Historic Squee-Blade: Fun & Jank Episode 73

Hello again! Plum here, and today we have a good ‘ol fashioned episode of Fun & Jank.

We’ll start with a little trip down memory lane so I can explain the history of today’s deck. Which is one that I’m amazed I haven’t talked about before. I brewed it up nearly 5 years ago and have been updating and tweaking it every now and again when I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. You may remember a Reddit post I made about it in r/Spikes in 2021 (probably not), but I want to revisit it today and show you the current iteration I’ve been messing with on stream!

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History

The original concept was inspired by a Conley Woods special from Dominaria Standard, but I eventually took it to Mythic by going all-in on a singular, stubborn premise: Squee, the Immortal is the only win condition you need.

The basic idea behind that original list was to play midrange pile that ran a ton of versatile pieces of interaction, while devoting only a few slots to an actual win-condition, which in this case, is Squee. By keeping the board clear, generating value through planeswalkers and permanents, and adding a fun wishboard of silver bullets, you could eventually end the game by smacking your opponent over and over with an unkillable Squee.

Now, Squee on his own is not very threatening, which is why the deck also played Blackblade Reforged to turn him into 10+ power game-ending monster.

So I took this basic idea and updated it for the Historic meta at the time. I swapped out the Mastermind’s Acquisitions for the more versatile Karn, the Great Creator and an artifact wishboard. It gave us a lot options in terms of how we can interact with other decks, and sometimes just gave us free wins for popular decks of the time like Cat/Oven or MUD. The overarching construction of the deck could be broken down into 2 simple packages

1.) The Squee Package (2 Squee + 4 karn).
2.) 54 other cards that make sure I don’t die.

Pretty straight foward?

The goal is to just outvalue and outlast your opponent via Squee. He can chump block every turn, survive boardwipes, chip in for damage, and just be a nuisance throughout the whole game. Squee makes sure we always have something to do no matter what the board state looks like. Instead of playing the long game, we try to play the realllllly long game.

I tried a variety of color combinations but eventually settled on Rakdos during the initial run of the deck. There’s definitely merit to diving into other colors now that we have things like Fragment Reality and Abrupt decay around, but we’ll talk more about that in a bit.

The fact that our removal spells of choice covered such a wide array of threats is waht made this original Rakdos list punch above its weight class. Historic was rather graveyard centric at the time, so you’ll notice I had a bias towards exile-based removal in general.

Feed the Swarm: This was a “gotcha” card. Rakdos is historically famous for having a blind spot when it comes to enchantments. Running Feed the Swarm meant that problematic cards like Solemnity or Nine Lives, which would usually shut down a creature-based win-con, suddenly weren’t a lock out.

Bloodchief’s Thirst: This was a perfect bridge spell. In a format as fast as Historic, you needed to kill a Llanowar Elf on turn one, but you also needed to kill a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria on turn five. Thirst did both, making it a great draw early or late in the game.

Bedevil: I chose this over cheaper options like Eliminate or Heartless Act specifically for the Artifact clause. It allowed you to handle everything from an opposing Mazemind Tome to a Witch’s Oven, all while doubling as a premium creature and walker removal.

Baleful Mastery: This was my answer to the “un-killable” threats. By opting for exile over destruction, I had a clean answer to Arclight Phoenix or Kroxa for just two mana (if you didn’t mind the opponent drawing a card) or four mana to keep the card advantage for myself.

Because almost every removal spell in the main deck hit at least two different permanent types, you rarely found yourself with a hand of useless cards.

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Besides removal, the other important aspect of this kind of midrange-esque shell (and the key to not dying) is setting up some form of card advantage. One of the biggest traps you can fall into with a deck like this is spinning your wheels. You can have the most versatile removal in the world, but if you’re just trading one card for one card, you eventually hit a pocket of lands while your opponent finds their second or third threat.

In the original Rakdos list, Mazemind Tome was arguably the most important card in the 60. Being able to filter your draws on their end step ensured you always found the right answer for the board state. And in a deck that takes a lot of incidental damage from its own lands and early aggression, that 4 life from the fourth activation was often the difference between life and death.

But card advantage isn’t just about drawing from your deck, we also had Karn to help “draw” us additional cards from our sideboard. Karn is essentially a one-card engine. If the board is stalled, he goes and gets Cosmos Elixir to start drawing extra cards and gaining life. If you’re under pressure, he finds a Tormod’s Crypt or a Pithing Needle to shut down their momentum. And of course, once you’ve successfully exhausted their resources, he finds the Blackblade Reforged to finally end the game.

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Updates

But let’s be real: Magic moves fast. In today’s meta, with the sheer power level of cards like Phlage and Psychic Frog, the old 1-for-1 and pray approach just doesn’t cut it anymore. If you’re just drawing one extra card a turn with a Tome, you’re eventually going to get lapped by the hyper-efficient value engines of the modern era.

As I pulled up the old decklist to play a few games for fun and a bit of nostalgia, I realized it needed more than just a tune-up, it kind of just need a whole facelift. I wanted to keep that core gameplan the same, but I needed an engine that could actually scale alongside the rest of the format.

While looking through some of the newer options in terms of removal, I obviously ran into some of the most popular and powerful additions that the alchemy sets have given us: The Chorus Package.

Ribald Shanty and Ballad were already on color with the orignal version, and they scaled as the game went on. Shanty could hit creatures and walkers, and Ballad gaining life and removing creatures via sacrifice seems great in the current meta.

The next obvious jump was to just drop the Tomes, and slot in Hymn at the cost of a light blue splash. Now, instead of just drawing an extra card, our draw spells get more powerful every time we interact with the board. The main cost here was losing some extra utility in the mana base, but I haven’t missed them too much during my testing.

So I swapped some thing around, threw in some new cards, updated the wishboard, and now we have Chorus Squee-Blade!

Besides adding the Chorus package, I also brought in a couple more efficient answers that weren’t around during the time of the original brew.

3x Molten Collapse: This is the modern successor to Dreadbore. In a world of cheap artifacts and planeswalkers, being able to hit multiple permanent types for just two mana felt like a necessity even if we don’t trigger Descend too often

2x Damnation: Sometimes you just need to reset the board. While we still love exile-based wipes, having a clean 4-mana wipe is essential for those games where the opponent goes wider than our 1-for-1 plan can handle.

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We can’t talk about this deck without talking about the Karn-board too! This has always been the brain of the deck, and with the recent shift back to a full 15-card sideboard in Bo1, we finally have the room to be truly degenerate again (we played this in Bo3 though).

We still have Blackblade Reforged for the Squee-kill and Liquimetal Coating for the classic Karn land-destruction lock. I’ve also added A-The One Ring and A-Cosmos Elixir to ensure that even if our main deck draw engine gets disrupted, we can find protection and card advantage from the side. The Stone Brain is here for combo decks, and Disruptor Flute gives us a more flexible way to shut down problematic activated abilities compared to just relying on Pithing Needle. If the game goes really long, we now have Cityscape Leveler and God-Pharaoh’s Statue to serve as massive, game-ending beaters that Karn can even animate to get in damage. You’d be surprised by the amount of times I’ve equipped Blackblade to a 6/6 God-Pharoah’s Statue.

With the new improvements ready to go, we hopped into 5 matches on the Bo3 Ranked Ladder and played some games!

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Gameplay

The Good:

When the engine clicks, it feels untouchable. In our match against the Bant/Superfriends pile, I got to remember why I loved this deck so much

• We were able to get Karn down early and immediately fetch Liquimetal Coating. By picking away at the opponent’s lands, we forced them into a position where they couldn’t cast their high-end spells, like Farewell.
• One of the highlights was slamming God-Pharaoh’s Statue. Between the tax and the incremental life loss, the opponent was essentially paralyzed. Once we found Squee and equipped the Blackblade, the game ended in short order.
• We out-grinded a Mono-Blue Tempo deck by simply having more answers than they had threats. The Hymn to the Ages proved its worth by refilling our hand right when we started to top-deck lands, allowing us to find the Molten Collapse we needed to stabilize.

The Bad:

As always, Jank has its problems.

• Our match against Elves reminded us that even with a board full of removal, a fast start with Layer of the Hydra and Collected Company is incredibly hard to beat. We struggled to find an untapped land for a timely board wipe, and the incidental damage from our own mana base put us in a dangerous spot. Sorcery speed removal was a hinderance here.
• We hit a rough patch against Ninjas where the deck simply refused to give us interaction. We drew back-to-back lands while the opponent setup Satoru and Ornithopter value engines. Without an early Ribald Shanty or Inquisition, we just couldn’t get off the back foot.
• While the Verge lands are a massive upgrade, we still found ourselves taking a lot of damage from our shocks and Thoughtseizes. Against hyper-aggressive decks, every point of life is a resource we sometimes spent a little too freely.

Overall it felt like the deck still has some legs! We have plenty of tools to compete, but finding the right composition of spells is going to be how we improve the list going forward.

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Closing Thoughts

I mean guys. C’mon.

It’s freakin’ Squee with a sword. What’s not to like?

It has its quirks and bad days, but this is Fun & Jank afterall! And when I lock a control player out with Liquimetal Coating, or gain 10 life off a massive Mycelic Ballad to stabilize against aggro, I remember why I brewed it in the first place.

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’!