The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Submitted Decks (October 10-16, 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 bouncing around from Standard all the way back to Legacy! 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
A while ago, before rotation, we played a deck built around the combo of Harald Unites the Elves and Moritte of the Frost. If you're not familiar with the super-janky combo, the idea is that if we can get two copies of Moritte of the Frost in the graveyard, we can use Harald Unites the Elves to reanimate one, milling some cards along the way, and use Moritte to copy Harald Unites the Elves to do it again, reanimating the second Moritte to copy Harald Unites the Elves. Since Moritte of the Frost is always legendary, one copy will legend-rule to put a Moritte back in the graveyard. We can do this again and again until we mill most (or all) of our deck. Of course, just milling our deck doesn't win us the game. Thanks to Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, we have a couple of creatures that should be able to get the job done, assuming we can get them on the battlefield before the combo. Slogurk, the Overslime should end up as a 20-ish power trampler as we mill all of the lands in our deck, while Willow Geist gets infinitely big from Moritte of the Frost repeatedly leaving the graveyard, allowing us to kill our opponent in one massive, trampling attack. When we played the deck in the past, the biggest issue we had was consistency—it's not always easy to get two copies of Moritte in the graveyard and find a Harald Unites the Elves. But Innistrad helps here too with Storm the Festival, which can snag either of our combo pieces from our deck. While I'd still guess that the combo is more of an Against the Odds brew than a top-tier competitive option, it looks way better today than it did in the past, and it's super hilarious when it goes off!
Historic
While we've seen some Jund midrange decks in Historic in the past, TheOblivionMage's plan is a bit different: try to recreate Modern Jund with the Historic card pool. While classic Modern Jund cards like Liliana of the Veil and Tarmogoyf aren't legal in Historic, the deck does a really good job of capturing the spirit of Modern Jund. When I think of Modern Jund, the first two things that come to mind are good removal and lots of two-for-ones, and the deck has both in spades. The removal in the deck is surprisingly similar to the Modern version, with Fatal Push, Unholy Heat, Assassin's Trophy, Maelstrom Pulse, Kolaghan's Command, and Thoughtseize all seeing various levels of play in Modern Jund. As for the creatures, many of the Modern threats are missing, although the Historic replacements are solid, with Thragtusk, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger, Bloodthirsty Adversary, and Seasoned Pyromancer all offering two-for-one value. We even get the two iconic Jund planeswalkers—Liliana and Wrenn. Even though they aren't the same versions (with Liliana of the Veil becoming Liliana, Waker of the Dead and Wrenn and Six growing into Wrenn and Seven), both are still powerful value engines. I'm not sure how well Jund lines up with the Historic meta, but if you're a Modern Jund fan, this is about as close as you can get to playing your favorite deck in Historic!
Solar Flair (Esper Reanimator) has always seemed close to being good enough for Historic, with good reanimation targets, good removal and Unburial Rites as a solid reanimation spell, but it sometimes struggles to fill the graveyard with creatures, to the point that many reanimator decks have reached into red for Faithless Looting. Well, now, thanks to Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, the deck has the perfect way to gets its big reanimation targets in the graveyard without ruining the mana base: Faithful Mending! While graveyard hate is still a problem, if you can dodge it, Igor A.'s deck looks like it should be able to consistently get a massive threat into play quickly, with plenty of removal to slow down the opponent while we get things set up!
Modern
A long time ago on Much Abrew, we played a five-color mono-white deck built around hybrid cards. Technically, every card could be cast with white mana, but almost all of them were multi-colored to trigger Hero of Precinct One to flood the board with tokens. Elivilson has a sweet update on the deck for our post–Modern Horizons 2 Modern format with 4C Boros Aggro. The big addition is General Ferrous Rokiric. Since every single non-land card in our deck is multicolored, each one that we cast with a Rokiric on the battlefield will come along with the kicker of a 4/4 Golem, basically making General Ferrous Rokiric a Hero of Precinct One on steroids. In a perfect world, we'll play a Hero of Precinct One on Turn 2; play a General Ferrous Rokiric on Turn 3; and then untap to play a bunch of hybrid one-drops like Dryad Militant, Figure of Destiny, and Judge's Familiar on Turn 4 to make a massive board of tokens to (hopefully) win the game the next turn. The best part? The deck is budget-friendly, only costing $97 in paper!
Legacy
Goblin Charbelcher has long been a powerful build-around in Legacy, but Chodekin has a really unique take on the archetype: Mono-Black Belcher! If you're not familiar with Belcher decks, the goal is simple: avoid playing many (or any) real lands (our deck has a single Bayou, which we can grab with Land Grant or another tutor) so that when we activate Goblin Charbelcher, we'll reveal our entire deck and hit our opponent for 40-ish damage to win the game. We then find Belcher and get to seven mana to activate it, winning the game on the spot. My favorite part of Black Belcher is the mana production. Alongside Dark Ritual, we're trying to sacrifice a free creature like Phyrexian Walker or Shield Sphere to Culling the Weak to make three extra mana. Toss in artifact mana like Lotus Petal, Chrome Mox, and Lion's Eye Diamond, and we can potentially pull off the Goblin Charbelcher kill as early as Turn 1! The backup plan is pretty spicy too. Since we've got a bunch of fast mana and free spells, we can storm off and win with Tendrils of Agony, using our fast mana to cast a Ad Nauseam (also as early as Turn 1); draw most of our deck; cast a few more Lotus Petals, Dark Rituals, and Culling the Weaks to make mana; and Tendrils of Agony our opponent out of the game! While Force of Will is traditionally a problem for Belcher decks (since a single well-timed Force of Will on Goblin Charbelcher itself can often leave us empty-handed), cards like Duress and Unmask help clear the way for the combo kill. Overall, I really like the deck, and while some parts of it look a bit janky, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that it was actually fairly competitive. And it's certainly very spicy!
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.
