The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy Viewer Submitted Decks (October 24-30, 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 some interesting 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
First up, in Standard, we've got a really unique take on Vadrik, Astral Archmage from Noah M.: Lesson Storm! The main goal is to use Lunar Frenzy or Mordenkainen's Polymorph to grow Vadrik, Astral Archmage, giving us a huge discount on our instant and sorcery spells. Suddenly, learn cards like Enthusiastic Study, Igneous Inspiration, and Divide by Zero cost just a single mana, which in turn allows us to tutor colorless lessons like Mascot Exhibition, Introduction to Prophecy, and Expanded Anatomy from our sideboard and hopefully cast them for free, thanks to Vadrik's discount. Ideally, we'll keep chaining together spells storm-style, using things like Ingenious Mastery and Culmination of Studies to refill our hand, until we eventually have an overwhelming board of Mascot Exhibition tokens, allowing us to untap and win the next turn. The biggest challenge is that things likely will go poorly if we can't keep Vadrik, Astral Archmage on the battlefield since a lot of our cards aren't great without Vadrik, although we do have a backup plan of beating down with various Wizards, like Symmetry Sage and Magmatic Channeler. The good news is that when the deck goes off, it should be pretty spectacular!
Historic
Speaking of storming off, Luke E.'s doing it in Historic with a deck that not only looks fun to play but also has the perfect name: Thousand-LIER Storm. The goal is to cast a bunch of spells and make a bunch of Treasures with Storm-Kiln Artist to give us the mana to cast more spells until we eventually find Thousand-Year Storm to copy all of our spells a bunch of times and Lier, Disciple of the Drowned to recast our graveyard, which should let us have a pretty insane turn, drawing through our entire deck until we eventually close out the game with the biggest Grapeshot in the history of Historic!
Apparently, it's storm week on the Fish Tank! A little while ago on stream, I mentioned that it was hard to build a traditional Storm deck in Historic because there aren't any rituals in the format. Well, 60Four was up for the challenge! Rather than using traditional rituals to generate the mana needed to storm off, the deck leans on cost reducers like Baral, Chief of Compliance, Goblin Electromancer, and Birgi, God of Storytelling and treasure-producers, including Strike It Rich, Seize the Spoils, and Prismari Command. The goal is to cast a bunch of spells in the same turn and then use either Mind's Desire or Mizzix's Mastery to cast a bunch more, until we get a storm count that's high enough to win the game with Tendrils of Agony. We can also Wish something like Chatterstorm or Grapeshot from the sideboard, if the situation calls for it. Just how good is the deck? I don't really know, although if you're looking for a traditional Legacy-style Storm experience in Historic, the build checks all of the boxes and seems like it should be super fun to play!
Modern
Everyone loves the Rat tribe, even though it traditionally hasn't been powerful enough for any non-Commander format. Lowenstein is looking to change this with a spicy take on Rats for Modern. The main goal is to get a bunch of copies of Rat Colony on the battlefield to pump each other, although Pack Rat, Metallic Mimic, and Piper of the Swarm help support the Rat plan. My favorite part of the deck is how good Aether Vial looks in the list. Outside of a playset of Changeling Outcast, every creature in our deck costs two mana, which means we should be able to set Aether Vial on two and dump things like Rat Colony or Pack Rat into play every turn. If our opponent manages to deal with our Rats, we can eventually recast them from the graveyard to rebuild with Lurrus of the Dream-Den. Are Rats finally competitive in Modern? I'd be surprised, but if you're a fan of the Rat tribe, Lowenstein's build looks like a really solid starting point for the tribe in Modern!
Finally, we have an update of one of my favorite Modern budget decks this week: Mono-Green Land Destruction, or "Karntrol" from ericjills. We played a version of the deck a couple of years ago, but it's gotten a bunch of new pieces since. The plan is to use Liquimetal Coating to turn lands into artifacts so we can destroy them with artifact-destruction spells. (We now also get Liquimetal Torque, which can't target lands but does allow us to turn other permanents into artifacts; plus, a bit of ramp is never a bad thing). Once we get a Liquimetal effect on the battlefield, we should be able to blow up basically anything our opponent plays with Outland Liberator, Manglehorn, Reclamation Sage, Dissenter's Deliverance, and even Karn, the Great Creator (which is good at eating opposing lands with its +1). While it's only a one-of, Splinter can be hilarious against a deck with a bunch of basic lands, potentially allowing us to exile most of our opponent's mana with a single card! Eventually, we'll find Stampeding Serow, which gives us a lock by allowing us to pick up a Reclamation Sage or Manglehorn every turn to blow up whatever our opponent plays during their turn, eventually allowing us to win the game, either by beating down with our random dorks or by tutoring a finisher like God-Pharaoh's Statue from our sideboard with Karn. I can tell you from experience that the deck is a blast to play, and I sort of want to revisit it for Budget Magic in the near future. If you'd like to see it in action, make sure to let me know in the comments!
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.
