Please make a youtube channel and i will watch every video. I have watched near all of moxnixs and would like to see how a lower to the ground storm deck pilots.

Thoughts on praetor's grasp? I've been doing a mental exercise on using it to steal opposing win conditions if I get real unlucky with jeleva flips.

Also, I'm adding blood crypt back into my version in addition to Badlands for consistency. Nobody in my meta plays back to basics or blood moon (outside of me) so it feels perfectly reasonable to swap out the swamp for it. I've been re-testing grapeshot as a more flexible interaction card instead of pongify that can also be used as another kill condition. Ive yet to run into issues with jeleva exiling all of my own win conditions so far, but it's just something I've been trying out.

Praetor's Grasp is strange, in my paper meta I might cut Grim Tutor for it just because there's so many Naus/Storm decks in my meta, but in cockatrice meta I would never cut Grim for it, and playing both just seems bad. Grim Tutor is already super underwhelming at 3 mana (with double black) and 3 life, so running a second copy doesn't sound ideal. It is true that it can be used to steal your opponent's wincon if Jeleva exiles both (or all three actually) of your wincons, but from hundreds of games played that has yet to happen to me. Once has Jeleva exiled both Labman and Reservoir, but I ended up winning that game with Iso/Rev into draw deck with Top into play Jeleva-remove Jeleva and mill my opponents out.

I'm not a huge fan of Blood Crypt even if no-one is playing nonbasic hate, if that's the case just run Sunken Ruins, Underground River or Urborg instead of the basic Swamp. The deck usually fetches Badlands so rarely anyway that I'd definitely rather run a more conditional U/B dual than Crypt. Grapeshot is okay, I don't really see the need to run it even when it doubles as a 3rd wincon since exiling Reservoir and Labman is super rare anyway, and also because without Remand/Unsub it pretty much needs Iso/Rev to work as a wincon. Vanilla-storming to 60 and Grapes-Yawgwin-Grapes doesn't sound like the best thing ever, plus I just like Pongify since being a blue instant is actually kinda relevant, it pitches to FoW and is tutorable with Merchant Scroll. Grapeshot is spicy tech against dorks, but because of how popular dorks have become I just went and added a second boardwipe in the form of Fire Covenant, which atm is actually Rolling Earthquake in my "experimental" Jeleva list.

I've been trying to figure this out, but how do you remove jeleva enough times to mill your opponents out? There's probably a very obvious interaction I'm missing though..

Step 1: Make infinite mana with Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal

Step 2: Draw your deck with Sensei's Divining Top or Mind's Desire

Step 3: Cast Jeleva, hold Priority and Mana Drain/Pact of Negation/FoW/Delay/Counterspell her and repeat so that she costs a lot of mana

Step 4: Cast Jeleva and let her resolve, all your opponents exile the top 10+ cards of their deck

Step 5: Chain of Vapor/Snap(sending to the command zone)/Pyroblast/Pongify/whatever her and keep recasting and removing her so your opponents exile the top X cards of their libraries where X is a lot. This already should be enough, but if needed we can keep going.

Step 5.5: Timetwister and do it all again, then if it STILL isn't enough (because most of your removal and counters are in exile? iunno) Yawgwin and do it all over again.

Step 6: Pass the turn and watch your opponents deck themselves.

I completely forgot about twister! Thanks dude!

Some things that I've been testing with mixed results recently, due to not yet owning Imperial Seal or grim tutor, are Transmute artifact and personal tutor. Lim-Dul's vault had been my substitute for Imperial Seal so far and it's performed admirably, so much so that I'm likely to keep it. I understand the feeling with the 3 cost tutors, which is why I cut fabricate from my initial build and replaced it with Transmute artifact with mixed results. Most of the time, Transmute artifact is great and allows me to assemble future-top or dramatic scepter relatively easily. I had originally cut snap for personal tutor as a test, but personal tutor so far has netted very mixed results, especially since I treat it as Doomsday #2, wheel #3 or twister #2 (I'm using spiral right now due to not owning a twister). I feel like in a deck where Doomsday is the primary game plan, personal tutor would be a fine stand in, but I'm not as impressed with it as I was with snap, which is always good.

What I have wanted to get your opinion on was Diabolic intent as another way to kill your own jeleva when you need gas, while still netting a significant advantage at the same time. It seems a little cute of an idea but it may have legs?

Intent is never online early game and is rarely online on the combo turn. Even the payout really isn't there, resetting Jeleva is more of a desperation play you do when you have to do it, not a thing you actively want to do. If we had access to green and dorks then yeah Intent would be great, but since we don't I wouldn't play it.

Hi reverse have you considered unsubstantiate? I feel ultimately it would prove itself more useful than the likes of snap. While it does not untap the lands it is was more versatile, from "countering" any spell even uncounterable ones although the only really relevant targets this might have is creatures of type named from cavern of souls but also just using the remand trick on your own mind's desire. Overall I think the cards versatility might out way the efficiency of snap. What do you think about the card?

I played Unsubstantiate for a long time and in the end it was just too bad. The thing is Snap costs practically 0 mana so it pairs great with wheels and other similiar plays plus being a ritual with High Tide is actually really big. The problem with Unsubstantiate is that as a counterspell it's kinda lackluster, in counterspell wars it doesn't do anything against Swan Song and the likes and overall you either want your counters to be hard counters or not cost two mana. The creature bounce mode isn't irrelevant but again at two mana it was too slow on the combo turn and hard to justify on later turns since unless you're going off the same/following turn (if you EOT Unsub) they can just play their hatebear/efficient beater back in which case running a real removal spell like Pongify is just better. I really like cards that do double duty and fill multiple roles, but Unsubstantiate in my experience was just too bad at both jobs to keep in the deck. As for the Mind's Desire synergy, more often than not that's just win-more and if the card isn't good as a reactive card what it primarly is the cute interactions ultimately aren't worth it.

Hey man, I love the list, and I've been wanting to get into grixis storm for a while now.

My only problem is that as a student I don't currently have the largest budget at the moment.

I was wondering if you had a budgeted storm list already made? Or if you could make some suggestions for the 100+ cards? Thanks!

Budget Jeleva

There's a budget Jeleva, it's pretty far from optimal but 4000$ -> 500$. That's about as bare-bones as the deck can go, updating is easy just get cards in this list that aren't in the budget one.

I have or am able to get almost all of these cards except for a few of the more expensive ones I do not already own is there any way to make substitutes for the following: abu duals, candelabra, fluterstorm, force of will, grim tutor, imperial seal, mana drain, timetwister. Sorry if that is a lot of cards they are just a bit out of the price I am wanting to pay on a deck at the moment I fully understand the deck will not be quite as good without a lot of these cards, but would like to try something out that is similar to your list any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

ABURs -> just twiddle around with different lands. Sunken Hollow is probably worth playing, Volc should be Shivan Reef if you want a second UR land, it could also just be Urborg, Sunken Ruins or just another basic Islans. Badlands just becomes Blood Crypt.

Fluster, Drain, FoW -> Anything that reads "counter target spell" and isn't 3 mana.

Twister -> Time Spiral

Candles, Grim, Seal -> Lim-Dul's Vault, and if your meta supports it throw in Praetor's Grasp to keep up tutor density, otherwise just throw in another counterspell or a rock or a cantrip or something. Candles could be Turnabout or Seething Song, but those are kinda bad so yet another rock or cantrip would be better.

Why so many tutor? Why there is no haste card? how do you attack with jeleva? someone might handle your jeleva 1st before attack

And also, whats the main win con of this deck? I see the other jeleva deck have many high manacost card that really powerful if you cast it without mana cost from jeleva.

Jeleva is a the tertiary plan for the deck. The deck operates without ever casting jeleva.

You win through fish bowl laser or doomsday/lab man generally.

EREM, this is a combo deck and it aims to win the game without ever having to cast Jeleva at all. If you have to cast Jeleva you're in a losing scenario and she's there just in case you run out of cards. If she hits a tutor or a wheel effect off of someone's topdeck that can often times stabilize the game for you. The reason there are so many tutors is because the wincons are so finely tuned that usually 1 tutor can allow you to win the game on the spot or set up 1 turn in advance.

This is a storm deck and it has 2 wincons:

1) Casting a bunch of spells in the same turn with Aetherflux Reservoir in play so that you can gain enough life to shoot your opponent(s) for 50 damage. This can easily be done with the combination of Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter and a mana rock such as Sol Ring in order to cast an infinite number of spells, which also turns Mind's Desire into a wincon of sorts.

2) Assembling a 5-card pile with Doomsday that almost always involves casting Laboratory Maniac and drawing from an empty library within the same turn. This is the most complicated wincon in all of Magic, but a typical 5-card pile for this deck will be Gitaxian Probe, Gush, Lion's Eye Diamond, Yawgmoth's Will, and Laboratory Maniac in that order. However, there are a myriad many possible Doomsday piles and it's highly dependent on the board state and your knowledge of your opponent's deck.

All of that having been said, there is so much more nuance to this deck than I or reversemermaid could explain in a couple of paragraphs. I've been playing almost this exact list for about 3 months and I'm just now starting to get a hang of the deck. It's by far one of the hardest decks to master, but one of the most fulfilling.

I recently got an astonishing turn 4 win where I was able to cast Mind's Desire twice in the same turn, once for a storm count of 8 and again for a storm count of 27. Between exiling Time Spiral and Ad Nauseum I was able to show off to my friend and go from 9 life (with Aetherflux in play) to about 1000 life in the same turn.

I love that you keep this so up to date as it makes it easier for me to see what I'm always striving for. I was curious as to what you thought about reality shift in comparison to pongify / rapid hydridization. My meta has devolved into a race to hulk combo recently and I feel like the extra mana for an exile might just be good enough.

I feel like creature removal is the wrong way to approach Hulk decks, using Nihil Spellbomb or Tormod's Crypt or throwing Counterspell back in would be what I'd do if I played against Hulk more. In addition to that depending on the Hulk pile Pongify still gets the job done.

That being said Reality Shift is an okay card if you play against decks where the exile is relevant but aren't graveyard-abusing enough to make a Crypt effect worth it.

Can you put a basic description together at the beginning that explains a) what "storm" is, b) how this deck works. I've started reading an page of all the commanders listed in tiers and your Jeleva deck is listed as a tier 1 top cEDH deck. From reading, I've recently understood that combat damage is not the way to win...apparently! Again from reading, I've seen many decks with many commanders essentially all winning from Laboratory Maniac. Many decks too seem to have Ad Nauseam in them. I don't actually understand about 90% of the interactions this deck list and comments discuss. Could someone spare the time to briefly explain how this deck works, what it's trying to do and hopefully explain that cEDH isn't just a tedious race to the most consistent Laboratory Maniac win con, in the process.

EREM seems to be as baffled as me. I bought the pre constructed Jeleva deck years ago and got into commander. I love the format now. But my Jeleva deck like all my decks are built from the notion of explaining the commander's abilities ie. lots of expensive sorceries. But it's rubbish partly because my cards are cheap and partly because it's slow and almost entirely random. So I never play it, instead I play other commanders that deliver commander damage and build creature board presence. But from reading the tier list decks and particularly this one, I'm beginning to understand that you don't actually attack in cEDH, instead you just get infinite mana, or turns or something like that and just 'win'. The game is about doing that in turns 1-4 more consistently than everyone else. A game I feel you could play by yourself!

If you'd see cEDH in action you'd see that cEDH is actually really interactive. Decks usually run more interaction than casual decks and while games usually end turn 5-ish they still contain a great amount of action and interesting plays. Just look at 60 card kitchen table casual vs. modern or legacy, just because the games are fast doesn't mean that they're boring or that no-one gets to do anything. There's also the thing that in EDH all the tutors are legal and players having 40 life makes creature beats a worse plan than slotting some combo in your deck. That being said there are a lot of decks that try to stop and slow down other decks through hatebears or just having more counterspells and card draw than others. If you dislike using combos as your wincon on a fundamental level cEDH probably isn't for you, but if you can look past that you'll see that it's actually a really fun format capable of much more than "durr race to a t2 infinite combo".

As for this deck, if you really have no idea what you're looking at I suggest checking out Moxnix's youtube channel, in his videos he mostly plays against non-competitive people in MODO and his list is pretty different from mine, but it's still good enough to see how Jeleva storm works. Moxnix's Channel: Moxnix's channel

If you just want to see cEDH gameplay Laboratory Maniacs has some great cEDH gameplay: Laboratory Maniacs' channel

Hello, I heard on Reddit that you were the man to come to with grixis storm questions.

I saw that you rated Jeleva slightly above Kess but recommended bringing Kess along if you know the meta or are playing with less than a four pod. However, I wanted to know your opinion when running a sub-optimal deck where they are more likely to be cast.

For example, if I'm less likely to hit a tutor off Jeleva, wouldn't I want Kess so that when I did find it I could immediately reuse it?

But as a counterpoint, wouldn't it be better to wheel for free especially if it's windfall or time spiral instead of WoF rather than wheel twice?