Historic Training Grounds: Fun & Jank Episode 24

Grab your popcorn, dim the lights, and prepare for a showstopper because Plum has a double feature for you! Two decks for the price of one. And you know what’s even better? They’re free!

This week, I have a couple of lists we brewed on stream featuring a card that has really tickled my fancy from Aether Drift: Alchemy—Trackhand Trainer.

This dude has been absolutely incredible in every deck we brewed so far. The fact that we now have copies 5-8 of Training Grounds, with an upside, has me feeling giddy like a little schoolgirl. I think the best part is that this guy has a built-in card advantage engine, all for just one freakin’ mana! When we have double Training Grounds out, he literally reads “U: Draw a card.”

The lists I’m showing off today try to leverage two or more Training Grounds on the field to win the game or generate incredible value from our creatures. Since we already have both Omen Hawker and The Enigma Jewel in the format, we now have a suite of 16 cards that power up activated abilities incredibly fast. With that much redundancy, we’re bound to find something broken to do with all of ’em.

So let’s get right into it!

Deck #1: Mono-U Training Grounds

If you’re familiar with Pioneer or Explorer, you may have seen something like this before. When I start on a brew, I tend to do a little research to see what inspiration is out there. Sometimes I look at user-submitted decks, old tournament results, or even really old forum threads for obscure interactions and combos.

This time was no different. I came across a few recent Pioneer tournaments featuring an off-meta list that placed fairly well. These decks were a unique take on Mono-U Devotion that used a card we played in Episode 18, Proft's Eidetic Memory.

I mentioned earlier that Trackhand Trainer can draw tons of cards with multiple Training Grounds in play. When combined with Proft's Eidetic Memory, we can use it to power up a creature each turn and churn through our library at the same time. Lucky for us, we also have redundancy in one-mana creatures that draw cards to take advantage of the Training Grounds discount.

Spectral Sailor, Hypnotic Grifter, and Harrier Strix act as additional ways to draw massive amounts of cards in a single turn. It’s also worth noting that both Strix and Grifter can draw and discard for just one mana with a single Training Grounds in play. Grifter can actually pump itself without Proft's Eidetic Memory on board and has won me countless games on its own. However, we would prefer to find a Sailor or Strix because flying makes it much easier to get damage through when we dump counters on them.

We’re also playing some cheap interaction to get rid of problematic creatures. Honestly, turning Sheoldred, the Apocalypse into a Legitimate Businessperson is one of my favorite things to do on Arena. These two enchantments are critical during the turn we want to go “all in” to remove anything clogging up the board and clear the way for our massive creatures. I’d also like to point out that I count Harrier Strix as another valid piece of interaction. Being able to tap down a blocker has proven to be useful in a number of games we played.

The last piece of tech I want to highlight is what we’re currently rocking in our flex slots alongside The Reality Chip. Monument to Endurance feels like a perfect “top end” in our list. Although we’re not a discard-focused deck, Hypnotic Grifter and Harrier Strix make it easy to get value out of it. We can activate their abilities at instant speed, allowing us to get multiple Monument triggers on our turn and the opponent’s. We had a few games on stream where we got to deal 6-12 damage every turn cycle just off this synergy.

Gameplay

Overall, I was very impressed by this list and how well it grinds. With literally every creature in the deck having the ability to draw cards, it’s easy to generate card advantage. Even without Training Grounds, The Enigma Jewel and Omen Hawker make a formidable package to abuse the activated abilities of our creatures.

Deck #2: Training-Scales

At some point during the stream, we started talking about +1/+1 counters and a card we had played recently in Spinner Combo, Marketback Walker. And you guys know my Big Brewers Brain™ started going off. I wanted to play Walker with Training Grounds to make it grow quickly. So I figured—if we’re putting counters on things, we might as well play Hardened Scales too. One thing led to the next and suddenly we were playing Elvish Archivist to glue it all together.

My brew was at a roiling boil guys.

We came up with a quick build before I ended stream, but I continued working on it a bit the following day. You can actually see me blowing my own mind on stream at this exact moment while we tested the first iteration of the deck. I ended up with the following list.

Yes, I know—it’s quite the pile of cards. This is a deck I’m still exploring because I think it has a lot of potential, but I’m overwhelmed by the different directions I could take it.

However, after I played the first draft and found the synergy between Bristly Bill and Skyserpent Seeker, we immediately went up to 4 copies of each. With both Hangarback Walker and Marketback Walker benefiting from Bristly Bill and Hardened scales I knew I wanted to focus more on generating +1/+1 counters on our creatures. Skyserpent Seeker not only put counters on itself for cheap with Training Grounds out, but it also ramped us by fetching lands. Grabbing two lands out of our deck also gets us landfall triggers for Bristly Bill.

Training Grounds made Bill’s activated ability incredibly strong with a board of just a few creatures, and it gets even better with multiple copies of Grounds, allowing us to double the +1/+1 counters on our creatures for just GG.

Archivist has been an anchor in this list from the get-go. I’ve been searching for a home for this guy for quite some time, and this definitely feels like a possible final destination. Archivist gives us value for playing our one mana enchantments even though it doesn’t have activate abilities, and becomes a scalable beater as we play our Walkers or other artifacts like Springleaf Drum.

I’ve been quite happy with it’s inclusion.

Don’t look at me like that.

I’ve already told you that sometimes Plum gets a little too lost in the sauce. I don’t actually like this card, but I must admit its been pretty sweet in a shell including Training Grounds and Hardened Scales. With both those enchantments on the field you can Adapt for just one mana to put three +1/+1 counters on it and pop another one into your hand. It also has a cute little synergy with Bristly Bill. Since the search ability triggers off any +1/+1 counter being placed on it, we can use the Landfall trigger from Bill to tutor more Guardians from our deck.

Is he worth the slots?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sure is fun though!

Gameplay

We played a few iterations of the UG list on stream the following day, including one with Afterburner Expert and Mindspring Merfolk, which was very bad. Both of those cards disappointed me greatly. The core of Bristly Bill and Skyseeker Serpent with the enchantments feels like it as a lot of potential, but I’ve done a poor job of figuring out how to exploit it so far. The deck can be explosive for sure, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. It’s been hard to balance the right number of artifacts and enchantments while also finding the best creatures to use them.

Closing thoughts

Trackhand Trainer is such a sweet addition to the Historic Format and I truly believe it will break something eventually. I just don’t know what that is yet. There’s a stark difference between the two lists I showed off today. One being a port of a Pioneer list and the other being a fresh and unrefined brew. Both of which felt strong in different ways. Between Omen Hawker, The Enigma Jewel Training Grounds, and Trainer I’m sure WOTC will print something to break them into Historic eventually. But I’m perfectly content with putzing around until we get there. There’s so many ways to brew around these cards that I think I’m going to need some help going forward.

One of the reasons I love streaming—and why our Discord community is such a blast—is the collaborative brewing process. I can get pretty deep in the sauce when I’m building, and sometimes I tunnel so hard I miss obvious improvements (like, you know, not playing Mindspring Merfolk). But when people pop into the stream and throw out ideas, it helps snap me out of that one-track mindset. I love bouncing concepts around, tweaking lists in real time, and seeing the deck evolve with everyone’s input. Even when the brews don’t work, the process itself is what makes it so much fun.

Thanks for reading.

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

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewing!