Flashzorius

Hi Guys,

I know what you guys are thinking – the Alchemist jumps with the bandwagon and makes a flash deck. Yes and no.

Simic Flash has been a semi-staple in the meta since Oko was still street legal.  Its cornerstone is the ability to pass the turn and play formidable threats at the end of your opponent’s turn.

A turn 2 Brineborn Cutthroat while leaving open mana for a Sinister Sabotage or Quelch can sometimes take the game home if the pirate fish doesn’t get answered. Followed by Nightpack Ambusher and Frilled Mystic for added insurance, Simic Flash is a great shell to build on top off which is why the pros in MC VII added more muscle and turn the flash shell into a stompy flash deck with great success.

Of course, you know we do things differently in the Lab. I drew inspiration from the classic draw go UW control shells are famous for and merged some flash elements into the picture because why not, we like playing during our opponent’s turn.

Brazan Borrower is an all-star in any deck that plays at instant speed. It’s like have 64 cards in your main deck. Angel of Grace is a great beater that has saved my life many times against BG and Mono-red. Dream Eater joins the pack as our 3-in-1 utility card that sorts our top 4 cards, bounces a problematic non-land permanent, and beats people for 4 damage in the face.

Gadwick is also an all-star that combines well with flashcards allowing us to tap our opponent’s creatures stopping them from attacking. Sphinx of Foresight is a tech I borrowed from Jeskai Fires which is great at smoothing out our draws and allows us to keep aggressive counter-heavy hands if we draw it in our opener.

The main idea here is we play a proactive control deck in game 1, then switch to a reactive control deck in game 2. Here’s the deck!

The sideboard is pretty specific to some decks we are not well-positioned against, that’s  Mono-Red and multi-threat decks like Simic Ramp, Sultai Walkers, etc.

Against mono-red, Cerulean Drake is the card you want to see in your opening hand. It will not win you the game outright but it sure does a swell job in making sure Javier Dominguez doesn’t knock you off more than 2 damage. It’s a great speed bump to allow you to stabilize and sweep the board or gain back some life from Absorbs or tempo them out with Brazen and Gadwick. To fit in all 4 copies, I remove 1 Chemister’s Insight, 1 Dovin’s Veto, and 2 Dream Eaters.

If you’re facing Simic or Azorious control, you want all the early counters you can get a grip on. Mystical Dispute and Dovin’s Veto does a great job at countering Teferi on the play, as well as Brazen Borrowers early game to keep your life totals high. Veto is also a great answer to pesky threats you want to make sure stays dead, like Nissa and Fires of Invention.

Commence the Endgame is an exclusive mirror tech to make sure you have a decent clock post board. CoE is also a great rebound card after you sweep the board and want to recover both on board presence and on cards. I made decent blocks with an unprepared Shifting Ceratops with this card since the zombie token is black, not blue. Gotta remember that.

Planar Cleansing is an all-star when you get to cast this midgame against Food decks. Wiping away the board of their precious Trail of Crumbs, Witch’s Oven and Food tokens feel. F*cking. Great. You won’t be losing much when you intend to cast this since you won’t be committing so much to the board anyway.

The deck has brought me from Gold 3 to Platinum 4 without losing any best-of-three matches. It has performed really well against Simic decks as Arena players slowly try the MC VII decks. I haven’t faced any Mono-red yet so let’s see what that match-up’s like. I’ll update this entry when I get more data.

Till then, see you all back here soon!

Vanson