Before we start, please note that you could perfectly use
Thelon of Havenwood
as the deck's commander, he is in the deck and is as powerfull as slimefoot. Using Thelon doesn't really change our gameplan
Disclaimer
This deck is my personnal, which was meant to be budget from the very beginnning but tends to become a bit more competitive. I'll take some time at the end of this explanations to talk about cheaper ways to do what the deck wants.
Introduction
Speaking of saprolings, golgari (black/green) does the job and let us generate a massive ammmount of saproling for us to sacrifice for bonus effects or to open attack with.
The Idea here is to let our funguns get 1 saproling counter and Proliferate as much as possible (Proliferate: To proliferate means to choose any number of permanents and/or players that have a counter, then give each one additional counter of each kind that permanent or player already has. src : MTG Wiki). Proliferate lets us generate saprolings at high speed so our deck remains useful even in mid/late game. When you think the time has come there are plenty of ways for you to generate a good ammount of saproling at once and then sacrificing them for your victory's sake.
Ramp
Ramp in this deck contains some classic pieces such as Cultivate or Rampant Growth. But there are some more "tokens oriented" ramp cards as
Perilous Forays
or
Song of Freyalise
. There isn't any mana rocks, because I thought it wouldn't fit the deck's theme.
Card draw
Most of the deck's card draw relies on your creatures dying. It actually isn't a problem since most of your creatures are forgetable 1/1 tokens. Even if cards like
Fecundity
allow your opponents to draw cards, you'll get more profit than your opponents most of the time since your deck is focused on sacrificing saprolings.
Focused or global hate
If you're playing against other human beings, odds are that they will play creatures, and you don't want to let their big stuff alive while they decimate your still innocents fungus and asprolings. So I included some spells as
Spark Harvest
or
Bone Splinters
. For artifacts there are
Return to Nature
and
Nullmage Shepherd
.
The only boardwipe I included is
Gaze of Granite
, even if
Butcher of Malakir
could be considered as one.
Saprolings generators
Our generators will often be cards such as
Deathspore Thallid
or
Utopia Mycon
. Little fungus that will hopefuly live long enough to generate our precious saprolings. Note that people will usualy try to focus them once they understand your gameplan. To protect them there are 3 cards:
Golgari Charm
,
Wrap in Vigor
and
Savage Thallid
.
If you're using Thelon as commander, protecting them should be easier but their newly aquired stats will probably reinforce opponents will to target them. If by any mean a fungus were to die, note that you can use thelon ability to exile it from your graveyard to generate even more spore counters. A fungus strengh is never really lost with thelon.
There are some others consistent ways to generate saprolings tokens as
Verdant Embrace
or
Mycoloth
.
In need of a quick yet serious ammount of saprolings, you can count on cards as
Morbid Bloom
or
Verdeloth the Ancient
. There are plenty of ways to generate saprolings with this deck which will usualy fit your gameplay.
Sacrifice outlets and Aristocrats
Here we are, the interesting part: where the value engine goes off. It's not uncomon for this deck to get at least one sacrifice outlet on board and two aristocrat pieces to generate even more value out of your evil (yet useful) acts.
Sacrifice outlets will usually be the generating fungus, but cards as
Fungal Plots
and
Perilous Forays
can do the job too, no matter how you sacrifice saprolings fact is you want them dead.
Aristocrats are usualy meant to drain 1 hp when a creature you control dies, but some of them are built different and that's the case of
Butcher of Malakir
, which makes every opponents sacrifice a creature when one of our creature dies. Note that the butcher is a worse version of
Dictate of Erebos
but it's also way cheaper.
Quick wording note: Poison-tip archer makes every opponent lose one life whenever ANY creature dies, even their's.
If you're using Thelon as commander, you probably will strugle a bit more to ping opponents down.
Combos
This deck does have an infinite combo, infinite saprolings, infinite mana:
Life and Limb + Sporemound
This one is easy, a saproling enters the battlefield, it's a forest, so sporemound creates a saproling, it's a forest and so on.
More budget options
In this section I'll go through 2$+ cards and see if I can replace it with a more budget version or a substitute card I think would still fit the deck.
Blood Artist
==>
Evolution Sage
Priest of Forgotten Gods
==> honestly I don't know
Pitiless Plunderer
==>
Ruthless Knave
Mycoloth
==>
Rot Shambler
Verdeloth the Ancient
==>
Sporecrown Thallid
Three Visits
==> any ramp spell you want (or removal spell if needed)
Second Harvest
==>
Death Mutation
Grafted Exoskeleton
==>
Illusionist's Bracers
Perilous Forays
==> any ramp spell you want (or removal spell if needed)
Fabled Passage
==> this one is tricky, just replace it with a ramp spell or another land you want.
Thanks for reading, this guide is meant to evolve through time as I understand how this site works and as my deck evolves. If you have any tip aside from the non-existant mana base, please let me know!
