The Fish Tank: Sweet Viewer-Submitted Decks (Feb. 23-29, 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 across formats! 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
Tokens used to be a top deck in Standard after Guilds of Ravnica was released but has more recently fallen by the wayside. Well, NateFennelly is looking to bring it back with a unique take on the archetype that brought him all the way to mythic on Magic Arena. Naya Tokens, while token-ish, is really more of a midrange deck with some token synergies thrown in (primarily Woodland Champion, which can turn into the biggest two-drop in Standard if we make enough tokens), along with March of the Multitudes as a token-based finisher. The deck's goal is mostly to play powerful things at each point on the curve and trust that the raw power of our cards will lead us to victory. While perhaps not the most off-the-wall build we'll talk about this week, making mythic with a deck that no one else is playing is quite the feat, suggesting that Naya Tokens might be one of the more competitive lists from this week's Fish Tank.
Apparently, it's Naya Week on The Fish Tank, at least as far as Standard is concerned, because next up is OGFuturemonk's Naya Giants. The awkward part of Giants in Standard is that there really aren't a ton of cards that want you to have Giants in your deck. In fact, the only pseudo-tribal Giant card in Standard is Realm-Cloaked Giant, which only blows up non-Giant creatures. However, having a one-sided wrath is quite powerful, especially since Giants tend to be big enough that if we can clear blockers out of the way, we should be able to kill our opponent with just one or two big attacks! One piece of criticism for the deck is the inclusion of Revoke Existence in the main deck. While having some artifact / enchantment destruction is fine considering Fires of Invention, Embercleave, Wilderness Reclamation, and Lucky Clover are some of the top cards in the current meta, the problem with Revoke Existence is that it's sorcery speed, and both Embercleave and Wilderness Reclamation are cards that do their damage almost immediately. I think that plain ol' Disenchant is probably a better option if you want the effect in your main deck.
Pioneer
Shadowborn Apostle is one of the most unique build-arounds in all of Magic, not just allowing you to play a ton of copies in your deck but also rewarding you for getting a bunch on the battlefield by tutoring a massive Demon onto the battlefield for a low price. The idea of turn2stormcrow's Shadowborn Apostle deck is to take full advantage of the one-drop. The main goal is to get six on the battlefield and use them to tutor our Demons, with Nightmare Shepherd giving us another Shadowborn Apostle activation by reanimating all of our Shadowborn Apostles, while Razaketh, the Foulblooded can tutor up Immortal Servitude to give us another activation. Eventually, we will get Sire of Insanity to empty our opponent's hand and ride our Demons to victory! While I'm not sure how competitive the plan is—in my experience, getting six copies of Shadowborn Apostle on the battlefield at once is harder than it sounds—it does seem like a really fun quest to try to activate in the Pioneer format, and the results should be spectacular when everything comes together.
Inverter of Truth is dominating Pioneer, but Skyler_hornagold's Torpor Orb Combos deck has a very different plan for taking advantage of the Eldrazi: stopping its enters-the-battlefield trigger altogether with Hushbringer, Tocatli Honor Guard, and Hushwing Gryff. While the deck's main goal is to use our Torpor Orb creatures to play big things like Inverter of Truth, Clackbridge Troll, and Plague Belcher while dodging the downsides of their enters-the-battlefield triggers, the hilarious upside of Torpor Orb Combos is that it should incidentally wreck Dimir Inverter, which needs to be able to trigger Inverter of Truth and often Thassa's Oracle to win the game. So while Torpor Orb Combos looks janky, it's an odd kind of janky that might actually have a really strong matchup against the current top deck in the Pioneer format!
Modern
Last but not least, we have some Modern action, with ianostros's Combo Dredge. At first glance, Combo Dredge looks a lot like traditional Dredge, with a bunch of ways to fill the graveyard, Conflagrate to flashback for a ton of direct damage, and Life from the Loam to keep our hand full of cards, but in reality, the deck is trying to get Eldrazi Conscription and Phyresis in the graveyard and then cast (or reanimate with Unearth) a Storm Herald) to get in one massive, annihilating, infectious attack to win the game! The main issue with the deck is that, much like traditional Dredge, it is very weak to graveyard hate. And while Nature's Claim in the sideboard can help, my guess is that Combo Dredge doesn't beat sideboard cards like Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace very often, but if you can dodge the hate cards, it seems like a funny and fast way to close out a game in Modern!
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 it as well! As always, you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
