Land (21)
- 4x Breeding Pool
- 8x Forest
- 1x Ketria Triome
- 3x Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
- 4x Steam Vents
- 1x Wooded Foothills
Artifact (5)
Creature (14)
Enchantment (6)
Instant (10)
Sorcery (4)
Sideboard
Maybeboard
Land (1)
Last night user kamarupa sent a message and presented before me a challenge:
Design and build a deck around Quicksilver Fountain.
I took one look at the card and thought ‘That’s crap. Thanks…’. However, the gauntlet had been thrown down and I must defend my honor as the preeminent Builder of barely functional decks revolving around awful cards.
To wit, feast your eyes on this wretched abomination, then go running for your favorite emotional support Commander precon!
Good grief. This is expensive, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to make things work. Since no sane person will ever play this, consider it a thought exercise and pay no attention to those pricey lands.
•8 Basic Forests will give Quicksilver Fountain something to home in on when the time is right. Yes, that sounds strange, but it was actually more difficult to ensure we have something to turn into an Island than it was to simply avoid our key card altogether.
•Just one Ketria Triome because I hate them. They enter tapped, are part of that garish Ikoria expansion with its hideously ugly art aesthetic and visual language, and they’re expensive. Nevertheless, it will grant access to all the colors we may need and so here it is.
•Ahh, Breeding Pool
and Steam Vents—here’s where things get technical. We need mostly for the first half of the game, and enough when we’re ready to pop off, so these two are the Shocklands we want. Why Shocklands? Simple; they’re already islands. Quicksilver Fountain only hits non-island lands, so these are exempt from Flood Counters. We still get our and our and don’t need to worry about that trash card interfering with them. Win-win.
•Wooded Foothills I’m actually not sure I’ll keep. If Quicksilver Fountain turns it into an Island it will also lose its ability to fetch, making it useless. However, since the fountain only hits at the beginning of each player’s upkeep we’ll have a whole turn in which to use it. Without extensive playtesting (why would anyone do that for this deck) I can only reason for now that the ability to fetch on command outweighs the potential irrelevance of the card if it be hit by a Flood Counter. It’s already here; I took the time to write this down; it stays.
•Oboro, Palace in the Clouds is here thanks to a suggestion by wallisface. We don’t ever want Quicksilver Fountain to ‘finish’ and make everything an Island and thus erase all those beautiful counters, so being able to interfere with it on command forestalls this. 4 copies were suggested, I’m going to try 3 and see how that works knowing I can always add the last if necessary.
•Lush Growth isn’t a land but I didn’t know where else to mention it. It’s easy to cast and is just a bit of extra insurance to make certain we have when we need it.
We have tissue paper defenses. The deck is kind of a joke anyway, so no one is really expecting it to hold up against any serious threat, but in an effort to create the illusion it’s playable I’ve added some deterrence in the form of Fog and Veil of Summer. Heroic Intervention is by far the best (and priciest) protection spell and adorns this ghetto build like dubs on a hooptie.
The former will let us get a couple extra turns to build up the boardstate without harassment, while the latter can protect key pieces once in play.
We run creatures which fall broadly into two categories; those we need early and those we need later.
•Elvish Mystic and Ignoble Hierarch are here for ramp and access to certain colors. They won’t be affected by Quicksilver Fountain so as long as they don’t die we can look to these guys for mana in a pinch.
Later on we want to turn to Cankerbloom and Pollenbright Druid when we’re ready to Proliferate. I figured it was best to run one card that enables immediate Proliferation, while the other can be held in-hand until needed in case the opponent deduces the plan and starts removing our on-board enablers.
Ugh. Just ugh. When I received the message from kamarupa I admittedly got a little excited—I do quite like building around little known or underused cards. Then I saw the card. Ugh.
•Quicksilver Fountain is trash. Maybe in some fringe Islandwalk Merfolk deck it might be decent, but as per the stipulations I was given Islandwalk was off the table. I sat there for a few minutes trying to think of something, anything that might combo off of it, and that’s when I remembered that red Enchantment card. You know, this one:
Ah yes. There it is. The idea is to ramp into Quicksilver Fountain then into All Will Be One and immediately Proliferate, which will bat that damage back at our opponent. The beauty of Proliferate is we can make a lot of counters really quickly, which will translate into mega damage.
So let’s start multiplying.
•Thirsting Roots is the cheapest spell I could find at one mana. It’ll also let us fetch a basic land, which can actually be kind of handy at this stage in the game depending on various factors.
•Throne of Geth works well. Even if we totally screwed our own mana base, will still let us do what we need to, and with no summoning sickness to worry about (yes that was a real term. I am old).
•Cankerbloom and Pollenbright Druid were already discussed, but use whichever is faster and contextually appropriate.
•I threw in Experimental Augury because we’ll definitely have at this point, and it would be nice to have some way to scrounge around for key cards if we somehow haven’t drawn them yet.
•Attempt to ramp with Ignoble Hierarch and Elvish Mystic.
•Buy time with Veil of Summer and Fog.
•Cast Quicksilver Fountain early, but not too early. You want at least a couple Flood Counters on both your own and your opponent’s lands, but don’t paint yourself into a corner. Be sure you have access to mana at the very least.
•Drop All Will Be One when there are at least one or two Flood Counters in play on your side of the table. Find it with Experimental Augury if desperate.
•Proliferate immediately and repeatedly until your opponent is toast. Cankerbloom can do so using any color mana, as will Throne of Geth.
No really, I actually made a sideboard for this crap.
•Natural State is a decent enough generic go-to sideboard card. Hits a lot of stuff, is cheap and effective.
•Tormod's Crypt for any graveyard based shenanigans.
•Pithing Needle because there are, oh, roughly 42 million specific cards that can dismantle our strategy in a single play.
•Boil is the ‘In Case of Emergency, Break Glass’ card. It’ll nuke any of your own lands that have been hydroformed, as well as our half-island shocklands, but it’ll hit your opponent’s stuff too. Since we have quite a few mana sources immune to Quicksilver Fountain we should come out on top in The Great Reset.
”He will reward them for what they have done: Wrath to his adversaries, retribution to his enemies. And to the islands he will repay their due.”
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Casual
99% Competitive
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| Date added | 1 week |
| Last updated | 1 week |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 3 - 0 Mythic Rares 22 - 4 Rares 10 - 7 Uncommons 13 - 4 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 1.77 |
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