Meme or Dream? Tribal Tribal (Historic)
It's been a while since we've had an episode of Meme or Dream?—the series where we take lists Wizards publishes from Magic Arena that (apparently? maybe? somehow?) got six wins in a row at platinum rank or better and put them to the test. But when I saw today's list, I couldn't help but take it out for a spin. If you follow Commander Clash, you might remember that one of Tomer's favorite creations is a deck he calls "Tribal Tribal." The idea is that you play a bunch of different tribal lords and payoffs from different tribes and then fill the rest of the deck with changelings so all of your creatures benefit from all of the tribal payoffs. Well, today's Meme or Dream? deck works with the same idea, except in Historic. We've got a ton of cheap changelings and back them up with Magda, Brazen Outlaw, Ayula, Queen Among Bears, and Feline Sovereign to buff them. Ideally, we'll draw a tribal payoff or two, follow them up with some changelings, and parlay the janky tribal-tribal value into a win. Is it really possible that playing lords from three different tribes can work, making the deck a dream, or will its inconsistency relegate the deck to meme status? Let's find out!
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Meme or Dream? Tribal Tribal
Lessons
First and foremost, the deck somehow managed to qualify for dream status, going 3-2 (with the slight asterisk that our first match was best-of-one by accident). In all honesty, the deck worked a lot better than I expected, and it seems very possible that the deck could manage to go on a six-game win streak. The issue with the deck wasn't power—we had some pretty insane games where we played an Ayula, Queen Among Bears or Magda, Brazen Outlaw with a few changelings hanging around and face-rolled into a free win—it was consistency. The games where we don't draw a payoff (or draw a bunch of Ancient Ziggurats) alongside a few copies of Collected Company go really poorly. The games where we stick a payoff early (and our mana works out) tend to go really well. Someone stringing together six of the good games in a row to get the list published seems like a very real possibility.
One of the goals of Meme or Dream? is to learn from other people's brews so we can improve our own, and the biggest lesson from Tribal Tribal involves Ancient Ziggurat. While it might seem like a good idea to play the land in a five-color deck with a reasonable number of creatures and a few non-creature spells, it usually isn't. One of the issues we had throughout our games was drawing a copy or two of Ancient Ziggurat and being unable to cast Collected Company without getting to five or six lands. The same is true of the one God-Pharaoh's Statue, which looks really weird in the deck and probably shouldn't be there but was oddly effective in some matchups. Decks like Modern Humans get away with playing Ancient Ziggurat because they typically play all creatures outside of maybe Aether Vial (which only costs one mana, making it fairly easy to cast). While the mana fixing of Ancient Ziggurat is nice, generally speaking, it isn't worth the cost unless you're playing all (or, at least, very nearly all) creatures.
Otherwise, I really liked the tribal payoffs in the deck, with one exception: Feline Sovereign. The three-mana cat lord just isn't very strong. I have to imagine there's a better option available in the Historic format, although I'm not sure exactly which tribal payoff would be best. If you have some suggestions, make sure to let me know in the comments!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
