Singing-B Storm
Hi all, sharing the deck I have been working on for awhile in Korae's discord server with a few others. It has been through many diferent versions, but I think it has finally settled. With the tourney coming up I really want to finalise the list, and polish it up. Any advice is and would be welcome. And for every fool that tries it GOOD LUCK!
Singing-B storm
Thankyou @enpassent for all the amazing advice and time he has shared throughout all the iterations of this deck!
https://moxfield.com/decks/u7h64A5Y7kGKpSve2xS_cQ
PRIMER
What I have set out to build is a non-deterministic storm deck, that feels like it always has some kind of play, and many available lines. One that is built less like a slot-machine and can answer stroke pull-through interaction from the other side.
The cards which this deck is built around are Beseech the mirror, Necropotence and Song Of Creation.
COMBO
Beginning with the most important card, Beseech the mirror, this lets us tutor and cast for any spell in our deck, allowing us to run fewer tutors in the deck, and just soft card smoothing.
The requirement to bargain we fulfil with 11 artifacts and 6 enchantments. Some of these, like 4 mishra’s bauble and 1 underworld breach do not remain on the battlefield and should be played carefully. 3 of our bargains are in the form of Vault of Whispers, we have tried running more but have found that a basic is necessary and too many mono-coloured lands will compromise our available plays. It is important to note here that in a PIF line and in a breach line you will want multiple bargains. With breach, if you have a large yard then this is simple, but with PIF, you will need generally 2 bargains, which can feel like a bottleneck.
Our payoffs
Song of creation is our namesake beseech payoff, allowing us to draw 2 per spell cast. We have 8 0cmc artifacts, 4 phyrxian mana and 4 Grief, which needs a black +1. This loads us up with beseech bargains, storm count and mana. Dark ritual I would also put in this grouping.
The method here is to play all your 0 cost cards. Some undesirables will land up in your hand like necropotence which is a perfect grief exile or mox imprint - you will want to really consider mox imprints and mostly the timing of your grief exile, because it, like mox is card neutral with song, not positive. We have made it so that lots of our cards will be an out. Brainstorm fits in this and more so if you can shuffle afterwards with your second land drop. The endgame is Noxious revival which can return any card to the top, and will draw us two. So if you have one noxious in the yard, you target it, draw two and its on top, this loop goes on, losing 2 life each time. One you have 3 noxious it is infinite draw. The storm is mad so usually not necessary to loop it many times. You can put back to the top whatever cards you’d like at a point, considering your available mana and cards in hand. It also slows down your draws, so even with a small library it is possible to storm off this way with song. The final card worth mentioning with Song in the mainboard is Underworld Breach, the value here is self-explanatory.
Past In Flames is another beseech payoff. Simple lines like mox bauble ritual ritual beseech pif ritual ritual beseech tendrils for 18, can be variated on endlessly. If you have coloured mana you can put in another spell like brainstorm. Noxious also is great here giving extra storm, as an instant. The other way is with breach, you may have few cards in hand but ritual + breach in hand. Assuming a second ritual in the yard and beseech, then you can escape the ritual to get over 5 mana and beseech bargain for PIF and flashback the rituals and beseech with just 4 cards in the gy. So two small things here. 1, you can bargain the breach and use the breach as escape cost with beseech. 2 that when you cast pif, all instant and sorceries will gain flashback, if you escape one of these, you will no longer be able to flashback it.
Generally Necropotence is not our first choice, but if its a t1 bargained beseech leaving you with no cards in hand it is what you want to do. Later, turn 2, even turn 3 if your life total is not being pressured and you dont see any obvious way to win - i.e. that your graveyard is not large enough and have no cards in hand, then beseech necropotence.
Underworld Breach is very useful when you have a large graveyard but not double ritual and a second beseech bargain which would lead you to PIF. Also if we do not have the correct mana colour and need to deck. Breach unlike PIF is a card which we are happy to draw and leads to some great lines.
Wishboard
We now have a split with our two copies of Tendrils of Agony between the mainboard and the side. Although the second copy can be very useful, we have two reasons for this. 1. With our necro if we discard our tendrils the opponent can surgical both of our tendrils which is extremely annoying. Playing Mastermind Acquisition gives us another wincondition already so that we land up with 3 potentially dead draws by playing the second copy main. Finally we now play weather the storm in the main, so that if our life total is low we can also weather the storm to for the life necessary to loop revivals and tendrils or torment from the side. What is important about this, is that weather plays through veil and protection, so works as a part of our second wincondition.
Thassa’s Oracle is our alternate win-condition which works off of Song, through protection and irrespective of oppos life. The nice thing about thoracle is that we are always getting closer to it being a win-condition, through playing out our deck, exiling it with Necro and drawing off of Song. I’ll add a few restrictions worth considering 1. We have only 2 fetchable blue sources + 1 copy of Mana Confluence. This means that you have to be very considerate of how your mana is used on a thoracle turn. This leaves us with only our Moxes to create UU by imprinting brainstorm, there is some play between beseech bargaining unhelpful moxes and breach replaying them. 2. This will only really work with Song, although I can see a world on which you can Weather, and exile your deck with Necropotence to thoracle win.
INTERACTION
Grief little to no surprise has been excellent otp and otd for free interaction t1. For this use and for song is all it is used for as we don’t play reanimate or phyrexian tower.
Thoughtseize and Veil of Summer I have tried many different splits between these in the main, and I think a 1-2 split is best, we want interaction, but we’re not always playing interactive decks. It has turned out that we can’t get maximum value out of a second veil in hand, because of the G casting cost, and it has to be used the same turn. For this and for PIF lines Thoughtseize is just as good. However we do play against counterspells and equally against OBM when it is played this is our way to song through it.
CARD SELECTION
We are playing Brainstorm because you can’t get better card draw and selection with a fetch base. Also with noxious revival it synergises very well, making many new lines possible.
Mishra’s Bauble is worth mentioning here because it thins our deck and loads our turns. Is an important beseech bargain in openers or drawn with beseech in hand. Being 0 cost it adds storm and draws cards with song.
FAST MANA
Here we simply play Dark Ritual and Chrome Mox and ways to reoccur them. People often want to play chrome mox in a base with few colours, but it’s also true that we can make colours on the fly with it to supplement our mana.
Other
This is our playset of Noxious Revival which has really changed how we can play the deck, it has great utility as mentioned before with brainstorm, it can also be cast off PIF, and finally hard combos with Song of Creation. We can use it as backup against discard otd, against counters and against graveyard combos. It also works with necropotence, allowing us to hold full control and put whatever on top, and getting the noxious in the yard or pre endstep putting a ritual on top.
Our two copies of Weather the Storm also fit into this category. They are very necessary for us so that even off a whiffed Necro we have a low resource way to stay in the game. Between our shock mana-base, Necro, our one Thoughtseize and the playset of Noxious also since we are always off the board, our life total is always under pressure.
LINES AND METHODS
Ritual Bauble Beseech Noxious. T2. This is a Song line, where the noxious is your last card in hand, returning the ritual to the top. There are about 26 good cards to draw off of the noxious revival, since we still have another land drop, to get us to the ritual. So the odds are very high to combo off.
Ritual Ritual Bauble/Mox Bauble/Mox/TS/Noxious Vault Beseech T1. Vault, Ritual, Ritual, Bauble, Mox+0, Beseech PIF, Ritual, Ritual, Beseech for tendrils for 20
Ritual (and one in GY) Breach Beseech Bauble. This is a tidy line which requires very little from the fact that our breach is also a beseech bargain. A line could be, with 8 cards and a ritual in the yard at the start of t3. Fetch, Ritual, Breach, escape ritual, escape ritual, mishras bauble, beseech bauble for PIF escape ritual flashback ritual flashback beseech breach for tendrils for 22. Variations 5 cards in GY ~ Ritual (and one in GY), DT in GY, Beseech, Mox, Bauble. This is another line including Breach and PIF, but this time the order is reversed. First you play out your Ritual, Bauble and Mox, Beseech for PIF, must be floating at least B here, Ritual, Ritual, DT for ritual, Ritual from hand, Beseech for Breach, escape ritual twice and finally Beseech for Tendrils = 30. This line is very large and has lots of leeway for cards in hand such as Mastermind, Tendrils, PIF and Breach. 4 or 8 cards in graveyard ~ Ritual Breach Mastermind/Tendrils Brainstorm Noxious. Another line requiring similar cards, but only a single Dark Ritual in hand. T3 Ritual, Breach, noxious, brainstorm, ritual, escape ritual, escape ritual, mastermind/tendrils for 16, tendrils for 18 /escape tendrils for 18.
SIDEBOARD
2 Into the Floodmaw has been one of our best sideboard cards in the deck because it can answer any problematic permanent on the board at instant speed for 1, which we are generally well targeted with. It works best when we can win next turn, though we can get it back with revival. I think it is an improvement over Pick Your Poison because it is instant speed, and can be targeted against any non-land permanent. I think it is a great card since we are already supporting blue.
1 Culling Ritual is one of our beseech targets post board, and also a great card to draw against energy and birthing ritual decks. You can do fun things against ocelot pride like into the floodmaw on a threat and they will make tokens of the fish on endstep which you can culling ritual. With 2 pride in play, I have made 30+ mana using this method. We are considering running 2.
3 Abrupt Decay as an answer to almost any hate pieces our enemy may have, and an answer to Frog and flipped Tamiyo that is uncounterable, works very well for us.
2 Thoughtseize are great in a combo mirror. Generally we are slower than them so it is important for us to interact.
2 Veil of Summer is crucial in a control matchup, against discard decks, and against OBM, as mentioned above.
1 Flusterstorm is a flex slot. We struggle against Commandeer in a sideboarded game, so I have added this one as an answer, it also lets us interact against a show and tell, or other combo decks, which this deck possibly could do more of, but we don’t want to dilute the deck. I have tried Defence Grid but I found that we were generally left with a poorer hand because of it, and after the first otp turn the card was useless.
(1 Tendrils of Agony, 1 Thassa’s Oracle)
2 slots remaining.
I will do a follow up before the 1k tournament on matchups, sideboard plans and any more lines that we find.
Hi all, sharing the deck I have been working on for awhile in Korae's discord server with a few others. It has been through many diferent versions, but I think it has finally settled. With the tourney coming up I really want to finalise the list, and polish it up. Any advice is and would be welcome. And for every fool that tries it GOOD LUCK!
Singing-B storm
Thankyou @enpassent for all the amazing advice and time he has shared throughout all the iterations of this deck!
https://moxfield.com/decks/u7h64A5Y7kGKpSve2xS_cQ
PRIMER
What I have set out to build is a non-deterministic storm deck, that feels like it always has some kind of play, and many available lines. One that is built less like a slot-machine and can answer stroke pull-through interaction from the other side.
The cards which this deck is built around are Beseech the mirror, Necropotence and Song Of Creation.
COMBO
Beginning with the most important card, Beseech the mirror, this lets us tutor and cast for any spell in our deck, allowing us to run fewer tutors in the deck, and just soft card smoothing.
The requirement to bargain we fulfil with 11 artifacts and 6 enchantments. Some of these, like 4 mishra’s bauble and 1 underworld breach do not remain on the battlefield and should be played carefully. 3 of our bargains are in the form of Vault of Whispers, we have tried running more but have found that a basic is necessary and too many mono-coloured lands will compromise our available plays. It is important to note here that in a PIF line and in a breach line you will want multiple bargains. With breach, if you have a large yard then this is simple, but with PIF, you will need generally 2 bargains, which can feel like a bottleneck.
Our payoffs
Song of creation is our namesake beseech payoff, allowing us to draw 2 per spell cast. We have 8 0cmc artifacts, 4 phyrxian mana and 4 Grief, which needs a black +1. This loads us up with beseech bargains, storm count and mana. Dark ritual I would also put in this grouping.
The method here is to play all your 0 cost cards. Some undesirables will land up in your hand like necropotence which is a perfect grief exile or mox imprint - you will want to really consider mox imprints and mostly the timing of your grief exile, because it, like mox is card neutral with song, not positive. We have made it so that lots of our cards will be an out. Brainstorm fits in this and more so if you can shuffle afterwards with your second land drop. The endgame is Noxious revival which can return any card to the top, and will draw us two. So if you have one noxious in the yard, you target it, draw two and its on top, this loop goes on, losing 2 life each time. One you have 3 noxious it is infinite draw. The storm is mad so usually not necessary to loop it many times. You can put back to the top whatever cards you’d like at a point, considering your available mana and cards in hand. It also slows down your draws, so even with a small library it is possible to storm off this way with song. The final card worth mentioning with Song in the mainboard is Underworld Breach, the value here is self-explanatory.
Past In Flames is another beseech payoff. Simple lines like mox bauble ritual ritual beseech pif ritual ritual beseech tendrils for 18, can be variated on endlessly. If you have coloured mana you can put in another spell like brainstorm. Noxious also is great here giving extra storm, as an instant. The other way is with breach, you may have few cards in hand but ritual + breach in hand. Assuming a second ritual in the yard and beseech, then you can escape the ritual to get over 5 mana and beseech bargain for PIF and flashback the rituals and beseech with just 4 cards in the gy. So two small things here. 1, you can bargain the breach and use the breach as escape cost with beseech. 2 that when you cast pif, all instant and sorceries will gain flashback, if you escape one of these, you will no longer be able to flashback it.
Generally Necropotence is not our first choice, but if its a t1 bargained beseech leaving you with no cards in hand it is what you want to do. Later, turn 2, even turn 3 if your life total is not being pressured and you dont see any obvious way to win - i.e. that your graveyard is not large enough and have no cards in hand, then beseech necropotence.
Underworld Breach is very useful when you have a large graveyard but not double ritual and a second beseech bargain which would lead you to PIF. Also if we do not have the correct mana colour and need to deck. Breach unlike PIF is a card which we are happy to draw and leads to some great lines.
Wishboard
We now have a split with our two copies of Tendrils of Agony between the mainboard and the side. Although the second copy can be very useful, we have two reasons for this. 1. With our necro if we discard our tendrils the opponent can surgical both of our tendrils which is extremely annoying. Playing Mastermind Acquisition gives us another wincondition already so that we land up with 3 potentially dead draws by playing the second copy main. Finally we now play weather the storm in the main, so that if our life total is low we can also weather the storm to for the life necessary to loop revivals and tendrils or torment from the side. What is important about this, is that weather plays through veil and protection, so works as a part of our second wincondition.
Thassa’s Oracle is our alternate win-condition which works off of Song, through protection and irrespective of oppos life. The nice thing about thoracle is that we are always getting closer to it being a win-condition, through playing out our deck, exiling it with Necro and drawing off of Song. I’ll add a few restrictions worth considering 1. We have only 2 fetchable blue sources + 1 copy of Mana Confluence. This means that you have to be very considerate of how your mana is used on a thoracle turn. This leaves us with only our Moxes to create UU by imprinting brainstorm, there is some play between beseech bargaining unhelpful moxes and breach replaying them. 2. This will only really work with Song, although I can see a world on which you can Weather, and exile your deck with Necropotence to thoracle win.
INTERACTION
Grief little to no surprise has been excellent otp and otd for free interaction t1. For this use and for song is all it is used for as we don’t play reanimate or phyrexian tower.
Thoughtseize and Veil of Summer I have tried many different splits between these in the main, and I think a 1-2 split is best, we want interaction, but we’re not always playing interactive decks. It has turned out that we can’t get maximum value out of a second veil in hand, because of the G casting cost, and it has to be used the same turn. For this and for PIF lines Thoughtseize is just as good. However we do play against counterspells and equally against OBM when it is played this is our way to song through it.
CARD SELECTION
We are playing Brainstorm because you can’t get better card draw and selection with a fetch base. Also with noxious revival it synergises very well, making many new lines possible.
Mishra’s Bauble is worth mentioning here because it thins our deck and loads our turns. Is an important beseech bargain in openers or drawn with beseech in hand. Being 0 cost it adds storm and draws cards with song.
FAST MANA
Here we simply play Dark Ritual and Chrome Mox and ways to reoccur them. People often want to play chrome mox in a base with few colours, but it’s also true that we can make colours on the fly with it to supplement our mana.
Other
This is our playset of Noxious Revival which has really changed how we can play the deck, it has great utility as mentioned before with brainstorm, it can also be cast off PIF, and finally hard combos with Song of Creation. We can use it as backup against discard otd, against counters and against graveyard combos. It also works with necropotence, allowing us to hold full control and put whatever on top, and getting the noxious in the yard or pre endstep putting a ritual on top.
Our two copies of Weather the Storm also fit into this category. They are very necessary for us so that even off a whiffed Necro we have a low resource way to stay in the game. Between our shock mana-base, Necro, our one Thoughtseize and the playset of Noxious also since we are always off the board, our life total is always under pressure.
LINES AND METHODS
Ritual Bauble Beseech Noxious. T2. This is a Song line, where the noxious is your last card in hand, returning the ritual to the top. There are about 26 good cards to draw off of the noxious revival, since we still have another land drop, to get us to the ritual. So the odds are very high to combo off.
Ritual Ritual Bauble/Mox Bauble/Mox/TS/Noxious Vault Beseech T1. Vault, Ritual, Ritual, Bauble, Mox+0, Beseech PIF, Ritual, Ritual, Beseech for tendrils for 20
Ritual (and one in GY) Breach Beseech Bauble. This is a tidy line which requires very little from the fact that our breach is also a beseech bargain. A line could be, with 8 cards and a ritual in the yard at the start of t3. Fetch, Ritual, Breach, escape ritual, escape ritual, mishras bauble, beseech bauble for PIF escape ritual flashback ritual flashback beseech breach for tendrils for 22. Variations 5 cards in GY ~ Ritual (and one in GY), DT in GY, Beseech, Mox, Bauble. This is another line including Breach and PIF, but this time the order is reversed. First you play out your Ritual, Bauble and Mox, Beseech for PIF, must be floating at least B here, Ritual, Ritual, DT for ritual, Ritual from hand, Beseech for Breach, escape ritual twice and finally Beseech for Tendrils = 30. This line is very large and has lots of leeway for cards in hand such as Mastermind, Tendrils, PIF and Breach. 4 or 8 cards in graveyard ~ Ritual Breach Mastermind/Tendrils Brainstorm Noxious. Another line requiring similar cards, but only a single Dark Ritual in hand. T3 Ritual, Breach, noxious, brainstorm, ritual, escape ritual, escape ritual, mastermind/tendrils for 16, tendrils for 18 /escape tendrils for 18.
SIDEBOARD
2 Into the Floodmaw has been one of our best sideboard cards in the deck because it can answer any problematic permanent on the board at instant speed for 1, which we are generally well targeted with. It works best when we can win next turn, though we can get it back with revival. I think it is an improvement over Pick Your Poison because it is instant speed, and can be targeted against any non-land permanent. I think it is a great card since we are already supporting blue.
1 Culling Ritual is one of our beseech targets post board, and also a great card to draw against energy and birthing ritual decks. You can do fun things against ocelot pride like into the floodmaw on a threat and they will make tokens of the fish on endstep which you can culling ritual. With 2 pride in play, I have made 30+ mana using this method. We are considering running 2.
3 Abrupt Decay as an answer to almost any hate pieces our enemy may have, and an answer to Frog and flipped Tamiyo that is uncounterable, works very well for us.
2 Thoughtseize are great in a combo mirror. Generally we are slower than them so it is important for us to interact.
2 Veil of Summer is crucial in a control matchup, against discard decks, and against OBM, as mentioned above.
1 Flusterstorm is a flex slot. We struggle against Commandeer in a sideboarded game, so I have added this one as an answer, it also lets us interact against a show and tell, or other combo decks, which this deck possibly could do more of, but we don’t want to dilute the deck. I have tried Defence Grid but I found that we were generally left with a poorer hand because of it, and after the first otp turn the card was useless.
(1 Tendrils of Agony, 1 Thassa’s Oracle)
2 slots remaining.
I will do a follow up before the 1k tournament on matchups, sideboard plans and any more lines that we find.