The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Submitted Decks (Oct. 27–Nov. 2, 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, we've got a bunch more sweet Pioneer lists, along with a peek at Standard! 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.

Pioneer

Omniscience is a powerful card in every format, including Pioneer. The challenge is getting it on the battlefield. Omni-Flood is looking to flood the board with mana dorks and then use Flood of Tears to pick everything up and hopefully put an Omniscience into play for free. Assuming we do stick an Omniscience, Dig Through Time can find us our finishers, while various Eldrazi can close out the game quickly. My main concern for the deck is what happens when things don't go according to plan. Everything should be great in the games where we play a bunch of mana dorks and Flood into Omniscience on Turn 4, but if our mana dorks die or we don't draw Flood of Tears, we're potentially left with a handful of expensive Eldrazi and uncastable Dig Through Times. Still, the power to win the game quickly and in a unique way is noteworthy. And when the plan comes together, the deck looks super fun!

Nabanamonicon was one of my favorite Standard decks back when Dominaria was released, and the deck actually gets a pretty meaningful boost of power in Pioneer thanks to Master of Waves. The deck's main goal is to annoy the opponent into submission with Merfolk Tricksters, Reflector Mages, and endless card draw from Silvergill Adept and Elite Guardmage, with Naban, Dean of Iteration to double up the triggers. The problem with the Standard build of UW Naban was that it often took a long time to close out the game since our creatures are so small, but Master of Waves coming down to add 10 or 20 power to the battlefield for just four mana massively changes the equation in Pioneer. On the other hand, the deck isn't without concerns: it is very well positioned against creature-based decks, but cards like Reflector Mage and Merfolk Trickster lose a lot of value against spell-based control, which means having a solid sideboard plan for creature-light strategies is essential. Hopefully, the combination of Spell Pierce, Sorcerous Spyglass, Deputy of Detention, and Mystical Dispute will be enough, although personally, I'd probably look to trim cards like Supreme Verdict (mostly good in creature matchups) for more cards to improve against control and combo. Still, this is a fairly small complaint, and the deck looks like a blast to play and like it might actually be reasonably competitive, especially considering that its price tag is just outside of our budget range. And it would actually be under $100 if if it weren't for Hallowed Fountain jacking up the price.

There was a brief, shining moment after Amonkhet was released where New Perspectives was the hottest deck in Standard. While its success proved to be relatively short-lived since a timely counterspell would basically beat the deck by itself, it is still one of the most unique decks we've had in Standard in a long time. If you've never seen New Perspectives in action, the goal is simple: get a New Perspectives on the battlefield with at least seven cards in hand, which allows us to cycle for free. Since our deck is almost exclusively cycle cards, we can cycle through our entire deck, using Vizier of Tumbling Sands to generate mana by untapping lands (ideally Lotus Field) and Shadow of the Grave to let us reuse all of our cycling cards to make sure we don't fizzle. The Standard deck used Approach of the Second Sun as the main win condition, but in Pioneer, we get Jace, Wielder of Mysteries to reward us with a win for drawing our entire deck.

While much of the deck is the same as the Standard deck, a couple of really big new additions power up the deck. The first is Lotus Field, which in conjunction with Vizier of Tumbling Sands potentially allows us to cast New Perspectives as early as Turn 4 (or even Turn 3 with the help of Growth Spiral), significantly speeding up the deck. The other is Veil of Summer. As I mentioned a moment ago, the reason why New Perspectives ended up fizzling in Standard was that it was extremely weak to counterspells. Now, thanks to Veil of Summer, the deck has a one-mana cantrip that protects the combo from countermagic, in theory shoring up the deck's single biggest weakness. 

Normally, when I think of Constellation decks, I think of Doomwake Giant, Courser of Kruphix, and friends, but Turkeyshape has a much more unique and aggressive take on the archetype. The main goal is to stock the graveyard with the help of cards like Stitcher's Supplier, Satyr Wayfinder, and Kruphix's Insight and then use Strength from the Fallen as a repeatable pump spell, hopefully on a trampling creature like Lotleth Troll. If we can't get in for combat damage, we can always sacrifice whatever Strength from the Fallen targeted to Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to directly drain our opponent out of the game! Of course, to keep triggering Strength from the Fallen, we need enchantments to enter the battlefield, which leads us to Mana Bloom, which we can cast for one mana to pump something with Strength from the Fallen, return it to our hand on our next upkeep, and pump again the next turn. My main concern for the deck is the reliance on the graveyard. While cards like Pharika, God of Affliction, Boon Satyr, and Lotleth Troll do give us a chance of winning without our graveyard, and Nylea, God of the Hunt and Doomwake Giant can help after sideboarding, something like Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace will shut down most of the deck and likely leave us with a lot of underpowered cards in hand. That said, if we can dodge the graveyard hate, Strength from the Fallen seems like it should be able to close out games very quickly.

Standard

You can make a pretty good argument that if your Standard deck can consistently play Oko, Thief of Crowns on Turn 2, you can fill the rest of your deck with whatever you like and still pick up a reasonable number of wins. But does this include land destruction? Ion Diamond thinks so! One of the things I really like about this build of Standard Land Destruction is that it actually only has eight land-destruction spells but then a bunch of ways to find (Escape to the Wilds) and reuse (Bond of Insight) them, which reduces the risk of hands where you just draw all land destruction and no meaningful ways to interact with the rest of the battlefield. Plus, we can live the dream of casting Fires of Invention on Turn 4 into double Rubble Reading / Demolish on Turn 5, which might not be enough to win the game, but it should at least send a strong message to our opponent.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for this week! If you have some ideas for these decks, make sure to let us know in the comments. And if you've got a deck you want to be considered for next week's edition of The Fish Tank (or the Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), leave a link in the comments, or you can email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.