Storm is perhaps the most explosive & fastest deck in Modern. It has spent a lot of time outside the winners' circle, though, due to factors like Inquisition of Kozilek and the Raven's Crime engine being played by one of the season's most popular decks.
But with buddies is now with us: GOBLIN ELECTROMANCER & Baral: It's just nuts to play around this guy and it's now so much easier to go off.
Where once Storm had Ponder and Preordain (now banned in Modern), this winner has updated (and maybe upgraded) with some one-mana spells from Dark Ascension: Faithless Loathing or Thought Scour.
The Storm deck closes out many games with Past in Flames or sets up its critical-mass finishing kill spell with Pyromancer Ascension, so the opportunity to put some cards in the graveyard (especially while drawing cards) can be quite beneficial (more fuel for the former, faster setup for the latter).
Storm has quite a low land count at sub-twenty, but makes up for that with its tremendous count of fast card drawing (Gitaxian Probe, Serum Visions, et al). As the deck is mostly just one-shot ways to net mana and zero- or one-mana ways to look at another card, it can "break even" over and over again while ticking up the Storm count. If it has Pyromancer Ascension in play—certainly Pyromancer Ascension powered up—it will actually net mana, cards, or both. Consider a Manamorphose while sitting on a jazzed Ascension... it costs you two mana, but gets you four back, and you draw two cards!
You take breakeven-or-better actions over and over while the Storm count rises, and you hopefully have left. Did you count high enough? A Grapeshot is meant to get you there.
After sideboards, the deck has Empty the Warrens as a supplemental/incremental way to win. Empty the Warrens is essentially never immediately lethal, but it is also pretty easy to set up a two-to-three-turn clock with one on a very early turn. It is pretty easy to imagine a second turn of:
Gitaxian Probe (Storm 1)
Desperate Ritual (Storm 2, )
Pyretic Ritual (Storm 3, )
Manamorphose (Storm 4, )
Seething Song (Storm 5, )
Past in Flames (Storm 6, )
... and then running back all the previous to jack the Storm count up even higher before making over a dozen Goblins. Or, if you just have Empty the Warrens (over Past in Flames, say), you are still putting the vast majority of opponents on a two-turn clock on turn two.
With the Modern format winding down, I figured I would close out this Top Decks with a few disparately played, heretofore unheralded choices that—whether or not they actually spiked PTQs (yet) (like now-darling Red-Green Tron)—probably aren't on your radar (also "yet").
This is a version of Oliver Ruel, but i made some changes in my sideboard because of the metagame
