Hi there! My name is Eric Caffrey, and I am a card-carrying member of Team Serious, hailing from Cleveland, Ohio. I wrote this for the Team Serious boards and Nat thought I should turn it into a proper article, so here we are. This one is about my time playing Legacy and how I turned an 0-3 drop at SCG Columbus into a learning experience for a spicy, new, experimental brew. I hope you enjoy!
I’ve played storm lists in Legacy for a long, but they’ve bummed me out recently. There are such good options against storm in blue and black, and playing the fastest combo deck in the format makes you way more all-in than I enjoy. I’ve been grinding my gears trying to find a good list that can play a small setup game and then win when the coast is very clear.
ANT is neat, but I feel it’s too slow to keep pace with the blue decks’ ability to get multiple one-mana counters in hand over the course of a tournament. Most of this can be solved by using [card]Silence[/card] in a disruption slot, but I dislike playing more than three colors in my storm lists. (I would say TES notwithstanding, although I don’t really like TES as much after playing with it either. I am too much a [card]Past in Flames[/card] gameplan guy than a turn-one [card]Empty the Warrens[/card] or [card]Ad Nauseam[/card] player.) I am in the process of learning some intermediate Doomsday piles so I can start sleeving that up for a tournament in the future, as I think that’s the gameplan I enjoy the most. For now, it’s the lack of experience that’s really preventing me from putting Doomsday together.
In the meantime, though, I still want to LED/IT some people to death. I put together a TES/ANT hybrid for the May 31 Legacy/Vintage split tournament in Columbus and didn’t draw very well with it most of the day. It included a sideboard that planned on playing four [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] against Miracles and getting around [card]Leyline of Sanctity[/card] without needing to play bounce effects. It was the best part of the deck by far.
This was the list for that tournament:
[deck title=TES/ANT Hybrid – Eric Caffrey]
[Lands]
4 Polluted Delta
2 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Island
2 Gemstone Mine
[/Lands]
[Spells]
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
4 Rite of Flame
4 Dark Ritual
2 Cabal Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Duress
3 Cabal Therapy
4 Burning Wish
3 Infernal Tutor
1 Ad Nauseam
1 Empty the Warrens
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
4 Young Pyromancer
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Telemin Performance
1 Time Spiral
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Pyroclasm
1 Massacre
1 Past in Flames
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
The sideboard was a mish-mash of cards I didn’t know if I liked or not. I didn’t use many of them, aside from using [card]Burning Wish[/card] for [card]Telemin Performance[/card] twice (dying on the following turn against Omni-Tell and ANT) and for the early [card]Empty the Warrens[/card]. The [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card]s should have been [card]Pyroblast[/card]s (which can build storm in a pinch since they can target any permanent, not just blue ones), but I couldn’t find them in my box of stuff before the drive down, so I played the lesser card. Regardless, they were very, very good all day.
After this tournament, I decided I was going to try to shove [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] into the maindeck and play a pseudo-tempo storm strategy. It’s the linearity of storm that I suspect right now is causing it to be too easily answered in the metagame. If you go hyper-linear/hyper-speed, you lose to Force of Will; if you go slower, more ANT style, you open yourself up to ridiculous Thoughtseize-Hymn draws from BUG, Thalias on the draw, and many other problematic cards that decks are employing nowadays.
I decided long ago that I enjoy the interaction of [card]Young Pyromancer[/card], [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card], and [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] as both a sizeable clock and disruption machine. This is the strategy I am exploring in storm combo as route one to winning, making storming out a secondary (but still very real) option once [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] is dealt with.
I decided that I wanted to be playing [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] in the main deck, so I wanted ways to play him as soon as possible. I included [card]Rite of Flame[/card] and [card]Lotus Petal[/card] in the list below, but I also wanted to be able to protect him from a “Land, Bolt your dudesweat” opening from my opponent, so I decided to play Daze over the Duresses in a normal ANT or TES build. This makes the starting build of the new deck:
4 [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]
4 [card]Gitaxian Probe[/card]
4 [card]Cabal Therapy[/card]
3 [card]Daze[/card]
4 [card]Rite of Flame[/card]
4 [card]Lotus Petal[/card]
Fleshing this out with storm staples and good blue cards, we come to the following maindeck:
[deck title=Pyromancer Storm]
[Lands]
4 Polluted Delta
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
1 Badlands
1 Swamp
1 Island
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Young Pyromancer
[/Creatures]
[Other Spells]
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Daze
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Dark Ritual
4 Rite of Flame
4 Infernal Tutor
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Past in Flames
1 Empty the Warrens
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion’s Eye Diamond
[/Other Spells]
[/deck]
The dual-land manabase was so that I could play either basic and fetch for a dual that would let me produce all three colors at once: Island with Badlands or Swamp with [card]Volcanic Island[/card]. I think I would play another Volcanic over a [card]Scalding Tarn[/card] or [card]Underground Sea[/card] going forward.
With this deck, I included Daze and [card]Young Pyromancer[/card], so I figured that my [card]Ad Nauseam[/card]s would suck, since that’s 14 damage from cards that are useless when flipped. But the average converted mana cost of the deck is 0.83, so it might have worked out with it in the main. I definitely lost a match to Elves! because of the lack of that Ad Nauseam-fueled speed in this list. I won two of the games in my three matches through a storm kill with [card]Past in Flames[/card].
So the sideboard. Now that I was playing [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] and Daze with more disruption, the idea popped into my head to play [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] out of the board and board out all the storm cards for cheap blue permission. I came up with the following board plan very quickly:
4 [card]Force of Will[/card]
4 [card]Delver of Secrets[/card]
3 [card]Spell Pierce[/card]
2 [card]Surgical Extraction[/card]
2 [card]Pyroblast[/card]
The boarding out plan looks like this against disruptive, non-combo blue decks:
-4 [card]Lion’s Eye Diamond[/card]
-4 [card]Infernal Tutor[/card]
-4 [card]Dark Ritual[/card]
-1 [card]Tendrils of Agony[/card]
-1 [card]Past in Flames[/card]
-1 [card]Empty the Warrens[/card]
Against faster combo like Reanimator and ANT, Surgicals and [card]Spell Pierce[/card]s come in for the [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]s and Swamp. Surgical is my board plan against Dredge or Reanimator and also has uses against trying to tempo out a blue deck by Therapying and Extracting their best cards. This is by no means a comprehensive sideboard strategy, but with a solid board plan against a lot of the field, I thought I could make the two slots work out the best with Extractions.
The first time I sleeved up the deck and played with it was round one of SCG Columbus. Always a smart one, I am.
Round 1: Neal with BUG Delver
Neal was at the May 31 Legacy/Vintage split tournament, and we talked for a bit about upcoming Ohio Vintage events. He had a blast playing, and because it’s proxied he is even more psyched on playing more and more Vintage. Awesome!
Game one, He landed triple [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] and I died to a flipped Delver and [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card].
In game two, I had turn one Delver, turn two Delver, Daze Bob, flip both and attack. This hand was nutty.
Game three was where I realized I should leave in the Delver plan against blue tempo decks. Of course, I didn’t come to the conclusion until after he had beaten me down with a Delver and a [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], and then showed me Force, Force, [card]Spell Pierce[/card], Daze in his grip when I Gitaxian Probed him. Rough beats, but I did learn from the game. Deathrite plus Delver seems worse than [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] and Delver, and I should have exploited that.
Round 2: Eliot with Elves!
Eliot and I had a great match with some fun banter. It’s refreshing playing games against people like that, and I play Vintage more than any other format because interactions like this one happen way more often.
He went crazy in game one with a [card]Glimpse of Nature[/card] on turn three after I Dazed his turn-one play, but was light on storm count to kill him. He fizzled out after drawing about 18 cards. I untapped and killed him with [card]Past in Flames[/card].
Game two, I mulled to six and had a turn-one Empty for 10 goblins. I attacked with them, then he untapped and put Crater-sized Hoofprints into my skull.
I named the wrong card on the first [card]Cabal Therapy[/card] in game three, seeing two [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s and pure gasoline. I had to take the [card]Thoughtseize[/card]s with my second Therapy, and he killed me before I could cast anything else. His hand was insane: [card]Heritage Druid[/card], [card]Glimpse of Nature[/card], [card]Nettle Sentinel[/card], [card]Natural Order[/card] and [card]Gaea’s Cradle[/card], with a turn-one dude in play.
I noticed in this match that the sideboard plan leaves a little to be desired against this kind of combo. I had taken out the [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]s for a [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] and the [card]Spell Pierce[/card]s in game two, but I put them back in and took out the Extraction and Dazes. I figured Pierce counters Glimpse and [card]Natural Order[/card], and one mana might make a difference. I think I should take out the Pyromancers and Dazes for Forces and Pierces next time and see how that works out.
Because I took out [card]Ad Nauseam[/card] from the 75 altogether, my non-Past in Flames storm piles are very dude-based. This makes all the little dudesweats that Elves play actually relevant, which flips this matchup into unfavorable territory. I may have to address this in a new version of the deck.
Round 3: Daniel with BUG Goyf-less Delver
In game one, he tapped out with Stifle in hand after seeing my hand of storm spells in an earlier turn, so I obliged and killed him with [card]Past in Flames[/card] into Tendrils. Don’t tap out with counters versus storm.
I saw a [card]Young Pyromancer[/card] but no Delvers in game two, while he saw multiple Delvers and an [card]Abrupt Decay[/card] for my Pyromancer. He beat me down.
Game three was a long one. I misplayed a bit, Surgical Extracting a wrong target and naming the wrong thing with [card]Cabal Therapy[/card]. I got Pyromancer in play and Probed him to see a [card]True-Name Nemesis[/card] in hand, but I failed to draw a red source in 12 outs (4 Petal, 6 fetch, 2 duals) to cast the [card]Pyroblast[/card] to counter it the following turn. True-Name took over the game, and I died to it. I again saw no Delvers this game.
I was going to play all rounds of this tournament to really get a feel for the deck, but I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning so I dropped, went to North Market for lunch, and then drove back to Cleveland.
Final Thoughts
This deck is a real deck in my opinion. It needs some tweaking, but I think a storm list that boards into a Delver plan has potential.
I will be trying out [card]Ad Nauseam[/card] and a [card]Chrome Mox[/card] in the main for the next tournament I play in, probably in place of Empty and another mana source. The decreased speed against Elves and other combo lists isn’t warranted, and the average mana cost of the deck seems low enough to make it work. I enjoyed the Dazes all day, and though the [card]Young Pyromancer[/card]s didn’t really play a major role in any game-ones because most of them were lopsided one way or another, I still feel they’re worth the maindeck slot. Pyromancers also play very well with Delver in games two and three. I have some ideas about maybe playing two in the main and two in the board, but I think I will stick with four main for now.
Looking back, I could have won all three of the matches I played that weekend. All went to game three, so with tighter play and a better understanding of my sideboard, I could have given myself more opportunities to showcase the sideboard strategy.
I will keep this deck sleeved up until I am comfortable with Doomsday; I foresee myself playing this for a very long time if that is the case.
Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to read about me getting my ass kicked playing Magic (and how much I learned from it)! Next time I’m going to talk some more theory about this list and what I plan to do with it moving forward.
Until next time, protect your sandwich!
Eric
@ocks_rock