Indescribable... Indestructible! Nothing Can Stop It!
- tagline, The Blob (1958)
- tagline, The Blob (1958)
Slogurk, the Overslime: It Came from the Mists is a Lands Control deck that seeks to survive into the late game by using various Fogs and Counterspells to preserve your life total and disrupt your opponents until you can grow Slogurk into an increasingly large and indomitable threat. To complement these elements an array of disruption and utility spells are utilized to stall the game out ranging from bounce and removal to card draw and Nostalgic Dreams.
This is the culmination of years and years of experimenting and tinkering with blue-based control decks, and with this list I think I have achieved what I set out to do: build a blue-based, lands-centric control deck that played out nonlinearly and balanced disruption with not being too rage-inducing.
This is my finest work yet.
It Came from the Mists
Approximate Total Cost:
Why Slogurk?
Slogurk, the Overslime offers a number of benefits that our deck takes advantage of. Firstly, it's a sort of Life from the Loam in the command zone, allowing us to consistently generate card advantage via recurring and lands. With our suite of fetches, cycling lands, and other ways to put lands into the graveyard, the deck can constantly take advantage of Slogurk's ability. In addition, Slogurk is nigh immortal with a little bit of support, which makes it a consistent threat and blocker. Cheating the commander tax is amazing, and generating card advantage at the same time is even better. Finally, since Slogurk grows and has evasion, it makes a natural and elegant finisher, saving us precious slots in our deck.
So, how does this deck work?
I've played a lot of control decks over the years both in EDH and something I've learned over that time is that you can't and shouldn't try to police the table. This is a surefire way to draw attention to yourself, causing you to spend resources on things that could've either been directed elsewhere and thus someone else's problem. No, it's far better to manage your threat profile and keep it low by using a light hand and using soft control such as bounce and fogs. These are less feelbad since they don't actually permanently remove anything but the tempo gains are palpable. As a control deck, we have a powerful endgame, and surviving to that point puts us in a fantastic position to win.
How does this deck win?
Slogurk beats. Being able to run effectively zero win conditions outside of the command zone is a huge boon to control decks as you can devote more slots to disruption and development. I like my decks to be well-oiled machines and cards that only win the game tend to gum them up on occasion, so I have a predilection towards purity of form.
Let's get into some more specific analysis, shall we?
Lands
Most non-cEDH decks have too few lands, full stop. Here, we fun slightly fewer than I think most EDH decks should have, but as we have a plethora of cycling lands we can always use them in a pinch to hit important land drops. Rimewood Falls and Tangled Islet seem out of place, but fetchable duals are fantastic and underplayed in two color decks. Coming into play tapped isn't great, but that's the thing: if you need something untapped, just don't get the tap land. This deck is actually surprisingly colored pip intensive, so those lands overperform, especially on turn 1. Speaking of fetch targets, since this deck can easily recur fetchlands, I run a high amount of basics. It's very easy to run out of lands to fetch, but in most cases this isn't an issue. If you have that many lands in play, you probably don't need more. Field of the Dead makes an appearance because it's a Magic card, alright. Our commander recurs lands, so we're running quite a few utility lands, from disruption to card draw to ramp.
Ramp
Speaking of, the ramp package has grown since I last updated this post. Sakura-Tribe Scout and friends are overperformers in regard to mana investment, and Burgeoning is one of the dumbest cards in the deck. We're able to barf out lands as necessary and in the mid to late game have all the mana available to do everything we want to do. I'd like to find room for something like Walking Atlas or Dryad of the Ilysian Grove or something but it's difficult to do so at this point.
Counterspells
Did I not say we are a control deck? Gotta have 'em. I'm a little uncomfortable with only 8, though, if I'm honest. The thing about counterspells is that when you need one, you really need one in a control deck, so a higher density of countermagic is very much wanted. However, you run the risk of becoming a table villain if you run too many. Letting things get out of hand without being out of control is an incredibly difficult and nuanced skill, but in my opinion it's better to have and not need than need and not have, particularly utilitarian countermagic.
Spot Removal
Similarly, I'm worried about spot removal. Unfortunately, there just aren't that many strong removal spells in Simic that I'm not already running. Nature's Claim? Kenrith's Transformation? Imprisoned in the Moon? If I could find one or two more cards truly worth running I would retool this section but here we are.
Board Wipes
Not that many good options here, either. Oblivion Stone is a necessary evil, as sometimes, you have to blow up the world. Curse of the Swine is mildly underplayed as removal and a pseudo-board wipe in non-white decks. Consuming Tide is a personal favorite, as you usually cantrip it and often generate card advantage, let alone the obvious tempo advantage you gain. 5 is an uncomfortably low amount, but the fogs we run do a lot to compensate.
Recursion
Older versions of this deck ran Shigeki, Jukai Visionary and Seasons Past along with Turnabout and Rude Awakening to generate infinite mana and win through growing an infinitely large Slogurk, but those days are behind us. Most of this section is now devoted to land recursion, but Nostalgic Dreams is such a cool card that I can't not play it. While we're here, I just need to say that Conduit of Worlds is an incredible card. Invest while you still can.
Card Draw
I am agonizing over this section. I love every single cycling land here, even Ash Barrens, but I feel like I'm running one too many actual spells here at the moment. Is Fact or Fiction the weakest link? Attunement is certainly a choice, but with our commander, it digs and grows at an alarming rate. I think the other three are auto-includes, but something has to go.
Tutors
Here's a brief list of cards Muddle the Mixture grabs:
What an all-star.
Most of the others are fairly straightforward, but Scapeshift is a bomb I've included but never drawn into. Honestly, I have no idea how it will perform, but in theory it means "kill target player and then Splendid Reclamation" but in practice I don't think that's going to happen often. do have an Intuition but I always feel awful playing that card. On the other hand, I'd play Gifts Ungiven in a heartbeat if it was legalized, so why not?
Sustain
The most interesting part of the deck. Why board wipe when you can just fog 'em out? Negating aggro decks with finesse instead of violence enables them to attack another player instead, doing your job for you in terms of murder. While combat tends to be the weakest win condition in the format, this deck, due to its low creature count can be weak to aggro, which is what makes these fogs extra great. Glacial Chasm and Constant Mists are just broken answers to combat. Spike Weaver, similarly, tends to delay games a lot in your favor. It's especially dumb with Conduit of Worlds. The others are the best fogs available, though Blessed Respite and to a lesser extent Tangle are on the cusp.
That's the deck! More to come as the list evolves and solidifies.
