Hello Legacy Storm Players! We are back with the first Infernal Tutoring article of 2019! With the new year, there have been some new and exciting changes to the deck! In the spirit of making The EPIC Storm even more explosive, Bryant Cook started testing Mox Opal. After testing many different configurations of the deck, we believe that two copies of Mox Opal is the ideal number. To make room for the two copies of Mox Opal, we cut our fourteenth land and added one in our flex spot. At first, I was very skeptical about testing Mox Opal, but I have seen first hand over last month the raw speed and power that it adds to the deck! I tried my hardest to include Mox Opal in at least one of the following scenarios, so without further ado, let’s jump into it!
Special Guest
A few words on Martin Vonásek (Sloshthedark/42AD):
Hailing from the Heart of Europe, Martin entered competitive Legacy in late 2009, got into DDFT in 2011 and has been focusing on the Storm archetype exclusively since late 2012. As the godfather of 2 Past in Flames in ANT, he has spent most of the time exploring the uncharted territories of the hybrid builds between ANT and Grinding Station with the highest paper finish in 10th place at GP Lille 2015. When not on MTGO, Martin currently splits his free time in rediscovering the joy of movement through 8 string guitars and calisthenics.
Deck List
Main Deck
- 4 Burning Wish
- 4 Infernal Tutor
- 4 Brainstorm
- 4 Ponder
- 4 Thoughtseize
- 3 Duress
- 1 Empty the Warrens
- 1 Ad Nauseam
- 4 Polluted Delta
- 3 Bloodstained Mire
- 2 Badlands
- 1 Volcanic Island
- 1 Underground Sea
- 1 Island
- 1 Swamp
Sideboard
SITUATION #1 – Miracles
Our first scenario is against Miracles! Our previous game plan against Miracles was to play the slow game and grind the opponent out with cards like Past in Flames and Cabal Ritual. The recent addition of Accumulated Knowledge has made us shift our game plan slightly though. It isn’t nearly as feasible to try to play the long game against Miracles, because they will crush us with card advantage. We want to beat Miracles before they can stabilize.
HOW I SIDEBOARDED:
In this scenario, we are in our main phase on turn two. We decided to be patient and restrain ourselves from casting our Duress on turn one, but we ended up drawing a Hope of Ghirapur. We now have to decide what we are going to play this turn as we only have one land. We generally want to slam out Hope of Ghirapur as fast as possible, but Hope of Ghirapur isn’t nearly as devastating to our opponent if they play a Counterbalance. With that in mind, how would you play out this turn?
SITUATION #2 – B/R Reanimator
In our second scenario, we are in game one against B/R Reanimator! Reanimator looks to put a big creature like Griselbrand in the graveyard using either Faithless Looting, Entomb or Unmask, and then attempts to cheat the big creature into play using Reanimate, Exhume or Animate Dead. With cards like Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, and Dark Ritual, they are often able to put a creature into play on turn one easily. B/R Reanimator also has turn zero hate with Chancellor of the Annex, and a full suite of discard spells to slow us down. The fact that the deck is so explosive and also disruptive makes it one of our toughest match-ups.While we still have a long way to go to win this game, I always count it as a blessing when Reanimator doesn’t play a creature on turn one. On our first turn, we played out our Mox Opal to pay for the Chancellor of the Annex tax, while our opponent cast a Faithless Looting, putting a Chancellor of the Annex into their graveyard. On our second turn, we played a Ponder and revealed a Brainstorm, a Chrome Mox, and an Empty the Warrens. How would you resolve Ponder to either win or put yourself in a winning situation?
SITUATION #3 – Aluren
Our final scenario is against Aluren! Aluren is a Combo deck that uses Aluren, Cavern Harpy, and Parasitic Strix to deal infinite damage. While this deck technically falls into the combo category, in most matches it plays out similar to BUG control. In addition to the typical suite of countermagic and discard that BUG decks are known for, Aluren also plays multiple copies of Leovold, Emissary of Trest. If that wasn’t enough, our Empty the Warrens plan isn’t quite as good, because our opponent can just win if they get four lands in play. In this particular match, game one and two didn’t reveal much about what our opponent was playing, so I assumed that they were on BUG Delver. That is why I sideboarded in so many copies of Empty the Warrens.
HOW I SIDEBOARDED:
In this scenario we are in a very close game three. I took an early Empty the Warrens line for ten goblins, but we hit the wall of not being able to quite deal lethal damage. Lucky for us, we were able to play an Ad Nauseam with three red mana floating and an available land drop. We know the opponent has a Flusterstorm in their deck because it is what they revealed with Shardless Agent the turn prior. How would you play out this turn to win or put yourself in a winning situation?
In closing, I would just like to encourage everyone to start testing the Mox Opal lists! I think we are on to something with Mox Opal, but it is going to take a lot of data for us to really know if it is better than the previous list. I have personally been very impressed, and I have been putting up some really solid results on Magic Online. As always, it has been a pleasure to bring you these three new scenarios. If you have any questions or feedback please let me know!Keep storming!