Building Around Marvel's Storm, Force of Nature in Commander

Posted on October 31, 2024

Let me preface this article by first saying that, when Wizards of the Coast first announced the Marvel and MTG crossover, I was, to put it politely, less than enthusiastic. It felt a little jarring to me personally but I wasnt ever going to poo poo anyone elses enjoyment of this crossover, Marvel is a huge franchise after all and it just so happens to be one that passed teenage John by.

Then the secret lair was revealed and my god, these commanders are going to be so fun to build around. I ran to my moxfield account as quick as my internet connection would allow and got brewing.

Building Storm, Force of Nature

So let me present to you, my deck list for Storm, Force of Nature. In this aticle you will find what cards I feel synergize the best with this commander and I have also included all the cards found in the Secret Lair.

One other thing I should caveat about this deck, I have purposely avoided fast mana like Lotus Petal or Mana Vault. Yes they are very good but most people dont have these cards. I wanted to build a deck that wouldn't be too prohibitively expensive should someone want to make it.

Storm, Force of Nature is a 3/4 Mutant Hero with Flying and Vigilance, who costs 1 Generic, Green, Blue and Red (or Temur for all of you Tarkir fans). Then Whenever Storm deals combat damage to a player, the very next instant or sorcery card we cast has Storm.

Storm is famously a fair* mechanic that allows you to copy a spell for each spell cast before it this turn, including your opponents spells.

So not only are we allowed to play a mechanic so strong, WoTC used its name to determine a scale of mechanics deemed too strong to reprint into standard sets, but we are in the colours most likely to abuse free stuff more often than me when I go to an all you can eat buffet.

*not at all fair.

So we have a bunch of different things we want to be doing with our doubling diva, firstly we need cheap cost cards that are not instant or sorceries. Whilst it's true that we want the bulk of our deck to be spicy non creature spells. We want to build up a huge storm count and the best way to do that is with cheap little guys like Ornithopter, Everflowing Chalice, Mishra's Bauble or Spellbook. Having a bunch of free spells in this deck acts as a free copy of whatever spell we want to cast.

We also need to make sure that our Lady of the skies can hit, she does have flying, and for some reason vigilance, but we can do much more to improve our odds of connecting with our opponents, which is why we are including Aqueous Form, Bilbo's Ring and Whispersilk Cloak. I have also included Sword of Feast and Famine. This does give us protection from the colours most likely to either destroy our commander or block her with reach and allows us to untap our lands. This is really invaluable if you can include it, but if not then Nature's Will is a great budget option.

You might be wondering why the untapping of our lands right after combat is so strong in this deck. Well let me answer that concern with two words. Double Strike. Because Storm's ability is attached to dealing combat damage, we can connect, untap our lands, cast an instant, get a strom trigger, then do it again and have a bigger storm count for our second main. Fireshrieker for the longest time was really the only reliable way to give a creature double strike, but now we also have access to Assault Strobe, Psychotic Fury and Critical Hit.

So now we have talked about the bones of this deck lets get into the fun bit, the stuff we are going to abuse with Storm.

First let's talk about ramp, I know, I know, but it really is worth talking about especially when we can give the best ramp spells in the game, storm. Sure we can include Rampant Growth or Cultivate but the best ones are the cards that let you sacrifice a land to tutur up specific or multiple lands like Crop Rotation and Harrow. The reason why these are so strong is that once the additional cost has been paid, you dont have to do it again, so sure we might lose a basic forest but we could get 8 lands in return just from casting a few cheap spells beforehand. Seems like more than a fair trade to me. That's not all, because Storm-kiln Artist cares about casts and copies, he will make a treasure token for all the storm triggers and the original, which will let you set up for another huge turn.

Card Draw

What's that, Dear Reader? Not enough value for you? Well let me get onto what every spellslinger loves to do, card draw.

We have the mana we just need the pay off. First lets talk about permanents, we are including Archmage Emeritus and Case of the Ransacked Lab but these cards come with a warning. These draw effects are not "may" abilities, if you trigger it, you have to draw and that could get a little dicey later on in the game. There are hundreds of card draw spells in these colours so you can probably find your favourites and insert them but my top picks are Unexpected Windfall, Gitiaxian Probe, Dig Through Time and Jeska's Will. We are also including Ashling, Fire Dancer as a repeatable looter but word to the wise, she has a similar, potential backfire as Archmage Emeritus.

Before we get into the combo's, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the cards I included that are just for fun. Did you know that a card that already has Storm can have multiple instances of Storm? Well it's true, much like cascade, and that's why we are including Brain Freeze, Grapeshot and Mind's Desire, allowing for an extra copy to be put on the stack. Want to know what's even better than getting a bunch of Storm triggers on the stack? Copying them all again with Display of Power. This card seems counter intuitive because it itself cannot be copied, but that's fine, what we are wanting to do is cast this in response to the strom triggers going on the stack, copying them all again for the low price of 3 mana. What's that, there is another Blue player at the table? Well punish them with Seedtime or protect yourself with Veil of Summer.

We also have a seemingly under-appreciated card in this build, Prologue to Phyresis. Honestly, there are tons of these effects, but this is my favourite. If you are able to get a storm count of 9 before casting this, then you just win the game by infecting everyone. For 2 mana. That's efficient anyway you look at it, and gives you the opportunity to hold mana back for counterspells.

I promised you combos and I have included 2 in the list. 1 is of no surprise to anyone, but Dualcaster Mage and Molten Duplication is a really affordable way to close the game and these are good on their own. Played out? sure , but its a staple in Izzet spell slinger decks for a reason.

The second one, is a little obtuse and needs some setup but it's well worth it. First thing we need to do is level up Sorcerer Class up to at least level 2. Once we do, we cast Stormsplitter and start casting as many cheap spells as we can. Basically for every spell we get, we double the number of Splitter's we have. The reason this is so strong is because the ability on Sorcerer class lets us use those pesky little otters to pay for the next spell and keep doubling our Otters. Once we have enough we can simply level up to 3 and take our opponents out with what is essentially an Aethurflux Reservoir or overwhelm our opponents with an ocean of Otters.