The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Decks (May 23-29, 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're jumping from format to format to check out a bunch of cool brews! What sweetness did you all send in? Let's find out! 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. 

Standard

Crackle with Power is a really interesting card. It has the potential to throw 20 damage directly at the opponent's face, but getting 20 damage out of it takes some work and a lot of mana. Knuffles is up to the challenge with their Big Red deck. So, how can we 20 our opponent with Crackle with Power? The deck has two plans. One is to get up to 14 mana by copying an Irencrag Feat with Dual Strike and then use all of our mana to cast Crackle with Power with X = 4, which gives us 20 damage to four targets, enough to not only kill our opponent but rub it in a little bit by killing their best creatures too. The other option is to cast a Crackle with Power with X = 2 for eight mana, giving us 10 damage, but also copying it with Teach by Example (which can also work with Irencrag Feat) to get the extra 10 damage to finish the game. The rest of the deck is mostly removal and tutors to find our combo pieces, although we can also Irencrag Feat out Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or Yidaro, Wandering Monster, which might be enough to win the game without Crackle with Power. While the plan is sweet and it seems consistent, it does seem like it will struggle against interaction, especially a timely counterspell on Crackle with Power, which is a concern since Sultai Ultimatum and Dimir Rogues are both counterspell heavy and near the top of the Standard meta. But if we can dodge the counterspells, the plan seems like it could be pretty powerful, and it's certainly spicy!

Pioneer

Meanwhile, in Pioneer, RookerKdad has managed to mash together two classic jank archetypes in Phenax, God of Butts. The main goal is to play high-toughness creatures like Charix, the Raging Isle, Merfolk Secretkeeper, Ruin Crab, and Fae of Wishes and then use these creatures to win the game, either by playing a Phenax, God of Deception and tapping them to mill our opponent out of the game over the course of a couple of turns or by sticking a Huatli, the Sun's Heart or Assault Formation and beating down, with Tower Defense working as a finisher. The deck also has a pretty interesting sideboard plan. If the butt-beatdown plan doesn't seem likely to work, we can sideboard out some of our high-toughness creatures for Fraying Sanity, Maddening Cacophony, and Ashiok, Dream Render to focus on the mill plan. On the other hand, if milling the opponent out isn't going to work, we can bring in another Huatli, the Sun's Heart and Tower Defense along with Heroic Intervention to protect our creatures as well as more counters and removal and focus on the beatdown plan. I have no idea how good the deck is, but it should be hilarious when it works!

Modern

Trusted Advisor is a really interesting card. It only costs one mana, and it comes with what is supposed to be a drawback: on each upkeep, you need to bounce a blue creature back to your hand. Well, Staxi_Boi is looking to turn the drawback into a benefit with Mono-Blue Advisor. The idea is to use Trusted Advisor to pick up creatures with enters-the-battlefield triggers that we can recast to reuse their enters-the-battlefield effect. Take Spellstutter Sprite, for example—if we can get a few other Faeries on the battlefield and keep picking up Spellstutter Sprite with Trusted Advisor, we essentially have a Counterspell every turn, potentially soft locking our opponent out of the game. Creatures a problem? Keep recasting Barrin, Tolarian Archmage. Need some fresh cards? Watcher for Tomorrow. The other cool trick is that we can pick up our worst blue creature and use it to cast Force of Negation or Disrupting Shoal for free. The end result is a weird mono-blue tempo list. While our creatures don't have a lot of power, they are super annoying to play against! While there is a risk of getting run over by a big threat or two, the deck looks like it should be pretty powerful once it gets going, making it really difficult for the opponent to execute their game plan.

Apparently, it's janky Kamigawa card week on The Fish Tank, with Ahn_Ryo offering up a deck built around another mostly forgotten Kamigawa rare: Horobi, Death's Wail. Once Horobi, Death's Wail is on the battlefield, if any creature is targeted by anything, it gets destroyed. This means Darkblast is a repeatable hard-removal spell, Hex Parasite turns into a one-mana Plague Wind if we're willing to spend some life, and Wasteland Strangler kills anything, whether our opponent has a card in exile or not. Backing up our Horobi shenanigans is Heartless Summoning to speed up the deck and let us cast Myr Superion for free to finish the game. While I really don't understand Scheming Symmetry in the deck (I don't see a way to keep our opponent from wrecking us with the card they get to tutor up), and the deck seems like it might struggle against spell-based combo and control, it should be able to beat up on creature-based aggro and midrange with a decent draw.

Legacy

Finally, we have some Legacy Against the Odds action this week from Crazylogic with One with Glory. I'll warn you right away that the deck is really janky and probably won't win very often, but it will be spectacular when it does win! As you probably noticed, the deck doesn't have any lands. Actually, outside of Academy Rector (which is in the deck to be sacrificed to Culling the Weak), the deck doesn't have any permanents that don't sacrifice themselves. The goal is to get a Barren Glory into play, either by ramping into it with cards like Lotus Bloom, Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, and various spirit guides or cheating it into play with Show and Tell or by sacrificing Academy Rector. (The deck might need another way to sacrifice it since, currently, it's just Culling the Weak, and we really can't afford to have Academy Rector stuck on the battlefield, so don't cast it unless it is going to die or you have Culling the Weak.) Once we get Barren Glory on the battlefield, it naturally will be our only permanent, so we can One with Nothing to empty our hand and win the game on our upkeep! While the idea of winning with two of the jankiest cards in Magic's history (One with Nothing and Barren Glory) in Legacy is hilarious, Force of Will and other free counters seem like a really big problem since a single counter to Barren Glory will keep our deck from doing much of anything. Still, if you're looking for an Against the Odds–style challenge for Legacy, One with Glory seems like a great option!

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.