Zaffai, Thunder Conductor | Art by Dmitry Burmak

A Storm Is Brewing

Magic is an incredibly delicate game. It exists as a series of intricate connected rules spanning thirty years of expansions. The promotion of new expansions requires the development of new ideas. However, these all have to cosmically balance with the rules of the game on both a technical and design level. A card must work within the rules of Magic and within the goals of Magic design. Thus, new mechanics and card designs are built from the knowledge of things that came before. Discover comes from Cascade, Jump-start comes from Flashback, and so on. It’s fascinating seeing how the ideas of Magic are iterated upon, with each design begging to be brought deeper into the ever-evolving system that is Magic.

And then you remember that Storm exists, and if you’re a Magic designer, you start to cry. Welcome to Mechanical Memories, the series where we examine Magic design through the lens of Commander. Ever wondered what makes a broken mechanic? What pushes something from powerful to punishing? What creates a cacophony of cardboard chaos, corrupting countless Commander collections? The platonic ideal of a broken mechanic is Storm.

When Stormy Weather Comes Around . . .

. . . it was made in Onslaught. Specifically, Scourge saw the premiere of the Storm mechanic with twelve cards. Each of these were instants or sorceries that, upon being cast, copied themselves once for each other spell cast this turn. This was a symmetrical effect, as most things in this era of Magic were. Typal effects and Anthems tended to affect both players, so Storm did the same. On the surface this doesn’t seem terrible. An aggressive deck could play two, maybe three spells before than Storm spell and get a decent amount of value from it. The problem comes from a lot of different factors.

Here’s the thing. It would be easy for me to write this article by saying ‘Storm broken, here’s an extended deck that did well, badda-bing badda boom.’ But everyone knows Storm is broken. Hell, Mark Rosewater literally named his scale of busted mechanics after it. What I’m interested in doing is breaking down the why of these cards are broken. I can’t promise I’m going to break open the Magic metagame with my cutting analysis. But I do plan to establish a clear explanation for what makes Storm so powerful that can be used to make a fun Commander deck.

I’ve thought about this for a while, and here are my three explanations for why Storm is busted. 

1. It breaks rules of resource management in Magic
2. It operates on an axis most decks aren’t prepared for.
3. It further strengthens the most powerful cards in Magic, homogenizing the decklists.

Looking at this list, you might think that I hate Storm. Thing is, you’d be wrong! I love Storm and Storm decks. I used to play a Modern Storm deck back in 2021 over webcam. My second Commander deck ever was an Izzet deck with Ignite Memories as the win-con. These are super fun cards to play with, but they exist in a very delicate space. You’ve likely never heard of 80% of the Storm cards simply because they aren’t very good. When Storm is good, it’s great. When it’s bad, it’s horrendous. And when it’s downright amazing? Well, then it’s Tendrils of Agony.

Storm On The Horizon

Resource management is one of the first things that players learn when honing their Magic skills. Reid Duke, pro-Magic player and all-around cool guy, wrote about his philosophy about resource management. He uses the cards Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath and Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger as primary examples. While Kroxa works to drain your opponent of life and cards, Uro gains you cards, life, and mana. By bolstering your resources, decks with Uro are able to lean into the strengths in their decks rather than trying to exploit others’ weaknesses. 

Thoughtseize is a prime example of this. It asks that you lose some life and a card in order to disrupt your opponent’s hand. This, if the player is skilled about it, can allow you to throw off someone’s gameplan. Take their turn two ramp spell and leave them unable to cast that four drop on curve. But Storm breaks this design paradigm in ways similar to Uro. The act of casting a spell becomes fuel for your Storm spell. Each cast propels the next one, allowing proficient Storm pilots to negate the resource loss of their spells.

Legacy or Vintage Storm decks use a high density of cantrips and Rituals to chain together spells before unleashing a massive Storm payoff, usually Tendrils of Agony or Mind's Desire. While Commander doesn’t have the same consistency of non-singleton formats, Storm spells still break general resource rules of Magic. By turning your cantrips into more burn or mill, Storm spells make the act of casting these cantrips negligible.

Imagine if Grapeshot said “All the spells cast this turn retroactively have ‘deal one damage to any target.’” That’s what Storm does (kind of). An ideal Storm turn is able to turn spells into resource positive or neutral actions. By removing the dilemma of resource management and balance, Storm goes against an essential paradigm of Magic design.

Riders On The Storm

The next aspect that breaks Storm is the axis it operates upon. There’s a lot of strange, quirky things that appear on Storm cards. When someone begins a game of Magic, they usually have an idea of what they might be up against. As such, skilled players construct their decks with the metagame in mind. Since you can’t pack your deck with silver bullets, players have to anticipate the best way to cover multiple angles. Wrath of God for creature decks, Roiling Vortex for Lifegain decks, and other umbrella responses. However, Storm’s weirdness in terms of effect and gameplay means it’s difficult to work into a typical deck. Players are left with two options. Either they pack silver bullets or hope the Storm player dies to their greatest enemy: themself.

As I mentioned, Storm counts the spells that all players have cast this turn. This creates a bit of an issue when trying to counteract a Storm strategy. If you try to disrupt their chain of cantrips and rituals, you’re still adding to the Storm count. Sure, you maybe stave off one or two additional copies of Brain Freeze, but you’re still playing into their overall strategy. The mechanic discourages you from responding to it, instead rewarding preliminary responses in the form of Stax or lockout spells. Damping Sphere can stop a Storm deck in its tracks, but it needs to be done before they can Storm off. In a game that rewards the push-and-pull dynamic of different strategies, this isn’t the healthiest thing for competitive Magic.

Storm spells also work strangely within the rules of Magic. A Grapeshot with a Storm count of five isn’t “deal 6 damage.” Instead, it’s spread across six different copies of a spell that are created by a cast trigger. This makes it incredibly hard to counteract Storm with typical anti-combo pieces. Counterspell might work against an opponent’s Reanimate, but it doesn’t do much against a Storm spell. This is also one of the advantages of Flusterstorm, an eternal format all-star that originated in Commander 2011. This Force Spike on nitro spreads it’s counterspell-ing across multiple copies. Typical counterspell wars on the stack don’t work here. Players are forced to either make their spell uncounterable or find a way to deal with multiple copies of Flusterstorm. Oh, and as mentioned, anything you do against Flusterstorm just increases the Storm count. So have fun!

You may ask why, if it's so hard to counter, does Storm not dominate every format? The thing is, Storm needs a very particular set of circumstances to work effectively. Most Magic players have seen someone attempt to Storm off for the win, only to realize halfway through that they don’t have enough gas to finish off the table. What this means is that Storm can sometimes fall to its own hubris. Spending all your resources Storming off can leave you vulnerable to being killed the next turn.

Let The Storm Rage On

Six of the Power Nine are mana-positive artifacts. Mishra's Workshop, Ancient Tomb, and City of Traitors are mana-positive lands that are staples in competitive formats. Sol Ring, the most played card on EDHREC, is a mana-positive card. These cards are good already. Nobody is debating that. What matters for our discussion here is their effect on Storm.

Let’s take Mana Crypt. Why is that card so good? Send in your answers now.

1. It adds two mana for zero mana.
2. It lets you ramp, then immediately ramp with its own mana.
3. It’s an artifact and can be easily abused.
4. All of the above, and it has sick Ron Spencer art.

If you answered D, you’d be correct (although I prefer the Volkan Baga art). All of the reasons Mana Crypt is so good that it demands a $175 price tag are also directly beneficial to Storm. Sure, any deck can benefit from Mana Crypt, but the specific needs of Storm relate to its strengths. Acting as a free spell, being bounced to hand with Paradoxical Outcome, and providing a huge leap in mana let Storm decks more effectively do their thing.

Wheels are another major example of this. Storm decks struggle to restock their hands during crucial combo strings. However, cards like Windfall or Wheel of Fortune can refill a player’s hand with another suite of free spells to continue casting. Again, this isn’t meant to imply that Storm decks suddenly made cards like Wheel of Fortune good, as if they weren’t already. Instead, the paradigms that Storm breaks are the same as the ones these iconic cards broke. Think of them as design siblings, doing the same busted stuff in Eternal formats.

So, what does this mean for Commander? Due to the format’s casual nature, you’d think Storm would be a much less common theme. However, Storm decks continue to thrive in the format. The mechanic fills the role of the Wizard power fantasy, slowly accruing magic with a flurry of spells before unleashing a massive blast. It’s an exciting thing to pull off! Let’s take a look at Storm through a casual lens and see if we can conduct a deck of our own. 

Zaffai’s Symphony Of Storm

Strike up the band because Zaffai, Thunder Conductor is ready for action. Zaffai’s ability rewards casting and copying larger and larger spells. Rather than relying on the usual fare of cheap cantrips for Storming off, we’re going to emphasize the heavy hitting instants and sorceries. That way we aren’t just building to a combo kill, we’re building to a crescendo of lightning and music!

Zaffai’s ability cares about the mana value of spells, so we’re running a few cards that cheat the rules on the calculation. Delving away eight cards to Temporal Trespass lets you get an eleven mana value spell for three mana. Summons of Saruman’s flashback ability calculates mana value based on X, so you can cast this for five mana from the graveyard and bump that up to ten through exiling. Cards that bend the rules of Zaffai make this deck just a tad more efficient at its attempts at Storm turns. 

There’s also some classical Storm turns that are possible with this deck. Rituals like Desperate Ritual and High Tide let us get more mana to continue casting spells. I also took a cue from Twiddle Storm, a Modern deck that I used to play. Twiddle effects let us untap permanents like Lotus Field, The One Ring, or Izzet Boilerworks to create pseudo-rituals or card draw. These effects are super fun and encapsulate the feeling of Storm decks. You can read more about them in Jesse Plotkin’s article on Twiddle effects! Just a Twiddle shoutout.

And finally, the deck has some spellslinger staples to close out the game and finish off opponents. Thermo-Alchemist, Guttersnipe, and Zaffai, Thunder Conductor himself all deal damage when you cast spells. Harmonic Prodigy doubles up their triggers, and Roaming Throne does the same for any creature type. While the deck can easily win through Zaffai’s tokens and damage, these Storm effects get a casual boost by taking a note from Elsha of the Infinite.

I’ve included a decklist below for my brew of Zaffai. It was super fun to revisit my Izzet Spellslinger roots and cast tons of cantrips. I’ve been kicking around the idea of Dina, Soul Steeper as a Golgari Storm deck for some time as well, and this experience made me want to try that out. Let me know what Storm decks you’ve built or want to build. I’ll see you next time on Mechanical Memories. Stay safe!

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Jubilee Finnegan

Jubilee Finnegan (they/them) is English literature student and writer based out of Southern California. They got hooked in Magic with Throne of Eldraine and haven't stopped since. When not deckbuilding, they're working on poetry, gardening, or trying some new artistic endeavor. They can be found on Twitter at @finneyflame or on Instagram @jwfinnegan.