The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (May 1-6, 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 a bit of Standard, Pioneer, and Modern, along with our first-ever Explorer brews! What spice 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

I mostly wrote off Obscura Ascendancy during spoiler season. Casting cards of five different mana values in a specific order is a big ask, even in Standard. But quez has a solid plan for taking advantage of the enchantment: a bunch of X-spells. Cards like March of Otherworldly Light, March of Wretched Sorrow, and The Meathook Massacre allow us to trigger Obscura Ascendancy no matter how many counters it might have, assuming we have the mana, which makes it much easier to get the five counters and turn it into a legit Spirit-pumping finisher. The rest of the deck is essentially a four-color control shell with plenty of removal and counters, and even a Xanathar, Guild Kingpin as a backup finisher. If you're looking to take the Obscura Ascendancy challenge, this seems like a great starting point.

Explorer

Explorer is here, and it seems like people are hyped to brew for the new format! Going forward, things will be a bit strange as far as Explorer vs. Pioneer, although the easy way to think about it is that every Explorer deck will also be Pioneer legal but not every Pioneer deck will be Explorer legal since some important Pioneer cards are missing from Arena. As such, if a deck is legal in Explorer, I'll list it as an Explorer deck—just keep in mind that you can also play the deck in Pioneer and might even get an upgrade or two.

For our first Explorer brew, we have Able B.'s Timestream Combo. The main goal is to get a flipped Fable of the Mirror-Breaker on the battlefield alongside Timestream Navigator, which, along with having at least five mana, will let us take infinite turns. We can copy Timestream Navigator with Reflections of Kiki-Jiki, activate the copy to take an extra turn, and keep doing this forever until we eventually win by drawing our entire deck and beating down with random creatures. Just how competitive the plan is remains to be seen. Instant-speed removal (which is popular in Explorer because Winota is a top deck in the format and instant-speed removal is one of the easiest ways to beat it) can fizzle the combo, which is a concern. But it does seem like a hilarious and even powerful way to win a game if we can get a window where our opponent is tapped down!

One of the most exciting aspects of Streets of New Capenna is a bunch of powerful new Treasure producers and payoffs. Mike410459 is looking to use these cards in Explorer as part of a new infinite combo! Here's the plan: get Stimulus Package on the battlefield alongside Pitiless Plunderer and a free sacrifice outlet like Woe Strider. We can use Stimulus Package to turn a Treasure token into a 1/1 Citizen, which we can then sacrifice to Woe Strider, which will make a Treasure with Pitiless Plunderer. By itself, this combo gives us infinite enters-the-battlefield and death triggers for both artifacts and creatures. If we add Xorn to the mix to double up our Pitiless Plunderer Treasure production, we'll make infinite mana (and also infinite 1/1 Citizens). And if we have Marionette Master, we just straight up win by draining our opponent out of the game. We can also just make infinite Treasures, pass the turn, and win with Revel in Riches, which is pretty hilarious. While I really like the idea, I do think maybe it can be improved a bit. Blood Artist seems like a solid win condition (maybe better than Marionette Master since its so much cheaper). Either way, the deck looks super fun, and it should be super sweet when it goes off!

Pioneer

In Pioneer, SirEklz has a sweet take on Queza Combo—a deck we've talked about before that looks to get Queza, Augur of Agonies on the battlefield alongside Lich's Mastery, which will give us infinite drain and card draw. What makes SirEklz build unique is that it's mostly focused on making Lich's Mastery good, with a bunch of lifegain cards like Cosmos Elixir, Renewed Faith, Faithful Mending, and Mazemind Tome, which should allow us to generate a ton of card advantage once Lich's Mastery comes down. Eventually, this will draw us into Queza, Augur of Agonies (along with Dovin's Veto to protect it), and we can finish the game with the combo. One idea for the list that may or may not be worth it would be to add in the Greasefang, Okiba Boss / Parhelion II combo. We already have Faithful Mending and Tainted Indulgence to fill our graveyard, which should make it easy enough to get Parhelion II into the graveyard for Greasefang to reanimate. Along with being a potentially interesting addition to the main deck, the Greasefang combo could also be an interesting transformational sideboard plan to help beat counters, which are really good against Lich's Mastery. Oh yeah, if you want to try the deck in Explorer rather than Pioneer proper, all you need to do is replace Supreme Verdict with one of the many wraths on Magic Arena (Shatter the Sky, Doomskar, Depopulate, etc.), and you'll be good to go!

Modern

Meanwhile, in Modern, angelvi is looking to steal opposing lands with Lay Claim, of all things, in an Resurgent Belief enchantment Living End–style shell. The goal is to spend the first few turns cycling or channeling big enchantments like Colossal Skyturtle, Greater Tanuki, Lay Claim, and Shark Typhoon. Once we get a big graveyard, we can use Ardent Plea or As Foretold to cast Resurgent Belief and reanimate all of the enchantments in our graveyard, stealing all of our opponent's best stuff (including lands!) with Lay Claim and hopefully winning the game. By far the biggest weakness of the deck is graveyard hate—if our opponent can exile our graveyard, we'll mostly be left trying to hard-cast extremely expensive enchantments, which will likely be way too slow to have a chance. Having Boseiju, Who Endures in the main deck helps, giving us an answer to things like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace, although having more answers to graveyard hate in the sideboard (or a plan to win without the graveyard) seems necessary. Either way, the deck seems pretty powerful if we can dodge the hate cards!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today. If you have some idea for how to improve these decks, make sure to let us know in the comments, and if you want your own deck considered for a future Fish Tank, leave a link there as well (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.