Flusterstorm – MTG Throwback Thursday (2011)

David
Fanany
Player
since
1995

Flusterstorm used to be one of the harder cards in the Modern time period to find, as it only has two previous printings, one of which was in a Commander deck. The new one is a Buy-a-Box promo, which makes it only slightly easier to find, but some decks have a motivation to try. It can be a pretty useful tool when facing a storm deck: you’ll be able to get enough copies to target each of the storming instant or sorcery’s copies, and the nature of storm decks is such that they often don’t have much mana to spare when they’re trying to win. Its next best application is probably against control decks, where it can win you a counterspell war if you save it for near the end of the sequence. Other than that, it’s surprisingly less powerful than you would expect for powerful game text with a super-powerful mechanic attached. There’ll always be a space ready for it whenever storm decks become popular.

Constructed: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Limited: 2/5
Multiplayer: 3/5
EDH/Commander: 3/5

Turns out the best way to beat storm is…storm itself. Or something. Normally, Flusterstorm is a glorified (and more limited) Spell Pierce that’s harder to just counter, since you need to counter every copy of Flusterstorm to get rid of it. But it shines brightest against other storm spells, since you can aim a copy of Flusterstorm at each of the copies of the other spell and make sure none of them get through. There are cases where this spell can shine, because this can stop Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens (and, in Legacy, Tendrils of Agony), but it generally is a bit weaker than the likes of Spell Pierce besides that.

Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 4
Limited: 2 (has appeared in Iconic Masters Limited, and was not very good there)
Multiplayer: 3.5
Commander: 4