The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User Decks (September 27-October 3, 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 have a good mixture of decks across formats, with a heavy focus on Modern and Zendikar Rising, along with a couple of sweet Standard and Historic decks in the mix as well! What coolness did viewers send in this week? Let's find out! But first, 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
Yes, ramping into Ugin, the Spirit Dragon has been done before in Standard, but Logan W. has a much different way of getting to the planeswalker early in the game: playing a bunch of colorless utility lands and Forsaken Monument! The end result is a weird mono-red / mono-brown ramp-ish control deck. If we can play Palladium Myr on Turn 3, we can follow up with Forsaken Monument on Turn 5. Not only does this grow Palladium Myr and our other random colorless creatures (Stonecoil Serpent, Skyscanner, and Solemn Simulacrum), but also, thanks to all of our colorless lands (and a Palladium Myr that now taps for three mana), we should be able to untap and cast Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, which is usually game-ending—and even more so in our deck since all of our permanents are colorless and avoid Ugin's exiling ability! While being mono-colorless could be interesting, in terms of the deck actually being competitive, red is a necessary evil because adding removal to the deck to give us a chance against aggro. If you're looking for something spicy to try in our new, post-banning Zendikar Rising format, Forsaken Monument looks like a ton of fun and like it might even be good in our new meta!
Historic
Yes, I know, everyone is burnt out on Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath specifically and ramp in general, but MrMindhack's Valakut Combo deck for Historic is so sweet that it's worth featuring, even if it does have some of everyone's least favorite cards. The idea is to get a bunch of lands on the battlefield with the help of Uro, Growth Spiral, and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove. Once we get our lands built up, we get down our main combo pieces—Lotus Cobra, Tatyova, Benthic Druid, and Valakut Exploration—to draw us cards and make mana as lands enter the battlefield. We then Scapeshift to draw a bunch of cards with Tatyova and Valakut Exploration and make a bunch of mana with Lotus Cobra so that we can cast even more spells (and maybe even more Scapeshifts if we draw into them). Eventually, we win the game in one of two ways: either by getting 20 cards under Valakut Exploration and passing the turn or by drawing our entire deck and casting one of our two Thassa's Oracles! While the deck is an all-in combo deck without any real removal or interaction, which could cause problems in some matchups, the combo turns look like they should be absolutely spectacular!
Modern
Mill is the new hotness in Modern thanks to the printing of Ruin Crab, but what if having eight Crabs with Ruin Crab and Hedron Crab is not enough? This is what evyon25 explores with 12-Crab Mill. The idea is to add Charix, the Raging Isle and Phenax, God of Deception to the mix, with Phenax allowing us to tap all of our Crabs for additional milling and Charix potentially milling a massive 17 cards each turn! We can also mill our opponent out in one turn by kicking a Maddening Cacophony with a Fraying Sanity on the battlefield, which gives us a way to jank our opponent out if everything else goes wrong. The downside of going all-in on the Crab plan is that to make room for more Crabs, we have to cut back on removal and other interaction. In theory, the Crabs themselves help against aggro since they are decent blockers, although it is still a bit scary to look at the list and not see Fatal Push or Thoughtseize. Is 12-Crab Mill better than more traditional, controlling mill? That remains to be seen, but it is a sweet idea and one of the funnier pseudo-tribal decks possible in Modern.
I love Colossus Hammer decks, and while Krusty_Roger's Mayael / Colossus Hammer deck might not be one of the most competitive Hammer Time builds I've seen, it certainly is one of the spiciest (and also very budget-friendly). Normally, Hammer Time decks are looking to equip a Colossus Hammer and win by attacking, but Krusty_Roger has a different plan: using Colossus Hammer (and also All That Glitters and other cheap equipment) to grow a creature to 20 power to win the game with Mayael's Aria. Of course, this is very much an Against the Odds plan rather than something that is going to win you a tournament, and doubly so with the all-basic mana base, which is going to make it really difficult to cast our spells on time. (If you decide to try the deck, add in whatever dual lands you have available. Fetch lands and shock lands would be ideal, but literally any dual lands that can help us cast our spells will improve the deck). As a result, at least in its current form, I would be surprised to find that the deck is competitive, but as someone who has built a few Mayael's Aria decks, the Colossus Hammer plan is intriguing and might actually be one of the best ways to grow a creature to 20 power to pick up the win. Basically, the deck certainly needs a lot of fine-tuning (especially the lands), but with a bit more brewing, it could actually be a really fun, unique, semi-competitive option!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for this week! If you have any ideas about 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.
