MTG Storm Explained: Rules, All 34 Storm Cards, the Kill Math, Why It Is the Second-Most-Banned Keyword in Magic (6 of 34) and an $89 Kess Deck (2026)

Storm is the keyword that copies a spell once for every other spell cast before it that turn — by anyone, from anywhere, whether or not those spells resolved. It arrived in Scourge in May 2003, and within six days one of its twelve cards had been restricted in Vintage before it had won a single match. Twenty-three years later the mechanic has 34 paper cards, its name is on Mark Rosewater’s scale for how unlikely a mechanic is to ever come back, and it is the engine behind a top-ten Modern deck right now. This guide counts all 34, does the arithmetic on how many spells each one needs to kill, and finds the number that explains the mechanic’s reputation: six of the 34 storm cards are banned or restricted in a paper format, a 17.6% share. Among the 200 keywords measured for this guide, only companion (4 of 10) is banned at a higher rate, and only flying (20 of 3,216 cards) has more banned cards in total. Cascade, morph, infect, exalted, surveil, foretell, convoke, flashback, kicker and cycling — 1,527 cards between them — have six bans in total, the same number storm manages with 34.

And yet not one storm card is banned in Modern or Legacy. Every one of the six bans is in Pauper (five) or Vintage (Mind’s Desire, restricted). What Modern and Legacy banned instead was the fuel: nine of the 32 classic storm enablers are banned in Modern, 22 are banned in Legacy, and 22 are restricted in Vintage, while the storm cards themselves — Grapeshot, Tendrils of Agony, Brain Freeze, Empty the Warrens — sit legal. That split is the real story of the mechanic, and this guide covers all of it: the rules and the storm count, why the copies are not cast (and what that does to prowess, Guttersnipe and magecraft), storm against its seven cousins, every storm card by set, colour and format, the kill table, every ban with its date, the fuel that went and the fuel that stayed, the three cards that grant storm, the hate, the commanders, and a 100-card Kess, Dissident Mage Commander deck for $88.91 that runs 20 storm cards. Every card fact was pulled from the live Scryfall database on 19 September 2026 and checked against the Comprehensive Rules of 7 August 2026.

What storm actually does

Storm is rule 702.40, and the whole mechanic is two sentences:

702.40a Storm is a triggered ability that functions on the stack. “Storm” means “When you cast this spell, copy it for each other spell that was cast before it this turn. If the spell has any targets, you may choose new targets for any of the copies.”

702.40b If a spell has multiple instances of storm, each triggers separately.

Three things follow from the wording, and every storm ruling on Scryfall is one of them restated. First, storm is a triggered ability, not part of the spell’s effect. It triggers when you cast the spell, goes on the stack above the spell, and resolves first — which is why the copies arrive before the original and why, in the words of the Wing Shards ruling, they “resolve even if the spell with storm is countered.” Countering Grapeshot does nothing to the nineteen Grapeshots already on the stack; you needed to counter the trigger, and only Stifle, Trickbind, Tale’s End and their kind do that. Second, the copies are put onto the stack, not cast. That single fact decides most of the interactions in this guide: a copy does not raise anyone’s storm count, does not trigger prowess or Guttersnipe or Aetherflux Reservoir, and cannot be countered by anything that says “counter target spell” except one copy at a time. Third, each copy may pick new targets, independently. Nineteen Grapeshots can be nineteen different targets, or all one face.

The original 2003 printing said “copy it for each spell played before it this turn,” and the card image above still does. The word became “cast” in the 2009 rules update that separated casting spells from playing lands, and nothing else about the ability has changed in 23 years.

The storm count: what counts and what does not

Players call the number of spells cast before the storm spell the storm count, and the rules are generous about what goes into it. The Chatterstorm ruling is the clearest statement: “Spells cast from zones other than a player’s hand and spells that were countered or otherwise failed to resolve are counted by the storm ability.” So:

• Every player’s spells count. The rule says “each other spell that was cast,” not “each other spell you cast.” Your opponent’s three counterspells add three to your Tendrils. Flusterstorm is built on this: cast in response to a storm turn, it copies itself once for every ritual and cantrip the storm player cast to get there.
• Countered spells count. A spell that was countered was still cast. The Thousand-Year Storm ruling says the same for its own count.
• Spells cast from the graveyard, from exile, from the top of the library and from the command zone count. Cast is cast. A card played with Mind’s Desire or Galvanic Relay counts if it is a spell; a land played off them does not, because lands are played, not cast.
• Copies do not count — not storm copies, not Thousand-Year Storm copies, not Krark copies, not Twinning Staff copies. Cascade and ripple are the exceptions in the copy-mechanic family, because they cast the extra spell rather than copying it, and cast spells count.
• Spells cast after the storm spell do not count, even if they resolve first. The Wing Shards ruling: “Spells cast after the spell with storm was cast but before the storm ability resolves aren’t counted.” The count is fixed at the moment you cast the storm spell; responding to the trigger with a ritual does not raise it.
• Casting the same storm spell again starts a fresh count. Haze of Rage has buyback, and its ruling covers it: each cast triggers storm again, each spell cast before it is counted, but “previous times you created copies of a spell will not.” Cast Haze of Rage with buyback four times and the fourth cast counts the first three casts, not the copies they made.

The trigger resolves before the spell — and the spell may never resolve at all

Because the trigger sits above the spell, a storm turn has two windows for interaction, and they are not the same. While the trigger is on the stack, nothing has been copied yet; a Stifle here stops all copies and leaves one Grapeshot. Once the trigger resolves, the copies are on the stack above the original, and the only outs are the ones that handle many spells at once — Mindbreak Trap exiles any number of target spells for {0} if its caster’s opponent has cast three or more spells this turn, and Flusterstorm brings its own storm count to counter them one copy per copy. Our guide to priority and the stack covers the general shape of this; storm is the mechanic where the order of the two windows decides the game.

Copies are not cast: what that does to prowess, magecraft and the payoff cards

The question this site gets more searches for than any other storm question is whether storm triggers prowess. It does not. Prowess triggers when you cast a noncreature spell, and nineteen copies of Grapeshot are nineteen spells nobody cast. Our prowess guide goes through the full list of what does and does not trigger it; the storm answer is one trigger for the original and nothing for the copies. The same applies to every “whenever you cast” payoff: Guttersnipe deals 2 for the original Grapeshot and 0 for its copies; Aetherflux Reservoir counts spells cast this turn and sees none of them; Talrand, Sky Summoner makes one Drake; Birgi gives back one {R}.

The payoffs that do see storm copies say “cast or copy,” and there are 31 cards in paper with that phrase, 29 of them under the Strixhaven ability word magecraft. Storm-Kiln Artist makes a Treasure for every copy — a storm-9 Grapeshot is ten Treasures. Ral, Storm Conduit deals 1 damage to an opponent for every copy. Zaffai, Thunder Conductor scries once per copy and makes a 4/4 for each copy of a five-drop. Veyran, Voice of Duality makes every one of those triggers fire twice. The Fiery Encore ruling states it directly: “Each copy you create because of storm will cause your magecraft abilities to trigger.” If you are building a storm deck in Commander, the difference between a cast payoff and a cast-or-copy payoff is the difference between one trigger and twenty.

One more consequence of copies not being cast: a storm copy cannot be a commander, and a copy of a permanent spell becomes a token when it resolves. Aeve, Progenitor Ooze is written around exactly that — “Aeve isn’t legendary if it’s a token,” and its ruling walks through the copies entering one at a time, each with a counter for every Ooze already there. Stormscale Scion’s copies are 4/4 Dragon tokens that each give the others +1/+1, so a storm-2 Scion is three 6/6 fliers. Amphibian Downpour’s copies are Aura tokens that can each enchant a different creature, so one three-mana spell turns an opponent’s whole board into 1/1 Frogs with no abilities.

Storm against its cousins

Storm is the oldest of a family of “make more of this spell” mechanics, and the table below is the fastest way to keep them apart. The two rows that matter for a storm count are the two where the extra spells are actually cast: ripple and cascade. A cascade spell that hits a ritual adds two to the storm count, one for the cascade spell and one for the ritual; a storm spell that makes twenty copies adds one.

Thousand-Year Storm deserves its own line because it is the card most often confused with the keyword. It is storm for every instant and sorcery you cast, on every spell, but it counts only your instants and sorceries — not your opponents’ spells and not your own creatures or rituals that happen to be artifacts. Bitter Ordeal’s gravestorm counts permanents that went to a graveyard this turn, which in an Aristocrats deck is a bigger number than any spell count. And there are three cards that grant the actual keyword, covered below.

Every storm card, 2003 to 2025

There are 34 paper cards with storm as of 19 September 2026, and two more that exist only on Arena (Galathul Galecaller and Limitless Rekindling, both 2026 Alchemy cards). Every one of the 34 was checked for a keyword-only “Storm” line in its rules text, because Scryfall’s keyword filter is a claim about text and has been wrong before; all 34 passed, none has two instances, and the three cards that grant storm are correctly excluded. The population: 19 sorceries, 11 instants, two creatures (Aeve, Progenitor Ooze and Stormscale Scion) and two Auras (Amphibian Downpour and Tempest Technique). Red has 14, blue 9, green 5, white 3, black 2, and Mordor on the March is the only multicoloured one. Rarity runs 12 commons, 9 uncommons, 12 rares and one mythic (Stormscale Scion). Mean mana value 3.97; the two one-drops are Flusterstorm and Ground Rift, and Dragonstorm at nine is the most expensive spell with the keyword.

The whole set costs $33.57 at cheapest ordinary printings (Crow Storm, the silver-bordered Unstable card, has no listed price), and 24 of the 34 are under a dollar. The dear ones are Radstorm ($5.69, the Fallout proliferate instant), Flusterstorm ($5.44), Dragonstorm ($3.41) and Stormscale Scion ($3.12). Empty the Warrens has been printed twelve times, Flusterstorm and Grapeshot ten each, and six cards exactly once — Astral Steel, Crow Storm, Hindering Touch, Ignite Memories, Scattershot and Volcanic Awakening. On EDHREC, ten of the 34 sit inside the top 5,000 cards, led by Flusterstorm (#308), Grapeshot (#722) and Brain Freeze (#781); Amphibian Downpour, the newest of the four, is already #1,228.

Three bursts and a long trickle

Storm arrived all at once: twelve cards in Scourge (May 2003), a cycle of commons and uncommons with a rare in blue and red, and the block ended there. Time Spiral brought it back three years later as one of the set’s nostalgia mechanics with five cards, including the two that define the archetype to this day, Grapeshot and Empty the Warrens, and Future Sight added Haze of Rage in 2007. That is 18 cards in four years, and then nothing in a Standard-legal expansion for eighteen years. The other 16 came one or a few at a time through the products that do not have to worry about Standard: Flusterstorm in Commander 2011, Crow Storm in Unstable, Weather the Storm in the first Modern Horizons, five cards in 2021 (Fiery Encore in Commander 2021 and four in Modern Horizons 2), two Universes Beyond cards in 2023 (Doctor Who and the Lord of the Rings Commander decks), three in 2024 (Fallout, the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander decks, Modern Horizons 3) and three in 2025 (Tarkir: Dragonstorm, its Commander decks, and the Avatar: The Last Airbender Eternal set). Stormscale Scion, in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, is the first storm card in a Standard-legal set since Future Sight — a single mythic Dragon with the keyword, in a set named for it.

That eighteen-year gap is the Storm Scale. Mark Rosewater’s one-to-ten rating of how likely a mechanic is to return to a Standard-legal set is named after this mechanic, and storm sits at the top of it: a ten, the rating for “will almost certainly never come back.” The supplemental sets are where a ten goes to live. Of the 16 storm cards printed since 2007, exactly one — Stormscale Scion — is Standard-legal today, and the card that grants storm to everything, Prismari, the Inspiration, is a seven-mana Elder Dragon with ward that costs five life, which is the price a ten pays to get into Standard.

The kill table: how many spells each storm card needs

A storm card’s value is its per-copy effect multiplied by the storm count plus one, so the arithmetic for every kill card is the same: divide the life total by the per-copy number, round up, and subtract one for the original. Tendrils of Agony drains two per copy, so ten Tendrils kill from 20 life and storm nine is the number every Legacy storm player has memorised. Grapeshot deals one, so it needs storm 19 to do the same job with one target — which is why Modern storm decks pair it with Past in Flames to cast it twice, or simply Grapeshot the board and win the next turn. Brain Freeze mills three; a 60-card opponent who has drawn seven has 53 cards left, so storm 17 (18 copies, 54 cards) empties the library. In Commander the numbers double for the damage cards (storm 19 for Tendrils, 39 for Grapeshot) and the mill number rises to storm 30 against a 92-card library, which is why Brain Freeze in Commander is a Thassa’s Oracle enabler rather than a kill.

The token cards do not kill on the spot, but the counts are smaller than they look. Storm four Empty the Warrens is ten Goblins for four mana on turn two or three, which is the reason it is banned in Pauper and the reason Legacy storm decks still run it as a second wincon against a countered Tendrils. Ignite Memories is the wild card: each copy reveals a random card from the target’s hand and deals damage equal to its mana value, so against a hand of expensive spells storm four is lethal and against an empty hand it does nothing.

Legality: where each of the 34 can be played

The legality sweep across every format Scryfall tracks returned exactly eight non-standard values on the 34 cards — five Pauper bans, one Vintage restriction, and two bans in Premodern, a community format outside the scope of this guide. Everything else is legal or simply never printed there. The distribution is lopsided in a way that tells the story: 33 of 34 are legal in Legacy and Commander, 17 in Modern, seven in Pauper, one in Pioneer and Standard. The only card not legal in Legacy or Commander is Crow Storm, because it is silver-bordered.

Storm is the second-most-banned keyword in Magic

Six of the 34 storm cards are banned or restricted in at least one of the seven paper formats (Standard, Pioneer, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Pauper). To see whether that is a lot, the same two questions were put to Scryfall for 200 keywords and ability words — how many paper cards carry it, and how many of those are banned or restricted somewhere — and the answer is that it is a great deal. Across all 200 keywords there are 16,415 cards and 95 bans, a rate of 0.6%. Storm’s rate is 17.6%, thirty times the average. Only companion beats it, at four of ten — a 2020 mechanic with ten cards, four of which have been banned in one format or another since. Counting bans rather than shares, only flying has more, with 20 of its 3,216 cards. Delve, the mechanic that took Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time out of three formats, is at 10.7%; dredge, the mechanic that gets a whole archetype banned every few years, is 7.1%.

The six bans, with the date each one happened and the reason given at the time:

Modern and Legacy ban the fuel; Pauper bans the fire

Now the half of the story the ban share hides: not one storm card is banned in Modern, Legacy or Commander. All five paper bans are in Pauper and the sixth is a Vintage restriction, and the pattern is not an accident. In the formats with access to rares and mythics, Wizards has always answered a storm deck by banning what powers it rather than the storm card at the end of the chain. The 32 cards below are the classic engine of a storm deck — rituals, free mana, cantrips, refills and tutors — and between them they are banned nine times in Modern, 22 times in Legacy and restricted 22 times in Vintage. Rite of Flame, Seething Song, Simian Spirit Guide, Gitaxian Probe, Ponder and Chrome Mox all left Modern while Grapeshot stayed. Yawgmoth’s Will, Wheel of Fortune, Windfall, Memory Jar, Frantic Search, Necropotence, Gush and the tutors left Legacy while Tendrils stayed. The one storm card ever banned there, Mind’s Desire, came back on 7 August 2023, with the announcement noting that free spells and stronger creatures had made the format much harder for storm than it was in 2003. Our banned list guide has every format’s current list; this is the storm-shaped slice of it.

Pauper is the exception because it cannot ban the fuel: commons are the format, and the rituals, cantrips and Manamorphose are all commons that a dozen other decks use. So Pauper bans the storm card. Five of the twelve storm cards with a common printing are banned there — 42% of the storm commons — along with Gitaxian Probe, Frantic Search, Gush, High Tide, Cloud of Faeries and Treasure Cruise, which is how the format ended up with the mechanic’s entire competitive history on its ban list and seven storm cards left standing, none of which kills anyone by itself.

The fuel that is still legal

What is left is plenty. Modern in 2026 still has Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Manamorphose and Past in Flames, which were never banned, has Faithless Looting and Mox Opal back (both unbanned on 16 December 2024) and Preordain back (unbanned the same day as Mind’s Desire), and the Ruby Storm deck adds Ral, Monsoon Mage and Ruby Medallion to cut a mana off every spell. Legacy keeps Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Brainstorm, Ponder, Ad Nauseam, Doomsday, Burning Wish and Infernal Tutor. Every card in the table is legal in Commander.

Storm in each format today

Modern. Ruby Storm is a top-ten Modern deck as of August 2026: mono-red, built on Ral, Monsoon Mage and Ruby Medallion as cost reducers, Desperate Ritual and Pyretic Ritual for mana, Wrenn’s Resolve and Reckless Impulse to keep drawing, and a kill of Grapeshot off Past in Flames or Ral’s transformed side exiling the top eight cards to cast for free. It wins on turn two or three against fair decks and folds to a single Drannith Magistrate or Damping Sphere it cannot remove. It is the strongest storm has been in Modern since the Seething Song years, and Modern Horizons 3 is the reason.

Legacy. Two shells, both older than Modern: The EPIC Storm (Burning Wish, Empty the Warrens as the backup kill) and Ad Nauseam Tendrils (the Ad Nauseam refill into Tendrils). Both run Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, Lion’s Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal and the blue cantrips, both win with Tendrils at storm nine, and since August 2023 both have Mind’s Desire available again.

Vintage. Mind’s Desire is the single restricted storm card; everything else is legal, and the restricted list is where the rest of the engine lives (22 of the 32 fuel cards above). Pauper has seven legal storm cards and none of the four that ever won anything. Pioneer and Standard have exactly one storm card, Stormscale Scion, and one storm granter, Prismari, the Inspiration — two cards that make the keyword technically Standard-legal while keeping it out of any deck that wants to win before turn seven.

Commander. The mechanic’s biggest audience. Brain Freeze at #781 and Grapeshot at #722 on EDHREC are played in thousands of spellslinger decks, the cEDH storm deck is Krark, the Thumbless with Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, and a budget storm deck is one of the cheapest competitive-feeling things you can build in the format — the one below is $88.91 with 20 storm cards. Seventeen of the site’s precon decks hold at least one storm card; the Goblin Storm Secret Lair deck holds four (Empty the Warrens, Grapeshot, Haze of Rage, Spreading Insurrection) and Prismari Performance holds Mind’s Desire and Fiery Encore.

The three cards that grant storm, and the copy engines

Three cards in paper give storm to a spell that does not have it. Prismari, the Inspiration, from Secrets of Strixhaven (April 2026), is the big one: a 7/7 flying Elder Dragon for {5}{U}{R} with ward—pay 5 life, and “instant and sorcery spells you cast have storm.” Under Prismari every cantrip is a storm spell, and Prismari’s own ruling is the 702.40b case: a spell that already has storm gets a second instance and both trigger. Storm, Force of Nature — the X-Men’s Storm, first printed in a Secret Lair in November 2024 and reprinted in the Marvel Universe series in June 2026 — gives your next instant or sorcery storm when she deals combat damage to a player. Crackling Spellslinger, from the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Commander decks, is the same effect as a flash creature’s enter trigger, and its ruling notes it only works if you cast the creature. Beside the granters sit the engines that multiply copies or pay you for them.

Two of those rows do more than they look. Strionic Resonator copies the storm trigger, so a storm-9 Tendrils makes eighteen copies instead of nine for two mana — nineteen Tendrils on the stack, 38 life drained. Twinning Staff adds one copy every time you copy a spell, and since storm copies the spell N times in a single event, that is N+1 copies, not 2N — a common misreading in both directions.

How to beat a storm deck

Storm hate divides cleanly by which of the three moments it attacks. Cards that stop the count from building (Rule of Law, Eidolon of Rhetoric, Deafening Silence, Ethersworn Canonist, Archon of Emeria, Damping Sphere, Thalia, Chalice of the Void on one) win before the storm spell is cast. Cards that hit the trigger (Stifle, Trickbind, Tale’s End) win in the first window, with the copies never made. Cards that hit the copies (Mindbreak Trap, Flusterstorm) win in the second. And Drannith Magistrate is the odd one out: it stops the spells the deck casts from anywhere other than hand — Past in Flames, Mind’s Desire, Galvanic Relay, Kess’s graveyard casts and Ral’s ultimate all fall under it — which is why the Modern Ruby Storm players call it the one card that loses them the game on its own. Remand is the classic mistake: bouncing the storm spell to hand does nothing to the trigger already on the stack. Our best counterspells guide ranks Flusterstorm among the format’s best for exactly this job.

Storm commanders

None of the 34 storm cards is a legendary creature you would build around except Aeve, and Aeve is an Ooze typal card that happens to copy itself. The commanders storm players actually use are the ones that make spells cheaper, copy them, or pay you per cast-or-copy; our spellslinger commanders guide covers the archetype more broadly, and the table below is the storm-specific shortlist.

The deck: Kess, Dissident Mage storm for $88.91

Kess costs four mana, flies, and once a turn lets you cast an instant or sorcery from your graveyard — a second Dark Ritual, a second Tendrils, a second Ponder — which is the cheapest form of the Past in Flames effect in the format and it lives in the command zone. Grixis is also the colour identity with the most storm cards: 25 of the 33 Commander-legal ones fit under it, and this list runs 20 of them, leaving out only Dragonstorm (no Dragons to find), Stormscale Scion, Volcanic Awakening (a storm land-destruction spell nobody wants at a Commander table), All of History, All at Once (no time counters here) and Radstorm (nothing to proliferate). Everything else is here, from the kills (Tendrils, Grapeshot, Brain Freeze, Empty the Warrens, Ignite Memories) to the utility storms (Flusterstorm, Hindering Touch, Temporal Fissure, Amphibian Downpour, Reaping the Graves) to the value ones (Mind’s Desire, Galvanic Relay, Storm of Memories, Fiery Encore, Mordor on the March).

The engine is five rituals plus Mana Geyser and Big Score, Baral and Goblin Electromancer to cut a mana off everything, fourteen cantrips and draw spells to keep the chain going, and the cast-or-copy payoffs: Storm-Kiln Artist (a Treasure per copy), Ral, Storm Conduit (a damage per copy), Veyran (every trigger twice), Thousand-Year Storm (every instant and sorcery becomes a storm spell) and Prismari, the Inspiration (every instant and sorcery is a storm spell). A typical winning turn: ritual, cantrip, cantrip, Storm-Kiln Artist Treasures paying for a fourth and fifth spell, Kess recasting the ritual from the graveyard, and Tendrils at storm eight or nine drains the table one opponent at a time — or Grapeshot with Ral, Storm Conduit out doubles every point.

The deck is $88.91 at cheapest ordinary printings on 19 September 2026, with 60 of the 86 nonbasic cards under a dollar; the four cards over five dollars are three rituals and Flusterstorm, and Cabal Ritual ($15) was cut for Big Score to keep it under ninety. The list is legal in Commander, singleton, within Grixis, and 100 cards exactly — every line was validated against Scryfall before it was written down here. Build your own version on the deck builder, check today’s prices on the card pricing tool, and if you can name a Grixis commander from its art you will do fine at Guess That Commander.

The other Storm: the X-Men cards

A search for “MTG Storm” now also finds Ororo Munroe. Three Marvel cards are named Storm — Storm, Force of Nature, first printed in a November 2024 Secret Lair and reprinted in the Marvel Universe series in June 2026, and two in the June 2026 Marvel Super Heroes Commander decks — and one of them is a storm card in the mechanical sense too, because Force of Nature grants the keyword. The other two are ordinary flying Mutants.

Rulings worth knowing

1. Storm is a triggered ability that functions on the stack. It triggers on cast, resolves before the spell, and the copies resolve before the spell too (702.40a; Wing Shards ruling).
2. The copies are put onto the stack. They are not cast, so they do not raise the storm count of a later spell and do not trigger “whenever you cast” abilities such as prowess (Empty the Warrens ruling).
3. They do trigger magecraft and any other “cast or copy” ability, once per copy (Fiery Encore ruling).
4. Spells cast by any player, from any zone, count. Countered spells and spells that otherwise failed to resolve count (Chatterstorm ruling).
5. Spells cast after the storm spell, even in response to the trigger, do not count (Wing Shards ruling).
6. The trigger can be countered by anything that counters a triggered ability — Stifle, Trickbind, Tale’s End. If it is, no copies are made and the original spell still resolves (every storm ruling).
7. Countering the storm spell does not affect the copies; each copy must be countered on its own (every storm ruling).
8. You may choose new targets for any of the copies, and different targets for each (Flusterstorm ruling).
9. A spell with two instances of storm triggers twice (702.40b; Prismari, the Inspiration ruling).
10. A copy of a permanent spell — Aeve, Stormscale Scion, the two Auras — becomes a token as it resolves. Aeve’s copies enter one at a time, each counting the Oozes already on the battlefield (Aeve ruling).
11. Casting a buyback storm spell again triggers storm again; earlier copies are not counted, earlier casts are (Haze of Rage ruling).
12. A card exiled by Mind’s Desire and not played by end of turn stays in exile for the rest of the game (Mind’s Desire ruling). Galvanic Relay’s card can only be played on your next turn, never the same turn (Galvanic Relay ruling).
13. Crackling Spellslinger’s grant only happens if you cast it; a Spellslinger put onto the battlefield does nothing (Crackling Spellslinger ruling). Storm, Force of Nature’s grant is for the next instant or sorcery you cast that turn, one spell only.

Frequently asked questions

What does storm mean in MTG?

When you cast a spell with storm, you copy it once for each other spell that was cast before it this turn, by any player, and you may choose new targets for the copies. It is a triggered ability (rule 702.40) and the copies go straight onto the stack without being cast.

Does storm count my opponents’ spells?

Yes. The rule counts “each other spell that was cast before it this turn,” whoever cast it. An opponent who counters three of your spells has added three to your storm count — and if they counter the storm spell itself, that also counts for the next one.

Do storm copies trigger prowess?

No. The copies are not cast, and prowess triggers on casting. The original spell triggers prowess once; the copies add nothing. The same is true of Guttersnipe, Talrand, Aetherflux Reservoir and every other “whenever you cast” ability.

Does storm trigger magecraft?

Yes, once for the original and once per copy, because magecraft says “cast or copy.” Storm-Kiln Artist, Zaffai, Veyran and Ral, Storm Conduit are the reason a storm deck in Commander is usually Izzet or Grixis.

If my storm spell is countered, do I still get the copies?

Yes. The storm trigger is separate from the spell and resolves first, so the copies are already on the stack when a counterspell hits the original. To stop the copies, your opponent has to counter the trigger (Stifle, Trickbind) before it resolves, or deal with the copies one by one (Flusterstorm, Mindbreak Trap).

Do countered spells count toward the storm count?

Yes. A countered spell was still cast. So are spells cast from the graveyard, from exile and from the command zone.

Do the copies count toward the storm count of my next spell?

No. Copies are not cast. If you cast three spells and then a storm spell that makes three copies, your next storm spell has a storm count of four, not seven.

How many storm cards are there?

34 in paper as of 19 September 2026 — 12 from Scourge, six from the Time Spiral block, and 16 from supplemental and Universes Beyond sets between 2011 and 2025 — plus two Arena-only Alchemy cards. Three more cards grant storm without having it: Prismari, the Inspiration; Storm, Force of Nature; and Crackling Spellslinger.

Is storm banned?

Six of the 34 cards are banned or restricted somewhere: Empty the Warrens, Grapeshot, Temporal Fissure, Chatterstorm and Galvanic Relay in Pauper, and Mind’s Desire restricted in Vintage. No storm card is banned in Modern, Legacy or Commander. Mind’s Desire was banned in Legacy from 2003 until 7 August 2023.

Is Grapeshot legal in Modern?

Yes, and it is the kill card of the current Ruby Storm deck. It is banned in Pauper, where it has been since February 2013.

What is the Storm Scale?

Mark Rosewater’s one-to-ten rating of how likely a mechanic is to return to a Standard-legal set, named after storm because storm is the canonical ten. Since 2007 the mechanic has appeared in exactly one Standard-legal set, on one card: Stormscale Scion in Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

What is the best storm commander on a budget?

Kess, Dissident Mage. She recasts one instant or sorcery from the graveyard each turn, her colours hold 25 of the 33 Commander-legal storm cards, and the deck in this guide costs $88.91. For competitive tables it is Krark, the Thumbless with Sakashima of a Thousand Faces; for a mono-red engine it is Birgi, God of Storytelling.

Is the X-Men card Storm a storm card?

Storm, Force of Nature is, in the sense that it gives your next instant or sorcery the keyword when it deals combat damage to a player. Storm, Queen of Wakanda and Storm, Shaker of Skies are ordinary flying creatures with no connection to the mechanic beyond the name.