Mystical Space Typhoon. It’s a card so iconic that you could ask people even vaguely familiar with Yugioh and receive a rough outline of what it does—including “negate”. Yes, the joke of people misunderstanding MST goes back over a decade at this point, popularized at a time when the Yugioh community beat jokes more dead than Harambe, to use a contemporary example from the time period. Yet still, its legend persists, being among the rarest categories of cards in Duel Links, mythology reinforced by homage after homage. Yet, in Doom of Dimensions, we may yet see the fabled typhoon crop up in meta decks, played by the game’s finest once again. This is because of the Magnifistorms’ debut, a series of appropriately WIND-Attribute monsters betting all their chips on Mystical Space Typhoon’s mythology, urging you to play that single line of text at a time when the average word count is around 130. The crazy part? You actually will. Let’s see what storm’s brewing with a potential contender for Rogue, especially after the next banlist: It’s Magnifistorm.
The Magnifistorms are divided into two rough classes, being their Spright-esque Level 3s, and the slightly harder to Summon 9s, with Magnifistorming Crothea as an intermediary. Of the Level 3s, Magnifistorming Erdam & Suen are fairly straightforward, with inherent Summons if your opponent controls no Spell/Traps, or you have MST in your yard. From there, they search either MST itself, or a Magnifistorming Monster or Spell/Trap, respectively. Critically, neither of these possess any locks, but that’s not true of the final Level 3, Magnifistorming Megala.
Megala grabs any of your unique Magnifistorms from Deck, including the strategy’s bosses, if she sees you activate MST or a “Magnifistorm” Quick-Play. This of course means she isn’t combo on her own, unlike Erdam or Suen, but instead raises the strategy’s ceiling, and is a fantastic way to path out of your core 3s, if you sense an opponent lacks interaction. The kicker however comes in the form of her final line, which locks you from non-WINDS for the rest of the turn. Once you choose to pivot around Megala, that cuts you off from the majority of the tools you’d want to use, especially from the Extra Deck.
Now Magnifistorming Crothea is actually worth the lock, and critically allows the deck to potentially play on your opponent’s first turn, aka ‘Turn 0’. If a Quick-Play Spell is activated, by either player, she pops out of hand and grabs another Magnifistorm and MST. This doesn’t interact with the opponent in a meaningful way, unlike the K9s or Vanquish Soul - Holy Sue, but it at the very least represents not only a natural +1, but also access to turning on all of your other free Summons once you get a chance to play. Both of the current top decks, being K9 piles and Yummy, have critical Quick-Plays that start their combos, so it’s very likely you get max value out of Crothea, and potentially go Crothea into Erdam + MST, and search another Crothea for when her Hard Once-Per-Turn is reset. The initiative Konami is taking to allow decks to play on both turns in this manner is commendable, and it’s led to some of the most fun Yugioh in modern memory.
How does Magnifistorm actually win though? That comes down to their two bosses, Magnifistorm Vortex Beauty Valrune & Magnifistorm Great Pyre Phonix. Each shares two effects, Summoning from the hand on any Quick-Play activation, and from the Graveyard when specifically MST is activated, which is part of why the question is not ‘do you play MST’ in the deck, but whether you’re on 2 or the full 3 copies. Valrune is your standard fare, being a Monster negate that occasionally also destroys if you have 2 copies of MST in rotation, but Phonix is a reactive Madolche Queen Tiaramisu, with two (unfortunately targeting) shuffles on a Quick Play. Still, if these aren’t dealt with via banishing, you can essentially go your entire turn with only them as hand/graveyard Monster effects, meaning you can strategically play around K9s until you have a mechanism to fight back.
This is all well and good, but for this deck to succeed, how on earth is it breaking parity to such an extent that it’s any better than a new take on Spright? The answer comes forth in an OCG innovation, Ghost Fairy Elfobia, alongside 3 copies of Emergency Teleport. By revealing one of our Level 3s, we can functionally lock down any silliness thrown our way by K9 strategies, and honestly most decks not named exactly Yummy. Not only this, by instead getting Ghost Ogre & Snow Rabbit, we can make a Virtual World Kyubi - Shenshen to handle any GY shenanigans from the base we hadn’t covered. It’s the usage of E-Tele that puts this list above and beyond, though the 3 copies of Super Polymerization with our chain-late effects certainly helps.
Magnifistorm has seen a number of different builds tested in the OCG, seeing success in the form of Tri-Brigade Magnif, Goblin Biker Magnif, and pure, as I’m showcasing here. This largely comes down to the fact that, if an archetype doesn’t mind Level 3s that are various types, so long as the other engine can perform before the WIND lock comes down there’s no other conflicting factors. Pair that with the solid filtering that comes in the form of Magnifistorm’s in-archetype Quick Plays, Sight Trance & Stanza Tribute, and you can reliably see a lot of either engine just as long as you don’t get Drolled. The one surprise beyond the variations seeing success, though, is the lack of Runick.
Initially theorized as the natural home for these, it’s a bit of a shock that Runick with its plethora of Quick-Plays isn’t enjoyed here, but it critically comes down to a lack of a playable Level 3 Runick. I have a hunch this version could be good if it leaned on the 9-Axis with Sleipnir, but it’s a bit early to say, given Runick hasn’t performed well in the OCG in a long time.
For the Side Deck, you have the benefit of jamming not merely your standard fare, Nibiru, Purulia, etc, but also 3 copies of Harpie’s Feather Storm, an utterly broken handtrap which I showcased with Yummy a few weeks back. These all being WIND with different types also creates opportunities to break parity with cards like Gozen Match & There Can Be Only One, which are debilitating if you know you’re going first. The sad part, though, is that your Triple Tactics cards aren’t great here, as they specifically box out Quick-Play Spells as legal targets, meaning there’s no compelling route to your engine by way of a Triple Tactics Thrust. This is more okay than you might think, given E-Tele shores up consistency, but not being able to play one of the format’s best parity breakers is unfortunate.
This list takes cues from the 3rd placing deck from YCS Yokohama, piloted by Muraco-san this past weekend. He was the first to truly innovate the Elfobia package, and I feel that’s critical to making the pure variant of Magnifistorming work. You will notice a glaring, green bird in the Side there, Simorgh, Bird of Sovereignty. It’s banned here in the West, so while we do have an extra copy of Super Poly here, an extra E-Tele there, the lacking of this absolutely instrumental WIND Extra Deck tool is debilitating. I’m of the opinion it could come off the list, and it’s in Konami’s best interest to unban ‘Big Bird’ to sell more Magnifistorm, given the numerous synergies with it and the strategy. Having access to Simorgh not only gives us a great spot to use our swarmy bodies, but also protect our Level 9s, and even Summon something like a Mist Valley Apex Avian. Just as long as they keep the WIND Barrier Statue banned, this is probably the path Konami must take if they want the deck to share its Rogue acclaim stateside.
The fact there’s 2 copies of literal Mystical Space Typhoon in a serious deck still throws me for a loop, especially having played the game for nearly 2 decades! Are you excited to see how Magnifistorm performs once DOOD comes out? Do you think Konami needs to unban Simorgh to give this list the gas to succeed, or is it fine to stay banned? Do you like this style of legacy support, or is it too on the nose? Let me know in the comments below!
