Plum takes you through a few drafts and ideas that he hasn't had a chance to play on stream yet! Check out these shells and see if they get your creative juices flowing!
Heyoooooo, Plum here, back with another episode of Fun & Jank!
Most of the time when I write these articles, I try to bring you something pretty polished and fully fleshed (like the decks in Episode 86) out that’s ready to take straight into ranked. But today, I want to pull back the curtain and show you some rough drafts, some decks that you can take, tinker with, and iterate on yourself.
These are a few brewing ideas we’ve talked about on stream, but haven’t really had the chance to fully pilot yet. With the release of The Hobbit set right around the corner, we’re going to be diving headfirst into brand new cards in the coming weeks. That means these concepts will probably fall by the wayside for a bit, but I think they offer some awesome jumping-off points for anyone looking to experiment with something new!
I’ll give you a quick overview of each list and what its trying to do, and then we’ll talk about a few important things for each!
Ordinarily, toughness-matters decks rely on continuous attrition or incremental combat damage. Here, we play early high-toughness, low-cost bodies like Armored Armadillo (0/4), Disowned Ancestor (0/4), or Nyx-Fleece Ram (0/5). Once we set up a Big-Butt-Enabler like Assault Formation, Walking Bulwark, or The Kingpin of Crime, we swing with the team.
When our non-Token creatures attack, Mardu Ascendancy triggers, dumping a 1/1 Red Goblin token onto the board for every attacking creature. Then, before damage, we sacrifice Mardu Ascendancy: giving all our creatures get +0/+3 until end of turn. Because our creatures deal damage equal to their toughness, that +0/+3 acts as both an offensive and a defensive buff.
Mardu Ascendancy + The Kingpin of Crime / Assault Formation: The core combo engine. Kingpin lets creatures with toughness greater than power deal damage with toughness, while Ascendancy multiplies the overall damage output by +3 per creature when popped.
Fragment Reality/Abrupt Decay: Efficient and Cheap removal. Unless we have an enabler on board our creatures just kind of sit around doing nothing. These cards are essential to keep us alive until we can find something that lets us start swinging.
Nyx-fleece Ram: Actually kind of a banger so far. This guy blocks nearly everything we need to worry about early. The incremental lifegain is gravy on top against any aggro deck.
Comments
With the limited testing I’ve done off stream for this deck, it does have some rough edges. Although it’s namesake card is in Mardu colors, its the only red card in the deck. This can give us a some awkward hands in terms of lands. While Birds of Paradise and Starting Town help, we might want to look into whether the Red splash is reliable enough, or if we need extra rainbow mana sources.
The deck is also heavily reliant on enablers. If Assault Formation or Kingpin get removed, we kind of end up dead in the water. Other Big Butt decks usually play Walking Bulwark and Arcades, but since we’re not playing any defenders to make sure Kingpin actually works, there’s not much we can do when he’s not around. Ascendancy can make the deck kill rather quickly, but it’ll lose to a single piece of interaction more often.
Normally, The Sibsig Ceremony gives you huge mana acceleration at a steep price: destroying one of your own creatures at the start of combat. Doctor Doom completely breaks that downside. When Doom enters, he brings two 3/3 artifact creatures with him, and he gains indestructible as long as you control an artifact. That means Doom can comfortably sit on the board and eat the Ceremony’s destroy trigger and stick around.
We use early permanent-based interaction (Liliana of the Veil, Momentum Breaker, The Meathook Massacre) to keep the board clear while stacking heavy Black devotion pips. Once Sibsig Ceremony and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx are online, we power out game-ending top-end threats way ahead of curve, slamming Gray Merchant of Asphodel for massive life drains or dropping The Hourglass Coven to leave behind a couple powerful bodies.
The Hourglass Coven & Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Our main ramp payoffs. Dropping an Hourglass Coven multi-body threat on turn 4 or 5 off Ceremony mana immediately shifts the game in our favor. Coven also happens to be a pet card of mine that we don’t find a home for very often
Doctor Doom + The Sibsig Ceremony: The star combo. Doom’s artifact-conditional indestructibility turns Ceremony’s required destroy penalty into a non-issue while leaving his tokens or other utility intact. The fact that he acts as a draw engine is sweet as well.
Devotion-Based Removal (Momentum Breaker, Liliana, Meathook): Instead of relying purely on instant/sorcery removal like Fatal Push, permanent interaction stays on the field to juice up our Nykthos mana output and Gary drains. Between Doom and Castle Locthwain we should have enough gas to spend all that mana on.
Comments
This is another deck that relies on an enabler to really get going. I’m hoping that the suite of removal will make it easier to keep hands that lack Ceremony or Nykthos, but without either of those our top end is rather clunky. We may have to mess with some number or just bring in additional removal/board wipes to keep up with the rest of the format.
I’ve been trying to find a home for this simple combo for quite some time but none of them shell I tried have felt great. This is one we never got to on stream but looks promising on paper.
If you’re not familiar the combo is Hawkeye’s Bow and 2x Kiora’s Followers.
It’s pretty simple. All you need is to get two copies of Kiora’s Follower on the field (or some clones), equip one with Hawkeye’s Bow, and then use them to infinitely Tap and Untap each other. Every time we tap our equipped creature it deals 1 damage to the opponent until they die.
What makes this iteration so intriguing is the Plan B. Most combo decks stall out completely if their main piece gets countered or destroyed. Here, if the opponent holds up instant-speed removal for Kiora’s Follower, you can just play a standard tempo/aggro game, beating down with lord-buffed fish, protecting your board with Vodalian Hexcatcher and Force of Negation, and digging deep into your deck using Collected Company.
Key Cards
Kiora’s Follower + Hawkeye’s Bow (+ Glasspool Mimic): The infinite win condition. Glasspool Mimic acts as additional copies of Kiora’s Follower (or any lord) while pulling double-duty as a land when needed.
Collected Company: Digs 6 cards deep at instant speed to find missing combo pieces (Kiora’s Follower is a 2-drop creature) or to build an overwhelming tribal board presence right before your turn.
Vodalian Hexcatcher & Force of Negation: Essential interaction that lets you go for the combo safely without tapping out completely or risking a blow-out from creature removal.
You’ll notice the basic Merfolk creature package here too. Shoreline Scout, Trackhand Trainer, and Svyelun are all powerful pieces commonly seen in these decks and still have a place here.
Comments
The main problem with this deck (and the other shells) is that Hawkeye’s Bow doesn’t have much worth outside of the combo. In other two card combos like Splinter Twin, Twin can at least get slapped on a Snapcaster or other creatures and give you intrinsic value. Bow doesn’t really have that capability here. It’s just a cheap equipment that adds a few points of damage here or there.
I’m hoping that the merfolk Plan B will be enough to hold it’s own if the combo doesn’t get up and running, but who knows. We’re missing a very important piece of that tribe in the way of Merfolk Harbinger since we need a three-color manabase to function.
I think this deck will be easy to revisit in the future with Nauctic coming out next year bringing more Merfolk support.
Hardened Scales is a beloved archetype across formats, but in Historic, the lack of Mox Opal usually means missing out on the hyper-explosive, turn-one/turn-two artifact acceleration that makes Modern Scales so terrifying.
This build solves that problem by running Mox Amber alongside a low-curve legendary engine. Turn-one Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student or an early Emry turns Mox Amber on quickly.
he real secret sauce, though, is Loki, God of Mischief. Scales decks naturally target their own creatures constantly, whether through Modular transfers (Arcbound Ravager, Zabaz, Iron Apprentice) or Agatha’s Soul Cauldron activations. Every single time you target one of your own permanents with those effects, Loki triggers to keep your hand full and keep the engine humming. Pair that with classic lethal lines like pumping Inkmoth Nexus for an out-of-nowhere infect kill or stacking counters onto The Ozolith, and you have a deck that can grind just as hard as it can explode.
Key Cards
Loki, God of Mischief + Modular / Soul Cauldron: Converts routine counter distribution and sacrifice chains into endless card advantage, solving the classic Scales problem of running out of gas. Cauldron also has the added bonus of being instant speed, so we can draw extra cards on our opponent’s turns too.
Mox Amber + Low-Mana Legendaries (Tamiyo, Loki, Mutagen Man): Gives the deck the mana acceleration of Modern Scales without needing Mox Opal, while Emry lets us recast Mox Amber or sacrificed artifact pieces straight out of the graveyard. Mutagen Man is a card we have yet to really try but seems at home here, especially along side Ravager
Inkmoth Nexus + Hardened Scales / Ozolith: Provides an alternate, high-pressure win condition that forces the opponent to play defensively against infect damage.
Comments
There’s a lot cards I think this deck would like to play but I just haven’t found room for without diluting it too much. We have useful recursion via Emry and Soul Cauldron, but still don’t have a lot of interaction outside of that. Metallic Rebuke is a card that would be rather good here, or maybe even splashing Red for Weapons Manufacturing or Galvanic Blast. But at some point we’d have to take a step back and wonder if we’re just playing a worse version of Affinity at that point.
Closing Thoughts
Whether it’s dealing infinite damage with equipped Merfolk, playing an indestructible Doctor Doom of off The Sibsig Ceremony, blowing out opponents with a Mardu Ascendancy toughness pump, or drawing a ton of cards off Loki in a Simic Scales shell, there is a ton of fun, unrefined potential here.
Since The Hobbit is right around the corner and will likely shake up our brewing priorities, I’d love to know what you think of these baseline lists before we move on. Which of these four concepts do you think has the most legs? How would you clean up the mana base for Mardu Ascendancy, or patch up the interaction gaps in Loki Scales?
I wish I had the time to brew and test everything that comes to mind, but there’s only so many hours in the day!
Thanks for reading!
As always, feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below. And make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!
Plum is the creator of the Jank Tank.
He started playing at the ripe old age of 12 and immediately fell in love with the infinite possibilities that deck building could lead to.
He truly understands that jank is a mindset, and spends most of his free time brewing and concocting new and exciting deck lists to help inspire and promote creativity within the MTG community.
