The Fish Tank: Sweet Viewer-Submitted Decks (Feb. 16-22, 2020)

Welcome back to The Fish Tank, the series where we peek at sweet viewer-submitted decks and maybe, with our powers combined, turn them into real, fun, playable lists! This week, we will jump around a lot from format to format, with some interesting decks for everything from Standard to casual! Oh yeah, and 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 them to me at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.

Standard

Etrata, the Silencer is a potentially powerful way to win the game, needing only three attacks (that also get rid of your opponent's best creature each time), but the downside of shuffling back into your deck makes it hard to build around or win with consistently. Well, as spiff realized, Theros: Beyond Death brought with it the perfect way to keep finding Etrata, the Silencer turn after turn in Enigmatic Incarnation. As long as we can keep playing three-mana enchantments (and between Disinformation Campaign, Treacherous Blessing, and Elspeth's Nightmare, we have plenty), we can keep tutoring up Etrata, the Silencer turn after turn until it attacks three times and kills the opponent! While creature-light control decks are likely bad matchups (which might be problematic in a world where UW Control and Temur Reclamation are two of the top decks in Standard), in creature-based matchups, the deck seems like it should be decent. Plus, Etrata is a super unique and fun way to win the game!

Goodkat88's Oketra Breach is one of the most unique Underworld Breach decks I've seen. While the deck can still be somewhat combo-like, it's really a Boros midrange deck. The idea is that, in the late game, we can get a God-Eternal Oketra on the battlefield and cast a bunch of cheap creatures like Alseid of Life's Bounty, Giant Killer, and Shepherd of the Flock from the graveyard to build a lethal board of 4/4 Zombies in a single turn and kill our opponent in one big attack. Various sweepers like Shatter the Sky, Storm's Wrath, and Flame Sweep do double duty in the deck, keeping our opponent's board in check while also stocking our graveyard with creatures for Underworld Breach. While I'm a bit worried that we don't have that many ways to fill the graveyard to pay Underworld Breach's escape cost (just two Oread of Mountain's Blaze and two Thrill of Possibility outside of our sweepers), if that is an issue, it would be easy enough to fix by adding more graveyard-filling cards to the deck.

Pioneer

With a name like Treacherous Sharknado Pact, how could we not feature Syntaxbad's Pioneer brew? The main goal is to generate value by reusing enchantments like Demonic Pact, Treacherous Blessing and Tymaret Calls the Dead with the help of Riptide Chimera (along with some backup options like Rescuer Sphinx, Teferi's Time Twist, and Paradoxical Outcome). Once the deck gets going, it should be able to generate an absurd amount of value turn after turn, until our opponent eventually can't keep up with our card draw, damage, and edicts and dies to our janky flying beats from Riptide Chimera and Rescuer Sphinx. Can the deck keep up with all of the degenerate combo decks currently at the top of the Pioneer format? I'm not sure. The bad news is that the deck's primary plan—slowly bouncing and replaying enchantments for value—is slow. The good news is that since we are in black, we do have access to Thoughtseize and some really solid sideboard counterspells and graveyard hate. Even if the deck can't keep up with Lotus Breach and Dimir Inverter, that's not really a deal-breaker because not much can at the moment, and Treacherous Sharknado Pact seems super fun to play if you like grindy, slow, value-heavy builds.

Modern

Gus B.'s Landfall Combo deck, as its name suggests, is all about going infinite. The idea is to get a Ruin Ghost on the battlefield alongside Retreat to Coralhelm. Then, we can use Ruin Ghost, which allows us to repeatedly blink a white-producing land (we can pay one and activate Ruin Ghost to blink the land; it will come back into play untapped, and we will get to untap Ruin Ghost with Retreat to Coralhelm to do it again). While this doesn't do much on its own, we can generate infinite damage if we can add one more piece to the combo puzzle. Tunneling Geopede gets the job done with its landfall trigger that pings an opponent, while Dryad of the Ilysian Grove allows all of our lands to tap for white mana, which means we can use Ruin Ghost to keep blinking Radiant Fountain for infinite life or Sunscorched Desert for infinite damage. The main issue with the deck is most likely that Ruin Ghost itself is pretty fragile and easy to kill. One possibility would be adding Knight of the Reliquary (which also goes semi-infinite with Retreat to Coralhelm) as a backup combo to give the deck more redundancy, but regardless, the deck seems sweet and wins in a really unique way.

Casual

Last week, we featured a silver-border deck that I called the most annoying combo deck in existence, but Mothin' is looking to top it with Silencing Power. While not legal in any competitive format (thankfully), this silver-border casual deck is built around Staying Power, an enchantment that makes it so the effects of cards that say "until end of turn" or "this turn" don't actually end at the end of the turn. This means that Silence or Orim's Chant make it so your opponent can't cast spells forever, which means Staying Power is likely to, well, have Staying Power and stick on the battlefield for a while, while Angel's Grace means you can never lose the game (although I'd argue that if you are playing with or against this deck, you're losing the game by default). So how do we actually kill the opponent? Apart from boredom and rage, the best answer is Master of the Feast. My guess is that you intentionally choose to not attack with it, because that would put your opponent out of their misery too quickly, and instead force your opponent to lose by slowing, painfully drawing an extra card each turn until they run out of cards and lose to drawing on an empty library. If you've ever wanted to convince someone that they should not play Magic by playing them in a game of Magic, this is the deck for you!

Conclusion

Anyway, that's all for today! If you have some ideas on how to improve these decks, make sure to leave them in the comments. And if you have a deck you'd like considered for the next edition of The Fish Tank (or the Fishbowl Thursday Instant Deck Tech), leave that as well! As always, you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.