I spent more time than I’m proud of searching for the Paradoxical Outcomes in today’s list. Pro tip: They aren’t there.
This isn’t a whimsical search through a carnival scene to find Waldo, who really needs to get a cell phone, by the way, because it’s 2016. This is a very different way of utilizing Aetherflux Reservoir.
This deck is much more akin to the Mono-Blue Prison decks from last season than the combo-oriented lists using Paradoxical Outcome and cheap artifacts, with Aetherflux Reservoir playing the role of Prism Ring. You’re going to use the control elements in the deck to continuously buy more time, until the point where your opponent’s ability to play a normalized game of Magic is crippled…or until the time you happen to be at 50 or more life, at which point you point your bazooka at your opponent and hope the recoil doesn’t take your arm off.
In that way, Aetherflux Reservoir does more than Prism Ring did, functioning as a legitimate win condition in addition to ratcheting up the potential lifegain, although I would hope you get a significant boost in functionality for the significantly increased cost.
With Engulf the Shore and your value creatures, you should be able to work the game into a spot where you can remove most or all of your opponent’s creatures for two to four turns while gaining a huge chunk of life in the process. It’s similar to the process that Mono-Blue Prison used to close games, setting up a huge finishing blow with multiple copies of Part the Waterveil. At its heart this is a combo-control deck.
The major difference is that this list doesn’t have Day’s Undoing to recycle its deck and completely lock the opponent out of the game. Here you’re setting up a soft lock for long enough to get to 50 life, which has its advantages. You can legitimately race aggressive decks if they have the staying power to play late into the game and you have a chance of grabbing a drink of water and a snack between rounds.
And if all else fails, you can muster up your motley crew of creatures to turn sideways, especially if that crew employs a Torrential Gearhulk or two to bring the heavy beatdowns. I particularly like the copies of Gisela, the Broken Blade in the sideboard that let you accentuate this plan in the post-sideboard games; all your creatures in the maindeck provide immediate value, which incentivizes your opponents to take out their removal spells.
It may not be the kooky combo deck that we were expecting when Aetherflux Reservoir was revealed, but Aetherworks Marvel already fills that role in Standard quite nicely. I for one like decks that are so versatile that your opponents will be put completely off-balance in gameplay and sideboarding. The Essence Flux blowouts alone are worth giving this one a try.
Creatures (14)
Lands (24)
Spells (22)
