Nivmagus Elemental is a very strange card.

Ever since its release people have tried to make it work, but it has almost always come up short because there are so few other cards like it. The most common trick was to play a few spells and then play the cheapest storm spell you could find, then eating all the copies with Nivmagus Elemental. This could make for an absolutely massive creature as early as turn two, but the problem was that it lacked redundancy because you only had four copies of Nivmagus Elemental. Well, it's time to make some new friends!

The new Magecraft mechanic looks a lot like prowess, but aside from only triggering on instant and sorceries it has one other major difference: "whenever you cast or copy." As such, it has a similar effect to Nivmagus Elemental in that each storm copy will pump it to the moon! Now with twelve total creatures forming a decent threat base, we're on to something!

Time Stamps:

00:04:01 - Match 1

00:19:52 - Match 2

00:41:19 - Match 3

01:11:27 - Match 4

01:14:31 - Match 5

Prowess Storm | Modern | unagieel, 5-0 MTGO League

• Creatures (12)
• 4 Clever Lumimancer
• 4 Leonin Lightscribe
• 4 Nivmagus Elemental

• Instants (24)
• 4 Flusterstorm
• 4 Gut Shot
• 4 Lava Dart
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Manamorphose
• 4 Mutagenic Growth

• Sorceries (2)
• 2 Assault Strobe

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Ground Rift

• Lands (18)
• 2 Mountain
• 1 Sunbaked Canyon
• 2 Sacred Foundry
• 2 Steam Vents
• 3 Wooded Foothills
• 4 Arid Mesa
• 4 Bloodstained Mire

• Sideboard (15)
• 3 Bedlam Reveler
• 4 Kor Firewalker
• 1 Lurrus of the Dream-Den
• 2 Path to Exile
• 2 Shattering Spree
• 3 Surgical Extraction

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What a ride!

While our final result could have been better, there's no doubt that there is explosive potential here. We had a lot of issues with drawing a second land, as like normal Prowess or Burn decks you really can't operate on one land despite not wanting to draw too many. This deck likely wants around 20 lands, and playing more than one Mountain is really rough as we were color screwed a few times as well. Amusingly enough Lightning Bolt feels like the weakest card in the deck, as it doesn't do enough toward your big combo turn attacks.

This is a wild new archetype based around something old and something new and it's going to be exciting to see how it develops. If you love killing people on turn two, give it a spin!