Fish Five-0: Orzhov Foretold (Standard, Magic Arena)
In a world full of Midrange matchups, we found a deck that can grind with the best of them! Maybe even surpass them?
Gameplan
The deck is able to grind very well and has a decent amount of board wipes and removal for us to fight off the early aggression as we do have cards like Kaya's Wrath and Realm-Cloaked Giant. We can also lock opponents out of some key cards with Sorcerous Spyglass. The obvious cards are these:
With the dominance coming from green planeswalkers right now, it's not enough to just be able to remove them. We need to render these planeswalkers useless and the only way is to prohibit them from using their abilities so the additional copies can get jammed in our opponent's hand. Of course cards like Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Teferi, Time Raveler have passive abilities that are still a problem but not having a 3/3 elemental attacking immediately can be the difference between us winning and losing.
The next piece in our deck is Doom Foretold as this will make it awkward for opponents to commit to the board as they'll have to sacrifice something that is non-token and non-land. Not only is this card great when we're loaded with cards like Golden Egg and Oath of Kaya, it's an enchantment and can't become a 3/3 elk thanks to Oko, Thief of Crowns' +1 ability. Don't be worried if you need to sacrifice the Doom foretold without getting the added value as this card getting opponents to take a turn off or sacrifice a ton of things is already good enough. Everything else is the cherry on top. Since we play a good chunk of artifacts and enchantments....
I know that this is a meta where creatures get elk'd but Cavalier of Dawn comes down and can blow anything up including planeswalkers or your own stuff so you can get a 3/3 body. There will be some situations where this matters as you can destroy your own Golden Egg for a 3/3 for board presence. This card being able to get around Veil of Summer is big. Ontop of all of that? The card dying can grab us a Doom Foretold or any of our enchantment/artifacts back for another use.
What are these planeswalkers doing in my deck?
Kaya, Orzhov Usurper is mostly here for us to fight whatever aggro decks we run into as they're still common on the ladder. Kaya is also a good way to eat opponent's food tokens while also being able to exile Gilded Goose. Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage is a way for us to keep our opponent's low on cards as a combination of Doom Foretold, removal, and discard can wither our opponent's hand. Lastly, Kaya, Bane of the Dead makes it so we can ignore Hexproof and at the very worst, it's a removal spell that can exile two creatures which is relevant in this format as we are short on exiling effects.
Matchups
Let's not lie here, the deck is geared towards grinding out food decks. We have tools that help us get around so many cards in their decks that it can be hard for food decks to ever get anything going. We just need to be mindful of counterspells as that's the best thing against us, so try to play around Disdainful Stroke and Negate whenever you can. Remember to Spyglass on Oko, Thief of Crowns first! This isn't always 100% but about 80% of the time you want to name Oko just so they can't undo your spyglass. If you see that they have black then name Vraska, Golgari Queen next as these are the two main ways for them to deal with our artifact.
Our aggro matchup should be amazing as we have so many things that are just a nightmare for aggressive mages. Between all of our sweepers and removal, we also have big bodies in Basilica Bell-Haunt and Cavalier of Dawn. Cavalier works overtime here as Cavalier can bring back Oath of Kaya or Golden Egg to help us with the lifegain plan. What is our worst match up? I believe that control decks are our worst matchup. Not tap out control but the ones that play a ton of counterspells as we're a very clunky deck and usually take a whole turn to play a single spell. On top of that, our main deck is filled with dead cards like Kaya's Wrath which do nothing in the control matchup.
Conclusion
The deck performed just as well as I imagined but the games are very slow midrange grind fests, so if you're looking to pick up this deck be prepared for a long one! I won't say this deck will 100% beat every food deck as they can have absurdly powerful starts but when we played this on stream it did very well putting up a record of 5-2 and 5-0. The best thing about the deck is that we have enough answers to everything so I don't think we need to play main deck Noxious Grasp as there will be some matchups where that card does nothing. The only thing I could see changing moving forward is the number of lands. I felt like we often had too many lands in the deck and nothing to sink all of our mana into so maybe something like an additional Castle Ardenvale could be huge.
If you ever have a deck you want to be made into a video feel free to leave a like, comment, Email, and subscribe to the MTGGoldfish Youtube Channel
-Your Friendly Neighborhood AsianAvenger
Twitter: @TheAsianAvenger || Twitch: twitch.tv/TheAsianAvenger || Email: theasianavenger@mtggoldfish.com
