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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / The Fish Tank: Modern Horizons 2 Edition (June 6-12, 2021)

The Fish Tank: Modern Horizons 2 Edition (June 6-12, 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, we are focusing on sweet new Modern decks brought to us by Modern Horizons 2! What sweet Modern lists did you all send in 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. 

Modern

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When Chatterstorm was spoiled, my initial reaction was that it probably won't be that good in a traditional Storm deck but could be insane in an 8 Whack shell. It seems that WilloWisp was thinking the same thing, with Storm Whack. While lacking the traditional Goblin sub-theme of many 8 Whack decks, Storm Whack makes up for it with speed, playing 16 free spells between Hidden Herbalists, Burning-Tree Emissary, Manamorphose, and Memnite. The idea is hopefully to cast a bunch of these cards on Turn 2 and then end the chain of free spells with Chatterstorm to make a bunch of Squirrel tokens that we can follow up with a Goblin Bushwhacker; Reckless Bushwhacker on Turn 3 to hopefully close out the game; or Thrasta, Tempest's Roar to hit for a ton of damage immediately. The deck looks super explosive and fast, although, like many 8 Whack–style decks, it is pretty all-in. We could be in trouble if we have a big combo turn and our opponent follows it up by sweeping our board. All in all, I wouldn't be surprised if something like Storm Whack were pretty competitive in Modern. The 8 Whack archetype tends to outperform, and some of the new Modern Horizons 2 additions make it even more explosive!

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When I look at Grist, the Hunger Tide, I mostly see a value-y tutor target for decks with cards like Collected Company or Chord of Calling. Orrin F. sees a really janky infinite combo piece! As you can see, Grist Combo only plays a single non-creature spell: Ashes of the Fallen. The idea is that we can use cards like Tribute Mage and Fae of Wishes to find our Ashes of the Fallen, play it naming Insect, and, with a single +1 activation, mill our entire deck, making a massive board of Insects in the process! Of course, this will leave us dead on our next upkeep to milling out, which means we need to follow up by playing a Thassa's Oracle to win the game. While the combo is hilarious, I am a bit worried that we need to have Thassa's Oracle in hand to win the game. If we could make the mana work, Priest of Fell Rites would be an interesting option for the deck since we could mill it over along with Thassa's Oracle and then unearth it to reanimate Thassa's Oracle and win right away. While I think the deck is more of a funny Against the Odds option than a competitive Modern list, it is a really neat idea, and it's awesome to see Ashes of the Fallen working as a game-ending combo piece!

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General Ferrous Rokiric is one of my sleeper picks from Modern Horizons 2. Hexproof from mono-colored makes it really hard for most decks to kill with removal, and getting a 4/4 Golem every time we cast a multicolor spell is a huge payoff that should allow us to close out the game quickly. OddityOdyssey is looking to take advantage of the General's power in a Naya Hero shell, backing it with Hero of Precinct One, which also makes tokens (although much smaller 1/1s) as we cast our non-creature spells. After we get General Ferrous Rokiric and maybe a Hero of Precinct One, we simply cast good multicolor cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Knight of the Reliquary, Lightning Helix, and Figure of Destiny and hopefully build an overwhelming board in just a turn or two. While the deck does look very fair, it also looks like it should be quite powerful once it gets going. Untapping with General Ferrous Rokiric for just a single turn should allow us to make enough Golems that we can finish the game with just one or two attacks!

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While we've spent quite a bit of time talking about decks that might be good in post–Modern Horizons 2 Modern, there's another super important group of decks: decks that almost certainly aren't good but are fun! Toss a Coin to Your Witcher from Aleddin falls into this category. The idea is to win by flipping coins, taking advantage of two crazy new coin-flipping payoffs in Yusri, Fortune's Flame (potentially giving us a free Omniscience if we can get lucky enough with our coin flips) and Chance Encounter, which can win the game all by itself—if we can win 10 coin flips. Krark's Thumb is the most important card in our deck, shifting the odds of winning a coin flip into our favor. And if we can stick a Mirror Gallery, we can have multiple Krark's Thumbs going, making it really difficult for us to lose coin flips and super easy to take extra turns with Stitch in Time, refill our hand with Fiery Gambit, and eventually win with Chance Encounter! While I don't expect Toss a Coin to Your Witcher to win all that often—coin flipping is just super slow and random—the games we do win should be absolutely hilarious and incredibly unique!

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Domain is one of the archetypes I'm most excited to experiment with in Modern thanks to Modern Horizons 2. Edgelord112233's Domain Blade list looks like a solid starting point. The main goal is to use fetch lands, Triomes, and shock lands to have all five basic land types on the battlefield by Turn 2, which will allow us to cast Scion of Draco as a 4/4 flier or Territorial Kavu as a 5/5 with upside. Backup our up big domain threats is a Stoneforge Mystic package that includes Kaldra Compleat to back up Batterskull and Sword of Fire and Ice. Oh yeah, and if we can get our opponent down to a low life total, Tribal Flames offers a massive five damage for just two mana to finish the job! If you're a fan of midrange, Domain Blade looks like a really fun Modern Horizons 2–infused version to mess around with, and it seems like the deck could actually be pretty powerful too!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for this week! Do you have some ideas on how to improve the decks we looked at today? Let us know in the comments! Have a deck for next week? You can leave it in the comments too! Thanks to everyone who submitted lists this week, and as always, you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.



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