The Fish Tank: Strixhaven Edition (April 18-24, 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 get a first look at some decks featuring new Strixhaven cards, with offerings for Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and even Commander! What cool ideas 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.
Standard
I might have underestimated just how excited players are for Velomachus Lorehold. Outside of the Mystical Archives, I'm pretty sure it's the Strixhaven card to show up in the most viewer-submitted decks so far, which I guess makes some amount of sense because Dragons are sweet and Velomachus Lorehold is a unique and powerful tribe member. Josh E. is looking to use the Elder Dragon in Standard to kill the opponent in just two big flying attacks! The main idea of Dragon Sucker Punch is to use Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast or Transmogrify to cheat Velomachus Lorehold into play on Turn 4 or 5 and then, when we attack with the Elder Dragon, hopefully flip into Unleash Fury (allowing Velomachus Lorehold to hit for 10 damage). If we can do this two turns in a row, we should kill our opponent from 20 with evasive damage, which is pretty impressive. At worst, we can his something like Inordinate Rage or Phalanx Tactics and smash for seven or eight, and kill in three attacks, which is still solid!
Temur might sound like a weird color combination for a Food deck, but thanks to Galazeth Prismari's ability to turn artifacts (like Food tokens) into mana sources, it actually makes a lot of sense. The idea of NobleRooster's Prismari Food deck is to flood the board with cheap artifacts—either Treasures or Food tokens—and then use Galazeth Prismari's ability to tap for them mana to cast a Crackle with Power large enough to kill the opponent on the spot. While this technically requires 14 mana, cards like Gilded Goose and Giant Opportunity can put multiple Food tokens on the battlefield, which should mean we can count up to 14 pretty quickly with a good draw. While the deck might struggle a bit against aggro and could possibly use a sweeper like Storm's Wrath, the idea is really sweet, and Prismari Food looks like it should be able to do some really powerful things once it gets going.
Historic
See, I told you Velomachus Lorehold is popular! Jimmythemole is looking to use the Elder Dragon in Historic in conjunction with Time Warp. The idea is to ramp into Velomachus Lorehold fairly using Treasure tokens from Prismari Command, Goldspan Dragon, and Treasure Map; attack with Velomachus Lorehold; and hopefully spin into an extra turn with Time Warp. The extra turn allows us to get another Velomachus Lorehold trigger and possibly hit another Time Warp. In theory, if we can do this three times in a row (which isn't super likely but possible), we'll 20 our opponent and win the game!
Bolas's Citadel is one of the sweetest cards to build around in Historic. While there are a few different ways to go about building a Bolas's Citadel deck, Arthur VII Juilus Pendragon is reaching back to Citadel's time in Standard to play the artifact with explore creatures. The idea is that we can stick a Wildgrowth Walker, which gains us three life when we explore, and then cast things like Merfolk Branchwalker and Jadelight Ranger (which sort of turn into rituals with Wildgrowth Walker and Bolas's Citadel since they gain us more life than we spend to cast them) to get lands off of the top of our deck so that we can keep chaining together spells with Bolas's Citadel. Eventually, we'll hit one of our storm cards. Weather the Storm doesn't technically win us the game, but it can gain us a ton of life, which in turn allows us to cast more spells with Bolas's Citadel. Meanwhile, if we can cast nine other spells, Tendrils of Agony just drains our opponent directly out of the game. While the deck looks sweet, I do think that it could probably use a few more explore creatures to support Wildgrowth Walker, or maybe just Path of Discovery to make all of our creatures explore. Either way, if you want to combo off, gain a ton of life, and win with some powerful new storm cards, Explore Citadel Storm looks like a really fun option!
Modern
Finally, this week, we have a really interesting Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose combo deck for Modern. The main goal is to stick a Vito alongside a massive creature (hopefully Daemogoth Titan) and then use Rite of Consumption to Fling the Daemogoth Titan at our opponent's face. Rite of Consumption itself will drain our opponent for 11, but then we'll also gain 11 life, which will trigger Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose to drain for 11 more and kill our opponent. While the Rite of Consumption combo kill is the most explosive thing our deck can do, we've got a bunch of other not-quite-lethal tricks, like sacrificing a Daemogoth Titan (or Rotting Regisaur) to Momentous Fall to draw a bunch of cards and gain a bunch of life. We can also backdoor into our one copy of Exquisite Blood, which also goes infinite with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. Plus, we can potentially win by just ramping into undercosted threats and beating our opponent down! While the deck does look somewhat fair for a format like Modern, we've seen time and time again that many Modern decks struggle to deal with large creatures, so the archetype might actually be pretty solid. But even if it's not, the combo kills seem like a ton of fun!
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.
