The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (July 10-16, 2022)
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 spice from Standard back to Legacy! What sweet brews did you all send in? Let's find out. Oh yeah, if you want your deck considered for next week's edition of The Fish Tank, leave a link in the comments, or you can email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
Standard
Recently, while playing Explorer, we stumbled on the pseudo-lock of a flipped Fable of the Mirror-Breaker with a creature that forces the opponent to discard a card when it enters the battlefield. The idea is that if you can get the opponent empty-handed, you can use Fable of the Mirror-Breaker to copy the discard creature on the opponent's draw step each turn, forcing them to discard whatever they draw, which more or less leaves the opponent without cards for the rest of the game (other than instants, which can break the lock). I mentioned wanting to see if the lock could work in Standard; now, thanks to Armorer, we have a deck built around the idea to try out!
As I mentioned a moment ago, the main goal is to flip a Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and use it to copy an Acquisitions Expert or Virus Beetle each turn to lock the opponent out of drawing cards. One thing I like about Armorer's brew is that it gets to play a lot of strong cards as its backup plan. Cards like Immersturm Predator and Graveyard Trespasser are good enough that we should have a chance to win even if we don't manage to lock our opponent out of the game, especially backed by all of the strong removal that red and black offer in our current Standard format. If you're looking for something different to try in Standard as we crawl toward rotation in September, Rakdos Discard looks like a super-fun option!
Explorer
A couple of weeks ago, we played a Waste Not deck in Explorer on stream. The deck was super fun, but it had one big issue: it crushed people in games where we found Waste Not, but it often struggled in games where we didn't find a Waste Not, playing a bunch of underpowered discard effects. Well, Ohako has a plan for fixing Waste Not's issue: Scheming Symmetry! Having a one-mana way to tutor up Waste Not seems awesome, although Scheming Symmetry comes with a cost, allowing the opponent to tutor up a card as well, which means they can find an answer to our Waste Not if they want to. But Ohako has a plan for that as well: mill! Cards like Vicious Rumors and Demogorgon's Clutches work with our Waste Not discard plan but also mill our opponent, so we can Scheming Symmetry without allowing our opponent to draw the card that they tutor up. Bloodvial Purveyor is another really interesting option for the deck. Assuming we have Waste Not out, it puts our opponent in a really difficult position. They'll get Blood tokens as they cast spells, but if they sacrifice the Blood tokens to discard and draw, they'll trigger our Waste Not and probably end up losing to all of our free value. If they don't sacrifice the tokens, we'll be able to beat them down with a massive Bloodvial Purveyor! I'm not sure just how strong the deck is overall, but it has some really cool ideas and should help solve the issue we had of not being able to draw Waste Not consistently enough.
Do you hate attacking with your creatures only for them to get blocked and deal no damage? Well, then, Gingervitus5 has an Explorer deck for you: the Menace Machine! The deck is basically menace tribal, with 26 creatures, all with menace! When it comes to keyword-tribal decks, the question is always, "What's the payoff for overloading our deck with cards featuring one specific mechanic?" While Menace Machine doesn't get a ton of payoffs, it does get one strong one in Labyrinth Raptor, which not only allows us to pump our team for just two mana but also makes it even harder for our opponent to block our menacing creatures because they'll have to sacrifice a blocker if they do. The rest of the deck is mostly the best menace creatures in the Explorer format, although there is one more big piece of spice in Pestilent Spirit. Pestilent Spirit is in the deck because it's another good menace creature, but it also has a unique ability, giving our instant and sorcery spells deathtouch. To take advantage of this, we have four copies of Blazing Volley and four End the Festivities, both of which ping each of our opponent's creatures for a damage. Normally, this wouldn't do all that much apart from taking out some X/1s. But with a Pestilent Spirit on the battlefield, they turn into one-mana Plague Wind, wiping our opponent's entire board, which should allow us to finish off our opponent's life in short order! I will say that I'm a little concerned that our only removal is Blazing Volley and End the Festivities. They are great if we have a Pestilent Spirit; otherwise, the deck looks like it could struggle with big creatures. It could be worth playing some more traditional targeted removal alongside the janky "build a Plague Wind" combo. Regardless, if you are tired of your creatures being blocked, Menace Machine looks like a really unique and funny semi-competitive option for Explorer.
Modern
Normally, Emergent Ultimatum decks are boring, but BlindOwl4 shows that it's very possible to build an incredibly spicy deck featuring Emergent Ultimatum in Kasmina Wins! The deck's plan is super janky and hilarious. The main goal is to use high-loyalty planeswalkers like Huatli, the Sun's Heart or Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner along with Kasmina, Enigma Sage's ultimate to tutor up Emergent Ultimatum. With our best draw, we can play a proliferating creature like Grateful Apparition or Thrummingbird on Turn 2, a Kasmina, Enigma Sage on Turn 3, and then either Huatli or Kiora on Turn 4, which can use Kasmina's ultimate immediately with one extra loyalty counter from proliferate. When we ultimate, we can grab Emergent Ultimatum and cast it for free, tutoring up three cards: Searing Wind, Explosive Singularity, and Fiery Emancipation. No matter what our opponent chooses, they'll end up taking at least 20 damage, ending the game on the spot! While the deck is very much an Against the Odds brew that requires a lot to go right to work, when it does do its thing, it has to be one of the most unique and spiciest ways to win with an Emergent Ultimatum!
Finally, KalasyoTuuhea's has a deck built around a deck-building challenge: build the cheapest possible deck that has at least some chance of winning on occasion in Modern. The end result—$19 (and 1 tix) Goblin Storm—is super sweet and super cheap! The main goal is to use the combo of Skirk Prospector, Putrid Goblin, and First Day of Class to make infinite mana. We can sacrifice Putrid Goblin to Skirk Prospector to make a red. Putrid Goblin will return to the battlefield thanks to persist, and the –1/–1 counter will be counteracted by the +1/+1 counter from First Day of Class so we can do this again and again. We have two ways of winning the game with our infinite mana. First, we can cast a bunch of spells and eventually use Empty the Warrens to make a ton of 1/1 Goblin tokens, which will get buffed and haste from First Day of Class, so we can smash our opponent for a few hundred damage by surprise. (We can also storm off and then win with Grapeshot damage.) Second, we can cast a huge, uncounterable Banefire and burn our opponent out of the game directly. While the deck is probably a bit too inconsistent to be a truly competitive Modern option, it also looks more than good enough to steal a lot of wins, which is impressive, especially considering just how cheap the deck is to play, both in paper and on Magic Online!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. Make sure to let me know in the comments if you have an idea for how to improve these decks, and leave a link there as well if you want your own deck considered for a future Fish Tank (or email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com). 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.
