Meme or Dream? I Spent All My Wildcards on Nexus of Becoming, So...
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Meme or Dream?, the series where we take decklists that Wizards publishes on Magic.gg, stating that they got at least six wins in a row at Platinum rank or better, and put them to the test. Are they just as janky as they look, making them a meme, or is there something sweet and spicy hanging out behind the janky facade, making the deck a dream?
Today's deck is wild. The best that I can tell is someone spent all of their wildcards on Nexus of Becoming when Outlaws of Thunder Junction was released and figured they were stuck building a deck around the mythic. While the deck's primary goal—trying to cheat Threefold Thunderhulk into play with Nexus of Becoming to make a huge board full of Gnomes outside of a big Thunderhulk itself—seems sweet, the rest of the deck is just odd. It plays zero removal spells but a ton of counters. Its sideboard only has three different cards, including a bunch of Doorkeeper Thrulls that lock our own combo out of the game. Finally, the mana base is hilarious. It has zero dual lands, persumably because the builder didn't have the budget, but somehow managed to play two copies of Hall of Tagsin, which is perhaps the worst rare land in Standard. I have no idea how someone ends up with zero surveil lands, pain lands, or fastlands but two Hall of Tagsins in their Magic Arena collection. Is this wild pile of janky a meme or dream? Let's get to the video and find out!
Meme or Dream?: I Spent All My Wildcards on Nexus of Becoming, So...
So, as you probably saw in the video, we only made it three matches with the original build before deciding to make some improvements. Two things became clear about the deck almost immediately. First, the good news is that Nexus of Becoming itself was awesome. Being able to put Threefold Thunderhulk into play was almost always game-winning. While the deck itself had some issues, the idea was surprisingly strong. The bad news was twofold. First, playing 10 counterspells but zero removal spells was a huge problem. If our opponent resolved anything, we'd just get run over before doing anything meaningful. The second big problem was the mana base: playing zero dual lands and a bunch of colorless lands left us in situations where we simply couldn't cast all of our spells on time.Thankfully, both of these problems were pretty easy to solve, which left us with something like this:
After updating the deck a bit, things went much better. We went 2-0, giving us an overall record of 3-2 with the deck (after going 1-2 with the original build). Honestly, I think Nexus of Becoming might actually deserve a second look in Standard. It felt incredibly powerful!
While we took a light touch with the rebuild (we didn't change any of the core cards, just turning some counterspells into removal and adding some dual lands), there are still a bunch of additional possibilities for building around the artifact. We could be a straight-up artifact deck, which has a lot of support in Duskmourn Standard, or go more controlling and use Nexus of Becoming as a finisher. Either way, the power of Nexus itself seems high enough to make it the centerpiece of a real Standard deck.
All in all, this leaves us in a weird position. By the record, the initial build of the deck was a meme, although the idea itself seems like a dream! With a few updates, the deck was awesome, and I think we're only scratching the surface of the deck's potential. Basically, it seems like Platinum-Mythic Ranked Player had an awesome idea, but the execution (maybe partly because of budget restirctions and the cards in their collection) left a lot to be desired. But if you're looking for something super fun and super different to play in Duskmourn Standard, give the deck a shot!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. 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.
