Trudging, Poxing, and Scheming: Fun & Jank Episode 78

What’s crackalackin’? I’m Plum, and welcome back to Epsiode 78 of Fun & Jank!

I tend to bounce around from brew to brew until I found something I enjoy iterating and improving upon, but with the release of SOS, I had two very specific decks I wanted to actually invest time into.

If you’ve read the last couple articles, you know I’ve probably gone through at least a dozen versions of both builds, testing both on and off stream. Trying everything I could think of until I found a list I like. In the case of Living End we ended up taking a fun Gruul build to mythic. I haven’t quite honed a Pox list to the point I want it to be, but I’m quite confident of the build I’m currently working on. So I wanted to put it out there to hopefully give you a better idea of what’s working and what’s not based on my last article where we did some theorycrafting for Smallpox.

So while I’m really enjoying sticking with a list until I get a well oiled machine, I also wanted to take a breather and explore some of the more eccentric synergies Secrets of Strixhaven has to offer. So today, I’m going to show off the current Pox list I’m finding success with, but also give ya a peek at a couple other brews we’ve had a lot of fun with on stream as well. These showcases won’t be super in depth, just a little glimpse at the kind of things we have fun with on stream!

Let’s get into it!

Deck #1: “All-In” Slumbering Trudge

Slumbering Trudge is a rather interesting card. A one mana 6/6 is a crazy rate, and even thought it enters with stun counters, we don’t really care if it ever attacks. Instead we want to abuse it’s high power to help discount and enable casting high mana spells waaay ahead of the curve. We can establish quite a crazy board state by turn three with the following cards.

Mitotic Ultimus – This Alchemy: Aetherdrift powerhouse costs less mana based on the greatest power among creatures you control. With a Slumbering Trudge on the board, this 8/8 tramping Ooze Giant suddenly costs only three mana. But it’s also very hard to trade with or remove favorably. It’s great against board wipes, and allows us to switch from going tall to going wide if it happens to get removed.

Fight Rigging – This is probably the best payoff we have in my opinion. Obviously we can spin into big cards like Great Henge or Ultimus, but its even better when we hit Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (or Turntimber Symbiosis). Pumping a creature every turn also isn’t the worst thing we could be doing.

The Great Henge – Outside of Fight Rigging, this is our other main “engine” in the deck. We can usually cast it for just three mana, and once we do it ramps us, gains us life, and pumps every creature we play afterwards.

Although these are what I’d consider the main payoffs for Trudge, theres also some other solid pieces to help fill in the rest of the list.

Ghalta, Primal Hunger – This is our next best payoff next to Ultimus. Higher power is great, and he’s basically always coming down for only two mana in this shell, but he also dies to single removal spell. it can still end the game by itself if left unanswered though, which is why he warrants an inclusion.

Fanatic of Rhonas – Trudge on turn one, into a Fanatic of Rhonas on turn 2, can catapult you to 7 mana by turn 3. This is a more of a utility piece in this list, but it also allows us to hard cast Emrakul if we can make it into the late game.

Tumbleweed Rising – I wasn’t originally sold on this card until I started playing with it. Trudge on turn one means we can use this to make a 6/6 on turn two to help further reduce the cost of things like Henge and Ghalta. And later on it can usually just copy Ghalta’s or Ultimus’ power to make a 12/12 or 8/8.

To ensure we find our Trudge early and often, we’re running a full playset of Green Sun’s Zenith. In this deck, Zenith effectively serves as copies five through eight of the Trudge, allowing us to tutor it directly to the battlefield for just two mana.

We’ve also packed the list with a heavy suite of Noble and Ignoble Hierarchs. While they provide the necessary ramp to get our engines online, their Exalted triggers serve a vital technical purpose. By attacking with a stray creature, we can temporarily boost a creature’s power to further reduce the cost of our high mana spells.

Gameplay

The deck was super fun to jam in the queue. I was a bit worried that Trudge would jsut eat removal all day long, but was pleasantly surprised that most of our opponents just left it alone, thinking they had time before it was an actual threat, only for us to drop a bunch of 8+ power creatures right after.

It’s explosive and rather consistent. We might be able to get away with splashing some other colors. Blue would give us Mocking Bird, Phantasmal Image, etc. But I really feel like sticking to Mono-Green is makes things simple and clean. We’ll definitely be playing this one in the future.

Deck #2: Mind Roots Pox

We spent a lot of time in the last article trying to find the proper route to take our Smallpox shell and I think I’ve found it. We’ve moved away from the “all-in” fast mana of Culling the Weak and settled into a much more robust, Golgari Midrange shell.

The biggest drawback for this shell is that we don’t have access to Life from the Loam as an engine to keep us ahead of the opponent as we cast Poxes. Since we can’t dredge, we’ve doubled down on Exploration and Malevolent Rumble. Rumble is particularly solid here because it provides an additional mana after we cast Pox.

Running both Witherbloom Charm and Witherbloom Command gives us a tool for every situation. The Command is especially valuable; it lets us mill ourselves to find lands, drains the opponent, and kills pesky 1-drops. In tandem with Mind Roots, you are constantly pressuring their hand while accelerating your own development. Speaking of which, Roots feels like it was made for this deck. It plays into our attrition plan by dropping two cards form the opp’s hand while possibly giving us another land.

The other prominent card here is Icetill Explorer. You’ll notice I’ve worked several pieces of utility into the mana base. Ghost Quarter, Nurturing Peatland, Bojuka Bog, etc. Although we’re getting rid of our lands early, we can get back to 4 mana pretty quickly with Witherbloom Command, Rumble, and Exploration. Icetill is usually how we start to close the window our opponents’ have at winning. I’ve found that looping Ghost Quarter to be particularly effective against a lot of the format right now.

The most common win-cons for this archetype are planeswalkers because they don’t get hit by Pox. Liliana is a mainstay in every list I’ve ever seen and is an auto-include for this Historic version as well. Liliana, the Last Hope and Dellian are kind of flex slots, but I’ve found both to be quite strong during testing. Dellian in particular has been an absolute powerhouse every time we get him on the board and I could definitely see going up to two copies over the other Lili.

You’ll also notice a single copy of Ba Sing Se in the mana base. It allows us to go both wide and tall, and earthbended lands can be sacrifice to Smallpox without losing them.

The rest of this list is made up of staples like Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, and Abrupt Decay. Smallpox does quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to early creature removal, and we can afford to be a bit low on “pure” removal because we can stop our opponent from curving out effectively.

Gameplay

I think you definitely just have to play the deck to get a feel on what kind of lines you can play into or mulligan decisions you need to make. Most of the games feel like an uphill battle until you finally hit a turning point and out-value the opponent. It can grind quite well, but still loses to itself sometimes. I’m still refining this one in my free time to try and squeeze in as much consistency as I can. Its a fun challenge for sure.

If you’re a fan of attrition based decks like 8-Rack or Stax I would give this a shot!

Deck #3: Abzan Sorin

To finish out this showcase, we’re moving away from the resource-denial and stompy strategies and into the world of pure, technical Midrange.

This list spawned from my desire to test Scheming Silvertongue in a midrange shell. During preview season we had discussed how well it played with Sorin, of House Markov so this was my attempt to find something that could take advantage of their similar play style and life gain synergies.

In this shell, flipping Sorin is rather trivial. Between the lifelink on your creatures and the incidental gain from Witherbloom Charm, Sorin transforms into a powerhouse Planeswalker that can stabilize your life total or simply drain the opponent out of the game. I was also very impressed with how often the Extort ability was relevant in grindy matchups as well.

Silvertongue was rather impressive here too. 1/3 flyer with Lifelink is already a decent defensive tool, but tacking on a Sign in Blood every turn makes it a solid card-advantage engine for a shell like this.

Guide and Pride are still so freakin’ good dude. They’re must-answer cards in this meta and since we already have a life gain theme happening they were another auto-include. They generate the life triggers needed for Sorin and Silvertongue while building a board state that demands immediate answers.

I think it is impossible to discuss the Abzan shell without giving a massive nod to the “one-mana planeswalker” itself: Deathrite Shaman. Holy moly I was blown away with how strong he was. I know he doesn’t get that much love in Historic becuase of the lack of fetches. But it didn’t matter. This guy put in so much work during our games I wish i could paly 8 copies. It ramps, drains, and the life gain turns on Scheming Silvertongue immediately and helps flip Sorin easier too. He’s just so damn good.

To tie everything together I we’re playing some pretty generic removal. Most of these are self explanatory and cover our bases against a wide range of threats. Abrupt Decay however, seems particularly strong in a meta full of Frogs and Barrowgoyfs.

Because we are playing a Lurrus build, every one of our non-land permanents has a mana value of 2 or less. This makes our deck incredibly lean, but also potentially vulnerable to being out-classed by bigger creatures. This suite of Erode, Push, and Decay acts as the technical safety net that allows us to play such a low-to-the-ground game. We don’t need to play 4-mana spells when we can efficiently trade one-for-one and then use Lurrus or Jet Collector to rebuy our threats from the graveyard.

Gameplay

4-1 ain’t too shabby for a fresh build like this one. We ended the stream with a very respectable win rate, and more importantly, the deck never felt outclassed. I feel like that’s pretty common for most midrange shells. You generally try to have a 50/50 matchup against most of the format. But with Dimir and Jund being the top midrange shells of choice, it was nice to play a different spin on the archetype.

Closing Thoughts

So like I mentioned at the beginning, I wanted to show off a few one-off brews that we tested out on stream over the past couple weeks. And besides having fun playing with some off-beat ideas, I think my main takeaway is that Historic is in a good place right now. You can play a fair game with Abzan Midrange and feel like a god because Deathrite Shaman is somehow still this good, or you can go completely sideways and play something like Smallpox and still compete. I’m going to keep iterating on these, especially the Pox shell, because if I don’t its going to keep haunting my nightmares. But for now, I’m happy with where we’ve landed. These decks are fun, they’re technical, and they’re janky. My three favorite things!

Give ’em a spin, tweak the numbers, and let me know if you find a version that feels even smoother. I’ll be back soon with more brews, more testing, and hopefully fewer misplays on stream (no promises though).

That’s it for me!

Thanks for reading!

As always, feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below. And make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to help me brew, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together.

Happy Brewin’!