So I know I’m not the only one whose jaw dropped when the new Jhoira was spoiled. As most of you know, I play a lot of Izzet so I took a crack at brewing. This is pretty rough, but I’d love to get a discussion started about the merits of Jhoira as a storm commander. The image of the card isn’t out yet, but this is what we’re talking about for those in the know:

I know not everyone is into the higher-power aspects of the format, but drawing cards when you cast artifacts screams “storm” to me. I play an Izzet Stax deck that has some storm elements to it, so naturally this got my creative juices flowing. Before we get to talking about Jhoira itself, I’d like to talk about storm decks in EDH, the established storm decks in the competitive meta. After that, we’ll get into where I see Jhoira slotting in and why I made the choices I made during deck construction. For those of you who just want to see my Jhoira list, you can find it here.

I think the most important question to ask for any newly spoiled general when you’re brewing at the top-end of the format is:

Why Would I Play This Over My Other Options?

With that in mind, I’d like to talk about the other options that are available to us in the space:

Sram-Os by HansonWK

I know Sram is a bit of a meme around here, but I think the deck probably feels a little similar to what we’re doing here. Sram’s a very hit-or-miss commander and being mono-white really hurts for a lot of reasons. This deck follows the same pattern of drawing cards incrementally rather than all at once, so we’re likely going to see a lot of overlap in card choices wherever possible. The downside here is there aren’t a ton of cards in a mono-white colour identity that synergize really well with what we’re trying to accomplish.

Sidisi Ad Nauseam Tendrils by Nakhla

The deck moved away from the Tendrils game plan when Aetherflux Reservoir took the throne as the premier storm win condition, but I still find myself calling this deck ANT. Another fringe artifact-based storm deck, Sidisi tends to draw all the cards at once at the expense of life via Ad Nauseam, but it uses the same method of casting artifacts into Aetherflux Reservoir to win.

JVP High Tide by ShaperSavant

High Tide is a spell-based storm variant. It relies on a lot of cantrips, untap effects like Candelabra of Tawnos, and ways to recur its namesake ritual to make a ton of mana and draw a ton of cards. This deck always felt really iffy to me, because – like a few of these other fringe decks – you can’t really tell with 100% certainty whether you’re going to win the game until you’ve cast 10 or 12 spells on your turn. The decision to start storming off is always a little stressful. I included this deck for comparison because it’s blue – unlike Sram and Sidisi – and High Tide/Candelabra is always a possibility.

Mizzix’s Intuition by Nakhla

Starting to get a little closer here. We’re in the same colour identity, but it’s a drastically different storm deck we’re talking about here. Mizzix focuses on cost reduction for instants and sorceries rather than storming off with Cheerios. The ACMC is a little higher than you generally see from storm lists because Mizzix offsets it nicely. Definitely an interesting option if you’re looking for a comparable Izzet storm list, though.

Jeleva Slim by Reversemermaid

You can’t really have a conversation about storm without talking about our Grixis overlords. You’ll sometimes see similar lists under Kess, but Jeleva Slim is undoubtedly one of the (if not the) most powerful storm decks in the format. It’s spell-based, though, so I don’t think there are going to be a ton of similarities to Jhoira. I honestly don’t think this new Jhoira has a chance at usurping either Kess or Jeleva as the storm stalwarts in the format, because access to a third colour – specifically black – brings so much to the archetype. If you’re looking for total and complete optimization, you should be playing one of these rather than dabbling in the fringe decks I’m talking about in this article.

To circle back to the original question, I think these decks paint a picture of why you would want to play this deck:

  • You don’t want to play Grixis Storm for whatever reason, and you’re accepting the fact that your decision to do so means that your deck will be suboptimal. I honestly think there’s a ton of space for innovation in the format and we don’t get there by playing the decks we already know are good.
  • You want to play an artifact-centric storm deck
  • You want access to blue for its artifact synergies, High Tide, filtering, and card advantage

Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain

Without further ado, let’s talk about the deck itself:

 

I started out by ripping my landbase from my Competitive Nin deck. Based on the other storm decks I’m looking at, I think 29-30 lands is going to be the butter zone. I made a slight modification by cutting two basic islands to add City of Traitors and Gemstone Caverns. This deck is aiming to be much faster than my Nin deck, and these lands make for some pretty explosive opening hands. Normally I shy away from Gemstone Caverns, but with a low coloured mana requirement this deck is fine with playing it as a land that taps for {C} ~93% of the time.

From there I started to think about what I’d need to grease the wheels on my storm turn. If you’re familiar with the archetype, you know that the two major things you need are card draw and either mana production or cost reduction.

Card Draw

Rather than having cost reduction in the command zone like you do with Mizzix, Jhoira provides you with a pretty incredible card draw engine that synergizes with our storm plan. In addition to Jhoira, I’ve chosen to include the following sources of card draw.

 

 

There’s nothing too spicy here. Aside from the standard early-game blue stuff we’re got storm all-stars like Chromatic Star/Sphere – which provide filtering and card draw on the storm turn. The package of three wheels and Paradoxical Outcome help to refill the hand either during storm turns or after particularly explosive opening hands.

Mana Production / Cost Reduction

 

This is a pretty standard list of mana rocks, with a storm twist. Chromatic Sphere and Chromatic Star are staples of the storm archetype due to the fact that they replace themselves both in mana production and card draw. I went a little deep on the storm theme by including rituals, and I’m not 100% sure that this is the right decision. The fact of the matter is that this is an all-in combo deck that relies on a 4-mana commander, so trading card advantage for temporary mana production is going to help us get Jhoira out on turn 3 or earlier. Finally, I focused on the cost reduction tools that would also synergize with Jhoira’s artifact synergy.

Win Conditions

At its core, this deck is an Aetherflux Reservoir deck. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Aetherflux Reservoir, the basic goal of the deck is to get to a storm count of 17. Here’s how the life gain table looks assuming you play each of those 17 spells individually (courtesy of Reddit user StalksYouEverywhere):

Spell # Life Gained Total Life Gained
1 1 1
2 2 3
3 3 6
4 4 10
5 5 15
6 6 21
7 7 28
8 8 36
9 9 45
10 10 55
11 11 66
12 12 78
13 13 91
14 14 105
15 15 120
16 16 136
17 17 153
18 18 171
19 19 190
20 20 210

This gets modified slightly if you are able to get multiple spells on the stack at the same time. Casting the spell triggers Aetherflux Reservoir, but the ability only checks how much life you’ll gain as it resolves. This means that if you cast your first spell of the turn, hold priority, and cast your second spell of the turn, each spell will gain you two life when the triggers resolve. With that in mind, we’ve got a small supporting package for this win condition:

 

Shimmer Myr allows us to cut the storm count drastically and even go off on someone’s end step if we have enough mana. The rest of the package consists of tutors and bounce spells that let us recast artifacts for mana production and card draw off of Jhoira.

That being said, it’s generally a good idea to build in a little redundancy. For this role I’ve chosen two infinite combos that are relatively compact:

 

This combo is absolutely awesome. Mox Opal is already a mainstay in this list due to the unusually high artifact count, and Master Transmuter can serve as a way to cheat out big artifacts like Paradox Engine, Krark-Clan Ironworks, and Aetherflux Reservoir. It can also bounce our key artifact pieces in response to removal. The best part about this package is that you can tap Mox Opal for U, activate Master Transmuter (bouncing Mox Opal to hand), and re-cast the Mox Opal, untapping the Master Transmuter and all your other artifacts. This loop allows you to create infinite mana if you have any other mana rocks in play, and draw your deck with Jhoira triggers. It’s important to note, here, that Jhoira’s trigger is not a “may”, so if she’s already in play you’ll deck yourself if you try to make infinite mana. With that in mind, I’ve also included Ashnod’s Altar.

 

This one isn’t anything new. It’s a way to recur and cast artifacts indefinitely and offers similar options as the Master Transmuter / Mox Opal combo above. The cost reduction package greases the wheels a little here, as we don’t necessarily need to have giant mana rocks to enable the combo.

Finally, I’ve chosen to include a single infinite mana outlet in the event that Aetherflux Reservoir is unavailable. Sometimes you just get hit by a Praetor’s Grasp or Gaddock Teeg, or Whir of Invention slams a Pithing Needle in your face when you’re just about ready to activate the fish bowl. Walking Ballista is tutorable off of any of our artifact tutors as well as Tolaria West. It can be used as a 0-drop artifact to trigger Paradox Engine or Jhoira, or we can cast it for X=1 to leave it on board while we storm off and pump infinite mana into it later on in the storm turn.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I’m going to have to do some testing to determine where this deck actually sits in my meta, but I think I like the direction it’s going. This is a deck that’s capable of some pretty explosive starts, and it can win at instant speed if need be. The deck is able to eschew some of the black tutors you’d get in Grixis due to the sheer card velocity that comes from a commander who turns 40% of your deck into cantrips.

This deck probably has a really hard time against some of the established stax decks that run Thalia or Sphere of Resistance effects.

Finally, the deck is really reliant on its commander to function – much like Momir Vig Hackball (a personal favourite of mine). Momir gets around this by playing a fairly robust suite of countermagic, but I like the idea of keeping to the artifact theme.

On the Chopping Block

There are a few pieces of this list that are right on the bubble. These are things that I want to test before making a final decision, but might ultimately get cut after testing.

How the hell did I make it through 2500 words before even mentioning that this deck runs Mana Severance? On the surface, this is one of those cards like One with Nothing that is hilariously bad. That being said, it serves a real purpose in this deck. Once Jhoira is in play, we want to maximize the odds of drawing artifacts to ensure that we can continue to storm off. If we’re at the point where Jhoira is in play, casting Mana Severance for 1U theoretically changes our odds of drawing an artifact from 4/10 to 4/7, which is a significant change. There isn’t a whole lot of land destruction in the competitive meta, so we can generally assume that if we’ve got enough lands in play to cast Jhoira and maybe sacrifice one or two to Chain of Vapor, we’ve got it made in the shade.

Didn’t Make the Cut

 

I started out by including Candelabra, and ended up cutting it because the package to support it involves spells and abilities that untap artifacts, as well as spells and abilities that allow us to recast High Tide more than once. We’re running Paradox Engine as a win condition but I believe with the density of draw and mana rocks that Candelabra would be win more once Paradox Engine is in play. If I were in a meta that really punished nonbasic lands I would probably be a little more motivated to cut nonbasics like the artifact lands and replace them with basic islands, and that would be a great reason to include Candelabra. With this list as it is, though, I don’t foresee ever getting past 3 or 4 islands, which is the point where Candelabra starts to see returns without first casting High Tide two or three times.

I struggled quite a bit with the inclusion of the new Mox that’s dropping in Dominaria – Mox Amber. Make no mistake – I think the card is really good, and it’s generally a good idea to include it in a list that will reliably cast its commander every game. This deck, however, needs its fast mana artifacts to contribute to getting Jhoira out early, and Tezzeret the Seeker is the only other permanent in the list that turns on Mox Amber’s mana production ability. Tezzeret costs more than Jhoira, so we can reasonably assume that this will never accelerate us into Jhoira. That being said, Mox Amber is incredible while you’re actually storming off, and having another 0-drop artifact with some actual utility (rather than something like Zuran Orb or Fountain of Youth) improves our ability to go off while Jhoira is on the battlefield. If you’re considering adding Mox Amber to a list like this, you  need to weigh the benefits of better storm turns against the fact that Mox Amber is essentially dead in your opening hand. I would say the ultimate decision to add or cut Amber is going to be very dependent on how fast your meta is.

Cursed Totem is a really incredible cEDH card in the decks that can run it. It just answers so many threats in the current competitive meta that I believe you need to have a pretty compelling reason to not run it. Keranos Stax runs the Totem because the deck doesn’t rely on activated abilities from creatures. Jhoira is similar in that Jhoira herself doesn’t rely on activated abilities, but the Master Transmuter combo I’ve included does, so Cursed Totem would be a bit of a nonbo. If I were to include Cursed Totem I’d probably slow the deck down considerably, including elements from other established Izzet stax lists that would allow me to stabilize the board and reduce the threat of one of my opponents closing the game out before I’m ready to cast Jhoira. I’d also cut the Master Transmuter combo for another redundant combo, although I’m not sure what that would be.

Countermagic

I could have gone much deeper on a combo protection countermagic suite. Force of Will doesn’t really fit this deck due to the lack of blue cards to pitch to it. I could have included things like Dispel, Negate, and Red Elemental Blast / Pyroblast. For the first draft I really wanted to make sure that I solidified the ability to storm off, so I went a little light on countermagic to reduce the number of dead draws.

 

To Sum Up

I think Jhoira has some potential to occupy some of the same slice of the meta as the spicy brews I listed above. I think it has the potential to compete against most of the decks you might see around a competitive table, but it’s not going to be fast or consistent enough to be the big bad in any metas. If you’re looking to shake things up or you think that a pure storm build might take your meta by storm surprise, I think this one is going to be a fun one to sleeve up.

 


 

That’s it for today! What do you think about Jhoira? Do you have any other thoughts for a storm build like this one, or any ideas for something like U/R stax, or another build entirely? Hit me up in the comments!

2 Responses

  1. Matija Vuk

    Hi, amazing article, I felt in love with new Jhoira artwork and her amazing draw ability just at the moment when I was discovering “storm” stuff in edh and wanted to build Sram deck that focuses on low mana cost (0-1) artifact equipment spells.

    I was wondering, would you include some additional means to your win condition:
    – Ancestral Statue + Mycosynth Golem + Altar of the Brood / Aetherflux Reservoir ?

    And what do you think about easy draw engine via 0 cost artifact equipments too ?
    there’s like 6 of them + XX Sigil of Distinction whom you can pay 0 , that’s powerful draw engine in itself.

    Then what about cards like ?
    – Sculpting Steel
    – Temple Bell

    And some cards that protect your creatures and crucial sorcery / instant spells so your win condition doesn’t get canceled / negated / delayed
    – Boseiju, Who Shelters All
    – Cavern of Souls

    and some additional draw power lands like:
    – Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
    – Sea Gate Wreckage

    I’d like to hear all your opinions on all the mentioned cards why would you include or not include them in your deck 🙂
    And if you have already updated your deck or when you do it, please if its not a trouble , send me a notice to my mail.

    Reply
  2. Matija Vuk

    Hi, amazing article, I felt in love with new Jhoira artwork and her amazing draw ability just at the moment when I was discovering “storm” stuff in edh and wanted to build Sram deck that focuses on low mana cost (0-1) artifact equipment spells.

    I was wondering, would you include some additional means to your win condition:
    – Ancestral Statue + Mycosynth Golem + Altar of the Brood / Aetherflux Reservoir ?

    And what do you think about easy draw engine via 0 cost artifact equipments too ?
    there’s like 6 of them + XX Sigil of Distinction whom you can pay 0 , that’s powerful draw engine in itself.

    Then what about cards like ?
    – Sculpting Steel
    – Temple Bell

    And some cards that protect your creatures and crucial sorcery / instant spells so your win condition doesn’t get canceled / negated / delayed
    – Boseiju, Who Shelters All
    – Cavern of Souls

    and some additional draw power lands like:
    – Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
    – Sea Gate Wreckage

    I’d like to hear all your opinions on all the mentioned cards why would you include or not include them in your deck 🙂
    And if you have already updated your deck or when you do it, please if its not a trouble , send me a notice to my mail , I’d really like to know and be updated for this commander deck, cause I want to bring it to the maximum perfection no matter how much time and money it will cost me to build it ^^

    Reply

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