#37 - Storm In Cube Deepdive - ft. FireruckModo

In this episode we're joined by Josh (FiretruckModo), to talk about Storm in cube. How to draft it, how to play it and how to include it in your own cube.

FiretruckModo - https://www.youtube.com/@firetruckmodo

00:13:21 - Storm in Cube
00:19:50 - What are the best mana engines?
00:28:37 - What are the best card draw spells for storm?
00:34:26 - What are the best storm winconditions?
00:42:49 - Doomsday in storm
00:43:38 - What does the makeup of a storm deck look like?
00:45:56 - How to draft storm
01:04:04 - How to play storm
01:19:18 - How are storms matchups?
01:24:15 - Adding storm to a cube
01:36:21 - Final thoughts on the future of storm

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James Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/ba642a54-a6c7-4587-b97e-1d95429c59b5
MTGO Vintage Cube: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/modovintage

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Chapters

• 1:13 News
• 13:42 Storm in Cube
• 20:11 What are the best mana engines?
• 28:58 What are the best card draw spells for storm?
• 34:47 What are the best storm winconditions?
• 43:10 Doomsday in storm
• 43:59 What does the makeup of a storm deck look like?
• 46:17 How to draft storm
• 1:04:25 How to play storm
• 1:19:39 How are storms matchups?
• 1:24:36 Adding storm to a cube
• 1:36:42 Final thoughts on the future of storm

Transcript

0:24

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Powerful Nothing a Magic The Gathering Cube podcast. I'm your host, Dan, and on the internet as Too Sweet MTG. And as always, I'm joined by I'm from I'm joined by my co-host James. How's it going, dude? Are you well? Yeah. Pretty good, pretty good. Awesome. We have a fun episode for everyone today. So much fun, in fact, that we couldn't do it alone today we're joined by a friend of the show, Josh, known online as Fire Truck Modo. Josh, welcome back to Power of Nothing. Good to have you here. Hey. Thank you. Nice. Yeah. Good to have you back on. It's been a hot minute. You're actually one one of the earliest episodes where we went over powered you. Today, we're gonna be talking about another powerful topic. Today, we're gonna be talking about Storm and Cube. And Josh is a storm aficionado. We thought it'd be good to get you on and get your insights into one of the most powerful, but definitely harder to play archetypes out there. There will be time goes down below if people want to jump around. But before we get onto our main topic, which is Storm and Cube, we want to touch on a little bit of news. Probably the main thing to touch on, is a rather large and expected in most cases anyway, banned in restricted announcements. I hope people have already given their insights on it already, but we thought as we had one of the winningest vintage players in all of Europe joining us today, we thought probably worth digging down into the bans. It's the ban and announcement specifically for vintage. So the vintage, the saga was restricted and vexing. Bobble was restricted. Now, as someone who kind of tangentially sees a bit of vintage, I talk to you about it every now and then, and the wife plays it, I'm assuming as a Bazaar of Baghdad player, you're kind of happy with at least vexing bauble being restricted. But just talk to me about these auction. How do you feel it affects the format overall? No, no, it was pretty shocking. I wasn't expecting it. The format was in a good place. The saga restriction I thought was wild, to be honest with the, it forced everyone to think about the battlefield, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. because typically people didn't have to. Like, if you go back in time, the Dax would have won two boats and the deck across the 75 like things in play wasn't really a thing other than artifacts. So yeah, 1 or 2 lightning bolts in a, of course, very cool. And most of the decks could operate. And that's how they interacted. The saga actually changed. That made you have to think about how you play a wasteland, made you think, how do you need like dress downs and this sort of thing, the mono white decks. Before you got restricted, they were playing main deck. much of otherworldly like usually over a number of swords, plowshares and likes to otherworldly like is not a playable card. So that's just like part of what saga think it it made people care about something that was different. That was cool. I was actually surprised at that when because I didn't think it was necessarily that unhealthy to make vintage players care about something that's not the stack, if that makes sense. and then the, the bauble as well. So I've got two different takes on the bauble. As someone who plays a lot of bazaar back Baghdad, it can go away, I don't care. great to see it go sort of thing. It's because I play a lot of squee and it completely invalidated that deck. Right? So the squee deck is has got no man FGC lands and it only casts pitch spells and you generate card advantage by discarding squee, Goblin, Nabob, and Master of Death and getting them back later and putting some creatures into play for free like Venom and Hollywood. So vexing bobble did just completely obliterate that deck. You can't play it that side of things. I'm quite happy that it's being restricted, but what I also did was in the in the dark times when bobble was unrestricted, I actually started playing the architects. Oh, which was the best deck in the format? and I started off with the main list, which had four balls in it, and I kept dying behind my own bobbles, because if you're playing a four, six, eight force of world deck with four bubbles in it, you play a bauble and then your opponent kills you. Yeah. And you can't force back. actually, if you go and look at my, like, goldfish results or something. a fortitude every challenge and missed on breakers in every challenge. I played Lara Saga. and by the last one, I just didn't play any bubbles. I just wasn't actually interested in having it in my deck. That was part of like, a psyop, because I thought if I play Lara Saga for a few months and decrease the number of bubbles, at some point I'll get good with the deck and I'll start getting results, and then people will let me play zero bubbles, and then hopefully I can play squee. And if you time that right, it would land in in across the eternal weekend season. Right. So there was a bit of a. Yeah. it was a bit of a you try to game this long game. The other thing about mega long game, but can I get good enough with Lara Saga to change the metagame? Enough to make squee good. that was a bit of a long term plan, but next, I think the I think like if it was up to me like I, I understand why they did the bobble restriction, but I just don't think the card was good enough to get restricted. So it's a bit weird in that sense. And then the saga restriction to me is just wild. But you know, they can do what they want. I think that'd be my two takes. Yeah. With the vaccine bobble, I think that's more like I get the feeling with that is is more just vintage is the place where you can play all these broken free spells and vaccine kind of stops you doing that. And it's probably not why they made the card. It's weird that they have banned vaccine all, rejected Vaccine Bobble and Saga in the same one because obviously. So they can go find your vaccine bobble or could have. So yeah. But if, if if vintage format where you know, you do powerful things and sometimes you win and sometimes you die. And yes, there's a maybe a high variance format, sometimes you die to vaccine Bobble. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Right. like holistically from the, from the format point of view, as I said before, with square being completely dead, I'm absolutely fine to see it get restricted. And I'm very split on it because I think it's wild. But I'm also very pleased. so yeah, I do I do understand it. It's a this is all the exact same reasoning they gave when they restricted chalice number of years ago as well. It's just it's, it stops people from playing. And so you deploy all of yours. You put them play your chalice on zero and then you pass the turn and your opponent can't deploy their MOX and you've got a 3 to 1 vantage to going into turn to sort of thing. So it's all the same reasoning. It's I don't I haven't gone back and looked at it, but from memory it's close to copy and paste, you know, let people have fun keeping this very vintage sort of thing. But I will say keeping people playing the, the, the expensive cards I guess as well. Exactly. But I also think, it could have been around longer. It could have drifted off like I was more pleased with my lower saga decks when I didn't have bubbles. But then marked who's one of the best players on my online platform, was, you know, just running out. There was four of them in his deck sort of thing. So no, it was interesting. I think. I think the thing, the saga ones pretty shocking and the bobble one I think is, yeah, I think it's wild, but you know, I do understand the logic behind it. I think they could have left it around a bit longer. see if it is actually good because I wasn't the only person trending down on it. Those are the people who didn't think it was great. yeah. Yeah. That one I checked out. The, chalice was the card I was going to compare it to with, like it's vintage to me. It didn't need another card, but only what is busted on the play. Kind of bad on the level and kind of determines the game on set. One of a full on man of artifact. You know, like maybe it wasn't too good. That was adding anything to the experience of playing vintage. I guess would have been my question. No, I can't I can't imagine there's adding to it really in any way. It's interesting from the point of view of the person who's playing the baubles and force of wills, right? Is just, you know, if you come off of one manor, if you play bauble on one, they don't do anything, you've got three marks and or whatever. If you come off that one mana left over to crack the bauble, then you can't turn on your force of wills have had doing something big and scary on the same. Although on the other hand though, if you do crack your bubble to force something, you've unlocked their thoughts of those as well. They. Yeah, it was interesting, but it was just, I don't know, I feel like it was trending down and slowly on its way to zero, one and two. But I think I'm happy with the changes because I get to play cool decks again. I don't have to play the race. You know what decks are thriving now with this change. I'm looking at MgO Fest and imagine it's, I mean, like the main I think the main winners were like, well, the resub is probably going to transform a bit, but the thing with the saga is it's now very good at casting a psychic frog right before it's a psychic frog deck with nine colorless lines in it. Right. Which is challenging at best. but you could get there a bit later on. So I think they actually gained a bit just because they've now got less colorless lands in their deck. I think bug was a big winner as well. So like the salty mid-range deck, which is death rate shamans and liver olds and hawkish bow masters and just generally quite annoying cards. yeah. False ancestor work, all that stuff. I think they're a big winner because they were already good against shops and dredge. and they didn't lose anything. Nothing changed. So I think they didn't play saga, they didn't play bauble. And grudge gets a little bit better sort of thing because you can cast you dredge spells and the big winner is squishy. But, the downside of squee is that everyone's now realized that they can play by strip mines in their deck, right? For waste in one strip, because strip mines restricted as well. Yeah, everyone's learned that they can actually play five strip mines in their deck, because if you go back the full saga, you would find these two three color control decks with 0 to 1 wasteland, two, that sort of thing, 3 to 1 strip mines in it. And if you're playing a tempo controlling style, is that our deck which you need to activate bizarre four times to win a game? that's a lot harder when you're dead. Right? So I think squeeze got better. But I also think that construction has come a long way through the saga is that it kind of brings on squeeze a bit. I don't know if squeeze is going to be good. I think dredge is very good. I think doomsday is just still very good as well. It doesn't really lose anything. yeah. I'm not sure what actually. What's at the top of the metagame at the moment? Phil and Susie have not looked, but I would imagine it looks like saga, Saga Dredge, and then Jewel. So if Jewel is the big loser because it lost the baubles that it was playing and the four sagas, but but the I guess the sagas, which is like a pretty potent backup plan, right. If you're playing Jewel Phelps. Yeah, yeah. So, game two, when your opponent's trying to know what you out of the board, you can go saga ancient team player, your Moxon and you mox into that fight, but you've got some ten is also fine. I think the saga is also chooses the manifold key to get the time belt combo going. But it's one of those things as well with the deck. So good it just plowing through 30 cards in a turn that it won't be hard for them to adapt and just pick up a different win condition. Right? I already played. Khan is going to continue playing the saga. Those two are fine. And POW time vault key. That's no. I think you need too many more kill conditions, but you can probably find some. No. Make sense. So yeah, just looking at the numbers. and this is just as of the 4th of September. dredge is currently top brand is 24% of the matter. So I just showed you the other day, and like that, I've got a video coming out with Dredge Trophy on the 5th of September. Honestly. Five oh ten oh through a magic league. And like, literally nothing went wrong. The whole league like to the point that there was a bizarre game where I kept seven with a bizarre fact that my opponent puts ley line into play, and I was just holding two figures and two green cards and I was like, yeah, let's kill your ley line and your die. Is that like is land speed record for five round two magic in under an hour. Unbelievable. Really funny. I'm actually looking at the, at I minute into this game I clicked on dread. your name is here under five, eight, five, five, five of my life and I just, I was trying to commentate on it. I just had nothing to say. I was like, I said, what I did here is just top my land to my opponents died, and I just. This is one of those. It's like, no, interesting. Not interesting. Right. But no difficult spots to think through. Just stretched them hard and just some good. Very funny though. Yeah. Dredges on top. That's quite cool. I'm always fine talking about dredge on top. But it is time. It is time, gents. We should move on. Let's go from one busted. deck in dredge, talking about another busted deck. Let's talk about storm in cube. So the aim of today is we're going to give an overview of the archetype, how it plays, what it's trying to do, and how you can build the deck and add it to your own cube. So I'm going to throw this to you first, Josh, if that's okay. Let's pretend okay. Let's just pretend like I am someone who has never played storm before and has no idea what they're doing with the tendrils of agony. I know, hard to imagine. Can you give me like, a high level overview of what the Storm Deck is and what it's trying to do, just as a starting point for our conversation today? Fundamentally, you're trying to cast a lot of spells in one turn, and then the final spell of the game will of of your big turn will be a pay off, typically with the stall mechanic which copies that spell great spell we've cast before that. So typically that will come in the form of casting a number of thoughts. Mana accelerants like Dark Ritual, of which we'll write a flame, lotus petal lines like diamond, this sort of thing. Black Lotus, obviously the best one of all time. and then after that, you'll cast some intermediary spells and you'll finish off with something like tendrils brain freeze. there's a new card in the go. Keep the dragon making thing into the Warrens with some, and then you replicate that spell. Great spell before it. And then hopefully that winds. Yeah. No, that totally checks out. I think some decks tend to play quite well. We often don't cast very many spells for the first 2 or 3 turns of the game, which normally is not a vast feat for winning games of Magic and Cube, but with storm decks it can be a sin. Yeah, definitely. I feel it when when people don't tap manor for four turns. I've initially I'm happy and then I like, oh, make me found storm. I better kill them very quickly. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things where the storm decks usually, almost always are like critical mass decks. Right. So there's it's good to wait as long as you can to as close to the ten before you lose as possible. Then you would have seen the most cards. You've got the most options. You've got the most info. And that way you can plot the most effective and efficient turn as well. to cast all your spells basically. So sometimes you just have to say hands where you can just say, oh, my opponents tap their lands. I've got everything I need off coffee pop sort of thing. But yeah, typically you're not doing too much just filtering and tripping and then, you know, the odd push and bolt here and there and then I think a big turn a bit later on. Now that makes sense. I think one thing I think I might want to drill down on, you mentioned there's I'm in that. Yeah. I when you were giving over you you did mention a lot of the powerful cards. We say, like you mentioned the words Black Lotus. obviously I've only seen Black Lotus in like, vintage power cubes. but I'm assuming storm isn't just available in vintage, like like the pay offs. I think a lot of them, like tendrils is a is is an uncommon like like like what kind of cubes can we see storm appear in the thing is. Right. Is that. Yeah. Tendrils brain freeze a lot of the storm kill cards. So empty the Warrens grapes. So these are all common long columns. So you can play those in your peasant and pop cubes if you want to be. Probably have to make quite a package that works. The rituals as well. oh. Common? Maybe uncommon. Like, say, the to spell the four red rituals. Right? Right. A flame desperate, poetic and seething song. I think they're all common of something. I had that question Kabbalah, which led common and uncommon. So you can probably fit something in that the thing that's the hasn't and pull up a cubes. There's I guess quote unquote lower power level cubes would lose would be the big splashy spell that lets you cast everything again. So I pass in flames. Underworld breach your most well, they're all going to be rares, so that's kind of problematic if you're trying to build a package into those caves. So I imagine it's going to be something like a legacy esque cube, or it would be the one where you can get all of the normal package. But that said, there might be some sort of regrowth effect out there somewhere that I can't think of right now that allows it. Impending cube. What's that pair of lost dice? What's that? Is that a common or uncommon Paradise lost? three. Going green for roll a two. Six out of dice. Returning number of cards with total money value. Ectoplasm. You're great, but your hand wax is the total of those results. Exile Paradise lost. What? Right up. That is an uncommon. Yeah. So it's basically a yield. Well, for your peasant cube. Sounds kind of tough, but, I began to try it. It sounds tough, but I don't know how to make it. Like you only need 1 or 2 more effects like that to consider something close to a package, right? I don't know, I don't know if it could be supported at that level, but yeah, I think legacy up. Yeah. Like I mean there's definitely a lot of space between like orphaned peasant cubes and powered cube, right. yeah. And I think it depends on how you bracket it as well. Right. Because if you say a modern cube, then you lose like your boss. Well, brain freeze tendrils of agony. Right. So I think it depends on there's going to be space in between in parallel terms. But I think in the, I guess, traditional way, cubes are split up in like or per peasant. And then I guess like that modern legacy vintage. I don't know where the bracket would be, but I think I could make a a peasant cube dorm deck, but it wouldn't be modern legal. Certainly. Yeah. But I think I think the higher the higher power level your cube is, the more easy it's going to be for it to support some, I think would be a fairly a fairly simple way of putting it. Actually a lot of words to say make it more powerful and then still my work. I think the reason it's so commonly associated with Power Cube, particularly vite, is that storm uses those ultra powerful cards better than any other deck. Basically, yes. Like yes. You put a black lotus in your that green that. It's like sometimes I have black lotus in my opening hands and that kind of gets me a free win. Assuming I don't have a removal spell of my grateful type or whatever. My questing beast. Exactly, exactly. But Black Lotus in a storm that, like, transforms the whole deck, right? Because, yeah, you're not just casting your black clouds as one seal, like two Springfield black glow sets and then casting it multiple times in a third. Yeah, I think I think you could probably build a package. Anything. But the more powerful your cube is as a baseline, I think your storm deck is going to operate and be easier to put together. Cool, right? So let's keep drilling down into the into the deck a little bit. So to generate the large storm count that we need to, make casting these, storm payoffs worthwhile, we need access to a lot of cards and also the manner to cast them in a single turn. James, I'll do this. Do you? First, what do you think are some of the best mana engines ways of making mana in the storm decks? Yes. This is, this is often like the sticking point for star night is. It's almost always mana. If you can get very good ways to efficiently generate a lot of mana, you'd normally in a pretty good place. there's sort of a few different macro ways of doing that, right? probably the most common is you're combining a bunch of ritual. So things like dark ritual, cabal ritual, seething song. So cards that generates more of them. They cost the cast, and then you're playing some way to hopefully play them again out of the graveyard often. And just by doing that, you've generated a really large storm count and a lot of mana. You can then cast your shoot, or never go and get your storm wind connection and go from there. but other ways you can do this though, which can be pretty effective. So, one thing that's been quite a lot of tips over the years is being mana doubles. So things for let your lands tap more mana from. They usually do things like copy of thing. High tide I think is probably the best here. Let all your islands tap for an additional blue. If you combine they just casting a high tide will often put you up a bunch of manner. If you're you have enough islands in play, then if you find ways to untap your islands again, things like turnabout, things like kind of, then you'll have a very, very big amount of engine. and that's going to be enough to let you then come cast to do all seven. Fine for whatever you need to win the game from there. think. Yeah. Of things like a frantic search was so great have like, probably nice. Powerful like not power card for for generating your manners is going to be blindside island. That's phase zero mana. Discard your hands and sacrifice sets to generate free manner of any color. So it's obviously not a good card on its own. Doesn't? Lest you cast spells from your hand. But if you do something like see, y'all come off well, which will let you cast spells from your graveyard, and then with that on the stack, you crack your lines. I diamond, you're already into free mana, and you can play the lines like diamond again out of your graveyard bracket. Again. Don't care about discarding your hand, you don't have one. Now to six manner, and that's going to be enough to let you play a bunch of cards out of your credit card. And then from there, there's like even some of where the random Indian stuff, like cream polls can work fairly well in the storm deck because it lets you keep powering through those cards three more seems like a more like an accidental storm. Yeah, it's it's interesting. So yeah, it's a very cool and fun, like manner engine because like. Yeah. Because it makes you throw spells free. Right. So it is a massive mana engine, but there's also like a subclass of we're not subclass, but this is also a group of cards which have been in they've been in the Mega Cube over time, but they can also be in any cube if you want them to be, which are just like a hundred year storm. Dream halls, bonuses, Citadel Memory gel this sort of thing where they're also not completely embarrassing to show and talent to play thing. So there's some of the cards around that you can use. Thing create a minor engine like sits down DreamHost. Out of the ones I just had a really good minor engines. thousand year storm is possibly a minor engine if you want to think about it that way, but it's kind of just a nutty card in itself. But yeah, I think DreamHost is a really fun one. Yeah, yeah, I love it's used by DreamHost, so maybe we're taking it for a storm spin next time around. what do we think about, like, electro monster effects? Because in theory, they are netting you manner as well. So I mean things like, yeah, like electro months, like escape familiar but older fans out there, cars that make kind of like, oh, you're innocent and sorceries or certain colors of spell cost cheaper. cost cost like a generic, less cheap, cheaper to cast. In theory, it'll cost in your rituals. Your bait helps you be more on mana. how do you feel about those in a storm? Well, I think they're okay, but I think they're a liability. Is the problem, right? One of the if if your storm deck is relying on them to do the the modern version of storm, like the modern gift store list where you're playing a barrel and then making your red rituals into red dark rituals. the problem with the storm decks is you typically don't have many creatures, and your your advantage over your opponent is they've got 2 or 3 dead cards in their hand which have no targets and their removal spells. So you're kind of turning those on. And it's also kind of hard where we're not in a reconstructed format. I could get a barrel, but I end up with my mana being dark ritual and right of flame sort of thing, and all of a sudden my barrel doesn't do anything because you need a critical mass of rituals which can be discounted, of which has three or there's not many. Yeah, around, just like my mortal face kind of gets into that class at that point. Yeah. Like they're good, they're fine. But I think if you want to play that effect, I would be much more interested in you playing like Helm of Awakening, which does it just globally, universally. It's not it's not, yeah. And because that goes into other combos as well. So that's that makes sense. I guess the electrons that they might be more, slightly lesser power level keeps them, than the and then the vintage power level kind of thing, I guess, is that they must be because because I'm assuming, well, a goblin, a goblin is going to be a bit cheaper than a Yorks. Well, I guess I would imagine so. I might just say I do have a gold board at one that can't be that expensive. But yeah, I'd be surprised how much your faith. But I don't know I these go for the cards of a lot of my best ever purchase was 1 pound for a gold board. It guy is great I think is worth like £50 now. Yeah that's correct. Yes. Yeah. I was like I spent 6 pounds on a gold board and throwing glasses but I'm Josh, let's go. I couldn't find the original one. I'm sorry. Yeah. One other one of the minor engine though, that I don't know if we just interrupted James or he just forgot about it. Probably the latter. but fast ones are really good. Minor engine as well. Python typically goes more into the sort of like drill 70 Dawn depth where you just hire fast and dump all your lands with your cards, your lands, and then eventually you'll find something, fast, but also has a little bit of fun with something like, let's skylight for your lands and your, your mass will affect exactly just your muscle, I think in this instance. But you can play fast, bond your mana costs, sacrifice holy lands cos you almost will play with land at your yard sort of thing. So you can get like a little double out of that as well. And then one other one, which is also very demanding on life points. But I've registered a lot channel and storm decks as well. Then you don't have to worry about Cutlass cos you're just all about that solid mana. Right. So you can. Yeah. Like right. Right. If say mammoth channel double Green as well. Isn't that not a bit. Is that not a bit greedy or are you getting there. I don't know, but if you go you go to forest, forest Island, Island, Kano, time spiral and then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah I've got, I've got four lands, I've got seven new cards and I don't have to worry about the colored mana. It's. I'm not saying it's the best mana engine in the world, but it's, it's one that's floating around these powerful cubes. Is you can utilize channel in your storm that. But you know, it might mean you have to be a bit more aggressive when you're going off because you might need wildlife to kill them with. And if they're playing guides and that might not be a luxury you have for too long sort of thing. Yeah, can go for mini tendrils to recharge. Your channel is always a nice story to restock the channel and go again. That day. Yeah. And yeah. Right. Yeah. I can really see what you meant when you were kind of like storm, makes the most use out of all the broken cards we've we've had of the dream. You might have a channel and have all of this. Cool. next thing, in terms of the puzzle, I guess. So we have our mana. We. Although we discuss some ways of making the man of the deck. Next thing we need to do is, draw cards. we need fuel in multiple ways. We need mana, and we need to be keeping the spells coming through our hand. what are some of the best ways of drawing cards and keeping the cards flowing? Like, is it cantrip or is it wheels? Is it a combination of all these kind of what are we thinking of? James? James, I thought it's easiest. Yeah. So one of the most powerful ways you can keep cards coming in stone is casting the same cards again. I think welfare cards you've mentioned a few times already. Like the underworld breach also. Fantastic. Yeah. so that's going to let you keep the using the same spells which can again, keep fueling your mana and keep calling cards. wheels also great. And some because they play very well with rituals. so you just go ritual ritual. We'll with like four mana floating and then there's not normally the issue of wheels, right, is if you just tap out for a wheel, they get to use their hand of seven cards before you get to use yours. Some can break that because you can with the rituals. Get up on mana and still have a bunch of mana floating paste wheel. it's kind of by time. Spiral is the best wheel most of the time. Stone because it also gives you your partner back from your lands right away. and then on top of that, we can play some, like, regular card to our spells to, to fuel up. So, hand trips are great because they can help set you up for your mana early, and they're really cheap cards count towards your thumb camp. But we can also like string something like a factual fiction in your deck isn't is is often a good thing. So you can cast out of the ten before you go off it. Dump spells in your graveyard and gives you cards in hand and you can often cast it again, showing us something nice makes sense, I guess as well. You'll. Of all the wheels, you are the most most like, most like to get the time spiral as well. I'm guessing because yes, if you have a shield, you're probably still so happy taking it, but it's not as it's it's not as cheap to cast as the other one, so that kind of makes sense. Well, one of the big search ones. Sorry. So just in terms of getting access to cards, it's going to come up a lot because it's one of the best totem cards, but brain freeze as well you can if you've already got the card that's going to allow you to cast everything a second time, like Past In Flames, your boss will under a breach. These sorts of things. You can just have a little exchange with your opponent where you pass the turn to them. They play a creature, you bolt their creature. They do nothing else in your in their in step. You can brain freeze yourself for nine if you're already holding your, you know, like massive regrowth sort of thing. You'll you'll wither your under a breach. You've just effectively drawn nine cards. There's there's lots of spots in gameplay as well where you'll find that your brain freeze is just drawing you off your deck. And that can be quite, a quite a nice way of getting access to more cards as well. No. Nice. That makes sense. I just just on those because they are coming up quite a lot as we're talking about them. Like how vital is cause like Uranus? Well, underworld breach to the storm deck. Is that kind of what it's kind of sounding like? Is that the card they're going to push? Is it over to being like a powerful, like, powerful deck rather than like a they are going to be like linchpin cards in most of your decks because a typical like the the I think that not level one storm kill but one of the classics is going to be like ritual ritual demonic cheetah your most will ritual ritual demonic 3 to 10 joules. Right? That's eight on there. That's quite easy if you've got a good axiom probe or preordained lingering in your graveyard, you're at nine. They fetch the land. They've got to land. That that. Right. You do. Getting to ten is, you know, part of it for tendrils. But yeah, there's the moment you got the yog moss well, stuff, you get many more, much simpler lines. So a lot of your lines will be getting to two of you almost follow underworld breach. you can't do it without them. but then that's when I think you need the next level of mana engines, where it's like dream holds, thousand year storm, Bolas, the Citadel. These sorts of cards were there. Impact is so big that you do have the kind of ability to draw your whole deck without having to go back through it in your graveyard sort of thing. But the ritual storm decks will typically go through the graveyard anyway, so yeah, I yeah, I'd say if you have a storm deck that isn't using its graveyard soul, you are. There's always going to need a bunch of wheels is your best way to keep the cards flowing. but for decks that are just relying on wheels, that is a little bit tougher in that you're going virtual ritual wheel and hoping your wheel hand is good. Which I mean, you can build your deck in a way where most of a time it will be, but some of the time it won't be. You know, sometimes your wheel hand will be like five lands of immovable spell and a cantrip, and you won't get there. at some point you've got to throw some lines of wheeling a lot, right? Say exactly, exactly where the, the if the lines where you're just touching and going through your graveyard, you can no, you when you cast your first ritual of that, turn that deterministically, you have to kill. If your opponent doesn't, that's up to you. I mean, I might not know because I might have messed up working it out, but, you know, people who are good at playing someone now. Awesome. So we have our manner engines, we have ways of making mana. We have cards. what are the best wing conditions? Josh, I'll pass this to you. what cards are you looking to cast to win you the game? And also kind of how highly should you take them? They in cube brain freeze is just the best one. you they need many storm to win with with a brain freeze. and it can also be it's also the cheapest one. And it can also be, as I said earlier, used in multiple different ways where you have like even like a little counter exchange with your opponent and you can go like freeze, snap, freeze, that sort of thing. so brain freeze is the best one because you don't need many storm. It's the cheapest one. Typically, is also blue tendrils is probably the next best one because we need a lower storm count to kill with. It's just a storm of ten sort of thing. But the brain freeze is killing on the store. Ten. But tendrils is in the colors of dark ritual. Cabal ritual. You almost will die, right? So in. So there's going to be some times when you might be a blue black deck, but as you start storming you and you need to go through Black Manor to get there and back again sort of thing, I think those two are going to be the best ones. I haven't really seen great shop grapeshot around in many cubes. That sounds like it's a bit difficult in limited, more limited environment, but then there's going to be some backup. I think those two that I've just said are the main two. They're going to be the best ones. there's going to be others. There's the new Dragon one empty. The Warren's was around for years, but those two are a bit difficult because you've got to pass the turn. Usually they brain freeze and tend to want to kill them now. And kill them quickly sort of thing. Yeah, I do love the dragon one, but I can see how it's. Yeah, if you're going through all the hassle of casting all these spells, doing this, all the time, passing the yeah, then pass go doesn't really seem like the vibe. Yeah. You really don't want this, back for at least this for Wrath of God. Other slayers. It's about fighting in terms of pick order as well. Brain freeze. I would take quite highly. I think brain freeze is actually kind of sought over these days. I think it can be used in a number of different ways and where you, if the environment you're playing in, has got underworld breach as well. So brain freeze is a really simple pick up because under a breach and brain freeze can win games on their own with just you, you know, a petrol or an LED and a Lotus make it easier. But you can't just win by passing in under a breach in a few brain freeze, this sort of thing. It's not. It's not too hard. If you've got a deck that drags out sort of thing or an academy. so yeah, I think brain Freeze, I would, I would take it like a slightly premium level, but tendrils is one of those ones where it is very good. It's going to be a good kill condition depending on how port over. I feel like storm is is in a given pod. I'm usually quite happy to let that one go around. because there's also other ways you can win a game, right? If you create 30 mana and your your whole deck, the world is your oyster. You can a fireball still exists in a lot of cubes. I guess that's yeah, I think it's called forth links now. But I say, yeah, it it draws you cards as well. Wonderful stuff. Excellent. Can't defend them. Want to keep it offline. You'll get a card out of it. just some other stuff. Because I did want to touch on. What do you, I do think minds desire being played in cube. Still. What do we think about minds desire? James, I don't want to. Yeah. So suddenly a very powerful sum card. I it's not really a win. Can I describe it more as analogous to your wheel or something? I like the, The mind's desire can kind of do a bit of the time spiral job, right? if you've got your cell count up high enough, you can pretty reliably think you're going to win the game once you've cast your mind's desire. But, but it is not winning the game itself. You have to put something else in your deck for actually wins the game. and that doesn't have to be a card system. And I think storm is kind of the word that is used to describe the archetype of making loads of mana, casting loads of spells and winning the game. But there are definitely ways you can win the game that don't have a word storm written on them. so for example, you bet things like foxes, Oracle, you can you can just get through your whole deck and win for fastest Oracle. That's that's pretty doable if you have like a very powerful way for a piece of the tool cards. like my deck recently doing it with like a displacer kitted in a coveted jewel, like SCA. Every time you cast a spell, you have drawing three cards and making free mana. You can get through your whole deck with that even, and you don't need to stomp out to it. And you could just win with that circle. and so even if you miss on that stuff too, like you can win with kind of just another combo because if you have another combo in your deck, but once you've a game and you see all the cards in your deck and you have a bunch of cheaters and make a bunch of mana, you know, it's it's fine for your being sometimes. Skippy, I'm going to beach and I'm like, like, that works too. I've certainly seen Josh when with decks where it's like the whole in condition with a lightning bolt that I never really understand how he manages to make that work. How many times were you passing that lightning bolt? I know I had a really cool one, which was a doomsday stack with is when regrowth was in the cube, and I remember having a doomsday stack with regrowth time. The doomsday and collective brutality. And that was paper on a loop. you just right, number one. That was that was quite fun. Oh, yeah. yeah. No, you don't have to have the story got and James picked up on a or not up a moment. One of the, really fun more recent additions to the vintage Q policy. It's been around for a while. Is displacer kitten. It's basically a thing we've come to do is a really nice way to draw your whole deck. But then there's also a displacer kit in with Tamiya as well. If you've got one of these LED Lotus or Lotus Petal, it's in Tamiya and the sacrifice artifact is infinite Mana Infinite Storm. At that point you just need your boat, your collective brutality. Anything that targets your opponent will probably kill them at that point. so that's another little Easter egg in that to go and find out which Tamiya is that out of interest? Is that the absolutely no idea, yes or no? That's the that collected a collector of tales. More of the spark. One that regrows. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And Tamiya it was a really fun one. The basic item was a really cool card for that as well, because it does do things like reset your planes, Walker's reset your coveted use. I remember resetting Natalia with it and that's really funny because then it costs every spell on your deck. and then your whole decks on the stack, they displace the kitten's bits really well into storm decks, because your whole deck is non creature spells, but it is a bit of a lightning rod. so yeah, I think it's. Yeah. You generally can't be on cast mate display success and pass for ten and go off if you need to you need to do it on you know, sometimes. Exactly. I was a bit like back in the day. I was like, this is my hobby of spring. I'm going to kill you next to. And it's like, you know, getting another turn right? So yeah, that's you can't really be tapping for that and playing display tickets and crossing your fingers. Okay. Yeah for sure. Displacer Kitsune is one of those cards as well, which I think is kind of worth smacking on. It goes accidentally infinite. So so easily. Like especially if you have just any zeros in your deck like, free mana to fairy a zero drop, and, Tamiya and Dixon will draw you your deck. If you're zero drop casts for mana, it will. Yeah. So you infinite manner as well, because each time you cast it your flickering, you'll you'll planeswalker. You can even, like a petal, a displacer kitsune and love us is infinite mana, which is quite cool because you click on your lower. It's now a new lower, so you can play a new thing from your great palette, which can be the lotus petal again. And you keep going. and the nice thing, well, there's deep spells. If you do have a storm cards in your deck, you're generating infinite stone as well. So one card we mentioned in there that I want to throw to you specifically, Josh, because I know you have a bit of a penchant to killing that, killing me with it in games of magic. talk to me about doomsday. how does doomsday? Because doomsday can exist as its own unique deck. What kind of. How does it cross over into storm? I kind of like, at what point are you taking doomsday while you're building a storm deck? That's kind of like a not a pivot, but I guess I kind of like as a backup wind condition, as it were. There's another one of these cards is like, so it is a killing itself, right where you can doomsday and make a oracle pile, but it does a very similar job to the dogma spells and underworld breaches that we talked about earlier, where it gives you access to a bunch of powerful cards. And then this way it's stacking your deck to make a kill. That could be a storm, because if you wanted it to be, it could be a oracle or just kill the band style kill if you want it to be as well. The thing where they cross over so nicely is that you can both. You can cast both doomsday in your world off of, the dark ritual or a dark petition even, which is the five magnitude to the three black and the decks crossover enough where you want the same cards, you want your cantrip, so you want some permission. You probably want a thought, Caesar. Inquisition. You want? Yeah. Nice cheap cantrip cards which help you filter and set up your hand. Build big, splashy play. So the setup of the deck is going to be very similar. It just might be a slightly different kill condition, slightly different payoff. and, you know, it also means that you get to think about doomsday stacks, which I think is the best thing that magic's given us is the most used sentence. I think I've. Yeah, to be clear, just does not need to be drafting or have drafted. He recently said message people about DMZ stacks for doomsday is, I think, one of the most fun cars just to think about and like, yeah, it's it's just really fun. And I remember being on the on a call with James once watching James, try and play doomsday and yeah, it was I think the most fun part of that was telling him to put the top card of his day and stay stuck in the draw. Seven a lot of the time was quite fun as well, but now doomsday is, yeah, very powerful. It lets you stack five cars on your deck to build a pile that kills, and there's a few cards around in magic that can help. Like facilitate that. So good tactic. Probes a very good 1 to 0 mana gets you into the five cards you've just, but they're from your deck and graveyard. You also, gosh, if you can pick up two Lancer because you two cards, which is even better because then you can get another card, draw two into your deck and something else. So like if, if your environ allows it than something like gush into LED deep analysis, you're going to have your deck in your hands of blue floating. And then it's just land drops. Oracle is a kill from there sort of thing. So yeah, I don't think it's powerful. The decks crossover enough in that you want you know you want the same things. It's just a different end game plan. Cool. So yeah. So we've we've touched on a bunch of the key cards for specifically, the storm deck. Well, they're kind of fresh in our memory. Let's actually talk about the draft a little bit. I think actually, let's jump straight to that. because, yeah, there's so many different moving pieces in this deck, and there's kind of like a lot of the draw cards and a lot of the ramp cards aren't that specific for the storm deck as like the payoff. So I kind of like how how do we know Storm is open and what early picks do you want to see that will lead you in that direction? I think ideally, your early picks are probably just going to be a pretty boring blue black start typically. Right. you're going to want to take ponders and preordained because these cards are phenomenal. And whatever deck you draft, you going to want to take thought seas, inquisition, fatal push because they're going to be brilliant. And whatever deck you draft. And then at some point along the way, you sometimes might have to be a bit aggressive about it. But, you know, you can pick up a ritual and then you might see some slightly, like, I guess here, two stormy cards come back around like cabal ritual isn't a high pick, but even like, even like the Re-Animator decks, right? They might be. They might go. They might play a dark ritual. The cabal rituals a bit worse. Right? So you might not thing. I'm trying to think of another example at the moment, but like. And if you've got one James. But yeah, cabal ritual might come around. Your muscle is not a high pick unless you're drafting storm. They you can usually take pick on tackle and ponder. And if you see that eight pick or ninth pick you almost will. Then we're gaming sort of thing. so there's a I think there's storm. There's a lot of floating cards around the pod. and you do need to maximize taking the cards that are actually good, first of all. And then there's the storm. Kill isn't many cards, right? It's a couple of rituals. It's a tutorial which we're going to play anyway, probably. And then you have multiple the tendrils. It's not it doesn't have to take up loads of space. Yeah for sure. I think for me it's. Yeah. Similarly starts off taking good cards, paying attention to what's in the pack. That might. Well because I have zero interest in fighting of a people first on deck. It's it generally ends up with two train wrecks in the in the draft cards. maximum. You'll get one win when you play the other trader zombie like, but if I I'll have like a nice blue and black start maybe, maybe I have a tutor. Tutor really want really pulls me into storm because I mean like quite a lot of decks, but, still maximizes tutors, I think, better than any of attack. and I know that was a well in the pack I opened, and it's like, well, maybe I want this. I'll take this cabal, this ball, Victor, over, and I'll take this dark threat over. Not much, because if I will wheels, I'm really going to want it. And then when I see the job, well, I'm like, okay with gaming with, And then the next pack. I'm perfectly happy first picking Alliance side diamond because I know that's why I'm going. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm more than happy taking sticking around, but I'm in pack one to be honest with you. But yeah, yeah, I think that might be the difference. In a fight, you'll have a temple guard and then somewhere before you have a lead. Yeah, but the thing is, you need a much less good storm deck to win than I do. I show, I can play, I think I can draft stone, like, not perfectly, but kind of okay, but playing storm, I feel like I'm leaving a lot of money on the table a lot of time, you know? because I just struggle to death actually calculate that whole line and play around stuff in a sensible way. yeah. And so I kind of feel like I need I need it to be wide open before the fire manifests, you know? Yeah, yeah, that there's a lot of things there that we will touch on in the remainder of this episode, kind of like playing the deck and also, kind of bits to include in your cube, because I do know that it's a fairly you do need a fairly large amount of specific cards to support storm, but kind of keeping it where we are in terms of the deck, when we're drafting it, ideally kind of what is the breakdown in terms of like, like, like if you had your like peak storm deck and like how like roughly kind of like how many mana producers, how many cards, what spells and how many of like, the wind cons? are we looking to have roughly in the deck? Kind of like it could be kind of ballpark because I have got the feeling that kind of some of storm is a bit vibes. Yeah. I don't like when it. This is 0.5. I don't think I've ever like, considered that before. the, the main thing you want to prioritize when you're drafting is going to be like when you decide, I am drafting storm, you're going to really want to have to consider how you're producing the money you need to win. That's always the right, okay. That's always going to be your shortfall. So the minor has to kind of take priority over anything else because you're going to need an amount of money. You don't need loads right. Sometimes it's to get to five so I can tutor. And then your will or tutor and then breach and then get back into mana. Right. You don't need loads, you just need some. Yeah. That pushes you over the over the edge sort of thing. more than just, you know, I play sick lands sort of thing. yeah, just, I think the contracts on the cards are going to be the main thing that you're going to have, like the bulk of, and then after that, it's going to be a number of good payoffs, I guess 3 or 4 payoffs. you probably push it from there, but then the payoff can also just be a tutor. Right? It could just be the vampiric or mystical. Yeah, it can be your second payoff easily. Yeah, that makes sense. Exactly. then one of the other things is if you're in a slightly more like, Wheel of Fortune style deck, then, you know, you, your your Wheel of Fortune are also payoffs. But I will say your card advantage and your control. So stacking your deck full of those isn't going to be an issue. But I think access to cards, whether it's just looking at them and taking one with can trips or just pack of actions with the fortunes, everything in between sort of thing. I think that's always going to be the like critical thing that's in the bulk of your deck. Then it's going to be a number of payoffs, three or 4 or 5 of them, and that's including tutors. And then the rest will probably just be trying to produce some minor, I guess. I'm just looking through this at the moment and I've. Yeah, I just look at stillness. I've got stillness. Well, I've got a dark ritual in a lotus petal sort of thing. Like there's not a lot of matter in here. Yeah, you're finding that right. Yeah. We're finding them with tutors or fact or fiction style things like big control. and then we're just casting them a couple of times. One of the big reprints, not reprints. One of the big prints in recent magic was the Besiege the Mirror. Right. So I've got a deck here in front of me that's got Dark Ritual, an LED and a Chromebox. That's all my forth manner. And then I can beseech for your boss will cast my dark ritual of my led again, cast a beseech and get my tendrils right. That's that's not a that's not many fast mana spells. Everything else in that deck is just. It's just blue. yeah. I think this is actually what makes Stone a decent amount harder to draft than a lot of other combo decks and cube, because if you're if you're drafting Re-Animator, say you can pretty reasonably give a guideline of like, you want X amount of animation spells, X amount of targets, X amount of discard outlets, tutors like you can give reasonable ballpark figures, whereas with stone the answer is kind of always it depends, right. because it almost what I'd be thinking about more than how many rituals I have or whatever, it's like, what does that with what I have? But how do I want my stone turn to go? Right, okay, like if I can to true a bit and find what I need, what, what what is going to let me go off. So like if my engine is brain freeze, underworld breach on the petal of a diamond, then I don't need that much mana to do that. But it's pretty compact. Whereas if my center needs to involve getting up to a time spiral of mine's desire or something. But I need a bunch more rituals because I'm going to need to generate a lot more manner in that Staunton. I think, yeah, it's on this. More useful to think about when you're drafting like, what do I want my stone turn to look like? And what do I need to make that happen? Okay, nice. Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. Let's just round off this deck now because we've gone through a lot of cards. We need to storm off and do that big turn. But I'm assuming we need some protection for our spells. Like. Like how highly? we prioritizing things like counter magic. Are we running creature removal? Do we care what our opponents are doing as much, or is it just more? Is protecting our stuff kind of like what is like the rest of the deck look like? Basically, it's that's going to be like that bit that we're saying, like when we're drafting the deck, right? When you're starting a draw, you're just going to be, you know, you might be sitting down to for some storm and that's fine. You can pick one pack on your LEDs and yield moss wells if you really want to. That's fine. But if we're, you know, drafting tend to be, I guess, and eating our vegetables on the way through, we're going to be taking underground seas, volcanic islands. We're going to be taking efficient removal in boat push that will pierce this sort of thing. So and you're gonna want to approach the beginning of each pack like that anyway, where you just take the best interactive cards that you can see or cantrip in card, most powerful card sort of thing. There might be something you don't want to float, like a pack three freeze or a pack 3 or 4. So you might not want to float it, but hopefully the deck rounds out from where we opened up a mediocre pack in pack one or got past the relatively pack pack one, and we take something like an inquisition or the duress out of it, and that can be a little bit of interaction. Picking up push dismember. You know, any of the Hydra variants are in cubes these days isn't particularly hard at some point if you're in a black deck. Same with red. Most most people have, you know, 6 or 7 wants to mount a red, burn spells, and you do want something in there because you want a way to kill faster, gassy creatures. And you also want to, if possible, think about basically the white player usually. And what do you do about the Thalia? Because that's going to be in a lot of cubes that you play. Having an answer to that sort of thing is, you know, that's very specific. But that is one of the cards in cube that is going to kill you if you can't remove it from the battlefield. it doesn't need to do much else because there's a Thalia in play. Your deck probably doesn't function like that was a very specific example, but it's one of those things as well. If if you're paying an eight man pod and you'll kill his brain, freeze at some point in the draft, you might need to think about what do you do about the person who drafts them, even if they get at 15th pick because no one's doing that. You might need a game plan for that sort of thing as well, because yeah, you're ducking them. They can just bring in an embryo and you can't that they can't die. Yeah, for sure. I think the, the, the removal if of of severe infraction I probably prioritize the highest install. My think is the discard because it lets me beat their interaction a lot of the time, which is in some ways from that a lot of I'm more important than beating math. That's right. Because you're trying to be quicker. and you can do it like proactively before you go off, whereas like a counterspell, it can be hard to go off keeping blue blue off. But over time they whether there's a discard spell I can just fire off, I don't even necessarily need to fire off the same turn. Sometimes you fire off the temp before because you know you can be mana constrained and sure, if I top that to counter that one turn, you die, but you generally feel pretty safe. I'm prioritizing that pretty highly. Stuff like the removal spells. I kind of find you end up with some in your deck. and that's fine, but it's kind of like, because you're not going to have 20 free spells, which all directly contribute to you going off most of the time. Bait and removal spells are just what you fill it up with, and generally I'm not prioritizing them super highly. I'm kind of taking them out of the packs that don't have anything good for me. but I find I'm not like going after them super hard once I know I'm in storm just because there's so many other things I need, right? Like I kind of need the fixing more most of the time. So I'll often take a landowner move removal spell. something like a, a dark ritual. I might not be completely confident I can wield, even if I'm confident that no one else is in storm because of a player's. Put that card in my deck. I need for good. I need to come over this. I was even able to turn one hex mage. Yeah, exactly. You know, you know, people do these things. so, yeah, I kind of just find often I'm, I play some of the removal spells that I end up with, and that's what is filling up my deck. Once I've played all the cards that I really want to play to help myself go off. Yeah, it makes sense. You, you mentioned fixing that. in this episode already, we've mentioned some double blue pit spells in this deck. We've mentioned some red spells. We've mentioned some triple black spells in this deck. How so? So, every deck, like it's 20, 24, draft your lands, everyone. Kind of like every deck needs fixing apart from the minor card ones, but, like, the storm needs prioritize it more if it is trying to run this kind of pit heavy three color deck or is it more you because you have these, ways of making big mana return things like your rituals, things like, coverage, all that kind of stuff like, like, all the mana requirement of the deck is bad as I'm imagining them. Or can you kind of get that with like, like drafting like, but like like two fetch lands, three jewels and like, like like an average kind of, land package or do you need more? You've got to take your lands. Right. That's. I think that's just like a draw thing. Fundamentally, you've got to take your lands, field multicolored decks. that said, when it comes to, like, actual deck building, you might find that you've got, you know, a predominantly blue deck and you're accessing black for the the Richland tutor chain. And that's kind of it. So you might actually be able to you might end up having something like a doomsday in your deck if you're not actually playing too many swamps because you've got to fetch lands to Jewel lands, a few swamp sort of thing. because your mana engine is likely going to fix you for your big turn. yeah. I don't think you need to go to, But you do need to take your lands, because. Yeah, if you've got a storm deck with a watery grave, it's gonna be a lot better than a storm deck with an island and Swamp Thing. That sort of thing. Like. Yeah. I don't think you want to take land. Yeah. It's weird. Sometimes it feels like you need more swamps to support the fatal punch in your attack than the doomsday in your deck. Right. Because you're casting the Doom South, a dark ritual on turn four, and you really want to bounce caster face flush on time on. Yeah. There's also there's also like land that you, the cube creator, can put in, right. There was a time when, Sunken Ruin was in the motoki and that was really sick, the doomsday, because then one of your islands is going to produce black alongside the sun converting in a swamp, right? So you can also make it a bit easier on the, on the combo player. yeah, I have that in mind. I might as well just write the word Josh on the song on the Sunken Ruins. Yeah. Can we. Isn't that groaning? Okay. Can we get can we get Necro in there? And that guy. Not in many caves in that Carter love. That is not in mind at the moment, but, you're probably not far. Absolutely. In terms of adding it on, I think I'm, I think I'm adding solitary confinement. I, yeah. No, I think today's stone. Dex, often when you're building your mana base, you don't just. Yeah. If you're used to, like, counting the number of pips you have for each color and building your mana base based off that, you probably need to look a little bit deeper with your sun deck in terms of when do I want to pass these spells? And on my rituals, helping me on my, or is it just I'm casting at least enough that I can fit to bunch had found myself. This is also things like what is my minor engine, right? If it's if it's dark rituals, they can probably we can ignore some black pips maybe. But then also something like, high tides that we mentioned earlier doubles your islands. So you're probably going to want to be a bit aggressive on the number of mountain swamps and forests you're playing so that we can cram in another island or two. So our high tide is maximized because once we've gone high tide, frantic time spiral, you know, we should hopefully be able to do something with that. so we just need to be able to do that and it be good sort of thing and have enough floating matter afterwards. So I think it depends on yeah. Depends on how we're creating our mana through our storm kill versus you know, how many pips I need. Like if I'm playing a fast one storm deck, do I want to actually load up on more forests that my fast wanted cast or earlier? Even though, you know, I actually only have 1 to 2 green cards in my deck, I might want to play like litany of great number forest 5 or 6 forests just so that my turn one fast bond is correct. Yeah, for sure. And I think it it is does sometimes feel in storm. Like you can get away with quite a lot more than enough attacks just because off of LA deck is doing is seeing cards fight. We have fairly good at taking Fermanagh as long as you have, you know web based color that you need like often blue. But sometime back to like cats flex contracts and get into more cards. Make sense. So I think that kind of that covers kind of drafting the deck. Next thing I want to touch on is playing the deck is. Personally, I find this is probably the part that's like the most daunting for people who haven't played the deck before. Haven't, I've got that much experience where I kind of like, let's start as we're getting kind of, what are we looking for in like an ideal opening hand that that is attainable in a average storm deck, would you say, like how many, how many cards or spells? How many bits of, ramp are we looking for? So you can have a you're gonna want a bit of everything. Probably. But the most important thing is going to be control spells, like things that help you sculpt your hand and develop a route to victory. And that's very generic and very this is how magic works sort of thing. But, you know, if you've it's a bit like just putting more pieces together from a reanimated deck, right? Like in the animator, we want a way to get some into the bend. We want a way to get something out. yeah. That's about it really isn't an animator, but you know, in some you want to work out how we're getting into our mana. So and then how we're getting access to the wind or the tutor or what have you. So the control is going to be pretty important here. And then there's also that you're also probably gonna want a little bit of interaction. You probably want to play against your opponent in some way. but something like, I don't know, let's say a cantrip, a dark ritual, an inquisition, a bow is going to be perfectly acceptable, capable hand. It's not the fastest, but it's going to get there. The more fast mana we have in our opener, the more we can just look for the payoff card. Be it doomsday, under a bridge, Tinker as well. Think of the card I think we've mentioned yet, but Tinker, you can go and get a jar on it. But it's it's the sort of thing that's easy. Routes to victory. so yeah, I think the main thing you're going to want to have is access to more cards. If your game plan is to stasis them and bolt their first two threats and play some lands, that's not gonna be a winning recipe. Your control spell doesn't have to be a pre-ordained or a ponder or something really good like that. It could just be. I'm going to see. I'm going to bolt your first threat and then turn four and go to Factor Fiction. And on turn five, I'm hopefully going to win off of that fact. That fact might just find us a ritual in a wheel or something like that. But that's still good enough, right? That's still going to push us into seven more cards. So yeah, James, I don't know if you've got more. Yeah, I think five, because I'm always thrilled to see in my opener as a cheater because, yeah, if I have a cheater, then even if I don't have any like any of the other really important pieces, I need to go off. But somewhere in my deck is a yeah, Maxwell. And so my Maddox alliance I diamond. I know that if my other car can find either half of that and I can just cheat off of the other half and once you've cast some cards or spells, you be able enough to win just off of that. Maybe find a ritual or whatever to, but it just means that all of the other tools get so much better because you can find for combinations of cards you need. what is it? Yeah. The cards, you, the hands you don't like. Other ones where you just feel like you need to naturally draw a bunch of different pieces? because, yeah, even if you can pay some stance and stay alive, it's just going to take you a long time to put that thing together. And ultimately are not that set up to win a game like your where your game plan is to one full on to match with your opponent, because eventually they're going to do our best efforts than you are, right? Because you have like tendrils that in the in your deck and it it it that doesn't answer that questing beast. So they will kill you unless you can do something together and reasonable amount of time. No. Make sense? Yeah. Yeah, I got it. That's going to sound like as well that we've already kind of that we've kind of covered with that kind of what, what you're trying to do in the early and mid game. You're looking to sculpt your hand. You're trying to work towards the point where you have your, way of playing a bunch of spells and making a bunch of mana, kind of like, as I say, one of the things with this storm as well is you do, you are just like that fundamentally. Just wants to make a lot of land drops, like every land you have in play is going to make your Kilton so much easier as well. so yeah, I don't know. That's just making land drops is going to be really good. So if we're doing a bit of filtering and a bit of interacting with whatever our opponents are doing, and if that's allowing us to make a land drop, that's going to make your life a lot easier and a lot of the time, yeah, you're going to be building up to a point that you going off as late as possible. But yeah, the nice thing about Stone that is because you have like your game plan is kind of broken in a lot of ways. You can just oops into nuts, like you do have outs for hands that are just absurd and people aren't realistically beating. They like sometimes you just go ten one fast on lands and land wheel and like it doesn't matter what your opponent has. so it's just an upset like that goes, you're not like getting two votes, but it is a real upside of playing that, that that you have broken tools that other Dex just can't deal with in a reasonable way. that does make sense. okay, this might be kind of like the bigger question of the day, because, like, we've talked about storming off. how do you know when to storm off? Like, when do you know now is the time to go for it? Like, I'm part of that as well as, like, all that times where I kind of you start storming off and then you kind of like, don't like you after after a couple of spells, you kind of stop yourself and like, like, how would you know? Yeah. How do you know when to go for it? And how do you know that this is like I have committed to this. This is this is what I'm doing. This is the turn I am going to win. yeah. How do you know when to go for it? The main factor is always going to be your opponent, right? Because whilst storm can feel like quite a goldfish heat deck, you have another player in the game and sometimes you might be forced to try and go off and you might get there sort of thing. So the main thing is always just working out. Is my opponent realistically killing me next turn and you know, looking at what they're playing and thinking of, is there a way that you can create just out of the cards that you know exist that they could kill you next to and sort of thing? if the answer is yes, and if you think it's good odds that you're going to die, like sometimes you might just be like, yes, I possibly going to kill me next turn, but I really don't think I can get anywhere. So yeah, roll the dice, let them have a turn. But if you think, you know, they've just wildly tutored a hasty threat to the top of that deck and you're dead to that sort of thing, then you have to go for it. And a lot of, a lot of playing storm is building up to that point. Right. And it's just playing the game, trying to get all those lands into play and going off at the last possible moment is like the classic storm kill, you know? Yeah, yeah. Wait as long as possible. Delay delay delay kill you laying. Hey sort of thing. yeah. Knowing what your opponent's doing and how they might kill you next turn is going to be the critical key to go off. other than that, if you're in like a blue match up. So blue on blue match up has your opponent tap down low for like their haymaker type thing. So if you're blue light control, the opponent is just tapped out for a chase or something and they've got no lands left yet. We still need to consider that they might have to force in that hand, or a daze or something like that, but if we're able to get our blue opponent to tap out from other things that we're doing as well, that can be a great way to find the time, to go off. And that's gonna that's where you'll dig cards or spells like fact or fiction, dig through time gets on. Given this sort of effect, if it's in your environment, is going to be really good as well, because these are big haymaker spells, which a control that is probably going to want to counter as well. this is a nightmare scenario for the opponent as we resolve a fact of fiction. We untapped, we thought sees them and now the count spells dead, right? So, I don't feel like I'm directly answering the question of what do you need to go for it? But I think it's very it's like we said earlier, right? A lot of the time it's just it depends. If you think you're dying, you need to just try and go. And that's just going to be counter of as much as possible, produce as much amount as possible, see as many cards as possible and see if we make it against the blue dex. We want to slowly build up resources and then at some point, I think a lot of the time you just want to have a fake exchange with them. So maybe pick a fight over their thing on their turn, maybe put a big card or spell on the stack on their turn and try and create a fight that we actually kind of don't care about. We're already holding something like Ritual Tutor Inquisition, right? That's probably gonna be fine as well. yeah. So and then the rest of the time, yeah, if you feel like you're going to win, feel like you can win, just push. I guess. Yeah. I think the the thing about, again, some of the attacks as well is because they can interact with you a lot more meaningfully from the other Dex. Right? They have permission. Whereas you're talking about that a white deck, their interaction is going to be removable, but you just don't care about, so against those acts, you really can afford to just wait until you're actually dying next turn. Whether it's against the blue decks, you might want to go for it. Not because of immediately killing you, but just because they're seeing a lot of cards. And you know, the longer you're going to, you wait. But more time. They have to take into that permission and oh well, time permission spell can disrupt your whole turn. You know, a counterspell Alpha is landed against stone is generally not a 1 to 1. This is generally like a three for one and V control dex favor. Right. So like you go, you go ritual. Ritual. Yeah. Well, and they cancel your ritual, you know, like, you know, you're in a lot of trouble that the worst one is when they get the all clear with the 11. Right. Yeah. Yeah yeah, yeah. Crack chirality. And then they, they have responses. It's pretty savage. So you need to, sometimes in those spots you need to push because even if you're not 100% sure you are going to win that ten, you just know that if you let them, like cast, their cards will spell end of turn. On top of that planeswalker, then that just can be seen. Too many cards, you know, it's going to be way more likely that I can spell up the next ten. So we need to go for it. That's done. Yeah, yeah, that does make sense, I guess. Yeah, it's kind of yeah. You're waiting until the last point or until you either know it's safe or you have to go for it, or I guess as well. Kind of like like what we kind of discussed. Like it's not like a plus B equals win, but kind of like like like you will have a, there will be like a range of hands of cards that we know will win you the game. Kind of like if you just have your big mana produce, your, your as well, or your, your card advantage and your wind gun in your hand and you probably then it is like win if you resolve it, if you resolve those cards, then you went on the spot. But I guess kind of I guess part of it is, when you're going for it and it's not deterministic, like, like you don't have the bits in your hand, kind of like what things, important to keep in mind, like, say you are going for it on that. oh like dog, like the turn before your aggro opponent is going to kill you. You're on six, for example, and your opponent has six power on the board. Next turn. They kind of like like you're going for it. Now you have some of the best new happen. Like what are the key things to keep in mind. So you don't kind of muck up your lines, that kind of stuff. But like is there any advice you would give to the people listening? And is is it's always just it's just how much manager you have is the it's just always the critical point usually. always usually. But yeah. So how much money if you got. But also the things when you're not sure if you can get that or when you're not sure if you need to get there as well. You can make plays where we sort of try and do something like don't use your but all of your money. First of all, right? Don't go ritual, ritual, ritual cast. Nice whisper. Right. With five floating, you can just reach out a nice whisper. You've got a black floating, you can get back into your other the ritual sort of thing. yeah. So you can be, like, slightly savvy in the way we sequence our cards. But in a normal storm turn, I guess, like in the dream Staunton, there's going to be like, make all my mana, cast my tutor, go and get my thing, make all my mana, cast my tutor, go and get whatever's next. but yeah. And then. But typically you want to see as many cards as you can before you commit your rituals, and you want to use a lot of ritual, all your rituals and tutors and see what your gift cards before you play your your big buy back regrowth, your muscle style spell. Is that make sense? Is the most well or the other one? I keep forgetting the bloody name of Amulet breach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it your. Is it when you cast your, your augments well. Or is that kind of the point of no return basically. yes and no. so like with your boss. Well, I'd say usually yes. Right. Because from now on, any resources we use are going to exile the. And your boss will is very typically going to be the last card out of your hand. the times where that's not true is when you've got, like, a time twister in your hand or something, and you're going to go for the Alchemist. Well, because it's deterministic. But then if a force of will you, you can rebuild off of a twist sort of thing that can be a thing that comes up. But, one thing with underworld breaches where that is casting, that doesn't exile, the spell that you cast, you can have turned in a more of a mid-game where I've done this before, where my turn is actually just cast Underworld Breach, and then I've got the resources in my graveyard to cost three preordained and then cross my fingers that brain freeze is in my top nine sort of thing. So you can breach. It's like different because you can lead on breach to get access to more cards. what's yours must feel. You can't lead on that. But, you know, you want to expend all your money beforehand. Breach. We don't need to. We can just play the breach and find what we need and then produce the mana later. If that's the way forward. No it does. Yeah. That's thinking kind of like, let's say you're looking to use your resources to kind of to draw. You draw your cards first before you commit your big mana or your big. Yeah, yeah, all your payouts. they said exactly. And like, there's also like, a lot of other payoffs that we haven't touched on too much. Like, don't tell Tinker these sorts of things. Where and like the wheels as well are the draw sevens are a big payoff as well. Where with these ones you can kind of use them a bit more as bait spells to then get your to turn off that. You can choose the creature as a bait spell, but we're already holding the tinker sort of thing. get into your big splashy effect that you're going to push multiple spells with something. Okay, cool. So obviously we've talked about our deck. Let's talk about our opponents decks. in terms of matchups, what, James, I thought was one to you, what are we pleased to be playing against? What is the perfect opponent for the storm deck? Who we beating up today? Oh, anyone who is trying to, like, grind mid-range stuff with a bunch of removal spells you're thrilled about. Because I think actually, one of the biggest upsides of playing storm is there's just so many cards that get played, and a lot of cube decks for you just barely do not care about whatsoever. the obvious one being removal spells, right? Yes. You don't have any targets. but even stuff like just the value features you often really don't care about, like, say your opponent plays a tile tracker. They kind of just played a free amount of free to because if they're spending mana cracking clues you felt about that, you know, then, you know, basically because they don't have relevant interaction for you, the only thing you care about is how quickly they killing you. so in that scenario, you. Yeah, I don't care. I can much more if it's like a gut. It's killing me very quickly. But, yeah. So I think the, the mid-range Dex, like queen Dex in general terms tend to be, tend to be very, very good match ups. I find with some, yeah, the black base mid-range Dex if I don't, too heavy on on discard can also be very good match ups and just slower combo backed by, like if my Re-Animator opponent like very quick fan of mates you might be worried about. if my Re-Animator opponent big payoff is putting it into play. You know, seven seven or whatever. Like an Italy. Say, probably beat that. Like I don't even necessarily need to kill him the next set a lot of time. because I'm not trying to. One for the one for my I'm not playing that value game, so I don't really care if you get value. but we don't want to play against is people where all their interaction is very relevant. People have a ton of discard, people have a ton of information so they can pick your hand apart fairly effectively. or just people who are trying to go even quicker than you. But, with a really quick stomp that you can generally, if you have, if you're some decks really good, you can just be quick, have no physical attacks, but with more of a medium stomp that you might be worried about, about really fast aggro. Yeah, yeah, I can see them getting under you being a bit of an issue. on that topic, Josh, who don't you want to be playing against this? Like the the white black beat? aggressive creature? Dex the horrific because they play something. Let's say let's take a current card in ocelot. Probably. Right. They'll play like a cheap threat. And then everything they do after that is going to be like hide Hollow Scholar into deep cavern, back into vindicate your land into a hair of blade hold and then you die. And I find that is like the nut they match up. The. The white decks aren't as bad as they used to be, because a lot of the taxing effects have gone from the modo cube now, and they might still exist. But, you know, there was a time when they had African wooden mer in there as well. on top of that, yes, that is annoying. but yeah, I think it's the more proactive now. White I guess. Exactly. And I think the. Yeah, the cheaper, faster dex from red and white, annoying. Some of the cheap black interaction is more problematic than the blue permission because your cards are just gone, right? Blue permission. We can play around. We can also. Thoughts? These are out of their hands. And you'll. Yeah, I think I think it's the quick white decks. the quick black interaction is the biggest problems. you will have some builds where you just literally can't be a force of. Will they, the fast bond. Oh, seven decks. A classic for this. Where these are all my resources. I play my way to fortune, and then they force it. And you just don't do anything for three more turns sort of thing. but, yeah, I think the nut low is the white black interactive decks. Yeah. I could see how specifically they just have everything they need to mess up your day. Yeah, that sounds like it's out. Yeah, yeah, it's when it's. Yeah. The discard combined with a clock. It's a real nightmare. Yeah, yeah. And the clock of Titan, it's got a is shockingly relevant when they start Q and vindicate to land sort of thing. And this is like yeah. Yeah. Now I think my denial as well is is that of that. Yeah. Very potent tool against you're playing I mean firstly off playing a lot of colors. I can if I wasteland in your strip mind and your whatever authentication your land so they can they can keep you off colors and you just need a lot of mana to go off. No, definitely. That doesn't make sense. Okay. So we kind of we've touched on the decks, we've touched on playing it. Let's actually talk about either ad. Yeah. Let's talk about adding storm to a cube. From your point of view, gents. what do you think are the key cards to include? I kind of like like, let's start because. Because, like, I've seen, like, the minimum you need to support a storm package. Because, like, as I've gone over stuff like the cantrip stuff like the card selection is things you see in lots of cubes, you don't really need to run too much more outside of what's already there to kind of support that, I would say, but like I've seen like storm packages just be like lines. I diamond underworld breach, brain freeze like that three card little combo is a storm package that you can support, but obviously it can be a lot bigger. Kind of like we've gone over the different types, but kind of like if you wanted to see this be like a larger archetype in supporting your kind of like like how many cards or like what portion of you're kind of like, is it or damage actually, do you think needs to be there to prioritize because like when I was putting my keep together, like a lot of the things I was saying was that like storm is a very is a fairly dedicated section that like, like other package like the other decks, don't want some of these cards anywhere near as much. Kind of like like if you were adding it to it, you would. What would you say are the main things you would want to see to support storm? I think it's quite a heavy package to add in, but I think it's one where either your players will benefit more, the more you dedicate to it sort of thing, or not dedicate. But try and find crossovers. But like the more rituals you give them, you know, the easier it is. It could be better off, especially especially the way that you go over 360, right? You need an even bigger mass of cards so that we actually open them. at night, as a very good example. At the moment, I don't think like the murder cubes got enough in there to support a storm deck sort of thing. I don't think it's got any rituals apart from dark ritual. And let's not talk about ritual. Right of flame. right at the moment. And then artifact mana. they've also dropped a lot of card draw and card keeping up cards or something you want access to as well, especially the stuff that draws multiple cards in a turn, even if that's just chart charter course or Knights Whisper. Right? Just something to push your card advantage is going to be critical for your combo players in general. so yeah, I think I think the more of the money you give them, the better. Without, you know, just having so much that the pot is flooded with 15 picked 15th pick ritual sort of thing, and then the rest of it, I think you'd need will breach and or past in flames. You need a number of those or something to that effect. One of those big replay everything cards. The more wheel of fortune you put in your cube, the better that is for the storm player. Yeah, I think adding stone. You've got to be thinking through what the actual storm pattern is going to look like for the storm deck. And do we have a decent amount of redundancy for all the phase pieces? plus, do we have shooters and cards for to go and find those things? so if we're doing the visual, something, we need enough rituals that the solid player is going to reliably get a couple. that probably means you need to open a couple because it is kind of a nice thing about Stone. There's generally no a lot of phase rituals you can. We elevate like people. People aren't taking those cards from you most of the time. and I think ideally, yeah, you you want to make sure that there's not like, sort of a single point of failure, you know, you don't want it to be like, oh, underworld breach wasn't open, so the stone deck doesn't really work. but that's pretty bad, I think, yeah, like, whales can do a lot of that and probably, like, we'll do all that and a lot of cubes that aren't supporting storm. Right. so that's nice, but they are closer to gray and stone. But you can go a lot of other places with, kind of similar with fast bond, I think, massively helps for some player, but also good for types. and you know, we talked mostly about rituals, but, you know, other ways you can go about manage generation. You know, you could put in a package with like mana flower hobby, Surviving High Tide and Waste on top of your lands. Right. That's that's kind of another direction to go with it. probably like a little less streamlined. So maybe not on further. for super, super powerful cubes, but also the cards aren't as expensive. And if your cube like, gives a little more time set up, I think that can be a pretty fun direction to go as well. That, that that blue green style storm that because, well, where we're playing additional lands, even if it's exploration and fast pond redundancy for that sort of thing. But I always found those ones like the most fun storm decks. The ritual storm decks are cool, but a lot of lines. It's like deterministic. Once you found it, the game's over. You just have to execute it. But those, you know, play my high tides, play my frantic search, play my time spiral and cross my fingers and do it again. And yeah, you're just wheeling and wheeling and wheeling. And then at some point you'll find something to do. And yeah, they're really good fun because a lot of the time, those blue green storm decks, when they start to go off, they are not deterministic. You're just making as much money as you can off your fast one, the high tide, and then pushing in some big effect, usually a wheel usage or seven or some variety. and that's quite fun. Just roll the dice and pray. Yeah. And I guess it's kind of got some upgrades since it's been like, I don't think we've had that much in Modo Cube since like Power Grid Vegas being a legal card. And that's that's a pretty good one for that deck, I imagine. And then you can take like, you know, your fantasy race that's from like, a saga that's like 50 years old and put it in. Okay. I don't, I don't know, I. Can't compare. It's also not in the mood. Okay. But thinking about. Oh no, no, no, I'm saying it hasn't been achieved with heartbeats. that might be cool. That could be cool. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Time. That's a socket. You can cut that bit out. And in 1998, I did I can bridges and, don't worry, I went into proper lamp vocab. The thing I assumed that was when it was Vincent. Right. Okay. No, it was, it was downshift it in eternal masters. But yeah, the very nice thing with the untap your lands heartbeat sort of storm. Is that the untap your land stuff can also go nicely with the Larian Academy. Oh, guys. Cradle and Hades have also cards that have really nice overlap with storm. Like the Academy stone can be. Can be very fun. It's like Tenko also works pretty well. Makes you feel some decks. So that's, that's that's kind of a nice overlap point. Yeah. Makes sense. Kind of like the more that we're talking about it, because the more I'm cutting, the more I've. This is probably obvious to a lot of people of the more like, I can see how you could build this as a archetype that you are supporting in, like, Peasant Cube or a lower power level cube. But just the more we're talking about it, the more it does make sense in a higher power level cube. Just because like, yes, you have to kind of store core storm package of like, oh on I got payoffs of like your brain freeze your tendrils, that kind of stuff. But like just the other cards around it, just cause you can actually see, like your tutors, you don't normally see many tutors outside of, like, higher power level cubes, like stuff like Bowser Citadel, like Dream Halls, these big engine cars, you don't see those outside of higher power level cubes. So you guys kind of make sense. They're kind of like, yeah, the more higher power level cube, it's just it accentuates storm basically. Oh but like like like like like like I think kind of like the, the way I kind of went into this thinking of storm as like, yeah, it is. You got some rituals, you cross the tendrils. Right. Easy. But like, it is much more of like a interweaving, kind of like network of like this. Plus, like, I can get my mana from these cars interacting. I get my car draw from this selection of things, or I can you tutors as cards or that kind of stuff. And then my payoffs can be anything like like like, yeah, I have my storm cards as payoffs, but I also have other ways that can just abuse a large amount of manner. That's kind of I guess. Yeah. What one of my main takeaways from this is just like how I knew storm was complicated before going into this, but I guess kind of like like, yeah, breaking it down into the you have your cards or you have your ramp, you have your payoffs. That's really helped me kind of understand it a little bit more and you'll pay off. the important thing is I sit somewhere at the end of the chain is going to be the the card with words dominant. Right? Like, and that's usually quite a secondary thing. But I think if you want to fundamentally try and like break it down, it would be like, you know, mana search and payoff not too dissimilar to Re-Animator being, you know, yeah, touch, discard and reanimate. but it's just there's a lot more moving pieces on the way through. And you, I'm sure there's a way of making in your environment. As a way of making just. I'm supporting the ritual storm deck sort of thing, and that is across characters colors, because that's usually where that sits. Then you also might just be able to support a slightly blue green past lands. Rule seven potentially storm, that sort of thing. But the thing is that they also all go together quite nicely as well. So if you put all of that in, then. Yeah. And I think me sort of the experience of drafting style and I think is way more fun when there's like multiple avenues, you can go right within the, within the environment. Right. It's like you're not just like I'm drafting a storm deck. I want it to look like exactly this, where there's, multiple different ways that you can assemble a bunch of mana, I think kind of makes it more interesting. I want I want to cast a palanquin again. Man, that was so good. I think that came out shortly after poker, Jake. And, you know, 2018, the same set, same day. I yeah, I remember the, the attack with, by the way, condition was having fun. Infinite mana capsize, all of your permanent stuff, the infinite mana. And then when by attacking with having from. I've got to do that, I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it timed out a lot, I'll tell you that. I remember you having a storm deck where your brewmaster got exiled, and it was very funny. Yeah, if that sounds like a spot I might not be able to. Women, but that is for that thing, right? Like you don't you don't need a card for that. So, like, it's fine. If you like, you can win with a bow man. You can win with infinite man or anything. You know. Yeah, yeah. Bomber man's a cool one as well. So to win the game, we've not really talked about Bomber Man, but that's quite a nice cipher. The other just salvages. Yeah or exile. It is just another nice card. I think that's one of the cards that should drag you into it. Right. We didn't. We actually end up on that that we've barely mentioned the white card today I think, or exile, which is one that would get you into white because it goes off with your lady and your lotus, but also, yeah, it's so common it combines in with everything. Then. Yeah, there's not many white cards we'd be interested in writing. The only one is like that. And the ferry time Traveler. You got no love for wing shards. Then? Not really. No. Okay. Reasonable. Reasonable. Yeah. I am not, past the turn. And now I can classify one shot. Yeah, yeah. All right. Just pulling it all together and just wrapping up a little bit now. so it's quite obvious that storm is a very powerful deck. there is an element of doom, like, like like it's being supported less in some iterations of the go vintage. You recently, do we think that's just like, how is storm placed in a world where a lot more of the newer cards of magic, like play to the board, like like creatures do things like you are like like we talked about at the start of the video, in the like, just because being restricted in vintage, because it was playing to the board, potentially a little bit too much, kind of like storm isn't something that like, like a lot of the design space, the magic is going down nowadays is doing things on the battlefield like some like AI, the most powerful guys recently printed on like mincing Booth. The initiative. It's not like storm pay offs, if that kind of makes sense. It's very rarely we get new things for this kind of. How do you gents both see where storm is placed? and. Yeah. And what do you think the future of storm is? for cube? at the moment, it's not particularly playable outside of the breach freeze package. over the last few iterations, the multi control has gone from the modo cube at the moment. So we lost charter articles. Fact or fiction, Treasure Cruise, Knights Whisper and these are all cards that you always very interested in. The ones that put more cards in your hand than they cost. Something like fruit item ponder a great. But because they're so cheap and so effective, the ones that actually put lots of cards in your hand have been like a big loss for storm. And I think a few is just the, like we lost the two rhetoric tools as well. At some point along the way. you do need to get quite lucky to open things up, have storm to actually work. Did they cut duck position on the last update as well? I think that got dropped. Yeah I don't think detections then anymore. Yeah. So I think actually if you're looking to dice so this is it. I haven't seen one for a while. The Dream Halls has been and gone. a thousand year old them's been gone. I think that one was like a bit of a joke, though. But it was really fun. they've also dropped by Tide and Turnabout. and Hurricane Drake as well. Not that it's ever been in, but like, that sort of things all gone as well. We've just got frantic search, which is much more of a Re-Animator slash doomsday card. Right. So I think if you're going to log online and try and build a combo deck using, you know, what was I lessons from this sort of thing, then I think you'd probably have better success sitting down to try and draft a Doomsday Deck, because it's fundamentally going to be very similar where you're going to take some trips, make some minor cuts to pay off that the doomsday one is one that's slightly more supported. But even then, losing chat, of course. Nice whisper is also quite bad for that deck as well. But still, I guess for a question I'd have to follow up because, I think they probably cut the storm cards because they weren't getting played as much as some of the other cards. But, do you think but Southsea still missing great and mikovits huge makes that cut a bunch that do you think they were justified in cutting a bunch of it because it wasn't good enough? Or do you think that if you add face cards to your cube environment, if you've got a powered cube of like similar sort of cube that has that to storm does still have the tools. If you had for like cards to to hang in the world of Maneskin boos and for failing gas and all that, I think you can still hang. because there's one of these things I said for quite a while. I think if you have like a good storm, that you're just better than everything. And I think that would still be the case if your opponent sitting down to cast Maneskin boos, even if they're on turn three, if we've got a good storm deck, you know they can play Maneskin. Do it as before. They can pump meniscus burn hits us for seven. If we're on the play, we can on tap for turn five and kill them right? I know there's other things going on in the game of magic, but I still think I think if you're building a storm deck that literally can't kill before turn four, then maybe we're in a problematic spot. Anyway. but one one note on them, like dropping cards and stuff, as they have said in the past that they were going to like, try and do things in packages with DreamHost and stuff being slightly more convoy, the maybe we're at the moment, we're in mid-range season or something, but it's been like that for most of this year, so I don't know. They dropped the package idea, I don't know. But yeah, I'm sure some will come back to a certain extent. I kind of feel like a bunch of the reason it was dropped was just that, like if a people do a draft on go, I bet like for the for a 0% draft som however good openness I would I yeah, I wouldn't dispute that. But one of the things is that having it there, the play experience from the one player in the ten drafts that does it right is such a fun draft. If you're sitting down to for storm, like I regularly do, it's really fun. That's all I want to do, right? Castle Palace data, I don't care. It's slightly exciting to go into our storm, and it's just good fun. And I don't know, it's also harmed my win rate since they dropped it. But that's a different story for a different time, I think. But like, I think if you're like yourself, James, someone who wins a lot of key plays, a lot of cube, it doesn't really touch the storm deck until you're forced to sort of thing where it's like, okay, this is actually open, and I worry about the pieces, you know? And I've just got a 13th pick your mouth will write that 1 to 2 stolen drafts you do in a season is like a memorable evening of really good fun, right? So I think it's I think it's sad that it goes because in my, you know, humble centric opinion, it's become a very mid-range grindy fest without much outliers sort of thing. The most combo thing you can do at the moment is in an attractor, in my opinion, and that's not so fun as yeah, sure, cards aren't as powerful, but the, you know, the cube, maybe the whole cube level drops a little bit. If we just get to the bunch of stupid nonsense. I think that's a bit more exciting for sitting down on a Wednesday evening after work. Say like, yeah, yeah, no, I actually totally agree. Like I, I win less with the storm that's from vertex, so I don't trust them that much. If it's a draft, I'm rarely invested in winning. But I love I don't really like the experience of drafting solid. It's a ton of fun because it makes you it makes you think a lot, like a lot of ways where V of the decks don't like with a storm deck, you are playing with your whole deck. Yes, your deck is in play, which you basically aren't. Yeah, but you really aren't with any other deck and cube, and that's a ton of fun. and it's just. Yeah, it's such an outlier in v cube drafting experience. Right? Like you're still in drafts feel completely different folio for drafts and playing them and and drafting them. And I think if you can get it into a cube, it does like add a lot to it. I think that is also a thing of, like if you're building a cube, you presumably have like a play group in mind of people who are going to be playing it. and it's it's a pretty unfriendly archetype for beginners, I think, because it's, it's pretty true of most of that. Right. Like maybe you feel it and, and then people, people learn. But, it is something to bear in mind, but it's a pretty like, high complexity deck for people to draft. No, I definitely agree with that. But I think, yeah, I one thing you touched on there, which is very important is that is that. Yeah. Just because it's not supported in the industry right now doesn't mean like that's not the only cube in town. Like, I know NSV does work on that. And I'm looking at his cube and by God there is a stone package in there. if you get, there's an element of storm in and you'll keep change, there's a little bit in mind and kind of like storm is always a package you can include. And if you're thinking about adding it to to your cube, you'll probably know if your drafters will want it. They'll be slightly more combo orientated. if people have a like like, oh, just ask them, do you want something new? Do you want to try a new package? And if they're up for it then yeah. Add storm to your Cuban. You can play with your friends. I also think if you do add it to your like paper environment, you've got to let it live for a while as well for a number of draft, because it is one way. Sometimes you do need it to line up for a player at a pod or something like that sort of thing. so yeah, I don't think it's one where it's like, you just leave it in for a few drafts and people didn't do it, like in your cube. Right? Then. We've tried 87 different Celestia themes, and it just turns out that no one drafts. That isn't. Yeah. All right, it's fun, but I've got a good feeling about counters that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I went to maybe, maybe. But yeah. No I think, I think yeah you, you probably need to let it live a bit because there's probably going to be a draft that someone could have done it but just didn't commit. And instead of holding to a blue black controlling midrange, which is like one of your get outs from storm is because you start your draft, you take an aggressive ritual and your will, and then you see nothing else, and you know, they a leak, you know what I mean? Yeah. So and then I think you want to let it lie in your environment for a while so that then it lets people see the cards come around, maybe even lets people see someone else draft it first sort of thing. No. Definitely awesome. That makes sense, right? I think that's where we're going to call it for today. Josh, thank you very much for joining us today. That was really insightful. Where can people find you online? Is it at Fire Truck mode on YouTube and YouTube? I think so, yeah, but fire truck mode on YouTube, I mostly play vintage, but I'm trying at the moment to increase my drop for your videos. So I keep drops on a Tuesday and a vintage league or event on Thursday. I'm also trying to increase the vintage stuff as we approach the season. So yeah, I'm trying to do two days a week minimum of one. Keep on vintage. Awesome, awesome. Yeah, yeah, I've seen you. I've seen you do some very dumb things on your channel. Go check them out yet. All those will be down in version below. Go follow Josh and James. Pleasure as always. Thank you very much, man. Yeah. Oh it's good. Nice. Just needs me to thank you all very much for listening. Do give the podcast a five star review a thumbs up, tell a friend all that good stuff. Until next time. It's goodbye from me. It's goodbye from Josh and James. And we'll see you all soon. Goodbye. Cool. All right. welcome to the aftermath. Welcome to the real fans who kept listening after the closing music played out. We love you all. yeah. Last time, we introduce a new segment. We're kind of. Afterwards, we just have a little chat about something that's not magic. yeah, a couple of one thing I wanted to ask you, Josh. you've had your had your YouTube channel, fire chat, Moto plug by plug on YouTube. you've had it for about a year or so now, is that right? Yeah, I think it's about. Yeah. How have you found YouTube and how have you found content creation like in general? It's fun. It's quite rewarding at points. how it started was just that people asked me for sideboard guides for bizarre decks, and I was like, I'm not writing that, Anthony. I don't want to have to. I tried to sit down and write things, and I was like, you know what? I'd much rather actually just find record videos of me explaining what I'm thinking, because it's far easier for me to talk through stupid lines than it is to. Yeah, right, I can't write. I can't tell you exactly what to do in every spot in a word document. Right? But you might see me doing those things from vibes that when it comes up in your match, you work on it, so it works. I think that's why I originally started, I've written some little cyborg guys in the past well, now. But that's why it started like those for the Patreon. Yeah, I want to start one of those soon. That's my plan for this month or next. Probably this because I want to write sideboard guides. I want to get them on Patreon. I want to get them on Patreon before it stops. did you have any issues setting up your channel or anything like that? One of the slight issues I have as a person when it comes to this sort of thing is I'm not the most tech savvy person you're ever going to meet, so just the whole process of make a video, cut pieces out, other video bits where, you know, I activate bizarre into a live old sort of thing, and then the five minutes, that sort of thing. that side of things is definitely like a space that I need to try and improve on, but it's also, you know, that side of things has also been a bit of a journey. I remember getting actually, I got, for most of my YouTube and tech side of things, I always come to you, a person who's seen a computer before. but no, I actually got taught how to videos by someone in the comment section one like, get the audio so that all the background crap doesn't come through. yeah, I found it. Okay. One of the things is, I don't know if I've had the fastest growing YouTube channel, partly because most of what I've done is vintage, right? Which is very, very nice. Not many people partake in that format. Magic itself is nation in the world of in the world of YouTube. Okay. And then yeah, I have not got outside of magic YouTube though. Right. So and they and vintage is fairly niche viewing in magic YouTube as well. yeah. But it's, it's it's okay. you know, some comments. Yeah. yeah. I've. Yeah, I've had some wild comment over the this doing it. But the thing is I've never really had that because the vintage community is quite place. Right. Like not close but like we know each other. We're mostly all in the discord as well. We all play with each other. We is. Right. So I don't get that too much from that side of things. The first time I had it was when I did my Vegas video, because that's something like my most popular video of all time is the Vegas graph, the one where I lose the finals to the kids, the keeps. And that video is had been like my most viewed video. And it's got like 60 something, not 60 like 30 odd comments on it. That's quite a laugh. I mean, that's really good. That's really good. Yeah, yeah. But the thing is, is that 15 of those comments are two people arguing about whether I'm good at magic. Or screw them. You got to like, yeah, it's two people who've not. There's loads could interact with that. And it's just like, yeah I don't know. And that was only 1500 views. Right. Well a YouTube video. So there's not loads. That's like that's not to say I don't know. I don't know if I get it, if I don't get it from the community at all, to be honest with you. But it's yeah. And like that sort of thing can be a bit frustrating. But like most of my negative comments beforehand then have been like about the audio quality, which I think affects I've not had that. So a good eight months now, I would say I and everyone is like the most critical person of your video is yourself. I watched plenty of your videos. The quality is great. You, naturally more charismatic than I think. You give yourself credit. You you're very dry and very entertaining. Yeah, that's one of the things I feel like I've really struggled with is because I, Yeah, there's no, like, we can chat crap all day and it'll be fun, but then trying to chat crap for yourself all day is really difficult. And I don't know, I'm sure you guys get this a lot, but I'm a very draining person to be around a lot, right? So, you know, just when you're making content on your own by yourself and you're me, it's it can be, you know. Yeah. No, I yeah, I can't be critical of my own stuff. But yeah, getting my personality across on a solo endeavor is quite difficult, I find. No, I can put you like one of the reasons why, like, I talked to James about starting this was, doing something with another person because, yeah, most of my, like, own channel stuff is me talking a camera with no feedback. And then you put it online and that kind of stuff and yeah, yeah, it is just doing stuff with other people doing of my. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's nice. But yeah. What am I doing? Pieces of content on my channel would be to be James crafting storm with me telling James how to win with storm, but James finding a line that doesn't win with storm. I think that's what I want. That's the main thing I want. Or maybe just I dropped a storm and then you, like, navigated a different room where you do points out of it all the winning line. So for me and I and I actually one where I like make some mid-range for what I thought might be great is that we we draft storm you draft storm I commentate you drafting storm. You defend on the discord so you can't hear me. yeah. Then we can have like, six, seven different lethal lines. You'll end up with a two. Two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be great. And then we'll do a verse one where I draft that like mid-range back and you have to pile with it. Yeah. Cool. That's fine. Yeah I mean I'll have good outs to go to one with the red black mid-range deck. That's true. I do not still want to do that. He did annoy me about you. And this is like I had a really fun like feeling that like with lots of drill sevens in a cynic, that only way I could put off I was basically an attractor. So, most of the time that was gonna be through a flash. That wasn't great at winning. but yeah. And then I just had, like, loads of audio problems that I couldn't solve through anything. So last night I drafted, and that video went out. Right. So I missed my Tuesday Cube video sort of thing. And I was like, I want to sit down. I want to draw something fun. And my draft is like, not a good polished trailer. And I was like, oh, it's today. Yeah, it's yeah, YouTube. It's been cool. I enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, I enjoy it as a as an outlook. I think the thing I'm quite bad at is I need to get it. I need to focus on it becoming an outlet again. Like like it is a creative endeavor for me rather than something I'm going to like, be holding my hat on, like, and like chasing dudes and that kind of stuff. That's really something that kind of like, I've released so many videos. Yeah, you did was probably really daily what it was or something. Yeah. Oh well, daily shorts like so, so like yeah I do like I do Spotify or I do pack one pick ones from queue because I can't, I can't pick one from like you. Oh the balloon I think. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Oh you definitely should. I apologize for the tanking. I have a lot of comments about what that's like. It's too. But yes, but we didn't talk about this. Keep all day. And yeah, last week we ended on saying, you know, you drafted the blue nothing cube. And then. No, we should organize another parade I think. Keep just finishing up on comments. Are there any comments that stand out to you that you've received? There's one that I always use as motivation to remember to like look at the audio. And it's also one that when this comment popped back up on my phone, I know I've responded to enough YouTube comments. Okay, just because of the way the studio thing what was my phone? And it says this. I was looking for videos to say different cyber plans, but could only enjoy a five minutes of my man swallowing one liter of saliva per minute very close to the microphone. I don't like the I don't think it's very funny. And then, yeah, that was that was a few weeks later that someone us then walked me through how to get a video in one of like the sections. That's cool though, right? Yeah, yeah. One of those people was more useful than the other. It's funny. They.