Does anyone remember how oppressive
Collected Company
Collected Company
Look at the top six cards of your library. Put up to two creature cards with mana value 3 or less from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
(CoCo) was during its time in Standard? Remember all of the mirror matches putting in
Reflector Mage
Reflector Mage
When this creature enters, return target creature an opponent controls to its owner's hand. That creature's owner can't cast spells with the same name as that creature until your next turn.
and
Spell Queller
Spell Queller
Flash
Flying
When this creature enters, exile target spell with mana value 4 or less.
When this creature leaves the battlefield, the exiled card's owner may cast that card without paying its mana cost.
at instant speed? Well, Innistrad: Midnight Hunt has brought us a card quite reminiscent of the loved and hated CoCo, and it is already seeing a good deal of play in Standard.
Storm the Festival
If we compare Collected Company and Storm the Festival, they each require vastly different ways to build your deck around them.
Collected Company
Collected Company
Look at the top six cards of your library. Put up to two creature cards with mana value 3 or less from among them onto the battlefield. Put the rest on the bottom of your library in any order.
costs four mana and can be played at instant speed. It requires your deck to consist of a high density of low costed creatures. At best, you can get six mana’s worth of creatures for the cost of four mana. At worst, you can ‘whiff’ and find no suitable targets in the top six cards of your library.
Storm the Festival is a lot more expensive to cast and also a lot slower at sorcery speed. But it can be a lot more powerful when resolved. At best, you can get ten mana’s worth of permanents for the cost of six mana. Its downside, unlike CoCo, is mitigated by the fact that it can hit any permanents (of five mana or lower) in the top five cards of your library. So as long as you build your deck with a high density of permanent cards, at worst you get a pair of lands. But extra lands aren’t so bad with Storm the Festival because more mana will ramp you into Festival’s Flashback cost, to cast it again from your graveyard.
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Selesnya Ramp
A ramp deck is a suitable shell to fit Storm the Festival into, allowing us to cast Festival easily and quickly while building towards its Flashback cost to cast Festival again. Playing this in a Selesnya deck allows us to take advantage of all the extra lands we’ll be putting into play.
Yasharn, Implacable Earth
Yasharn, Implacable Earth
When Yasharn enters, search your library for a basic Forest card and a basic Plains card, reveal those cards, put them into your hand, then shuffle.
Players can't pay life or sacrifice nonland permanents to cast spells or activate abilities.
is a big body that ensures we get all the lands we need, and
Felidar Retreat
Felidar Retreat
Landfall — Whenever a land you control enters, choose one —
• Create a 2/2 white Cat Beast creature token.
• Put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control. Those creatures gain vigilance until end of turn.
can turn lands into an army of cats.
Wrenn and Seven
Wrenn and Seven
+1: Reveal the top four cards of your library. Put all land cards revealed this way into your hand and the rest into your graveyard.
0: Put any number of land cards from your hand onto the battlefield tapped.
−3: Create a green Treefolk creature token with reach and "This token's power and toughness are each equal to the number of lands you control."
−8: Return all permanent cards from your graveyard to your hand. You get an emblem with "You have no maximum hand size."
is also a must include for Festival decks as it makes tokens equal to the number of lands we have in play.
Sultai Festival
Compared to the Selesnya Ramp variant, the Sultai deck is more so concentrated on putting the highest quality 5-drops into play. It still has some aspects of ramp in the deck like Binding of the Old Gods and
Rootcoil Creeper
Rootcoil Creeper
{T}: Add one mana of any color.
{T}: Add two mana of any one color. Spend this mana only to cast spells from your graveyard.
{G}{U}, {T}, Exile this creature: Return target card with flashback you own from exile to your hand.
to leverage Storm the Festival’s flashback. But this version of the deck plays a higher count of 5-drops like
Lolth, Spider Queen
Lolth, Spider Queen
Whenever a creature you control dies, put a loyalty counter on Lolth.
0: You draw a card and you lose 1 life.
−3: Create two 2/1 black Spider creature tokens with reach and menace.
−8: You get an emblem with "Whenever an opponent is dealt combat damage by one or more creatures you control, if that player lost less than 8 life this turn, they lose life equal to the difference."
and
Iymrith, Desert Doom
Iymrith, Desert Doom
Flying
Iymrith has ward {4} as long as it's untapped.
Whenever Iymrith deals combat damage to a player, draw a card. Then if you have fewer than three cards in hand, draw cards equal to the difference.
alongside four copies of Wrenn and Seven.
Collected Company has a turbulent price history. When it was first released it was $5.00. It quickly jumped to $15.00, sunk back down for a few months, then skyrocketed to almost $25.00 when it became the dominant deck in Standard. Since then, CoCo has shifted between $12.00-$20.00, as it continues to see play in older formats like Modern to this day.
I think Storm the Festival costs too much mana to see play in older formats, so I wouldn’t expect it to see prices as high as CoCo’s. But currently, the cost of a regular art Storm the Festival is less than $1.00 on TCG Player! The extended art version is only $2.00! Those are beyond reasonable prices for a card with so much potential. Plus, I think this card will only get better in Standard the more sets/cards are added in the future, because it will give Festival more powerful options to find on the top of your library. I can see this card costing as much as $5.00 later in its Standard life cycle, so I’d definitely pick up a playset today.
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