Back when Streets of New Capenna was about to release, we did an article and video about a pretty meme-y deck. I dubbed that deck “Golgari Big Boy” and it focused in on a pretty spicy card from New Capenna, Fight Rigging. While it was a meme for Standard, the core of the deck wasn’t too far off, and it’s picked up some steam in Explorer!
We’ll talk the in’s and out’s of the deck and why it’s a solid contender for MTG Arena’s newest format! Obviously we have to start with the namesake card, Fight Rigging.
Fight Club
To understand the deck, we need to look at Fight Rigging. It’s a 3 mana enchantment, which lets us hideaway a card from the top 5 cards of our library. Then each combat, it puts a +1/+1 counter on a creature we control.
Then if we have a creature with 7 power in play, we can play the hidden card for free. Even after we play the card, this continues to pump up our creatures every combat so playing multiples is super powerful. Seems pretty great right? So there’s 2 segments of creatures we want in this deck. We want enablers, and hits. Let’s look at our enablers first.
The Coaches
To kick things off, we are playing 8 mana dorks in Llanowar Elves and Gilded Goose. We want these two because we want to power out Fight Rigging and our other Enablers quickly. Speaking of enablers, we’re playing a few creatures that are WAY above the curve for their cost. Shakedown Heavy and Rotting Regisaur turn on Fight Rigging right away.
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The Hits
With our enablers, let’s look at what cards we’re wanting to hit off Fight Rigging.
To preface this, there’s a couple standard hits you’ll find in nearly every version of this deck, and a couple that are a bit different. Verdurous Gearhulk is one of those off beat choices, but it’s VERY good. It beefs up creatures, it has trample, what’s not to love. Elder Gargaroth is another creature that we really love hitting. It’s a big creature and very versatile. With this, we can start to build a wider board with it’s token, draw some cards, or stabilize our life total.
On the big end of the spectrum, Titan of Industry is a total house, literally and figuratively. Another insanely versatile creature, and a massive body to have out on turn 3 or 4. Lastly, Turntimber Symbiosis is almost like extra copies of Fight Rigging, as it’s going to cheat another creature into play from our library. Since we also have some big 3 cost creatures as well, they’re reasonable choices since they’ll get 3 +1/+1 counters as well.
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It Stands Alone!
Now the Fight Rigging game plan is one that can end the game very quickly. But we’re not always going to be allowed to solitaire our way into a free win. We’ll run into hand disruption and counter magic and what not. That’s not a problem for our deck at all! If we remove Fight Rigging from the equation, what we’re left with is an aggressive midrange deck that plays creatures that are WAY over the top of pretty much any other creature deck in the format.
We can apply some huge pressure to our opponent’s life total, and we have a few other cards to help close out the game.
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Sideboard
Since we’re in the Golgari colors, we have access to play some of the best removal and disruption in the format.
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The List
Here’s the list that we’ve been talking about.
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I’ve been playing a bunch of this deck on the ladder, and it’s been doing incredibly well. We can fight against nearly every deck in the format, and if we fall behind, many of our draws are enough to put us right back in the fight, so to speak.
Definitely give this list a shot, as it’s a rising star.
