What's up, Wizards? It's time for Rule Zero, the show that helps you prepare for the best game of Commander. It is our hope that through our combined 20 plus years of experience playing EDH, cultivating a great playgroup, tons of great decks, and also trying a lot of outside the box variants and homebrew rules, that we can pass that golden knowledge on to you. This week, we are tackling something that is very particular to Bloomboro. Replacing humans with animals. It's a conspiracy actually. No, it is just Alania divergent storm. Now I have never made a storm deck, but inspired by these electrical otters. I have decided to try my hand at building blue red, particularly since we had a listener early on max, who asked us to look at Alania, I believe was the commander they were interested in. And so. This one's for you, Max, and we're gonna do it big. We are making this deck themed along the lines of a film from 1996, Twister, starring Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, other people, Carrie Elwes, a cow that flies around in circles, a barn. Tornadoes, trucks, a little compass thing, or whatever you call it, that spins around on the roof of a house. All that stuff and more will be present inside this deck, except turned into otters, hopefully, or perhaps into a different type of vehicle. And the goal is two. Get out thousand year storm,'cause that's what that movie was all about. We are trying to find the biggest, the meanest, the scariest storm we can possibly find. And we're gonna release a ton of little things into the air, which in our case will be lots of spells on the stack. And then we will end the game with perhaps a crow storm or something similar. So, strap in, put your seatbelts on, whatever you need to do to survive this, here we go. As we do with all of our deck techs here at Rule Zero Podcast, we will discuss what type of deck we're building, play patterns, or how do you want your early game to look, highlights and great cards within the deck, combos, and more. Non bows, or strategies that might be traps, and finally, a wrap up discussing why you should build this commander. First, let's introduce Alania, and then some of her otter friends on top of that. Alania Divergent Storm, for three, a blue and a red, a 3 5 legendary creature otter wizard. Whenever you cast a spell, if it's the first instant spell, the first sorcery spell, or the first otter spell, other than Alania you've cast this turn, you may have target opponent draw a card. If you do copy that spell, you may choose new targets for the copy. So Alania has this sort of built in clause where it has to be the first instant, the first sorcery, or the first otter. So you're not able to make Infinite copies with Alania, but that's okay because Alania is just the figurehead. We're going to be casting some otters. We're going to be casting plenty of instants and sorceries. So we're going to be able to gift out these cards for goodwill and then also take advantage by copying our own draw spells, etc. So, who else is rounding out the storm chasing crew besides Alania? We have Rauh Crackling Wit for 2 colorless, a blue and a red, legendary planeswalker. Whenever you cast a non creature spell, put a loyalty counter on Rauh Crackling Wit. He starts off with 4 automatically. Plus 1 is create a 1 1 blue and red otter creature token with prowess. Great. Negative 3, draw 3 cards, then discard 2 cards. Negative 10 the ultimate draw three cards you get an emblem with instant and sorcery spells you cast have storm Important to recognize that the turn you play ral you could potentially ultimate ral if you have some kind of Infinite combo going which this deck does run two of and I'm going to go over in detail Next creature in our van that's chasing down tornadoes is none other than storm catch mentor blue and a red one one You Otter Wizard with haste and prowess. Instant and sorcery spells you cast cost one less to cast. Just cost reducer. We're not actually running the Goblin Electromancer that reduces cast because we're just trying to focus on the flavor of otters, but you are more than welcome to if you would like. We have another cost reducer and this is Rau in human form. Rau, Monsoon Mage, one and a red, a 1 3 legendary creature human wizard. Starts off on the top, instant and sorcery spells, you cast cost one less to cast. Then, whenever you cast an incident or sorcery spell during your turn, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, Rau Monsoon Mage deals 1 damage to you. If you win the flip, you may exile Rau, and if you do, return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner's control. So, When you flip Rau, you get Rau, Leyline, Prodigy, a Planeswalker with two loyalty. Rau, Leyline, Prodigy enters the battlefield with an additional loyalty counter for each instant and sorcery spell you've cast this turn. So you could, the storm count could help him, uh, become stronger. Then for plus one, until your next turn, instant and sorcery spells you cast cost one less to cast, so it's just the static ability on the front side, but it's a plus, that's fine. Minus two, Ral deals two damage divided as you choose among one or two targets. Draw a card if you control a blue permanent other than Ral. Fine, kind of. Negative eight. Exile the top eight cards of your library. You may cast instant and sorcery spells from among them this turn without paying their mana costs. Pretty solid, more solid in a deck that actually plays a lot of very expensive spells. Whereas ours is more focused on the lower cost. However, there are some big ones in there. We'd be happy to cast for free. But mostly I like Ralph for the front side. I just have him in here as another mana reducer. And he does turn into an otter in the story. And we have his otter planeswalker form already in the deck. Next otter we're running. Thunder trap trainer for one and a blue, a one, two with. Offspring four offspring is this mechanic where you can create a double basically a smaller token version of the same card for that cost So for two mana you get a one two that as it enters look at the top four cards of your library May reveal a non creature not only a card from among them and put it into your hand But the rest on the bottom of the library in a random order But for six mana, you could have that effect happen twice in a row. So you get to look at the top eight instead. Not bad. Harnesser of Storms is another otter wizard, a 1 4. Whenever you cast a non creature or otter spell, you may exile the top card of your library until end of turn. You may play that card. This ability triggers only once each turn. Note that is not just your turn. So if you're casting an instant spell on somebody else's turn or flashing in an otter perhaps, then you get to have this trigger on other people's as well. So it just digs you into the deck a little further. I'll take it. And lastly, but not least we have storm splitter without further ado. Storm splitter is for three and a red, a one, four otter wizard with haste. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery, create a token. That's a copy of storm splitter. Exile that token at the beginning of the next day. So basically, if you want to end the game, you could do it with Crowstorm, which we have an option to do, or you could just do it with Stormsplitter, because there's several ways where we're going to cast the same instant of sorcery over and over and over and over and over again, infinite amount of times. Game over. Let's shuffle up and play. We know the theme of the deck is Storm. We know that our play pattern is going to involve some amount of holding up mana, casting instant speed spells, drawing cards, and trying to stay alive. Basically, as long as we need to in order to storm off with either Thousand Year Storm or two of the combos that I'm going to mention, um, here in just a second. These are cards that are going to be fun to play. Some are very flashy staples that have seen a lot of EDH play before, and some, not so much. Either way, they all fit the form and function of this deck and we'll make it a lot more rip roaring of a ride. First up, we're going to highlight some of the removal package or the package that allows you to stay alive until you can storm off. First up, we have devastation tide. It has a giant tornado on the front. It is a miracle sorcery. So for three and two blue, you can return all non land permanents to their owner's hands. Or if you pay it's miracle costs, which is a mechanic from back in the day that says you may cast this card for its miracle costs when you draw it. If it's the first card you have drawn this turn and so that miracle cost is not five mana But instead one colorless and a blue very cheap effective spell But you have to choose to reveal it and then and then cast it When you rip it off the top of your deck at the start of your turn then we have rivers rebuke a classic Classic staple, which some people think is a little mean, but in a deck that's all about storms and the elements just raging. I thought it was just fine for, and to blue for sorcery return, all non land permanence target player controls to their owner's hand. So you're really kind of picking on somebody here. And I would hope that as you play this, what you do is you're able to find a lane in which you can pick on the person you're about to kill. And that way it's a little less feel bad than just like blowing up their board for no reason. Next up, Cyclonic Rift. It's in here. Of course it is. For one and a blue instant return target non land permanent you don't control to its owner's hand, or you can overload it to do that for every single non land permanent you don't control for six and a blue. Everyone loves this card, right? Next up, we have another little spell that's gonna allow you to survive. And that is none other than Evacuation. What's better for like a tornado drill than Evacuation? It's literally in the movie. It happens right in the very first 10 minutes. So we have 3 and 2 blue for an instant speed spell. Return all creatures to their owner's hands. Your creatures are fairly cheap, and you're just trying to dissuade folks from attacking at you. You're gonna have some counterspell magic and stuff as well within the deck, if you want to look up the list on Moxfield. However, a lot of your creature removal is just this sort of bounce effect. You're trying to temporarily Solve the problem. It is not solving the problem permanently, however, and you need to be very conscious of that and only casting one of these when you're really needing to moving on a couple more highlights that I wanted to point out in the film, there is sort of this academic versus rogue sentiment. It's sort of like, well, you have the storm chasers who are funded by a university and they are competing against Bill Paxton, Helen hunt, and they're sort of more rogue. Uh, working class operation. So I've put another storm chasing team in the deck. Funnily enough, y'all are both working to find the thousand year storm. And so it kind of fits flavorfully, even though they are competing technically, they're both chasing the same storm, both trying to do the same thing. They're just trying to do it faster than the other. And this team is comprised of humans and much more academic humans. And that team is led by none other than Bergy, God of Storytelling. We have Legendary Creature God for two and a red. Whenever you cast a spell, add a red. Until end of turn, you don't lose this mana as steps and phases end. Creatures you control can boast twice during each of your turns rather than once. That doesn't mean anything in this deck. However, um, what we care about is when you cast those spells, you get a red mana and you don't lose that mana as phases end. So. You're going to keep this floating red mana that will help you sort of storm off. Another card that's going to help is another member of the enemy crew Stella Lee wild card for one, a blue and a red, a two, four legendary creature, human rogue. Whenever you cast your second spell each turn, exile the top card of your library until the end of your next turn, you may play that card. You can tap steadily to copy target instant or sorcery spell you control, and you may choose new targets for the copy activate only if you cast three or more spells this term. Another player we have on their team is Archmage Emeritus, the more academic side. For 2 and 2 blue, we have a 2 2 human wizard with Magecraft. Whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, draw a card. Gonna keep that handful. And finally, we have a Veyran, a voice of duality. A 2 2 Ifrit wizard, for one, a blue and a red legendary creature. And With Magecraft, whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, Veyran, Voice of Duality, gets plus one, plus one until end of turn. If you are casting or copying an instant or sorcery spell, and it causes a triggered ability of a permanent you control to trigger, that ability triggers an additional spell. So that will occasionally come into play, for instance, with Bergy. So if casting a spell causes you to have one red mana with Bergy, now it will trigger an additional time and it will give you two red mana. If casting a spell causes you to draw a card with Archmage Emeritus, that means you go ahead and get two cards. And lastly, We'll go ahead and highlight another creature that is sort of a pet favorite of mine. Mana form Hellkite. 2 and 2 red. Uh, dragon 4 4 flying. Whenever you cast a non creature spell, create an XX Red Dragon Illusion creature token with flying and haste. Where X is the amount of mana spent to cast that spell. That's pretty cool. Exile the token at the beginning of the next instep. This is another thing, just like storm splitter earlier. It allows you to have a bunch of hasted flying attackers that you can go infinite with perhaps, and just win the game. So in this next section, I want to talk to you about two topics that I think are really important. One is the combos that are in the deck. There are two of them and we want to let you know how they work and kind of explain how they work because there is nothing worse than getting to a table and trying to kind of fiddle and fidget and not really know how the combo works. It feels bad for you. It feels bad for the others at the table. And the second topic we're going to talk about is also how to prevent feel bads at the table, yours and your friends. By keeping track of mana and also keeping track of storm count. And so I'll post an image of how pro players often keep track of storm count in tournaments, where it's important that you have not only timeliness, but also a clear recognition of what's on the table for you and your opponents and everyone else. The first combo we want to tackle is a classic. I love that we get to play this card. It feels disastrous in itself. It starts with high tide for one blue mana, instant speed until end of turn. Whenever a player taps an Island, For mana, that player adds an additional blue mana. Next up, we have Archaomancer. For 2 and 2 blue, a human wizard 1 2. When Archaomancer enters the battlefield, return target instant or sorcery from your graveyard to your hand. Third piece is snap an instant for one and a blue return target creature to its owner's hand. Untap up to two lands. So the way this combo works, and we're going to talk about it because it's super important is we're going to number one, have at least five untapped islands. We need to have blue mana available and they need to be islands because that is what high tide allows to make extra First step we're going to cast high tide by paying one blue causing islands to add an additional blue this turn second We're going to activate two islands by tapping them, adding four blue. Then we're going to cast Archaomancer by paying two colorless and two blue. Archaomancer enters the battlefield, returning that high tide from your graveyard to your hand. You activate another island by tapping it, adding two blue. You cast high tide by paying one, causing islands to add an additional one blue this turn. Then you activate an island by tapping it, adding three blue. You cast snap by paying one colorless and a blue returning Archaomancer from the battlefield to your hand and untapping two of those islands. You activate two islands by tapping them, adding six blue. You cast Archaomancer paying four of that. Archaomancer enters the battlefield returning snap from your graveyard to your hand. And then you repeat from the point where you cast snap, return the Archaomancer, untapped two lands. Every single time you're creating extra mana. The results are going to be infinite, infinite, enter the battlefield triggers and you're done. Infinite leave the battlefield triggers an infinite storm count. So if you have anything on the battlefield that allows that storm count to pay off, for instance, you have storm splitter Uh creating tokens of itself or manaform hell kite creating tokens of itself Um, then you are going to be able to win the game right there The second combo we want to highlight actually includes the card that inspired the whole deck in the first place, thousand year storm. It is a four card combo, and that includes one other card also. So really it's kind of five, but it gets a little complicated and that's why it's important to know these things before you ever enter, uh, the game store. hoping to play this thing. The cards this combo includes include Memory Lapse, one in a blue colorless instant counter target spell. If that spell is countered this way, put it on top of its owner's library instead of into that player's graveyard. Very important that it goes on top. Storm Kiln Artist, three in a red. This thing combos it. If you sneeze on it, it's a Dwarf Shaman Tutu. It gets plus one, plus zero for each artifact you control. Don't care that much. However, Magecraft, whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell, create a treasure token. So we're not really going to save those treasure, but we are going to be able to make mana that we can then use to combo off with those treasures. Next up, we have Future Sight, an enchantment for two and three blue. It says, Play with the top card of your library revealed. You might be noticing why that's important. You may play the top card of your library even more important. And the final piece is Thousand Year Storm. You pay four, a blue and a red for an enchantment. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, copy it for each other instant and sorcery spell you've cast before at this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies. So. What we need to have happen before we ever even start this combo is we need to have a memory lapse in hand or in library, but in access from like the future site being on the table, we need to have storm kiln, thousand year storm and future site on the table. We need to have cast at least one instant or sorcery this turn and have one colorless and one blue available to memory lapse it. Or we could wait for an opponent to cast a spell. When that happens. When we cast the spell or they cast the spell, we hold priority. If we need to, we cast memory lapse, either from our hand or from the top of the library, by paying that to, we target the spell that was originally cast thousand year storm and storm kiln artists trigger. We resolve the storm kiln artist trigger, creating that extra treasure. We resolve the thousand year storm trigger, creating at least one copy of memory lapse with each copy targeting the original memory lapse. Stormkill and Artist triggers for each copy made this way, creating at least one treasure token. We resolve that first copy of Memory Lapse, countering the original Memory Lapse and putting it on top of the library. All remaining copies of Memory Lapse fizzle due to having no illegal target. We activate two treasures by tapping and sacrificing them. We add two blue mana. We repeat from step two, which was holding priority, casting memory labs from our hand or from the top of the library targeting the original spell. What this results in is infinite colored mana. We can use that for a crackle with power. We can use it for, um, I don't know, use your imagination, whatever you would like to pick. We get infinite mage craft triggers. We could literally draw our own deck out with archmage emeritus this way, right? But we're not playing, um, anything like a Thassa's Oracle or anything that would allow us to win with no library. So I wouldn't recommend that one for, for this build. We get infinite storm count so we can win with crow storm. It's an uncard you'll have to rule zero it, but I don't think anybody should be too upset about it because the storm cards that are actually legal are scarier. And we get infinite treasure tokens from this so we'll have enough spells that were your storm kiln harness could potentially I guess become totally enormous and swing in for a hit on its own that can take one person out. Like I said these combos are pretty complicated so it's important that as you're tracking storm count and mana and all these other things you need to have a couple tokens that are helpful. I would suggest you have a basic island that you really think is awesome looking, something really cool and memorable that you're able to put on the top of your board With dice on top of it that are very clear Maybe like those spin down d20s where it's very easy to take them up and you do the same for red mana You also want to have a storm count card. And for this, you could use something like an infinite token. A piece of paper is not as recommended because it wastes time. You should have this kind of already in your deck box when you're playing this deck. Like here's my storm count card. You can even kind of flavorfully customize it or something like that. If there's something that you really enjoy, maybe like a Pokemon electron bolt, or I don't play Pokemon. I'm sorry. You know what I'm talking about. So you can use something like that, um, to represent here's the storm count and you're going to need to keep taking all of these things off as you're playing this. So you got to get really good at being like up one, up one, up one, up one, up one, constantly like moving as you're casting and counting spells. Once you can demonstrate sort of a loop or an infiniteness to this, the playgroup should be. If they're awesome and casual, like we hope they are, should allow, okay, fine, we see you win. What's your payoff? You know, how are you going to win? Um, with this infinite amount of spells, infinite mana, and as long as you can show them what it is, let's move on to another game. Now I know combos can sometimes be controversial in magic, but I think you're going to have plenty of fun with this deck, even if you don't try to do the infinite combo route. However, Sometimes a game goes long, boards get to standstills, and you just want to be in a new game. Maybe you want to try a different deck. Maybe other people are getting a bored look on their face. And in those times, that is when Storm can be the hero. So don't be scared to whip this out. I mean, it's going to take some work. It's going to take some doing. I might even suggest printing out something from this really great website called commander spellbook. com where you can find these combos at, and it explains it step by step don't feel ashamed or scared of combo. It just takes some time. And once you do it a couple of times, you will know it like the back of your hand and you know, it's a great way to end the game, go for it. That does it for Alania and the storm chasers. I hope you had a blast with the deck I did in making it. Um, it was sort of a first for me. I don't build storm often. I think maybe I've put together some storm constructed decks, but not necessarily storm commander decks in the past, and so straight up blue, red storm with a hint of fuzzy otter. Was just what I needed. And then we added a pinch on top of that, of bad movie from the nineties and I was sold. And the truth of the matter is there's so many more wild cards that are in the 99. I hope you take a look at the Moxfield page and heck, if you have great suggestions, leave them in the comments below. I'm sure, um, I will appreciate them. Or any other listener who's thinking about building Blue Red Storm would appreciate them as well. I want to remind everyone that I'm going on vacation, hopefully away from cell phone coverage, so if I don't respond to things either via email or by the YouTube channel, don't fear, don't fret. It is just because I am away in the ancient wilderness, hopefully relaxing for a bit. But I'm not going to leave you all in the lurch. I have been stockpiling a couple episodes on the back end. And so I'm going to have two box openings. And in addition to that, I'm hoping to have two regular episodes that come out on the Sunday or Monday release schedule, depending on whether or not you listen to the podcast. Or the YouTube version itself. One of those, the next one coming up is going to be with me and another member of the play group, Jude, who put together a Sheldon Minnery tribute deck with none other than the Sheldon Minnery card, AKA Ruhan of the Fomori. It is a, you did this to yourself deck. And if you don't know what that means. Take a second, Google it. It's a really funny play style and I enjoy it quite a bit. So we had a really good time talking about the card selection and the deck things you can do with it, play styles, how to win with a deck where you're really depending on throwing other people's stuff back at them. Um, it's a blast. So. In closing, you can follow us on Twitter at Rule Zero Podcast, or you can email us at RuleZeroPodcast at gmail. com. If you enjoyed this deck or others, be sure to check it out on the Moxfield page where we link all the decks we talk about. And if you would like for us to highlight one of your decks, we would love to just reach out and don't forget in magic, there is no problem that a Rule Zero conversation cannot solve.