The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (August 1-6, 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 jumping around from format to format, although thanks to Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, we also have a lot of Historic brews this week! What sweetness did you all send in this week? Let's take a look! But first, to have your own deck considered for next week's edition, make sure to leave a link in the comments, or email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com. 

Standard

One of the best parts of Standard rotation is that a lot of cards, decks, and archetypes that weren't quite good enough before rotation suddenly deserve a second look. Clerics were a tribe I was really hyped for back when Kaldheim was released, but thanks to the power of sets like Eldraine and Ikoria, they haven't quite made it in Standard...yet. Mewe174 is looking to combine the tribe with Pyre of Heroes as a tribal-only Birthing Pod. The Cleric tribe is an oddly good fit for the artifact thanks to a lot of tribe members that do their damage with enters-the-battlefield triggers as well as cards like Orah, Skyclave Hierophant and Hofri Ghostforge that allow us to return Clerics from the graveyard to play. The main goal is to grind out value with Birthing Pod–esque creature chains. We can play a Professor of Symbology to tutor up a lesson (or a Elderfang Disciple to make our opponent discard) and sacrifice it to Pyre of Heroes to get Priest of Ancient Lore and draw a card (or something like Venerable Warsinger to potentially reanimate something we sacrificed earlier). Then, we can sacrifice our three-drop to get Orah, Skyclave Hierophant, which will start returning creatures to play as we sacrifice things like Pyre of Heroes until we eventually build an overwhelming board and can win by beating down or with Skemfar Shadowsage for drain. While Cleric Pod doesn't look especially fast, and a lot of its individual pieces aren't all that powerful, the tribe is incredibly synergistic, with the idea being that the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. How good will Cleric Pod be in post-rotation Standard? I have no idea—it's hard to speculate without knowing what is coming in Innistrad. But if you like grindy, value-heavy, graveyard-centric tribal decks, Cleric Pod looks like a blast. And I can't wait to give it a try once rotation hits!

Historic

Last week, for Against the Odds, we tried to build around Volo, Guide to Monsters in Modern, and the results weren't great. While we did get to see the legend do some explosive things, most of the time, it just died before we could make a copy of anything. Could Historic be the right home for Volo? Isaac C. thinks so! The plan of Historic Volo is much like the Modern version: play a bunch of different creature types and as much creature-based ramp as possible to speed things up, stick a Volo, Guide to Monsters, and start casting creatures to make copies, hopefully overwhelming the opponent with value. We also have a few clones, which work incredibly well with Volo, Guide to Monsters since they are Shapeshifters or Illusions on the stack but are the creature type of whatever they copy when on the battlefield, allowing us to keep getting Volo copies of any future clones we cast. Spark Double is the best of the bunch since it can copy Volo, Guide to Monsters itself (and things get crazy quickly with two or three Volos going), although Mirror Image offer another cheap backup clone. If you like Panharmonicon-style decks and creature value, Historic Volo looks like a lot of fun, although even though Historic has worse removal than Modern, I still expect we'll have a lot of games where Volo, Guide to Monsters dies without doing much, which might just be how Volo works. 

Bolas's Citadel is one of my favorite cards in Historic, but I've mostly played it in Golgari-based decks that look to ramp into the artifact. Smegma Lasagna has a very different plan thanks to Jumpstart: Historic Horizons: tutor the artifact into the graveyard with Goblin Engineer and then reanimate it with Trash for Treasure or Refurbish. The deck is so dedicated to reanimating Bolas's Citadel that it can't even hard-cast it unless it happens to have its one-of Chromatic Orrery (or multiple Terrarions) on the battlefield! Once we stick a Bolas's Citadel, our plan is to play through our deck until we find Aetherflux Reservoir and eventually kill our opponent by getting up to 50 life to throw 50 damage at our opponent's face! The biggest downside I see with the plan is that graveyard hate is really, really good against it. I'm not sure it's possible to make the mana work, but it would be nice if hard-casting Bolas's Citadel were a more realistic backup plan. On the other hand, with a good draw, Lorehold Citadel can have a Bolas's Citadel on the battlefield on Turn 3, which is incredibly fast, so there is a big reward that comes along with the risk. If you can dodge the hate, the deck looks incredibly explosive and should be super fun to play!

Speaking of comboing in Historic, Joshua C. is looking to go infinite with Zirda, the Dawnwaker, High Alert, and Faeburrow Elder. If we can get all three pieces on the battlefield, we'll have a Faeburrow Elder that taps four mana and then can be untapped with High Alert for just two mana, giving us infinite mana, which we can use to cast a massive Finale of Devastation (either by drawing it naturally or tutoring it from our sideboard with a Fae of Wishes) to win the game. This might sound inconsistent because we need three combo pieces, but there are a few reasons why the combo is likely more consistent than it looks. Most obviously, Zirda, the Dawnwaker is our companion, so we should always have access to it. We also have Biomancer's Familiar as a backup Zirda. And while the easiest way to go infinite is with Faeburrow Elder, Incubation Druid can get the job done too if we have a Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy on the battlefield. Oh yeah, and if we don't draw High Alert, we can tutor Gauntlets of Light from our sideboard with Fae of Wishes, which does the same thing with Faeburrow Elder. Basically, even though we need three (or maybe four, since we'll need a finisher to go with our infinite mana) to go infinite, the deck actually has a ton of redundancy, which should help make it easier to get things set up. While I would still guess that consistency is an issue, the deck seems like it should be hilarious when it goes off!

Legacy

Legacy is one of the best formats in all of Magic, but it (rightly) has a reputation of being super expensive. Simenbo is looking to change this with a Legacy deck that only costs $128: Soulherder! Of course, getting the deck down near $100 means playing a less-than-optimal mana base without fetch lands, original dual lands, or even shock lands, so there is a cost. But outside of the mana, the deck looks pretty solid, with a ton of value creatures that combine really well with Soulherder and Ephemerate to generate a steady stream of value. While combo matchups are probably pretty difficult since we don't have Force of Will or Force of Negation, budget Legacy Soulherder looks like it should be able to win some games against fair decks! The deck seems like a fun starting point if you're looking to get into Legacy on the cheap, although be warned that it will probably need some fairly expensive upgrades to be truly competitive, with Force of Will and improved mana being at the top of the list. (You don't need to buy original duals—just adding some fetch lands and shock lands probably would be good enough.)

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for this week! Do you have some ideas on how to improve the decks we looked at today? Let us know in the comments! Have a deck for next week? You can leave it in the comments too! Thanks to everyone who submitted lists this week, and as always, you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.