Fish Five-0: Bant Tokens (Standard, Magic Arena)
Welcome back to another episode of Fish Five-0! This week we're going to take an existing archetype and see what Hero of Precinct One and Dovin, Grand Arbiter can do for the tokens archetype!
Gameplan
The plan is to go wide with a ton of small creatures and to slam an anthem effect out of Trostani Discordant or Venerated Loxodon to close out the game. The way you play this deck, unfortunately, does require us to play into some board wipes but with some new additions, we don't have to commit as hard anymore.
Hero of Precinct One can generate an army quite easily through a bunch of spells we were going to cast anyways. Flower // Flourish and so on. Dovin, Grand Arbiter was a tough card to evaluate at the beginning of spoiler season but now with everything revealed and a decent amount of playtesting, the card is probably the best of the three new planeswalkers. It's -1 ability generating a token and gaining a life has come in clutch at numerous times. The +1 ability of Dovin helps get Dovin to his -7 quite fast. I've gotten his -7 off as early as turn 4 and lets just say handpicking 3 cards out of your top 10 is usually hard to lose with unless you're super unlucky and hit all lands. Dovin has had a lot of negative buzz, but Dovin is more of a supporting role than your main win condition.
Changes I'd Make
I would highly recommend adding Tocatli Honor Guard in the sideboard. The number of how many should be three to four as this card will help us beat the Golgari matchups and help stop all the other 'enter the battlefield' effects that we have issues with. It's really nice to be able to shutdown cards like Wildgrowth Walker and Ravenous Chupacabra from triggering.
I would also look into adding an Unbreakable Formation as this card will help us fight control and all of their sweepers. It'll also be nice to know that I can swing into my opponent's board and not lose any of my threats.
Conclusion
The deck feels almost there and if you've got the cards laying around, try it out. I'm gonna to fine tune this list on my own time as I think there's something powerful here. I'm not 100% sure if Bant is the only variation that could take advantage of Hero of Precinct One and Dovin, Grand Arbiter as I think there could be a really good Esper Midrange shell that uses the same two cards but also uses Thief of Sanity and Hostage Taker. I can say however that if you're in the token business, Hero of Precinct One is the truth and adding blue for Dovin is definitely a huge plus.
See you soon!
-TheAsianAvenger
