The Fish Tank: Sweet Viewer-Submitted Decks (March 15-21, 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 in Standard, Modern, and Pioneer! 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.
Pioneer
Last week, we looked at a more traditional Feather list for Pioneer, but while Hooterd's The Reckoning does have Feather, the Redeemed, its primary game plan is very different. The main goal is to make an indestructible, lifelinking Boros Reckoner with Rush of Vitality or some combination of Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, Deafening Clarion, and Selfless Spirit, and then deal some damage to Boros Reckoner (using some of those same cards or Reckless Rage, Shock, or Kolaghan's Command. This will allow us to gain infinite life by repeatedly targeting Boros Reckoner with its own trigger, which keeps damaging our indestructible, lifelinking Boros Reckoner. After we gain infinite life, we win the game at our leisure, potentially while locking our opponent out of the game by casting Kolaghan's Command on each of their draw steps, with the help of Feather, the Redeemed to make our opponent discard whatever they drew for the turn! The deck's main downside is we have to play some pretty questionable cards to make the Boros Reckoner combo work. While Rush of Vitality is our best combo piece, it isn't exactly a Pioneer-playable effect, which will lead to some games where we don't find Boros Reckoner and are stuck with a hand full of bad combo pieces, but the good games should be really unique and even powerful!
One thing we've learned about Fires of Invention since it was printed a few months ago is that it really likes mana sinks that allow us to take advantage of our mana once we don't need it anymore since we have Fires of Invention on the battlefield to cast our limit of two spells a turn for free. While there are a bunch of ways to insert mana sinks into a Fires deck, SirEklz has a unique take on the archetype, featuring a bunch of Gods! Cards like Erebos, God of the Dead and Kefnet the Mindful allow us to draw extra cards once we have Fires of Invention, while The Locust God can loot, The Scarab God can reanimate creatures, and The Scorpion God...puts a −1/−1 counter on something. We back all this up with Fae of Wishes to tutor even more spicy options from the sideboard, and the end result is a really sweet take on Grixis Fires. Is playing a bunch of Gods better than playing a more traditional build of Grixis Fires deck? Perhaps not (although who knows?), but it is certainly a really fun and spicy way to build around the powerful enchantment.
Modern
Apparently, it's Boros Reckoner week here in the Fish Tank! Apart from having a very punny name, Greenhamma's The Boros and the Beez looks really fun to play. It has a bunch of different creature-based synergies that are somewhat but not really related. Plan A seems to be to make infinite mana with Devoted Druid and Vizier of Remedies and then Genesis Wave for our entire deck, which will kill our opponent by gaining us a bunch of life thanks to Essence Warden and Suture Priest, allowing us to Volcano Hellion and Boros Reckoner for a lethal amount of damage without killing ourselves with Volcano Hellion. We can also just cast Blasphemous Act with Boros Reckoner or Hornet Nest on the battlefield to deal 13 damage and end up with 13 deathtouching Insect tokens. While the deck is a bit interaction light (actually, completely interaction-free outside of Blasphemous Act), it does seem like it should be powerful when it gets a good draw, although adding Path to Exile or Lightning Bolt to the deck might not be a bad idea.
Infect is an archetype that sort of naturally lends itself to budget building since most infect creatures are inexpensive and the best support cards are pump spells, which are also fairly cheap. Lugi83's Budget GB Infect list looks like a really solid starting point if you're looking to play a budget build of Infect in Modern. While it loses some resilience (mostly because Inkmoth Nexus doesn't fit into the budget), the deck is still very capable of killing opponents on Turn 2 or 3 with the help of Glistener Elf, Plague Stinger, and powerful pump spells like Scale Up and Vines of Vastwood.
Legacy
John L. sent in a sweet Legacy combo list but with a note that the main combo pieces are legal in Modern as well. The deck's plan is to get a Keen Sense on a Firebrand Archer and then cast a spell, which will trigger Firebrand Archer to draw us a card and deal a damage. In theory, since our deck is overflowing with rituals and cheap cantrips like Manamorphose and only has six lands, we should be able to play through our entire deck, or at least enough of it that we can generate 20 damage with Firebrand Archer and win the game, possibly as early as Turn 2! If you're looking for a deck-building challenge this week, leave your best Modern version of Keen Archer Combo in the comments (it's going to be a lot harder since most of the rituals are banned in the format), and we'll talk about the sweetest Modern build in next week's Fish Tank!
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.
