There are a lot of exciting and powerful new cards in Kaladesh for Standard play. From splashy mythics like Chandra, Torch of Defiance and efficient lands, there’s plenty of awesome effects to start messing around with. Of all the cards I was excited to see played in Standard, Aetherflux Reservoir never even crossed my mind. This week, Frank Karsten sets out to show that the idea of gaining enough life to activate Aetherflux Reservoir isn’t that farfetched, even in Standard:

Aetherflux Storm - Kaladesh Standard | Frank Karsten

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Thraben Inspector
• 4 Reflector Mage

• Spells (30)
• 4 Anticipate
• 4 Aetherflux Reservoir
• 4 Bone Saw
• 4 Oath of Nissa
• 4 Paradoxical Outcome
• 4 Terrarion
• 2 Cathar's Shield
• 2 Crush of Tentacles
• 2 Traverse the Ulvenwald

• Lands (22)
• 2 Forest
• 2 Island
• 1 Plains
• 4 Botanical Sanctum
• 3 Evolving Wilds
• 3 Fortified Village
• 3 Prairie Stream
• 2 Inventor's Fair
• 1 Canopy Vista
• 1 Port Town

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I missed an important piece of text when I first read Aetherflux Reservoir. You don’t just gain one life when you cast a spell. You gain one life for each spell you’ve played this turn. In his article, Frank shows the math on what that progression actually looks like, but assuming you’re still at twenty, you only need to cast eight spells in one turn to gain thirty-six life. So the idea is to resolve an Aetherflux Reservoir and then storm your opponent to death by gaining a bunch of life and then dealing fifty to your opponent.

There’s a couple of cool interactions going on here to help you hit a critical mass of spells, but first you’ve got to actually find an Aetherflux Reservoir. Unfortunately, Oath of Nissa doesn’t help you there. Instead, you’ve got to rely on Thraben Inspector, Terrarion, and Anticipate to help dig through your deck to find key pieces. In a pinch, you can cast a bunch of cheap permanents and use Paradoxical Outcome as a draw spell to find Aetherflux Reservoir. You can even use Thraben Inspector and Reflector Mage to buy time or use Inventor's Fair to tutor up a copy if you can find enough artifacts.

Once you have a Aetherflux Reservoir in play, you can start comboing off. The combo here is straightforward. Cheap or free spells let you gain a bunch of life. Crush of Tentacles and/or Paradoxical Outcome let you rebuy your cheap spells like Oath of Nissa so that you can gain even more life and potentially just kill your opponent.

This engine is exciting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Crush of Tentacles has shown itself to be a powerful haymaker in midrangey matchups, and that seems unlikely to change any time in the near future. Secondly, the ability to use Aetherflux Reservoir and cheap spells as a way to keep your head above water until you find a copy of Paradoxical Outcome to complete the combo is a completely reasonable plan against a lot of aggressive decks, particularly with Crush of Tentacles as a back-up plan.

It’s hard to say if the format will be slow enough for something like this to be a real option, but I’d certainly love to see a deck built around casting a dozen spells in a turn have at least a moment in the Standard spotlight.