We have come again upon the age of self sacrifice. here we make our stand and we will continue to praise the glory that is Laboratory Maniac.
todays deck tech will explain the nuances that is self mill while using our new favorite frog lord.
Starting with our commander he states whenever a frog you control attacks mill 3. some would immediately HOP on board for a frog tribal, but here in the land of maniacal self mill we shall say nay to this trend.
Grolnoks second ability reads as "Whenever a permanent is Placed into your graveyard from your library, exile it with a croak counter on it." now this has a few implications when played alongside cards that enjoy hitting the graveyard before being exiled. in addition it means that these cards with croak counters do not lose them while exiled, and with that it brings us to our next ability from our frog master.
"you may play lands and cast spells from among cards you own in exile that have croak counters on them." and viola we have come full circle and now have an idea for froggy goodness.
our lord mills cards when he or another frog attacks, they hit the graveyard triggering whatever effects they trigger when doing so, and then they are exiled with froggy goodness to be played at any time we could play the cards normally.
Grolnok has major combos that allow him to abuse an untargetable hand. however he does have some major weaknesses that must be addressed before we delve into the meat of it.
First major weakness of Grolnok is graveyard hate. Cards like Leyline of the Void Dryad Militant & Rest in Peace exile our cards that go to the graveyard before they actually make it there. this prevents Grolnoks second ability from triggering thus loosing all cards we mill.
Second Major weakness that Grolnok relies heavily on is playing cards he wants whenever he wants. Cards like card: Gravedigger's Cage & Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. these cards limit when and where we play our cards and this can really hurt the lab man wincon.
and the last weakness of Grolnok is his fragility. he is a simple 3/3 frog. no natural defenses lead to this frog lord being target for creature hate. and if we dont have our froggy lord then we lose a lot of our strategy.
Now we address our weaknesses before landing on our strengths.
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Fragility: we must protecc our frog. first we must make him untargetable by all but field wide removal. Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots & Whispersilk Cloak. this will allow us to maximize the time grolnok gets to spend on the field, while preventing our enemies from targeting him. alongside these protections we have Veil of Summer & Autumn's Veil. these two cards protect our combo pieces on the turns we want to combo out in, by preventing our cards from being countered or from targeted removal spells.
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Control: While playing Grolnok we need the ability to combo out on our terms and our terms only. the biggest road block to this is are limitations placed on our cards, the biggest being card: Teferi, Archmage of Zhalfir. alongside cards that allow our opponents to combo out themselves we need to counter anything that prevents us from playing at our own pace. however if the cards that hinder us do reach the field, we have a couple of answers to this card: chain vapor & Krosan Grip will target key problems in artifacts, enchantments and creatures that pose problems for us.
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Graveyards: the graveyard is our friend, it is the heartbeat to our deck and it is the most important part to our strategy. the core of our deck answers this major problem. all of our cards are to be used in removing threats from the board that prevent graveyard manipulation. anything that states instead of going to the graveyard exile instead negates our commanders second ability to exile our own cards with croak counters on it.
to know ones own weakness is the start of ones path to overcome that weakness. to embrace that same weakness is to know that even if one is imperfect we can overcome that weakness with knowledge.
