Howdy! It's your old MTG dog back with another brew! I'm a competitive TCG player who has taken to Magic The Gathering Arena since COVID. I played paper modern on the tour a handful of times, but now stick to the Free to Play goodness that is MTGA. Brewing decks for all kinds of TCGs is a passion of mine!
I love eternal formats and I HATE alchemy/digital-only nonsence mixed in with the #1 TCG, MTG. So I play explorer quite often on arena, and have loved brewing the format. Even with a limitied card pool vs other eternal formats there is still great depth and strong off-meta decks can be brewed.
The deck I took to Mythic this season is a graveyard-loving, life gaining, extra explosive and spicy deck. Not with big bombs, but more of a combo-like finish. We aim to fill our yard then pull lots of creatures back at the same time, stacking ETBs that drain the op to death. It features some of my favorite magic cards in arena; Dina Soul Steeper, Return to the Ranks, and Rally the Ancestors.
The deck functions by just constantly playing creatures that stack lifegain ETB or mills self. We can chump block and gain decent life, living easily vs aggro. Then we convoke to return heeps of 1-2 drops at sorc speed with Ranks, or we can pay 4-5 mana to return ALL 2-3 CMC or less in your yard to the board at instant speed. We win by stacking multipule lifegain ETBs with Dina, Vito, or Blightpriest most games.
Here is my current top explorer deck, -Rally the Ranks-
One cool note is sometimes you have to Rally the Ancestors w/o going letal. Woe strider lets you sac all your creatures before they exile from Rally. You can keep digging for a second Rally/Ranks while doing so. Another cool interaction in this deck is having both Rally and Ranks in hand. You can tap out casting Rally with self-mill creatures in the yard. If you also have 2 white creatures coming back, you can then cast Ranks using convoke. Bringing back 2 full yards in 1 turn is an auto-win if it resolves.
Last note is about HomeBrew decks like this. Bo1 is your friend, no one has a clue what your doing. When they figure it out, its to late hahaa. It is a Fast, High-powered, and Resiliant deck with an instant speed 4-5 mana win-con that is rarly seen. Bo1 Heads will roll while Dina steeps in thier salty souls!
Cheers and Have a good night, I'm off to battle with my guild in another TCG called Splinterlands :D