The Fish Tank: Amonkhet Remastered Week (August 16-22, 2020)
Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, The Fish Tank has been focused mostly on Historic, thanks to the release of Amonkhet Remastered adding a bunch of sweet new cards to the format. As such, today, we're going to embrace Magic's newest format and have an Amonkhet Remastered in Historic–themed article! What Amonkhet Remastered cards are viewers brewing around? What new spice is on its way to Historic? Let's find out! But first, 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.
Historic
In the past, Turbo Fog was one of my favorite budget / rogue strategies, but sadly, Nexus of Fate sort of gave the archetype a bad name. Should an entire archetype suffer because of one overpowered box-topper that is now banned in several formats? Probably not, so Turbo Fog is back on the menu, thanks to Jesse B. and the printing of Teferi's Tutelage. The idea of the deck is to use Haze of Pollen to slow down the opponent's offense, while we draw cards and eventually find our single Teferi's Tutelage to mill our opponent out of the game. Shadow of the Grave is our main payoff, allowing us to return a bunch of cycling cards (or cards we discard to Thirst for Meaning and Thirst for Knowledge) to our hand, which, in conjunction with Lotus Field and untappers like Vizier of Tumbling Sands (which Shadow of the Grave can return to our hand to make even more mana) and Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner, will allow us to have massive combo turns where we essentially draw through our entire deck and mill the opponent out of the game all at once. If the mill plan doesn't work, we can simply draw our entire deck and win with our one Thassa's Oracle! One possible option for improving the deck is New Perspectives, which has comboed with Shadow of the Grave and Vizier of Tumbling Sands in the past. While we'd probably have to rebuild the deck a bit (and play a bunch of cycling lands), much of the shell seems designed to support New Perspectives already.
Speaking of New Perspectives, J_Mazz_2020 has a build ready to go for Historic. If you're not familiar with New Perspectives combo, the idea is to resolve a New Perspectives with enough cards in hand that we can start cycling for free. And then, since most of our deck is cycling cards, we should be able to cycle through our entire deck while making extra mana by tapping and untapping Lotus Field with Vizier of Tumbling Sands and tutoring lands into play with Shefet Monitor. Once we cycle everything we can, we use Shadow of the Grave to return all of our cycling cards to our hand and repeat the process until we eventually go through our entire deck and win with Jace, Wielder of Mysteries (or if things go wrong, we can use Commit // Memory to shuffle our graveyard back into the library and start the process over again). In general, the deck looks solid, although I think that Thassa's Oracle might be a better finisher than Jace, Wielder of Mysteries, and Fae of Wishes as a one-of to tutor another finisher or protection from the sideboard could be a good idea. Speaking of protection, by far the biggest issue with New Perspectives is that the deck is basically a glass cannon that is all-in on resolving its namesake card. This means that if our opponent can counter our New Perspectives (or otherwise keep it from hitting the battlefield), our deck does very close to nothing. Leyline of Sanctity is a good start to protecting New Perspectives, keeping our opponent from making us discard it to Thoughtseize or Duress, but Mystical Dispute or other cheap counter magic could also help and is probably worth including in the sideboard. If you're looking to draw cards and combo off, New Perspectives is a really unique option and a ton of fun to play. Plus, when the meta is in the right spot (mostly meaning there aren't a ton of counterspell decks), it can also be pretty good!
Next up, we have not just one but two decks built around Anointed Procession's ability to double up our token production. Peter Sebastian M.'s build reminds me of the Blue-White Embalm deck that was one of my favorite decks to play back in Amonkhet Standard, with the goal being to stick an Anointed Procession or two and then embalm cards like Champion of Wits, Sacred Cat, and Anointer Priest to make a ton of tokens, gain a bunch of life, and draw oodles of cards. Meanwhile, Pareidoliac came in with a more combo-focused build of Anointed Procession, driven by Archon of Sun's Grace and Mythos of Illuna (which seems absurd with Anointed Procession since it can copy any permanent, allowing us to make more Anointed Processions if we need to or flood the board with creatures, if we already have enough copies of our namesake enchantment). The main goal is to play an Archon of Sun's Grace and a Anointed Procession and then follow those up with Mythos of Illuna copying Anointed Procession, which will make two more Anointed Processions and sixteen 2/2 Pegasus tokens!
I'm honestly not sure what build I'm more excited for. We know that Champion of Wits with Anointed Procession is great, but Mythos of Illuna seems absurd too. Maybe some sort of hybrid combining the best aspects of both decks together could work. Either way, I'm super excited for Anointed Procession in Historic, and these decks seem like a good starting point for brews around the enchantment.
You're probably familiar with my experience with Elves in Historic. When Jumpstart was released, Elves was one of the first decks I built for the format, and I had high expectations that thanks to cards like Elvish Archdruid and Craterhoof Behemoth, they would actually be a competitive tribe in the format. Sadly, they were horrible, losing to anything with heavy removal or sweepers thanks to their all-in board-flooding nature. However, in the constantly changing world of Historic, the deck has already gotten some massive upgrades that might fix Elves' problems, as macklinrw realized. Collected Company naturally generates card advantage by putting two creatures into play with a single card, while its instant-speed nature helps to play around sweepers. Meanwhile, Thoughtseize is an old Modern and Legacy Elves trick, allowing us to steal removal or wraths from our opponent's hand before they can ruin our deck. Add all of this together, and it might be time to give Elves another shot in the Historic format!
Solemnity is one of the most exciting new cards from Amonkhet Remastered, with most of the hype focused around its synergy with Nine Lives to lock damage out of the game forever. However, thelucshak has taken Solemnity combos to the next level, with Luminous Broodmoth joining the mix. The idea is simple: we play Solemnity; then, we play a Luminous Broodmoth and a Corpse Knight or Cruel Celebrant. Finally, we play a Stonecoil Serpent or Ugin's Conjurant for zero mana. The X creature dies and immediately comes back into play thanks to Luminous Broodmoth, but since it can't have the flying counter placed on it, it dies and returns to play again and again and again, which drains our opponent out of the game with Corpse Knight or Cruel Celebrant. Plus, of course, we can also tutor up Nine Lives with Idyllic Tutor and try to get a free win by locking our opponent out of damaging us for as long as our enchantments stick on the battlefield! While graveyard hate could be an issue, if we can dodge the Scavenging Oozes and Rest in Peaces of the multiverse, the deck looks like it could actually be pretty powerful in a very janky, unique way!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for this week! If you have any ideas about how to improve these decks, make sure to let us know in the comments, and if you have a deck you want to be considered for a future Fish Tank, leave that there as well! Thanks to everyone who sent in decks this week! 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.
