Hey, everyone. My name is Lowell (MostlyHarmless on most forums) and I’m going to talk to you about Tendrils of Agony. Technically, I’m going to talk about whatever Magic topics I find interesting, but let’s be honest: what’s more interesting than storm?
That said, I hope that everyone will be able to get something out of these articles. The fundamentals of piloting a storm deck (e.g., have a plan, focus on what’s important, maximize your card value) apply to every deck. Even if you never plan on playing a Dark Ritual, hopefully you can learn something about Brainstorm. In addition, you’ll probably have to play against combo at some point in your life. Understanding your opponent’s deck can be vital to stopping them.
I suppose I should give a quick introduction first, in case you don’t know me. I started playing Magic in 1994, when Ice Age and 4th Edition were coming out. We were the most casual of casual crowds (what can I say, there aren’t very many tournaments in northern Maine), so I played a lot of janky control decks and horribly fragile 5 card combos. I mostly quit at the beginning of high school (Invasion, for those keeping score), but picked the game back up in college mid-Ravnica block. I finally discovered tournaments and was terribly disappointed to find out that I was no longer the best player around.
Since I was buying into the game again (in Ravnica Standard, no less), every format was pretty expensive, so at some point I decided to try out Legacy. I got a Stax deck for pretty cheap. It was awesome. Not that Stax is good, but it was ridiculously fun. (Yes, I’m the guy who likes fast combo and prison. I have, in fact, played Armageddon stax mirrors for fun.) I was pretty much hooked on Legacy at that point, so I bought a (somewhat) competitive UWb Landstill deck and started winning tournaments rather than just making my friends cry.
Maybe a year later, I decided to try out one of those cool looking combo decks. Naturally, I picked up the most complicated one on the market: NLS. Most of you probably have no idea what NLS (Next Level Storm) even is (and with good reason, since the deck existed for all of four months), so I’ll give a quick overview.
| NLS by Brandon Adams (60) 4 Brainstorm 4 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Ponder 4 Duress 3 Thoughtseize 4 Burning Wish 4 Mystical Tutor 1 Ad Nauseam 1 Doomsday 1 Meditate 1 Tendrils of Agony 4 Dark Ritual 3 Rite of Flame 4 Lion's Eye Diamond 4 Lotus Petal 2 Chrome Mox 4 Polluted Delta 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Bloodstained Mire 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 1 Badlands 1 Island 1 Swamp | Sideboard (15) 1 Doomsday 1 Ill-Gotten Gains 1 Infernal Tutor 1 Cruel Bargain 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Empty the Warrens 1 Grapeshot 1 Thoughtseize 1 Deathmark 1 Pyroblast 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Echoing Truth 1 Wipe Away 1 Slaughter Pact 1 Pulverize |
This is literally the best deck (for its format) that I have ever played. It’s blazingly fast (consistently turn 2 or 3), has a ridiculous number of options and is incredibly resistant to hate. The combination of Burning Wish and Mystical Tutor mean that you have access to virtually all of your deck at any given time, so you can choose your win conditions as you please and access counter-hate whenever necessary.
Of course, this means that the deck is ungodly hard to play well. I spent three or four months fumbling around with the deck, learning some basic Doomsday piles and leaning on Ad Nauseam like nobodies business.
Learning to play combo is a little strange. When you start playing Landstill or Zoo or Aggro-Loam, you already understand the basics. You’ve played UW Control before; you’ve played RG Aggro; you’ve played the Rock. There are new tricks, but the basics are already ingrained. Combo decks, at least in my experience, are a different beast. There has been no analogue to Legacy storm in any standard format I have ever played. (No, Dragonstorm doesn’t actually count.) Even if there were, the presence of so many tutors and cantrips means that small mistakes are drastically amplified. You can find any one card in your deck. In a good hand, you can find any two. If you choose the right cards in the right order, you’ll win the game. If you choose wrong, you’ll lose and think that your deck sucks. You have two mana available. You can spin Top (on upkeep or after you draw); you can Mystical Tutor (same choice); you can Burning Wish; you can cantrip and Duress; or you can do nothing. I had no idea what I was doing and spent most of my time making mistakes I didn’t even notice.
Sadly, the banning of Mystical Tutor killed NLS. To my knowledge, no one has managed to replicate the deck again. Since then, I’ve moved on in two different directions. Now, I usually play either TES (The Epic Storm) or DDFT (Doomsday Fetch Tendrils).
For reference, here’s a list for each of them.
| TES by Lowell Thompson (60) 4 Brainstorm 4 Ponder 4 Duress 3 Thoughtseize 4 Dark Ritual 4 Rite of Flame 4 Lion's Eye Diamond 4 Lotus Petal 4 Chrome Mox 4 Infernal Tutor 4 Burning Wish 2 Ad Nauseam 1 Tendrils of Agony 4 Polluted Delta 2 Scalding Tarn 1 Bloodstained Mire 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 1 Badlands 1 Island 1 Swamp | Sideboard: (15) 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Ill-Gotten Gains 1 Past in Flames 1 Grapeshot 1 Empty the Warrens 1 Diminishing Returns 1 Thoughtseize 1 Pulverize 2 Echoing Truth 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Hurkyl's Recall 3 Pyroblast |
| DDFT by Christoph Alsheimer (60) 4 Brainstorm 4 Gitaxian Probe 3 Ponder 4 Sensei’s Divining Top 4 Silence 3 Orim‘s Chant 1 Ad Nauseam 4 Burning Wish 3 Doomsday 1 Ideas Unbound 4 Dark Ritual 4 Lotus Petal 4 Lion’s Eye Diamond 4 Flooded Strand 4 Polluted Delta 1 Island 1 Plains 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island 1 Badlands 1 Tundra 1 Scrubland | Sideboard: (15) 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 1 Shelldock Isle 1 Chain of Vapor 1 Echoing Truth 1 Rebuild 1 Flusterstorm 1 Grand Abolisher 1 Pact of Negation 1 Deathmark 1 Doomsday 1 Duress 1 Emtpy the Warrens 1 Pulverize 1 Tendrils of Agony 1 Time Spiral |
That’s it for today, but I’m going to attempt to turn this into some sort of regular column. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see.