Hurkyl's Recall Storm

[Hrishi]

So I've had this idea sitting around in my head for months but I never got around to thinking it through. After vintage champs I got the bug again and I wanted to ask the help of some experienced storm players to see where I can take this.

Anybody who has played Storm knows about Hurkyl's Recall. The card is a godsend against shops and indeed, usually casting it EoT and untapping into an empty board means you win. However, storm pilots would also know that often times you can use Hurkyl's as a storm enabler by targetting yourself. You then get to replay all your moxen and get to 10 spells easily.

I had this idea a while back but never attempted to try it before. What if you could construct a storm deck in such a way that it was designed to abuse casting Hurkyl's Recall on yourself as one of your main ways to generate storm? Wouldn't that mean we could run an obscene amount of Hurkyl's Recall in the maindeck and boost our shops matchup immensely?

Obviously, if we are looking to make use of Hurkyl's Recall, we want to include a number of low casting cost artifacts. The recent Steel City Vault decks have done something similar, so I started there. Draw 7s also have some obvious synergies with low casting cost artifacts so I included them, but I really dislike Draw 7s due to how swingy they are.

The 2 Dark Rituals are just in there for value because sometimes the deck can get mana hungry. You can even tutor for it sometimes in some lines of play. Multiple tops seemed very nice, especially with playing Hurkyl's Recall.

Thoughtcast was a way to reload my hand. With all these cheap artifacts, it usually only ever cost U or 1U. I am also a fan of playing 2 copies of Tendrils rather than one. The multiple flusterstorms are there for protection to augment your forces. I've liked them more and more as extras are also fodder to pitch to Force.

Lands
2 Island
2 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
1 Tolarian Academy
3 Underground Sea

Artifacts
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
4 Mox Opal
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
2 Grim Monolith
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Memory Jar

Instants
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
2 Dark Ritual
2 Flusterstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
3 Hurkyl's Recall
4 Force of Will

Sorceries
1 Demonic Tutor
2 Gitaxian Probe
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Time Walk
1 Mind's Desire
2 Tendrils of Agony
4 Thoughtcast

Creature
1 Inkwell Leviathan

Sideboard
4 Yixlid Jailer
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Defense Grid
2 Rebuild
2 Toxic Deluge
2 Steel Sabotage

This list is not tuned. Please don't think of it as a list but look at it more as an idea. I would really appreciate any advice you can give me. Perhaps this list is not the correct way to approach this, perhaps it is. If you were to try designing a storm deck built to take advantage of Hurkyl's Recall, how would you do it? Am I close to the mark or far away?

Some Considerations

Imperial Seal? Go deeper into the Dark Ritual plan? Missteps? Other tutors like Grim Tutor? Burning Wish?

Plenty of ways the deck can be taken, I'm not sure which is the right one.

[Stormanimagus]

Interesting idea to be sure. I would probably cut red in favor of some number of gitaxian probes. That card is so insanely good in storm and kinda fills a similar role to Xantid Swarm (though obviously Swarm is much more protective against blue) in that it helps you know when you can 'go off.' I wouldn't run a true-blue storm list without at least 2-4 probe these days. I don't think red really helps that much as your game 1 vs. Shops should now be quite decent. You can then tighten up the mana-base anyway, and even find room for a singleton Rebuild or something. That's my 2 cents. Nice idea!

-Storm

[John Cox]

Thought of using this guy?

[Hrishi]

I thought about Retract, but Hurkyl's performs double duty as well as dodges misstep. I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to keep at that, but it was my thought process.

Intriguing suggestion on removing red. A lot of the reason I chose to go red was to get Wheel of Fortune and Pyroblasts and less about the shop hate. That being said the Probes seem like a great suggestion. I will try to find room for them.

[nedleeds]

1/2 the blue decks are on 3+ misteps it's pretty miserable trying to resolve 1's through the wall of derpsteps. I ended up cutting Imperial Seal from my list this weekend because I was just so tired of that dumb counterspell. On the subject I think maybe you want a couple of Duress effects in your 75. I could also get behind a Fire // Ice in this list it's a nice non Misteppable catch all for a number of irritating creatures.

[The Atog Lord]

The Delver decks is quite good at countering Blue spells and countering one drops. Oath of Druids is neither, and so is quite a powerful tactic against Delver. The spells in Ritual Storm tend to be one or the other, and so as a Delver player I would much rather face Ritual Storm than Oath of Druids. Hurkyl's Recall is a two-drop but Blue. Retract is a blue one-drop, and far less flexible agains Workshops. I don't think Retract.dec is viable.

That said, you can always get in touch with some of the old Meandeck folk about the powerful Meandeck Retract deck.

[John Cox]

The Delver decks is quite good at countering Blue spells and countering one drops. Oath of Druids is neither, and so is quite a powerful tactic against Delver. The spells in Ritual Storm tend to be one or the other, and so as a Delver player I would much rather face Ritual Storm than Oath of Druids. Hurkyl's Recall is a two-drop but Blue. Retract is a blue one-drop, and far less flexible agains Workshops. I don't think Retract.dec is viable.

That said, you can always get in touch with some of the old Meandeck folk about the powerful Meandeck Retract deck.

Did they ever get that deck to work?

[The Atog Lord]

I believe it was as much joke as actual deck, and I don't think they ever made it actually work. But, I could be missing something.

[Methuselahn]

Anybody who has played Storm knows about Hurkyl's Recall. The card is a godsend against shops and indeed, usually casting it EoT and untapping into an empty board means you win. However, storm pilots would also know that often times you can use Hurkyl's as a storm enabler by targetting yourself. You then get to replay all your moxen and get to 10 spells easily.

I had this idea a while back but never attempted to try it before. What if you could construct a storm deck in such a way that it was designed to abuse casting Hurkyl's Recall on yourself as one of your main ways to generate storm? Wouldn't that mean we could run an obscene amount of Hurkyl's Recall in the maindeck and boost our shops matchup immensely?

Following this goal, you should probably try Rebuild, Chain of Vapor, and Empty the Warrens.  Retract is bad because it doesn't interact with your opponent.  Rebuild and Chain of Vapor both generate storm in their own way.  Have you tried these?  Empty the Warrens replacing Tendrils so you don't have to get to 10 storm.

[vaughnbros]

Following this goal, you should probably try Rebuild, Chain of Vapor, and Empty the Warrens.  Retract is bad because it doesn't interact with your opponent.  Rebuild and Chain of Vapor both generate storm in their own way.  Have you tried these?  Empty the Warrens replacing Tendrils so you don't have to get to 10 storm.

The problem is that empty is probably worse than ever with all of the hate for Delver+YP also working to wipe away all of your goblin tokens.

[Hrishi]

Following this goal, you should probably try Rebuild, Chain of Vapor, and Empty the Warrens.  Retract is bad because it doesn't interact with your opponent.  Rebuild and Chain of Vapor both generate storm in their own way.  Have you tried these?  Empty the Warrens replacing Tendrils so you don't have to get to 10 storm.

The problem is that empty is probably worse than ever with all of the hate for Delver+YP also working to wipe away all of your goblin tokens.

This is why I stayed away from Empty the Warrens. I didn't think it made sense to invite all the hate that's crept into everybody's decks to deal with YP and friends.

On the topic of Rebuild, do you mean running more of them in the main? What would you cut? Put it in place of Hurkyl's? I like the suggestion of Chain because you can also use it to build storm often enough.

[Will]

Following this goal, you should probably try Rebuild, Chain of Vapor, and Empty the Warrens.  Retract is bad because it doesn't interact with your opponent.  Rebuild and Chain of Vapor both generate storm in their own way.  Have you tried these?  Empty the Warrens replacing Tendrils so you don't have to get to 10 storm.

The problem is that empty is probably worse than ever with all of the hate for Delver+YP also working to wipe away all of your goblin tokens.

This is why I stayed away from Empty the Warrens. I didn't think it made sense to invite all the hate that's crept into everybody's decks to deal with YP and friends.

On the topic of Rebuild, do you mean running more of them in the main? What would you cut? Put it in place of Hurkyl's? I like the suggestion of Chain because you can also use it to build storm often enough.

Personally, I think that Rebuild can at times be better, but often this is not the case. If your opponent has Artifacts worth returning, chances are that they have a Null Rod and/or Sphere effects on board. In these types of situations, Rebuild is tantalizing, but the extra mana that you have to spend for Rebuild can be costly against a modern day Shop deck, especially if they know you're on a combo list in which case their sole purpose should be to shrink your mana.

Rebuild is superior to Hurkyl's when you have a lot of mana and 1-2 things that you want to bounce in addition to your Artifacts. Cycling is worth mentioning as it has some occasional value. Dodging Chalice of the Void at 2 can be game winning, though with the prevalence of Sphere effects and Revokers, playing Chalice@2 is becoming more of a gambit.

I think that this deck could either play or at least sideboard some 0 drop creatures like Memnite, Shield Sphere, Phyrexian Walker or Ornithopter. Each has their own pros and cons which will have to be weighed, but the versatility that these creatures can add is worth considering.

[WhiteLotus]

Ideas if you are going all in on artifacts:

-Thirst for Knowledge

-Candelabra of tawnos

-Expedition Map

-Time Spiral

-Trinket Mage

-Repeal

-Vedalken Archmage

-Auriok Salvager

[John Cox]

I had a deck that used artificer's intuition a while back. It's great for finding lotus and filling up the grave yard for Yawgmoth's will.

[tribet]

Similar than Burning Oath decks, maybe you can find room in the 75 for 4 Oath + 2 Tidespout Tyrant.

It wouldn't require much trimming from the main and the mana base may need to be swapped to Rainbow mana.

This package could also fit well as a transformational sideboard tech.

[Methuselahn]

Is there a storm deck that's better positioned than Burning Oath right now? 

Oath is a wonderful thing versus shops because you really only have to resolve one spell.  Obviously Oath is great versus the swath of creature decks out there right now.  If you are trying to build a storm deck in a Shop meta, how will it out-perform Burning Oath versus shops?  What does it do better than that deck?  Same questions for Steel City Vault.

[jamestosetti]

I have tried the multiple hurkyl's recall approach more than once. It is basically like playing with the s/b in. Your blue matches will suffer, which kind of defeats the purpose of the ritual deck.

[Hrishi]

More of a sideboard question, but since this deck does not run any creatures, what do you think about running Tabernacles in the board to control swarm creature based strategies? Feels like it would be useful against both Delver and Dredge matchups well as have random value elsewhere.

I have also been wondering about switching to missteps rather than flusterstorms since I'm convinced a couple duress style effects (was thinking of 2 Thoughtseize somewhere) seem useful. Running some missteps maybe opens up running a couple more Dark Rituals and maybe a Grim Tutor or two somewhere. This seems to move me towards Long though, so I'm not sure what I think about it. It does not specifically benefit from an artifact heavy manabase.

[tribet]

what do you think about running Tabernacles in the board to control swarm creature based strategies? Feels like it would be useful against Dredge matchups

I lost Game1 against dredge after chaining T1 Wasteland, T2 Tabernacle and even T23 Jace Ultimate (with 6 cards in my opp's hand)...

No need to say I was disappointed not to draw a single Mishra to chumblock the hasty Ichorids & Bloodghasts

[vaughnbros]

what do you think about running Tabernacles in the board to control swarm creature based strategies? Feels like it would be useful against Dredge matchups

I lost Game1 against dredge after chaining T1 Wasteland, T2 Tabernacle and even T23 Jace Ultimate (with 6 cards in my opp's hand)...

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

[xouman]

I like the idea of playing Riddlesmith in decks with lots of artifacts, but maybe adding a 2/1 enables cards from opponents. Baleful strix is interesting because it protects from heavy beating (it's poor against pyromancer but still wins time) and performs nice with hurkyl's.

the most complicated deck to play against is mud, even with maindeck hurkyl's (a chalice or sphere could be a nightmare). Other than that, null rod/stony silence and thalia are also disablers.

I like the idea of going UB, so 2 tendrils are ok for me. Just add toxic deluge to get rid of annoying creatures!

[Methuselahn]

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

Why is Tabernacle not a good card against dredge?  Please explain.

People think it's good because it's a land and dredge can't really hate on lands.  Also, Dredge vomits creatures out.  And runs virtually no mana base.  Dredge having no respectable mana base and having to pay a mana upkeep for each of their army of turds is probably why people think it is good.   Please explain why you don't like the Tabernacle.  I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's bad.  How are people playing around it?

[Samoht]

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

Why is Tabernacle not a good card against dredge?  Please explain.

People think it's good because it's a land and dredge can't really hate on lands.  Also, Dredge vomits creatures out.  And runs virtually no mana base.  Dredge having no respectable mana base and having to pay a mana upkeep for each of their army of turds is probably why people think it is good.   Please explain why you don't like the Tabernacle.  I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's bad.  How are people playing around it?

Blooghast, Ichorid, and Flamekin Zealot.

[vaughnbros]

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

Why is Tabernacle not a good card against dredge?  Please explain.

People think it's good because it's a land and dredge can't really hate on lands.  Also, Dredge vomits creatures out.  And runs virtually no mana base.  Dredge having no respectable mana base and having to pay a mana upkeep for each of their army of turds is probably why people think it is good.   Please explain why you don't like the Tabernacle.  I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's bad.  How are people playing around it?

Game 2/3 dredge has access to mana so it is more than capable of paying for 1 or 2 creatures a turn.  It also rarely wins by "vommiting creatures" post board.  Tabernacle does nothing to stop dread return, therapy, or ichorid.  It's basically just a minor annoyance for bridge from below, and even there you are giving a sac outlet to bloodghast.  Tabernacle is about as effective as playing a metamorph copying nothing.  In my experience playing dredge, Ive never lost a game to an opponent where tabernacle was their only "hate" card.

[Methuselahn]

In my experience playing dredge, Ive never lost a game to an opponent where tabernacle was their only "hate" card

The tournament games that I've beaten dredge with Tabernacle always involved another oppressive hate piece.  Everyone who plays Vintage seriously knows you need multiple hate pieces versus the deck.  It's not a bad card if only because Dredge has no answer to it.  The dredge player might get some mana post board, but not that much.  Most definitely better than a metamorph that copies nothing.

In games two and three, Dredge players tend to side out Dread Return and Flamekin in favor of anti-hate, when Tabernacle comes in.  So, I don't see those two cards as reasons why Tabernacle is not good.

[vaughnbros]

In my experience playing dredge, Ive never lost a game to an opponent where tabernacle was their only "hate" card

The tournament games that I've beaten dredge with Tabernacle always involved another oppressive hate piece.

Unless you've piloted dredge yourself you can't really evaluate the hate pieces, I assure you the other oppressive hate piece is doing 99% of the work in those wins.

[Hrishi]

I ended up dropping the Draw7s, they were just bad almost all the time and gave me random "oops I win" situations here and there. Upped both the artifact and Thoughtcast count. Cut red altogether. Deck feels more stable but less explosive.

Still on the fence about Tabernacle but it would make my sideboard much more compact providing me with splash damage on Delver and such. Toxic Deluge is typically such a bad card against them because your life is low enough when you can cast it, and it's hard enough to resolve.

[tribet]

In games two and three, Dredge players tend to side out Dread Return and Flamekin in favor of anti-hate, when Tabernacle comes in.  So, I don't see those two cards as reasons why Tabernacle is not good.

Ichorid is the main problem and, not far behind, Bloodghast (when hasty & when opp is making land drops).

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

Tabernacle is ok versus dredge mainly because it buys a lot of time (I was able to Jace Ultimate!) so it allows you to draw into more solid hate pieces or simple chumpblockers. More important Dredge can't get rid of Tabernacle.

Tabernacle is not primarily there for Dredge. It is a very flexible slot for hard control decks such as Landstill which try to protect themselves versus Delver decks or any other aggro decks that naturally prey on hard control decks. Tabernacle is certainly better than any Landstills, Spell Snares, Drains or Null Rods... against Dredge so it makes the cut Game2 & 3.


Saying that, in the list posted in the OP, I think Toxic Deluge is better in that slot because it is very quick & easy to fire off using all the moxens

[Methuselahn]

Unless you've piloted dredge yourself you can't really evaluate the hate pieces,..

lolwhut!?!?  I think I can wrap my mind around the concept.  That counter argument is laughable, at best.


As far as Hurkyll's combo goes, the list might be over populated with artifacts.  I don't think you need to add any additional artifacts in order to combo off and generate storm.  The bottleneck will be mana before it is having enough artifacts to replay.  Just play the best cards.

Additionally, I would probably look to drop draw7s wherever possible and test Dig thru Time.

[vaughnbros]

lolwhut!?!?  I think I can wrap my mind around the concept.  That counter argument is laughable, at best.

You mean this argument?

The tournament games that I've beaten dredge with Tabernacle always involved another oppressive hate piece.

 I'm not really sure how this explains that tabernacle is good.  Its like saying I beat dredge with a leyline of the void, but I also played a tabernacle in that game.

Tabernacle is not a good card against dredge.  I don't know why people keep thinking it is.

Tabernacle is ok versus dredge mainly because it buys a lot of time (I was able to Jace Ultimate!) so it allows you to draw into more solid hate pieces or simple chumpblockers. More important Dredge can't get rid of Tabernacle.

Okay aka not good.  In the right shell its not a terrible card (most notably shops), but its no where near a stand alone dredge hate piece.  In the context of this deck, a storm deck, it does basically nothing.