Meme or Dream? Chaotic Transformation (Standard)
Welcome to another edition of Meme or Dream?, the series where we take decklists that Wizards publishes over on Magic.gg, which it states got at least six wins in a row at Platinum rank or better in best-of three on Magic Arena, and put them to the test! Are the decks as janky as they look and a meme, or is there actually a possibility that the fabled Platinum-Mythic Ranked Player broke the format with a wild-looking list and the deck is a dream?
Today's deck is interesting. It's built around Chaotic Transformation, with the idea being that, with some careful deckbuilding, the chaos can be controlled and that for six mana, the red sorcery will cheat multiple huge finishers like Atraxa and Portal to Phyrexia into play! While the game plan looks sweet, I do have some big questions about the deck. First, the deck is five colors but is playing a massive 15 basic lands, despite the fact that only a single card in our main deck can ramp out a basic. There are eight basic Mountains, which is an absurd number for a five-color deck, apparently to support a single Koth, Fire of Resistance in the sideboard? Speaking of the sideboard, the deck has one, which is great. Many Meme or Dream? decks skip the sideboard altogether, although the sideboard for our deck today is super weird. Considering how slow our deck looks (and that it's basically playing no real creatures to make sure we Chaotic Transformation into Atraxa), my first thought was that the sideboard should be overloaded with sweepers and removal to help keep us alive until we can cast Chaotic Transformation. But instead, it's a bunch of random ramp spells and a couple of forgotten planeswalkers. It almost looks like a transformational sideboard plan, but I have no idea why we would want to sideboard out of our primary Chaotic Transformation plan. Anyway, is Chaotic Transformation with a five-color, 15-basic mana base and a super-strange sideboard a meme, or is the wild pile of cards somehow a dream? Let's find out!
