As a lover of Eternal and non-rotating formats, I appreciate the stability afforded by a large, non-rotating card pool. Many Modern players, myself included, appreciate the fact that one can purchase a deck with the knowledge that this investment will be of lasting value. Although the meta-game may shift periodically, a deck that is competitive upon purchase will still be of a similar caliber the following year. Modern's continuously expanding card pool offers stability to an environment, relatively unperturbed by the release of each new expansion.  Nonetheless, each set offers a (typically small) number of individually impressive cards that shake up the Modern format or, at the very least, expand the variety of competitive decks that are available, and Oath of the Gatewatch is no exception. Last week, I reviewed a number of spicy newcomers to Modern that have potential for incorporation into established decks and new brews. Today I'd like to focus on Oath of the Gatewatch's new Izzet spellslinger, Stormchaser Mage and a little-known deck that can make the most of him.

mage

A few months back I started testing with a deck that I found in an article on a Tempo strategy known as iGrow. The deck wins by quickly mounting an overwhelming offense by increasing one's board presence relative to that of its opposition. I won't go into too much detail regarding the theory behind the deck (for that you are welcome to visit the original article, Power Calls: iGrow and Broken Tempo), but I want to talk about the testing that I did with it and my initial conclusions about certain card choices that may now be improved upon.

iGrow (Version 3)- Jordan Boisvert

Spells

4 Day's Undoing

4 Delver of Secrets

4 Disrupting Shoal

4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Monastery Swiftspear

4 Serum Visions

2 Sleight of Hand

4 Tarmogoyf

4 Vapor Snag

4 Young Pyromancer



Lands

1 Breeding Pool

3 Island

4 Misty Rainforest

1 Mountain

1 Sulfur Falls

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Steam Vents

1 Stomping Ground

1 Wooded Foothills



Sideboard

3 Forked Bolt

2 Feed the Clan

2 Snapback

2 Destructive Revelry

2 Threads of Disloyalty

1 Blood Moon

1 Izzet Staticaster

1 Forest

1 Negate



Deck Breakdown

Serum Visionsdays

The Card Selection and Day's Undoing:

This deck has 10 cantrips in the mainboard and the full playset of Day's Undoing, which means the pilot is going to be drawing a lot of cards for little to no mana. The combination of Serum Visions with both Gitaxian Probe and Sleight of Hand means that if there is a card you're trying to dig for, your chances are very good of finding it the turn you want to. Each card you cast is usually pulling double-duty in this deck. With Monastery Swiftspear and Young Pyromancer in play, Gitaxian Probe gives you a card-draw, knowledge of the contents of your opponent's hand, a 1/1 Elemental Token, and a Prowess trigger; all for the price of one blue mana or just 2 life. With either of these creatures in play, one can easily cast one cantrip spell into another and functionally "go off" in a Storm-like fashion.

iGrow wants to dump its hand quickly, deal damage, and repeat the process. In the days of Treasure Cruise this was accomplished by simply delving away one's dead Delver of Secrets and Monastery Swiftspears in order to draw into shiny new ones, and I think that all of us who were there to witness it can agree that it was absolutely broken. Now Day's Undoing replaces Treasure Cruise in its functional role of refilling one's hand after his/her threats have been destroyed. Rather than spending one mana to draw three cards, one spends three mana to draw seven.

The Creatures:



Monastery Swiftspear - Swiftspear is the most important creature in the iGrow. It is brutal and efficient. One cantrip spell draws into another, each one triggering Monastery Swiftspear's Prowess ability.

Young Pyromancer - Young Pyromancer functions similarly to Monastery Swiftspear in that each spell one casts builds incremental value, except that the pyromancer makes an army of 1/1 Elemental Tokens, allowing a player to go "wide" rather than "tall." Unlike Swiftspear, Young Pyromancer can also generate value off of a cast Day's Undoing.

Delver of Secrets - Delver fits into pretty much any Tempo deck that plays a ton of Instants and Sorceries. The Scry ability on Serum Visions allows one to better control when Delver of Secrets flips, and Disrupting Shoal protects it long enough to get a couple of attacks in.

Tarmogoyf - Tarmogoyf is a strange inclusion in this deck, and is pretty much the only reason to stretch the manabase to a third color. Commonly dumping spells into the graveyard early in the game, Tarmogoyf puts the "grow" in iGrow. Tarmogoyf becomes a formidable threat early on, simultaneously putting pressure on the opponent as well as holding the line against more aggressive decks.

Day's Undoing is a tricky card to cast with Goyf in play: shuffling away the contents of every graveyard reduces it to 1 toughness, putting it in range of damage-based removal. Additionally, because the game-state is checked when Day's Undoing ends the turn, if there is any damage on Tarmogoyf when each graveyard is shuffled into its owner's library the Goyf will die as the turn ends. On the bright side, few decks are capable of filling up the graveyard as quickly as iGrow, so a shrunken Tarmogoyf will be just as large as before by the time of its next attack.

The land count in iGrow is kept at a minimum to increase the probability of drawing gas. One only needs 3-4 lands for the entire game, and finding them is made quite easy by all of the free-flowing cards supplied by the various cantrips. However, the manabase is very tight and life total is extremely relevant in the aggro and Grixis matchups, which makes the inclusion of green mana quite strenuous on the deck. Tarmogoyf is difficult to support - so much so that there is a basic Forest in the sideboard to come in against Blood Moon et al. I found Tarmogoyf to be the weakest link for iGrow due to putting such mana constraints on an otherwise strictly RU deck, but it was still an essential threat for lack of a suitable replacement.

The Tempo Spells

Vapor Snag - Vapor Snag fits uniquely into a Tempo strategy: it trades card advantage into tempo at a one-for-one rate, displacing an obstacle momentarily so that one's own threats can push combat damage through. Vapor Snag is normally played during an opponent's turn, either during combat or at the end step, but it will often be the case that the iGrow player Main-Phases it in order to get additional damage off of Prowess triggers.

It is also useful as a way to get around uncounterable removal such as Abrupt Decay. Vapor Snag can be used on one's own creature if it would be destroyed This is especially strong with Young Pyromancer because it leaves a token behind, and is inconsequential with Monastery Swiftspear because its low casting cost and Haste results in little loss of tempo.

Lightning Bolt - iGrow is similar to Burn in that it prefers to throw Lightning Bolt at an opponent's face rather than their creatures. Day's Undoing shuffles away previously used bolts, which means that there is an effective 16 copies of Lightning Bolt in the deck. Lightning Bolt is an extremely versatile card. Although one would like to deal damage directly with it, it can be used as a worse Vapor Snag in order to push damage through from creatures. It also triggers Prowess and Young Pyromancer, which is extremely relevant.

Disrupting Shoal - Like Vapor Snag, Disrupting Shoal is strictly a Tempo card. A decent impersonator of Force of Will, Disrupting Shoal turns card advantage into tempo in order to protect the threats that are already on the battlefield. Disrupting Shoal can save a Delver of Secrets from destruction, giving it time enough to get damage in as [[Insectile Aberration], or it can protect a turn-2 Young Pyromancer, generating a token in the process. It is the perfect card to maximize value out of the creatures that require a slight time investment to really get going.

Disrupting Shoal and Vapor Snag both give up card advantage for the sake of tempo, but this effect is balanced by Day's Undoing, which does the opposite. Day's Undoing refills one's hand, often with another copy of Disrupting Shoal that can be cast for free. In this way the iGrow deck is able to complete the "rinse-repeat" cycle, giving it a much better mid-to-late game than the typical aggro strategy.

Disrupting Shoal will typically counter a spell of converted cost 1 such as Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile, but Day's Undoing can also be pitched to it to counter cards like Liliana of the Veil. As with Force of Will, players often forget that Disrupting Shoal can be cast with mana instead of its alternative cost of exiling a blue card. This is important to remember, because the deck cannot otherwise counter spells of converted mana cost 2.



Testing and Initial Misgivings

iGrow has a number of weaknesses that are concerning to me and need addressing before I can trust that it is truly competitive.

The manabase: with only 18 lands in the deck, I don't want to be playing three colors. Period. It is too difficult already to beat decks that are more aggressive than iGrow, let alone doing so while having to pay so much life to support a fetch-shock manabase in three colors. Playing a basic land in the sideboard also severely limits the number of answers we can board in for the more difficult matchups.
Blue-2: Young Pyromancer and Tarmogoyf are the only 2-cost spells in the deck and neither of them is blue, so Disrupting Shoal cannot readily counter problem-cards like Terminate, Arcbound Ravager, and Cranial Plating.
Affinity - Affinity is a horrific matchup, and in the new metagame we are going to be seeing a lot of it without Splinter Twin to keep it in check. Against Affinity it is typical to bring in as many copies of Hurkyl's Recall as possible, while taking out Day's Undoing, but that is still not enough. At the very least I would like access to a cheap flyer to block the Vault Skirges and Signal Pests profitably, but Delver does a poor job of blocking and really wants to be turning sideways every turn anyway.
The Solution

In an ideal world, there would exist a blue creature that costs 2 mana to cast (and can thus be pitched to Disrupting Shoal at two), can block Signal Pest, Inkmoth Nexus, Blinkmoth Nexus, and Vault Skirge profitably, and be easier to cast while also fitting into the general iGrow game-plan. For a long time the card I just described to you was just wishful thinking, supplanted in reality by the next-best thing, Tarmogoyf. This dream-card has finally been realized thanks to Oath of the Gatewatch in the form of Stormchaser Mage.

mage

Stormchaser Mage does it all - he has Flying, Prowess, and Haste! Before any Prowess triggers, Stormchaser Mage has 1 power and 3 toughness, so he can profitably block many of the most troublesome threats out of Affinity. On the offensive, he functions as Monastery Swiftspear copies 5-8 with built in evasion! Stormchaser Mage is blue and costs 2 mana, so he is the perfect replacement for Tarmogoyf. It resolves the mana issues, by allowing us to cut green from the deck entirely - or relegating it to just one Stomping Ground for the sake of certain supporting sideboard cards - and he can be exiled to pay the alternative cost of Disrupting Shoal for countering spells with converted mana cost 2, a feat that was impossible to perform in the previous version of the deck. Stormchaser Mage is the perfect addition to this deck, solving most of the problems with previous iterations of iGrow. The final version seems perfect! There isn't much room for tinkering with the list, since every card has a specific function that is necessary to keep the deck running like clockwork. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. The fact that the mainboard has little room to change from year to year or tournament to tournament means that you can focus on becoming a better player with it instead of constantly having to adapt the deck to a given metagame or tinker with it every time a new set comes out. Here's the list I would run the day that Oath of the Gatewatch becomes legal in Modern.

Perfect Days (or TempGrow)

Spells

4 Day's Undoing

4 Delver of Secrets

4 Disrupting Shoal

4 Gitaxian Probe

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Monastery Swiftspear

4 Serum Visions

2 Sleight of Hand

4 Stormchaser Mage

4 Vapor Snag

4 Young Pyromancer



Lands

1 Cinder Glade

3 Island

4 Misty Rainforest

1 Mountain

3 Sulfur Falls

4 Scalding Tarn

2 Steam Vents



Sideboard

2 Destructive Revelry

1 Dispel

2 Electrickery

2 Feed the Clan Feed the Clan

4 Forked Bolt

1 Hurkyl's Recall

2 Slip Through Space

1 Threads of Disloyalty