The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (August 28-September 4, 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 mostly focused on Historic thanks to the release of Jumpstart: Historic Horizons! 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.
Historic
Right after Modern Horizons was released, we played Squirrel Twin in Modern. Well, now, as Wade H. realized, thanks to the release of Jumpstart: Historic Horizons, it's possible to go infinite with Scurry Oak in Historic! The primary goal is to get Scurry Oak onto the battlefield alongside Heliod, Sun-Crowned and something like Soul Warden or Prosperous Innkeeper that gains life whenever a creature enters the battlefield. This allows us to play a creature to gain a life and put a +1/+1 counter on Scurry Oak with Heliod, Sun-Crowned. (A leveled-up Cleric Class can also work in place of Heliod.) Scurry Oak makes a 1/1 token, which will trigger the Soul Warden effect to gain us a life and complete the process. Thanks to Collected Company's ability to find all of our combo pieces, it seems like the combo might be at least somewhat consistent, even though it technically requires three pieces to go infinite. One thing that I think could improve the deck is a better backup plan to win without making infinite Squirrels. Cards like Llanowar Visionary and Knight of Autumn could be replaced by more lifegain payoffs, like Righteous Valkyrie or even Ajani's Pridemate. Either way, winning with infinite Squirrels is super sweet, and it's awesome to see the combo making its way into the Historic format!
Apparently, going infinite with Scurry Oak is a pretty popular plan in Historic at the moment, as we have another version of the combo, this time from Koko's Homesbrews. The combo itself is the same—Scurry Oak, Heliod, Sun-Crowned, and Soul Warden for infinite Squirrel tokens and lifegain—though this build has a bit of a twist, with Aetherflux Reservoir to close out the game immediately after going infinite, avoiding the possibility of making hundreds of Squirrels only to have the opponent untap and play a sweeper. Fauna Shaman is another interesting addition, as a backup for Collected Company to find combo pieces. I've been playing the two-drop in Harmonic Shaman, and it's been pretty impressive. While the list looks solid, I'm pretty sure that Prosperous Innkeeper is pretty close to a strict upgrade on Impassioned Orator. While it gives up some power, ramping into Collected Company on Turn 3 is pretty powerful. How good is the Squirrel Twin combo in Historic? I don't have any idea yet, although the fact that there are a bunch of ways to build the deck is exciting, not only giving options for adapting to the meta but also increasing the chances that at least one of the builds might be good! If you have some ideas on how to improve the combo or have your own build, make sure to leave it in the comments!
Hardened Scales is one of the most interesting Jumpstart: Historic Horizons additions to the Historic format. In Modern, it has long been a key part of a top-tier deck, although many of the key pieces of that deck (Arcbound Ravager, Walking Ballista, Hangarback Walker, and Inkmoth Nexus) are missing from Historic. Can the enchantment work in Historic? Theluvshak thinks so! The main idea is to combine Hardened Scales with Conclave Mentor and Winding Constrictor to add a ton of counters to a creature with Luminarch Aspirant, Ranger Class, Show of Confidence, and even Vastwood Fortification. We also have Voracious Hydra, which can get absolutely massive if we can stick a few Hardened Scales and also kill a creature when it enters the battlefield. While some of the individual choices are a bit weird (like main-deck Gaea's Blessing), this mostly might be a best-of-one thing to account for the popularity of decks like Rogues. There are also a ton of other +1/+1 counter synergies and spells to consider for the deck, so there are tons of possibilities here as well. Collected Company also could be solid in the deck, assuming we can get a few more hittable creatures around, although it is a bit of a non-bo with Voracious Hydra specifically. I have no idea where the deck will end up, but theluvshak's build looks super fun and like a solid starting point for exploring Hardened Scales in the Historic format!
One of the most exciting aspects of a bunch of Modern Horizons cards coming to Historic is that cards that might not be quite good enough to see Modern play have another shot at glory. Take, for example, the central card in Anthony G.'s build: Junk Winder. In Modern a, 5/6 for two coming down on Turn 4 isn't really that exciting since there are so many massive creatures that can come down early in the game. On the other hand, in Historic, especially backed by cards like Feasting Troll King and Giant Opportunity, which also care about having a bunch of tokens on the battlefield, Junk Winder has the potential to be a massive threat! The idea is to flood the board with Food tokens as quickly as possible using cards like Gilded Goose, Wavesifter, Tireless Provisioner, and Trail of Crumbs and then start slamming massive threats. Scuttletide looks a bit strange in the deck, but we do need a way to get Feasting Troll King into the graveyard to be able to play it by sacrificing three Treasures, and it does have a bit of extra synergy with Hard Evidence. If you like smashing opponents with huge creatures or are just a fan of Crabs, Junk Winder looks like a fun and, outside of having 16 rare dual lands, fairly budget-friendly option for Historic!
Modern
You might remember that during a stream a couple of weeks ago, we tried to break Flumph and were rewarded by losing 26 games in a row, before finally picking up a win. Well, longshot2 is ready to take the Flumph challenge, this time in Modern! The goal is to combo off with Flumph. To do this, we first need to make Flumph indestructible with Heroic Intervention, Boros Charm, or Nahiri's Machinations. We then can use Seismic Assault to discard Dakmor Salvage, hit Flumph for two damage, and use Flumph's card draw to dredge Dakmor Salvage back to our hand so we can do it again. The idea is that we'll win eventually by milling our opponent out with Flumph draw, although I think the deck needs one more piece to pull this off successfully. If we pull off the combo every time we hit Flumph for damage, our opponent will lose a card from their library (by drawing it), while we will lose two (thanks to dredging Dakmor Salvage), which means that we'll likely run out of cards first. (Plus, the way dredge is worded, we have to be able to mill two cards to dredge Dakmor Salvage, so the combo will fizzle once we have one or less left in our library.) Thankfully, this is super easy to fix by adding an Eldrazi or Gaea's Blessing to shuffle our library back in once we mill it, which would make it so we never run out of cards and will slowly empty our opponent's library with Flumph. Is the plan competitive? Not a chance. I mean, it's a Flumph deck! The good news is that if you can pull off the combo even once, it will be one of the most hilarious possible ways to win a game of Modern!
Legacy
Finally, we have a super spicy-looking Legacy mashup from VixStix this week: Dread & Taxes. Death and Taxes has long been a top-tier deck in Legacy, while trying to cheat Phyrexian Dreadnought into play (most often with cards like Stifle) is also super powerful and a great way to jank unsuspecting opponents out of the game. Dread & Taxes combines these two plans together with the help of Hushbringer and Tocatli Honor Guard to Stifle Phyrexian Dreadnought's enters-the-battlefield trigger and keep the 12/12 trampler around forever, while also taxing the opponent. The rest of the deck looks like a lot like Death and Taxes, with cards like Mother of Runes and Giver of Runes to protect our more important creatures, Ethersworn Canonist to slow down combo decks, and Esper Sentinel for value, along with Wasteland and Rishadan Port to attack the opponent's resources. My favorite part of the list is that no one is going to see a Mother of Runes or Esper Sentinel on Turn 1 and expect a 12/12 trampler to show up a couple turns later, which makes the deck a hilarious way to catch opponents by surprise. Is Dread & Taxes better than traditional Death & Taxes? Maybe not, but it's certainly way spicier!
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.
