The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (June 20-26, 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 have a bunch more Modern Horizons 2 decks! 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 (and for our Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), make sure to leave a link in the comments, or email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com. 

Modern

Viewers seem to be on a mission to prove that I was wrong when I said that Abiding Grace was only a Soul Sisters / Martyr Proc card. BlueNose has a different way of abusing the ability to reanimate a one-drop each turn: Turbo Fog...err...Frog. The main goal is to stick an Abiding Grace and then use it to loop Kami of False Hope or Spore Frog every turn to Fog all of our opponent's attacks. Eventually, we'll win by casting two copies of Approach of the Second Sun. While the plan looks like it could be very strong against creature-based decks, it can be soft to graveyard hate or against combo or control decks that are looking to win with non-creatures. But either way, Turbo Frog is a really cunning use of Abiding Grace that once against proves the card is way more than just a way to reanimate Martyr of Sands each turn.       

Bludgeon Brawl is one of the hardest Against the Odds cards we've ever tried to build a deck around, but now, thanks to Modern Horizons 2, it might finally be time for the enchantment to shine (or at least be a slightly more competitive Against the Odds card). WilloWisp's RG Gam Objects deck is looking to combine the enchantment with Academy Manufactor and a bunch of cards that can make Food, Clues, or Treasures (Tireless Provisioner, Tireless Tracker, and The Underworld Cookbook). The idea is that we can flood the board with zero-mana artifact tokens and then turn them all into equipment that cost zero to equip (and also give +0/+0) with Bludgeon Brawl. Why would we want a bunch of equipment that are free to equip but do nothing? We have some payoffs that benefit from being equipped, like Goblin Gaveleer (which will get massive with a bunch of Food, Clues, and Treasures attached to it) and Valduk, Keeper of the Flame (which can make a ton of tokens each turn). While I would guess that RG Game Objects is more of an Against the Odds deck than a truly competitive option - the plan is hilariously janky—it's also the best looking Bludgeon Brawl deck I've seen!                    

So far, the Magic world mostly has been focused on playing Grief unfairly as a combo piece with blink cards like Ephemerate, but maybe Grief can work in a fair deck too. While Chodekin's Mono-Black Grief deck does have a few Malakir Rebirth to combo with Grief, it's really a mono-black discard deck looking to use Grief to empty the opponent's hand (and also our own hand, to turn on Ensnaring Bridge) and trigger Waste Not. After stripping our opponent of cards, we can win with a planeswalker ultimate or with a huge Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate with the help of Cabal Coffers. I do wonder if we need a way to find Cabal Coffers more consistently. Urza's Saga to snag Expedition Map to find Cabal Coffers seems like it might have potential. We could even throw in a copy of two of The Rack as another way to benefit from getting our opponent out of cards. Either way, if you like making your opponent discard cards and playing weird Commander cards to close out the game, Mono-Black Grief looks like a fun new option for Modern.

Speaking of Academy Manufactor, Pie4man has another sweet and budget-friendly way to take advantage of the new three-drop: taking infinite turns with Time Sieve! Here's the idea: with Academy Manufactor on the battlefield, the combo of Cauldron Familiar and Witch's Oven makes two extra artifacts each turn (we can sacrifice Cauldron Familiar to make a Food, Clue, and Treasure and then get it back by sacrificing just the Food), while Master of Death with The Underworld Cookbook makes three (we can discard Master of Death each turn and pay 1 life to return it to our hand, to make a Food, Clue, and Treasure). This gives us exactly enough artifacts to activate Time Sieve and take an extra turn. As we repeat this process turn after turn, we eventually will drain our opponent out of the game with Cauldron Familiar! While the combo itself is really sweet and should be game-winning, consistency is a bit of a concern. While Emry, Lurker of the Loch can help to find Witch's Oven, The Underworld Cookbook, and Time Sieve, we're otherwise mostly hoping to just draw our combo pieces naturally. I'm not sure there is an easy solution to this on a budget, although in less budget builds, Urza's Saga or Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar could help us tutor them up. Consistency concerns aside, the deck looks super sweet, especially for being budget-friendly!

Finally, we have some sweet, sweet Siege Rhino jank from James H.'s Rites of Rhinos! The idea is to use Overgrown Battlement and Axebane Guardian to ramp, play a Siege Rhino, and then kick a Rite of Replication on the Rhino, making five options and hopefully draining our opponent out of the game immediately! While I'm not sure the plan is super competitive, it should be hilarious when it goes off since no one expects a crash of Siege Rhinos to suddenly kill them in a deck full of harmless walls!

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.