The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (August 14-20, 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've got decks for four formats, ranging from Standard all the way to Pauper! 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

We haven't covered too much traditional Standard recently because it's almost time for rotation. Still, I wanted to show off Happoale's Ora Mimic deck because it is built around a combo that I haven't seen before, and even though the deck itself doesn't survive rotation, most of the combo does. Here's the idea: We stick a Bastion of Remembrance so we can drain our opponent whenever a creature dies. We follow that up with a Maskwood Nexus so all of our creatures have all creature types. Then, we play an Orah, Skyclave Hierophant and then a Glasspool Mimic (which is now a Cleric, thanks to Maskwood Nexus), copying Orah, Skyclave Hierophant. This will cause the two Orahs to legend rule, and we choose to sacrifice the Glasspool Mimic copy. This will trigger the remaining Orah, Skyclave Hierophant to reanimate a Cleric of mana value three or less, and since Glasspool Mimic will be a Cleric in the graveyard too thanks to Maskwood Nexus, we can reanimate it. We then copy Orah again and repeat the process an infinite number of times until we eventually drain our opponent out of the game with Bastion of Remembrance. Needing four pieces to go off means consistency likely will be an issue, although we have a solid backup plan of removal, discard, and sweepers to help us stay alive while we are setting things up. Plus, we can always just play a control game with our removal and try to win with a big Starnheim Unleashed without needing the combo. Of course, the big downside of the deck is that it won't survive rotation, which is creeping ever closer. Yet, there's a decent chance the combo itself will since all we need is a replacement Blood Artist effect for the rotating Bastion of Remembrance to keep the fun going in Innistrad: Midnight Hunt Standard!

Historic

One of the more underrated additions to Historic from Jumpstart: Historic Horizons is likely Timeless Witness. While perhaps a bit worse than Eternal Witness in a format like Modern, this isn't a problem in Historic, which didn't have an Eternal Witness at all before Historic Horizons. Smegma Lasagna has a really sweet idea for taking advantage of the four-drop: a Soulherder blink plan! The deck is overflowing with creatures with powerful enters-the-battlefield triggers to reuse with Soulherder, ranging from the ramp and card draw of Risen Reef to the token-generating prowess of Blade Splicer. But the most exciting is Timeless Witness, which opens up some really sweet synergies. Against control, we can sacrifice Ranger-Captain of Eos each turn on our opponent's upkeep to keep them from casting anything relevant and then blink Timeless Witness to get it back and do it against the next turn. Against aggro, we can do the same thing but with Pause for Reflection to Fog our opponent out of the game! Blink is one of the archetypes I'm most excited to build once Jumpstart: Historic Horizons is released, and Smegma Lasagna's list looks like a really solid starting point!

A couple of years ago in Standard, we played a deck looking to combo Emergency Powers with Smothering Tithe to make an absurd amount of mana and, hopefully, eventually win the game by putting Thousand-Year Storm into play. Well, Palasdin is looking to do something similar but in Historic! The main goal is to resolve a Emergency Powers with a Smothering Tithe (or two) on the battlefield. This will force our opponent to draw seven cards and, since they likely won't have 14 mana available to pay the Smothering Tithe, give us a bunch of Treasure tokens, while Emergency Powers also lets us put a permanent into play for free from hand, which hopefully will be Thousand-Year Storm. We then can use our Treasures to cast another Emergency Powers, this time making hundreds of Treasures thanks to the Thousand-Year Storm copies, until we eventually kill our opponent with the biggest Banefire or Crackle with Power in Magic's history (or by playing Ral, Storm Conduit and casting a bunch of spells to slowly burn our opponent out). While the deck traditionally is pretty soft to counters (the opponent stopping Emergency Powers from resolving really hurts our plan), if we can dodge the counters and live long enough to get things set up, the deck should be able to do some insane things!

Pioneer

Meanwhile, in Pioneer, The Cavalry has a unique take on Gruul Aggro in Manattack. The idea is to go wide with creatures with the help of cards like Goblin Rabblemaster and Legion Warboss and then turn those creatures into massive amounts of mana, with cards like Grand Warlord Radha and Dragonrage (which I honestly forgot was a card but seems pretty powerful in the right shell). We then can use this mana to do things like make a ton of tokens with Tilonalli's Summoner, make our team massive with Biomass Mutation, or throw a ton of damage at our opponent's face with Fall of the Titans, all of which are instant-speed effects to take advantage of the fact that Dragonrage only makes mana during combat. The best part? The deck is only $95 in paper and 11 tix on Magic Online, putting it firmly in the budget price range. Oh yeah, The Cavalry also asked if we had ideas for other abilities or spells that would let us spend all of the extra mana at instant speed, so if you have some suggestions, make sure to let them know in the comments. The deck already looks sweet, and with our powers combined, maybe we can make it even sweeter!

Pauper

Finally, we have some Pauper action this week, with Nurgle's spicy Accursed Scaretiller deck! Pauper is a unique, often very grindy format, and Accursed Scaretiller has a really weird plan for generating pseudo-card advantage: repeatedly sacrificing Cradle of the Accursed to make 2/2 Zombies. The main plan is to get down a Scaretiller, which can reanimate a land whenever it becomes tapped. We sacrifice Cradle of the Accursed to make a 2/2 Zombie; then, we can then use Holdout Settlement or Survivors' Encampment to tap Scaretiller and put Cradle of the Accursed back into play so we can do it again the next turn. While this might not sound that exciting, remember: we're playing Pauper. A free 2/2 each turn can really add up in a format without many sweepers and where the biggest threats in the format are usually things like Gurmag Angler. The rest of the deck is filled with removal and artifact creatures that can return other artifacts from the graveyard to the battlefield, to support the grindy game plan. While the deck doesn't look like it can win quickly, it seems like it should be able to keep itself alive for a long time (especially against decks built around ground threats) while it slowly builds up a lethal board. While I have no idea how competitive the deck might be, especially right now in a Pauper format with Chatterstorm still running around, the idea is really sweet and unique!

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.