Your logic for Memnite holds true for Vengevine, since starting the chain with a Vine also saves a mana and generates an extra 4/3. You draw the Memnite without Survival less often, but then naturally drawing Vengevine is much better.

I played Clamp in older versions of the deck alongside a miser Trinket Mage, but it got cut when I was making room for tutors and Null Rod. This made the deck more explosive (tutor for lotus) more consistent (tutor for survival) and gave it more winning lines in its worst matchups (tutor for Null Rod).

Maindecking Leyline is a meta-dependent move, it's terrible against aggro/fish and unpowered metas.

"No problem. Wasteland + Crucible pinning you down? No problem. "

You: Grunt
Them: waste-return to play w/ crucible.
You: Crap.

Grunt is a 2cc 4/4 that can help the game state, overall a very good card. Good w/ cabal therapy.

If you're running confidants and therapys, I reccomend trying dusk urchins as well. They have been sick for me in every other format, although I haven't tried them in vintage yet.

Null rods are crazy good for unpowered decks w/ rituals.  I'd also run lotus petal as another method of getting null rod/confidant online turn one, also allows turn one hymn/sinkhole.

Gator is pretty bad right now. Bomberman owns it, goyf owns it, empty for 3 owns it, shop aggro owns it, dryad owns it, and orchard owns most creatures. Good in a deck with stifle, as its sack effect is a triggered ability, I wouldn't run it in much else. SB, maybe.

Glad to see high tide paid off, 13nova posted a tide gush storm list in the TTS thread a while ago. It ran gifts though.

That game two win on day2 r3 gave me a hard on. God I love storm.

I agree that you should've lost g3 of the finals, for multiple reasons. What's a storm deck doing running colossus in the first place, isn't there a crap ton of Oath around? Is it only for shop aggro? If there's enough shop aggro in your meta to warrant colossus then your best bet is to win the die roll g1, and board in ingot chewers in the other games, not dilute your deck with inferior win conditions.

Even if you do board out chain of vapor, a lot of decks keep in E-Truth vs storm combo, or board in a copy, for goblin tokens.

Tinker-Jar-win was his correct play at that point, which he unfortunately missed by not having it in his deck.

Awesome report, it was fun to read.

Not trying to be a thread user of ill repute, but I had a chance to test out the shop aggro matchup in a M-league mini, I only played against it and then one painter deck in the finals. The Ingot Chewers were a great replacement for duress on the draw. On the play I went -1 ETW, -1 Tinker, -1 jar, -1 ponder. I think that was right.

I've moved up to 4 confidant in the board, and have been very happy with them.

I won one game through brainstorm/sack jar in response. The hand couldn't win (you'd think w/ ten cards...) but I could set a tutor and a recall on top to win turn two.

I've been less and less thrilled with ETW. So far, every time I've been forced to go for the ETW win they've met EE or E-Truth. First I'm going to test Doomsday in its slot, and if I don't like that I'll test Burning Wish.

I agree with the boogie man about crop rotation, it should probably stay in. Whether you keep bargain depends on whether you keep cabal ritual (I think you should drop both)

As a replacement for the storm combo why not run zuran orb instead? It's synergistic with the rest of the deck, as you're already running crucible/fastbond, it would simply give your tutors a different purpose while using less slots. Those slots could be more business spells and disruption.

Manlands seem like they could work under void pretty well while giving you an answer to their turn one creature.

I'd splash white for balance, but from the looks of things you don't have the mula for the artifacts necessary to make it bomb-tastic.

Good luck with the deck!

Land 13
1 Tropical
1 Volcanic
3 Underground
2 Island
6 Fetches

Accel 11
1 Jet
1 Emerald
1 Ruby
1 Sapphire
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault (W/ Tinker, Hurkyls, and Chain this has been better for me than sol ring)
1 Lotus Petal (This has been amazing)
1 Black Lotus
4 Dark Ritual
1 Fastbond

Control 12
4 FoW
4 Duress
1 Hurkyl's
1 Chain of Vapor

Kill 2
1 Tendrils
1 Empty

Draw/Fixers 12
1 Walk
4 BS
3 Ponder
4 Gush

Bombs/Tutors 10
1 Mystical
1 Demonic
1 Vamp
1 Iseal
1 Personal
1 Will
1 Twister
1 Tinker
1 Jar
1 Ancestral

Sideboard 15

4 Leyline
1 Echoing truth
4 Ingot Chewer (haven’t tested against stax yet, might change this)
1 Jester's Cap
2 Pithing Needle
3 Dark Confidant

I’ve streamlined the deck to fit my play style more, focusing on either the artifact-bounce kill, the yawg win kill, or the fastbond-gush/draw 7 kill. I’ve found these kills to be highly synergistic with one another and resilient to hate strategies, while other “I win” cards can hinder them. Namely Necropotence, which has no chance at winning turn one, and sometimes doesn’t even win on turn 2. It conflicts with Fastbond and the 2 pain tutors, and looks really bad in the face of beats or burn decks. Not only that, but it’s terrible to see after turn one, and while you can tutor it up turn one, that costs at least five mana to set up for a win next turn. With five mana and a tutor why not try and win that turn?

Don’t get me wrong, I do like the card, I just think it hinders the deck overall. I am thinking about leaving necro in the board, as it does rock against a lot of slower decks.

I tested a lot of games and had a few terrible scenarios where I went off with the gush combo, drawing through some 30 cards, but ran out of gas. I really felt the deck needed another bomb or setup card. I originally ran wheel of fortune, but the tutor is just so much better. It sets up a lot of kills just as well as the other tutors, like tutor will, BS, tutor tendrils, replay BS. And it grabs both draw 7’s, possibly making it better than either could be individually.

I have been considering Burning Wish instead of the ETW slot, and putting the ETW in the sideboard alongside Desire and some artifact hate. Thoughts?

I found 4 Ponders to be too many with 4 BS, 4 Gush, and the walk to get the tutored card off the top, and as it’s worse than BS or gush 3 is the right number.

I think 13Bus’s High Tide/Gifts build looks really interesting, if a bit too dependent on fastbond.

The D-Day kill also looks interesting and consistent post-duress, but pre-duress I guess I’d have “the fear” –losing with no backup plan to force, reb, or even ancestral gives me the chills. Unlike Necro though, there are a variety of scenarios where I wouldn’t mind drawing into it mid-combo, so I will test with it.

He does have some waste defense in the form of 4x stifle.

Although my current list is URB, I've messed around w/ URW a bit so I figured I'd weigh in.

I started with 4 lavamancer, then dropped to 3, then 2. Fanatics are looking like a better choice, I'll probably switch to 3 of them.

I like ponder, but I don't think it fits here. You have stifles, brainstorms, and one drops. The one drops immediately effect the board, and the instants are synergistic (if you don't stifle you can brainstorm on their eot). Ponder seems significantly worse in comparison.

Is Remora good against anything? I tested different builds of storm against that MU deck w/ 4 remora's and a buttload of countermagic, but they never did anything for my opponent. Either he'd draw one card for my REB, or I would sit back and sculpt my hand while he tapped himself out every turn. If it isn't good against a decent player with an all-spell deck, what is its effectiveness? It might be good if you ran grunt/goyf/negator(synergistic w/ stifle), so that they're forced into playing spells while under a quick clock.

 I originally tried ninjas w/ cloud of faeries and spellstutter sprite, but it wasn't as consistant or powerful as I would have liked, so I switched to a skullclamp draw engine. It has its good parts and bad, I like the searchability w/ trinket mage and the power level, drawing 2-4 cards per turn is huge. I'm considering adding lightning bolts, I think they'd go well with this type of draw.

I also experimented with null rods to support the mana denial (not w/ clamps, obv) and it worked all right. I also ran simian spirit guides in that build. They helped drop rod turn one, let the REBs act like FOWs, and could swing with the other creatures. Overall, I liked the spirit guides more than the null rods, and am now running mox monkeys instead.