I Tried to Play Solar Flare in Historic: Fun & Jank Episode 74

Hello again! Plum here.

By now you know that I’m a big fan of the good ‘ol days of Magic. AKA 2012-2014 Modern specifically. Which means I often go back and dig through archived decklists to find nostalgic decks and archetypes to get inspiration from.

There’s something uniquely satisfying about dusting off an old archetype and seeing if it still has some teeth in the modern era. I like to step away from brewing fresh ideas sometimes and stretch my brewing muscles by bringing these old decks up to speed with the cardpool of today.

With that in mind, I decided to take a crack at Solar Flare. I wanted to see if I could bring that classic Esper reanimation energy into the Historic format and have some fun with one of my favorite old-school shells.

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History

The name “Solar Flare” first appeared around 2006 during the Ravnica: City of Guilds and Time Spiral Standard season. It was a deck designed by Jeff Novekoff and later popularized at Pro Tour levels.

This was an Esper list named after the Solar Flare move from Dragon Ball Z. Why? Because the deck’s original “finisher” was Angel of Despair, which people thought looked like a DBZ character, and the deck would “explode” onto the board in a single turn. I used cards like Compulsive Research and Court Hussar to dig through the deck, discarding big threats only to bring them back with Zombify.

The version most people feel nostalgic for came during the 2011-2012 Innistrad Standard era. This is when the deck shifted from a pure combo-reanimator to a heavy Value-Control shell.

The key update to the list was Sun Titan. It wasn’t just about bringing back a big creature, but moreso creating a loop. You’d bring back Phantasmal Image, which would enter as a copy of Sun Titan, which would then bring back a Ratchet Bomb, Liliana of the Veil, or another Image. The deck combined this with Unburial Rites. This card was a game-changer because of Flashback. You could mill it or discard it to Faithless Looting (or Forbidden Alchemy) and still have access to your reanimation spell.

In the context of 2026 Historic, Solar Flare is considered Jank because the game has sped up significantly. Back in the day, a Turn 5 Sun Titan was an unbeatable value engine. Today, you’re often facing down a board full of artifacts or a combo before the Titan can even tie its shoes.

So lets take a look at what I cooked up in Historic.

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The Deck

When I started updating this list for Historic, I almost viewed it like a time capsule. I wanted to keep the soul of that 2011-2012 era intact. I tried to lean heavily into the cards that defined the archetypes peak. In my opinion, that identity was tied to three things:

Sun Titan: Keeping the Sun Titan and Phantasmal Image core is essential. This was the “infinite value” engine of the original deck—using an Image to copy a Titan, which then brings back another Image, effectively rebuilding a board from nothing in a single turn.

Discard Value: Lingering Souls and Unburial Rites are the quintessential “discard for value” cards. We want to churn through our deck quickly, but also keep up with our opponents while we do so.

Planeswalkers: Running Liliana of the Veil and Jace, the Mind Sculptor are still powerful even after all these years. Magic. They provide the hand disruption and deck thinning the deck needs to reach the late game.

Since its been over 14 years since this deck was played, and Historic is a completely different format, I swapped some of the old spells for modern efficiency.

Instead of relying solely on the old Forbidden Alchemy (though I kept one for flavor), I moved into Faithful Mending. Being two mana and providing a life-gain buffer is huge against the aggressive decks currently stalking the ladder.

Prismatic Vista and Starting Town help ensure you actually hit your three colors on time. Restless Anchorage gives you a man-land that provides Map tokens, a great way to grow your small creatures while digging for your finishers. But we also have Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit to keep that old-school feeling.

Fatal Push and Fragment Reality (in the sideboard) are necessary evils. In a world of cheap, high-threat creatures, you simply can’t wait until Turn 4 for a Supreme Verdict every game.

Sylex is a nice upgrade to Ratchet Bomb and easily recurred with Sun Titan to deal with low-cost threats. The House Grows Hungry is also an interesting recursion target to help ensure we can grind for the long game. There’s a couple Mind Stones in here to help ramp and act as additional recurable card draw.

Search is classic in its own right now. It does double duty: filtering your draws early to find interaction, then flipping into Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin to ensure you never run out of gas in a control mirror. Plus, Sun Titan can bring it back if it gets destroyed.

Back in the Return to Ravnica days, Detention Sphere was actually pretty sweet. Hitting multiples things with the same name is pretty relevant. Sphere can delete tokens, remove any permanent, and is a somewhat stick card type that can dodge a decent bit of removal. Nice catch-all removal for Sun Titan to recur if our opponent actually has interaction though.

Sun Titan and Phantasmal is the main win-con and we were able reserve slots for them in our list as well. When Sun Titan enters the battlefield (or attacks), you bring back Phantasmal Image from the graveyard. The Image enters as a copy of Sun Titan. Because it’s a new Sun Titan entering the battlefield, its ability triggers, allowing you to bring back another permanent with mana value 3 or less, perhaps a Mind Stone for draw, a Detention Sphere for removal, or even a second Phantasmal Image to keep the chain going.

In a single turn, you can go from an empty board to having two or three 6/6 Vigilance creatures and a handful of utility permanents. Phantasmal Image is also super sick because it can copy any creature on the field, meaning we can copy opposing utility creatures, big haymakers, or anything else we might want to use for ourselves.

Our other big reanimation target of choice is Elesh Norn. There’s obviously tons of choice here, but I thought she seemed fitting to keep close to the deck’s original Era and is not the worst reanimation target in Historic (definitely not the best though). But she’s good for keeping the board clear against small creatures, and her ability to pump our tokens to close out games faster is very relevant.

So with all that in my brain, I was eager to hop onto the Bo3 ranked ladder to see how would do!

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Gameplay

So yeah…

We did bad.

After all that, we went 0-5 on stream. Which is actually kind of what I expected, but that still did make loss after loss after loss feel any better. Even though the record was rough, the games actually showed exactly where the deck shines and where the “modern” power creep starts to pinch. Here is the breakdown of how a few of the matches went:

Against Scapeshift:
We were trying to build a board while they were hiding behind The One Ring and setting up with Wrenn and Six. None of our interaction was particularly good here, and we just died to Valakut triggers.

Against Auras:
Speed was the issue here Sram and Shelter made it incredibly difficult for our targeted removal (like Fatal Push or Path) to stick. Without drawing Verdict we were dead, and then we didn’t draw Verdict and promptly died. The aggro decks of today are much faster than this list could handle.

Against BW Blink:
They targeted our mana base and used blink effects to generate more immediate ETB value than our slower reanimation setup could match. They outvalued us immediately and we never catch up.

Overall it kind of just felt like we were just spinning our wheels most games. Every deck we faced pretty much demolished us. The disparity in card quality of every other deck to ours was obvious.

Closing Thoughts

The 0-5 run was fascinating, but painful at the same time. I love when we get to see old decks in action and how much the game has changed in real time.

The biggest takeaway from the matches against Auras and Scapeshift was the efficiency of protection. In the past, a well-timed Path to Exile or Detention Sphere could be a devastating blow. Now, decks are built with so much redundancy and “free” protection (like Shelter giving ward) that our one-for-one removal just can’t keep pace. We are playing fair, interactive Magic in a format that has a speed and power level way beyond that.

Really kind of felt like I was a in Model-T staring at a Ferrari. I still loved the sound and the soul of the classic, but it just can’t compete with modern machines.

So yeah, turns out when you take an almost 15 year old deck and throw it in a format today, you do bad. Duh. But we did get to do the thing we set out to do. I casted some Sun Titans, made some spirit tokens, and ticked up Jace, the Mindsculptor a lot. So mission accomplished, I guess.

This deck was definitely a blast from the past. More Fun rather than Jank. Which is just what I wanted to play. Arena and just grind all the time. It felt good to take these old staples and play with ’em again. Highly recommend you try doing the same sometime too! This one definitely is going to help you 7-0 a qualifier. Gotta’ play it for the love of the game.

That’s it for me!

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!

If you want to help me brew, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together.

Happy Brewin’!