Traditional flash decks are boring. They faded out of relevancy long ago. Cards like
Brineborn Cutthroat
and
Thassa's Intervention
are far outdated. Instead, today we're playing BIG boys!
I got this deck from Jeff Hoogland, who is fantastic at creating good jank, particularly in Historic. There are some amazing game-winning synergies in the deck that I'd like to show you now.
-
Growth Spiral
into
Nightpack Ambusher
. Nightpack's biggest problem is being slow, and Growth Spiral really helps solve that by letting you get one on turn three. Unlike
Explore
, Growth Spiral is instant-speed and so still works when you already have an Ambusher out.
-
Torrential Gearhulk
and
Sublime Epiphany
. If you get this one off, your opponent should just hit concede. With a Gearhulk on the battlefield, cast Sublime Epiphany and get all the usual value from it, but copy your Gearhulk. When that Gearhulk ETBs, you can recast Epiphany and bounce, draw, and create another Gearhulk. That Gearhulk grabs another card from your graveyard like a
Hieroglyphic Illumination
or
Growth Spiral
and suddenly you have three 5/6s, bounced two permanents, drew a bunch of cards, and likely countered a spell. For six mana.
-
The card
Rewind
. This card is insane in this deck. Unless your opponent is casting at instant speed or is likely to get into a counterwar, this basically is a free counterspell. You're likely to be able to take advantage of the four extra mana between all your instants and
Castle Vantress
. My personal favorite line in the deck is T1 land, T2 land
Growth Spiral
, T3 land
Rewind
Nightpack Ambusher
. Eight mana of value on turn 3? Not bad, not bad! It could even be as high as _twenty _mana of value if you somehow draw all four Rewinds and your opponent gives you stuff to counter, but that's pretty much just a theoretical situation.
Your counterspells like
Jwari Disruption
and
Quench
are mainly to last you until you have four mana, as T1-3 are where the deck struggles. Aggro is particularly difficult, which is why we have
Blast Zone
as a land.
Shark Typhoon
and
Brazen Borrower
can be used for similar purposes, but they're just general value cards.
I don't play Bo3 with this deck (I don't have the wildcards), so I can't comment much on the sideboard. I will say that I know god-pharoh's statue is for the new storm decks and
Ratchet Bomb
for aggro. Everything else is relatively obvious, I think.
The manabase is also me being limited by wildcards and not wanting to invest into a Historic manabase. The original deck had more
Breeding Pool
and fewer temples/Fabled Passage and I think there were check lands as well. My manabase is still fine and I rarely have troubles. There are a lot of lands, but you really want to be sure to hit your land drops and ramp with
Growth Spiral
, and you have a lot of cards that can win on their own.
This is a really fun deck to me, I've always really enjoyed good synergy and especially flash decks. It performs really well in the play queue, but I haven't taken it into ranked since my version is incomplete and I don't play a lot of Historic.
EDIT: Added 2x
Magma Opus
as additional ramp, taking out 2x
Jwari Disruption
, which I found I almost never used either side of. Opus also has great synergy with
Torrential Gearhulk
. The manabase has also been adjusted slightly to give the option to hardcast Opus if Gearhulk is not drawn and ramp is not needed (late game). The very first game after adding Opus, I discarded it to ramp into a Gearhulk to cast Magma Opus which killed an Embercleaved Bonecrusher and blocked a Questing Beast. Literal perfect scenario.
