Maybeboard


Speccing out a Grist deck for fun. The goal is to hold as high of an insect ratio as possible while having... playable cards. The categories aim to be self-descriptive, but some benefit from accompanying explanation

You only get to be in the Bugs category if you have the subtype "Insect". I don't care if you're a lord for bugs, or make bug tokens; this category is for things that Grist likes to mill.

We are running as much fetch land as we can in order to thin out our land base from the deck as quickly as possible during the game, that way we can increase Grist's odds of hitting bugs when we mill.

When Grist isn't able to close out games with its -5, our most basic wincon is to swing with big bugs for the kill. Anything in the threat category either enables this, by making all of our small bugs bigger and scarier, or is a solo threat who can get big and tramply enough to kill someone, ideally. These are our swingers that we expect to eat removal.

Our main source of high value targeted removal is Grist, while a lot of our other removal is underwhelming, because as much as possible we are trying to only use removal that is a bug. Our one exception is Crippling Fear, which is an asymmetric bugwipe.

In addition to lands that help us ramp by grabbing more lands, we're running several things that turn all of our little bug tokens into mana dorks. Our silliest ramp combo is Ant Queen with some of our enables like Itlmoc and Insidious Roots, so that we can pump all of our mana into making more mana bugs.

Grist is the bug token authority, but we're running a lot of friends that make bug tokens to help it out. They're our bread and bugter in this deck.

Given that we plan to mill tons of stuff into our deck with Grist, we hope to reanimate any particularly choice cards that end up there by mistake. Again, trying as much as possible to have recursion that is stapled to a bug, with a few exceptions.

This category is our favorite, because they're what let us do more of everything we're doing. Doubling season is huge (Grist's +1 is now a +2 that gains 2 loyalty and makes 2 bugs per bug milled, etc) and Parallel Lives is a smaller version of it, Chain Veil lets us grow Grist and nuke the table on the same turn, and Footbottom Feast/Forever Young/Gravepurge let us put every bug in our graveyard on top of our deck to set up a truly massive +1 (and also recur one other creature for free).

Much as I hate to admit it, commander decks go nowhere without draw. We don't have nearly as many draw effects in this deck as I would like, but we'll do our best with what we've got.

These are cards that do some important weird role, like shutting down opponent combos or tutoring wincon pieces for us.

Most of our mill comes from Grist, but we have a few others to support filling our graveyard with creatures that power up some of our big hitters.

Outside of Grist nuking everyone with its ult, we have two others that we can reliably expect to enable game-ending turns. Ayara can help a massive Grist +1 be lethal, and Syr Konrad can help a big sac or recursion wave be lethal. Both of them combo extremely well with Footbottom Feast/Forever Young/Gravepurge, as an X creature graveyard means X cards leaving the graveyard and X black insects entering the battlefield. Lich-Knights' Conquest can mean X creature sacrifices, X cards leaving the graveyard, and X creatures entering the battlefield all at once.

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95% Casual

Competitive

Revision 2 See all

(1 week ago)

-1 Bane of the Living main
-1 Carrion Grub main
+1 Iridescent Hornbeetle main
+1 Metallic Mimic main
Top Ranked
Date added 2 weeks
Last updated 1 week
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

5 - 0 Mythic Rares

35 - 0 Rares

25 - 0 Uncommons

21 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.58
Tokens Copy Clone, Insect 1/1 BG, Insect 1/1 G, Insect 1/1 G w/ Flying, Deathtouch, Morph 2/2 C, Plant 0/1 G
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