The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User Decks (September 20-26, 2020)
Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, we have a good mixture of decks across formats, with a heavy focus on Modern and Zendikar Rising, along with a couple of sweet Standard and Historic decks in the mix as well! What coolness did viewers 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 them to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Standard
A few weeks ago, we played Izzet Tutelage for Budget Magic, and while the deck was sweet and fairly powerful before Zendikar Rising, it might be even better now thanks to some new additions, as Kyoya realized! So, what does Zendikar Rising add to the mill deck? First and foremost, Ruin Crab, which is an extremely strong mill spell, typically milling for three or even six (with the help of Fabled Passage) cards each turn while also blocking against aggro. While it will probably die a lot since we don't have any other creatures for our opponent to target with removal, it doesn't take that many cards mill to make Ruin Crab worth it. Second, we get Valakut Awakening, which gives us a combo finish. Since we typically have a hand full of cards thanks to all of our cheap card draw and cantrips, Valakut Awakening will often draw us six, seven, or even more cards for just three mana, which is an absurd number of Teferi's Tutelage triggers. Finally, we get Jace, Mirror Mage, which offers more card draw and combos with Teferi's Ageless Insight, which creates a replacement effect so that not only do we draw two cards every Jace activation, but also our Jace, Mirror Mages don't lose any loyalty, which turns Jace into another great source of card advantage and Teferi's Tutelage triggers! If you already have the Izzet Tutelage deck, this seems like a great upgrade for Zendikar Rising Standard, and if you don't already have Izzet Tutelage built but like the idea of drawing tons of cards and milling the opponent out of the game, this should be a solid, budget-friendly option!
Historic
Hammer Time has been one of my pet archetypes ever since we played it on Budget Magic over a year ago, but the pieces didn't really exist to pull off the Colossus Hammer combo kill in Historic...until now! Thanks to Zendikar Rising, we now have the ability to equip Colossus Hammer to a Warrior for just a single mana with the help of Resolute Strike, which opens up some very fast kills. Let's say we play Fireblade Charger on Turn 1. On Turn 2, we can play Colossus Hammer, equip it with Resolute Strike, and hit our opponent for 11. Then, if our opponent manages to kill our Fireblade Charger, they'll take 11 more damage and die! Meanwhile, Champion of the Flame offers a massive, trampling two-drop to Hammer up, while Kor Blademaster turns all of our two-shot-kill Hammer attacks into one-shot-kill Hammer attacks by giving our equipped Warriors double strike! While the deck looks extremely explosive and fun, I'm not sold on the Karn, the Great Creator plan, especially with Karn only being a one-of. I think that we need to either maximize our copies of Karn, the Great Creator and fully embrace the Karn sideboard plan or cut Karn, the Great Creator altogether (possibly for more copies of Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients, which seems perfect for the deck) and move our fourth copy of Colossus Hammer to the main deck. Basically, Historic Hammer Time could probably use a bit of tuning, but all the pieces are there to make a really powerful, fun, and possibly even competitive deck!
Modern
As you probably know, Tron is my nemesis, but there are exceptions to my Tron hatred. For example, if you're using Tron like David F. to try to win the game with Coalition Victory, I'm 100% on board! The idea of Coalition Victory Tron is to use our Tron mana to get Chromatic Orrery on the battlefield so we can start spending all of our colorless Tron mana as if it were mana of any color. This allows us to play The First Sliver and Sliver Hivelord to get a five-color creature on the battlefield, hopefully cascading into Dryad of the Ilysian Grove or Prismatic Omen to make all of our lands each basic land type, which will set us up to win the game with Coalition Victory! While the plan is obviously pretty janky, it is a Coalition Victory deck, and Coalition Victory is on the shortlist of hardest alt-win conditions to pull off in all of Magic. Compared to other Coalition Victory decks I've built or seen, Coalition Victory Tron looks surprisingly solid. While I wouldn't expect the deck to win all that often, when it does win, it will be in one of the most unique and hardest-to-achieve ways in Magic. If you're looking to get your "I got the Coalition Victory victory" patch, this seems like a good place to start.
Collected Company is an extremely strong Magic card, showing up in top-tier decks across formats, but for some reason, its sorcery-based twin Collected Conjuring hasn't really caught on. The Young Pyromancer is looking to change this in Modern with Temur Souls! The big challenge of building around Collected Conjuring is that you really need at least 28 "hits" in the deck to make it consistent, and playing 28 sorceries doesn't leave much room for anything else. However, thanks to some sneaky deck building, Temur Souls manages to find cheap sorceries for just about any situation, with Lingering Souls and Crashing Footfalls making creatures; See the Truth and Ancestral Vision offering absurd amounts of card advantage; and Dreadbore, Maelstrom Pulse, and Inquisition of Kozilek giving us plenty of interaction. With 28 "hittable" sorceries in the deck, we should find at least two with Collected Conjuring most of the time, while Bloodbraid Elf and As Foretold offer backup ways to cast cards with no mana cost, like Ancestral Vision and Crashing Footfalls, without waiting a bunch of turns for them to come off suspend. While I'm still a bit skeptical about Collected Conjuring in general, mostly because I've never managed to make it work, Temur Souls looks quite solid. If there were ever a deck to make Collected Conjuring at least somewhat playable in Modern, it's probably this one!
What's better than turning the opponent's lands into artifacts with cards like Liquimetal Coating and Karn, the Great Creator and then killing them with random artifact-hate creatures like Manglehorn, Reclamation Sage, and Trygon Predator? Turning opponents lands into artifacts and stealing them with Thieving Skydiver!
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.
