THE CLAW is a bo1 standard (who willingly plays Standard outside of Arena?) tap-out control deck with a
wishboard. The basic idea is to stick some early permanents as a fodder for your incoming
Doom Foretold and eventually pull ahead of the opponent by exploiting the incredible amount of mana you generate when you
explode the world with
Fires of Invention in play. A common line is hitting your 6th land with Fires and
THE CLAW in play, use THE CLAW to get your
Bae, cast it with the Granted mode to get the Cleansing and then bring your stuff back with
Dance of the Manse - the net result being you just wiped everything your opponent held dear while you lost nothing - in fact you have your bae waiting for you in the exile zone to have another go. My personal record is casting 13 Granted in a single game against Simic Elementals.
While Fires ramp you immensely and tactically exploding them gives you a lot of flexibility, this isn't fundamentally a Fires deck. Sure, whenever you pull off turn 4 Fires into Kaya's Wrath against aggro or into Doom Foretold against midrange, you feel really skilled, but a Wrath or Doom are still great plays on their own. This is also the reason there's only 12 red sources (1 Mountain, 4 ways to fetch it untapped, and 7 eggs) in the deck, you only ever need 1 red mana on turn 4+ in a game.
The other basic synergy in the deck is Clawing for T3feri to bounce THE CLAW back to your hand. This acts like a sorcery-speed Whispers of the Muse, except now there's a T3f in play, which puts a lot of pressure on slower decks or buys you life against aggressive decks because leaving T3f around leads to fair lines of play with instant-speed Wraths and Wishing. And of course, if you already have T3f waiting in your hand when you Claw, you're just straight up Diabolic Tutoring while again leaving T3f behind. If you already have a spent T3f in play, you can even claw for a fae, get Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God and copy T3fs bounce with it on the talisman. Also worth noting is that against hellbent opponents with no non-land permanents, Doom Foretold restricts their ability to use THE CLAW themselves to instants - if they don't claw, it gets sacrificed; if they do claw, the card will get discarded to Doom Foretold if it's not immediately cast. What usually follows this scenario is a shame scoop and it feels good.
Thanks to THE CLAW, we also have easy access to silver bullets like Kill Target Nissa AND Oko AND Perk Up Your T3feri, Discard Whatever The Opponent Wished For, Kill Target Big Dumb Idiot, This Game Has Gone On For Far Too Long Button, and your bae.
j/k with El Loco banned, filthy red aggro decks have reared their ugly mugs. To stop dying on their turn 4 when we're on the draw, we slashed our silver bullets in order to turn our lone bae into a full playset, since their 1/4 flying bodies make for excellent early blockers. On the flip side, our wholesome Magic deck turned into a harem anime which means we're going straight to hell where weeb sinners belong.
Your baes can in turn get you a white land to ensure timely Planar Cleansing, Ashiok, Dream Render to cripple other Dance of the Manse decks and Cavalier of Thorns rebuys (and that one trooper still swearing on Arclight Phoenix), Thought Distortion after your control opponent drew their cards, Covetous Urge to jack whatever opponents faes got them, some extra Dance of the Manse as wincons and various removal to cover all your bases. Planar Cleansing is your catch all (except for Nissa lands), Nicky Bobo is great against a solitary target, Lili against doubles, and war never changes is something a Fires opponent doesn't like to hear. With a full contingent of baes, we don't have to be afraid of them getting milled, countered, killed, or discarded and struggling to actually win the game from a commanding board position. They can also put those matchup stinkers that have been rotting in your hand the whole game to good use by bouncing themselves. Note that with T3feri's +1, you can wish at instant speed and wishing for and casting Thought Distortion in their draw step feels pretty skilled again. And don't let haters fool you, having T3f in play is pure skill, NOT an easy mode.
Best matchup are Fires decks, since Doom Foretold eats Fires for breakfast and they operate at sorcery speed so no nasty surprises from them. Any aggro deck without good reach dies to any reasonable draw as well. Witch's Oven decks usually overextend and die to the 2nd Planar Cleansing.
Hands down the worst matchup is UG Flash because of permission and instant speed shenanigans in general. Getting T3feri online to shut these off is a top priority. The UR version is much easier to beat because it trades some counters for burn, which we laugh at heartily.
The grindiest matchup is Simic Elementals because Cavalier of Thorns rebuys Hydroid Krasis for hand refill and rebuying Finale of Devastation for End-Raze Forerunners can potentially one-shot you, so you need to keep your guard up in the endgame. Stealing the cavalier to rebuy your own stuff while denying a rebuy for them is usually the way to shorten the game drastically.
Note:
If you wish to meme on fools, swap some niche sideboard cards for Happily Ever After and add Planewide Celebration. I only got to combo them once but it was worth.
Note 2: I originally built the deck to snipe Field of the Dead with Unmoored Ego thanks to THE CLAW but alas, Wizards in their infinite wisdom banned it so a new purpose had to be found.
Note 3: Now that Oko, Thief of Crowns is banned, another major overhaul is needed. This could've been all prevented if Wizards banned green mana back in M20.
