The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Submitted Decks (December 5-11, 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've got sweet brews for Standard, Historic, and Modern! What craziness did you all send in? Let's find out! Oh yeah, if you want one of your decks considered for next week's Fish Tank, make sure to leave it in the comments, or email it to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com, and your deck could be featured next week!
Standard
Ever since its release in Innistrad: Crimson Vow, Hullbreaker Horror has made its presence felt in Standard. CelticWolfNW is using the seven-drop in a pretty unique way: rather than just using it as a generic control finisher, Celtic is using it as a prison piece! The main goal is to get Hullbreaker Horror on the battlefield alongside Archon of Emeria, which limits each player to casting just one spell each turn. In theory, we can use instant-speed spells like Fading Hope, Divide by Zero, Fateful Absence, Eureka Moment, and more to bounce every single spell that our opponent plays during their turn and then cast another spell during our turn to bounce on of our opponent's permanents, essentially hard-locking them out of the game as we beat down with Hullbreaker Horror for the win!
Historic
The plan of using Neoform to tutor up Craterhoof Behemoth by sacrificing Myr Enforcer or Thought Monitor in an Affinity shell has gotten a bit of traction in Modern ever since the release of Modern Horizons 2, but Bennymon1 is looking to bring it to Historic! The goal is simple: use a bunch of random artifacts, including Blood Fountain, which offers two artifacts in one card, to get our seven-mana affinity threats on the battlefield as soon as possible and then upgrade them into lethal Craterhoof Behemoths for just two mana with Neoform! The biggest upside of the deck is that it has a solid backup plan—if we don't draw Neoform, we can win like a normal affinity deck by beating down with cheap artifact creatures. If you like aggro with a combo-esque finish, Neoform Affinity seems like a fun option for Historic!
You might have figured this out already, but Necroduality is one of my favorite cards printed in recent years. Well, Bknipstein has a really fun way to take advantage of the super-Panharmonicon in Historic with Yorion Zombies! While the deck is mostly a fairly straightforward Zombie tribal build (with 80 cards, of course, to support Yorion, Sky Nomad as its companion), the addition of Yorion's mass-blink ability can do some crazy things with Necroduality. Since Necroduality triggers whenever a Zombie enters the battlefield—not when it's cast—we can play a bunch of random Zombies, stick a Necroduality, and then use Yorion, Sky Nomad to blink them all, essentially doubling up our Zombie horde! If we happen to have something like Corpse Knight or Wayward Servant to drain the opponent whenever a Zombie enters the battlefield, there's a decent chance that we'll just burn the opponent out of the game directly when our Zombies return from their Yorion-fueled journey!
Modern
Meanwhile, in Modern, angelvi is looking to eat away all of their opponent's permanents with the combo of Cloudstone Curio, Reality Acid, and a bunch of enchantments. The idea is that we can use Drift of Phantasms and Idyllic Tutor to find Reality Acid and Cloudstone Curio. We can then enchant any of our opponent's permanents (including lands) with Reality Acid. Normally, Reality Acid is a super-slow removal spell since you have to wait three turns for it to slowly vanish, removing whatever it enchants. Well, the Acid Cloud plan isn't just a lot faster but also repeatable! We can play Cloudstone Curio and then cast any of the many random enchantments in our deck to pick up Reality Acid and make our opponent sacrifice the enchanted permanent. We can then recast Reality Acid on something else, pick up something like Omen of the Sea or Out of Time, and keep repeating the loop until we eat away our opponent's entire battlefield! While this list looks really fun (although maybe a tiny bit slow) as is, another possibility would be to add the Reality Acid / Cloudstone Curio combo into a more traditional enchantress shell, with things like Sythis, Harvest's Hand to help us draw into the combo. Just imagine how many times we could cast and bounce Reality Acid each turn with the mana made by Sanctum Weaver!
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the Modern banned list. One of the cards I'd like to see unbanned is Glimpse of Nature, which traditionally is most powerful in an Elfball-style combo deck, where cards like Heritage Druid and Nettle Sentinel offers tons of mana; Glimpse of Nature offers tons of cards; and, eventually, with a bit of luck, you can play through most or all of your deck in a single turn. So, what's the best way to figure out if Glimpse of Nature would be safe to unban? Trying Elfball with the next closest option: Rite of Harmony. The plan is the same as it would be with Glimpse of Nature, except it costs two mana to get the fun started with Rite of Harmony. In general ash_202457's list looks solid, although I'm not sold on Winding Way. (Something like Realmwalker might be better as additional card advantage since that would better support the Rite of Harmony plan.) How good would Elfball be in Modern with Glimpse of Nature? Maybe we should try the list with Rite of Harmony and try to find out!
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.
