Eight Decks You've Never Played Against

PLUS: Battle of Wits for charity, vote for my next brew to play, and Spike Colony is on a roll

Apr 14, 2025

The North American Premodern Championship is right around the corner, have you picked out your deck yet?

Since we’re still in the calm before the storm, this issue features bountiful spice in the form of the decks making it to the playoffs of Spice Paradise (via community vote), playing decks for charity, voting for the next deck I play, and content from around the Premodern community.

Eight Spice Paradise Decks People Want to See More Of

We recently wrapped up the regular season of the second Spice Paradise, the webcam league I organize that highlights brews and under-played decks. You can check out deck photos of the approximately 150 decks that were played over the eight weeks here. This season, we decided to do a community vote to determine which eight decks would enter the playoffs and the results are in!

8. Tireless Clerics by GibsonJunkie

[Deck List] One of the rules of Premodern is that the Tireless Tribe crew is always cooking up something special. This one has the cards you’ve come to know and love from the archetype but with the added twist of the Life combo of Daru Spiritualist increasing its toughness through Shaman en-Kor. You can then gain infinite life with the Starlit Sanctum or hit for infinite damage with About Face or Transmutation (reasonable cards with Tribe already). The Shared Triumph gives the deck a little bit extra punch given the creatures share many types (Human or Cleric).

7. Dreams and Nightmares by Gaunology

[Deck List] Big fan of this list! You’re utilizing Show and Tell to get out a Dream Halls (both symmetrical cards) and then going off with Opportunity, Time Stretch, Infernal Contract, and Arcanis the Omnipotent to draw cards and take additional turns. I also love the inclusion of Hypnox here, which can exile your opponent’s hand if cast through Dream Halls. If not, Show and Tell for a an 8/8 flying creature isn’t bad either. The sideboard plan is also sweet too with Parallax Nexus to clear the way and Energy Field plus Yawgmoth’s Agenda providing a pillow fort option.

6. Blasts by K-Run (Raphaël A. Caron)

[Deck List] We don’t have Painter’s Servant in Premodern to change the color of cards but we have a variety of tools that K-Run cleverly utilizes here: Blind Seer, Distorting Lens, and Sway of Illusion. The deck is packed with color hosers that can efficiently control the board once you have control over colors. Notably, Blind Seer can change the color of spells on the stack too. Wildfire Emissary is also a nice touch as it’s already somewhat tricky to remove with a four toughness, four CMC, and protection from white. If you want to learn more about K-Run’s brewing process, check out this recent interview I had with him!

5. “Ad Nauseam Tendrils” by loveisgreen

[Deck List] This combo deck utilizes Necrologia, a predecessor of Ad Nauseam, to draw bountiful amounts of card on your end step at the cost of one life per card drawn. You’re then able to use instants to build storm and finish off your opponent (hopefully) with a Brain Freeze.

4. Varchild’s Plague by Koget

[Deck List] This beauty utilizes Varchild’s War-Riders and Carnophage for efficient beats while controlling the Survivor tokens generated by the War-Riders with Plague Spitter, Engineered Plague, and Slice and Dice. Dingus Staff and and Burning Sands further punishes the opponent for Survivors dying on their watch.

3. Dragonstorm by Elendrile

[Deck List] What’s the best storm payoff in Premodern? Brain Freeze or Hunting Pack? Neither! It’s Dragonstorm (no, not the newest set release). Elendrile, who is a must-follow on Instagram, has been tuning his list for years now and it’s still a joy to see in action. The deck seeks to power out four Volcanic Dragons (16 damage) and one Rorix Bladewing (6 damage). Unfortunately, this means that if you draw a Volcanic Dragon, you cannot typically win that same turn and require two attacks. There are no other dragons in the Premodern card pool with Haste and the deck really craves the addition of Portal, which would add Brimstone Dragon.

2. “Dark Depths” by BrandonE

[Deck List] Easily one of my favorite decks of the league, BrandonE’s deck aims to bin some number of Laquatus’s Champion and then bringing them back with Living Death or Shallow Grave. False Cure amplifies the Champions even further, flipping their leave the battlefield trigger into six life loss instead of gain — meaning Shallow Grave on a single Champion results in six life loss on entry, six damage from attacking, and another six life loss on exit with False Cure. The sideboard Life Bursts are also a wonderful touch, providing looting fodder as well as a late-game “burn” spell with False Cure.

1. The Dark Hope (Phil’s Version) by mtgbanding

[Deck List] One of the three decks I played for Spice Paradise, the deck is my take on Baronbounty’s deck, The Dark Hope (primer). I loved his original build, which utilized Blood Celebrant to get out a fast Avatar of Hope by spending one black mana to activate Celebrant’s ability over and over until your life total is three and then spending one additional white mana to cast your Avatar. My version removed the prospect of a turn two Avatar by playing aggressive creatures that causes incidental life loss. The payoffs remain the same to the original, which are the Avatar and Convalescent Care (of which I acquired one of the original preliminary sketches for the artwork by Greg Hildebrandt and probably gave me a few extra votes). I also had to find room for the Phyrexian Processor to show off the custom Minion tokens from the first season of Spice Paradise.

And there you have it! The top 8 matchups will be as follows:

1. The Dark Hope (Phil’s Version) vs. 8. Tireless Clerics
2. “Dark Depths” vs. 7. Dreams and Nightmares
3. Dragonstorm vs. 6. Blasts
4. “Ad Nauseam Tendrils” vs. 5. Varchild’s Plague

Our games have typically been open to viewers in the main Premodern Discord, but perhaps we’ll try to record these ones for future enjoyment… stay tuned in the Spice Paradise thread.

Deck Highlight: Battle of Wits

Yes, that is 16 cards across and 15 cards down (plus sideboard). Michael Arnold recently crafted this beauty of a Battle of Wits deck to play at the Southern California quarterly event and collected donations benefitting The Autism Society for each win he got with the card Battle of Wits. I did say earlier in this issue he was worth a follow on Instagram, right? I did a similar challenge five years ago, donating to a cause for each Donate cast while playing Trix. Let me know if you decide to do something similar — I’d love to contribute!

What I’ve Been Playing Lately

Raging Glaciers

[Deck List] I decided to run back an old favorite, Raging Glaciers, in the Spring Fling webcam event. I made Top 8 of the last Fall Brawl (7-2, losing to Rich Shay’s Mono U Stiflenought) with pretty close to the same list, but with a few changes:

EDIT: I have been informed I misread Flame Burst… I thought it was an extra two for each copy of Flame Burst but it’s actually only one! Back to Incinerate…

I swapped in Flame Burst for Incinerate to try and leverage the possibility of Oath of Druids milling over copies. I was able to capitalize on this in one game, dealing 8 damage while my library was flipped over from Oath with a Gaea’s Blessing trigger on the stack. I’m not sure yet if I like it more than Incinerate, as a lone Burst won’t kill an elephant token or Treetop Village, and also you can’t really just board out one or two, but it’s certainly the flashier option so there’s that.
I swapped in two Phyrexian Furance for two Lava Dart because I felt like graveyard decks were creeping back while Elves, Goblins, and Burn were receding a bit. I also felt that I had enough points against the first two that Lava Dart didn’t feel as needed.
I swapped two Overload for a Rorix and a Tranquil Domain in the sideboard because the Stiflenought’s plan of Parallax Tide means they’re no longer all-in on Phyrexian Dreadnought and I felt that I had enough artifact destruction already. I used to play an Akroma, Angel of Wrath in my sideboard as a twist but it got stranded in my hand a surprising amount of times so I tried Rorix as a castable version. He was pretty solid, though I did lose a game in which his lack of vigilance was a downside. I believe the next game I hardcasted Rorix, so it evened out. Tranquil Domain because I felt that Replenish and Enchantress are gaining steam.

I ended up 2-2 in the first half of the event, beating the boogeyman of the format and losing in three games to my worst matchup. I decided to drop from the second half to focus on the Big Apple Highlander webcam league, but Raging Glaciers remains a great time!

What’s next…

I’ve been noodling around on my own takes of a few decks that already exist in Premodern. What do you think I should play next? I don’t want to spoil too much of the surprise (but if you know where to look, you may have seen them already) so here’s a teaser for each deck:

Slivers — What if we jammed Survival of the Fittest into Slivers and going base green instead of the more common rainbow manabase? We can fit in Gaea’s Cradle and a Brood Sliver top-end…
Pit Rack — After experimenting with the green splash of Pit Rack, what if we added white instead? We get Gerrard’s Verdict, Swords to Plowshares, Seal of Cleansing (much more natural of a fit with Bottomless Pit than Naturalize), and even Eternal Dragon. If Deadguy Ale is midrange/aggro and BW Control is control, can this be the prison version of black-white?
Survival Terravore — The GWx Survival Terravore deck has made a ton of progress thanks to Billy M.C. and the Terravore Discord… but what if we skipped white entirely, went heavier on red and black, and just popped out a stream of hasty Terravores, strengthened by “fair” Hermit Druid?
GW Slide — What if we took the essence of GW Slide, blinking creatures with enter the battlefield triggers, and turbo charged it with Opalescence plus Parallax Wave instead of Astral Slide? And we use Survival of the Fittest to dig up any number of creatures like Wall of Roots (infinite green mana), Wall of Blossoms (draw your deck), Spike Feeder (infinite life), Ghitu Fireslinger (infinite damage), etc.

Brewer’s Challenge Corner Reminder

This Friday (April 18) is the deadline to submit a brew idea around Restless Dreams to Gabe Farkas at premodernbrewing@gmail.com. For more background on the challenge, read here.

Spotted on Bluesky…

I was algorithmically served this up on Bluesky (follow me) and I read the first few words and was like wow, a Stiflenought Terrageddon mashup!? And they crocheted their deck list photo!? Almost…

Content

Listen

🎙️⚔️ Spike Colony released a series of excellent episodes, highly recommend: Billy M.C. from the Duress Crew chats about data, Lan D. Ho chats about the greatest players of all time, and a car ride episode with Andy Levine and Rich Bucey following a Win-a-Mox event
🙅‍♂️🥱 Travis Schneider, of Shared Discovery fame, chats on Hardcast about Tireless Tribe — one of the coolest decks and communities in Premodern!
🗣️🔨 2 Cabal Therapists chat about rumors and necessity of bans and unbans

Watch

🔁🎴 I Play Magic talks about sideboarding in Premodern
🤑📉 Cardboard Crack showcases affordable decks to start off with in Premodern
🐊👼 The Impulse Crew features 5C Gators vs. The Solution in the first round of their recent $1K
🍳🦐 The Duress Crew has a video between Full English Breakfast vs. Mono U Stiflenought from their last regional… featuring two legendary players!
🧙‍♂️🪨 Heavy Play showcases Burn, featuring Mages’ Contest (!!), against The Rock
😡👺 Survival Madness vs. Goblins… a classic matchup by brightsdays