A long time coming, this is my first attempt at a storm deck in commander. Only goldfished it so far, but its definitely on the stronger side of deck’s I’ve made, at least in terms of its ceilings, winning as early as turn 7.
I purposely picked Neera as a weaker commander over say Mizzix or Galazeth; I originally had Veyran at the helm but she fit ridiculously well on the curve for opening turns and made many of the wincon threats hyper lethal. Not fun for others and not even for me, as I’d get halfway through a storm turn with Aria of Flame down and the table would already be dead. Neera on the other hand doesn’t raise the ceiling so much as the floor - if we have nothing else to slam/build towards turn 6/7 we can play her instead to try and find those other cards. And once we have, she continues to do work increasing our storm count. This idea - of raising the floor rather than the ceiling - has been the decider in many other thoughts with the deck, such as if I want to run ritual spells. Ultimately, the worst thing about the deck so far is running dry on cards. So in every instance I've chosen to play things that are good no matter what when hit off Neera, which is always the deck's "worst" case scenario. Again the high power level it already has means I have no reason to try and push the ceiling, so may as well mitigate the floor.
General gameplan is to spend mana in the early turns to get down a damage dealer or draw into one. My thinking is that I’ll only want one on the board, so that the damage doesn’t get too insane, and one in hand, in case we lose the former. The rest can be scryed or discarded away, something we’ll be doing a lot of. Once that’s done our spells become much more productive, and then its just a matter of finding more ways to cast more of em, ideally storming into something in the process.
Speaking of discarding, I learned pretty quick that having additional costs in a deck that abuses a lot of free casting is not ideal, leading me to cut Tormenting Voice and the like. However, I have kept the ones that make treasures, because as I have also learned, making treasures is incredibly broken, leading me to add every instant/sorcery that makes them into the deck, full stop. They get us to our big spells sooner, build for big storm turns, and most important of all, can let us go more or less infinite with a powerful enabler like Eye of the Storm. But again, the discarding must be played around. So despite wanting all the mana we can get, holding a land or two once you have 7 in play can be important for keeping things running smoothly.
Some cards are far and above better than others. This wasn’t so much a design choice as a reality of what’s available. I’m running essentially every “when cast deal damage” card as those are the wincons of the deck. I think this strategy is essential to make storm work in commander as cards like grapeshot just don’t have the firepower (but I’m still running it for the culture). This does mean that its more of a spellslinger than a true storm deck, but it still plays similarly either way. Ultimately, the variability of the cards ends up being part of the fun.
Of all the instants and sorceries that copy other instants and sorceries, I only like two of them, and I’m only running one, Teach by Example. I’d kinda rather just have another cantrip, but it’ll often enough just be one anyways. Unlike other copy spells that require a target, it counts towards storm when it comes to copying a storm spell, and because it doesn’t target, you can just pitch it to Neera on an opponents turn. Galvanic Iteration is the other spell like this, but frankly I forgot about it. Still, don’t really want too many of them regardless, curious to see how it plays.
Given the importance of mana I was initially running 40 lands, none of them cycling. I realized a deck made of cantrips is actually one of the few times its good to run less, so I shaved it down to what I think is a happy place. Any opening hand that can cast a few cantrips should feel pretty confident in hitting the first 6 lands or so, and after that they can start being pitched freely. The most important thing for me is not flooding out as that feels pretty terrible, hence the cycling lands. Also taplands aren’t ideal in a deck like this for obvious reasons but they’re rarely a hinderance - being taxed on early turns isn’t even really a bad thing, as it usually means keeping a cantrip in hand without wasting mana. The duals are necessary because lots of cheap spells means lots of color requirements, and with the discount effects you’re sometimes playing 5 cards in a turn that all need exclusively colored mana. Hence a lot of duals and no colorless lands, except for Temple of the False God.
The deck plays essentially no interaction. I like this for two reasons: it makes the going off more fun, and makes it weaker for the sake of my playgroup. I can imagine a few counterspells would go a long way in making the combos more resilient, not to mention removal for potentially killer cards like Thalia (Gelectrode your time has come!). But as I’m already worried about this deck being too silly at my table, my hope is that this lack of interaction/protection on my part will make it sufficiently disrupt-able and enough of a glass cannon to make it fun for everyone.
I splurged a bit more on this deck than I usually would, but still couldn’t bring myself to spend multiple dollars on Consider, the least cool cantrip (and one that will undoubtedly get some reprints) and Finale of Promise, a very cool but ultimately underwhelming card in this build compared to what it can be. However, I forgot to buy cards to replace them (such as Obsessive Search or Scour all Possibilities) so I’m using Introduction to Prophecy and Divination from my collection, which are fine. But other than that, I’m running many of the best cantrips from across Magic history, many for the first time, something I’m real excited about :)
After doing some testing in paper, I’ve come to realize I may want to replace Ponder and Omen as well. Which is a bit unfortunate, as they’re some of the best cantrips, Ponder probably being the best as it can go 4 cards deep (well, 3.99 i suppose :p). But man, shuffling a commander deck is not fun. And adding it in the middle of already lengthy turn sequences sounds downright annoying, especially for those watching. But also the deck does a lot of scrying, so you could argue shuffling isn’t great for us anyways. I’ll hopefully be able to find some suitable replacements at a local shop before playing this weekend.
Big turns coming soon!
ending up being wayy too strong for the group, even the toned down version. Still, was fun to grapeshot for 50
