As a full time Twitch streamer, deck donations are pretty common for me, and I've even written about them quite a few times. Every so often I'll have a really cool or fun idea sent to me that we manage to tweak into a fairly successful offering for the format in question. Well, today we're going to talk about just such a Historic deck.

One of the most difficult parts of my job, at least emotionally, is trying to turn a deck that someone has submitted into a success. Trying to give them something that they can play up the ladder with positive results, or trying to make sure they have some great card ideas and suggestions that they didn't have when they first sent me the list. I definitely think we managed that today, and I was having an absolutely fantastic time crushing my opponents with the following list.

Jeskai Historic | Historic | Frank Lepore

• Creatures (21)
• 2 Barrin, Tolarian Archmage
• 2 Captain Lannery Storm
• 2 God-Eternal Kefnet
• 2 Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain
• 2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
• 2 Niambi, Esteemed Speaker
• 2 Niv-Mizzet, Parun
• 3 Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
• 4 Fblthp, the Lost

• Planeswalkers (6)
• 1 Ugin, the Ineffable
• 2 Gideon of the Trials
• 3 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria

• Instants (3)
• 3 Justice Strike

• Sorceries (5)
• 1 Jaya's Immolating Inferno
• 1 Urza's Ruinous Blast
• 3 Karn's Temporal Sundering

• Lands (25)
• 1 Island
• 1 Mountain
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 2 Raugrin Triome
• 3 Glacial Fortress
• 3 Hallowed Fountain
• 3 Sacred Foundry
• 3 Steam Vents
• 4 Clifftop Retreat
• 4 Sulfur Falls

• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer
• 3 Negate
• 2 Mystical Dispute
• 2 Urza's Ruinous Blast
• 2 Fiery Cannonade
• 2 Lyra Dawnbringer
• 2 Ashiok, Dream Render

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As usual, what you're looking at is the final product after our two hour play-test session. The original version was submitted by JoshVS, who is a long time viewer and supporter of the stream. It's worth noting that I'm still having a great time in the Historic format. I may get a little frustrated with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, but outside of those, the format tends to feel like Pioneer or old Extended. It's wider than Standard, but not too wide that you end up with a heap of broken decks and strategies. (And let's be honest: most legendary creatures with three or more words in their name that start with a "U" are obnoxious to play against.)

Since you're able to see the decklist for yourselves, and you can see it in action in the video provided below, I'm going to talk about some of the most impactful changes we made from start to finish.

Niambi, Esteemed Speaker - Niambi seems custom made for a Historic-based deck, and for obvious reasons. While her enters-the-battlefield ability isn't game-breaking by any means, the extra life and ability to save a creature from removal is quite useful. She also trigger Jhoira, allowing us to draw a card, and her ability to let us discard an extra legendary card to draw two new cards is pretty spectacular. This card hits so many sweet spots and I'm really glad we found it.

Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain - This was a late addition to the deck, and one I avoided because a Hill Giant seemed a little clunky. I guess I should have realized if Raff Capashen was good enough for the deck, so was Jhoira. Truth be told, there isn't a ton of spot removal in Historic, so Jhoira would often stick around for a bit, and once she did... oof. Jhoira went above and beyond in terms of how strong of a card-drawing engine she turned out to be. Nearly every single card in the deck triggers her and lets us draw a card. I'm pretty sure the three copies of Justice Strike are the only cards in the deck that don't let us draw cards, which is ridiculous. I started at one copy and immediately went up to two.

Karn's Temporal Sundering - I love Time Walk effects, and this is pretty close to a Time Warp. The fact that you get to bounce a permanent the opponent controls is just gravy. While this is a legendary sorcery, the deck rarely has a problem with having a legendary creature or planeswalker in play. This card feels so fitting in the deck that I added a third, removing a couple of the initial copies of Urza's Ruinous Blast. Additionally, this can be hit off God-Eternal Kefnet for double the turns, and being a legendary sorcery, this also lets us draw a card off of Jhoira. There's nothing quite like casting this off of a Kefnet, bouncing a permanent, drawing a card, then doing it all over again on your next turn. It's rare that you'll be losing from that position.

Kira, Great Glass-Spinner - Kira was surprisingly amazing, and I didn't even know she was legal in Historic! (Thanks, Jumpstart!) This was a crazy good addition, forcing your opponents to have to hit things like Raff Capashen, Lyra Dawnbringer, and even Niv-Mizzet, Parun multiple times in order to kill them. Do you know how hard it is to remove something like Niv-Mizzet when you have to target it twice? The only card this really negatively affected was Niambi, as it prevented us from being able to bounce our own creatures, but Niambi was a great option after the opponent had played their second spell on one of our creatures and took down the shields for us to bounce it back to safety. But seriously, having to spend double the removal spells on our creatures was really strong, and I could see going back up to three copies. I'm also pretty sure most Arena players didn't know how Kira worked, because people were misplaying against it left and right.

Finally, Urza's Ruinous Blast is a card that we initially had three of in the main deck, but in my first round I played against Ugin, the Spirit Dragon; Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath; and Nissa, Who Shakes the World, which convinced me that there were too many legendary cards in the format to really main deck three copies. We also had two copies of Search for Azcanta in the deck initially, but since none of the legendary sorceries count Legendary Enchantments/Lands, they didn't really have any inherent synergy with the deck and I don't think they help what we're trying to do.

One card I was tempted to try was a single copy of Inspired Ultimatum, simply because it's a powerful top end card that can really put us over the top, but I forgot about it when I was trying to remember what card I wanted to add during deck-building.

As I mentioned, this deck was a great success, and definitely one you should see in action.

I actually love this deck for the Historic format, and I think there are a lot of ways to customize it. Maybe remove one Raff Capashen. Maybe remove the Captain Lannery Storms altogether. Maybe add something like Ugin, the Spirit Dragon or Drakuseth, Maw of Flame to cast at instant speed and surprise attack with. There are tons of options for the deck and we have a lot of great options for "historic" cards. I even considered adding Green instead of Red for Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath, but I do think the Red cards are a bit more effective. That being said, the option is still there, and we have a ton of awesome Green planeswalkers we could include as well.

As always, I really appreciate you guys reading, and you should for sure leave me a comment below letting me know what you think of the deck, of the Historic format, and if there's anything that I'm overlooking in the deck. Stay safe, I love you guys, use promo code FRANK5 for all your purchases, and I'll catch you all next week!

Frank Lepore

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