Pattern Recognition #69 - Storm

Features Opinion Pattern Recognition

berryjon

31 May 2018

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Hello everyone! I am berryjon, your resident Old Fogey. Welcome back to Pattern Recognition, Tappedout.net's most regular article series - barring the occasional week off for work or just because I'm out of energy. I endeavor to provide insightful, thought provoking and educational material for you all. Or at least a convenient target for all of you to aim your Grapeshot at.

No real reason for todays article. It falls into the category of "because I want to". And that's good enough for me!

Now, let's talk about a mechanic that is so definitive that Mark Rosewater himself has gone on record stating his views of the mechanic and what it needs to come back.

So, the answers to those turn out to be words along the lines of "It's a bad mechanic" and "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH" respectively.

Why does a mechanic that has only appeared a measly twenty cards get this kind of dismissal?

Storm, the mechanic chosen to define 'never coming in Standard'. Storm, the end dream of every infinite Combo. Storm, only appearing in two sets, having such a huge impact on the game. I mean, I talked a bit about how Ninjustu got the short end of the stick when it came to mechanics, but Storm is a whole different beast entirely.

First appearing in Scourge, the last set in the Onslaught Block, which also makes it the last regular printed set before the cut off point for the Modern Format. As a mechanic, Storm didn't really fit in the with the flavour of the set or the story, except for some small idea that with all the wild and excess mana flooding around Otaria with the passing of the Mirari, spells would repeat themselves. Or you say in Mirari's Wake. ;)

Yeah, not doing well with that joke. Moving on!

Now, let's start with some obvious problems. Storm didn't interact well with the Stack. And it has what are called "Memory Issues" by Design and Development. I'll start with the second thing first, as it's pretty important.

How often do you forget things? Quite often, according to Science! And in Magic, this is a problem. Ask our local zandl about Commander and Missing Triggers! Anyway, the problem of memory is in keeping track of what happened, when. And unless you're playing online with a service like MTGO, or with some future single player game where the computer can remember for you, you'd have to keep track of this yourself.

Wizards ... can't depend on that. So when an effect is temporary, it either deals with something right away, such as with, say, Cancel targeting something on the stack, or Lightning Bolt a creature on the battlefield - or it waits until a predetermined point to end, most often the end of the turn or your next upkeep.

Or, the effect is permanent, because the card itself stays on the battlefield like a permanent.

Memory Issues arise when the game or players try to keep track of things that have happened, but are no longer relevant. Players will remember that their creature has +1/+1 and First Strike because of Seize the Initiative, because the effect is immediate and pertinent. They might not remember which card did it, but the effect is still there.

Add in any permanents cast or responses made in the heat of the moment, and multiple players, and keeping track of how many spells were actually cast (not resolved, but cast) can be a problem.

Especially when that count can mean the difference between a player still having life left over once Grapeshot resolves or if they don't.

Now I also mentioned that Storm and the Stack don't interact well together, and part of that was a deliberate design choice to avoid going infinite with itself. For when a Storm spell is played, the copies of the spell go straight onto the stack. They themselves are not cast, which means, thankfully, that a Storm Spell can't go infinite on itself.

But because the spells aren't cast either, they just (pardon the pun) magically appear on the stack, you avoid certain triggered effects that respond to the casting of spells. But they also all have to be resolved distinctly, which can be a problem when each spell can have distinct targets. Because using all the copies of Volcanic Awakening on the same Dryad Arbor might be a bit excessive. And each such copy can be responded to uniquely. Slapping a Counterspell on the initial cast doesn't help when that means you only take out one copy of the spell.

So yeah, Storm spells were really hard for control decks to take care of. And given Wizard's bias toward Blue, this meant that something needed to be done. The answer, thankfully, has only appeared in Commander and Masters set - Flusterstorm which has decided that if you can't beat a Storm deck, you might as well join them. After all, why bother countering all the spells that have been Stormed off when you can just Storm off your own Force Spike?

Storm also has another, more subtle problem. And for once, I use that term loosely. I've talked in the past (I think) about how playing cards decreases your had size over time, especially when combined with making land drops. And about how the various colours work to regrow their hands.

Storm takes all that, and throws it away. At its core, you want to Storm out for as many iterations of the card as you can, unless you're playing a Dragonstorm deck, and only need the initial casting plus three more to search your library for four copies of Bogardan Hellkite and burn your opponent for 20.

And the basic, assumed limit to that was the number of cards in your hand, plus whatever your opponents feel like contributing. And that's something that the players of Magic take as a challenge. They don't assume anything about any card, and that's why Wizards has a ban list.

So, the first problem would be mana. It doesn't matter how many cards you have in your hand if you can't pay for them all. Thankfully, Time Spiral provided a two-for-one answer to the question of getting mana and driving up your Storm count with Lotus Bloom. A well-timed series of card using Suspend would drive up the cards played on the turn you planned to Storm out while spreading the mana costs out over previous turns.

The second option would be to play spells as cheaply as possible. Ornithopter was a great choice for Storm decks, as it was a cost Artifact, which meant it could go into any deck at any time and not screw up the mana curve. Other options included every cost reduction effect you could get your hands on, and playing low to the curve for so long as you had enough mana at the end to Storm out for the win.

And yet, this still didn't resolve the problem of getting cards in hand. Playing them cheaply is all well and good, but without more cards, you run out of steam quickly. And that's where direct draw and Cantrips come in. I've discussed these before, cards like Concentrate or Archivist or Lashknife Barrier come into play. These cards can replenish your hand mid-turn, giving you more fuel to Storm out on. Only problem is, once again, the mana costs.

The first solution to this is to somehow create an infinite combo to cast spells. My preferred one from Standard at the time was using Enduring Renewal and Wild Cantor to fuel my Grapeshop. Of course, this was a simpler time, and pulling it off nowadays would either mean I'm at a casual table, or I'm really desperate. However, the players of the time were much more cunning than I, and they came up with all sorts of ways to generate arbitrarily huge Storm numbers. I'll leave it to the comments section below for people to volunteer their tales in that regard.

But Storm is not dead. Not by a long shot. Every so often, Wizards will crack open their box of toys and let out a card that would do wonders for a Storm deck, and with the release of Dominaria, a new creature has arrives that makes Storm decks - in Commander! - even more refined. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain, gives a free card draw whenever you play a Historic spell, and when you're already in the two colours that care most about your Storm count, this becomes something of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. In fact, I dare say that she has displaced Jhoira of the Ghitu as the Storm Commander of choice.

Huh, I knew Jhoira was awesome. I guess this means that she is so awesome that the only thing that can beat her is her!

Now, while we're talking Time Spiral cards, let's look at two other Storm cards that did something different. This is another, more minor problem for Storm. All it does is repeat the effects of the card, and that becomes a very hard limit as to what a Storm card can do. Too much, and a low Storm count will blow you out of the water. To little, and it's not worth the mana, except maybe as another card to add to a better cards count.

So, Bitter Ordeal. With the alternate mechanic of Gravestorm, this card acted as a sort of 'win harder' button in a colour that already loved putting things - any things! - into the graveyard. Sure the actual effect of the card is kinda interesting, exiling a card from their library, but in the hands of a decent Gravestorm count, or knowledge about how the deck works, it can completely gut someone's options and forcing them into the position of having no way to win. I haven't done this myself for a long time, but honestly, I suspect that I would put it into my planned mono-black Control deck.

Lastly, we have Storm Entity. This one doesn't repeat itself, but rather gets bigger the more spells have been cast so far this turn. Now, normally, this would be an excellent case for casting in the second main phase, after all the combat tricks have been done in the turn. But there's this little thing called 'Haste' on the card, which means that you can cast it in the main phase, and then it can swing in the combat step as a cheap, and hopefully big attacker.

No memories of this guy though, sorry to say. It's one that I've always wanted to use, but cut out for more reliable sources of damage.

So, that's Storm! Or a good chunk of it mind you. Now, before I leave you for a week, here's the question - what did I just do to the battlefield? First winner gets a patented Marvel No-Prize! And I'll see you all next time for a subject I haven't decided upon yet.

Until then, please consider donating to my Pattern Recognition Patreon. Yeah, I have a job, but more income is always better. I still have plans to do a audio Pattern Recognition at some point, or perhaps a Twitch stream. And you can bribe your way to the front of the line to have your questions, comments and observations answered!