My favorite of those untraditional decks is one I've been playing over the past day or so at Platinum 3/4: Four-Color Dredge, or Chilled Lox if you're into
I toyed with the idea of using Narcomoeba and Venerated Loxodon together shortly after the full spoiler came out, but couldn't get it to work. At the time, there were three major issues. First, the deck struggled to win postboard games, when a deck like Golgari Midrange could keep its streamlined gameplan while adding cards like Ritual of Soot. Second, Venerated Loxodon wasn't doing enough to consistently win games on its own, and the draws without it weren't great. Third, the mana was terrible.
After I started playing Arena, I went back to the deck. The first problem was solved by a best-of-one format, and as it turned out, there were fairly simple solutions for the other two.
Molderhulk, which I initially dismissed as slow and clunky, turned out to be fast and powerful, increasing the deck's consistency with eight top-end threats instead of four. Molderhulk also mitigates two of Venerated Loxodon's main weaknesses, bringing back white sources from the graveyard when the elephant gets stuck in hand and providing a way to take a turn off to convoke Loxodon while keeping the pressure on or multiple blockers up.
As for the mana issues, I just needed to make a few adjustments. After reducing black to a secondary color and cutting any white and blue cards other than Narcomoeba and Venerated Loxodon, Unclaimed Territory got better at naming whatever it needs to without screwing up the curve. With Stitcher's Supplier and Molderhulk both being Zombies and Pelt Collector and Glowspore Shaman both being Elves, it maintains functionality beyond being just a white or blue source.
With that in mind, I arrived at this list:
Four-Color Dredge
4 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Swamp
4 Temple Garden
4 Unclaimed Territory
2 Watery Grave
1 Woodland Cemetery
4 Pelt Collector
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Glowspore Shaman
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
4 Narcomoeba
2 Wildgrowth Walker
4 Jadelight Ranger
4 Venerated Loxodon
4 Molderhulk
The gameplan here is to fill up the graveyard with self-mill cards and explore creatures, building up a reasonable board state while applying pressure to the opponent's life total. This sets up a board state where at least one huge threat (Venerated Loxodon or Molderhulk) will break the game wide open. If that isn't enough, the self-mill engine helps close things out: Narcomoeba chips in for incremental damage in the air, while Creeping Chill gets in the last few points of damage.
Stitcher's Supplier and Pelt Collector are the turn one plays. Ideally, the one-drops would be the same color, but Stitcher's Supplier is insanely powerful. When six cards hit the graveyard, there's around a 60% chance of hitting at least one of either Narcomoeba or Creeping Chill, and since over half the deck is creatures it makes casting Molderhulk on time easier. This means that when the opponent makes a play like turn
one Ghitu Lavarunner, attacking into Stitcher's Supplier has real downside for them.
I chose to play Pelt Collector over Llanowar Elves because it helps an area of weakness while Llanowar Elves doesn't. Many of the creatures in the deck have below-curve bodies, and getting an extra few points of damage in early is valuable. Unlike Golgari Midrange, which wants to play Carnage Tyrant and Vivien Reid as fast as possible, this deck doesn't get much out of acceleration other than playing Jadelight Ranger a turn early.
At two mana, Glowspore Shaman is an aggressive body with self-mill tacked on. It's usually better not to put a land on top of the deck, but it's nice to have the option. Merfolk Branchwalker fills a similar role. Wildgrowth Walker provides a much-needed bit of defense against aggressive decks while synergizing with the gameplan. With all three in hand and the mana to cast them, I like playing Glowspore Shaman first unless I'm up against an aggressive deck, in which case I would play Wildgrowth Walker first.
Jadelight Ranger is the only three-drop. Three mana isn't the best slot in this deck – the ideal turn three plays are Molderhulk and Venerated Loxodon – but a graveyard engine with a serviceable body and card selection tacked on is a good backup plan.
The best hits off of all those graveyard enablers are Narcomoeba and Creeping Chill. Narcomoeba can turn a good start into a broken one when milled early, and if cast or milled later, it does a decent job at chipping away at the opponent's life total. Creeping Chill provides both speed and inevitability. It's good with a fast start, and digging for it with self-mill cards can close out a grindy game.
Molderhulk and Venerated Loxodon are the top-end threats. Venerated Loxodon's hard-to-answer anthem effect is a huge swing, provided the opponent can't take advantage of a turn where the only blocker is a 4/4.
It's better to play shocklands tapped when possible, but the deck has two ways (aggression and lifegain) to mitigate the negative effects of playing one untapped. It's sometimes better to play an untapped shock on turn one when playing another land instead, like Unclaimed Territory, would cut off plays later.
When figuring out what to name with Unclaimed Territory, my main priority is figuring out what will allow me to cast everything in my hand, then what will allow me to cast the non-Narcomoeba spells in my deck, and finally Narcomoeba if there isn't any reason for me to name something else. The five common names are Scout for Merfolk Branchwalker and Jadelight Ranger (Scout could also represent Seekers' Squire so it's better to use that than Merfolk), Zombie for Stitcher's Supplier and Molderhulk, Elf for Pelt Collector and Glowspore Shaman, Cleric for Venerated Loxodon (Elephant is, fittingly, too obvious), and Illusion for Narcomoeba.
Dredge doesn't have any truly great matchups, but it doesn't have any truly bad ones either. Even the more effective answers like Deafening Clarion can't kill every single threat, and even the faster finishers like Crackling Drake aren't always fast enough.
Despite all the shocklands and X/1s, mono-red is a good matchup. Their deck is designed to deal 20 damage, not 26, so Wildgrowth Walker and Creeping Chill are effective against them. The setup cards aren't great, but they can still trade off while advancing the gameplan, and Stitcher's Supplier is more explosive than anything their deck can do. The top-end threats also shine here, with Molderhulk presenting a body they have a hard time dealing with while keeping the pressure on, and Venerated Loxodon growing creatures out of Chainwhirler range. Although Dredge's gameplan lines up well overall, Runaway Steam-Kin and Goblin Chainwhirler can be difficult to beat due to the lack of spot removal, so I think it's better to play around Chainwhirler as much as possible.
White aggressive decks are generally okay matchups. Sometimes their start is unbeatable, but in the games where it isn't, Stitcher's Supplier is better than any of their turn one plays, Wildgrowth Walker and the explore cards help stem the bleeding, they can't usually block Narcomoeba, Molderhulk is too huge for them to trade with, and Venerated Loxodon helps neutralize an anthem on the other side of the board.
Jeskai Control is good, but tricky. Dredge has a fast clock, but their answers are good and their finishers are better, so correctly identifying what risks to take and what cards to play around is often the difference between winning and losing a game. Risky plays like attacking all-out and forcing them to have Settle are usually bad. The clock isn't fast enough to completely take away their room to maneuver, and as aggro-heavy as the Arena meta is, it makes sense for them to play more sweepers than a typical best-of-three control deck would play.
Golgari is not great, but not horrible either. They have a good lifegain engine with four Wildgrowth Walker and up to twelve explore creatures. Their main weakness is in dealing with threats they can't block one-on-one: Molderhulk and Narcomoeba. Venerated Loxodon is also strong, although without Benalish Marshal to pump it up to a 5/5 it's a bit weak to Finality.
Izzet Drakes is another fine matchup. If they gum up the board with Murmuring Mystic or try to end the game in two hits with Enigma Drake or Crackling Drake, there isn't really much Dredge can do, so it's really important to get aggressive. I like making more aggressive plays like an all-out attack even when their life isn't particularly low. I'd rather play against the version with no Enigma Drake than the version that plays it, because when they spend the first three turns playing cantrips it's hard for them to win, but when they have a good blocker on turn three it gives them more room to execute their gameplan.
Unfortunately, the new manabase means there's no hope of playing a few cards that might seem good in this deck. Of those cards, Doom Whisperer is probably the most important. A 6/6 flying body for five is good at ending games, and this deck can take full advantage of the surveil engine by dumping a bunch of Narcomoebas and Creeping Chills in the graveyard. I think Pelt Collector is better than Llanowar Elves in the second one-drop slot, but not by much, and if I were to adjust the deck to include Doom Whisperer (probably as the second top-end threat instead of Venerated Loxodon) I would make that switch.
The others are less consequential. Seekers' Squire and Lazav, the Multifarious are solid cards, but they're minor sacrifices given that Stitcher's Supplier, Glowspore Shaman, Merfolk Branchwalker, and Jadelight Ranger are all better at their primary function of dumping cards in the graveyard and applying pressure. Seekers' Squire is probably playable anyway, but costing black mana is a downside, and Wildgrowth Walker edges it out for the final two-drop slot in part because of that downside.
Gruesome Menagerie is also a no-go, but I don't like that card in this deck. At five mana, I need a game-winning bomb, not a card that does the things I wanted to do on turn one or two. I feel similarly about Midnight Reaper. Drawing cards is bad when those cards are mostly creatures that cost one or two mana, and losing life is also bad. It helps reload after a board wipe, but other than that function I don't like it.
If I were to play it in best-of-three, my sideboard would probably look something like this:
3 Golgari Raiders
3 Duress
4 Kraul Harpooner
2 Midnight Reaper
1 Sorcerous Spyglass
2 Wildgrowth Walker
In a linear deck like this one, it's important not to change the gameplan too much, which means it's usually better to play specialized cards that are great against one deck than catch-alls that are good against two or three. Furthermore, the inability to reliably cast nongreen, noncreature spells on time limits the number of options. Aside from Kraul Harpooner, all of the cards in the sideboard are targeted toward a specific style of deck.
Golgari Raiders could be maindeckable, but I don't want too many cards that rely heavily on the graveyard engines to function, and I think Molderhulk's functionality as a mana fixer and ability to be cast on less than four lands make it a better fit. Against a deck like Golgari Midrange, a good draw with graveyard engines is essentially a requirement to win the game, and a hasty attacker that's bigger than Carnage Tyrant forces them to have one of their few removal spells or risk falling behind. It's also good against control, which is forced to answer it at instant speed or lose a chunk of their life total.
Duress and Sorcerous Spyglass stop control decks from taking over via board wipes and planeswalker engines. Even with only nine black sources, Duress is fine because it doesn't need to be cast in the early turns, whereas a creature like Seekers' Squire or a removal spell like Moment of Craving would be more problematic for the manabase. Sorcerous Spyglass is a preemptive answer to Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, which is their best way to close out a game.
Sometimes, control decks will draw a boardwipe and play it immediately, or ignore Spyglass naming Teferi and win with Niv-Mizzet, Parun, which is where Midnight Reaper comes in. One boardwipe is good for them, but drawing a bunch of cards and filling the board back up again makes things hard for them. It's also a creature, which helps cast Molderhulk on time. I like cutting Creeping Chill in this matchup in part because it's too hard to play Molderhulk and sideboard hate and another four noncreature spells, and playing creature-based hate cards as much as possible helps with that.
Wildgrowth Walker's utility as a blocker, threat, and lifegain engine is good against white and red aggressive decks. It's only a two-of in the maindeck, never too terrible against any deck but only great in certain matchups, but I want the full four in the matchups where it shines.
Because the deck can't play spell-based removal and hope to cast it on time, it's hard to deal with big fliers, which stop Narcomoeba dead in their tracks and end games within a couple turns. Against Izzet Drakes, Jeskai Control, Boros Angels, or any other deck that relies on fliers, Kraul Harpooner shores up that weakness. The body is good against most of those decks as well, in case there isn't another good turn two play available.
Although Four-Color Dredge isn't as strong as a tier-one deck, it can hang with anything in the format, and I like it for grinding up the lower levels of the ladder or bringing to Friday Night Magic. Plus, it's a lot of fun!
(Edit: Adding an importable version of the list, without links.)
4 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Swamp
4 Temple Garden
4 Unclaimed Territory
2 Watery Grave
1 Woodland Cemetery
4 Pelt Collector
4 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Glowspore Shaman
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
4 Narcomoeba
2 Wildgrowth Walker
4 Jadelight Ranger
4 Venerated Loxodon
4 Creeping Chill
4 Molderhulk
