The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Submitted Decks (November 22-28, 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, Pioneer, 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

For some reason, it seems like everyone has forgotten about the explosive potential of the magecraft mechanic in Standard—everyone except SirEklz, that is, who has a sweet Bant Magecraft list taking advantage of Crimson Vow's Stormchaser Drake as a powerful card-advantage engine. The goal is to play Stormchaser Drake alongside a magecraft payoff like Clever Lumimancer, Dragonsguard Elite, or Leonin Lightscribe. We can then start casting spells like Guiding Voice, Homestead Courage, and Charge Through targeting the Drake, drawing a bunch of extra cards along the way and growing our magecraft creatures into massive game-ending threats. Eventually, we can use Charge Through to trample up our biggest creature and hopefully kill our opponent in just one attack. The other upside of the deck is that between Snakeskin Veil and Wild Shape, it has a ton of ways to protect its creatures, which is pretty important against various removal-heavy control decks in Standard. If you like fast prowess-combo-style kills, the deck looks incredibly explosive and like it might even have the potential to be pretty good!

Pioneer

Last week, we played an Ill-Tempered Loner infinite life combo deck in Standard. Well, rmuz24 has a very different plan for abusing the Werewolf, this time in Pioneer. The goal is to generate infinite damage with the help of either Ill-Tempered Loner or Boros Reckoner. We can use Resolute Watchdog, Selfless Spirit, Boros Charm, or Selfless Savior to make our combo creature indestructible and then target it with Arcbond and Gideon's Sacrifice / Saving Grace so that whenever our Loner or Reckoner takes damage, it deals that much damage to everything else. But the damage dealt to us is redirected to the Loner / Reckoner, triggering it again for infinite damage, and then either us (thanks to Gideon's Sacrifice) or our Reckoner/Loner is dealt damage to start the loop. The idea is sweet, and it looks like it could probably pick up some fair wins as a weird Boros beatdown deck, although one thing I'd like to see added is a way to deal damage to our Boros Reckoner or Ill-Tempered Loner to start the loop. Right now, we're mostly dependent on our opponent attacking us or attacking into / blocking our Boros Reckoner / Ill-Tempered Loner, which might make the deck inconsistent. Anything from Spikefield Hazard in the mana base to Abrade as a removal spell would get the job done. Plus, a bit of removal for opposing creatures couldn't hurt. Either way, the combo seems like it would be really sweet when it goes off, and outside of some of the weird spells, the deck gets to play a decent number of cards that are solid even outside the combo, as a bonus.

Modern

A couple of weeks ago, we had a YouTube short about a potential Turn 0 win—the fastest kill in Modern. Well, Daniel O. took the concept to the extreme with Luck of the Irish. The deck has not one but two potential Turn 0 wins. First, we can have an opening hand with four Chancellor of the Dross and two Soul Spike, which can burn the opponent for 20 before the game event starts! Second, we have the potential of having four Archive Traps in our opening hand. We can wait for our opponent to crack a fetchland and cast all four Archive Traps, and win the game by milling our opponent's entire deck. Hilariously, the deck doesn't have any lands because if we can draw the right opening hand, we don't need mana to win. Is the deck competitive? Not at all. The odds of having the right opening hand is tiny, even with Serum Powder for free mulligans, although if you can pull off a Turn 0 win even once, it will be more than worth all the losses along the way!

We've already seen the idea of using Neoform to cheat something huge into play be fairly successful in Modern. The same idea drives decks like Grishoalbrand (saccing Allosaurus Rider to get Griselbrand) and some interesting Affinity decks that sacrifice things like Myr Enforcer to get Craterhoof Behemoth. Pie4man has a different, much more budget-friendly plan: sacrificing Gurmag Angler to get Griselbrand to draw a ton of cards or Tidespout Tyrant, which, in conjunction, with cheap card-draw spells like Consider and Thought Scour, should be able to quickly bounce all of the opponent's lands. The plan looks incredibly explosive when it comes together, although it is really dependent on finding a Gurmag Angler to do much of anything, which makes consistency a bit of a concern. Still, having a $100 deck that can potentially lock the opponent out of the game by Turn 2 or 3 is pretty exciting! Just mulligan for combo pieces, and it will (hopefully) work out fine.

Finally, Ezra B. has a unique, ultra-budget take on Modern burn: Artifact Burn! While the deck has a lot of typical burn spells like Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike, and Skullcrack that show up in top-tier Modern Burn, what makes the deck interesting is its artifact / Blood token subtheme. Cards like Vampire's Kiss, Blood Fountain, and Sanguine Statuette all make Blood tokens, which we can use to filter through our deck by discarding extra lands to find more burn. More importantly, they allow the deck to play two incredibly powerful Burn spells that most builds of Burn can't play because they require artifacts on the battlefield to work. Galvanic Blast offers an insane four damage for one mana if we can get three artifacts on the battlefield, while Shrapnel Blast offers five damage for two mana if we can sacrifice an artifact, giving the deck a ton of reach to close out the game. The best part? The deck only costs $50, which is super cheap for a Modern deck!

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.