I'm curious about Prairie Stream and Sunken Hollow. How have those been in your experience? It seems like they could either be great or total duds.

They aren't great, but the deck is really greedy on blue and black. I just like having the option to fetch a Hollow/Stream when I don't need the mana, such as on the end of an opponent's turn, and still leave the option to grab 2 untapped duals with my other fetches.

I might probably replace the Stream with a basic Swamp since stax is slowly coming back to my meta, but the ability to fetch 3 UB duals saved me a few times, so I'm more inclined to keep the Hollow.

Seriously cool idea. Is this still a viable deck if I can't afford the candlestick, seal, and mana drain?

Seal is optional. You can easily replace it with Thirst for Knowledge, Opt, Peek or Intuition. Mana Drain can also be replaced with Counterspell with no significant impact on the gameplan.

Candle is crucial, and while the deck can work without candle, it makes your Shimmer Myr lines a lot less reliable.

How's Mind's Desire working? What was replaced?

Also Intuition and Cyclonic? Very cool changes.

It seems like a shift away from Shimmer Zur and towards a spell-based storm build.

Yes, I did change the deck a little in response to a more controlling meta, and I've updated the description to explain the changes.

Very cool. Have you found a noticeable power change?

To add to what Alexdagreat said, have you thought of going grixis? Without the Shimmer Myr and more reliance on spells than Necropotence, red might be a better splash color than white.

To be honest, you're right. I've switched my paper deck back to Shimmer Zur - this short stint back on storm has reinforced my belief that Shimmer Zur is the better way to play Zur now. Traditional Zur storm feels like just a worse Thrasios Tymna storm deck most of the time.

The same goes for Grixis though, it's hard to find a reason to play Grixis Storm when there's Thrasios Vial Smasher, which is going to be better most of the time. I think that the days of 3 color storm are nearing an end. You get a lot more from 4 color, and in a Blood Moon or B2B meta, you're better off on 2c storm anyway.

Shimmer Zur avoids that by making the strongest use of Necropotence in the command zone, which keeps it strong. Also, I'm just overly attached to Zur at this point, so as long as he's remotely viable I'll make him work.

Should be updating the list again soon.

I agree however I think Grixis is in a better spot than Esper. Thrasios/Tymna is just great that s true but Vial Smasher is kinda mediocre. Jeleva still gives you 16 cards to potentially win from and Kess has some fun interactions such as the ability to double cast High Tide..

Also grixis has access to Wheel of Fortune which helps

I think Shimmer Zur definitely rivals Thrasios/Tymna and Teferi as one of the top 5 strongest decks in the meta. I think it's stronger than Grixis due to Zur's ability, and I've found it to be more resilient than a lot of the Thrasios/Tymna lists I've played against.

Alexdagreat Unfortunately, I do think Grixis is the better storm build. It's really hard to outdo having an extra draw 7 effect in Wheel of Fortune or Intuition -> PiF lines, etc. I don't think any Esper build can realistically compete with Grixis Storm consistently. Even pure UB has had a significant boost with Paradox Engine strategies helping to reinforce Dralnu and Oona.

Shimmer Zur still has 1 fatal flaw - you need to cast Zur, which is almost the same as skipping an entire turn. That's very risky, and can backfire into an instant loss.

True, but outside of pure storm builds, I think Zur pivots better between win lines, and has far more options than Grixis as far as outs against Stax and such.

Ive been using a list similar to this with snow lands and basics to fight non-basic hate. Needless to say, Tainted is a huge improvement, and definitely takes the deck to a whole different level.

Interesting idea. I'm curious to see how it pans out. I cut LED recently, and have been pretty happy about that. I'd consider putting it back in if these Doomsday lines are worth trying out.

Note that the LED isn't as good in Doomsday lines without a good draw-2 effect to set it up, because you want to LED + draw spell. Right now there's only Frantic Search to set it up, but that has it's drawbacks in that it needs 3 mana initially, and that you need 2 other cards in your hand to discard. It might be worth considering Perilous Research over Frantic Search, since I've already cut High Tide, and most of the High Tide cards are very lackluster.

Actually that's not a bad idea. -Frantic Search +Perilous Research for now.

Yeah, I'm going to wait on your feedback with the Doomsday lines for that one. I haven't cut High Tide yet, but I'm definitely considering it for maybe Rapid Hybridization or some piece of interaction currently.

Let me know how this one goes.

Currently, my Tainted Zur list ties Hulk for wins in my meta. The deck is obscenely strong, and a huge upgrade over the old style.

why not add Night's Whisper

You want as many of your spells to be instant speed as possible. Night's Whisper is slightly better in a vacuum, but when you're trying to go off, Perilous is better when you're shimmering since you can actually cast it, allows you to sacrifice Necropotence to keep your cards in the graveyard if you whiff, and when you're going through Doomsday lines, sacrificing a permanent is negligible since you either win or lose regardless.

I was kinda torn between Whisper and Research, honestly. But given that I've played with Night's Whisper plenty of times in the past I thought I'd give Research a try, especially since this is the kind of deck where Research is actually a justifiable choice.