There are some really powerful cards being released as part of Duskmourn: House of Horror (First mention of a set should always be the full set name). Everything from a new Eerie blue Enchantress to a new Hexproof Enchantment land is hitting the scene. Plenty of new Duskmourn cards facilitate incredibly exciting infinite combos alongside these soon-to-be staples.
Stormsplitter certainly got some attention during Bloomburrow’s release, but the card was eventually dismissed when it became clear that it did not impact competitive formats much. Thanks to a new Duskmourn rare, that may be about to change.
Enduring Vitality and Stormsplitter
Who knew that a Cryptolith Rite on a creature could cause so many problems? Enduring Vitality is a rather simple 3/3 Enchantment creature that grants your other creatures the ability to add mana. Sure, this can make for explosive ramp turns, especially paired with common Convoke enablers like Gleeful Demolition, but Enduring Vitality doesn’t seem like a problematic card on the surface.
Stormsplitter, on the other hand, seems like a card that can cause problems in the right context. This card doubles the amount of copies of itself in play each time you cast an instant or sorcery. They don’t stick around for the turn, but the Haste keyword should hint at what you should be trying to do with a creature like this.
Enduring Vitality and Stormsplitter can create a terrifying interaction. Because Stormsplitter has Haste, they can tap for mana immediately with Enduring Vitality in play. You can use this to cast instants or sorceries, and Stormsplitter will just keep generating more mana. It’s not difficult to create a lethal board with some cantrips if your Stormsplitters can tap for mana.
Early Decklists
It may not seem like much, but this Standard combo could change the format. Most of this deck focuses on finding your two combo pieces using cards that can also combo off with your creatures. Cache Grab and Say Its Name help find your Enduring Vitality and Stormsplitter, while Analyze the Pollen can directly search for your combo pieces one Delirium is enabled. Many of your other spells are both mill cards and contain two different card types, further enabling Delirium.
This deck demonstrates how truly easy it is for Stormsplitter to go off and win the game once it can tap for mana. Every other card in this deck, barring the combo pieces and the one copy of Altranak, is capable of triggering Stormsplitter, and many of these cards can find more cards to copy Stormsplitter.
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Improvements?
Cache Grab and Say Its Name not being able to find more instants or sorceries can cause this deck to brick. From that lens, finding a card that can recur your spells may be the key to making Stormsplitter go off and win the game. One card I would consider adding to this deck is Festival of Embers.
For five mana, Festival of Embers is definitely expensive, but the cost won’t be too high mid-combo, and should almost always enable a combo kill if you have Enduring Vitality and Stormsplitter on the board. It seems like a safe maindeck inclusion at a few copies that gets sided out against aggressive decks. You can’t give your opponent a huge window to remove your threats, so killing them in one fell swoop is likely more important than we think.
Additionally, if only four copies of Enduring Vitality isn’t enough, Insidious Roots is also capable of winning the game alongside Stormsplitter. Since the creature makes tokens, Insidious Roots can tap them for mana.
The potential for this new combo seems clear. All you really need is two cards to start the chain, and your opponent’s imminent death is just a few instants and sorceries away.
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