Twiddling with Twiddle Storm

Recently there has been a new cloud in the bright open sky of Modern, and it announces some very stormy days to come.

The infamous storm deck, now available in a new variant with Twiddle effects! Also with Ad Nauseam. This is what I developed alongside my teammate Thibaut Cantaluppi, we both have been following the deck closely since its first inception when M20 was announced.

We decided to smooth out the cantrip package of the deck, foregoing effects like Merchant scroll for more selection. So we are now on the 12 cantrip package. I personally hate Shimmer of Possibility, two cantrips usually dig as deep or deeper with Serum visions, and use as much mana, but you get the best two cards in the top cards of the library. This also reflects in the mana base, the decklist is completely foregoing any Lonely Sandbar, or taplands (apart for Tolaria West). This way, we are valuing our lands drops even more with the ability to use the mana more efficiently with the cantrips that we are given, which are often better than Lonely Sandbar cycles.

We are also on a 20 land package, meaning only 13 'true lands' after counting out Lotus Fields and Tolaria West. This should be able to guarantee the first two land drops leading up to Lotus Field.

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For those who want an explanation for why 13 lands are enough see below:

Basically (or the TLDR version), what this means is that in a deck of 60 cards where we can draw into 13 hits i.e. lands we have 80% chance of having seen at least two 'true' lands by the second turn.

The following is our reasoning:

Considering that we are on the play and that we have access to 2 of the worst cantrips in our deck, meaning the ones that can at worst dig two cards deep each.

By turn 2, this means that on top of the starting seven we keep, we also have 4 looks at a land plus the additional draw from the draw step, so 12 looks in total for the second land. Thus according to the calculator we have an 80% chance to have our second land drop by turn 2. This of course doesn't take into account mulliganing, which should considerably improve our chances.

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We also run the whole Arcane package which makes the central piece of the deck. To that we add 6 'ritual' effects in Twiddle and Dream's Grip. We settled on a 4-2 split thanks to the added utility of Dream's Grip entwine mode, but a 3-3 split is fine if you are expecting Surgical effects in your meta.

Two Grapeshot is the number we felt good running: it helps having the second one when going off so that if you ever fail to go over 20 storm count you can still double Grapeshot the opponent for the win, it is also less tiring in long playing sessions.

Our piece of interaction in the main is Echoing Truth. Unsubstantiate had also been a consideration in light of the Grapeshot-Unsub-Grapeshot line, but due to Karn, the Great Creator, and Whirza being able to get a Grafdigger's Cage by Turn 3 on the field game 1, we felt that Echoing Truth was the better piece of interaction.

Our biggest innovation, and one I can feel proud saying is one that I thought of, although some may have tried it before me, is the addition of Ad Nauseam in the main. Inspired by Legacy Ad Nauseam Tendrils, we noticed that the deck had an extremely low curve, and with Twiddle effects producing massive amounts of mana, it allows to go off off hands that are heavy in twiddle effects, but poor in card draw effects, whereas list that run the 3rd PiF, would be stuck in waiting another turn. Also our goal being to go off on turn 3, we expect not to get hit by much damage, especially in this slower meta, so drawing for 15+ life worth of cards is not a rarity right now. You just have to be mindful of Lightning Bolts, and/or Galvanic Blast.

Ad Nauseaming on end step is also a huge play against decks that tend to run Force of Negation as one of their main piece of interaction in the early game.

The playstyle of the deck is pretty straight forward, the deck has very few deterministic kills going off from most hands, so you just have to go off and pray to the lords of chaos. A good hand to go off from usually has either Psychic Puppetry and a couple of Arcane spells, or Twiddle effects and Ad Nauseam. Of course this is considering you already have a Lotus Field on board. When going off, there are usually two parts to storming:

-Getting either to PiF or Ad Nauseam mana + U (since your 'rituals' only cost 1 U to continue storming after resolving either)

-Finding the Grapeshot to kill the opponent

The first part guarantees often that you'll have enough storm to kill the opponent, and it also allows you to wheel completely through your deck if you have gotten enough Arcane Spells.

The second part is just the completion of the deck's plan: kill the opponent through lethal Grapeshot.

This means that before finishing part 1 do not try to touch the Grapeshots, and prioritize wheeling through your deck to get to PiF or Ad Nauseam mana + U.

When cantripping in the setup turns, prioritize finding Lotus Field, and then Psychic Puppetry. You have a lot more possibilities with Lotus Field on board, but much less with only Psychic Puppetry in hand. If the deck was a machine, Lotus Field would be the main wheel without which the deck wouldn't function, and Puppetry the handle of the wheel. You can make the wheel turn without the handle, but you can't use the handle to turn a wheel that is not here.

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For the sideboard, I think that with this deck it is very possible to beat decks which only method of interaction with you is discard like Jund. So I try to focus on beating decks with a lot of counterspells, or which can restrict our Storm Count quite substantially.

I find Hope of Ghirapur to be quite good here, as those decks tend to sideboard out removal, and do not really want to spend a counterspell on it. But as we can see with Captain Ranger of Eos, such effects can be completely broken in Modern, in the right circumstances. A playset is the number I settled on, but it may be better to play only 3 since the first is usually the only one needed.

(On that note, I feel that Modern is becoming more and more a format where not allowing your opponent to interact is key: Dovin's Veto, T3feri, Captain Ranger, Abrupt Decay, Narset etc..., but maybe that is just me)

The idea is to either force the opponent to spend resources on Hope itself, or have it win the game for us, just like Xanthid Swarm does in ANT in Legacy, or Hope itself does for TES (Hope is used in TES mostly due to the usage of Mox Opal).

I also look to beat hate which mostly presents itself in the form of Damping Sphere which disables both our spells and Lotus Field. Hence the high amount of artifact hate.

With Empty the Warrens being a bad card currently (with it facing badly Batterskulls, or Plague Engineer), I have decided to forego it entirely. Aria of flame has also felt underwhelming in this deck, mostly because it cannot go down consistently on turn 3, due to us wanting to find Lotus Field. So as an alternate win con, I have settled on a little favorite of mine, and a card that made one of the most memorable moment of Magic: Ignite Memories. With Big Mana decks making a comeback, and decks getting a higher curve due to the slowing of the format I think that the card can be good enough right now.

Otherwise you can play Precognition Field in its place.

I find the case of Precognition Field to be interesting, on one hand it is a very good card against discard decks, and its 3rd ability allows you to grind much better by having better selection. However at a cmc of 4, it is pretty costly, especially since the deck doesn't want to get to 4 mana usually, and is often more disrupted by land affecting effects like Damping Sphere or Alpine Moon, so the 4th mana can be very elusive.

Pieces of the Puzzle, the traditional sideboard option for Gifts Storm is also a possibility, but I have a feeling it doesn't play as well in the deck.

The last possibility is to play Leylines of Sanctity to completely blank discard, but I have a tendency to prefer proactive cards in decks like storm, which can actively give an edge in other matchups and not just discard spells, to which we are already a bit more resilient to than most other combo decks naturally.

Maybe this is the wrong way to proceed, but I'll stick to my guns for now.

The one thing we agree on is that the deck is still a work in progress: it does indeed very powerful things, and quite ridiculous things too, but it too often lacks consistence, and is very able to lose to itself. We just do not know which card in Modern's immense cardpool is THE ONE for our deck.

I'll keep you all updated, until then, take care, and look out for those stormy clouds!