Solitaire and You
Storm is one of the most iconic and most powerful strategies in Magic’s history. It has warranted several bans in Modern, Legacy, and some Standard formats, and, in doing so, built up its status as the notorious “solitaire” deck. The appeal of the deck is tied into its unconventional game plan: being able to string together cards one after the other until you (somehow) find a way to win. Storm decks offer challenging gameplay with a large number of decision points that also largely ignore your opponents plans by trying to win all at once and before they do. That’s also why the deck can be so miserable to play against as you have to watch you opponent have fun beating you.
I could write a whole article about Magic’s Love-Hate relationship with Storm. I’m here instead to try and walk the untrodden path and build storm in EDH, which presents a few challenges and also a few new opportunities. The challenge is that, in a 100-card singleton format, there’s much less consistency. We don’t have to ban Seething Song because it isn’t a big deal when the card is 1% of your deck. That said, we have access to our commander 100% of the time, meaning we are guaranteed to draw a powerful engine.
What a Growing Storm Needs
Every storm deck needs three things to get going: ways to cast a lot of spells (mana rituals, Paradoxical Outcome + eggs, candelabra effects, etc.), card draw, and a wincon.
There are plenty of great options for commanders that provide one of each of these (or sometimes multiple). Mizzix of the Izmagnus provides mana, Niv Mizzet, the Firemind card draw, Momir Vig, Simic Visionary sort of both since you can grab you mana dorks and he draws you them, etc. The best commander for storm is, of course, the mono black commander, Sidisi Undead Vizier
So we could play Sidisi, tutor up Ad Nauseaum on turn 2, and combo out our ex-friends before they even play a card. But I genuinely believe commander is, first and foremost, a casual format. So with that in mind, we’re going with the most tier-2 Storm commander I could find.
Tatyova, Benthic Druid
Tatyova isn’t the best pick, and if we wanted to be spikier we’d play one of the Izzet commanders, Momir or Sidisi, but she does provide a very strong engine in the right shell. She obviously gives us a source of card draw, but since it’s tied to a means of getting mana (making extra land drops), and she’s in the perfect colors to take advantage of this, she enables a pretty powerful strategy.
Overview
To build Tatyova we’ll first layout each type of enabler for her (whether is cards like Azusa that let us make extra lands drops each turn or cards like Cultivate), and then look at wincons. From there, we’ll pick the best wincons, and slap some enablers that work for them into a decklist.
Enablers
When I was going through looking for cards, I broke the mana-enablers into two classes:
Bloom effects-These cards allow you to make an extra land drop each turn or let you put extra lands from your hand into play. Creatures like Skyshroud Ranger allow us to put a land into play combo immediately with Retreat to Coralhelm. With a bounce land, we immediately can draw our whole deck and win the game.
Explosive Vegetations– We’re playing a broccoli deck, so of course we’ll be playing a number of these anyways. They’re especially strong in this deck because they’re also divinations.
Since this deck absolutely vomits its hand onto the table, Tatyova sometimes isn’t enough. I’ve found that running some on-theme Howling Mine effects like Ghirapur Orrery, Horn of Greed, and Rites of Flourishing can really help out.
Here are some other cards I’m not including, but you might want to play or have lying around:
Abundance– I haven’t actually tried this card, but I could see it being a key enabler or a win-more.
Broken Bond-We can do a lot better than four mana for an extra land. I guess if your meta is REALLY heavy on hatebears then, sure. I could see this being like a budget Force of Vigor maybe?
Courser of Kruphix– The future sight effect is great, but that’s about it, and we won’t always need to be hitting more lands off the top when we have plenty of draws/ways of getting them into our hand.
Dreamscape Artist– I mean, three mana Thrill of Possibilities on a stick is fine?
Seedborn Muse– Most of the time we want to play stuff on our turn. If you can run more Vedalken Orrery effects might be really strong. Maybe for if you want to go a more controlling route?
There’s a lot more I haven’t gone through because, to be fair, there’s roughly a million green cards that deal with lands.
Possible Wincons
We can win through traditional storm, drawing our whole deck, turning our million lands into creatures, or landfalling to victory.
Storm– Aetherflux Reservoir and Mind’s Desire are pretty much the only ones. I really like Reservoir since it’s pretty easy to pull off and synergizes with our commander’s lifegain ability.
Lab Man– Laboratory Maniac + Enter the Infinite. IT’s actually pretty easy to Enter by turn 5, so we’re running it as another way to win on the spot.
Awakenings– Sylvan Awakening and Sudden Awakening give us ways to basically win on the spot once we’ve gotten enough lands. I’m running both of them since I think they’re really strong in aggressive metas.
Landfall– Avenger of Zendikar, Rampaging Baloths, Roil Elemental, Zendikar’s Roil, etc. are all really strong grindy options, but pale in comparison to our other wincons in my opinion.
Taking all of these into consideration, the wincons that made it into the final deck are Reservoir, Lab Man, Enter the Infinite, and both awakenings. It might be a little light, but if you find that you’re storming off an not killing everyone then I think Mind’s Desire, Baloths, and Avenger are the next card you’d want to add, in that order.
Final Decklist
Taking all of this into account, here is the final decklist!
Taytova Storm by Brandon Wood
Creature (16)
1 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
1 Beanstalk Giant
1 Coiling Oracle
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Llanowar Scout
1 Lotus Cobra
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Oracle of Mul Daya
1 Psychosis Crawler
1 Ramunap Excavator
1 Sakura-Tribe Scout
1 Skyshroud Ranger
1 Springbloom Druid
1 Trygon Predator
1 Wayward Swordtooth
1 Wood Elves
Sorcery (16)
1 Circuitous Route
1 Collective Voyage
1 Cultivate
1 Enter the Infinite
1 Explore
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Far Wanderings
1 Grow from the Ashes
1 Kodama’s Reach
1 Rampant Growth
1 Rude Awakening
1 Scapeshift
1 Skyshroud Claim
1 Summer Bloom
1 Sylvan Awakening
1 Urban Evolution
Instant (14)
1 Crop Rotation
1 Early Harvest
1 Force of Vigor
1 Growth Spiral
1 Gush
1 Harrow
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Reality Shift
1 Simic Charm
1 Sunder
1 Swan Song
1 Turnabout
1 Voidslime
1 Worldly Tutor
Enchantment (7)
1 Burgeoning
1 Exploration
1 Khalni Heart Expedition
1 Retreat to Coralhelm
1 Rites of Flourishing
1 Song of the Dryads
1 Trade Routes
Artifact (5)
1 Aetherflux Reservoir
1 Ghirapur Orrery
1 Horn of Greed
1 Sol Ring
1 Swiftfoot Boots
Land (41)
1 Breeding Pool
1 Coral Atoll
1 Fabled Passage
1 Flooded Strand
18 Forest
11 Island
1 Jungle Basin
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Polluted Delta
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
The deck comes in at around $650 a the time of writing, which is pretty pricey for a casual deck. To make it more budget, we can swap the fetches for cards like Evolving Wilds, and cutting Azusa, Exploration, Burgeoning, Wordly Tutor, and Scapeshift get us down to a pretty reasonable level.
Either way, I’ve run this deck a few times in 4-player games and have had a ton of fun with it. The skill cap is really high, and there’s always a little shock value in playing 20+ lands in a turn and leaving your opponents with a Rude Awakening.
Enjoy!
Reasons Past 