Magic the Gathering

Casual

Rainbow Stairwell — Yawgmoth’s Storm

By Ben Mcdole ⋅ January 12, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅

Step 1) Cast Yawgmoth’s Will.
Step 2) Win Game.

At the end of my last arti­cle I wanted to be able to give a good overview of the rain­bow stair­well deck piloted by Aaron Fortino (one of the own­ers of Armada Games.) Unfor­tu­nately Aaron has taken the deck apart and is look­ing to sleeve up a fresh sixty in the near future. That’s alright though, I’ve been wait­ing to show my combo deck since the for­mat intro­duc­tion article.

The first I heard of the for­mat was from Shel­don Men­ery. As I men­tioned it can be dif­fi­cult to get together enough play­ers for a proper group game of EDH and we needed a diver­sion before the fes­tiv­i­ties so to speak. In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure I was not par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in the idea of rain­bow stair­well at first.

The idea of the for­mat seemed more restric­tive than I usu­ally enjoy. It’s not that I dis­like sin­gle­ton for­mats or even lim­its on con­verted mana cost, the ini­tial deal breaker for me was the mana. There’s noth­ing quite so frus­trat­ing for me as being unable to cast spells because of mana incon­sis­tency. Obvi­ously with the pre­vi­ous deck we got around that con­cern, though that deck was not actu­ally my first foray into the format.

The first deck I con­structed for Rain­bow Stair­well actu­ally came as a chal­lenge from Shel­don. Shel­don chal­lenged me to build a viable combo deck for the for­mat. Chal­lenges like that appeal to me on a num­ber of fronts. I like com­plex card inter­ac­tions and the degree of skill it takes to pilot them cor­rectly. Please note that I’m not say­ing I always have that skill, I just like the interactions!

With the gaunt­let hav­ing been thrown I set to work. Most combo decks require an unfor­tu­nate degree of redun­dancy. It’s very dif­fi­cult to get that redun­dant effect when you can only run one of each card. There sim­ply are not enough func­tional equiv­a­lents of many combo pieces. Since I was not going to be able to build an “old school” combo I had to turn to the most recent trend in com­bos, Storm. I’ve become con­vinced that the eas­i­est way to break a card is have it cost two more and give it storm!

Armed with the world’s most unfair mechanic I set out.

Since we want to get as many spells in a sin­gle turn as pos­si­ble it’s very impor­tant that spells either kill, pro­vide pretty severe card advan­tage or act as a one shot “rit­ual” effect. We can afford to throw a spell away adding noth­ing but mana to our pool if it’s going to enable our ulti­mate goal.

With­out fur­ther delay, let’s take a look at the list I decided on:

Blue

1. 1 Brain­storm
2. 1 Tolar­ian Winds
3. 1 Timetwister
4. 1 Gifts Ungiven
5. 1 Dream Halls
6. 1 Mind’s Desire

Black

1. 1 Vam­piric Tutor
2. 1 Demonic Tutor
3. 1 Yawgmoth’s Will
4. 1 Ten­drils of Agony
5. 1 Promise of Power
6. 1 Yawgmoth’s Bar­gain

Green

1. 1 Fast­bond
2. 1 Man­amor­phose
3. 1 Elvish Spirit Guide
4. 1 Chan­nel the Suns
5. 1 All Suns’ Dawn
6. 1 Recy­cle

Red

1. 1 Rite of Flame
2. 1 Recoup
3. 1 Wheel of Fortune
4. 1 Empty the Warrens
5. 1 Ignite Mem­o­ries
6. 1 Nucklavee

White

1. 1 Enlight­ened Tutor
2. 1 Bal­ance
3. 1 Idyl­lic Tutor
4. 1 Pur­suit of Knowledge
5. 1 Turn the Tables
6. 1 Open the Vaults

Arti­fact

1. 1 Sol Ring
2. 1 Pen­tad Prism
3. 1 Coali­tion Relic
4. 1 Etched Ora­cle
5. 1 Mem­ory Jar
6. 1 Com­pos­ite Golemn

Land

• 1 Bayou
• 1 Over­grown Tomb
• 1 Plateau
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Tun­dra
• 1 Hal­lowed Fountain
• 1 Under­ground Sea
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Taiga
• 1 Stomp­ing Grounds
• 1 Bad­lands
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Scrub­land
• 1 God­less Shrine
• 1 Trop­i­cal Island
• 1 Breed­ing Pool
• 1 Vol­canic Island
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Savan­nah
• 1 Tem­ple Garden
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 City of Traitors
• 1 Reflect­ing Pool
• 1 City of Brass

There are a few omis­sions of note. Ad Nau­seam draws a lot of cards… some­times. In a deck like this Ad Nau­seam rolls the dice in a way that we really can’t afford on a con­sis­tent basis. Another card that feels like a good fit for this deck (or any deck for that mat­ter) is Sensei’s Divin­ing Top. I have opted for the accel­er­a­tion of Sol Ring over the card advan­tage gen­er­ated by the Top, though if you find fewer aggro decks in your area the Top might be the bet­ter call for you.

There are a few rules tips and tricks you can use. If you cast Mind’s Desire and hit Recoup you will be able to Recoup the Mind’s Desire itself! Addi­tion­ally if you Recoup a storm card the card will get storm for all the cards cast that turn includ­ing the Recoup. Mem­ory Jar now has a delayed trig­ger abil­ity that trig­gers at the begin­ning of end of turn step. If you wait until all end of turn trig­gers have occurred on your opponent’s turn you can acti­vate the Mem­ory Jar and keep all the cards until your end step!

There are a few more tricky rules inter­ac­tions. If you have a Dream Halls in play you can­not cast a card with flash­back using both its flash­back abil­ity and the abil­ity of Dream Halls. If you have a Pur­suit of Knowl­edge in play and you Brain­storm skip­ping the draws you would still need to put two cards back (but you would do so before draw­ing the seven!) A final warn­ing comes from Recy­cle. Remem­ber that you do get to draw a card from play­ing a land using recy­cle but you do not get to draw a card from remov­ing Elvish Spirit Guide since you haven’t played a card!

There are a few sug­ges­tions to be made for fix­ing up the deck if you should want to invest the money. My orig­i­nal list included Ances­tral Recall and Time­walk as my blue two and three drop spells. There is noth­ing wrong with hav­ing them and they are cer­tainly bru­tally effec­tive but do not be sur­prised if you find your­self with­out a play group if you use the “unfair” power. It’s also worth con­sid­er­ing Death Wish in the five mana slot and Dimin­ish­ing Returns in the slot over Gift’s Ungiven. The like­li­hood of los­ing all your kill con­di­tions as well as Death Wish is excep­tion­ally low.

In addi­tion to Rain­bow Stair­well and EDH I find myself play­ing Pack Wars and Pack War vari­a­tions quite a bit and so I’d like to dis­cuss them a lit­tle bit. Pack Wars is a very sim­ple for­mat and it can be a ton of fun! All you need are two packs and thirty lands. Sim­ply open a pack, shuf­fle in three of each basic land type, have your oppo­nent do the same and you’re ready to play! Pack Wars offers a great alter­na­tive to sim­ply open­ing a pack and it’s great fun.

As a judge I open a lot of sealed prod­uct. At most of the events I work I take my com­pen­sa­tion for work­ing in booster pack form because it’s just more fun that way. As such typ­i­cal pack wars can be time con­sum­ing to do when you’re open­ing three to four boxes. Since I still love to open boxes the local judges and I have come up with a pack wars vari­ant I’d like to describe.

Each player begins with a pack that they open and remove the token. Any foils get wind­milled face up and start in play. Note that if the foil is a crea­ture it will have haste since you’ve tech­ni­cally con­trolled it since the start of the turn. Each player then plays the game like a nor­mal game of magic except you only begin with one card in hand. Addi­tion­ally each player has infi­nite mana to use and to make the games more inter­est­ing x-spells and x-damage crea­tures (Nan­tuko Shade for exam­ple) are capped at five. That being said, cards that rely on lands and basic lands them­selves cycle. So if you draw a card like Ten­drils of Cor­rup­tion you can cycle it.

That’s it! Go to town!

A few peo­ple have their own rules they like to impose and if you think some­thing would be more fun than change away!

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Join me next week when this odyssey of wacky for­mats con­tin­ues and takes us to the wacky land of Demon Dice. It’s an odd vari­a­tion but it’s one of my favorites! Until next time this is Ben­jamin McDole bring­ing you a hun­dred rea­sons to play magic!

My name is Benjamin McDole and I’m a level 2 judge from Tampa, Florida. When I’m not teaching math at a local college or spending time with my wife I’m usually playing EDH at Armada Games or running some events. My long term goal is to make sure everyone enjoys Magic and especially EDH as much as I do. I’m a member of a few organizations, Team Lives in the Red Zone and the American Association for the Advancement of Pie (I’m the only member!)

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