Magic Arena‘s Explorer format is in full swing, and it’s a fantastic environment. The meta is diverse and you never know what you’re going to run into. While Winota may be heading up the ship of the metagame, there’s a deck archetype that had some eyes on it initially.
It’s powerful and is playing a card that has been previously Banned on Arena. Today we’ll be looking at the Fires of Invention decks of the format and what our recommended version is!
Fires of Invention
Our star card is Fires of Invention. This 4 mana enchantment limits you to playing spells only on your turn, but also you can cast 2 spells for free if it’s equal or less than the number of lands you have in play. This is VERY powerful and even resulted in it’s banning for Standard and Historic. But it’s fair game in Pioneer and Explorer! Let’s look at a few different versions of the Fires decks.
Mono Red Golos Fires
Our first list is Mono Red Golos Fires. This list is a pretty far cry from what Fires decks looked like back in the day.
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This version of the deck has been really killing it in MTGO leagues in Pioneer, and so we’ve translated it over to Explorer. We loose a couple cards from the mana and sideboard, but generally speaking we have the whole deck. The idea here is that we’re using Fires of Invention to stick a Golos, Tireless Pilgrim to ramp, and a Cavalier of Flame and have a bunch of open mana to pump it up.
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Izzet Golos Fires
Next up, we have a riff on the previous deck, this is Izzet Golos Fires. This deck takes some of the core components of the Mono Red version, but looks to play a little more of a control game plan with some blue cards.
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We have access to Omen of the Sea and Shark Typhoon to help us find cards, but also we’re playing more removal. We have Farewell to deal with a variety of problematic permanents and our finisher is The Kami War.
Because we’re accounting for playing blue, we also get a more diverse sideboard to deal with more issues.
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Jeskai Fires / 4C Fires
With Jeskai / 4C Fires, we return back to a deck that feels a bit more familiar. We have 2 lists here so let’s look at 4C fires first because that’s what people are playing in Pioneer.
We don’t have a sideboard for this list, but you can definitely pieces from the next list. The 4c version plays some control elements, but also has a cool Token maker / Transmogrify package to find Agent of Treachery. Agent is one of the premier finishers in this game and can often lead to an early concede.
Now, let’s look at the plain jane Jeskai version.
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The Jeskai version looks pretty similar to the 4 Color version, but we drop the green and Esika’s Chariot in favor of more control cards, and a more consistent mana base. We still rock a near identical token and Transmogrify set up here, but we’re a lot less reliant on the token strats for this version.
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As for our recommendation on which version to play, I’m a big fan of the Jeskai version. To me it has the right mix of card advantage, removal and threats. While all of these versions have their advantages, Jeskai really offers a solid package to match the current meta.
