays a delver and passes back. I draw the Dark Petition, then brainstorm into Petal, Ritual, Probe. I probe him and see absolutely no relevant interaction, just creatures and a pyroblast (he's tapped out). I cast Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Dark Petition (getting Cabal Ritual), Cabal Ritual, Dark Petition (getting Tendrils), Petal, Tendrils for exactly 18. (he probed). Another natural tendrils kill, 3 on the day.
Game 3 I mull to 5, keep a hand with two lands, tendrils, preordain, and past in flames. He leads on a mainphase brainstorm then passes back. I preordain and he dazes. He replays his land and plays a delver, I draw a ritual, play a land, and pass. He doesn't flip delver, then plays two more delvers. I draw another ritual and realize that i'm one mana short of killing the following turn if he has no interaction. He of course flips all 3 delvers with a force of will off the top, swings for 9, and passes back. I draw a lotus petal. If Lotus Petal and the first cabal ritual resolve, then I can win through the force of will because I have enough mana to cast the Past in Flames and the Tendrils, but he's smart and counters the first cabal ritual leaving me stuck. Oh well.
Round 4
Imperial Taxes
Game 1 my opponent mulls to 5 on the draw. I cantrip and pass, he plays a Vial and passes back. I cantrip again and find a force of will for Thalia, but on his turn two he doesn't have one. I play another land and pass back, a little light on interaction. His turn 3 he plays a 3rd land and casts Imperial Recruiter (which will probably get Thalia and then immediately enter play because of the vial on 2). I Force Imperial Recruiter. This is the first time all day Force has done anything special, but it definitely did something regular ANT wouldn't have been able to do very easily. I would've needed a probe before a therapy to tag the recruiter, since therapy would absolutely have named Thalia in the dark instead of recruiter.
He doesn't draw anything else relevant and I find the combo pretty quickly after that.
Game 2 I mull to 5, he has a turn 2 thalia. I find a removal spell for thalia but he kills me anyway before I can put together the win.
Game 3 I'm back on the play, I probe him turn 1 and see a hand of Vial, Canonist, Thalia, Rest in Peace, three lands. I play a fetch and pass the turn with a hand of Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Past in Flames, Dark Petition, second fetch, which is one ritual off of a turn 2 kill. He plays the vial and passes back, I brainstorm into a second dark ritual, tendrils, brainstorm. Put the brainstorm and tendrils back, untap, draw the tendrils, and it's academic from here.
---
I ended up at 3-1, with my loss coming to a mull to 5 that featured a lucky force of will flip combined with a bad decision not to mulligan, which seems pretty good to me. I think there are some really good things about this deck to consider going forward, so here are my thoughts in no particular order.
- I had three natural storm kills without Past in Flames and two Turn 2 kills. Both numbers are higher than I expected. The turn two kill R3G2 would not have been possible with Infernal Tutor over Dark Petition, which is neat.
- I only cast Force relevantly once, but it definitely had a huge impact on the game. Being able to avoid a Thalia game 1 against death and taxes without getting lucky enough to tag it with therapy turn 1 is a big deal. I liked having it, but I did find myself with Force but no blue card in hand several times. It's possible only playing 3 is correct, or maybe replacing the 4th with Pact of Negation as Ari Lax suggested in one of his articles. More games are definitely required to figure out this balance.
- I only cast Dig Through Time once all day, but it was a sweet extra card to have available.
- I'd like to add a single Grim Tutor to this list. Probably where the Top is main, but maybe over the 2nd Preordain or 2nd Dig. I'm not positive it's necessary but I think it could be good. The lifeloss is less of a big deal without Ad Nauseam in the list. The only reason I didn't play one last night was that I didn't think about it until I was at the shop and I had left my only copy at home.
- The sideboard obviously needs help. I included Empty the Warrens to give me something to do against Rest in Peace or Leyline, since I was pretty all-in on Past in Flames, not realizing that Cabal Ritual and Dark Petition's graveyard reliance means I'm incredibly unlikely to do anything with a single Empty the Warrens. The sideboard alternate win-con absolutely needs to have no reliance on the graveyard. I think most likely it should be Young Pyromancers. Xantid Swarm is far less necessary than in previous iterations of the deck because of the Forces, we can move the Tropical Island to the main, and only play a single Flusterstorm and that buys 4 slots. Death and Taxes will still be a little rough because they have RiP but Pyromancer won't be very good against them, so I'll have to think about that more (definitely open to suggestions)
- I'm not 100% sold on the discard configuration. I do think having Force of Will means I'm more interested in playing targeted discard than Cabal Therapy, even though I'm still playing the probes, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I should be playing more Thoughtseizes and fewer Duresses, but I feel like that only really matters versus Death and Taxes, and even then only game 1 because I'd usually rather answer their things on the board than try to get lucky and catch them in their hand turn 1.
- I'm sure the deck name won't stick and if anyone ever does well at an SCG event they'll call it "Dark Ritual Combo" or something equally useless for comparing it to other storm decks, but I'm calling it Dark and Stormy for now because it fits and I like rum.
| Spells | Lands |
|---|---|
| Card Selection 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Gitaxian Probe 2 Preordain 2 Dig Through Time Interaction 4 Force of Will 2 Duress 2 Thoughtseize Mana 4 Dark Ritual 4 Cabal Ritual 4 Lotus Petal 2 Rain of Filth Action 4 Dark Petition 1 Past in Flames 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Grim Tutor |
4 Polluted Delta 4 Scalding Tarn 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 1 Tropical Island 1 Island 1 Swamp |
| Sideboard | |
|
4 Young Pyromancer 3 Abrupt Decay 3 Massacre 2 Xantid Swarm 1 Flusterstorm 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Sensei's Divining Top |
|
Perhaps dread of night over some massacres so you can save all your mana for combo turn against the scourge of fun, D&T?
ReplyDeleteThe only reason I prefer Massacre over Dread of Night is that some D&T decks are now maindecking canonist. Not sure how Dread saves mana over Massacre, since Massacre costs 0 though.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't cabal therapy warrant an include from the synergy it has with pyro as well as probe? I think I'd try removing the duresses and a rain of filth, possibly even a thoughtseize, but that's unlikely... Gonna go test, awesome list, love the name
ReplyDeleteMy thinking with this configuration is that I really want to take advantage of not playing Ad Nauseam, and play Thoughtseize which can answer Thalia or Eidolon or Counterbalance or Force or anything. Sure, Probe+Therapy can do that, but in general it's nice to only need the one card instead of the specific pair.
ReplyDeleteYou're right that once Pyromancer is a board card that may change the dynamic, although to some extent that depends on what matchups we want the pyromancer in and whether discard is good in those matchups.
At this point I'm hard pressed to say Thoughtseize or Therapy is better, but I know how therapy plays out from experience and I've almost never played storm with Thoughtseize, so I'm leaning towards the unknown just to gain reps with it.
I do think it's possible we actually want to go full on the targeted discard plan and trim the number of probes down to 2 or 3, kind of where OmniTell often runs them, and play the full set of Preordains. In that instance we might actually even cut the Dig Through Times for the Grim Tutor or something like that. The point in that instance would be to get faster and more consistent, while having fewer therapy based blowouts. Some give and take. Have to see where things end up.