Vinestorm

Posted on October 1, 2013

On September 27, Temporal Fissure, one of the last common storm spells that could be considered proactive, was banned from Pauper.

“First, the storm mechanic has few answers in Pauper. In our Gatecrash update, Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot were banned. While we knew Temporal Fissure was also powerful, it was less strong than those two. Rather than ban the card, we choose to see how the metagame would shake out. In small amounts, the Temporal Fissure deck is interesting. But, in large amounts, it narrows the competitive metagame.”

– Erik Lauer

This means that if you love the storm keyword and you love Pauper, your options have been severely diminished. And while you might not be able to play the competitive Magic Online Pauper format with this brew, you’ll at least have some fun ideas for common storm-chasing.

Two from Time Spiral and one from the original stormbringer Scourge, these are the dangerous common spells that are banned in Magic Online Pauper.

These three are all from Scourge as well, and none has an ability that wins the game. Another mechanic that Wizards of the Coast has deemed dangerous is the free-spell mechanic, which debuted in Urza’s Saga. These spells untap a number of lands equal to their converted mana costs when they resolve or enter the battlefield. Despite their overpowered nature, Rewind was reprinted in Magic 2013 because, as it’s a reactive spell, it’s much harder to abuse than is, say, Palinchron or Cloud of Faeries. Similarly, Hindering Touch’s storm is actually quite innocuous.

Astral Steel buffs creatures, but it makes sense as a combat trick more than it does as a win condition. Scattershot deals damage, like Grapeshot, which is nice, but it’s for 1 more mana, and it can only hit creatures. A Stuffy Doll could serve as our opponent’s stand-in for Scattershot targeting, but the Doll’s a rare, so it won’t work here. We could enchant an opponent’s creature with Binding Agony, Ragged Veins, or Spiteful Shadows and do the same trick, though; however, our opponent’s creature will probably die before all of the storm copies resolve to deal enough damage to our opponent—unless, that is, we also have Astral Steel.

But that puts us in three colors before we even start figuring out how to generate infinite mana and spell-casts to trigger storm the requisite number of times.

Ground Rift could prevent our opponent’s creatures from blocking, but only as many as we could storm for, making it far less effective than a Seismic Stomp, for example. I really can’t imagine a Ground Rift—no matter our storm count—doing anything that a Seismic Stomp couldn’t.

Reaping the Graves provides an interesting effect, offering us a 3-mana Death Denied with X equal to our storm count plus 1. This will essentially put a lot of cards into our hand, which I’m sure we could find something to do with. However, the creature cards need to be in our graveyard to start; contrariwise, Sprouting Vines can fill our hand in a very similar way except that we don’t have to dump anything into our graveyard first—we just need to have basic lands in our deck.

So, yes, this means I’m going to build a storm deck that attempts to use the power of Sprouting Vines to win.

Now, Sprouting Vines has never had a chance to shine, and to be fair, it will probably end up being the weakest card in this forthcoming deck. It wasn’t even particularly playable in Onslaught block Draft. Also, its Gatherer rating is 3 stars, so it’s not even legal for the Gatherer-Terrible format.

But the card has always appealed to me, and I’m still always looking out for a chance to have it fit into a Commander deck. There must be some Commander strategy that synergizes with wanting to leave 3 mana available in hopes an opponent casts several spells on his or her turn just so I can search up a bunch of basics . . . right? Oh well.

Anyway, moving back to the Pauper plan, these three cards, assuming we have at least one land that generates 2 mana, will allow us to cast a spell (Ghostly Flicker) over and over again any number of times. By Flickering the Cloud of Faeries (speaking of free-spell cards) and the Mnemonic Wall, we untap two lands (one of which generates 2 mana) and return the Ghostly Flicker to our hand. With our refreshed 3 mana, we can cast the spell again and repeat. If two of our lands generate 2 mana, we can now generate any amount of mana while also pumping our storm count.

In order to control lands that generate 2 mana, we’ll run Simic Growth Chamber and Fertile Ground.

Another way to generate any amount of mana is to have threshold (seven or more cards in our graveyard) while controlling a Krosan Restorer enchanted by a Freed from the Real. With the Restorer, we can untap three lands, at least one of which should produce , and then spend that to use the Aura and untap the Druid to start over, floating 2 mana as we go.

This sequence doesn’t soup up our storm, but were we to have a buyback spell, such as a Capsize, we’d be in good shape. In order to fill up our graveyard for threshold, we have Theros’s new Commune with the Gods, which should help do the trick while finding any of our necessary creatures, Freed from the Real, or even Fertile Ground. And speaking of Fertile Ground, using one on an Island with the Restorer will allow us to generate any amount of mana in any combination of colors even if we don’t have our graveyard filled up yet. With a Simic Growth Chamber instead of Fertile Ground, we can generate infinite .

From here, having a way to win would still be nice—especially since the premise of this experiment is to win with Sprouting Vines. A Seismic Assault would be perfect, but as this is a Pauper list, we’ll have to settle for Wild Mongrel. I’d love to squeeze in a Simian Brawler or two, but the list ended up really tight. That said, Simian Brawler would really shine here as a worse Wild Mongrel who’s never gotten his day in the sun. If you love snow-dwelling Apes with fangs and clubs, though, and you’re not so much a fan of efficient, color-changing Hounds, give the Simian his chance.

Another option for a grip full of lands—apart from pumping up green creatures and hoping they connect—is to start retracing. Thanks to Modern Masters and its penchant for dropping cards’ rarities (except for a few—sorry, Auriok Salvagers!), Eventide’s former uncommon Syphon Life is now available in Pauper.

And thanks to Sprouting Vines, we’ll have plenty of lands to use for retracing. And thanks to Fertile Ground, we will actually have the mana we need while going off.

With some Mulldrifters—for their incredible power and synergy with Ghostly Flicker—some Drift of Phantasms—for its ability to block and superpower to fetch any of several of the deck’s key pieces—and plenty of basic lands for Sprouting Vines, we finish off this new Pauper storm brew.

"Vinestorm"

I hope you enjoyed a look at the less powerful side of storm—and how it can still be used to generate powerful effects. With that one little keyword (and a few superpowered friends), even a Lay of the Land can be fuel to win the game.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fFissionessence at hotmail dot com