The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (May 15-21, 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, Modern, and Pioneer! What wild 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

First up, in Standard, we have a fun Orvar, the All-Form brew from grimasf. The primary goal is to stick an Orvar, the All-Form and use its ability (along with cheap targeting spells like Blizzard Brawl, Snakeskin Veil, Tamiyo's Safekeeping, and Fading Hope) to copy Gladewalker Ritualist a bunch of times. Thanks to Gladewalker Ritualist's ability, this will draw us an ever-increasing number of cards, as each new copy of Ritualist will trigger all of the copies already on the battlefield. Then, we can either win by beating down with a huge board of Gladewalker Ritualists or by drawing into Titan of Industry and copying that a few times. While the deck looks hilariously fun when it goes off, the challenge is removal. Thankfully, we have a ton of ways to protect our creatures, with Tamiyo's Safekeeping and Snakeskin Veil. But we won't do much of anything if we can't keep a Orvar, the All-Form and another creature on the battlefield to copy, which might make this more of an Against the Odds–style deck than a truly competitive option. But with Kaldheim rotating in September, this is our last chance to make the mythic work before it leaves Standard forever.

Explorer

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In Explorer, we have the return of a deck that was one of my favorites in Standard a couple of years ago: Knight Adventure, or, in the words of creator frogler, Black Clover. While the deck is an adventure deck, it's very different than the most traditional Temur Adventures builds, with the plan being to flood the board with cheap Knights and then use Smitten Swordmaster to drain the opponent out of the game, with the help of Lucky Clover doubling or tripling up the drain. While the deck isn't super adventure heavy, we also have Foulmire Knight for card advantage, Order of Midnight to refill our hand from our graveyard, and Bonecrusher Giant and Murderous Rider as removal. Oh yeah, we also get to take advantage of Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, which is at its best in an aggro shell like Black Clover. It suits the deck especially well because we can use it to sacrifice a Smitten Swordmaster to get it in the graveyard so that Order of Midnight can return it to hand, which will allow us to drain our opponent again. While the deck looks a bit strange on paper, I expect it will play a lot stronger than it looks, considering that the Standard version also looked pretty janky but was able to win a ton of games!

One of the strangest aspects of Explorer at the moment is that combo isn't really a thing. The pieces of the two best combo decks in Pioneer—Lotus Field Combo and Jeskai Ascendancy Combo—aren't on Arena. AaronConlin is looking to change this with a Saheeli Rai / Luxior, Giada's Gift combo deck. The main goal is to turn Saheeli Rai into a creature with Luxior, Giada's Gift so that we can copy Saheeli Rai with its own ability, allowing us to legend-rule away the first Saheeli Rai and keep the new artifact copy of the planeswalker. At this point, we can keep copying Saheeli Rai with its own ability (since it's now an artifact, making it a legal target for its –2). Because of the legend rule, we'll only ever be able to keep one copy on the battlefield, but this doesn't matter. If we have Reckless Fireweaver on the battlefield, we'll deal infinite damage as our artifact Saheelis enter the battlefield, and we'll get infinite counters if we have Dragonspark Reactor, which we can turn into infinite damage when we sacrifice the artifact. But that's not all—there's a second infinite combo in the deck built around Panharmonicon. If we can flip a Fable of the Mirror-Breaker with a Corridor Monitor and Treasure Vault on the battlefield. we can make infinite copies of Corridor Monitor. We use Reflection of Kiki-Jiki to copy Corridor Monitor and untap Reflection of Kiki-Jiki and Treasure Vault with its enters-the-battlefield triggers, which allows us to use Reflections of Kiki-Jiki to copy Corridor Monitor an infinite number of times and win, either by beating down with hasty Corridor Monitors or with direct damage, if we happen to have Reckless Fireweaver or Dragonspark Reactor. I'm not sure just how strong the deck is—both combos require three pieces, which might keep it from being truly competitive—but it does look super fun to play and should be pretty awesome when it goes off!

Pioneer

Jund is almost synonymous with Modern. The plan of playing the best removal, efficient threats, and as many two-for-ones as possible has existed in the format for nearly a decade. Can the deck make the leap to Pioneer? That's what Clipper70 is looking to find out. In many ways, Pioneer Jund is similar to Modern Jund—good threats, planeswalkers, and removal—although it also comes along with an interesting graveyard theme to power up cards like Grim Flayer and Traverse the Ulvenwald. Honestly, there isn't much else to say about the deck. It looks like a solid midrange brew, and if you're a fan of Modern Jund who's interested in Pioneer, it could be worth testing out, at the very least.

Metalwork Colossus is a really sweet card that has supported some really fun (and surprisingly powerful) brews in the past. Chunky Nelson has a new plan for taking advantage of the Construct in Pioneer: Vehicles! One of the challenges of Metalwork Colossus is that it wants a lot of non-creature artifacts on the battlefield to reduce its cost, which makes it difficult to play many creatures and sometimes leads to decks that get run over in the early game as a result. Vehicles are a really neat way to solve this problem, giving us non-creature artifacts that can also turn into creatures when necessary. While the deck looks sweet in its current format, I do wonder if some extra ways to crew our Vehicles could be helpful, like Mech Hangar in the mana base, or even splashing into white for Peacewalker Colossus, considering that we still only have seven non–Metalwork Colossus creatures in the deck for crewing right now. Otherwise, the deck looks solid, especially considering that it falls into our budget price range, at right around $100. It can be even less without the Rampaging Ferocidons in the sideboard, which probably aren't especially necessary in a more midrangey deck like Metalwork Vehicles.

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.