The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (April 4-10, 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 get a first look at some decks featuring new Strixhaven cards, with offerings for Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and even Commander! 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
Yes, I know, Standard brews being adventure decks with a few random cards thrown in is sort of a meme at this point, but Halfwing's Abzan Magecraft does have a really unique plan. The main goal is to flood the board with cheap creatures (which is where our adventure cards come in); get a Professor Onyx on the battlefield, either by hard casting it or reanimating it with Elspeth Conquers Death; and then sacrifice all of our creatures to Plumb the Forbidden, which will draw us a bunch of cards but, more importantly, also trigger Professor Onyx's magecraft ability a bunch of times, hopefully enough to sort of "storm off" and kill our opponent on the spot. If we can get 10 creatures on the battlefield, we can kill our opponent from 20 life for just two mana, but we'll most likely chip in for a bit of damage earlier in the game, so we should be able to win with fewer creatures on the battlefield. The other interesting part of the deck is the small learn / lesson package, which might be the most common way to play with the mechanic in best-of-three. The deck has four Field Trips as its only learn cards, which makes sense, considering three-mana ramp spells are already fairly common and playable in Standard, and then two lessons (Confront the Past to reanimate Professor Onyx and Containment Breach to deal with artifacts and enchantments). This still leaves the deck with 13 sideboard slots for more powerful cards, like Sedgemoor Witch, which seems like a pretty absurd support card for the combo since we can Plumb the Forbidden to make a bunch of Pest tokens and draw a bunch of cards. And if we hit another Plumb the Forbidden, we can repeat the process, which might make the three-drop good enough for the main deck! I have no idea how good the deck will be, but it seems like a really sweet way to take advantage of some of the most exciting cards and mechanics from Strixhaven!
Pioneer
I'm a sucker for mass land destruction, and Fall of the Thran is about as close to Armageddon as it gets in a format like Pioneer. The problem with Fall of the Thran is that it's basically an Armageddon that requires an additional card to work since you need to play it and then keep the opponent from returning their lands to play over the next two turns. Well, SirEklz has a plan for abusing the saga in Historic: planeswalkers. Our main goal is to stick some planeswalkers, play a Fall of the Thran to blow up all of the lands on the battlefield, and then use either Vraska, Golgari Queen or Vraska, Relic Seeker to get rid of Fall of the Thran so the second and third lore counters never trigger, turning it into a real (albeit six-mana) Armageddon. The other upside of the planeswalker plan is that it offers a way to win the game after we Armageddon since we should be able to ride the repeatable value that the planeswalkers offer to victory. My main worry about the deck is that it looks like it can be a bit slow sometimes, which could be an issue against aggro, although cheap enchantment-based removal like Trial of Ambition and Elspeth's Nightmare should help, to some extent. Either way, if you love mass land destruction and want to Armageddon in Pioneer, this seems like a really fun way to go about it!
Modern
We've seen a few different white-based decks have success in Modern, like Death and Taxes, Stoneblade, Emeria, Humans, and Mono-White Devotion. Well, Stevomat24's Mono-White Riddle of Steel deck basically combines all of those shells together into something new. The deck is Human based in the early game, with Champion of the Parish and a bunch of cheap Humans to get off to fast starts. Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Skyclave Apparition are all-stars from Death and Taxes; we have Stoneforge Mystic to find Sword of Fire and Ice, Maul of the Skyclaves, and Batterskull; and then, at the top end of our curve, we have Mono-White Devotion / Emeria threats Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite, Sun Titan, and Luminous Broodmoth (with a Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to ramp into them). While the deck might look a bit strange, according to Steovmat24, they are 63-18 with the deck since the most recent round of bannings, which is a pretty absurd record! If you are a fan of white decks and looking for something unique to try in Modern that might be fairly competitive, Mono-White Riddle of Steel seems like a fun option.
Spellweaver Volute is a weird card. It basically enchants an instant in your graveyard, lets you cast it once for free when you cast a sorcery, and then moves to another instant in your graveyard. While being able to cast a Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand and get a massive instant for free can be powerful, the problem is that it traditionally isn't all that easy to get massive instants in your graveyard without playing a bunch of self-mill or looting cards. Well, as Pengey realized, thanks to Strixhaven, we now have the perfect instants to Spellweaver Volute in Magma Opus and Creative Outburst, both of which can put themselves into the graveyard with their "discard to make a Treasure" ability, which also helps to ramp into Spellweaver Volute a turn early! The idea is that we can hopefully find and discard a couple of Magma Opuses and / or Creative Outbursts in the early game, play Spellweaver Volute, and then cast cheap sorceries like Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand to cast our seven- and eight-mana instants for just a single mana! The rest of the deck is basically an Izzet Control shell, with some counters and planeswalkers to help us stabilize and find our combo pieces. While it might be worth having some hard removal in the main deck (aggro seems like it will be a tough matchup), and the drawback of the Spellweaver Volute plan is that graveyard hate can be a blowout, the plan is really unique, and—if we can dodge the hate—casting Magma Opus and Creative Outburst turn after turn for just one mana seems super powerful!
Commander
Finally, today, we have a Commander list featuring one of the most unique new legends from Strixhaven: Quintorius, Field Historian. Quintorius, Field Historian is basically a Boros graveyard / exile commander. To be fully powered, it wants you to stock your graveyard with cards and then have those cards leave the graveyard one by one (rather than with mass exile like Tormod's Crypt or Rest in Peace) since it triggers to make a 3/2 Spirit token (which is actually a 4/2 thanks to Quintorius, Field Historian itself) every time one or more cards leaves your graveyard. While Boros isn't the most traditional self-mill color combination, red offers things like Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, and Thrill of Possibility, and there are a bunch of artifacts like Codex Shredder, Perpetual Timepiece, and Ghoulcaller's Bell to get the job done. We then can reanimate creatures from our graveyard with things like Karmic Guide and Sun Titan, exile cards from our graveyard with Relic of Progenitus and Scrabbling Claws, or even just cast / return things like Squee, Goblin Nabob and Squee, the Immortal to trigger Quintorius, Field Historian to make an overwhelming board. In general, the list looks like it has its bases covered, with a good mix of on-theme cards to support Quintorius, targeted removal (Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares), sweepers (Austere Command, Dusk // Dawn, Slash the Ranks, Single Combat), card draw / filtering (Valakut Awakening, Shattered Perception), and ramp. If you've been thinking about building around Quintorius in Commander, GoldenMunchkin's list hopefully will give you some sweet ideas to get you started!
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.
