The Fish Tank: Sweet Viewer-Submitted Decks (March 1-7, 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
Our first deck this week isn't so much notable because of its spice or power level but because of it's price. mtwoods444's Mono-White deck for Standard comes in at just $13 in paper and four rares on Magic Arena. While this extremely cheap price does mean that some powerful but expensive cards are missing (like Heliod, Sun-Crowned or Gideon Blackblade), the deck does look pretty functional for its price point. If you're looking for something different to play on the kitchen table or casually on Magic Arena, this seems like a reasonable option that is as close to free as a Magic deck can get!
Hadhayosh's Standard Cheerios (designed for best-of-one play on Arena) is one of the stranger combo decks in Standard. The idea of the deck is to repeatedly cast Chamber Sentry, Stonecoil Serpent, and Ugin's Conjurant for zero mana, making them 0/0s that immediately die but trigger cards like Cruel Celebrant and Corpse Knight for damage, Midnight Reaper for card draw, Daxos, Blessed by the Sun for lifegain, and God-Eternal Oketra for damage. After emptying our hand, we'll (hopefully) stick a Mystic Forge or Bolas's Citadel to play cards from the top of our deck, use Forever Young to stack all of our Cheerios (aka free creatures) on the top of our library, and cast them all again, hopefully winning the game in one big combo turn! I'm not sure how consistent the deck it, and something like Leyline of the Void ruins all of our fun (which is partly why the deck is most powerful in best-of-one, where opponents can sideboard in graveyard hate), but when the plan comes together, it seems like it offers some of the most unique ways to win in Standard!
Pioneer
While Pioneer isn't nearly as expensive as Modern (at least, yet), as more players pick up the format, it will get more expensive, making budget options more important. Pie4man comes through with a $50 Fires of Invention extra-turn combo deck! The idea of the deck is to stick Fires of Invention so we can play a couple of things each turn for free and then snowball this advantage by taking a bunch of turns in a row. Karn's Temporal Sundering is our budget-friendly extra-turn spell, but with the help of Repeated Reverberation or Ral, Storm Conduit, each copy of Karn's Temporal Sundering can offer two or three extra turns in a row, which should be enough to put away the game with the help of planeswalker value. The other sweet trick of the deck is our kicker-based finisher Fight with Fire. While Fires of Invention doesn't pay the kicker cost of Fight with Fire for us, we can cast Fight with Fire with Fires of Invention and then pay the kicker cost to get full value. This means we have a spell that technically deals 10 damage for just six real mana, and if we can copy it with Ral, Storm Conduit or Repeated Reverberation (likely with the help of Fires of Invention), we can potentially 20 our opponent in one turn!
Modern
We recently played a Rakdos Ball Lightning deck on stream, and one of the most popular questions was, "Where's Groundbreaker?" The Normie Cleaner's answers this question with a deck that's quite literally playing every Ball Lightning possible, with Collected Company and Bloodbraid Elf to hold everything together by getting us additional Ball Lightnings (or Groundbreakers or Lightning Skelementals) for free! Primal Forcemage is another sweet card in the deck, pumping creatures +3/+3 the turn they come into play, which is often useless (thanks to summoning sickness) unless you have a bunch of creatures with haste, like a ton of Ball Lightnings, for example. While the deck is very all-in on the Ball Lightning plan, and cheap removal or blockers with first strike can basically shut down the entire deck, smashing the opponent for six on repeat is a fast way to close out the game if nothing goes wrong.
Normally, when you think of land destruction, red and green come to mind first, but Marcos R.P. is taking the road less traveled with a Mono-Blue Ponza list. The deck's goal is to stick an evasive threat on Turn 1 like Delver of Secrets or Pteramander and then spend the rest of the game bouncing the opponent's land drop each turn with Boomerang, Eye of Nowhere, Aether Tradewinds, and Cryptic Command, theoretically leaving the opponent so low on resources that they can't deal with our threat (or do much else) while we beat our opponent down in the air. The big challenge with decks like Mono-Blue Ponza is that they can have some really bad matchups, especially if they end up on the draw. Something like Turn 1 Goblin Guide on the play is close to unbeatable, while fast aggro decks (that don't need many lands to function) are rough in general. On the other hand, against control or slower midrange decks, bouncing a land each turn can potentially keep the opponent from ever doing anything meaningful for the entire game! My guess is that if you try Mono-Blue Ponza, you'll have some really sweet wins but also some horribly brutal losses. Either way, the idea of the deck is super cool, which makes it worth showing off!
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.
