At the end of the day Saturday, I had a pretty average record of 6-3. Which was not good enough for day 2. I don’t necessarily blame my deck list for my mediocrity on the weekend. Which you can view below:

 

I’ve posted my deck list around the storm groups recently, hopefully this list won’t come as a shock to anyone. I opted to try the additional copy of Empty the Warrens in the sideboard after Jordon Robbin’s success with it. Below are the match-ups from Saturday:

 

Round one: Elves 2-0

Round two: Abzan 2-1

Round three: BUG Delver 1-2

Round four: Esper Deathblade 1-2

Round five: Eldrazi 1-2

Round six: Burn 2-0

Round seven: Sneak & Show 2-1

Round eight: Merfolk 2-0

Round nine: Sneak & Show 2-1

Totals:  15-8 | 6-3

 

The Die Roll: 5-4
Ad Nauseam Wins: 8
Empty the Warrens Wins: 3
Natural Storm Wins: 3
Past in Flames Wins: 1
Mulligans: 6

 

My initial two losses were to unfortunate luck and playing against a strategy that is very good against storm – discard spells plus counter magic. My game two against BUG Delver I opened a hand of all mana and Infernal Tutor, I decided to go for it. It didn’t pay off. In our third game, I mulliganed to five on the play and almost won after my opponent started the game with two Hymn to Tourach, he had a timely draw step that stopped me on my combo turn. After that my opponent activated Deathrite Shaman repeatedly (although very slowly), with little time left a draw could’ve likely happened. He draws Brainstorm into a pair of Delver of Secrets, I need to draw Burning Wish for turn to force a match draw. It was a Lotus Petal, Burning Wish was the next card down.

 

My round three opponent sided in eleven cards for the match-up, I sneakily won game two through all of his hate before he started our third game as follows:

Turn 1: Deathrite Shaman
Turn 2: Liliana of the Veil

I then play Gitaxian Probe on my turn, he still had Force of Will, Snapcaster Mage and Brainstorm. I tried to battle through it but lost.

 

The Eldrazi match-up was uneventful, I won the first game with Goblin tokens and then lost the next two due to too many lock pieces. Even after keeping hands that were fine.

I was very unimpressed with the additional copy of Empty the Warrens, I’ll be making it another Chain of Vapor which helps against the taxing effects while we have Abrupt Decay for Chalice of the Void. That will be the only change to my list. I was relatively happy with my performance while accepting that I had some rough matches paired with bad luck in the initial rounds. Can’t win all of them!

 

I spoke to a few storm pilots while I was there and the consensus was that The EPIC Storm is definitely the storm deck you want to be playing in an Eldrazi metagame. The additional speed to get underneath Chalice of the Void or Thorn of Amethyst is a big difference in that match-up. Despite losing my round, the games were all close – I could have seen it going either way. I never would’ve had the mana or time to Burning Wish for an Artifact destruction piece if I opted to play one.

Sorry that this was a brief article, but I think it has everything you need to know from my Philadelphia storm experience. Until then, keep storming.