The Fish Tank: Sweet Viewer-Submitted Decks (March 22-29, 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 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

A couple of weeks ago, we played Storm Herald with Eldrazi Conscription in Modern for Budget Magic. Well, today, edi has a Pioneer take on Storm Herald that is also budget-friendly. The big challenge with moving the deck to Pioneer is that the format doesn't have an aura anywhere near as powerful as Eldrazi Conscription for Storm Herald to reanimate, so we make do with a combination of Prodigious Growth (to boost power and toughness and give evasion) and less powerful auras like Madcap Skills, Mantle of the Wolf, and Raised by Wolves (the latter two coming with the upsides of making some extra creatures, in the form of Wolf tokens). My main question for the deck is whether Storm Herald will be game-ending enough without Eldrazi Conscription to be worth the effort, but there's only one way find out: play some games with the deck!

Modern

Last week, we had a bit of a deckbuilding challenge in bringing Firebrand Archer  / Keen Sense combo from Legacy to Modern. Blitz124 was up for the challenge with a budget-friendly Temur Keen Archer build. Since Modern lacks all of the fast mana found in the Legacy build of the deck, the goal of Temur Keen Archer is consistency. Along with Firebrand Archer, we get a backup combo of Reckless Fireweaver, Banishing Knack, or Retraction Helix and a zero-converted-mana-cost artifact like Paradise Mantle or Tormod's Crypt, which generates infinite damage by allowing us to repeatedly bounce and recast the artifact to trigger Reckless Fireweaver. If we add Keen Sense or Curiosity to the mix, we also get to draw a ton of cards. Basically, the end result is a build of the combo that is slower than in Legacy, but thanks to more redundant combo pieces, it should be quite consistent! 

Necroplasm Combo is a really sweet (and budget-friendly) idea. In some ways, the deck is similar to Dagger Burn and other decks we've played in the past designed to give our opponent tokens but turn those tokens against them with cards like Trespasser's Curse. One of the issues with the "give your opponent creatures" plan is that those creatures can kill you. Robin Sharif figured out a way to solve that issue with Necroplasm. On the turn we play Necroplasm, it blows up all zero-CMC creatures, which means all of the tokens we give our opponent with Hunted Horror, Hunted Phantasm, and Clackbridge Troll die! Then, if we give our opponent more tokens later, we can always dredge Necroplasm back from the graveyard and do it again. Meanwhile, we're draining our opponent out of the game with Trespasser's Curse and Blood Artist while attacking with massive, undercosted threats! While I have no idea how the deck competes with the top tier of the Modern meta, it looks really fun for kitchen-table play, at a minimum.

Next up, we have a crazy-looking three-land deck for Modern from mikelarru. Since mikelarru sent in a really in-depth write up about the deck, rather than listening to me describe it, here's their description:

I've been playing the RG Goblin Charbelcher / Recross the Paths version for a long time (even got a Top 4 in a local PPTQ), but I always felt that the deck's biggest issue was not drawing a win condition often enough. The banning of Faithless Looting made me abandon the deck for a while, but with the printing of Thassa's Oracle in Theros Beyond Death, Modern Three-Land Belcher now has additional one-card combos to add consistency!!

I'm not saying that this deck will win a GP anytime soon, but I feel that it's totally capable of winning at FNM level, and I find it's a really unique and fun deck to play. Also, barring Force of Vigor and Thoughtseize in the side, which could perfectly be replaced by Duress and Back to Nature / Ancient Grudge / etc., the deck is super cheap for a Modern one!!

PLAYSTYLE: We are a combo deck, and even if hard lines appear sometimes, the play pattern is super-straightforward. The goal of the deck is to resolve one of our 10–11 combo pieces once there are no lands left in the deck. This leaves us in a position where we win next turn. A typical game would go in the following way:

TYPICAL GAME:

• Turn 1: Play Forest, fetch a second land; or reveal Chancellor of the Tangle, fetch a Forest, play it, and fetch a second land; or play Swamp and Renegade Map.
• Turn 2: Play Talisman of Resilience, Pentad Prism, Utopia Sprawl, or Wild Cantor, and fetch the missing land (if Simian Spirit Guide is the ramp card, just fetch the third land).  
• Turn 3: With access to four mana, play your win condition: Goblin Charbelcher or Undercity Informer / Balustrade Spy milling ourselves.
• Turn 4: On upkeep, activate Goblin Charbelcher or cast Memory's Journey, shuffling Unearth into the library. Draw Unearth, and reanimate Thassa's Oracle, winning the game on the spot.*

*If we happen to draw Thassa's Oracle, shuffling both Manamorphose or a Pentad Prism will still allow us to win.

Some things to take into account:

1. MULLIGANING: This is the most crucial part of Three-Land Belcher. We need to keep a hand that can generate green mana on Turn 1. This can be done the following ways: Forest; Chancellor of the Tangle; Simian Spirit Guide + Wild Cantor; Swamp + Renegade Map; Swamp + Simian Spirit Guide into Talisman of Resilience; or double Simian Spirit Guide into Manamorphose. IMPORTANT: Apart from a way to generate green mana, the hand should contain land-fetching effects, such as Traverse the Ulvenwald. I try to keep hands that can at least get two lands out of the deck.

2. RAMP: Notice that we are a three-land deck, and our win conditions cost four mana (Undercity Informer costs three plus one to activate), so we also need a way to ramp us to the fourth mana. Talisman of Resilience, Simian Spirit Guide, Pentad Prism, Utopia Sprawl, and even Wild Cantor help with this purpose. These cards can also serve as protection against land destruction / tax effects. **Note on Undercity Informer: If the opponent doesn't have removal, the Informer wins with just three mana: play it Turn 3, and on Turn 4, with three mana, activate it on upkeep, then cast Memory's Journey and Unearth.

3. SIDEBOARDING: This is a work in progress, so not sure about the side yet.

-Forest: Against blue / slower decks or decks with land destruction, the additional land comes in. In these cases, we can cut some ramp spells, as speed isn't as crucial, and lands can produce the fourth mana.

-Force of Vigor: Being graveyard dependent (except from Belcher) means we have to answer opponents' answers.

-Thoughtseize: All-star against blue decks. Post-side, discard + multiple win conditions can be hard for them to deal with.

-Fatal Push / Assassin's Trophy: Removal. Push is good, but not hitting some three-CMC creatures is troublesome. Maybe Dismember could be played?

-Memory's Journey / Pact of Negation: If there's no permanent graveyard hate, I noticed that Memory's Journey is a powerful tool against slower decks. After milling ourselves, we can shuffle Unearth + Thoughtseize + Pact of Negation to set up a win over some turns. Also, the third copy helps against counters, as the opponent might let us mill ourselves while trying to counter all of the Memory's Journeys so that we lose on the draw step.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This is my first draft of the possible Modern All-Spells deck, but there are plenty of options to be explored yet.

• Firstly, the numbers of the list could for sure be optimized. I'm sure there's some mathematical way to determine the correct split of land-fetch spells / ramp / win conditions. I've been thinking that maybe a ramp spell should be the third Balustrade Spy.
• Recross the Paths seems tempting, as a win condition that only needs three mana and dodges graveyard hate, but it forces us to run red in order to win the game via stacking the deck with Reforge the Soul into a bunch of rituals and Goblin Charbelcher on top. In principle, it could also work in straight BG, by stacking the deck with Manamorphose on top. That way, on the opponent's upkeep, Manamorphose would add red mana and draw Reforge the Soul, which could allow us to play Collected Company into Undercity Informer and Thassa's Oracle and mill ourselves in response to the trigger. I'm trying to figure out this version, as I feel that adding more dead cards (like Collected Company) makes the deck worse, but I could be wrong. Another idea could be to use Recross the Paths as a transformative sideboard plan...

Thanks for reading!!

Pauper

Ever since real storm cards were banned in the format, Pauper players have went to great lengths to try to make storm-style combo lists work in the format. Well, in response to our Keen Archer Challenge from last week, Tvdybgggh brewed up a Pauper version of the combo. The goal is to get Firebrand Archer or Thermo-Alchemist on the battlefield, with Tandem Lookout and Ophidian Eye being our Pauper-legal Keen Senses. Then, we start casting cheap cantrips like Ponder, Preordain, and Manamorphose along with rituals like Rite of Flame, Desperate Ritual, and Pyretic Ritual, which each dealing one damage with Firebrand Archer or Thermo-Alchemist and drawing us a card thanks to Tandem Lookout and Ophidian Eye. With a bit of luck, we'll keep drawing more rituals and cantrips until we cast enough spells to 20 our opponent in a weird, storm-esque kill!