"Harness The Storm: Spellslingers Delight"

"Harness The Storm: Spellslingers Delight"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

When I was still working in Accenture we often had games in the Pantry and one of the decks that I would often face is my friend June Bhryans Overkill Burn deck.The deck was a fun albeit simple one. The only thing you would find in it were red spells that were meant to zap your opponents dead. After being Overkilled a couple of times I made my own version of the deck and went on a spellswinging spree.

Bang Bang Bang Zap Zap Zap. Boom. Dead. Is how our games normally progressed. The point was to shoot the other red mage dead first and it was a lot of non calculated fun. We draw a card. Cast for damage and wait for the next person who would be drawing and casting another burn spell. Games were fast and furious. All around us would be players sludging on with their own battles while we probably finished games 5 more times than them. It never got old.

If June Bhryan ever rebuilt his deck or I rebuilt mine I would definitely add Harness the Storm. I mean the ability to cast a spell from the graveyard again and again without it being exiled. So if you do the math a little bit casting a 1 red mana Lightning Bolt for 3 and paying another red mana for a copy of the same card for 3 more damage! 6 freaking damage! And if you have 3 Lightning Bolts in the graveyard and 4 mana. It would be a total of 12 damage!

In essence you could L-Bolt an opponent to death.

1st Lbolt - 3 damage!

2nd Lbolt + 1 Lbolt in the GY - 6 damage!

3rd Lbolt +2 Lbolt in th GY - 9 damage!

4th Lbolt +3 Lbolt in the GY - 12 damage!

And that all adds up to 30 Lightning Bolt Damage! Ah Ah Ah Ah!

And all you need is just 4 mana! And assuming you draw the 4 Lbolts you just need 4 turns.(One can dream). And yes it is not feasible unless you found a way to cast the Harness the Storm on turn One. Still with this kind of damage one will always dream. I know there are a lot of you out there who could probably figure this one out. 

And for something really evil in Standard you could also try milling your opponent for 13 cards per pop with the card Startled Awake.

1st Startled Awake - Mill 13 cards

2nd Startled Awake + 1 Startled Awake in GY - 26 cards

3rd Startled Awake + 2 Startled Awake in GY - 39 cards

That is a total of 78 cards! And a standard deck only has 60 cards!

Granted that you need 12 mana to pull off the last milling but heck like I said a few sentences ago one can dream. 

Wait there is more to this as well. Think about Storm. And the Card Brain Freeze! It gets really crazy.

1st Brain Freeze - 3 cards

2nd Brain Freeze + 1 Brain Freeze in GY - 6 mill + 3 more to storm count = 9 cards

3rd Brain Freeze + 2 Brain Freeze in GY - 9 mill + 9 more to Storm count = 18 cards

4th Brain Freeze + 3 Brain Freeze in GY - 12 mill + 18 more to Storm count - 30 cards

And that is a total of 60 cards! And this doesn't count the initial 7 card draw and the succeeding 1 card draw per turn. 

Innistrad is proving to be a very exciting block. Time for another Spellslinging Overkill or Milling Overkill deck to be born.