The Fish Tank: Dominaria United Week (August 27-September 3, 2022)

Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we sneak a peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, we're focusing on decks featuring Dominaria United cards, and we have some sweet ones, ranging from Standard all the way back to Modern! What sweet #MTGDMU brews did you all send in? Let's find out. Oh yeah, if you want your deck considered for next week's edition of The Fish Tank, leave a link in the comments, or you can email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.

Standard

In Standard, we've got a pretty wild Grixis deck—Shadow of Hidetsugu—from SquilliumFancyshot. The idea is to abuse Shadow of Mortality, not by getting it on the battlefield but with the help of cards that can take advantage of its massive 15-mana cost. For example, if we can get a Shadow of Mortality in our graveyard with the help of cards like Otherworldly Gaze, Tainted Indulgence, and Maestros Charm, we can play Monstrous War-Leech as a four-mana 15/15, which is pretty absurd. But it gets even better. We can use Runo Stromkirk to put Shadow of Mortality from our graveyard to the top of our library, which will not only flip Runo Stromkirk the next turn but also potentially let us exile it with Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos for a massive 15 damage! While the plan is hilarious, and it should be pretty powerful when it works, I do think we might need a bit more removal and perhaps a few more early-game plays to avoid getting run over by aggro because our curve is super high. Either way, the deck is super unique, and it seems like it should do some super-cool things, especially if we get enough time to set up our synergies.

One of the Dominaria United cards I'm most hyped to build around is Ratadrabik of Urborg. The ability to make non-legendary tokens of legends when they die is super unique and maybe even powerful! Adross1235 has a unique Mardu take on the deck in Jaxadrabik Controlish. Overall, the deck is a midrange-y Mardu control build, although it does have one really interesting synergy: Ratadrabik of Urborg with Jaxis, the Troublemaker. The idea is that we can use Jaxis to make a copy of Ratadrabik, which will make us legend-rule away one of the copies of Ratadrabik of Urborg but give us a non-legendary token copy. Things will get pretty wold once we get to this point because every legend that dies will give us two non-legendary token copies, so on the next turn, we can Jaxis Ratadrabik again, do the same legend-rule trick, and end up with four copies of Ratadrabik of Urborg. Once we get a bunch of Ratadrabiks on the battlefield, we can find and kill a Rem Karolus, Stalwart Slayer to make a massive board of damage-increasing hasty fliers and likely win in one turn with a combination of combat damage and burn spells like Play with Fire and Lightning Strike. While I'm not sure how strong the deck is overall, I really like the absurd things that the combo of Ratadrabik and Jaxis can do. If you have some other ideas on how to build around the synergy, make sure to let me know in the comments—I'm sure we'll be playing a Ratadrabik of Urborg deck soon!

Explorer

One of the most exciting parts of Dominaria United for constructed is the lord cycle. While I've mostly been focused on playing Valiant Veteran—our new Soldier lord—Mr_Venable has another plan in Standard: playing as many lords as possible in a Human Soldier hybrid tribal deck! It just so happens that many playable Soldiers are also Humans, which opens up the possibility of playing a ton of lords. Alongside Valiant Veteran, the deck also has King Darien XLVIII, General Kudro of Drannith, and Thalia's Lieutenant to help grow its Human Soldiers, which means even small threats like Boros Elite and Thraben Inspector should get massive pretty quickly. Collected Company holds everything together, potentially giving us two lords for four mana at instant speed! While the deck looks sweet, there is a bit of awkwardness in some spots, such as Valiant Veteran being a Kor Solider rather than a Human Soldier so it doesn't benefit from things like Thalia's Lieutenant or General Kudro of Drannith. But the deck looks like it will have enough power that this shouldn't matter too much. Sweepers are probably a problem since rebuilding after a wrath seems hard outside of Collected Company, although thankfully, sideboard options like Heroic Intervention and Thoughtseize will help. (And if control is a problem, there are more possibilities to improve the matchup, like Elite Spellbinder.) If you like getting aggro with tribal decks, playing as many lords as possible seems like a fun way to win some games in Explorer!

Pioneer

In Pioneer, we have a spicy (and very budget-friendly) take on one of my favorite Standard budget decks from a year or two ago: Simic Kicker by Ohako! The plan is similar to the Standard version: use Roost of Drakes to flood the board with creatures and Verazol, the Split Current to double up our kicker spells. But thanks to Dominaria United, we get some fun additions like Vodalian Mindsinger to steal our opponent's creatures, Joint Exploration for ramp, Vineshaper Prodigy for card draw, and Urborg Lhurgoyf as a potentially massive two-mana beater. Is Simic Kicker fast enough to keep up with the Pioneer meta? I'm not sure, but the deck looks super fun to play, and considering it's just $75 in paper and 13 tix on Magic Online, it's not too expensive to give it a try and find out!

Modern

Meanwhile, in Modern, we've got a super-spicy combo deck from NobleRooster that mashes together Lantern Control and Paradox Engine combo. The deck is built around Meria, Scholar of Antiquity, which seems like the perfect way to fuel a Paradox Engine combo since it not only lets us tap all of our non-token artifacts for mana but also can tap them to draw cards in case we run out of spells to cast to trigger Paradox Engine. The goal is to flood the board with cheap artifacts—mostly Lantern of Insight control pieces like Codex Shredder, Ghoulcaller's Bell, Pyxis of Pandemonium, and friends—which should help us slow our opponent down by controlling the cards our opponent draws while also helping us find our combo pieces. Eventually, we'll hit Paradox Engine and Meria, Scholar of Antiquity, which is where the fun really begins. With both on the battlefield, we should be able to play through our entire deck. We tap all of our artifacts for mana thanks to Meria, Scholar of Antiquity's ability and then cast a spell to untap everything so we can do it again. If we run out of cards in hand, we can use Meria's other ability to tap a couple of artifacts to draw a card, which will give us roughly infinite mana and infinite cards. Eventually, we'll draw into Karn, the Great Creator to snag an Aetherflux Reservoir from our sideboard to win the game! 

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! Thanks to everyone who sent in their sweet and spicy brews! If you want your own deck considered for the next edition of The Fish Tank, leave a link in the comments, or you can email me the deck at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.