Much Abrew: Waste Not Storm (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Techs, our spicy Modern combo list Waste Not Storm came out on top. As such, we're heading to Modern this week to see if we can use Waste Not as a game-ending combo piece in a deck that's looking to storm off and win in one big turn by making a ton of Zombie tokens. The trick to the deck is to make sure that we're not just making our opponent discard cards to trigger Waste Not but also making them draw cards too, so they always have something to discard. How practical is the plan of storming off with Waste Not in Modern? Let's get to the video and find out; then, we'll talk more about the deck!
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Much Abrew: Waste Not Storm (Modern)
Discussion
- As for the record, we ended up going 3-2, which is pretty reasonable for a very off-the-radar deck.
- The best part of the deck is the power of Waste Not itself. While not quite as efficient as traditional Storm, if we untap with a Waste Not on the battlefield, it is pretty easy to play through a big chunk of our deck and make a ton of mana and a million Zombie tokens all in one big turn to win the game.
- Heading into the matches, I was a bit worried about finding Waste Not, since our deck doesn't really do anything without the namesake enchantment on the battlefield. The good news is that after playing the deck a bunch, I found this really isn't a problem. The combination of Faithless Looting and Burning Inquiry is great for helping us churn through our deck and find Waste Not with some consistency.
- As far as the rest of the deck, the core cards are Burning Inquiry and Wistful Thinking, since these cards allow us to generate Waste Not triggers even when our opponent is empty handed by forcing them to draw cards (and then discard them). Burning Inquiry is the best of the bunch, and even if we can't get a Storm kill, being able to Burning Inquiry and then Snapcaster Mage to flash back Burning Inquiry often generates enough value to win us the game.
- The other key piece of the deck is Dream Salvage, which is an absurdly powerful card-draw spell. Ideally, we'll wait until after we have a Waste Not, cast a bunch of Burning Inquiry and Wistful Thinkings, and then use Dream Salvage to draw a new hand for one mana, although one of the sneaky lines of the deck is to cast Burning Inquiry on Turn 2 and follow it up with Dream Salvage as an Ancestral Recall for card advantage. Thanks to Snapcaster Mage and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, we can get away with casting combo piece early in the game for value, knowing that we can flash them back from the graveyard later after we find a Waste Not.
- While in general I liked the deck, two things specifically drove me crazy in our matches. First, we often ran into a bottleneck on non-black mana. When we combo off with Waste Not, we often end up with 10 or even 20 black mana floating but some blue or red cards that we want to cast. Passing and letting the mana go to waste is painful. One possible solution would be to add Manamorphose to the deck, as a way to turn some of our black Waste Not mana into whatever color of mana we need.
- The second part of the deck that concerns me is our plan for finishing the game. While we can win with Waste Not making a bunch of Zombie tokens in some matchups (where our opponent has a lot of creatures), if we run into creature-light decks, our main plan for winning the game is Empty the Pits. While Empty the Pits is a fine finisher, the problem is that we often have to cast it during our main phase to use our Waste Not mana, which give our opponent a turn to untap and cast some sort of sweeper. If they do sweep our board, it's really hard to cast a second Empty the Pits (with the help of Snapcaster Mage or Jace, Vryn's Prodigy), since we normally delve away all of our graveyard to cast the first copy. While I think one copy of Empty the Pits is fine, I'd like to find room for one more finisher, perhaps something like Grapeshot or Empty the Warrens, both of which work better with our flashback creatures. If we end up going on the Empty the Warrens plan, we could even play a Goblin Bushwhacker (or Reckless Bushwhacker) or two as a way to win the game right away—a plan that doesn't work with Empty the Pits, since the Zombies enter the battlefield tapped.
- So, should you play Waste Not Storm? While I think the list can be tightened up and improved, even in its current state, I think the answer is yes. While it's likely not a tier deck in the Modern format, it's certainly good enough to win a lot of games. When you combine that with being super unique and fun to pilot, it seems like a solid lower-tier option with enough power to compete at the FNM level for sure and, with tuning, maybe even steal some wins in more competitive environments.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Don't forget to vote for next week's deck by liking, commenting on, and subscribing to Instant Deck Tech videos! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.