Slimefoot, the Stowaway II: The Secret of the Ooze
This Budget EDH deck centers around Slimefoot, the Stowaway and other cards that produce and weaponize tokens, while also spreading spore counters. This is a Thallid deck, w/ a soft Fungus subtheme.
I believe it is also very flavorful, and is my pride-and-joy when it comes to vorthos.
Be warned, you will need a metric ass-load of counters and tokens for this deck. Come prepared.
The goal of this deck is to play Thallids. Thallid is a creature originally printed in the set Fallen Empires. The gimmick with every Thallid is that they passively accrue spore counters. They can remove three of them to summon a 1/1 saproling token. We run just about every Thallid that I could squeeze into this deck who isn't outright garbage.
We start by playing cheap Thallids, like Deathspore Thallid, Thallid Germinator, Utopia Mycon, and Vitaspore Thallid. We buy time for them to amass spore counters with fog cards like Fog, Darkness, and Moment's Peace; or removal cards like Mold Shambler. Additionally, we aim to establish our board's safety with cards like Butcher of Malakir, and Dictate of Erebos, making our opponents think twice about murdering our innocent lil' Thallids.
As we do this, we should remain passive, keeping our Thallids out of harm's way, and buying for time to draw cards and mana ramp. If necessary, cards like Skullclamp, Viscera Seer + Dark Prophecy / Moldervine Reclamation, and Thallid Soothsayer can be used to sacrifice any spare saproling tokens we may have to get more resources.
Once we have a good boardstate, and a respectable number of Thallids on our side, we should play cards like Sporesower Thallid, and Sporoloth Ancient to accelerate our spore counters. Spread the Sickness, Plaguemaw Beast, and Thelon of Havenwood also help with this, but either cost us additional resources, or have an opportunity cost associated with them. Regardless, in an ideal situation, every single one of our Thallids should be able to start pooping out saproling tokens each turn. Additionally, non-Thallid token generators can help here as well, such as Druidic Satchel, Jade Mage, and Sporemound; as well as more expensive options like Verdant Force and Sprout Swarm.
By now, our engine should be online, and we can shift gears. We can begin sacrificing our tokens to cards like the afformentioned Viscera Seer, Psychotrope Thallid, Grim Backwoods, and Thallid Soothsayer to get card advantage; Utopia Mycon for mana; and cards like Deathspore Thallid for removal, which Butcher of Malakir and Dictate of Erebos help with as well.
Once wrestling away board control from our opponents, we can maintain it by using our fog suite (Respite, Moment's Peace, Fog, Darkness), or my preferred option: by setting up a really janky combo between two cards: Koskun Falls, and Season of the Witch.
Now allow me to explain:
WARNING: I AM A BIG DUMB IDIOT HEAD, FALLS AND WITCH DON'T COMBO!!! BECAUSE KOSKUN FALLS SAYS THEY "CAN'T ATTACK", THEY ARE SAFE FROM SEASON OF THE WITCH.
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Koskun Falls functions similarly to cards like Ghostly Prison, where opponents must pay if they wish to attack. Koskun Falls does come with a cost, requiring a on one of our creatures to keep it around. Now, though slightly expensive, that's not bad on its own.
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However, it gets better. Season of the Witch is a card that forces our opponents to attack with their creatures. If they don't, those creatures are destroyed.
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You may notice, our opponents are now in a bit of a pickle. If they don't want their creatures dead, they have to attack. However, they need to pay to attack, thanks to Koskun Falls.
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So they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either they have to spend a ton of mana just to keep their creatures alive, or they let their board get wiped by Season of the Witch.
"But wait" I hear you say, "can't they just go down to a single creature?". Oh sure, they can. But remember:
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We've got tokens, at least a dozen of them. we're not worried about one single creature. We can chump-block for days.
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So this all results in a situation where each opponent is forced into a position that is favorable to us, where they have few creatures, and we have many, allowing us to play our precious Thallids, create saprolings, and durdle to our heart's content.
"B-but wait!" I hear you say once more, insisting on speaking while the professor is talking, "Season of the Witch forces us to attack too!"
- A wise observation, dear student of the fungal ways. But that's just it... We came prepared:
If you read Season of the Witch's oracle text closely, you notice that it doesn't really care whether our creatures attacked or not. What matters to it is that they're tapped. Therefore, we're totally free to tap our creatures out for something else... like Cryptolith Rite.
With Cryptolith Rite in play, we can theoretically gain tons of mana of any color. Though, for our purposes, we're only concerned with Cryptolith Rite's ability to let us tap for .
Enter our win-condition, Pestilence. Once we have our Koskun Falls, Season of the Witch, and Cryptolith Rite combo set up, we can durdle around until we've got enough creatures to win with Pestilence's activated ability.
Here's the step-by-step process. It's simple:
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Get at least a number of creatures equal to half the life total of the opponent with the highest amount.
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Play Pestilence, and Slimefoot, the Stowaway.
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Tap-out our entire board with Cryptolith Rite.
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Dump all that -mana into Pestilence.
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The first trigger will kill all of our now tapped 1/1 saprolings, triggering Slimefoot, the Stowaway's ability, dealing that much damage to each of our opponents, and causing us to gain that much life, simultaneously protecting us from Pestilence's damage.
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Finally, watch as the opponents' life totals disappear, and revel in the glory of the greatest victory fungus-kind has ever witnessed.
Winning this way is super satisfying, but I admit, it's pretty damn janky. Because of that fact, this deck runs some alternate win-conditions, and some support to help us get there.
Nemata, Grove Guardian, and Overwhelm provide really strong buff effects that can help us win the old-fashioned way of smacking the opponent. Evasion from Profane Command, and other anthems can help with this as well, like Thelon of Havenwood and Sporecrown Thallid
We also can opt to go tall, by sacrificing our creatures to Carrion Feeder, giving him haste with Vitaspore Thallid, and swinging.
Big recursion spells like Creeping Renaissance, Grimoire of the Dead can help us make big comebacks, while single-target recursion from Profane Command and Life / Death can help us get back important cards to our strategy.
Tutors help us get our combo-pieces more efficiently, like Mangara's Tome, Diabolic Tutor, or Increasing Ambition (if cast twice using its Flashback, it can theoretically grab all three pieces of our stupid janky combo).
Lastly, if we have a good opening, we can also make very explosive and risky plays with Life and Limb, and the first half of Life / Death, allowing us to get a bunch of creatures to combo-off on Pestilence with.
Possible Card Replacements:
Replace Life / Death w/ Blessed Respite — Blessed Respite provides us both recursion, and a fog effect. Arguably, the fogs are more relevant to our overall strategy than the Life and Limb-esque effect from Life / Death.
Replace Overwhelm w/ Door of Destinies or Coat of Arms — Honestly, apart from its $14 USD pricepoint, the reason I chose not to run Door of Destinies was the fact that I'd have to keep track of all those counters in addition to the spore counters. If you feel confident in your ability to track all those counters, then by all means go ahead. Coat of Arms is another similar boost in power over Overwhelm, but it wasn't included due to its price, which is $16 USD as of writing this.
Replace Springjack Pasture w/ Reliquary Tower — Pasture is a nice card, since it gives us tokens. However, honestly, the increase to hand size is hard to give up, so I'd recommend slotting that in instead if you aren't a fan of goats.
Replace Increasing Ambition or Mangara's Tome w/ Seasons Past — Seasons past is capable of grabbing Cryptolith Rite, Season of the Witch, and Koskun Falls all at once, like Increasing Ambition, though it is far less mana-intensive. Additionally, it also can be reused, since it gets placed back in your deck after being cast.
Replace Respite w/ Heroic Intervention — Heroic Intervention provides a ton of protection all at once, which can be especially valuable if you're about to combo-off. However, it's like twenty bucks, that's unfortunately outside our budget. But if you can afford it, or already have a copy, it'd be an immense help to this deck.
