Why is This Deck?
This deck is an experiment leveraging a combo of Outcaster Trailblazer and Vesuvan Duplimancy. With enough one-mana spells, these two cards can go big enough that they might as well be infinite.
By copying the Outcaster Trailblazer with one-drop spells, you can generate mana and draw exponential cards, effectively storming off and leaving a ton of power behind. In a perfect situation, you use the spells to protect your pieces and actually generate the value during your opponent's turn to really catch them off guard.
Why No Sideboard?
This deck is basically a party trick. If it's capable of executing the storm turn, it can win the game. All it takes is for an opponent to sideboard in Negate, Get Lost, or Tranquil Frillback and suddenly our fun gets ruined. Given that Arena has Best-of-One as a viable ranked option, I just feel like that format will serve it much better.
Also, I have attempted it in Best-of-Three and found it is much more difficult to pull off. Honestly, BO3's Standard meta is just much, much more interactive than BO1's. I'd often cite that as a good thing because it results in back-and-forth gameplay, but it puts this deck at a significant disadvantage.
The Creature Suite
The main star of the show is Outcast Trailblazer. This lizard-riding cowboy does all of the things we need and can even kind of protect itself from removal by way of Plot. If you plot the trailblazer on three, turn four can see you play Vesuvan Duplimancy AND the Outcaster Trailblazer with a floating mana left over to start the chain (assuming your hand cooperates).
Gala Greeters have been a mainstay for janky brewers for some time while being all but completely ignored by the competitive scene since they came out. The ability to recur value on ETBs lines up with what we're trying to do perfectly but, more importantly, they soak up early removal. Aggro players will see an engine that can gain life while control players will see a threat that grows if left unchecked. Of course, both of them are right, which means they're a perfect distraction to pull early removal and allow our finishers through later.
Stormchaser Drake is also a red herring in the early game meant to frighten out opponent into interaction, but it also gives us cool synergy with the spell suite we have that's designed to trigger Vesuvan Duplimancy. In the early game, if we have to spend a Tamiyo's Safekeeping or Fading Hope on a blocking Stormchaser Drake, drawing a card in addition to the spell effect is very nice. It also represents flying damage that we can copy later if we have a board stall after establishing our engine.
This one might look a little out of place, but trust me, it puts in work. Bloated Contaminator reads like it belongs in dedicated toxic decks or other proliferate shells because of its great synergy with them, but it's also a trampling 4/4 for three mana. It triggers the draw off Outcaster Trailblazer and represents an amazing offensive option as well as a brick house that Mono Red or Boros decks might have a tough time attacking through.
The Spell Package
I'm a firm believer that protection spells can be overused in janky brews by deck builders who fear losing their combo pieces. In general, I'd recommend prioritizing redundancy and card draw over protection spells because protection spells are dead cards if there's nothing on board to protect. That said, I need to check my biases because these one-drop protection spells just so happen to give us the triggers that we need to keep our engine running.
Tamiyo's Safekeeping is probably the best for a myriad of reasons. The two life gained is pretty notable against aggro, and it can target any permanent. Ideally, we're targeting creatures after our Vesuvan Duplimancy is live, but if our opponent has a clutch Tear Asunder or Get Lost, we can protect our Duplimancy to fight another day.
I love the additional utility of adding a ton of power to an attack that this card brings us. In the midgame, it fits our scheme perfectly while also potentially juicing a swing from a Bloated Contaminator or Stormchaser Drake after blockers are declared. X will often equal zero as this deck combos off, but don't forget the option to turn this into lethal damage.
Slip Out the Back and Fading Hope are both excellent at doing what our deck is trying to do, but they also represent potential disruption in the early game. It might seem like a nombo to have cards that remove creatures from the board given that our trailblazers trigger off other creatures entering, but if you go into full control mode, you can stack multiple spells before the original one phases out or bounces. Also, Fading Hope specifically is amazing in the early game for preventing huge attacks off prowess creatures and buying a few turns. If your opponent casts three spells into a Slickshot Showoff, Fading Hope takes the wind out of their sails like no other.
In Conclusion
I honestly did not expect this deck to work when I first put it together. My initial testing in Best-of-Three was not promising, but since making the switch to Best-of-One, I've been delighted at how well this deck lines up against aggro and how powerful of a punch it can deliver in the midgame. If you face off against more control or removal-heavy midrange, you'll need to be very cautious in deploying the threats alongside open mana to protect them, but against most of the BO1 field, dropping critters, hanging on for two turns, and then value blasting just simply works. I'm a huge fan of this deck and would recommend you give it a try if you enjoy BO1 and have the cards.
Thanks for reading, and happy brewing!
