Much Abrew: Marvelous Dragonstorm (Modern)

Tweet by SaffronOlive // Jul 17, 2017

Much Abrew About Nothing modern video

Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. Last week during our Instant Deck Tech, it was our Wildcard Wednesday offering—Marvelous Dragonstorm for Modern—that came out on top. This wasn't a big surprise because the deck is pretty crazy and stuffed full of a ton of ways to cheat Dragonstorm into play and then a ton of Dragons to tutor up with Dragonstorm to win the game. The challenge with the deck is that its plans are scattered, and while they all focus on letting us cast Dragonstorm, they don't necessarily work well with each other. Can we draw the right cards in the right order to get some Dragonstorm wins? Let's get to the videos and find out; then, we'll talk a bit about the deck!

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Marvelous Dragonstorm (Instant Deck Tech)

Marvelous Dragonstorm vs. Blue Steel (Match 1)

Marvelous Dragonstorm vs. Bogles (Match 2)

Marvelous Dragonstorm vs. Jeskai Control (Match 3)

Marvelous Dragonstorm vs. GR Ponza (Match 4)

Marvelous Dragonstorm vs. WB Solemnity (Match 5)

Marvelous Dragonstorm (Wrap-Up)

Discussion

All in all, we finished with a 2-3 record, which obviously isn't great, but it sounds about right for a deck that looked very much Against the Odds.

The issues with the deck are numerous, but a lot of them are also unavoidable if the goal is to make Dragonstorm work.

Maybe the most pressing issue is that our plans don't really work together. The Aetherworks Marvel energy plan doesn't really work with the Spelltwine graveyard plan, which doesn't especially synergize with the Lotus Bloom ramp plan. This often leaves us in situations where we draw parts of each plan and our deck doesn't do anything.

As for the Aetherworks Marvel plan, we are a bit lacking in energy sources because so much of our deck is dedicated to Dragons and our other plans. We sometimes have trouble getting the six needed for our first Aetherworks Marvel spin, and if we happen to whiff on that spin, we are unlikely to find enough energy for another one for a few turns.

The Spelltwine plan has its own problem: we need our opponent to have an instant or sorcery in their graveyard, and while it might sound strange, this doesn't always happen in Modern. For example, Spelltwine was basically a dead card when we played against Bogles. One possible solution is to simply replace Spelltwine with more copies of Sins of the Past, which doesn't require a specific card type in the opponent's graveyard to work.

Finally, as for the Lotus Bloom ramp plan, we simply don't have enough other ramp for it to be consistent. Even if we have a Lotus Bloom on Turn 1, we won't be hardcasting Dragonstorm until at least Turn 6, which is just way too slow for Modern.

As weird as it sounds, another issue is that our Dragonstorm deck has too many expensive Dragons. We need somewhere between two and three Dragons to win with Dragonstorm, depending on the situation, so having a total of nine in our deck is a bit excessive. Plus, some of the Dragons are pretty bad. For example, it's hard to imagine a situation where we'd want to tutor up Nicol Bolas, and hard casting it (and keeping it alive for long enough to do anything) seems impracticable. It seems like the deck would have run better if about half of our Dragons were replaced with interactive cards like Path to Exile or Thoughtseize.

As for the sideboard, as a five-color deck, we should have access to all of the best sideboard cards in Modern, but instead, our plan is a bit confusing and not quite clear. It seems like the main idea is to transform into a Dragon midrange deck, which isn't a bad plan but leaves us with no room for interaction. Maybe the most frustrating part of the entire deck was realizing that, including both the main deck and the sideboard, we simply don't have a way to answer something like Solemnity, and discounting expensive Dragons like Bogardan Hellkite, we can't even kill a problematic creature.

I've talked before about how, no matter how good or bad the deck ends up being, I try to learn at least one thing that I can apply to other decks. So, what was the takeaway from Marvelous Dragonstorm? Dragon midrange beatdown could actually be good. In fact, most of our wins came from simply casting things like Dragonlord Ojutai and Stormbreath Dragon, so maybe some sort of efficient Dragon deck could be worth exploring in the future.

So, the big question is: is it possible to fix Marvelous Dragonstorm? Here, I'm skeptical. This is actually the second Dragonstorm deck we've played on Much Abrew, and both were failures in terms of putting up a winning record. I think the deck can be improved by some of the things we've talked about, like focusing on a single plan, fixing the sideboard, playing less expensive Dragons, and changing Spelltwine to Sins of the Past (assuming that plan is still part of the deck). The problem is that even with these changes, I'm not convinced the deck would be good—it would be better, but it would likely still struggle to put up a winning record. Dragonstorm is just a tough card to make work in a format as powerful and fast as Modern.

So, should you play Marvelous Dragonstorm? For fun, sure, but not if you want to win. That said, if you have some ideas about how we can make a better Dragonstorm deck for Modern, make sure to let me know in the comments. Maybe with our powers combined, we can figure out a way to make the archetype work!

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.