Pioneer is here! This fresh format brings with it the allure of new decks, cheaper cards, and of course new brews! I looked through some of the mtggoldfish results for the format, and decided that the best way for me to welcome this new format was with one of the weirdest decks in the format, and one that falls in line with something I had been thinking about since the format was announced. So say hello to five color Fires Superfriends.
There’s a lot going on here, and all of it is Planeswalkers. Well, almost all of it. Fae of Wishes gives us a blocker and a way to pull silver bullets out of our sideboard. The wish board gives us lots of specific answers, top end threats and lock pieces like Possibility Storm. Deafening Clarion lets us protect our planeswalkers while sometimes gaining life in a race. Drawn from Dreams does a decent enough impression of Dig Through Time, and ends up being better here since we try not to have many cards in our graveyard, and Supreme Verdict gives us an excellent board wipe that’s very hard for our opponents to get around.
Heart of Kiran lets us use our 16 planeswalkers as a more direct threat, Oath of Teferi gives us a way to get incredible value from our planeswalkers, and Fires of Invention can act almost as a mana doubler in this deck.
Now we get to the meat of the deck: the planeswalkers themselves. Narset, Parter of Veils keeps our opponent from drawing too many cards, and gives us a couple chances to find any Planeswalker we might need. Oko, Thief of Crowns is pretty well-known by just about everyone at this point, and for good reason. He helps us gain life, turns our opponents threats and artifacts into Elks, and can steal our opponent creatures if we need to. Teferi, Time Raveler stops our opponent from being able to counter our spells, bounces our opponents threats, and draws us cards. He also lets us cast Drawn from Dreams at instant speed, or wipe the board on our opponent’s turn. Moving up on mana costs, we have Jace, Architect of Thought, which helps us protect our board, draws us cards, and can let us steal cards from our opponents if we really want to.
Teferi, Hero of Dominaria lets us draw into even more planeswalkers, tuck our opponent’s threats, and gives us a solid finisher with his ult. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion gives us tokens to protect our walkers with, a board wipe for anything bigger than an elk, lets us turn the corner with her ult. Garruk, Cursed Huntsman also gives us protection, removal, card draw, and yet another anthem on an emblem. Rounding out the planeswalker roster are the two Bolas’s.
The heart of this deck, in my opinion, is Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God. I’ve loved this card since it was released, and was a main part of why I went looking for a Fires Superfriends deck. Not only is he great on his own, drawing us cards, eating away at our opponent’s board, and potentially just outright winning us the game, but he also gets to steal abilities from other planeswalkers on the board. Including our opponent’s. We can use Oko’s +1 to turn 2 of our opponent’s creatures into elks in one turn. We can double up on Jace +1’s to make our opponent’s creatures even weaker. We can make six tokens in one turn with an Elspeth on board. Bolas can give us a second dose of any value we could get out of our other planeswalkers, which makes him feel very strong. The second is Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh, who allows us to essentially mill our opponent while stealing their cards, rip apart their hand, kill them outright, or completely wipe their board.
Being a five color deck, we don’t have a lot of room for utility lands, but thanks to Fires essentially fixing our mana, we do still find a little bit of space for them. Castle Vantress lets us use our leftover mana to dig for better threats, and the Temples allow us to fix our mana while also making sure we get the cards we need to win. The rest of our lands are either basics or mana fixing, as well as Interplanar Beacon to give us any colors of mana we need.
With Fae of Wishes as a core of our deck, we much prefer noncreatures In the sideboard. Some of them may seem weird as traditional sideboard cards but they can give us incredible flexibility game 1. Possibility Storm is good against decks that are trying to combo, or where our overall card quality is better than theirs. It also forms a nice lock with Teferi, Time Raveler locking them out of casting spells. Deploy the Gatewatch can allow us to turn Granted into an overwhelming presence, and Hour of Revelation gives us another cheap board wipe against decks that like to go wide and is usable without Fires. Authority of the Consuls slows down our faster opponents so we have more time to develop our board, and also gives us a bit of a life cushion against them. It is also a relic of the Cat Combo format as it shut that combo down, this could be changed to different life gain or disruption depending on preference. Grafdigger’s Cage and Rest in Peace fight against the graveyard strategies that will inevitably pop up, Pithing Needle lets us deal with any pesky opposing Okos, and the extra Deafening Clarion and Supreme Verdict give us some extra board wipes for Fae of Wishes if we need them. Jace, Cunning Castaway is an interesting threat out of the board but could be a bevy of other options. Gideon’s Intervention can be useful against a lot of cards, but especially Eidolon of the Great Revel.
Tips
- If you play Fires on turn four, then you can play three spells on turn five with some help. Free cast a planeswalker (preferably Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God), then free cast Oath of Teferi. Exile Fires with Oath, then cast your second planeswalker for the turn.
- If you’re desperate for a board presence and you have Garruk and Dragon-God in play, you can use Garruk’s 0 ability from both of them, giving you more tokens and a higher chance of getting Garruk to his ult. Dragon-God does so many impressive things in this deck, so keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to dunk on 'em.
Extra Spice
- Spark Double allows you to play two Dragon-Gods in a single turn, and the second one enters with an extra loyalty counter. Or two Elspeths. Pretty much two of whatever your best planeswalker at the moment is.
- Sorin, Grim Nemesis gives you a pretty fast clock in this deck, especially if you can get multiple +1’s off in a single turn, and his -X helps keep the opponent’s board clear. You can also add any of your favorite giant planeswalkers. I could see either 6 drop Chandra being great, and you could even go all the way up to Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
- The Chain Veil acts as another Oath of Teferi here, and although it is cheaper, it costs more mana to use over time. However, you can have it out at the same time as Oath to get three activations per turn. Considering mana isn’t necessarily an issue with Fires out, four mana for the activation isn’t bad at all.
- Ashiok, Dream Render could be a more flexible hate piece out of the sideboard if Field of the Dead decks ratchet up in popularity. It also does a great job repeatedly pinning down Izzet Pheonix's Treasure Cruise and birds.
This list plays a ton of fun card, has a lot of neat interactions, and of course lets you use all of the best planeswalkers from the past few years. The flexibility here is great, and since colors are less of an issue thanks to Fires of Invention, you can swap out planeswalkers just about however you like. The deck is a lot of fun to play, and what better time to play janky brews than the beginning of the format?
