The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User-Submitted Decks (Oct. 13-20, 2019)
Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we take a peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, our main focuses are on Standard and Modern, with some sweet combo decks and an updated build of a classic tribal deck with some big upgrades from Throne of Eldraine! If you missed last week's edition of The Fish Tank, you can find it here. 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
On paper, Lucky Knights looks like a weird (and maybe bad) version of Golgari Adventures. But after playing against the deck on stream, I can tell you that Smitten Swordmaster with Lucky Clover are a very scary combination. With a few Knights on the battlefield, it's pretty easy for a single Smitten Swordmaster to drain for 8 or even 10 for just one mana. And with multiple Lucky Clovers (or a few more Knights), it's very possible for Curry Favor (the sorcery half of Smitten Swordmaster) to literally be one-mana "win the game." While the mixture of Knights and non-Knights (Edgewall Innkeeper and Lovestruck Beast) is awkward, it might just be that those cards are so strong in an adventure-style deck that you can't leave them out, even if they don't support the Knight plan. We randomly ended up playing the deck on stream this week. Here's the replay, if you want to see it in action.
With Field of the Dead running rampant in Standard, players have been looking toward land destruction as a way to deal with the Zombie-making nonbasic. Build-a-Geddon (originally called Fires of Destruction) takes this to the extreme. The goal is to stick a Fires of Invention while also having a way to copy a spell on the battlefield (either League Guildmage or Ral, Storm Conduit). Then, on the next turn, we cast Repeated Reverberation for free with Fires of Invention, copy it, and then use Rubble Reading or Demolish as our second spell for the turn with Fires of Invention, which, with two Repeated Reverberations, will be copied a massive six times, blowing up seven lands! My main question for the deck is if it has enough removal to survive against aggro. It might be worth cutting some expensive cards to make room for Lava Coil or some other efficient removal spell. Drawn from Dreams also seems well suited for the deck and is probably better than Commence the Endgame, at the very least. While my guess is this one is more of an Against the Odds deck than something that will win a Grand Prix, the games where you blow up all of your opponent's lands on Turn 5 will make some clunky losses more than worthwhile.
Modern
Fires of Invention has to be one of the most popular brew-around cards of all time. We've seen people playing it fairly to cast big things and unfairly to take all of the turns, and now with In a Barbie World, we have a Fires of Invention prison deck. The plan is simple: we stick a Fires of Invention so we no longer have to tap lands to play spells and then Manabarbs to punish our opponent for tapping their lands to cast spells. Just in case our opponent is playing a cheap deck that doesn't require tapping many lands, we have Trinisphere to make sure that everything costs at least three mana, which equals at least three damage with Manabarbs. While I'm not sold on Trespasser's Curse, which is very matchup dependent, and while Chandra, Torch of Defiance is probably better than Chandra, Fire Artisan, in general, the deck plays mostly good cards to back up the janky combo. Plus, it's got a catchy name.
Rogues are a tribe that has felt really close to being Modern playable for a while now. Oona's Blackguard and Stinkdrinker Bandit are very solid, if untraditional, lords, and a pile of evasive, annoying tribe members support them perfectly, offering tons of damage and potentially even cleaning out the opponent's hand early in the game. Now, thanks to Throne of Eldraine, the tribe has some really interesting new additions. Robber of the Rich is the best of the bunch. Unlike in Standard, where we basically only access the cards Robber of the Rich exiles if Robber itself attacks, in Rogue tribal, we should consistently be able to play the cards we exile from our opponent's deck. And both Brazen Borrower and Rankle, Master of Pranks add some extra removal and flexibility to the tribe. While I'm not sure that Morsel Theft is playable in Modern (it should probably be more Lightning Bolts and Fatal Pushes), the tribe looks oddly competitive. Will the new Throne of Eldraine cards be enough to put the tribe over the top? It will take some testing to see, although the tribe certainly looks better today than it did a couple of months ago, and it wasn't that far away from being playable even before Throne of Eldraine was released.
Fae of Wishes has had an immediate impact on Standard but very likely also has Modern implications that haven't been fully realized yet. Heartbeat of Spring Combo takes full advantage of the card. After generating a bunch of mana with mana doublers like Heartbeat of Spring and Dictate of Karametra, along with Early Harvest to untap our all-basic mana base, Fae of Wishes allows us to tutor out whatever finisher we need for a given situation, ranging from Omniscience, to Coax from the Blind Eternities to snag an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, to a Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in case we draw our entire deck with Blue Sun's Zenith. My main worry is that the deck might be slow in some matchups. Apart from a couple of Gigadrowse and Echoing Truths, we don't really have much interaction, so assembling the combo as quickly as possible seems important. While we have a bunch of ramp and redraws to set things up, will we be fast enough to stay alive against the quickest decks in Modern? That's the big question. However, the deck is very close to being in the typical budget price range, coming in at just $130, thanks in large part to the all-basic mana base for Early Harvest, so if you want to give it a try and see how it plays, at least it won't set you back too much. If you do decide to try the deck, let me know how it goes. Heartbeat of Spring Combo seems like it has potential if someone can find the right mixture of support cards to stay alive and combo pieces to finish the game.
Fishbowl Thursday Deck Tech
In case you missed our Fishbowl Thursday deck tech this week, you'll find the deck tech and list for cnofafva's Warp World Combo below!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. If you have some ideas for these decks, make sure to leave them in the comments. And if you have a deck you'd like considered for next week's edition of The Fish Tank (or the Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), make sure to leave a link to that as well. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
