Magic Arena but it's 420 | Brewer's Kitchen
Hey there! In case you came here before watching the video, I’d highly suggest watching it for some context.
You came back for the deck tech? Oh ok, I wasn’t planning on going any deeper into what the deck does… besides blazing our opponent’s face for 420. It does have some interesting lines of play, but keep in mind that I’ve built it with the sole goal of pulling off the meme in a real match. While that can win some games, it’s certainly not the most efficient way to go about it. With that in mind, here’s what the list looks like without the bees:
The Gameplan
You’ve seen the video, right? If not, you probably should! It’s very short since making a 420-minute video seemed a bit excessive. So, assuming you’ve watched it, you saw that the deck plays the incredibly solid green-white enchantress shell with Sythis, Harvest's Hand, Sanctum Weaver, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Setessan Champion.
There are some more niche cards in the list, though. Nyxbloom Ancient and Nylea, Keen-Eyed usually seem a bit too cute for the historic meta. And while this is true, it is what makes the deck accelerate at a rate that can be too quick for the opponent to scoop to. Ok, that sounds a bit weird, but let me explain:
The problem I had while building this deck was opponents realizing that we were meming on them and scooping the game. Some people just concede before we can untap with a Nyxbloom Ancient on the battlefield. But if we spend too much time trying to produce enough mana for the meme while clearly having the option to kill them at any point, the scoop chance rises to almost 100%. I had to find a way to surprise the opponent with an ungodly amount of mana production and pull off the combo while our opponent still reads Protean Thaumaturge.
This weird two drop becomes a copy of any creature on the battlefield whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under our control. If it would be an enchantment itself, it would be an amazing card. Considering that it would trigger itself, it would effectively be a two mana Clone after entering the battlefield. Sadly, it isn’t an enchantment itself… Good thing, the creatures we are trying to copy with it mostly are, though.
Let’s say we play a Thaumaturge on turn two and follow it up with a Sanctum Weaver on three. We can now copy the Weaver, have two enchantments on the battlefield and tap the copy to produce two mana right away. Supposing our opponent doesn’t interact with our board, we can now play a Nyxbloom Ancient on turn four and copy it once it enters the battlefield. If we have the fourth land, it will now tap for nine mana, since Nyxbloom Ancient and its copy will stack their mana tripling effects. While we’re at it, we could use that mana to play a Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and copy this once it enters the battlefield. Now we can make two additional land drops, one from the original Dryad and one from the copy.
Sadly, Setessan Champion will not trigger the Thaumaturge but serves as an amazing target to copy. If we sequence our copying targets correctly, we can chain mana production, card draw, and additional land drops to churn out insane value in relatively early stages of the game.
This engine takes up most of the space in the deck, though. We basically give up crucial deck slots that should be used for interaction (Cards like Baffling End or Elspeth Conquers Death) in favor of combo pieces. To make as much room for the engine possible, we shift a lot of important cards to the sideboard and find them with Fae of Wishes. Since our engine involves a lot of card draw, we can usually find a Fae once we are ready to serve our opponent the 420 special. Most of the times, we use it to set things up, though:
Wrath of God is our boardwipe of choice to prevent getting beaten into the ground before doing anything cool. I might change it to Divine Purge if it turns out to be effective in playtesting and update the decklist. But then again, maybe the card gets nerved/buffed/whatever in the meantime? (Alchemy amirite?)
Finale of Revelation is our way to seal the deal on the success of our combo. As seen in the video, drawing cards and untapping lands with Nyxbloom Ancient is almost synonymous with winning in this deck.
Some of you might have seen a Crackle with Power in the video. I’ve played this to use it for another meme edit that didn’t make the cut. I switched it out for Gauntlets of Light which can easily create an infinite mana loop with Sanctum Weaver. While talking about making changes to the sideboard: If you can find the room for it, an extra turn spell-like Alrund's Epiphany or Alchemist's Gambit are very effective as wish targets to set up a combo turn. Your opponent is likely going to scoop to this, though.
Once you’ve accumulated enough mana, you can get the Banefire to shoot the opponent for X= any funny number you can come up with… or 20… I guess… that’s a bit boring if you ask me. Fun fact, while Banefire is strictly better, I’d rather play Blaze here.
Sterling Grove and Destiny Spinner make it harder for our opponents to stop us from executing our ridiculous gameplan. Make sure to sacrifice the Grove before you try to copy one of our enchantment creatures since Shroud prevents even ourselves from targeting them. Destiny Spinner’s activated ability is an excellent win condition if we can’t access our sideboard.
Nylea, Keen-Eyed always felt a bit underwhelming in the decks I’ve played her in so far. But turns out, her activated ability is quite useful if we produce hundreds of mana. She also makes most of our deck cheaper to cast, enabling even more explosive turns if we live to untap with her.
Shigeki, Jukai Visionary is the newest addition to the deck. It triggers Constellation and other enchantment-related synergies and can be used to return large numbers of cards back from our graveyard once we start tripling our mana production. Not getting back legendary cards sadly means we cannot use it to get back Sythis, Harvest's Hand, which is the most powerful card in our deck.
Wrap Up
And that’s it for this one. The deck plays surprisingly well for a meme deck but is clearly missing interaction. Once you’ve gotten used to sequencing Protean Thaumaturge’s copy ability, the deck becomes super fun and interesting to play, though. I personally prefer comboing over interacting. If you do too, give it a try in case you have the wildcards to spare.
If you have questions or ideas for this or any other deck, you can reach me on Twitter @Brewers_Kitchen or at brewerskitchen@mtggoldfish.com.
