The Fish Tank: Kaldheim Edition (January 31–February 6, 2021)
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 is Kaldheim week! Even though we don't have the full set yet, people are hard at work brewing around the new cards, and we have some really sweet submissions! What cool Kaldheim brews did you all submit this week? 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 it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Standard
Mystic Reflection is one of the more unique cards in Kaldheim, but figuring out a way to take advantage of its power can be a challenge. BilboB2 has a pretty sweet idea for Standard, with a UW Foretell deck that's looking to use Mystic Reflection in conjunction with Reverent Hoplite or Harmonious Archon to make an absurdly big board in one turn. Here's the idea. Let's say we can foretell a Mystic Reflection so we can cast it for just one mana. Then, we cast a Reverent Hoplite, which makes 1/1 tokens equal to our devotion to white. With Reverent Hoplite's trigger on the stack, we cast Mystic Reflection targeting Reverent Hoplite itself so that once Hoplite's trigger resolves, all of the 1/1 tokens instead will be copies of Reverent Hoplite, which in turn will produce an absurd amount of 1/1 tokens! We can do the same trick with Harmonious Archon, making the two tokens it makes into Harmonious Archons, which will give us three Harmonious Archons and four tokens! The rest of the deck is mostly a UW Foretell control shell, with Ravenform deserving special mention since it offers a way to put a 1/1 on the battlefield, which we can then target with Mystic Reflection in response to our opponent casting a bomb, giving them a harmless 1/1 instead! I have no idea how good the deck is, but it does seem like it should be able to do some absolutely absurd things with Mystic Reflection!
When Birgi, God of Storytelling was previewed, my initial thought was that it could make for a storm-style deck in Historic, but little did I know that players like Ricky M. would be figuring out ways to storm off in Standard with the new red God! The idea of Birgi Storm is to get our namesake God on the battlefield alongside Song of Creation. We can then cast one-mana red spells like Crash Through, Shock, Spikefield Hazard, and the adventure side of Merchant of the Vale for free since Birgi, God of Storytelling nets us back a mana while also triggering Song of Creation to draw through our deck. Eventually, we win with a combination of burn spells and massive Sprite Dragons, which makes Birgi Storm a weird sort of hybrid between Storm and Temur Prowess. Traditionally, the problem with Song of Creation decks is that they are great when Song of Creation is on the battlefield but look pretty bad without the enchantment, but Birgi helps here as well. If we don't have Song of Creation, we can play the backside of Harnfel, Horn of Bounty, which does a pretty good Song of Creation imitation as a card-draw engine. While I'm not sure how the deck will hold up to things like Lovestruck Beast into Embercleave, it looks super fun to play and like it should have some really sweet combo turns, if we can live long enough to get Song of Creation going. Oh yeah, one last thing: considering leaving adventure cards like Bonecrusher Giant or Merchant of the Vale hidden away in exile so that we can use them to restart Song of Creation after we discard our hand, if we are forced to try to win over the course of a couple of turns!
Historic
Maskwood Nexus might be the card from Kaldheim that enables the most jank combos. Take, for example, LeChimmyChongas's Deathbellow Nexus deck. The idea is to stick either a Maskwood Nexus or Arcane Adaptation naming Minotaur, use Irencrag Feat to ramp into Deathbellow War Cry, and put any four creatures from our deck into play for free. This probably means getting a Tuktuk Rubblefort for haste, an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger as a big beater, Sethron, Hurloon General (which will make a ton of tokens since all of our creatures will be Minotaurs), and whatever else you want (probably Lathliss, Dragon Queen, which will make a bunch of 5/5 Dragon tokens if we have Maskwood Nexus since all of our creatures are also Dragons). The end result should be that our opponent dies on the spot in one big, glorious attack! My one criticism of the deck is that it might need just a touch more redundancy. What happens if we happen to draw our Tuktuk Rubblefort so we can't give our team haste, for example? Adding one Terror of the Peaks could be a good option since it naturally works with our Magda, Brazen Outlaw / Dragon plan, and it also allows us to win instantly with Deathbellow War Cry, even without attacking, by throwing a bunch of direct damage at our opponent's face. Either way, the deck looks super fun to play, and while I'm not sure how consistently the plan will come together, the end results should be spectacular when it does!
Earlier this week, we played a Maskwood Nexus and The World Tree combo deck in Standard for Against the Odds. Well, MajoraDidNothingWrong has a similar idea for Historic, except without Maskwood Nexus (which seems super helpful as far as consistency), since Historic has enough Gods to win the game even without turning our non-Gods into Gods. The plan is to ramp aggressively with Explore, Growth Spiral, Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, Cultivate, and Binding the Old Gods; use Golos, Tireless Pilgrim or Hour of Promise to tutor up The World Tree itself; and, once we get enough mana, activate The World Tree to tutor up seven different Gods, including Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded to give all of our creatures haste and God-Eternal Rhonas to double their power; and win the game on the spot! In Standard, we found that getting up to 11 mana can be a challenge, but this shouldn't be a problem in Historic, which has an absurdly strong suite of ramp spells! The only drawback is that the main deck is super light on interaction. Can we get to 11 mana before we die to Goblins or other aggro decks? I'm not 100% sure, but we do have a ton of removal in the sideboard, which should help against aggro in games two and three. The upside is that unlike in Standard, where consistency was a problem since it's not all that easy to find and stick a Maskwood Nexus, the Historic build of The World Tree looks extremely consistent, with tons of tutors to find key combo pieces and a plethora of ramp spells! If you're looking for something different to try in the format, it looks like it should be fun, at the very least!
Pioneer
One of the sweetest combos from Kaldheim is the ability to take infinite turns by ultimating Kaya the Inexorable and Karn's Temporal Sundering. The challenge is figuring out which format the combo works best in. It's probably too slow for Modern, but maybe Pioneer is the right speed for the combo? That's SirEklz's theory, with their Inexorable Esper Combo deck! The goal? Sweep the board a bunch with Doomskar, Supreme Verdict, and Settle the Wreckage while also playing planeswalkers. Hopefully, this gets us to the point where we can ultimate Kaya; then, using Fae of Wishes or The Raven's Warning, we can tutor up Karn's Temporal Sundering (we also have one in the main deck that we can draw naturally) and take infinite turns by repeatedly casting Karn's Temporal Sundering from exile until we eventually win with value from planeswalkers like Ashiok, Nightmare Muse, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, or Liliana, Dreadhorde General. While the deck looks solid as-is, there are a couple of potentially interesting additions. One would be Fires of Invention, which has already proven itself in Superfriends lists in Pioneer. Splashing into red might cause some difficulties, but Pioneer's mana is good enough that it should be possible. Another is Oath of Teferi to offer more planeswalker activations each turn, although it's possible the five-mana enchantment is just too slow and clunky for the curve. Either way, if you like planeswalkers and combos, Inexorable Esper Combo looks like a really fun option for Pioneer!
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.
