Goal is to hit them hard and fast with
Lotleth Troll
and
Charnel Troll
shennanigans, and trying to keep this thing under $100. All of your play should be around having a couple of those guys, making them big, and keeping them on the battlefield. The supporting cast is built around either keeping those guys alive (slash, bringing them back into play), granting them +1/+1 counters, fixing card draw, or getting some graveyard churn going - sometimes more than one of those at the same time! It can be tricky to navigate, so let's call out a handful of noteworthy items :
Shambling Shell
- The sacrifice portion for +1/+1 is pretty obvious, but what needs to be understood is the discard/dredge synergy. Using your trolls to discard it and then activating dredge to bring it back to hand to be discarded again to be dredged back to hand to be discarded... built in loop for making counters without even bringing him to the battlefield. Once you feel like you have reasonable board set-up (or at least a chance to win the game), start dredging these guys back to hand every turn for guaranteed counters and maintaining/escalating pressure.
Varolz, the Scar-Striped
- Bonus troll! And believe it or not, he's not a key piece to making the deck work. Rather, Varolz is a mostly situational piece that gives us longevity in the face of games where we don't just win on turn 5. Hell, he doesn't even do anything unless you have some graveyard presence, so don't be afraid to discard him if it's early and you need to get the ball rolling. It's also worth calling out that the best scavenge target tends to be
Charnel Troll
as it provides the best mana-to-counters ratio.
Slitherhead
- Not just discard fodder, but makes for a perfectly reasonable chump-blocker as well. Regardless of how it reaches the graveyard, free +1/+1's to whoever needs it most! In the best case scenario it gets discarded for free and scavenged for free to yield at least 2 +1/+1 counters, but don't be afraid to get creative.
Growth-Chamber Guardian
- Sort of an alternate win con creature, or at least one that adds a lot of pressure and fits well with the rest of the pieces in this deck. Brings something of a swarm element when you're lacking some juice, and can make itself pretty big with just 3 mana and some
Hardened Scales
/
Winding Constrictor
support. Alternatively, the fetch portion can be used to simply add discard fuel if the situation warrants - namely an early
Charnel Troll
when there's little graveyard churn to keep it out.
There's something very satisfying about suddenly whipping out ass-loads of +1/+1 counters and swinging for the fences, and I've had a lot of fun putting this together. Hopefully I've inspired you to do something similar. The trolls can make it happen!
