Red Storm

A mate of mine designed this new slant on red storm decks which has never really become an established archetype. Most storm decks have a blue base to get the required draw and card quality however red has some new tools at its disposal making it the viable main colour. There is sufficient redundancy in cost reducing effects and red rituals to have quite a reliable deck that uses a different mechanism to the other storm builds to generate its mana and storm count. The blue versions, being green, mono and red, all use effects that increase the amount of mana your lands tap for and effects that untap lands to go off. The blue untap effects tend to be more powerful when you have the right support cards such as High Tide or Heartbeat of Spring however the red rituals, despite being fairly weak, will work effectively regardless of what else you have giving you more options and more resiliance to disruption.

This deck is only really viable in rotissery formats as far too many of the key cards are narrow and wouldn't be in most cubes. So much of this deck was pulled out of the C cube but this has certain advantages in that you don't need to fight over things. Blue is always very heavily drafted in rotissery and this is correct, if half the field are not in blue, more so the case if it is a powered cube, then the players in blue will have much more powerful cards overall. This applies less in draft where blue is still very powerful but much harder to mould into a functioning archetype. It is always refreshing to find a powerful new build for a combo deck that has no need of blue, especially when it is one that is fairly robust against blue.


27 Spells

Lion's Eye Diamond
Mana Crypt
Mox Opal
Chrome Mox

Lotus Petal

Goblin Bushwhacker
Gitaxian Probe
Mana Vault
Faithless Looting

Elixir of Immortality

Recoup
Ruby Medallion
Helm of Awakening
Goblin Electromancer

Grapeshot
Manamorphose
Pyretic Ritual
Desperate Ritual

Scroll Rack
Grim Monolith

Seething Song
Wheel of Fortune
Priest of Urabrask
Simian Spirit Guide

Empty the Warrens

Memory Jar
Reforge the Soul

13 Lands

Great Furnace
Seat of the Synod
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors

Volcanic Island
Scalding Tarn
Steam Vents
Shivan Reef

Cascade Bluffs
4 Mountains


Other possible sensible cards


Ignite Memories
Past in Flames

Mox Diamond
Goblin Welder
Lotus Bloom
Chromatic Star
Sensei's Divining Top
Wild Guess
Voltaic Key

Other possible tenuous cards

Gut Shot
Lava Dart
Gamble
Storm Entity
Scattershot (just to up the storm count)
Ground Rift (just to up the storm count)



As this is such an early evolution of the archetype the list is likely quite a bit off, usually in the ratios of things. Some cards are probably better off in the slots of others as they are fairly similar, Ingite Memories might be superior to having the Bushwhacker, Past in Flames might turn out to be more effective than Recoup etc etc. I will have to play around more wit the deck to be more confident in any preference but there is definitely enough choice and depth to tune this deck and have it be competitive. I would love more card draw effects but red isn't overdone with them and so I feel a touch light on win mechanisms and a little overdone with mana generation as it stands. The most common way presently for this list to lose is by not finding either one of the storm cards or one of the draw seven effects. If it gets at least one of each, preferably the draw seven into a storm card then it is usually way to fast to stop it going off. The most effective way of beating this deck is to deal with the tokens. A Pernicious Deed is very hard to beat and a Detention Sphere needs to be carefully played around using the Bushwhacker.

The deck is brutally fast and consistently goes off to some extent within the first three turns making somewhere between 8 and 22 goblins. It has to rely on speed as with such little card quality and tutoring you simply cannot play outs and have them be useful for you. Most blue storm decks pack at least once bounce spell to get a problem permanent out of the way prior to going off, this deck just has to go off first. Although probably never going to be quite of tier one standard this deck is certainly very close to tier one and a very good meta choice in a heavy blue field.

Most of your mana generation is cheap and works for you right there and then needing very little established infrastructure of lands. This means you can go off out of nowhere with no warning at all. The deck is fairly reliable at being able to cast most of the cards in its hand in one go allowing you to use a draw seven effect and unloading again. You are fairly all in once you start trying to go off as you rarely have the resources to have another go should your attempt fail. A great fun deck to play and really technical while refreshingly different.

.