Manamorphose, How I Love Thee

[thorme]

I readily admit that Workshop decks, and not Storm decks, are my area of expertise.  However, in a moment of boredom, I decided to tinker around with some Storm concepts and I have fallen in love with Manamorphose. 

Remember folks getting excited about Repeal in Storm decks?  With a moxen, it's free, adds a storm and cantrips....what else could you want?  Well, enter Manamorphose - also free, adds a storm, cantrips, and to top it off, color-fixes at the same time.  The issue of course being the R/G in the casting cost.  I'll present 2 decklists that I think have a lot of promise.

First, Suicide Tendrils.  This deck is redux of Meandeck Tendrils and plays similarly...get your storm up and Tendrils for the win on Turn 1.  To accomodate the Manamorphose, Elvish Spirit Guides have been added (as a thought exercise, compare ESG to Sol Ring or Chrome Mox in a deck designed to win on turn 1...and think about how much better something like Lotus Petal is than all of these in such a deck), and some additional card draw.  The Eggs are gone.  60% of the time Manamorphose is better every time.     Once you have the green mana floating around, Crop Rotation and Academy make lots of sense.  I really wanted to replace the Night's Whispers with Ideas Unbound here, but as awesome as Manamorphose is, even with the full 4, UU is too much to ask of the deck consistently.

Sui Tendrils:

3 ESG
4 Dark Rit
4 Cabal Rit
4 Tendrils
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
4 Spoils of the Vault
4 Night's Whisper
4 Manamorphose
4 Chromatic Sphere
3 Repeal
1 Ancestral
1 Brainstorm
1 Crop Rotation
2 Meditate
4 Land Grant
7 SoLoMoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island


Next up, a deck that takes advantage of the Chrome Mox unrestriction.  You'll see that the deck is a straight up U/R storm deck that utilizes the Draw 7's...the tutoring power of black is not necessary in a Draw 7 deck, and red gives you similar mana acceleration while accomodating Wheel and Manamorphose mana.  It even plays the full complement of Pact of Negations, as it is again designed to win on Turn 1 (where Meditate and Pact essentially have no drawbacks), although does so a bit less frequently than the sui-tendrils list above.  This deck doesn't so much rely on the storm-generating strength of Manamorphose since once you're rolling, getting the storm count lethal isn't an issue - its all about the mana fixing here.

This Ain't Your Daddy's Academy

4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Chrome Mox
4 Meditate
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
4 Pact of Negation
4 Manamorphose
3 Chromatic Sphere
3 Brain Freeze
4 Street Wraith
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
4 Diminishing Returns
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
1 Windfall
7 Solomoxen
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mana Vault
1 Lotus Petal
1 LED
1 Tolarian Academy


These are certainly not the end-all, be-all decks.  Just some solid starting points.  Once you play around with them a bit, you'll realize that having Manamorphose is always such a good feeling - you're never disappointed to have it in hand, and it is a card born to shine in storm decks as one of the best helper cards around.

[Xyre]

A reference for Meandeck Tendrils - a list piloted by a friend of mine at a pre-restrictions tournament to 4th place.

Main Deck
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Dark Ritual
4 Brainstorm
4 Tendrils of Agony
4 Repeal
1 Demonic Consultation
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Land Grant
4 Darkwater Egg
4 Spoils of the Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Night's Whisper
3 Manamorphose
1 Yawgmoth's Will

Land
1 Tropical Island
1 Bayou
1 Polluted Delta

All day he wished the Manamorphoses were more Eggs. The advantage of Eggs is that they convert your useless mana (colorless and off-color) directly to useful mana at a low cost. The problem with Manamorphose is that, while it's randomly great if you can play it off a land, usually that's not the case. Inevitably, MM is just in the wrong place to work in Meandeck Tendrils, I think, which sounds strange but testing has shown is probably true. One problem is Land Grant's alternative casting cost, which allows your opponent to decide if you can get any use out of that land. That bottleneck meant that usually your source of green mana would get countered, cutting you off MM. Eggs and Spheres have no such drawback.

And the advantage of Repeal is that, while it's occasionally bad for your mana base (turning your blue mana into white/red/green mana), it provides two storm, where MM only does one. This is a deck that is always in need of more storm; usually, the only way the deck could hit critical storm would be if the control deck decided to counter an ultimately-useless spell. That's how tight it is, and why MM is usually not as useful as one would hope.

[thorme]

All day he wished the Manamorphoses were more Eggs.
...
That bottleneck meant that usually your source of green mana would get countered, cutting you off MM. Eggs and Spheres have no such drawback.

Agreed, your friends list does appear as if it would frequently lack enough green mana.  I haven't found this to be an issue in the list I posted with the addition of ESG's.  Also, I can see why storm would be even tighter in a list with only 2 Night's Whispers for draw...I found 4 to be too few which I why I added 2 Meditate.

And I certainly agree that the deck is tight - in addition to the storm count though, the mana can be really tight - where the additional mana you have to sink into an egg vs the mm can make the difference.

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

the first two tournys I played after the restriction I played ICBM tendrils, because i didn't know what to play and it seemed like a lot of fun
this things runs absolutely NO disruption, despite that, it really did all right. First nearly getting to top 8, but losing to control slaver for the spot, then ending up 2nd in a small event dropping 1 game till the final round, again losing to control slaver.

the list I ran was:
5 mox
petal
lotus
crypt
vault
sol ring
4x dark rit
2x cabal rit
4x rite of flame

3x repeal
4x mana morphose
4x street wratih

2x simian spirit guide
4x city of  brass
4x gemstone mine

41
wheel of fortune
memory jar
tinker
time twister
wind fall
necropotence
yawgmoth’s will
mind’s desire

brainstorm
ponder
night’s whisper
ancestral recall

vampiric tutor
demonic tutor
imperial seal
mystical tutor

3x tendrils of agony

sb:
3x xantid swarm
4x orims chant
DSC
2x ETW
2x hurks
3x meta slots

The turn 1 win rate was staggering at times. The shop match up was literally a coin flip, your faster than ichoird and not will dependent at all. Game two always sb in one ETW.
8x lands seems a little low, but I frequently saw more than the 1 I needed while going off a lot of the time.

[Negator13]

Would you run Chrome Moxes in that deck now, 100?

[zeus-online]

This is kinda similar to the belcher list we've been testing...
Shops are a coinflip.
Ichorid is favorable, since you win if you win the flip, and you (edit:) you only loose if they have bazaar+chalice.
Control is...well...depends on the disruption they can put up within the first 2 turns.
We haven't tested aggro-control, but a resolved null rod is pretty bad.

/Zeus

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

Would you run Chrome Moxes in that deck now, 100?

from when i was playing this guy I always had a priority of colors I would want to be floating into a blind draw 7 or something.
First I would want to float  , because rite of flame gets you a lot of mana, and that all your looking for, also mana morphose turns 1  and a bad mox and colorless source into a lot of usefull mana.
second  because of the rituals and nights whispers and tutor access
lastly  . Brainstorm was more bad then good in this deck, ponder was pretty good ancestral was the best bate spell ever. The only real bombs is this color were twister and desire, in the cast of desire your going to want access to lotus or manamorphose to make that happen a lot of the time. In this deck opponents will be constantly watching your ability to make  , if your on turn 2 dropping your second land should be the last thign you do, it makes your opponent feel really silly.
repeal is nice utility for chalice, it was a frequent tutor for mana fixing or +2 for lethal storm. It's also not that hard to sure make a ton of mana and bounce Platz and 7/10 if you need to. Over all, nothing I would really call broken.
another thing i really liked when this deck was shown to me is that if you have access to    with a mox somwhere ( even though you'd rather float  ) your theoretically running 11 less cards even though those cards still have mechanical in game applications. It feels like cheating. I've definitely kept hands and just stated cycling for a tutor or bomb.

To get more to the point, I had briefly considered chrome mox, but with a "cycling engine" and minimal draw I'm not so sure I'd want to lose the card in game (the deck did mulligan pretty well though). Chrome mox is also bad with repeal. Not to mention, when ever I wanted a color, most of the time I would want red. That was more easily obtained from my SSG, which work through null rod and cotv. So not in this build.

I'd even seem a few games, from me and other players, where you hard cast this dude for storm leaving your opponent at 2, then swing for lethal next turn.

@ zues
null rod can be the hard shits, but the sb DSC and ETW where a big help, I had won all the null rod match  ups I had, but it was very very close, and one was due to A DSC beat and some bob flips.

[PhilipJFry]

Hex, in your build, did you consider the use of Meditate as an additional bomb?  The skip a turn clause may not be too severe if you are winning on turn one.  It seems to me that one way to gain resiliency when the deck contains no disruption is to up the bomb count as much as feasible.  I am just curious if you had tested this possibility.

When you were playing the deck, were you fining that you had enough mana to get started (0 mana possibilities, lands, spirit guides, and the like)?  As I test, I find myself throwing hands back because they can't get started. 

Thanks for posting the deck.

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

@philip j fry

The problem with meditate is that I didn't often want to have to make blue mana. But you are correct in saying that you must up the threat count,and that is exactly what ICBM tendrils does. Running MM, repeal, and SW your effectively running a 49 card deck in some regards (when you have access to  , which can be easy achieved with MM). I ran 8 main deck bomb, not counting ancestral, and 4 tutors (top decking tutors are amazing the MM, repeal and SW). This gets you 12 bomb+bomb finders out of 49 cards. A double threat is surprisingly achievable. After one event players commented on how they liked how I "held back mystical for back up". There is just a ton of stuff an opponent has to counter, and its only exaggerated post bored by xantid/chant and theoretically you should have access to a bomb or two.

When I was given this list, it had 9 lands, I cut it to 8 after the first event I played it at, swapping it for ssg. After the event the slinga' showed my a few things about the list, and told me to not be afraid to look for things by cycling SW, casting MM and repeal, worst case scenario you burn for a bit and the cards replace them selves. After that I did a bit of testing and found that putting my balls pn the table and shouting "STOP ME OR DIE!" really payed off at times (also something Ben had told me). Being bale to read a player is also a big help. Oddly enough I found the deck mulligans pretty average. Also in decks like this where you see 30+ cards a game occasionally, pile shuffling is important.