I am a Johnny. I have my Timmy moments. I like attacking with big creatures. I like playing big effects. I love socializing with others via Magic. I have some Timmy DNA. I have my Spike moments. I like land destruction. Stone Rain is not a bad word. I don’t see any issues playing Stasis. Armageddon tricks are fine—as long as you win the game quickly thereafter and aren’t using it to delay losing. This is a game, and a game is about winning. I have some Spike DNA. But at the end of the day, I’m a Johnny. I like the synergies and combos that make Magic magical.

So when I see a card like Harness the Storm spoiled, I need to take a seat. My mind is assaulted by an avalanche of ways to use, abuse, and synergize with it.

Today is all about the Harness—and ten ways I see to release its power after Shadows over Innistrad is released.

Now let’s do the obligatory Harness the Storm fun time.

First, here are a few notes from Harness the Storm.

1. When you play Harness the Storm, you still have to pay the mana costs of whatever is in your graveyard that you are copying. So if you play Crack the Earth and want to cast another from your graveyard, you need to spend a to play the additional card. (This includes any additional costs as well, so the discard to play Firestorm is required a second time, and it could give you a very different effect.)
2. The card cast from your graveyard is not exiled. This is not a flashback or similar effect. You can use it again.
3. If you control just one Harness the Storm, you only have one chance to cast a graveyard-based, similarly-named card, no matter how many copies are in your graveyard.

There are a few ideas that pop into my mind.

10 — Burn, Baby, Burn

An obvious choice, and the one folks are talking about the most, is burn. And Lightning Bolt. One Lightning Bolt, followed by one more Bolt under a Harness the Storm is 9 damage. A third Bolt is 15. That’s game against a lot of folks (add in shock lands, a few creatures attacking here and there, and more). But I think there might be another way to play this game. See, a lot of decks are going to run ways to drop cards into your graveyard, like Chanda Ablaze, Chandra, Flamecaller, Wheel of Fortune, and so forth. There might be a card that just works better in that shell—Kindle or Flame Burst. (See also Accumulated Knowledge for a similar trick, using card-draw in blue.)

9 — Ummm . . . Storm?

I know it’s pretty obvious, and it’s in the title. But Harness the Storm should prove a marvelous companion to storm the mechanic. After all, you have a mechanic that cares about how many times you’ve played some thing that turn. And imagine if you Harness the Storm a storm card. Here, let me illustrate:

Assume you have played just two spells this turn so far.

1. Play Grapeshot. Make two storm copies.
2. Cast Grapeshot from graveyard. Make three storm copies.
3. You now have seven Grapeshots to resolve, which means 7 damage to dole out

Now imagine you have some mana and a simple Empty the Warrens. You could have fourteen 1/1 Goblin tokens easily. And this all assume a low storm count going in, in a deck that does everything it can to increase spell count that turn, with cards like Gitaxian Probe or 0-drops that increase your count.

8 — Control the Board

One great way to use Harness the Storm is to abuse cheap control effects you already play. Take the iconic creature removal spell Swords to Plowshares. The major knock on it has been that it’s not pure card advantage when you need it. But forget that. Cast it with another in your ’yard. You have two Swords for just 2 mana, and two creatures are being exiled to the pretty white diamond palace in the sky. Cheap, mana-light cards like Terminate, Lightning Bolt, Oxidize, Vandalblast, and Path to Exile all come to mind.

7 — Buyback

If you play a spell with buyback, and pay that cost, the spell returns to your hand, and you can play it over and over again. You can also cast a similarly named spell in your graveyard. A great example is Whispers of the Muse. You cast Whispers, buy it back for 5 mana, and you draw one card for free; then, if you have a Whispers in your graveyard, cast that one for another , and you gain much more power from your spells. There are a ton of great buyback cards you can use or abuse, from Corpse Dance to Capsize. You can also use cards like Memory Crystal or Sapphire Medallion to make these effects so cheap that they are abusable. (You can also buy back a spell from your graveyard and return it to your hand. So if you play Disturbed Burial from your hand and then cast the one in your graveyard and buy it back, that Burial heads back to your hand.)

Super-secret tech: If you want a card you can return to use again and again, how about Punishing Fire?

6 — Fork-a-thon

Another powerful use of a Harness the Storm effect is to run it in a deck that has a lot of copy effects like Mirari. You are getting a lot of chances of duplicate effects. One spell cast can turn into not one, or two, but four total versions of that spell! Take a humble card like Seething Anger. Play the Anger in your hand, and cast the one in your graveyard for another . Now each casting of those two spells will let you Mirari yourself. You can activate it twice and have four Seething Angers. That’s a ton of spells for your investments.

Super-secret tech for you: Check out the antics of Wort, the Raidmother.

5 — Spell Triggers a-Go-Go

Another great set of cards to play with a Harness the Storm are the various cards that trigger when you play an instant or sorcery. The classic example is probably Young Pyromancer, all looking to make an Elemental token each time you cast that instant or sorcery. When you have a nice big Harness the Storm out, you can sometimes cast spells, gain a second casting and a new trigger, all from the own card. If your Magma Jet gets a card twice, makes two Elemental tokens, and scrys 2 twice, you are in a good place. There are a ton of similar engines, like Talrand, Sky Summoner, Goblinslide, and Prescient Chimera.

5B — Surge

Don’t forget about this little mechanic out there called surge. What does surge do? If you (or a teammate) cast a spell this turn, you can play a card for a reduced surge cost, and one that often comes with a bonus. So if your spell in the graveyard has surge, you can get it at a reduced cost. Most surge cards are creatures or have high costs that may prevent abuse (Fall of the Titans, Crush of Tentacles), but they are out there. I’m not giving this a full number in here as a result, but I did want to put it on your radar.

4 — Graveyard Abuse

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of discard ways to put stuff into your graveyard, such as Wheel of Fortune. There are some great cards for that sort of shell, cards like Burning Vengeance and Secrets of the Dead. Don’t forget that many cards with flashback can fit into this theme as well. (Faithless Looting is the prime example of sexiness in a card.) Check out Death Spark!

Super-secret tech for you: Wild Research. Search your library for a spell. If you discard it randomly instead of the junk you have, oh well, you can just copy-cast it when you search up another.

3 — Splice onto Arcane

I haven’t seen anyone talking about this yet, so I want to discuss it here. If you have a bunch of Arcane spells, you can cast one, copy another into your graveyard, and splice onto either from other cards in your hand. This might be a little hard to see at first, so let me give you some clear examples:

1. You cast Kodama's Reach. You have a Reach in your graveyard, and in your hand a Kodama's Might, and in your graveyard a Wear Away.
2. As you cast the Reach, you can pay a to splice Kodama's Might onto it.
3. You can cast the Reach in your graveyard, so you do.
4. You can splice the Might onto the second Reach, too, if you want to pay the again.

You cannot splice the Wear Away since it’s only in the graveyard and not in your hand. You can splice multiple cards if they are in your hand and you have the mana. There are a ton of great splice spells that can really push your Harness the Storm.

Super-secret tech for you: An Arcane-heavy deck like this one would win with Ire of Kaminari.

2 — Mana-Making

Casting a spell from your hand and then casting another from your graveyard can require a lot of mana. Know what would be cool? Casting spells that make you mana. A simple Dark Ritual will make you 2 extra black mana normally, but you can Harness the one in your ’yard to give you two more. Cards like Cabal Ritual, Brightstone Ritual, Battle Hymn, or Seething Song can give you a serious dosage of mana. Use it to do fun stuff, such as play other cards to trigger or to go big quickly.

2B — Mana-Free

Paying the extra mana for another copy of a spell with Harness the Storm can push your mana around. Play free spells, like the untapping Frantic Search, or Phyrexian mana cards, like Gitaxian Probe, in order to draw cards.

1 — Just Combo Out

We all know Harness the Storm is a serious combo engine . There are a lot to ways to combo out.

• 4 Harness the Storm
• 4 Rite of Flame
• 4 Manamorphose
• 4 Recollect
• 4 Faithless Looting

You put some junk into your ’yard early. Then, drop Harness the Storm. Cast a mana-making effect, like Rite of Flame, to make some extra mana, use 1 green mana and the red you have to cast and recast Recollect to return a Recollect and a Rite of Flame to cast it again. You can repeat this as long as you have spare green mana, and you can build up a stock of red mana. You can also convert red mana to green with Manamorphose, and you can go really big on mana (and draw your deck) all for free. (Or you can use the red mana to Fork via Mirari.) You make a huge amount of mana and a huge number of cards in your hand from Manamorphose, and then you win. Faithless Looting and other cards (Wheel of Fortune and the like) can get you the packed graveyard and the right stuff to get started, and you can have Kindle or something to win with. There’s a shell of a deck you can build around. Go blue instead of green for Call to Mind and Frantic Search. You can run mana filters to make red mana something else. (Skyshroud Elf can turn anything to red or white, for example.)

And this is just the first combo that comes to mind.

Here’s another:

• 4 Harness the Storm
• 4 Intuition
• 4 Kindle
• 4 Accumulated Knowledge
• 4 Faithless Looting

Here, you are using Intuition to grab three copies of a card; you put one into your hand and the others into the graveyard, which guarantees you two dead copies. So when you control Harness the Storm, you guarantee that you have the cards to use. This is deadly with Accumulated Knowledge. Cast it from your hand with two in the graveyard, and then cast one in your graveyard, too, and draw . . . six cards for 4 mana. I think you might win the game with that sort of card advantage. Cast a Kindle, and you spend 4 mana for 8 damage dealt. That’s a winning condition at that point. You can layer in any combo sorceries and instants in good ol’ Izzet and make them work here. By ensuring you find them with Intuition, and cast them twice with Harness, you are setting yourself up for a potent combo kill.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this quick look through all of the cool interactions that Harness the Storm suggests to me. Are you ready to get it on? Welcome to casual tables everywhere!