The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User-Submitted Decks (Oct. 6-12, 2019)
Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we take 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 some cool Standard combos, a budget Modern list, and our first-ever Historic deck! If you missed last week's edition of The Fish Tank, you can find it here. Oh yeah, and 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
Bag of Holding is a fairly solid card when you play it fairly, but LoganS901's list is looking to go all-in on powering up the artifact with a self-discard plan. Bag of Holding offers a crazy card-advantage engine, storing up the cards we discard to things like The Royal Scions, Cavalier of Flame, and Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion, while Glint-Horn Buccaneer offers a way to close out the game with direct damage as we discard and draw our way through our deck. While it's hard to judge just how competitive the list is since it plays a lot of strange cards that don't show up in other decks, this uniqueness makes it worth showing off in the first place. If you decide to take it out for a test run, make sure to let me know how it goes since I'm very curious.
So far, many of the best Fires of Invention decks in Throne of Eldraine Standard have been used to support the Golos, Tireless Pilgrim / Field of the Dead plan, but can it also be used to fight the current greatest evil in Standard? Stone Rain Productions seems to think so. The main goal of Fires Land Destruction is to stick a Fires of Invention and then use it to cast multiple land-destruction spells each turn until the opponent, eventually left without resources, gives up and concedes, with Liliana, Dreadhorde General offering a finisher if we need to kill our opponent. While the deck does look super sweet, I do have a couple of concerns. First, how does the deck do in non-Golos matchups? Some main-deck sweepers might be necessary to help fight against decks like Simic and Mono-Red. Second, are two Chandra, Fire Artisan and two Escape to the Wilds enough card draw to keep the land destruction flowing? I don't know the answer to either question, but if you decide to pick up the deck, they are worth keeping in mind, at the very least.
Kenrith, the Returned King is one of my favorite Throne of Eldraine cards, so seeing our newest buy-a-box promo show up as the engine of a really janky combo was more than enough to make me want to show off the deck. The idea here is to get Kenrith, the Returned King on the battlefield along with a Biomancer's Familiar (or two) and a Smothering Tithe (or two). Let's say we have two Biomancer's Familiar and one Smothering Tithe (although the combo works the other way as well—with two Smothering Tithe and one Familiar). We can activate Kenrith, the Returned King for one mana to force our opponent to draw a card and, assuming our opponent is out of mana, make a Treasure token with Smothering Tithe, which we can then use to activate Kenrith, the Returned King and force our opponent to draw another card. We then repeat the process until we force our opponent to draw their entire deck and lose to milling out. The rest of the deck is a smattering of Biomancer's Familiar synergies, with cards like Faerie Formation and Spectral Sailor being especially powerful when their activated abilities cost two less. Just how often will the combo combo together? I have no idea—it does technically require four pieces (although we have a lot of card draw to find them), but when it does, the Kenrith combo kill has to be one of the spiciest available in Throne of Eldraine Standard.
Modern
If you're a fan of Feather, the Redeemed in Standard and looking to dip your toes in the waters of Modern, Percha2's budget Modern Feather list looks like a fine (and fun) starting point. One of the biggest upsides to Feather, the Redeemed in Modern is there are a lot of powerful payoffs for casting cheap spells that target your own creatures, with Akroan Crusader and Young Pyromancer making tokens and Phalanx Leader pumping the team. While the deck looks fairly powerful (especially for a budget deck) and solid against creature-based strategies, my main concern is how it will stand up to the unfair decks in the format. If budget is less of a concern, cards like Blood Moon, Rest in Peace, and Stony Silence in the sideboard could go a long way toward shoring up matchups against combo and even control. Still, the price is right, especially considering you might have some of the cards already from your Standard Feather, the Redeemed deck.
Historic
If I'm being honest, I mostly picked B. Grant's Historic Historic deck because of the name, but after looking more at the list, there might actually be something sweet happening here. One of the criticisms of Historic is that it is mostly just Standard, but Historic Historic is a good example of how this isn't always true, with the recently rotated Sai, Master Thopterist and Voltaic Servant joining new Throne of Eldraine additions Emry, Lurker of the Loch and Corridor Monitor in a deck overflowing with artifact-based synergies. I haven't gotten the chance to play Historic at all yet, but making a bunch of Thopters with Sai, Master Thopterist and then pumping them multiple times each turn by untapping and retapping Steel Overseer seems like it could be fairly powerful. Regardless of how good Historic Historic ends up being, it's exciting to see people already taking advantage of Magic's newest (and arguably least supported) format!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today! If you have ideas on how to improve these lists, make sure to let us know in the comments, and if you want your own deck considered for a future edition of The Fish Tank (or our Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), you can leave a link in the comments or email me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
