Meme or Dream? "I Wish I Owned More Angels" (Standard)
A few months ago, Wizards started publishing decklists from Magic Arena. To qualify for publication, a deck needs to win at least six matches in a row at platinum rank or better. This sounds simple on its face, but some incredibly janky lists end up being posted every time lists are published. This has led to speculation that a bug in the system allows decks that didn't actually win six matches in a row to be published or, for the most tin-foil-hatted crowd, the idea that Wizards just publishes whatever it wants, to make the metagame look more diverse than it really is.
This week, we have a deck that, as per tradition, is lacking a sideboard, but the weirdness goes beyond the lack of a sideboard. My best guess is that someone set out to build either Angels or Clerics but realized they didn't have enough of either to make a deck, so they sort of smashed both themes together along with some random lifegain cards to fill in the gaps. It also features an absolutely shocking number of scrylands. While the deck is Orzhov, we have six off-color scrylands, which means a huge percentage of our lands come into play tapped. Oh yeah, and there are just 23 total lands, even though we have 65 cards in our main deck for some reason! While lifegain seems to be the overarching theme of the deck, there are some really weird choices, like Youthful Valkyrie with a total of seven Angels in our deck. The funniest part is that because the deck has 65 cards in the main deck, it would be perfectly legal to cut five cards from the deck, so we know these cards aren't here because the deck's builder didn't have any better options and needed to find 60 cards to play the deck—they are here because they are wanted! Is this mismatched pile of Angels, Clerics, and lifegain synergies a meme or a dream? How many games will we get mana screwed on with 23 lands in a 65-card deck? Can we assemble off-color Temple Tron for no apparent reason? Let's play some matches and find out!