The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User Decks (November 14-20, 2020)
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've got several Historic decks—people seem excited to brew with new Kaladesh Remastered cards. But don't worry, we've got some Standard and Modern too! What cool 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 them to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Standard
In the world of Standard this week, we have a really janky but super spicy Double Vision deck: Illuna's Vision! The idea is to get Double Vision on the battlefield to copy the first instant or sorcery we cast each turn and then use Mythos of Illuna to copy Double Vision (twice). Once we are up to three copies of Double Vision, every first instant or sorcery will resolve four times. If we can find another Mythos of Illuna to copy Double Vision again, we'll be up to seven copies of Double Vision, which means any instant or sorcery we cast will be absurd. Sublime Epiphany can bounce our opponent's board and draw a ton of cards. Purphoros's Intervention can make a board full of hasty, trampling tokens. Experimental Overload makes a ton of Weirds, and so on. While the deck has a lot of strange cards, it also has decent removal, and assuming you're playing best-of-three, the sideboard can be filled with counterspells to protect Double Vision. While I have no idea how good the deck is, the games where we get three (or seven or 20) Double Visions on the battlefield should be hilarious!
Historic
This week, there's been a big focus on Historic thanks to the release of Kaladesh Remastered, and while panamakid's #SplinterTwinSituation doesn't have a ton of Kaladesh Remastered cards (really, none outside of Fatal Push), the idea is sweet enough that it deserves to be featured. Here's the plan: we get a Glasspool Mimic on the battlefield copying something; then, we use Wispweaver Angel to blink it. When the Glasspool Mimic comes back into play, it can copy the Wispweaver Angel and then blink the original Wispweaver, which blinks the Glasspool Mimic. This basically gives us an infinite loop of enters-the-battlefield triggers. If we add Thieves' Guild Enforcer into the mix, we can mill our opponent's entire deck since Glasspool Mimic is still technically a Rogue even if it copies Wispweaver Angel, while Corpse Knight drains our opponent out of the game as our looped creatures come into play. The biggest drawback is probably that Wispweaver Angel itself is six mana (imagine if Felidar Guardian were legal—the combo would be so much more efficient!), although since we're in the Esper colors, we do have good removal and discard to slow the game down and stay alive while we are getting the combo set up. Is the deck top-tier competitive? Probably not, but it does seem good enough to win some games in a really unique and spicy way!
One of the most under-appreciated mythics from Kaladesh Remastered is probably Indomitable Creativity, although as we've recently seen in Pioneer and even Modern, the card can be a game-ending combo piece in the right shell. SirEklz's plan is to use cards like Forbidden Friendship, Chandra, Acolyte of Flame, and Pirate's Pillage to make tokens and then use Indomitable Creativity to turn those tokens into the only creatures (or artifacts) in the deck: four copies of Terror of the Peaks and one Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. If we can cast Indomitable Creativity x3, then no matter what creatures we hit, we'll end up throwing at least 20 damage at our opponent's face. Three Terror of the Peaks all triggering each other is 30 damage, as is two Terrors and an Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Toss in some blue mana for cantrips to find our combo pieces and sideboard counterspells to make sure we can resolve Indomitable Creativity, and you've got the recipe for a really powerful and fun deck!
For our final Historic deck of the week, we have the return of an infamously janky combo deck from Standards past: Mono-Green Storm! The idea is to get a copy of our one creature—Marwyn, the Nurturer—on the battlefield and then use pump spells, which also happen to untap the creature they target (Ornamental Courage, Stony Strength, Sudden Spinnerets, and Gift of Growth), to "storm off" and make an absurd amount of mana by tapping and untapping Marwyn, the Nurturer. If we add Season of Growth to the mix, we'll also draw a card for each spell we cast targeting Marwyn, the Nurturer, which helps to make sure we find more untapping pump spells to keep the chain going. The end result is that we should be able to draw our entire deck and end up with a massive Marwyn, although I think the current build of the deck might be missing something important: a way to close out the game. While we can easily make a Marwyn, the Nurturer big enough to one-shot our opponent, I don't see a way to give Marwyn, the Nurturer trample or another form of evasion, which means if our opponent has a blocker, we can theoretically draw our entire deck, make a 50-ish-power Marwyn, and still end up losing! Thankfully, this is an easy fix: play a couple copies of a pump spell or enchantment to give Marwyn, the Nurturer trample so we can win through blockers. We don't need many—because we're planning to draw our entire deck, we'll eventually find the finisher, even with just a couple of copies.
I should also say that Mono-Green Storm is very much an Against the Odds deck. It's something you'll build because it's hilarious when it works, but don't expect it to be consistent enough to rank up and truly be competitive. The good news is that deck is fairly cheap, with only 15 rares and no mythics, so if you want to put it together for meme purposes, it shouldn't set you back too many wildcards.
Modern
As I'm sure you probably know by now, I love Panharmonicon decks. And while using the artifact to grind out value is fine, some of my favorite Panharmonicon brews use Panharmonicon as a weird combo piece rather than as a value engine. CyTheCeleryGuy has a really interesting take on Panharmonicon combo for Modern: Sea Gate Stormcaller Combo. The main goal is to get a Panharmonicon on the battlefield alongside Sea Gate Stormcaller and possibly Snapcaster Mage. Once we get this set up, we can use Cloudshift and Ephemerate to start blinking Sea Gate Stormcaller, making it so our next cheap instant or sorcery gets copied. This allows us to do things like cast a Cloudshift, blink both Snapcaster Mage and Sea Gate Stormcaller, cast something like Manamorphose to draw cards and make some extra mana thanks to the Sea Gate Stormcaller copies, flash back Cloudshift from the graveyard to repeat the process, and hopefully draw through most of our deck until we eventually finish the game, either by copying Lightning Bolt a bunch of times with the Sea Gate Stormcaller loop or by milling the opponent out with a few copies of Glimpse the Unthinkable. The idea is super sweet, and things should be crazy quickly if we can actually untap with Panharmonicon and Sea Gate Stormcaller.
One quick thing I did want to point out: when you go through the combo loop, you can't use a single copy of Ephemerate or Cloudshift to blink the same copy of Sea Gate Stormcaller twice. Because both copies need to target while on the stack, if they both go at Sea Gate Stormcaller, the first one will resolve, and the second one will fizzle since Sea Gate Stormcaller will technically be a new version of itself because it left the battlefield. As such, getting two Sea Gate Stormcallers (or a Sea Gate Stormcaller and a Snapcaster Mage) on the battlefield is ideal because it allows us to maximize our Ephemerate / Cloudshift value and stack up even more copies of future spells!
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.
