The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (February 21-27, 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're bouncing around with sweet lists for Standard, Historic, Pioneer, and Modern!. 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
Song of Creation is undoubtedly powerful. Drawing two cards any time you cast a spell is a ton of value. However, its power is hard to harness since if you don't win the game on the turn you cast it, you'll have to discard your hand, leaving you in a position where if you top-deck a land the next turn, you won't be able to restart Song of Creation and will end up doing nothing. While we've looked at Song of Creation / Teferi's Tutelage decks before, there's a big reason why I wanted to show off Will F.'s build: some new cards from Kaldheim make the deck much, much more consistent. While the primary plan is still to stick Song of Creation, draw through our deck, and win, either by milling the opponent out with Teferi's Tutelage or with Thassa's Oracle, Birgi, God of Storytelling makes the deck much, much better. While Birgi herself is solid as a source of extra mana, the true combo is the backside Harnfel, Horn of Bounty, which lets us discard a card to exile two cards that we can cast this turn. If we can get Harnfel, Horn of Bounty on the battlefield alongside Song of Creation, it becomes almost impossible for our combo to fizzle since if we draw a bunch of lands (the main way Song of Creation itself fizzles), we can discard them to Horn to find more non-lands and keep the combo going. The other sneakily powerful addition to the deck from Kaldheim is two cheap foretell cards in Crush the Weak and Ravenform. While both cards can be used as removal spells, their main purpose is to give us a guaranteed way to restart Song of Creation (for just one mana) if we need to combo over the course of two turns. If we can foretell either card early in the game, it essentially gives us a spell in our hand that can't be discarded to Song of Creation, so the worry that we'll discard our hand and top-deck a land the following turn is eliminated. While I'm still not sure that Song of Creation combo is ready to break into the top tier of Standard, I will say that Will F.'s built is likely the best version of Song of Creation I've seen for Standard, so if you want to take the Song of Creation challenge, it seems like the perfect starting point!
We know from experience that assembling a party is pretty difficult, but WhammeWhamme has a really unique way to get it done: Gyruda, Doom of Depths! The idea is to use Gyruda, Doom of Depths' mill-and-reanimate ability to reanimate creatures with party types, which in turn allows us to use Thwart the Grave as a cheap double-reanimation spell to get back more copies of Gyruda, Doom of Depths and various party creatures for value until we either overwhelm our opponent with a massive, janky board or possibly mill our entire deck and win with Thassa's Oracle. While the main deck doesn't really have much interaction, we can use Fae of Wishes to snag various wraths and removal spells from the sideboard, if necessary. While the deck looks really odd on paper, WhammeWhamme said that it took them to 7-0 and 6-1 finishes in the recent Metagame Challenge event on Arena, which is quite impressive. Plus, Thwart the Grave has the potential to be extremely powerful. It's an absurd deal if you can reanimate two big creatures for two or three mana, and Gigan Party might just be the deck to harness its power!
Historic
Ever wanted to make infinite Servo tokens? Well, Super_Jophes has you covered with their Rishkar's Servo Factory deck. The goal is to get a few different cards on the battlefield, which in turn should let us make infinite-ish Servos. First, we need Animation Module to make a Servo token for just one mana whenever a +1/+1 counter is put on a creature. Then, we need Path of Discovery to explore (which puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature) whenever a creature enters the battlefield. These two cards together let us play a creature, put a +1/+1 counter on it with Path of Discovery (as long as there's a non-land on the top of our deck), and trigger Animation Module to make a Servo, which then explores because of Path to Discovery. This can put a +1/+1 counter on the Servo and trigger Animation Module again. We can keep doing this until we run out of mana. Of course, doing something until you run out of mana isn't infinite. The last piece of the puzzle is a way to keep making mana, which, in Rishkar's Servo Factory, is the combo of Rishkar, Peema Renegade (which lets us tap creatures with +1/+1 counters for mana) and either Tuktuk Rubblefort or Samut, Voice of Dissent for haste. Now, we have Servos that come into play, hopefully get a +1/+1 counter from Path to Discovery, and immediately can tap for a mana, which lets us pay for Animation Module to make another Servo and keep the combo going. While there is some chance that we will get unlucky and have a land on the top of our deck, once we get things set up and find a non-land, we can choose to keep it on top of our deck, which should allow us to make an infinite number of Servos and, assuming our opponent doesn't have a wrath, win the game on the following turn with a huge Servo attack! While I don't think Rishkar's Servo Factory is super competitive (we need three or four combo pieces, most of which don't have replacements, so consistency seems like it will probably be a major issue), it does seem like a really cute and fun idea to mess around in unranked mode.
Pioneer
Pioneer had been in a pretty broken and unfair place pre-bannings, but now, with the most broken cards banned, it might be time for fair decks like WU Monument to shine! The goal of the deck is to go super-wide with Oketra's Monument tokens while also squeezing value out of creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers, with Thraben Inspector, Militia Bugler, and Cloudblazer for card draw and Spell Queller, Reflector Mage, and Deputy of Detention (which should probably be Skyclave Apparition) for removal. If our opponent manages to sweep our board? No problem—we can get back almost every creature in our deck with Dusk // Dawn. Eventually, we either grind our opponent out with small white creatures and tokens or find a God-Eternal Oketra to quickly flood the board with 4/4s. I actually think that WU Monument has the potential to be a very powerful strategy in Pioneer. The problem is that the deck is super slow and fair, which means the strategy just can't compete in a world where other tier-one decks are comboing off to win the game on Turn 4. However, now that Pioneer is theoretically in a fair (or at least, fairer) place, it might finally be time for the deck to break out in the format!
Modern
Mystic Reflection has quickly grown into one of my favorite cards from Kaldheim. And while we've played the card in a few different ways, RookerKdag's plan is one of the most hilarious I've seen yet. Here's the idea: we play Boldwyr Heavyweights (or as a worse backup, Hunted Wumpus), which will allow our opponent to put the best creature in their deck (or hand) into play for free. While this might sound risky, don't worry—it gets better. Once we have Boldwyr Heavyweights on the battlefield, we can target it with Mystic Reflection and give our opponent a token with Forbidden Orchard. The token will be a copy of Boldwyr Heavyweights, which means we'll get to tutor our library for a creature and put it into play, and that creature will be Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, which should be better than anything our opponent could tutor up with their copy! As a backup plan, we can play Torpor Orb and then just cast our Boldwyr Heavyweights and Hunted Wumpuses without the drawback of their enters-the-battlefield triggers. While the plan is super janky and giving the opponent free creatures is risky—we'll probably end up killing ourselves if something goes horribly wrong—it also seems like it will be super hilarious when it goes off!
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.
