The Perfect Storm

Hrishi

One of my favourite decks ever is The Perfect Storm. For those who don't know what it is, it is a Storm deck that used a combination of Force of Will and Duress as it's disruption. The term "TPS" has been used interchangeably over the years and has been used to refer to anything Storm, but I am particularly referring to this variant.

From my understanding, TPS originally declined with the printing of Lodestone Golem. Before this, TPS decks played a bunch of basics, waited out Workshop decks, cast Hurkyl's Recall and won.

TPS decks were typically slower than their more aggressive cousin (which today manifests itself as Dark Petition Storm), but traded this speed for a little more stability.

Now the metagame is very different to what it used to be. We don't have 4 Golems to deal with anymore, but Eldrazi is a huge new contender. I am very curious if it is possible to put together an actual TPS deck in the context of today's metagame!

For myself, I've long believed that there was a build of TPS out there that was borderline good enough, but 4 Golems pushed it out. However, my love for the archetype does not make me very objective, so I'd like to get other people's opinions on this! When I originally started playing Vintage, I played nothing but TPS for longer than a year before branching out to try other archetypes, so I am pretty familiar with this deck as well.

So, I'd like to open the floor to any other Storm experts here, as well as anybody else with thoughts on this matter.

Islandswamp

I like the idea, but I'm also unsure of force of will in that kind of deck.
When I started playing online most people were playing force in their storm decks. I was always too in love with force to want to avoid playing it
The pitch storm deck with dark petition, Gushbond, and forces seems like the closest option I've seen recently. S4mmich played it on MTGO not that long ago.

Hrishi

@Islandswamp Thanks for the reply, but please understand that I am not talking about a specific decklist that exists in any noticeable form today. I'm talking about an archetype at large that has seen very little play ever since the printing of Lodestone Golem. I am not suggesting that you simply drop 4 Force of Wills into any existing Storm deck and call it a day.

Here is an article written by Steve from 2008 that gives an overview of the archetype (although some sections are understandably dated?). I am interested in exploring the possibility of the exit of Lodestone Golem giving any room for this archetype to expand. Perhaps @Smmenen has some thoughts on his own article as well?

DrStreetmention

So TPS was designed to play a longer game, then bounce and combo but was too slow to compete with the Sphere + clock of Lodestone? Sounds awesome.

I am no expert but I see two issues with this. One is that modern shops decks are pretty much all Aggro shops. They only have one golem but they still present a decently fast clock. More importantly Eldrazi also has a fast clock (though Tribal is faster than White). So if TPS fights prison decks where are the prison decks in the current metagame that it would prey upon?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but that's the question that occurs to me.

I think the viability of TPS hinges on your case to not use Dark Petition. Dark Petition is just so consistently good; any Dark Ritual deck ought to play 4 in my opinion.

If you don't play 4 Dark Petitions, then what are you using? The draw7s are not good enough because:

Modern countermagic is too effective to allow the opponent to see a lot of cards.
Decks are faster; if you Draw7 against a Mentor deck, they'll likely just win on their turn.

With TPS, what card(s) exactly do you want to Force of Will? There are only a few targets that I can really think of, so maybe 2 Forces is better than 4?

@desolutionist said:

I think the viability of TPS hinges on your case to not use Dark Petition. Dark Petition is just so consistently good; any Dark Ritual deck ought to play 4 in my opinion.
If you don't play 4 Dark Petitions, then what are you using?

agreed. dark petition is just so utterly insane not playing it seems just wrong

Hrishi

@desolutionist For what it's worth, I suppose we could run fewer than 4 without cutting the card out completely? I'm not even saying this is a good thing to do but even if I were to play TPS, I feel like I'd still want to run Dark Petition for how strong it is.

Macdeath

I think TPS would be great with dark petition, just cut all draw 7s play only the best bombs, you could even add gifts ungiven for more threat density if you really wanted to.
However the real problem is that i don't think TPS can keep up with Gush in blue matchups. The deck that people call DPS (really a Long variant) is able to compete with gush because it has more early pressure and most importantly Defense Grid. Tps would have to fight through all the countermagic with its own counters and duresses while being way worse at reloading after a counterwar than the gush deck and the lower mana source virtual card advantage. It's the same problem every combo control deck has vs Gush decks.

I really don't have any idea how you would setup your deck to beat gush. Pick a fight end step with gifts? Mystic Remora could serve a function similar to defense grid function in theory (although I don't think the card is very good). Also, you probably want a plan b that isnt tinker for badsteel colossus.

letseeker

i myself am not a storm expert so dont take what i say as fact, but to me dark petition seems too good not to run in some numbers, atleast two imho, but if you want a tps list with force i would say a steel city vault type deck is where you want to be, being able to get vault key when you cant generate enough storm is huge, and the deck gets a good amount of free wins. as for a tps list i honestly think it just gets outclassed by the other storm decks, but like i said before im not a storm expert.

Aelien

It is time my friend... Time to rise up again

Aelien

I already have so many questions and ideas, and that just for this deck.
Is playing a single MM correct?
The top tutors are great again, mystical and vampiric for sure, but what about Imperial seal?
Our discard is way better now, but other people will start playing discard as well so we need to be wary of that.
Is Merchant scroll good again? It finds a pretty safe ancestral now.
Will people start playing mystic remora more commonly again?
What do we think about stuff like Dispel and Spell pierce against us?
Are more than one Maindeck chain of vapor viable now?
And so on and so on...

That DPS Karn deck from eternal weekend was awesome. After some warm up games, I posted 4-1, 5-0, 4-1, 3-2 with it.

It has a lot of things in it that are probably still relevant like maindeck spot removal in Abrupt Decay and Collective Brutality. Karn was a freak of nature and I wonder if it’s still worth playing 1.

The reason I'm saying this is because I think Force of Vigor is the future of Storm against Spheres. We just have to get the green count up whether it be from Fastbond, Channel, Abrupt Decay, or Manamorphose.

Aelien

@desolutionist but aren't we just able to play 1 mana disruption now that misstep is restricted?

@aelien

I think 0 mana to destroy two targets is still ideal when you're pressed for mana against multiple spheres.

Your 1-mana Duress effect is going to resolve against blue, that's not the issue in my opinion. It's the Lavinias and Sphere effects that you need to worry about.

Aelien

@desolutionist true, for artifact removal FoV is the best choice, however you have to jump through some hoops to get the green count requires I think.
Aren't multiple chain of vapors doing a good job against Thalias, Narset's, Spheres and Lavinias alike?

I could See myself Packung multiple in tue maindeck

As a thought you now have veil of summer to up your green count as well. Card has been strong in a lot of my testing. It isn’t good against shops but in general is good for the deck.

Good ol Xantid Swarm might also be worth a look now as well with no misstep around. Just some thoughts.

I’ve also been on two chain of vapor main with a collective brutality, karakas, and thoughtseize in the side in Ad Nauseam and in normal storm variants. It has felt really strong against Lavinia and all her ugly friends.

@aelien

I like Chain of Vapor definitely.

Another techy consideration is Wasteland. Since without Misstep, you can take them off of the mana they need to counter your spell.

I think 1-of Karn is just a better version of Tinker-Colossus. It’s a haymaker. It’s an alternate win in the face of adversity. It’s game 1 dredge hate. It’s a control card against artifact decks. I think the minimum sideboard configuration is:

1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Bolas’ Citadel
1 Mycosynth Lattice
2 Tormod’s Crypt

2 of those cards are part of the dredge hate package anyway, so it’s really only taking up 3 slots. And if you look at all the DPS lists that have done anything in the past 3 months, they have plenty of junk in the sideboard to give up.

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