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Very few mechanics send a shiver down Magic: The Gathering players’ spines quite like storm. When you’re the one pulling it off, a huge storm count can be a thing of beauty, drowning your opponents under a wave of spells. When you’re on the receiving end, it can feel like the ultimate game-ender.

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For such a popular and often-used mechanic, storm is surprisingly complex. Here is everything you need to know about it, including how you can ensure you’re using it correctly.

What Is Storm?

Galvanic Relay by Lucas Staniec
Galvanic Relay by Lucas Staniec

Storm is a triggered ability found on a variety of different spells, but mostly on instants and sorceries. In simple terms, when a spell with storm is cast, you copy it for each other spell cast this turn.

The copies of this spell are placed directly on the stack (and are therefore not themselves cast, preventing storm from triggering further). If that spell required a target, you are allowed to choose new targets for each copy of the spell you’ve made.

Grapeshot

The number of spells cast in a turn is known as the storm count. These spells also don’t need to have resolved – spells that fizzled or were countered are also counted. For example, if seven spells have been cast in a turn, the storm count is currently seven, and any storm spell will be copied seven times in addition to the original storm spell you cast (for a total of eight spells on the stack to resolve).

The player casting the storm spell is expected to keep track of what the storm count is. Make sure you’re considerate of your playgroup by either keeping an accurate tally in your head, or using a d20 dice to track the spells cast that turn.

Keep in mind that ‘spell’ applies to anything you can cast, be it from exile, the Command zone, or your graveyard. Creatures, artifacts, enchantments, Planeswalkers, instants, and sorceries all count as spells, allowing you wrack up a decently high storm count in a turn. Lands, tokens, and abilities are not spells, and are not cast.

Storm spells do not count themselves, only the spells cast before it. However, storm spells also don’t need to resolve to make their copies – just be cast. Even if an opponent counters the original storm spell, the copies will still be on the stack waiting to resolve, making it an incredible tricky mechanic to defend against.

A particularly strong aspect of storm many people miss is that it counts every spell cast that turn, not just your own. If you have an opponent who is throwing lots of spells around, a well-timed storm spell of your own could use their casts to make a much larger number of copies than anticipated.

Aeve, Progenitor Ooze

While storm spells are mostly instants and sorceries, there is one permanent spell with it, too. Aeve, Progenitor Ooze with storm, making copies of itself for each spell that was cast before it. Like whenever you copy a permanent spell on the stack, that copy enters the battlefield as a token.

How To Use Storm

Weather The Storm by Justin and Alexis Hernandez
Weather The Storm by Justin and Alexis Hernandez

Almost every MTG player knows that getting stuff for free is good, and storm takes that concept and stretches it to the limit. Storm is an incredibly powerful mechanic, so much so that numerous storm cards have been banned from formats like Pauper simply for being far too much.

As storm requires quite a large mana investment to be really valuable, decks are often built around it. Decks that use lots of low-cost spells benefit from storm, such as burn decks using things like Lightning Bolt, Lava Coil, Shock, or Lava Dart before following it up with the storm spell Grapeshot.

Tendrils of Agony

Of course, lots of combo decks use storm as a fast win condition. For example, blue/black Zombie decks can use sacrifice outlets and Rooftop Storm to infinitely cast and recast Gravecrawler to build up a massive storm count, before using something like a Brain Freeze or Tendrils Agony to take the win.

A mechanic that works incredibly with storm is Strixhaven’s magecraft. It triggers on whenever a spell is cast or copied, which means they go off not just for your initial spell’s cast, but also for each storm copy it makes. There’s a reason why Veyran, Voice of Duality is such a popular storm commander, as with just a few spells it can become a massive threat and generate huge amounts of value with its trigger-doubling effect.

Countering Storm Spells

Flusterstorm by Chris Rallis
Flusterstorm by Chris Rallis

As mentioned, traditional counterspells like Counterspell or Mana Drain can't deal with a whole stack of storm spells. They can counter one, but the rest will still resolve – often only marginally limiting the impact. However, there are ways of dealing with them.

Flusterstorm is a popular answer, as it itself has storm to deal with each copy. If you use this to counter a storm spell, your storm count will be one higher than theirs, giving you enough copies to counter the entire stack, and one left over for good measure.

Flusterstorm

There’s also Whirlwind Denial, which puts an expensive tax on each copy. This isn't as safe an option as Flusterstorm, as someone with enough mana could just pay their way out of it, but considering how mana-intensive setting up a storm count can be, it's often just as useful.

As storm is a triggered ability, it can even be countered by cards like Stifle and Tale’s End, preventing the copies from ever entering the stack in the first place.

Finally, you could just end the turn. This is an extreme option, but with cards like Obeka, Brute Chronolgist; or Day's Undoing, you can exile the stack completely and prevent those spells from ever resolving.

What Colour Is Storm?

Spreading Insurrection by Johann Bodin
Spreading Insurrection by Johann Bodin

Storm appears incredibly infrequently, despite its popularity. Debuting in 2003’s Scourge, there are only 25 cards with the keyword.

With blue and red being the primary spellslinging colours, it should be no surprise that they are the most prevalent colours for storm cards. There are 11 red, five blue, five green, two black, and two white. There are no multicolour or colourless storm cards.

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