Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed checking out all of the decklists. I ended up with about 70 decklists, most of which were really cool. It was honestly more difficult than I anticipated to select the winners. For three of the cards, the winner was pretty decisive and clear cut. The Anje’s Ravager and Ominous Seas decks were much trickier to evaluate though. I’d like to thank Eli Goings (GoblinLackey1) for helping me narrow down the results and choose the winners! The contest was very open-ended, so it’s not like there was any one set of parameters I was looking for. Accordingly, let’s just dive right into the results and talk about them, in WUBRG order, of course!
UW Combo by David Bellanger, Winner for Myth Realized
| Spells (45) 2 Orim’s Chant 4 Ponder 4 Lion’s Eye Diamond 3 Entomb 4 Dark Ritual 4 Chrome Mox 4 Myth Realized 3 Narset, Parter of Veils 2 Preordain 4 Lotus Petal 4 Brainstorm 1 Silence 2 Tendrils of Agony 4 Echo of Eons Creatures (2) 2 Monastery Mentor | Lands (13) 2 Underground Sea 3 Polluted Delta 3 Flooded Strand 1 Island 1 Plains 2 Tundra 1 Swamp Sideboard (15) 2 Chain of Vapor 2 Disenchant 3 Swords to Plowshares 2 Defense Grid 1 Silent Gravestone 1 Hurkyl’s Recall 2 Surgical Extraction 1 Silence 1 Echoing Truth |
Most of the Myth Realized decks that I received were Standstill or Miracles variants of some kind. I felt like those were sort of the low hanging fruit in terms of making Myth Realized work, so I really liked the angle of attack here. The deck has four primary plans: 1. Beat down with a big Myth Realized. 2. Go wide with Mentor. 3. Storm off via Tendrils. 4. Use Echo plus Narset to strip all your opponent’s resources. The plans have at least some amount of synergy with each other, and provide a varied enough range that one piece of hate probably doesn’t shut you down in post sideboard games. I feel like this deck gets to steal a bunch of easy wins while still being able to grind some tougher ones out; that’s a great spot for a brew, and I look forward to playing this one!
UGx Combo by Miranda Keith, Winner for Ominous Seas
The ideas that people had for building around Ominous Seas were just…crazy. I loved it. Standstill, Sylvan Library, and Greater Good were the three things that most commonly tried to push the Kraken producing Enchantment to its limit. Of the lists I received, I think Miranda Keith’s version is probably the best (you might recognize her name for Maverick-related reasons!). In case you don’t “see it,” Once you produce your first Kraken, you can use Greater Good to draw your whole deck (make a Kraken, sac a Kraken, draw 8, make a new Kraken…). You can then win via Labratory Maniac and even have Veil of Summer to make it safe! Given the powerful shell, it will not have any trouble staying alive long enough to make the first Kraken.
BUG Standstill by Theodore M, Honorable Mention for Ominous Seas
While I only can have one winner for each category, I do have an honorable mention for each other card from here on out. This deck is conceptually similar to the last one, but attacks on a slightly different axis. While the previous deck is really sort of a control/combo deck, this deck is closer to a hard control deck with an incidental combo finish in some games. I can imagine the Shark Typhoon blowouts now…
Skelementomb, SaborDeSoledad, Winner for Unearth
| Lands (19) 1 Arid Mesa 3 Badlands 4 Bloodstained Mire 1 Marsh Flats 2 Polluted Delta 2 Mountain 1 Scalding Tarn 1 Verdant Catacombs 2 Wooded Foothills 2 Swamp Creatures (18) 4 Bloodghast 4 Dreadhorde Arcanist 1 Fulminator Mage 1 Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger 4 Lightning Skelemental 1 Magus of the Moon 1 Phyrexian Revoker 1 Plague Engineer 1 Seasoned Pyromancer Spells (23) 1 Thoughtseize 4 Unearth 1 Pyroblast 4 Entomb 4 Faithless Looting 1 Fatal Push 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Cabal Therapy | Sideboard (15) 3 Abrade 1 Blazing Volley 1 Coffin Purge 2 Dark Confidant 1 Encroach 4 Leyline of the Void 1 Pyroblast 1 Scab-Clan Berserker 1 Shenanigans |
Okay, this deck is just cool. I actually received a fair number of “Ball Lightning” decks, but this one was the most polished by far. I really like the game one Entomb package. It can find food for Arcanist, Lightning Skelemental for value, or any number of silver bullets from Revoker to Plague Engineer. Many of the decks I received were just “value etb creature” decks with things like Baleful Strix and Snapcaster Mage, but this deck has some real character. I bet this deck is reaaaaaallll annoying to play against, and it should make for a great stream!
Rielle Combo by Nate Golia, Honorable Mention for Unearth
| Lands (18) 1 Badlands 2 Bloodstained Mire 1 Swamp 4 Polluted Delta 1 Mountain 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Island 2 Underground Sea 2 Volcanic Island Spells (34) 4 Unearth 4 Brainstorm 2 Breakthrough 2 Burning Inquiry 2 Dark Deal 4 Dark Ritual 4 Faithless Looting 4 Lightning Bolt 1 Pyroblast 2 Ponder 4 Thoughtseize 1 Thud Creatures (8) 4 Flameblade Adept 1 Ox of Agonas 3 Rielle, the Everwise | Sideboard (15) 1 Abrade 2 Aria of Flame 2 Brazen Borrower 1 Fatal Push 2 Flusterstorm 4 Leyline of the Void 1 Pyroblast 1 Shenanigans 1 Toxic Deluge |
Nate Golia of the Eternal Durdles podcast submitted this doozie of a decklist. It felt like more of a “Rielle” deck than an “Unearth” deck to me, so it can’t take home of the metaphorical trophy here, but this was one of the craziest decklists submitted for this contest. This is like the powered up cousin of “the fling deck” that the one guy in your play group always tried when you first started playing Magic. Killing someone with Thud in Legacy in 2020 gets you a hidden MTGO achievement, or so I’m told. Tag me in screenshots when you do it!
Ravager Stompy by Theodore M, Winner for Anje's Ravager
| Creatures (21) 4 Anje’s Ravager 2 Ox of Agonas 4 Seasoned Pyromancer 4 Simian Spirit Guide 4 Stromkirk Occultist 3 Surly Badgersaur Spells (18) 4 Chalice of the Void 4 Chrome Mox 2 Lotus Petal 4 Blood Sun 4 Punishing Fire | Lands (21) 9 Mountain 4 City of Traitors 4 Grove of the Burnwillows 4 Ancient Tomb Sideboard (15) 2 Chandra, Awakened Inferno 1 Karakas 4 Leyline of the Void 4 Pyroblast 2 Shenanigans 2 Sorcerous Spyglass |
Theodore may have received an honorable mention above for Ominous Seas, but he gets the full on win here for a really spicy decklist. There are many ways to make Anje’s Ravager work, and this one works with multiple of them. It gives you value for discarding, allows you to cast cards from the graveyard later, allows you to ditch dead cards, enables madness, mitigates costs of playing fast mana acceleration… This is a well-crafted decklist with great synergy. I hope this list has some legs, because it looks so fun.
Anje Echo by Anonymous, Honorable Mention for Anje's Ravager
Anje’s Ravager inspired the greatest range of brews. Sometimes Anje’s Ravager could be clearly inserted into an existing deck like this one with minimal changes to the shell. This take on the deck seems pretty powerful, but the person who submitted this deck openly admitted that the majority of the deck’s shell already existed. This one was more of a “hey, here’s another direction you could try” sort of submission. Other interesting ideas were slotting it into 4c Loam, playing Red Prison featuring Sin Prodder and Yidaro, Wandering Monster, or a mono red aggro deck featuring cards like Eidolon of the Great Revel and Scab-Clan Beserker.
Netherfit by Reddit User Paganfears, Winner for Shifting Certops
| Lands (22) 2 Bayou 2 Swamp 1 Phyrexian Tower 1 Plains 1 Savannah 2 Scrubland 1 Karakas 4 Verdant Catacombs 1 Volrath’s Stronghold 4 Windswept Heath 3 Forest Spells (21) 1 Sylvan Library 4 Abrupt Decay 4 Cabal Therapy 1 Diabolic Intent 4 Green Sun’s Zenith 4 Nether Void 1 Overwhelming Splendor 2 Pernicious Deed Creatures (17) 1 Carnage Tyrant 3 Prowling Serpopard 4 Shifting Ceratops 4 Veteran Explorer 1 Vexing Shusher 4 Academy Rector | Sideboard (15) 2 Carpet of Flowers 2 Choke 1 Collector Ouphe 4 Leyline of the Void 1 Reclamation Sage 3 Thoughtseize 2 Veil of Summer |
To quote the deck description, “Not your daddy’s Nic Fit deck, this variant aims to land an early Nether Void — sometimes with the help of Academy Rector — and slow the opponent to a crawl. From there, Abrupt Decay teams up with Shifting Ceratops to break the symmetry of the pricey Legends enchantment, along with the hearts of anyone playing countermagic.”
This is, unquestionably, my favorite submission from the entire contest. It was love at first sight. I really would love to snag a 5-0 with this one and have it permanently attached to my name. Scorpion Pepper or Ghost Pepper levels of spice, unquestionably.
Dino Painter by Darkhawk, Honorary Mention for Shifting Ceratops
Shifting Ceratops is sweet, but what if it was a baby Progenitus? This is a really cool alternate take on Painter. It has powerful acceleration, a surprising amount of selection for a RG deck, and Veil of Summer looks pretty gross in the post sideboard games.
I hope you all enjoyed these zany decklists as much as I did. I’ll be playing my next three streams with my normal donation queue, and then I’ll be playing the winners of the deckbuilding contest in WUBRG order. That means that I’ll be aiming to start with the Myth Realized deck on the 22nd, plus or minus a day or two. If you don’t catch them live, don’t worry, they always end up on Youtube by the next day!
As a side note, if you enjoyed this contest or enjoy the streams/videos in the coming weeks and want to support more content of this nature in the future, you may do so here.
Finally, I like to take a moment to plug some of my non-mtg content. I’ve been playing the hell out of Monster Train recently, and it’s become one of my new obsessions. In short, it is a roguelite deckbuilder with tower defense or worker placement elements. You’re on a train heading straight for the heart of hell, and you’re looking to reignite the fires of hell while stopping the forces of heaven. I think I’ve had the game for two or three weeks and have logged about 100 hours into the game. I made a short intro video about the game and wrote one article about it already. I have been streaming the game quite a bit as well as recording daily videos for Youtube similar to my Daily D&T series. If you’re a little burnt out on Magic (something something elk, something something) and are looking for something else to scratch that strategic itch, I highly recommend this. In particular, if you enjoyed Slay the Spire, you will love this game. Okay, shameless plug over!
