The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User Decks (November 28-December 5, 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 Pioneer 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

Normally, Containment Priest is used as a sideboard hate card against reanimator decks. But as James H. showed, with some careful deck building, there is a way to make the two-drop into the centerpiece of a deck, as we see with Azorius Flicker. Since Containment Priest exiles any creature that comes into play but isn't cast with a Priest on the battlefield, we can use Flicker of Fate as a hard removal spell on our opponent's creatures, exiling them forever for just two mana, while the instant also adds value with our enters-the-battlefield creatures if we don't have Containment Priest on the battlefield by allowing us to reuse their ETB triggers. While not as direct as Flicker of Fate, we can also do something similar with Shepherd of the Flock and temporary removal like Glass Casket and Banishing Light. We can cast Banishing Light or Glass Casket to exile one of our opponent's creatures; use Shepherd of the Flock to bounce it back to our hand, leaving the creature in permanent exile thanks to Containment Priest; and then cast Banishing Light / Glass Casket again to exile something else. How competitive is Azorius Flicker? I honestly have no idea. The deck looks really fun to play and has some really sweet, tricky synergies, but it doesn't seem to be overflowing with raw power. Either way, if you're looking for something different and synergistic to play in Standard, Azorius Flicker looks worth testing, at the very least!

In some formats, making infinite mana isn't really that big of a deal. In Modern, for example, decks make infinite mana all the time with Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies as early as Turn 3. On the other hand, making truly infinite mana in Standard is really hard. But as John P. shows with his Glimmerbell Combo deck, it is possible! So, how do we make infinite mana? We need Glimmerbell, Ashaya, Soul of the Wild, Zirda, the Dawnwaker, Wolfwillow Haven, and Zirda, the Dawnwaker. The idea is to use Ashaya, Soul of the Wild to turn Glimmerbell into a Forest and then enchant it with Wolfwillow Haven. This gives us a Glimmerbell that can tap for two green mana and untap itself for one and a blue. If we add in Chromatic Orrery so we can spend our mana as if it were any color, we now have a Glimmerbell that can tap and untap itself an infinite number of times. The last piece of the puzzle is Zirda, the Dawnwaker to reduce the cost of untapping Glimmerbell to just one mana, so now we'll actually make an extra mana every time we tap and untap the two-drop. The final piece of the puzzle is mutating a Parcelbeast onto the Glimmerbell, so that after we make a ton of mana, we can tap and untap the Parcelbeast Glimmerbell to draw our entire deck and win the game with our one Volcanic Geyser or by flooding the board with random creatures. Is this plan competitive? Almost certainly not. Needing five cards to make infinite mana and six to draw our entire deck means we need a lot to go right, although if you can pull off the combo even a single time, the results will be both spectacular and hilarious!

Historic

Looking to go infinite in Historic? Well, Ivan H. has a sweet plan revolving around Marionette Master and Treasure tokens. The goal is to get a Marionette Master on the battlefield alongside Ruthless Knave, Anointed Procession, and some random creatures (which Marionette Master itself produces). This allows us to sacrifice a creature to Ruthless Knave to make four Treasures. We can then sacrifice those four Treasures to drain our opponent with Marionette Master and sacrifice another creature to Ruthless Knave to make four more Treasures. With the help of cards that put multiple tokens on the battlefield like Marionette Master, Master Trinketeer, and Servo Exhibition, we should be able to do this enough times to drain our opponent completely out of the game! While the combo itself isn't all that fast, there is good news: Hidden Stockpile and Anointed Procession are really good at stalling out games by repeatedly making 1/1 chump blockers. So while we might not be comboing off until the late game, there is a pretty good chance that we should be able to live long enough to pull off the combo. 

Every once in a while, a decklist comes with an explanation that is so in-depth that it doesn't really make much sense for me to do my own write-up. Instead, I'll let Charlie K. explain their Historic Gruul Control deck and card choices in their own words:

Historic Gruul Control is a deck built around casting powerful card draw spells and creatures while killing a great deal of threats.

The deck revolves around three main cards: Valakut Exploration, Cultivate, and Thragtusk.

Card drawing is a challenging thing on Arena right now. Blue's card draw has been severely limited, with cards like Sphinx's Revelation being some of the better options. While Glimmer of Genius is certainly a powerful spell, it doesn't have a big enough impact on the game to be regarded as good in the current format. That is why I've decided to rely on green and red for card draw.

4x Cultivate: Cultivate may be the most powerful Divination effect ever printed. Cultivate makes sure that you will hit two lands, which is super important. When Ivan Floch won Pro Tour M15 with a deck running Divination, it was clear that two lands was the best two draws that the Divinations could provide. Cultivate ensures that, and one of them comes into play straight away.

4x Valakut Exploration: Valakut Exploration is an extremely powerful card. Over the long game, it can draw easily upwards of six cards. With enough copies, you can win from nowhere by playing lands and ramp spells, and even on its own, it can swing a game wildly. It synergizes perfectly with the ramp package and provides an effect that our opponents have no choice but to answer.

4x Beanstalk Giant: Beanstalk Giant is the last ramp spell in the deck and has special uses. It can, of course, be used to ramp on Turn 3, but the real power comes when you can cast it and an additional spell on Turn 4 or 5. It also doubles as an incredibly powerful finisher in the late game.

4x Thragtusk: Thragtusk is the most important card in the deck. This creature dominated Standard and isn't available in Pioneer, but luckily, we have access to it through Jumpstart. Thragtusk is a very fair spell. It's always worth several cards. It can easily come out on Turn 4 and makes the red matchup, the Gruul matchup, the control matchup, and the sacrifice matchup possible. The card single-handedly carries the deck and is the reason we play this deck in Historic.

4x Escape to the Wilds: The second reason why this deck is Historic, Escape to the Wilds provides outs when no other can. The five cards it draws are crucial to the deck's success, and it is best saved for later in the game.

2x Fire Prophecy, 2x Scorching Dragonfire, 4x Bonecrusher Giant, 2x Thundering Rebuke, 2x Magma Spray: A useful and powerful removal suite. Bonecrusher Giant especially is useful because of the powerful body it comes with.

3x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon: Our finisher and sweeper. Ugin is just a broken card, and so we pack three copies.

1x Oracle of Mul Daya: A one-of, Oracle is a powerful card that I wish I had room for more copies of. It's powerful, fun, and just a plain good card.

4x Stomping Ground, 4x Fabled Passage: The dual lands. These make sure our mana works well. Fabled Passage in particular works well with Exploration.

8 Mountain and 8 Forest: Yes, you need 16 basics. We run four Fabled Passage and eight cards that get basics. An even split perfectly fits our needs.

Jegantha: Our deck happens to fit Jegantha's companion ability, so she is a fantastic fit for the deck. While we do lose access to Shatterskull Smashing, Jegantha is worth it because of the extra card in our hand.

Play Patterns:

1. Thragtusk aggressively. The card is hard to deal with and provides blockers. If you can cast a Thragtusk, it's usually a good idea. Now, if the game doesn't call for casting a Thragtusk, don't. But I value Thragtusk over most other spells in the deck.
2.  If you have an adventure creature exiled with Exploration or Escape, it is usually correct to play the adventures. This guarantees the creature being castable later in the game, and reduces the impact of losing the cards due to the impulsive draw effect.
3.  Kill anything that moves. I will aggressively kill anything I see with my removal. It's basically always correct too, as your ramp spells do require time.
4.  Sandbag Escape to the Wilds. It's your best recovery tool other than Ugin, so keeping it until you need it is usually correct. This isn't so much true if it's exiled to another Escape or Exploration, in which case the card can usually be cast.
5. If you see a Phyrexian Obliterator, I would recommend conceding. The odds of winning are 10 percent.
6. If you see an aggressive deck, rejoice. You are 80 percent to win.
7. Have fun. The deck is a blast to play.
8. Scratch number 5. This deck can win out of nowhere with Escape, or Oracle, or Exploration. I've won games on one life on Turn 8 with no creatures because I was able to trigger two copies of Valakut Exploration 10 times each. The deck is explosive and VERY powerful.
9.  Pray to RNG that your opening hand contains a removal spell and a ramp spell. If it doesn't have the ramp, that is OK. If it doesn't have removal but has enough ramp to hit a Thragtusk on Turn 4, I wouldn't recommend keeping it, but it can work out.
10.  Just have fun.

Commander

We don't look at Commander decks all that often on The Fish Tank. (Maybe we should more? Let me know what you think in the comments!) But John H.'s Oops, All Spells deck is so unique that we have to take a look at it. The goal is to make something similar to the Modern / Legacy / Pioneer Oops, All Spells deck work in the Commander format. As you can see, the deck has zero actual lands, instead relying on Zendikar Rising's MDFC lands and a bunch of cheap mana dorks to make mana. Playing zero "real" lands opens up a couple of different paths to fast wins. For example, if we can find either Balustrade Spy or Undercity Informer (and four mana), we can mill our entire deck, then flashback Dread Return by sacrificing our random mana dorks to reanimate Thassa's Oracle and win the game. No "real" lands also means that Goblin Charbelcher should be able to deal enough damage to kill any single opponent each turn. We can also stick a Syr Konrad, the Grim before we mill our deck, use Undercity Informer or Balustrade Spy to mill everything, and one-shot the entire table with Syr Konrad damage! I'm sure there are a bunch of other sweet tricks too that I'm overlooking at the moment, but either way, Oops, All Spells is one of the most unique Commander decks I've seen in a long time, and I can't wait to test it out!

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.