The Fish Tank: Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Edition (February 6-12, 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 focused on Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty brews across formats! What spice 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

First off, we've got a really fun-looking Standard deck from Pie4man: Hinata Blink! Hinata, Dawn-Crowned is one of the most unique cards from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, working as an absurd source of ramp with cards that target multiple things. Perhaps the most hyped Hinata synergy for Standard is Magma Opus, which can cost just two mana with Hinata, Dawn-Crowned, which is pretty absurd. But the real plan of Hinata Blink is to reduce the cost of Semester's End to just a single mana and use it to blink a bunch of cards with enters-the-battlefield triggers, like Spirited Companion, Circuit Mender, Priest of Ancient Lore, and more, hopefully drowning our opponent in card advantage. If only Panharmonicon were in Standard!

Modern

At first glance, Tameshi, Reality Architect looks like a pretty safe card because of its "once per turn" restriction. But if you read it closely, you'll see that this only applies to its card-drawing first ability. Its second ability—bouncing a land and playing some mana to reanimate an artifact—can be used as many times as we want (probably because Wizards figured we'll run out of lands eventually). NobleRooster's Tameshi Titan deck is built around this ability. Here's the idea: Cascade into Lotus Bloom with Violent Outburst or Shardless Agent. We can then crack Lotus Bloom for three mana and use Tameshi, Reality Architect to reanimate it for just one mana (and picking up a land), netting two mana in the process. We then can do this over and over again, making a huge amount of mana. Once we run out of lands, we can use cards like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Primeval Titan, and the backside of Jadzi, Oracle of Arcavios to get more on the battlefield in order to keep the combo going until we eventually win, either by making a huge board of creatures or with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove! Whether the plan of comboing off with Tameshi is more competitive than that of more traditional TitanShift-style decks remains to be seen, but the combo generates so much mana that it seems like it should have potential in Modern, at the very least. Even if Tameshi Titan isn't the deck that breaks the synergy, it seems possible that something will eventually. Making eight or 10 extra mana on Turn 4 is pretty absurd, even in Modern!

Bogles getting better? Hooray... While Kelvin [escesare]'s Bogles deck looks a lot like traditional Bogles—Slippery Bogle, Gladecover Scout, Kor Spiritdancer, and a bunch of Auras—it gets one massive new Kamigawa addition in Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice. While Light-Paws is obviously super strong in a deck full of auras, essentially giving us two auras for the price of one, it does have one big problem: it doesn't have hexproof, which means it's likely to eat a removal spell (especially since our opponent can't target most of our other creatures). But Kelvin has a plan for this: turning Light-Paws into a hexproof creature with the help of Alpha Authority. We can simply wait until our opponent taps out, play Light-Paws, Emperor's Voice and any two-mana aura, and tutor up Alpha Authority to make sure that Light-Paws sticks around, at which point we should have no problem winning the game as Light-Paws will quickly help us make our creatures massive by loading them up with auras! 

For our final Modern deck of the week, ByzJim is looking to lock opponents out playing instants, sorceries, or artifacts with the help of Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant! The primary plan is to get an affinity-for-artifacts six-drop like Steelfin Whale or Somber Hoverguard on the battlefield as quickly as possible and then turn it into a copy of Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant with the help of Neoform or Eldritch Evolution. Once Jin is on the battlefield, either Ethersworn Canonist or Archon of Emeria will lock our opponent out of playing instants, sorceries, or artifacts. If they foolishly try to cast one, Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant will counter it as the first spell our opponent plays; then, Ethersworn Canonist or Archon of Emeria will keep our opponent from playing a second spell. We can just build a big board of janky artifact creatures with the help of Jin's artifact-doubling ability and beat our helpless opponent down! Of course, the downside of the Jin lock is that it doesn't stop creatures or planeswalkers, which means our opponent can still impact the board. But without instants or sorceries, it should be tough for most decks to break out of the lock by killing Jin, which means we eventually should be able to out-value our opponent.

Legacy

Finally, in Legacy, we have a deck I wanted to show off mostly because it's built around one of the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty cards that I didn't really expect to see play outside of Commander: Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful! So, how can we support the one-mana 1/1? With a deck full of cheap legends like Isamaru, Hound of Konda, Kytheon, Hero of Akros, and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben to grow it and equipment like Umezawa's Jitte, Eater of Virtue, and Sword of Fire and Ice (backed by Stoneforge Mystic, of course) to pump it. The other payoff for overloading our deck with cheap legends and equipment is that we get a massive eight Moxes between Mox Amber and Mox Opal, which should allow us to dump our hand at lightning speed and (hopefully) pick up some very aggressive wins. Is Legendary Aggro a truly competitive Legacy deck? I honestly have no idea. But it is a hilarious idea, and it looks fast enough that it should be able to win some games, at least!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. Thanks to everyone who sent in decks this week! If you have a deck you want considered for next week's Fish Tank, make sure to leave a link in the comments, or you can email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com. If you have some ideas on how to improve this week's decks, make sure to leave them in the comments too!