The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (April 3-9, 2022)
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 have a bit of Historic and a ton of Modern! What spice did you all send in? Let's find out. Oh yeah, if you want your deck considered for next week's edition of The Fish Tank, leave a link in the comments, or you can email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Historic
First up in Historic, we have a spicy Wishclaw Talisman combo deck from Wishclaw master Kelvin-escesare. Here's the main idea: we can tutor with Wishclaw Talisman and then use Divine Purge to exile it once our opponent gains control of it, which will allow us to recast it and tutor again. If that's not enough, we can use Wishclaw Talisman to tutor up Trostani Discordant and steal back Wishclaw Talisman every turn, which will allow us to tutor three times, and then use Divine Purge to reset Wishclaw Talisman and tutor three more times. Eventually, all this tutoring will allow us to find a way to win the game, like The Kami War or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. I'm sure I'm missing some other spicy synergies in the deck—there's a lot going on in this list—but if you're looking for something wild to mess around with in Historic, Divine Claw looks like a really fun and potentially somewhat competitive option!
Modern
A long time ago on Against the Odds, we played a Spellweaver Helix / Worst Fears combo deck, with the idea being that we could use Spellweaver Helix to exile Worst Fears and then cast Raven's Crime each turn (with the help of Life from the Loam to make sure we have lands in hand) to control all of our opponent's turns. Well, NobleRooster has a very updated version of the deck in Spellweaver Coffers. Along with the plan from the Against the Odds deck, NobleRooster's build can also just ramp into Worst Fears with the help of Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Plus, thanks to the addition of Karn, the Great Creator to tutor up Spellweaver Helix from the sideboard, the Against the Odds combo should be even more consistent as well! Is running jank like Worst Fears the most competitive way to play Cabal Coffers in Modern? Maybe not, but it does seem like the most hilarious way at least, and I wouldn't be surprised if the updated build had the ability to win a decent number of games!
Speaking of updates to Against the Odds decks, Pie4man took last week's deck—the Mindlink Mech combo deck—and made it free on Magic Online! Shockingly, outside of downgrading the mana base and changing around the removal / discard package a bit, not much needed to change in the deck. It's pretty shocking that cards like Batterskull, Kaldra Compleat, and friends are so cheap on Magic Online that you can play them for free with the free card-rental programs. If you want to see what the deck is trying to do, check out the Against the Odds video—the plan is the same. But the TLDR is that the deck tries to use cards like [[Cephalid Constable], Cold-Eyed Selkie, or Dreamstealer to crew Mindlink Mech; turn Mech into a copy of that creature; and then bounce a bunch of permanents, draw a bunch of cards; or make the opponent discard their hand with its combat-damage trigger. If you like the idea of the ATO build but don't want to invest in a somewhat janky (although surprisingly effective) brew, this free-on-MTGO build looks like the perfect starting point!
Finally, we have another Modern combo deck this week from NobleRooster: Olivia's Eternal Honeymoon. The idea is to get Olivia's Attendants on the battlefield as quickly as possible (probably with the help of Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord). We can then hit our opponent with Olivia's Attendants to make six Blood tokens. We can sacrifice those tokens to Time Sieve to take an extra turn and do this again and again and again until our opponent finally dies from Olivia's Attendants beats. The other spicy part of the deck is a New Capenna addition in Lord Xander, the Collector. At seven mana, Lord Xander is a bit too expensive to play fairly in Modern, but it is one of the best Vampires to cheat into play with Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, by making the opponent discard a bunch when it enters the battlefield and then sacrifice half of their permanents when it dies. Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord is the perfect way to take advantage of the new mythic since we can –3 Sorin to cheat Lord Xander, the Collector into play as early as Turn 3. If we need Lord Xander to die, we can always sac it to Sorin's Lightning Helix +1; then, later, we can potentially reanimate Lord Xander with Olivia, Crimson Bride to do it again! The main problem I see with the plan is blockers—for the Olivia's Attendants plan to work, we need to be able to get in for at least five points of combat damage each turn, which means blockers or removal can shut it down. But when it all comes together, it is one of the sweetest ways to win with Vampire tribal in Modern!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. If you have some idea for how to improve these decks, make sure to let us know in the comments, and if you want your own deck considered for a future Fish Tank, leave a link there as well (or email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com). 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.
