[Deck] GushStorm

[Appletree]

Before getting started, I want to answer a question I think everyone out there should have in mind when looking at the
decklist (what was probably the first thing you did when entering this site…): Why the hell should I play this deck?
Yes, it’s true! This is a Tendrils-deck in a format where Flash and all it’s nasty friends are legal. So why should I play a deck
to which almost every Vintage-“pro” refers to as “Inferior.dec”? Well, I don’t know…yet. I’ve played some matches versus
the Vintage top-tier, but by no means do I state having played enough test-games to identify any win-percentages. What
I say is that this deck has something going I like about it:
-   The matches didn’t really feel that one-sided at all. Well, Ichorid game 1 did so, but…
-   The deck is surprisingly resilient to Counters and Duress
-   Although it is not even nearly as fast as Flash, it’s consistency is what speaks for it
-   The (non-Workshop)hate running around nowadays doesn’t affect it too heavily (especially Leyline…); also, it doesn’t
play flammable slivers…
If that’s not enough for you to read on, did I mention that this deck is incredibly fun to play?

The Decklist GushStorm

        // Land 13  just enough for Gush to work, not enough to fizzle too often
        4 Polluted Delta
        2 Flooded Strand  six is probably the right number
        4 Underground Sea
        1 Watery Grave  there to fetch out and Spoils for a four-of land
        2 Island  vs. TMWA, Stax, Fish…

        // Acceleration 16
        4 Moxen (Emerald, Jet, Ruby, Sapphire)  they aren’t any helpful early on, so only 4
        1 Black Lotus   
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Lions Eye Diamond   don’t know yet, surprisingly powerful with pacts, read below
        1 Mana Vault     +2 colorless
        4 Dark Ritual
        3 Cabal Ritual  extremely powerful  mid-combo, early on only good with moxen

        // Card-Draw and tutoring 17  maybe a little few, couldn’t find anything better…
        4 Gush  read below
        4 Brainstorm    duh! Rread below
        1 Ancestral Recall
        4 Spoils of the Vault  extremely powerful in this deck
        1 Demonic Consultation  even better than Spoils
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Vampiric Tutor  finds Will, Lotus…
        1 Imperial Seal  see Vampiric

        // Disruption 10  more would cause the combo to fizzle too frequently
        4 Pact of Negation  counters counters, adds to Storm, is spoilsable…
        4 Duress maybe 3, only really good turn 1
        1 Chain of Vapor  not really thrilling, but needed
        1 Hurkyll’s Recall  can you imagine what Stax does to the decks strategy?
   
        // The Win 4
        3 Tendrils of Agony  enough, no Tendrils-flood
        1 Yawgmoth’s Will  gets removed frequently, so don’t get used to it…

Cards that didn’t make the cut

Chromatic Star:
This deck doesn’t need any mana-filtering. It’s blue-requirement per game is  reduced to one so that it doesn’t need to run
filter-cards. Drawing a single card with this deck is only good after a topdeck-tutor was played.

Fourth Cabal Ritual:
Lategame, this card is an absolute game-winner. Early in the game, this isn’t always the case.
It needs some other accelerant to be really effective early on (do not ever use your blue mana to play this). In the end, I’m
not quite sure if it should be in the deck, as drawing multiples is not really bad at all.

The fifth Mox and the Sol Ring:
Sol Ring adds just one mana to your mana pool and most likely costs you on-color mana. Overall just infinitely worse than Cabal
Ritual. Early in the game, you really don’t need any off-color acceleration at all. Just goldfish the deck and think about what
two moxes in the opener would help you.

Mystical Tutor:
Costs blue mana and doesn’t search for Black Lotus.

Interesting Synergies

Gush + Brainstorm:
Have you ever thought about how insane a Brainstorm is post Gush? Gush gives you the obvious +1 card-advantage at the
expanse of two of your lands in play. You get those two lands bounced, no matter how much counters they throw at your
Gush (thanks for the Storm). The Braincestral after the Gush will shuffle the two lands back. If they counter your Brainstorm
after the Gush, they’ve just countered a one-blue-mana instant you’ve got four more times in your library and increased your
Storm-count all at once. Either way, you always get away better than your opponent.

Pact of  Negation + …Lions Eye Diamond?:
When losing a Counter-war with a pact of Negation you should already have a pretty high Storm-count. Most of the time it
should be enough to spoils for a Tendrils afterwards, using LED-Mana to make this possible.

Spoils of the Vault + Pact of Negation:
A PoN for one black. Not that bad either.

So how do I play this deck?

First and foremost you should know that the turn this deck aims to kill the opponent is turn 2. On turn 1, you should not do
anything more than to play a land and duress. The only exception to that rule is when there’s no second land in sight (e.g.
Ritual-> Spoils for U-Sea). You might be tempted to play that Brainstorm on turn one to make your hand stronger, but with
this deck I found it to be actually better to hold back for the big turn. On turn 2, you have two different scenarios. You have
one land in play that taps for black: Tap it for black. Now you either have Gush and try to find that second land with additional
Ritual-mana up (!), or you raw-dog it with many tutors and even more mana or a Yawgmoths Will. You have two lands in play,
one of it taps for black: Tap for UB, then first play a Ritual (some people counter Rituals). If that works, try to assemble the
Gush + Brainstorm afterwards-combo. In an overview, you always just try to first add UB to your mana-pool. This is usually
enough to get the deck going. In short, the blue mana is used for seeing enough cards to produce a lethal Tendrils which is
found and cast off just the one black mana and some tutors. It’s really hard to explain how exactly you do that. Just goldfish
the deck and you’ll see. It tries to combo off in a way like Meandeck Tendrils does, so the articles on Starcitygames might help
you a little. All I can say is that you should try it more than once, even more than 10 times. I can get the deck to reliably kill
on turn two, even versus resistance.

The Sideboard

I really like the Leyline-tech Rich Shay used in his GAT-Sideboard. Versus Stax I usually  side in 2-3 Hurkylls Recalls, play Basics
and Moxes and then try to EoT Recall, next turn win. Versus GAT, well, I don’t really know yet.

Hope you guys show interest in the deck and help me make it run better and find a good sideboard. Yeah, that’s it from me.

Appletree

PS: Sorry if my english sounds a bit unusual...I'm from Germany 

[Grand Inquisitor]

Really interesting list.  I like this much better than the other Gush Tendrils lists I've seen, which seem to be glorified GAT lists.

However, there seem to be some enchantments missing.  With seven rituals and an admittedly idling turn 1, necro sounds strong, maybe even bargain.  Also, have you tested fastbond?  Does it just stretch the colors too much, or is more that this really plays more like SX, than traditional Tendrils decks?

[Sarah Angel]

I would agree, you really should stuff Fastbond in there!

But as for Necro and Bargain....hmmm...I was actually thinking that Spoils does that for you.  You've got tremendous card drawing ability so it looks like you can "cheat" and not play bargain.  You can even spoils for another spoils to add storm count, I like that.

It's kind of unfortunate that you have to run 3 Tendrils.  Maybe you could cut 1 tendrils and add Necropotence, which should be very easy to play in this deck with all of those rituals.

Have you considered Mind's Desire?  Or do you find that just too costly to play?

Really nice deck!  I might have to put it together myself.

[Appletree]

This deck is basically a variant of SX that tries to abuse Gush and therefore has to slow down to turn two.

Necro:
I forgot to write about it in the "Cards that didn't make the cur" section. Yes, getting a Necro down on turn one is still good. We aren't that far yet, I think. Most of the time I got to make that move, it got countered and I was down a Ritual and therefore a way to win next turn. If you look at the decklist there is no Spell in there to protect Necro (Duress doesn't count...you know why). Another problem with Necro was that you sometimes draw it when trying to combo. The deck already has a questionable number of useless cards (I'm still not sure if I should run 12 or 13 lands), so I don't think Necro is the right call. I may be wrong but for me Necro didn't work out as I thought it would.

Bargain:
Whew! I never thought about Bargain. Give me some time to test, or, better yet, try it out yourself!^^

Fastbond:
Fastbond is a card that makes the deck more consistent after it gets it's combo going, as it seems. Thats the reason why I play three Tendrils (not just because of Spoils, they're a real threat on their own, ending a counterwar with mana and lethal Tendrils): I don't need to go "Infinite".
The second problem is the casting cost. Maybe adding some Summoners Pacts and Elvish Spirit Guides would help that problem, I'm just not sure if that really strengthens the deck. Again, I don't know yet.

Minds Desire:
See Bargain, - "Give me some time to test, or, better yet," 

One last thing I forgot to mention is Tendrils mentality as an actual threat rather than a finisher. It happened more than a few times during testing that a counterwar over keycards ended in a lethal Tendrils.

[KiernanM]

@ the OP:
I'm curious whether you've looked at Tainted Pact or tested it vs. Spoils of the Vault.   My guess is that Tainted Pact could be slow @  {B}1, and you always risk removing doubles to get nothing, but it has 2 things going for it:
1 - You don't have to name anything, so you can use it to "look" for 1-ofs you'd never get w/ Spoils.  It keeps your options open, or something. 
2 - You run enough single cards to be concerned about the randomness of Spoils' life cost if you're already on, like, 12 life. 

[zeus-online]

Interesting list...here's a few notes though:

Spoils of the vault is suicide, it might not kill you every time but it's still a risk i wouldn't take.

Watery grave seems unnecessary, why not just another fetch or an island?

No mystical tutor? How come? it seems to be able to fetch anything spoils can get except lands, but is tutoring for lands really a stellar play?

/Zeus

[KiernanM]

Spoils of the vault is suicide, it might not kill you every time but it's still a risk i wouldn't take.

That's why I was looking at Tainted Pact.  I'm not sure it's worth it @  {B}1 though.

[ErkBek]

I've been working on this deck recently and it's really solid. Yes, playing Spoils can kill you, but that's a risk worth taking in my opinion. Here's the list I've been rollin' with

// Lands
    4  Polluted Delta
    4  Underground Sea
    1  Island
    3  Flooded Strand

// Spells
    4  Tendrils of Agony
    2  Chain of Vapor
    4  Gush
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Ancestral Recall
    1  Demonic Tutor
    4  Duress
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    2  Careful Study (to become ponder)
    1  Demonic Consultation
    1  Mana Crypt
    1  Mana Vault
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Emerald
    4  Pact of Negation
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Lotus Petal
    4  Dark Ritual
    4  Cabal Ritual
    2  Spoils of the Vault
    1  Vampiric Tutor

I've been really happy with this deck so far. I'm something like 8-2 vs. scroll decks, one of the loses coming to spoils. I really like the inevitability factor and being the aggressor in each matchup.

[Appletree]

@KiernanM
Tainted Pact didn't make the cut because of the mana-cost. It's pretty risky to play, as well, turning up nothing and losing next turn to the other Pact. Another problem is that there's a grudge lying on me that forces me to ALWAYS draw multiples of cards that are more than once in any given deck...I hate that!  Maybe I'm wrong - but I don't think so  (from the Monk theme song...)

@kobefan
I would really play at least 3 Spoils as you're usually too fast for your opponents to foil your life-plans. Also, with three you shouldn't draw more than one too often. You can also Imperial/Vampiric and then Spoils for the card. Could you please explain more detailed why you decreased them to two?

Why no Seal?

8-2 versus SCROLL-DECKS????!!!!! Oo What deck did you play against?

Is Frantic Search worth a slot?

[ErkBek]

@kobefan
I would really play at least 3 Spoils as you're usually too fast for your opponents to foil your life-plans. Also, with three you shouldn't draw more than one too often. You can also Imperial/Vampiric and then Spoils for the card. Could you please explain more detailed why you decreased them to two?

Why no Seal?

I've played 15 games total with the deck, going 10-5. Of my 5 loses, 3 of them came from Spoils to death (often is very unlikely situations), the other 2 from brokenness from opponents. I'm not too sure about you, but I try to slow roll hands as much as possible. While I know the deck can go off on turn 2, I usually try to win on turn 4 or so with a hand that can win through multiple counters thanks to free spells and playing several lands to produce stable mana. I run 1 more copy of Tendrils than you, so spoils is a slightly less risky play, however I find that I don't need it as often. Between DT, VT, Consult, 2 spoils, and 4 Tendrils I feel that I've got enough tutoring to consistently locate tendrils without having to rely on spoils is a substantial portion of my wins. Basically, I feel that Spoils is needed, but I want to rely on spoils in as few games as possible.

I didn't test imperial seal, but it just doesn't seem like it'd fit the way I play this deck very well in which I just build resources and then combo. Iseal gives your opponent information on what spells to counter. To me if seems that Iseal would be like casting Duress on yourself since you could run cards like ponder in it's place. Also, unlike other storm decks, Iseal for Lotus just doesn't seem that impressive in here since you build mana with your lands.

8-2 versus SCROLL-DECKS????!!!!! Oo What deck did you play against?

4 vs. GAT, 3 vs. Empty Gush, 3 vs. 1-Gift Gifts deck

Is Frantic Search worth a slot?

Not really. To me it seems like it'd be an obvious card to counter for opponents since it shuts down mana and card draw. Careful Study doesn't have that liability whatsoever.