UR Gifts Storm: So, I finished 80 leagues online with UR Storm, and I thought it was about time for me to write a few words on the deck. My results can be found here.

TLDR: 68.5% winrate in 400 matches (210 in competitive leagues, 190 in friendly leagues).

Friendly versus competitive leagues:

So, I’m a family dad, and I unfortunately don’t have much time to play mtg. I usually gets a few games in late in the evening and during the weekends, and I don’t feel like throwing money away when my brain is tired. Consequently, I usually only play competitive leagues during the weekends, and I stick to friendly leagues during Monday-Friday. If I had to guess, I think my winrate would probably be 1-2% lower if I had only played competitive leagues.

Current list:

Individual card choices:

Mana bears: I believe 6 is the right amount, and I wouldn’t change it as long as the most succesful Storm players are set on 6 (the competitive trophy leader Beicodegeia, Caleb Scherer, Paul Muller etc.). It’s rare that you want two, and I will rarely play it early against removal decks anyway – at least not before I got mana for Remand/Repeal protection/Gifts to find a new one.

+Repeal/÷Unsubstantiate: Flexible and awesome. It hits everything without being card disadvantage. In a modern world where so many decks have random cards that just wins against Storm (Meddling Mage, Chalice, red Eidolon, Leyline of Sanctity etc.) you simply need some kind of maindeck bounce. I dislike Unsubstantiate though since it does not offer this flexibility. While Unsub can be a bad Remand when combo’ing off, it doesn’t hit permanents unless they are on the stack, and the card disadvantage is huge. I have played at least 50+ matches with only 2 Remand + 1 Unsub, and it was the card I hated most in the deck.

Noxious Revival: Play it. No, don’t ask questions about it, just play it. I wrote a bit more about it here, if you wanna know why.

Abrade: Honestly, I think this is one of the most underplayed sideboard cards in modern. The flexibility is huge for a combo deck since you don’t always know whether the hate is being stuck to an artifact, creature, or spell. The worst part about Abrade is the damage unable to hit the face, but the CMC is not a problem at all. Against pretty much all creature decks this comes in post board since most decks have artifact hate these days, and even if they don’t it just kills their most important creature.

Empty the Warrens: No copies main, 2 copies in the board. This has been correct amount until the unbanning of BBE/JtMS at least. I’m unsure if this is still true. Since Burn is on the rise along with Jund, it might be a good time to throw a copy of Empty in the main and go down to 2 Grapeshot. It will cost some games for sure, but it’s also close to the best thing we can be doing game 1one against Jund and Burn.

Shattering Spree: I like 2 copies, but since I play Abrade and EE, I can’t justify playing 2. If I would cut either EE or Abrade, I would probably find room for another copy of Spree again.

Gigadrowse: With all sorts of random control decks in every league (“I WANNA PLAY JACE MOM!”), this is a must. Gigadrowse is often just a “I win”-buttom against control where games tend to go past turn 6.

Engineered Explosives: My latest addition to the deck. It’s such a versatile card. It hits all problematic permanents on CMC 1, 2, and even 3 if absolutely needed (by using manamorphose). Heck I once cast it on 4 in a slow roll game against a control deck using Leyline of Sanctity. On top of that it’s awesome against GBx since most of their creatures cost 2. Generally though, it’s an all star against Merfolk, Taxes, and all sorts of random creature decks (like Bogles, GW Value Town etc.) since it hits both their permanent hate and their creatures. It also works well against stuff like Rest in Peace, Relic, Grafdigger, Ather Vials, Chalice and the list goes on. Most importantly people don’t bring any artifact hate in against Storm, so often I can play it safely and wait with activating it until I have to.

Search for Azcanta: I actually played this card for 50+ matches. I tried a split of 1 copy in the main and 1 in the board. I rapidly moved on to only 1 in the main. I think it’s too cute, and often it would just be a scry 1 for two turns before comboing off. From the board I don’t think it adds enough % against the matchups you wanna bring it in against. Against control you would rather want Gigadrowse and against midrange decks they often have enough graveyard hate to turn it off, and even if it flips, they have land destruction naturally in their decks. Sure it won me games, but I’m fairly confident that the card doesn’t belong in Storm.

Pyromancer’s Ascension: I love the card, but there is too much graveyard-hate to justify it. I actually like it against decks like Jund, but I prefer the flexibility of other cards currently.

My thoughts on my results:

I’ll go through some of the odd results you may notice in my spreadsheet.

11-10 against Burn: Storm is not favored. A combination of luck, bad Burn players and experience in the matchup is what turned these results in my favor. I would never ever wanna face a good Burn-player if I could avoid it.

4-7 against Humans: The matchup is bad, but since I split my removal across more names, I have been having more success. Between Repeal, Bolt, Abrade, EE, and E-Truth, I’m starting to feel like the matchup is approaching 40-60 in favor of Humans – which is something I can live with.

10-4 against Eldrazi Tron: I believe this to be a slightly favored matchup for Storm. Imo Eldrazi Tron is the ultimate deck of variance, and sure they sometimes have the 12% natural tron, which can be rough, but Chalice is manageable, and they are often too slow to hit Storm before it goes off. I only believe this to be something around 55-45 in favor of Storm though, so my results seem like a combination of luck, variance, and experience in the matchup (I’m a former E-Tron player too, so I would like to think that I know the deck quite well).

12-9 against Death’s Shadow: Always a fun matchup. The games are close, especially post board, and it often comes down to player skills. I think Death’s Shadow are slightly favored, but probably not 40-60 that people tend to believe. Of course I’m biased, but I think it’s closer to only 45-55 in favor of Death’s Shadow.

6-3 against Abzan, 3-1 against Rock, 7-3 against Jund (2-2 since BBE unbanning): A close matchup again. Game 1 often goes in the favor of Storm since PiF is a beast of a card in this matchup. If GBx goes discard into pressure into Lilly, it can be rough, but otherwise I actually think it’s sort of fine. Post board is rough since you have to fear all sorts of hate (most discard, surgical, graveyard hate etc.). Probably slightly favored for GBx, but again it’s close. I’m not sure the unbanning of BBE is bad for storm. Jund cuts on its discard, and tapping out is often bad against Storm. If Jund becomes bigger, Tron will eventually rise, and that’s also a good thing for Storm (the wheel of modern I suppose).

6-2 against Wx Taxes, 7-2 against E&T: Always close games, but I believe Storm to be favored – at least post board. I fear Arbiter into GQ more than anything, but I will always have enough removal for their Thalia’s and stuff that I can prolong the game enough to turn it in my favor. Granted, my deck is tuned to beat these kind of decks, and I understand why the taxes players probably feel favored. I might also encounter worse taxes players than average, since I tend to face them more in friendly than in competitive (if my memory serves me right).

9-2 against UW Control: I would play this matchup every day of the week, and I believe we are heavily favored. Gigadrowse is a winner here. This is the same reason why I fear UR and Grixis Control decks more since they can apply pressure/threaten a combo kill/have access to discard.

Feel free to ask me for my perspective on other matchups. I might be biased.

UR Gifts Storm in the current meta:

Interested in UR Gifts Storm?

I just wanna give a huge shout-out to my boy Caleb Scherer. You can find his Twitch Stream here., and his (blog here.)[https://adventuringgear.wordpress.com/] I have learned everything I know from watching Caleb play. The guy is a genius. I would also like go give a shout-out to Caleb’s friend, Paul Muller, who won a SCG Open playing fetchless storm. Paul just started streaming, and he is gladly discussing Storm while playing it. Quality content for sure which can be found here.](https://www.twitch.tv/variancedout)