Goodbye The Goose Mother, hello FILF.
My old Simic deck was getting a little stale. I hadn't picked it up in months. It was stuffed with proxies, and was simultaneously too powerful, and yet too weak due to neglect. And when I saw Sab-Sunen, Luxa Embodied, a 6/6 trampling, indestructible amphibious god, it rekindled the love I have for big mana, big draw and big creatures.
The play pattern here is pretty straightforward - ramp into frog god early, keep it in the game with counterspells and protection, then manipulate its +1/+1 counters to both draw and attack every turn.
We'll start easy. Green do what it do best: Ramping. We've got nearly 20 cards that get us into those higher mana brackets. Not much in the way of dorks or rocks -- instead, we're looking for lands (and mostly of the basic variety). Some classic staples like Rampant Growth or Kodama's Reach, some that give us a little modality or flexibility like Insidious Fungus and one of my personal favorite rampers when you can guarantee a fat creature on your side of the table, Traverse the Outlands. Imagine casting Sab on turn five (though you'll likely get her out sooner). She puts a counter on herself becoming a 7/7. Then turn six, you drop a land while she puts on another counter to an 8/8. Traverse will find you eight more lands, exploding you to 14 total lands (one of which is untapped to hold up protection). Game officially changed, even though there are no game changers in the deck.
Let's talk about that protection. From traditional counters like An Offer You Can't Refuse and Voidslime to cheap hexproofing spells like Snakeskin Veil and Tamiyo's Safekeeping, we should have more than enough ammunition to stop any exile attempts on our commander (since she can handle destroy effect on her own). We've also got Swiftfoot Boots and Champion's Helm for some more permanent hexproof solutions, but it's nice to have it at instant speed too.
And finally, here comes the beatdown. Sab gives herself a counter each turn, which we love. But she also can only attack or block when she's holding an even number of counters, which we love a lot less. We've got card such as Fight Rigging, Roaring Earth and Bow of Nylea to always even her out before the combat step, giving us the cards without losing out on the damage.
That's the basic engine. Most of our deck falls into one of these three buckets, plus some solid removal pieces. But I did want to sneak in a few fun cards just for me. Considering we're often going to be having large amounts of mana to play with, some big threats like Koma, World-Eater or this Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger I ripped from a pack and have been struggling to find a home for are swingy includes. Roaming Throne might seem out of place since there isn't much of a tribal theme, but we really only need it to double trigger our god commander. But we do have a Tyrite Sanctum which, in addition to putting counters on Sab, can also turn our scariest creatures into gods.
And lastly, a few pet cards. Dulcet Sirens gives us an even better goad effect to keep the crackbacks to a minimum, especially when paired with a Kiora's Follower or Murkfiend Liege to give us more opportunities to use the effect. And both Faerie Artisans and Machine God's Effigy can allow us to benefit from whatever fun creatures our opponents are playing, helping to reduce a bit of the tunnel vision our game plan can create.
Overall, we're not reinventing the wheel here. We are just kind of doing the things Simic likes to do. But we get to have very impactful turns that don't slow the game down, and that makes for a fun time.
