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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Simic/Thallid deck
September 3, 2009

Today's client, Dr. Jekyll, built "a deck that hurts the brain" with the sheer math involved in figuring out how many Saproling tokens it makes. I can attest to its brainbending potential-- I kept looking it over, thinking long and hard about how to fix it, and then getting up from the computer to let my thoughts simmer in the back of my head, to prevent it all from boiling over or turning my head into a pressure cooker. Now that I've let the meat of the deck get soft and tender over a low flame, I'm ready to begin.

Hey BMoor,
First off, you've got a great site, well done. I've seen your deck building garage and I love what I see. So I figured I'd lay one on you and see what you think.

The goal of this deck was to make a casual deck, mostly multiplayer, deck that I needed a math student to figure out, while at the same time still being fun. The idea is simple, Sporesower Thallid with Followed Footsteps, Doubling Season & Paradox Haze. Eventually, it will stay on the table long enough to to bad things. Just as an example, turn 10, with only 1 Sporesower, 1 followed, 1 haze, and 1 doubling season, I end up with well over 10,000 saprolings. While I don't expect to get that far very often, the math involved is rough, so hopefully they kill me early. The liege is because I own one and it works well. Vigor adds much needed support. Simic Mage is mostly for the enchantment move, but I can see the counter stuff being useful sometimes. And getting one or more of those a turn appeals to me, as does an essense warden every turn. Utopia Mycon work okay, and make the math really REALLY annoying. I think I'm going to get a PC program to track it all. I had a Nacatl War-Pride in here, because it's funny with Doubling Season, but it kinda doesn't work with the rest. I was thinking running 4 Clone, but I am not so sure what to cut. Maybe a Vigor and the Guildmages? Also, the only reason for having only 3 Doubling Season is I currently only own 3. I don't mind dipping well into old school cards either, I'm just mostly familiar with Extended. Please, Pimp my deck Mr. BMoor!
Thanks, Dr Jekyll

Vigor 4
Sporesower Thallid 4
Simic Guildmage 3
Essence Warden 4
Utopia Mycon 4
Creakwood Liege 1

Followed Footsteps 4
Doubling Season 3
Paradox Haze 3
Copy Enchantment 4
Verdant Embrace 3
Kodama's Reach 3


Llanowar Reborn 3
Forest 8
Island 4
Simic Growth Chamber 3
Novijen, Heart of Progress 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Alright, let's take it step by step then, shall we?

The first thing I want to draw attention to is Vigor. It just looks wrong here, for two reasons. One, it takes until turn six to send out, by which point your exponentially increasing Saproling army should hardly need the help. Your deck wins by creating creatures faster than they can be killed, not by saving them from damage. And two, between the creature tokens and the spore counters, the last thing you need is be loading +1/+1 counters onto your creatures on top of that. You said yourself that you can make Saproling armies up to 5 figures, do you really want to be keeping track of how many +1/+1 counters they all have? And do they really need any +1/+1 counters? There's hundreds of them after all!

Besides, if you take them out, it makes room for a card I think you really ought to have: Thallid Shell-Dweller. I toyed with the Thallid deck in Time Spiral block, and I found the Shell-Dweller to be absolutely critical. In its "natural habitat", a Thallid makes one Saproling every three turns. Yes, you've got all sorts of toold to hasten things along, but they still take time to set up. Thallids are naturally wanting some time to get things set up, and aggro decks won't want to give you that time. The Shell-Dweller holds off most aggro beaters, and is too big for burn spells, thus allowing you to get your engine rolling. To say nothing of the fact that you currently only have Sporesower and Utopia Mycon as your Saproling producers-- a third would add to the consistency of your deck as well as help you put out more tokens over the course of the game.

Also, by removing Vigor, we no longer have much use for Novijen, Heart of Progress-- a weak card even under the best of circumstances. In its place? More Islands and Forests, most likely, to ensure you get colored mana when you need it. Maybe Sapseep Forest if you're the type who likes "utility lands".

After that, I like Gaea's Anthem better than Creakwood Liege in this deck, mostly because you can copy it with Copy Enchantment. But if you want to add Clone, then by all means go with the Liege. I'm just not sure what to pull for the Anthems, though.

Which is a shame, because there are more cards I want to add. Utopia Mycon is a great one-drop, but it won't produce much mana for you, and let's face it-- it's not suited for combat. Hence, Utopia Vow. Utopia Vow will turn Utopia Mycon into a Utopia Tree, and accelerate your mana. But the real reason to add Utopia Vow? So you can combo it with Gilder Bairn, of course!

Once you've got Utopia Vow on a Gilder Bairn, you can tap the Bairn for mana and spend it on the Bairns untap ability, to put more spore counters on creatures, further doubled by Doubling Season....

Ouch. I'd better stop there before everybody in the garage needs ibuprofen.

Good luck!

~BMoor