This deck began life as a thought experiment in "What is the maximum damage I can do with creatures in a single combat phase?"
The answer, it turns out, is a bit over 78,000,000,000.
(That isn't a typo--I did mean to write seventy-eight billion. Story at the end.)
Most of the deck is quite straightforward. Every Saproling-producing
Thallid
variant is included, plus
Elvish Farmer
.
EDIT: I'm apparently an out-of-touch old fogey who didn't know about the Thallids in Timeshift, Planar Chaos, and Dominaria. All I have are the Fallen Empires ones.
Thallids produce tokens rather slowly, so
Spore Flower
is there to stall the game and
Fungal Bloom
to speed token generation.
Natural Selection
allows you to trade a Saproling for one of the deck's centerpieces;
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
,
Verdant Force
, or
Nemata, Grove Guardian
.
Beyond that, the deck has two main stupid tricks, both of which leverage
Gaea's Cradle
.
First, by dumping the Cradle's mana into either
Fungal Bloom
or
Nemata, Grove Guardian
, your Saprolings multiply by 16% or 33%, respectively, every turn.
Second, once you have enough tokens, you pour the Cradle mana into
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
's Overrun ability.
For example: how did the deck get to 78 billon damage? The combo came together around turn 10, with 10 creatures on the board. 40 turns later, there were 361,000 Saprolings (hooray for compound interest!). That was enough to fuel Kamahl's ability 72,000 times, making every Saproling a 216,601/216,601 with Trample. Some of that offense was lost to killing blockers, but not enough to significantly reduce the final figure.
As you might guess, the opponent had a pretty lackluster creature-based deck, and so couldn't do much one the engine was rolling (fortunately, he soon became as curious as I to see the final result, and so wasn't bored). Later, to make this deck a bit more serious, I added Epic Struggle as an easier win condition.
