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Browse > Home / Strategy / Articles / The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (August 7-13, 2021)

The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (August 7-13, 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 a bunch of Historic and a bunch of Modern! 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

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Storm had a bit of hype when Strixhaven was released and brought cards like Grapeshot and Tendrils of Agony into the format. But outside of a sweet Budget Magic deck, the archetype hasn't really taken off. But that might be changing thanks to Historic Horizons, as Bennymon1's Chatterstorm deck exemplifies. Chatterstorm gives the storm archetype another really powerful finisher, with one huge upside: it's much better than Grapeshot if we can't get our storm count all the way up to 20 since it leaves behind permanent bodies on the battlefield. The deck also steals a sweet synergy from Pauper Storm, with First Day of Class to give all of our Chatterstorm Squirrel tokens +1/+1 and haste, allowing them to kill the opponent immediately without letting the opponent untap and potentially clean up the board with a sorcery-speed sweeper. The deck looks like it could be incredibly explosive. The combo of Birgi, God of Storytelling and Grinning Ignus can generate infinite Storm by itself—although consistency might be a bit of an issue since the deck doesn't have many cantrips or ways to filter. If we're going into green anyway for Chatterstorm, it might be worth running Abundant Growth as a cheap yet powerful way to dig through our deck. Either way, Storm keeps getting better and better in Historic. And while I'm not 100% sure it's ready to be a top-tier deck in the format yet, it wouldn't be a surprise if it gets there eventually as more cards keep coming to Historic.

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I've been pretty meh on the new digital-exclusive Historic Horizons card Davriel's Withering, but maybe that's because I've been thinking of it as a removal spell rather than as a combo piece! Qayer S. is looking to use the instant to go infinite with another new Historic Horizons addition: Vesperlark! The idea is that you play a Vesperlark and then use Davriel's Withering to give it –1/–2 perpetually. This will kill the Vesperlark, and thanks to the perpetual –1/–2, it will be a 1/0, which means Vesperlark can reanimate itself with its leaves-the-battlefield trigger. When Vesperlark returns to the batttlefield, it will die and return itself to the battlefield again. And again. And again. Basically, this gives us infinite death triggers, which means that with either a Blood ArtistCruel Celebrant, or Bastion of Remembrance, we will have infinite drain and kill our opponent on the spot, perhaps as early as Turn 4! Just be careful: Vesperlark's leaves-the-battlefield ability isn't a "may" ability, which means if we start the loop without a Blood Artist, Cruel Celebrant, or Bastion of Remembrance on the battlefield, Vesperlark will loop itself forever for no value, and the game will end in a draw. The rest of the deck is discard to protect the combo and some card draw to find our pieces. While the plan sounds a bit janky, I'm actually pretty scared of the combo. While it takes three pieces to win the game, if we're about to lose, we can always fire it off without a finisher to draw the game (which is better than losing) and try again next time!

Modern

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In Modern, we have a pretty wild combo deck built around Demilich. While most people have focused on Demilich being a recursive threat for Arclight Phoenix–style decks, OddlyAsymmetric has a very different plan: using Demilich as a Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis–like combo piece! Here's the idea: Play Altar of Dementia on Turn 2. On Turn 3, cast enough free spells to make Demilich free. We can then cast Demilich and sacrifice it to Altar of Dementia to mill four cards. Since our entire deck, outside of the four Bloodghasts and four Altar of Dementias, are instants or sorceries (the mana base is exclusively MDFCs), we should hit four instants or sorceries so we can cast Demilich from our graveyard again for free. After we repeat the process a bunch of times, we'll eventually mill all four Creeping Chills (for 12 damage) and four Bloodghasts, which can come back with haste once we make a land drop to deal eight more damage and 20 our opponent on Turn 3! While the idea is hilarious, and it seems like it should be really explosive when things go well, there does seem to be a risk of some pretty clunky games if we don't draw Altar of Dementia, although we can still try to win by attacking with Demilich fairly. While the consistency issues (and risk of graveyard hate) probably mean the deck isn't super competitive, it looks like it should be able to do some really spectacular, unique things really quickly and pick up some free wins against unsuspecting opponents!

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Many years ago, for one of the first Budget Magic episodes ever, we played Heartless Retriever combo. Ancelot has been working on the deck and has a new, improved, non-budget 2021 edition! If you're not familiar with the combo, the main idea is to play Heartless Summoning and then loop two copies of Myr Retriever (when the first one dies, it can return the second one from our graveyard to our hand), which will both be free 0/0s thanks to Heartless Summoning. The final piece of the puzzle is Altar of the Brood, which mills our opponent whenever we have a permanent enters the battlefield, which, with the combo, gives us infinite mill. With a really great draw, the deck can combo off as soon as Turn 2, which is incredibly fast, even for Modern, although a Turn 2 kill isn't especially likely since this requires four different combo pieces. So, what new additions does the archetype get? By far the biggest is Urza's Saga, which gives us a way to tutor up Altar of the Brood, although cards like Force of Negation and Thoughtseize also help to protect the combo. One other card that might be worth testing is Profane Tutor. While a bit slow, having one card that can tutor up whatever combo piece we might be missing seems pretty powerful. Otherwise, if you have the budget build of Heartless Retriever and are thinking about upgrading, this seems like a really fun and solid starting point!

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While we've played Naban, Dean of Iteration Wizards and played Harmonic Prodigy (in Shamans), I'm almost ashamed that we haven't put the two Wizard Panharmonicons together in the same deck yet. Thankfully, PhyrexianManaDork has us covered with American Wizardamonicon. The main goal is to stick as many copies of Harmonic Prodigy and Naban, Dean of Iteration as possible (we can use the Wizardcycling mode on Step Through to tutor them up) and then start playing Wizards with enters-the-battlefield triggers. We have Silvergill Adept and Wistful Selkie for card draw; Basalt Ravager, Merfolk Trickster, and Reflector Mage as removal; and Master of Waves to make a huge board of Elemental tokens and close out the game. If that's not enough Wizards value, we can even double up our enters-the-battlefield triggers with Ephemerate! While the list looks sweet, it is missing one of my favorite Wizards for the archetype: Venser, Shaper Savant. While being legendary might mean we don't want a full playset, a copy or two seems worthwhile. Being able to bounce a land (or two or three lands if we have a Wizard Panharmonicon or two on the battlefield) is pretty insane. With Ephemerate to blink it, we can even build it into a one-sided Armageddon, potentially bouncing all of our opponent's lands, which should make it pretty hard for them to win or do much of anything at all! While I'm sure there could be a few small changes around the edges, the list looks solid. It should be a blast to play if you like tribal decks or Panharmonicon-style value decks!

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.



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