If you've been watching CardMarket's Youtube channel, you might remember this list (which I submitted!) from this video they uploaded few months ago.
What is Poison Storm?
Poison storm is a deck built around the poison counter, first introduced as far back as Legends through Pit Scorpion and Serpent Generator, but later made into a major mechanic for the Phyrexian forces in Scars of Mirrodin block in 2010.Poison counters are simple, if you have 10, you lose.
But before I give a more in-depth explanation of the decklist I'm running with, here it is:
MainBoard
Artifact
4 Pentad Prism
Instant
4 Experimental Augury
1 Prologue to Phyresis
3 Snap
4 Manamorphose
4 Weather the Storm
3 Steady Progress
Sorcery
4 Thirsting Roots
4 Contentious Plan
4 Infectious Inquiry
4 Vivisurgeon's Insight
4 Lórien Revealed
Land
4 Saprazzan Skerry
4 Hickory Woodlot
2 Peat Bog
2 Sandstone Needle
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
SideBoard
Instant
4 Dispel
3 Pyroblast
2 Moment's Peace
3 Breath Weapon
Creature
3 Faerie Macabre
This deck includes a small number of cards that gift your opponent a single poison counter, namely Infectious Inquiry and a single copy of Prologue to Phyresis. These are the first priority to find, so you can get the engine running. It's not essential to have as soon as you start the game, but you will need to keep track of the amount of proliferation the deck does so you know how much you can extend before a win becomes impossible.
Infectious Inquiry is the more relevant of the two for this deck, as while it is a Sorcery and not an Instant, there's usually more counterplay for blue instants in the metagame than there is for a black sorcery. For starters, Inquiry doesn't play into the Pyroblast territory, so the only resources available to counter it that are somewhat played are Spell Pierce, Counterspell and Envelop. Two of these can also be used against Prologue, but relying more on it leaves you exposed to Dispel (Which is currently played more commonly than Envelop) as well as Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast. With the amount of blue spells in the deck in general, it's almost guaranteed that opponents would already be sideboarding in more Pyroblasts, so not giving them the opportunity to counter the most important poison counter is essential to the deck's success.
Alongside this, the deck is built on a proliferation engine. Proliferate is an action also introduced in Scars of Mirrodin block, that allows you to add a counter to any permanents or players, as long as those permanents and players already have a counter of that type. In our case, this means providing more counters on lands and artifacts to keep them generating mana, and gifting the opponent with a steady supply of poison counters.
There's a variety of card draw, with a throughline of proliferating, so that both your hand and board stays stocked. The list I use has 19 total ways to proliferate, so there's plenty of redundancy while getting started, so you can search for key pieces at the start of the game. To talk more about proliferation, I should explain the permanents you'll want to be adding counters to.
The landbase consists of 17 lands, 5 of which are basics in case of land destruction (which is very prevalent through both wildfire and ponza lists) and to provide a target for cycling Lórien Revealed. The rest are 4 of 5 cards from a cycle in Mercadian Masques, which each tap for 2 mana, but are destroyed when there are no more counters on them. The goal being that you do your best to not allow them to be destroyed. Despite this, there are sometimes cases where you will need the mana to cast cards, so it can be worth it to let them be blown up so that you can stay alive. On top of this, there's a card that isn't a land but is your most important permanent: Pentad Prism. The depletion lands (ones from Mercadian Masques), as useful as they are, can only tap for 2 of one color each turn, while Prism can instantly turn proliferation into mana for the same turn. The wheels really start turning when you have multiple in play, since two makes Thirsting Roots into a Lotus Petal, and any of the 2 mana card draw into free spells, which can snowball further with 4 copies in the deck.
You may be asking "Why is it called Poison Storm? You've talked about poison, but not any cards with Storm yet", and that's a good question! But this is where Weather the Storm comes in. The deck is very light on interaction, only including 3 copies of Snap (and even then, that's moreso to keep the combo going, and not as hard removal), so you need a way to stay alive against aggressive lists. Weather the Storm provides a payoff for casting as many spells as you can in a single turn, letting you at least survive to the next turn for another shot at hitting 10 poison counters.
The sideboard has some tools that can aid in the unfavourable matchups, Dispel and Pyroblast to ensure that the spells you need to resolve do so, Breath Weapon and Moment's Peace against creature-based aggressive lists and Faerie Macabre against graveyard decks.
How well is it positioned in the meta?
In my opinion, the deck is positioned somewhat nicely in the meta. It will not perform strongly in an aggro-skewed metagame, as it isn't as consistently fast or interactive enough to compete with them, but it absolutely preys on more controlling lists like Wildfire and Tron, decks that play much slower and can be left with a lot of removal spells that help us in the matchup, since Poison Storm doesn't have any creatures to remove.Since the Zeta set isn't currently legal in MTGO, there isn't much data on what the meta will look like with the inclusions of Dispatch, Cut Down and Baleful Strix, but I have a good feeling it's set to get better with the big incoming cards being removal, pushing people away from the aggressive lists. An increase in decks running better creature removal just means more decks running useless cards to take advantage of.
Then there is the subject of the upcoming Reality Fracture set. I don't know if it's going to have any major shift on the format, although the concept of introducing planeswalkers to pauper has made me excited. I was really hoping for an instant along the lines of "1U - Draw a card. Empower Jace 1" as something that could slot very nicely into Poison Storm, letting you filter and draw through the Jace abilities as an extra payoff for the amount of proliferation involved in the deck, while also acting as pseudo-lifegain if the opponent chooses to spend attacks/burn spells on the planeswalker instead of the life total. Sadly they did not print such a card, but there are some alternatives I am interested in testing. These cards are Protege's Awakening and Campus Crier. The former seems like a fit, but 4 mana to draw 2 cards at sorcery speed seems too slow, and then the latter could be a very viable choice, being able to create a Jace with 2 loyalty for 1 mana and at instant speed is exceptional, although it would require reworking the deck to include discard effects.
Conclusion
Overall, Poison Storm is quite an unusual piece to the pauper landscape, but by far one of the most interesting for me, and I hope that enthusiasm has been portrayed effectively here. There are multiple more ways to build the deck, I've seen some lists run Merchant Scroll and Teach by Example, which seems very interesting, but I have not been able to try it out yet.Would love to hear your thoughts: do you think the deck is cool? Have you tried out any of the Reality Fracture cards yet?