The Fish Tank: Ikoria Edition (April 12-18, 2020)
Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, we're right in the middle of Ikoria spoilers, and people seem hyped to build around the new set, so we'll be focusing exclusively on decks featuring Ikoria cards! Oh yeah, and to have your own deck considered for next week's edition (and for our Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), make sure to leave a link in the comments or email them to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Standard
Song of Creation is undoubtedly powerful, but it feels easier to break in older formats with fast mana and more free spells. Master_Tame is taking the Song of Creation challenge in Standard! The core of the deck is 11 free creatures, in Chamber Sentry, Stonecoil Serpent, and Ugin's Conjurant. While they will die if we cast them for no mana, they'll still trigger Song of Creation to draw us two cards, making them free Divinations. The idea is that if we can cast enough free creatures (and cheap ramp creatures like Arboreal Grazer and Gilded Goose), we'll be able to draw our entire deck and then flash in Thassa's Oracle for the win! The other important pieces of the deck are Rielle, the Everwise and Leyline of Anticipation, which will help us get Song of Creation onto the battlefield while still having a hand full of cards. Normally, Song of Creation's drawback—discarding your hand at the end of turn—is massive, but with a Rielle, the Everwise on the battlefield, we can let Song of Creation's discard trigger resolve and immediately refill our hand! Meanwhile, using Leyline of Anticipation to flash Song of Creation into play at the end of our opponent's turn is another way to get around discarding our hand, at least for a turn. The main issue with the deck is the games where Song of Creation doesn't resolve—in those games, we're left with a bunch of really weird and underpowered creatures. The backup plan of using Fae of Wishes to snag a finisher helps, but the deck does seem very dependent on having a Song of Creation on the battlefield to do anything powerful. That said, when we do get to untap with Song of Creation, we should have a very good turn and possibly just win the game outright!
Pioneer
Gyruda, Doom of Depths is one of the companions that seems hardest to play in companion mode, but Wizards of Flames is up to the challenge with a crazy combo deck for Pioneer. The idea is simple: play Gyruda, Doom of Depths as quickly as possible and hope that its enters-the-battlefield mills over a clone to copy Gyruda, Doom of Depths. Considering the deck has a massive 24 even-converted-mana-cost Clones, the odds of hitting at least one are actually pretty good! Eventually, we'll hit a Spark Double, which is our most important Clone since it makes a non-legendary copy of Gyruda, Doom of Depths, which in turn will allow all of our other clones to make copies of Gyruda, Doom of Depths that actually stick on the battlefield rather than legend-ruling themselves. Then, we either win with a big board full of Gyrudas or reanimate an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger to close out the game.
While the deck's plan is sweet, I'd change a few things. First, having just Sylvan Caryatid as a two-mana ramp spell seems risky. Considering we really need Gyruda, Doom of Depths to hit the battlefield (since most of our other cards are Clones, which are useless without anything good to copy), playing Paradise Druid or even Growth Spiral to increase our odds of ramping into Gyruda, Doom of Depths seems necessary. Second, Thassa's Oracle seems like it could be a decent addition to the deck since if things go well with our Gyruda, Doom of Depths plan, we'll likely mill our entire deck in one big turn of enters-the-battlefield triggers.
Modern
As you probably know by now, I'm really high on the possibility of Yorion, Sky Nomad. Starting with an extra card in hand is powerful, especially if you have a deck that can take advantage of Yorion, Sky Nomad's mass blink ability. As Marcos R.P. exemplifies, there's already a Modern deck that seems built for the companion: Soulherder! While going up to 80 cards adds some amount of inconsistency, Soulherder decks draw so many cards by blinking creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers that it should be able to brute-force card-draw into the pieces it needs. Plus, Soulherder isn't really about specific cards; it's more about generating incremental and eventually overwhelming value from random dorky creatures. Does Yorion, Sky Nomad mean that playing 80 cards is the future of Soulherder in Modern? My guess is yes, and Marcos R.P.'s list looks like a solid starting point!
Song of Creation has the potential to be the most broken card to come out of Ikoria, and Kelvin already has a crazy Storm-style Modern list built around the card! He also added a really solid write-up of the deck, so rather than my ramblings, here's the explanation straight from the horse's mouth:
Gameplay:
1. Mulligan to Song of Creation or Glittering Wish (which can get Song from sideboard).
2. Play lands, "ramp" spells (Skirk Prospector, Wild Cantor, Pentad Prism), and rituals to get to four or preferably five mana, to cast Song of Creation (see below for why we want mana to go off).
3. Cast Song of Creation (making sure to have at least one other free spell to kick it off)
4. Play free spells (we have 39) until we draw Grapeshot and win the game.
Why we want five mana to go off:
Even though we have many "free" spells, some of them still need one or two mana upfront to cast. If we cast Song of Creation with only four mana, we can only play zero spells until we get one extra land drop off Song of Creation, which propels us into one-drops. This is fine, but after the first free land drop, we have to rely on Simian Spirit Guide to get to two-drops, which is unreliable (94% success). If we start with one spare mana (and land drop into two), this raises our success rate to 98%.
Neat things:
- No duplicate mana symbols, so we can play Jegantha, the Wellspring for free. Playing a Turn 1 or Turn 2 Jegantha is a very real threat (like Gurmag Angler). Then, if we do draw Song of Creation, Jegantha, the Wellspring gives us mana to play it.
- Thassa's Oracle and Empty the Warrens serve as alternate win-cons (in case the opponent plays Leylines or Unmoored Ego).
- Sideboard Song of Creation offers protection against Unmoored Ego.
- Glittering Wish also lets us tutor some sideboard silver bullets.
- Summoner's Pact lets us cast two spells for free.
- Noxious Revival is also a free spell that chains into extra free spells, especially if we grab Summoner's Pact.
- Two Noxious Revivals can loop each other for even more card draw.
- We can Pact of Negation our own spell to get a free cast trigger for Song of Creation.
Most of the hype around Zirda, the Dawnwaker has been for Commander, where it makes infinite mana with Basalt Monolith or Grim Monolith, but Commander isn't the only format where Zirda can make infinite mana! Arcanity gives us a deck that not only manages to hit Zirda, the Dawnwaker's companion restriction but also can go infinite pretty early in the game. The main goal is to reduce the cost of activating Izzet Guildmage to one mana with the help of Zirda, the Dawnwaker, which allows us to copy Manamorphose an infinite number of times, drawing our entire deck and generating infinite mana! We can then cast something like Lightning Bolt and use our infinite mana to copy that enough times to burn our opponent out of the game! The rest of the deck is a Splinter Twin–esque blue-red control shell, giving us plenty of removal to slow down the game while we assemble our combo and counters to protect our key pieces. The deck's main downside is that Izzet Guildmage and Zirda, the Dawnwaker aren't the most resilient creatures, so fighting through decks overloaded with removal spells could be a challenge. But when everything comes together, Splinter Fox should offer a pretty spectacular and unique way of closing out the game.
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for this week! If you have any ideas on how to improve these decks, make sure to let us know in the comments, and if you have a deck you want to be considered for a future Fish Tank, leave that there as well! Thanks to everyone who sent in decks this week! As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
