my current deck, minus what i am missing.
this is my own custom brew.
you can see the revisions i've made over the past month or so here
40 creatures and zero main deck removal for mostly obvious reasons. heavy self mill and dredge is the name of the game. in a match typically game 1 i will generally ignore most opposing gameplay and just swing to win. game 2 i'll bring in most of the sideboard.
obvious strategies are pretty obvious: discard dredgers w/ Fauna Shaman and Lotleth Troll mill them with
Splinterfright
and Nyx Weaver
Slitherhead
and lotleth troll combo well enough on their own, but scavenging the counters onto nyx weaver or Birds of Paradise is also good - there are currently no flyers in this deck.
Loaming Shaman is main deck to restock the library, Eternal Witness and nyx weaver to get stuff back we can't get otherwise ie via Golgari Thug - typically cards like Hero's Downfall or Surgical Extraction post board.
loaming/ewitness/nyx weaver should remain main deck at all times so we can fetch sideboard spells if we need them again after casting.
the big finisher is probably just to sac big things to jarad. like splinterfright or lord of extinction. but lotleth troll is an all-star in this deck. with a good draw he can win games by himself. it's an aggro deck and should be played as such.
i tried to run this with 3x varolz and 4x Death's Shadow but it's not really that fun. i want options. fauna shaman gives me the ability to have a larger variety of creatures to pick and choose from.
removed slitherhead for stinkweed imp, need more flying creatures. i would use Deathrite Shaman instead, but it's banned
anyway sideboard options are probably things like dredgers for removal. most of the time you'll want to bring in everything outside of
Witchbane Orb
and Phyrexian Revoker. those are there for specific cards like ashiok, Mindslaver, Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace, etc.
my maybeboard is full of options to put this together in a budget format, like swapping out fauna shaman for grisly salvage, corpsejack menace could be good if you want to go more of a varolz variant. plus plenty of more budget sideboard options. generally anything i thought would be useful vs control, aggro and burn which i think will be the hardest matchups.
i've given it a lot of thought and i don't think fetchlands are a game changer outside of getting shuffles. 4x temple of malady is better, so i removed 2 verdant catacombs. jungle hollow slows tempo so replaced those with a forest and a swamp for 4 each of each land.
