This deck was just something I tossed together while goldfishing brews in cockatrice a while back (and that's where dredgelon comes from, I just mashed words together for a save file), but recently it inspired me to get an mtgo account (skjall1992 showed interest, thus renewing my own, and we traded messages here about the deck- I think he's since added red for faithless looting (and other things), but mine for now is my original concept). It cost me 3ish tix for the entire thing from scratch (my sideboard is in a very primitive state atm). I've been playing it on the for fun section; I was concerned my 2 evolving wilds would just draw quits, plus I'm very new to the program anyway (which has its quirks).
How It Works
There are two primary win conditions here. Lotleth troll and zombie infestation. You can use commune with the gods to find either or grisly salvage to find troll or more gas (or a land if desperate). Infestation will grow you an army of 2/2s over time to swarm over. Troll will give you a very fast clock that has regen and after a turn a sizable butt. Once you get your threat down, you can chain cast shambling shell every turn. Use him to block and or put a +1/+1 counter down, then dredge more fuel into the yard to bring back next turn. Example- turn 2 lotleth troll, turn 3 discard 2 eidolons, play shell, discard eidolons again, sac shell, attack for 7. Next turn, dredge, mill another eidolon, play shell, recur 3 eidolons and discard them all, swing for a potential of 11. That's a pretty solid start, but I've had even better ones as well.
Eidolons are slightly better than squee once your engine is going (you get freshly milled eidolons when you cast shell versus having to wait an upkeep, and you also can get them back twice in one turn though that isn't not common). Squee is gas without gold spells. Typically you have a gold spell or two and can dig into a shell, but a mixture seems good in case shell gets taken from your yard (don't let them exile it from play, remember to sac it). Grisly salvage can be used at instant speed to empty your yard, either for more pump or to protect your eidolons (if not your poor shell). You lose the fresh mill, but hey what can you do.
The decision points are what to play versus what to discard (especially with infestation which can discard anything), waiting or not for regen up with troll, whether to dredge shell or not (if you want more mill and shell versus already having a gold card and preferring a draw step), which between troll and infestation given the option, whether or not to hardcast eidolons (typically bad, though if desperate and not under pressure... or they are at 1-2 life, here comes entropic eidolon!), whether to sac shell or not (watch for combat tricks, burn protection, blocking, not saccing for the extra attacker without summoning sickness, not needing to sac because you dredged another shell), plus the normal situational stuff. There's more to it than that (sideboards for example, how to play with and against- I don't have a ton of experience here but you don't have to autolose to hate), but the ideal game is straight forward. If everything goes perfectly you spend several turns doing the same thing, churning out zombies or fattening one up. Fortunately this is still fun! Huge resilient zombie trolls are neat, almost as neat as amassing a great hoard of zombies. Who doesn't love that?
Budget?
Very much so. I spent 3ish tix of my starting 5 putting this version together. I may use the rest in tweaking the sideboard, but that's still insanely cheap. In paper it's very cheap as well, as most cards are worth nothing. Squee is the only card worth anything iirc at about 1.50 each. If you want to keep it cheaper than a pack of sleeves, just play more eidolons. I don't think that's a sin. This is a huge selling point of the deck personally, but I really don't feel like I'm giving much up to budgetize it even. I'm going to be on the alert as far as mana issues and looking at budget options there, but it's playable as is. If nothing else it gives you some room to grow. If I make a paper version I may toss in lilianas (because they're laying around, not even sure if I want them mainboard though, at least side probably), my one abrupt (interaction, gold, instant, seems good...expensive :/), and whatever duals I have. So make sure you utilize your collection, there are things to consider adding.
I drafted up a new version on a whim the other day and went out got mtgo and bought it. This is a very straight forward list:
A) lands are not great. It doesn't ruin you too often, but use whatever duals you have. You want both colors turn 2 often, and almost always by 3 (infestation is black, but you need to be casting gold spells). I think a couple evolvings is okay. Maybe even 3 or 4. One in the opening is good. It lets you fix, and the deck has NO main deck 1 drops. No life loss even, heh. Plus I'm running drown in filths, so bonus (compared to guildgates)
B) Numbers could be tweaked. I may alter mine over time. Like I said I've just been playing in the for fun duels (and winning basically every match..not sure that's really enough to change rooms though- a number of the players haven't seemed great so far (and I'm rusty)) Drown in filth hasn't been insane, but I haven't had much pressure on me (the one aggressive start I played against had 3 goblin guides, but infestation ate them up and he stalled out pretty bad).
C) The sideboard. I had duresses from the starter kit. I had guiles from the starter kit (I think that's where I got them.. in any case skjall initially had them in for path though I'm not sure he kept them or we need them, mostly I had spare slots so why not test it. I wanted golgari charms for rest in peace/leyline (regen can be decent vs pyroclasm/anger, -1 for decks with lots of little guys, and of course it's an instant speed gold card so there are tricks there). Crypts for other gy decks. Decays would be great, but are expensive. I think I may go back and add something that kills creatures at instant speed. Preferably gold... If not, just like doom blades or something. Twin could be hard (not that I'm playing against top tier decks atm). Charm could luck out on mites, plus duress, but I definitely could still see some instant speed reactive spell in the board at least.
So yeah, that's my deck right now. It does cool things and I haven't seen anyone else using this engine prior, so yeah there's some pride there (winning with it feels great no matter what the competition is :P). Will it win you anything? Outside of fairly casual games? I have no idea; I actually don't have that much experience with it. But I've won most if not all of the handful of games/matches I've played so far (and often quite easily), and skjall sounded like he was enjoying it. So hey, if you wanna play modern but only have a grimy 5 dollar bill, here you go!
I've looked at many other options for decks similar to this, but this one has some sweet things going on (aka I've dug through a *****load of cards (anything with graveyard, discard, every gold spell... but you can easily overlook things or just miss something with your search terms, so feel free to contribute). If you have your own take on it, have suggestions, or just wanna say something, welcome!
Edit- Well, another idea. I was thinking about discard against us, and while I think you can dig for a second win condition if needed, treasured find might be worth consideration from the side. It can get back win conditions, it can be used to get back another gold spell (even another milled treasured find), it could even grab a third land (milled or reuse a wilds). It may find it's way into the deck for a little test. Also added two putrefy to board for now. Could use some creeping corrosions. Hmm.
Ok, so not too many people have picked up on this. I love the idea of making Lotleth Troll playable in modern. Using the Eidolon's to keep him gassed up is awesome. I toyed with the deck for a while and made some changes, obviously these aren't budget friendly changes but they make the deck more competitive in the meta. The basic shell of the deck is a great starting point, so I looked at what I might be able to do with it. That's when I realized that Lotleth Troll and Shambling Shell are both Zombies. So I decided to take the build in a slightly different direction, making Zombies the core theme of the deck. Gravecrawler was the obvious first choice when pusshing zombies, but the next spot was a bit harder to nail down. Geralf's Messenger is the usual choice after Gravecrawler when trying to put together a zombie build. I don't like his casting cost, and I wanted something that had more synergy with Lotleth Troll. That's when I decided I'd go with Dreg Mangler, he fits perfectly in the deck. He returns your Eidolons when you cast him, and he can be scavenged in the mid-late game to give your board a huge boost. Anyway, here is the deck I've put together using your engine, thanks for the idea!
Just wanted to pop in and say that I saw someone on MTGO playing this deck and it looked pretty fun. I'm gonna throw it together myself and give it a whirl.
Hello, first post here.
Read this post a while back, took the brilliant Eidolon engine idea and made a semi budget deck out of it. It worked well for my casual playgroup. Graveyard hate can be played around by hording Eidolons, and can race or grind (Gnaw to the Bone) it out with RDW. Quite weak to exile but Ranger's Guile in there just in case.
Main Focus is making Lotleth a threat, keeping Eidolons in hand to play on opponents turn.
I decided to Turn this into a dredgevine deck, but that's the list i played with for a good while. Lands are expensive, but everything else is still relatively cheap.
I got by with only 8 Eidolons, -2 won't hurt. And commune isn't really needed. Putrefy is sideboard material, which i would take Ancient Grudge over, considering
you will mill yourself out of removal cards. More Abrupt Decay would be better if you want the creature removal.
This deck was just something I tossed together while goldfishing brews in cockatrice a while back (and that's where dredgelon comes from, I just mashed words together for a save file), but recently it inspired me to get an mtgo account (skjall1992 showed interest, thus renewing my own, and we traded messages here about the deck- I think he's since added red for faithless looting (and other things), but mine for now is my original concept). It cost me 3ish tix for the entire thing from scratch (my sideboard is in a very primitive state atm). I've been playing it on the for fun section; I was concerned my 2 evolving wilds would just draw quits, plus I'm very new to the program anyway (which has its quirks).
How It Works
There are two primary win conditions here. Lotleth troll and zombie infestation. You can use commune with the gods to find either or grisly salvage to find troll or more gas (or a land if desperate). Infestation will grow you an army of 2/2s over time to swarm over. Troll will give you a very fast clock that has regen and after a turn a sizable butt. Once you get your threat down, you can chain cast shambling shell every turn. Use him to block and or put a +1/+1 counter down, then dredge more fuel into the yard to bring back next turn. Example- turn 2 lotleth troll, turn 3 discard 2 eidolons, play shell, discard eidolons again, sac shell, attack for 7. Next turn, dredge, mill another eidolon, play shell, recur 3 eidolons and discard them all, swing for a potential of 11. That's a pretty solid start, but I've had even better ones as well.
Eidolons are slightly better than squee once your engine is going (you get freshly milled eidolons when you cast shell versus having to wait an upkeep, and you also can get them back twice in one turn though that isn't not common). Squee is gas without gold spells. Typically you have a gold spell or two and can dig into a shell, but a mixture seems good in case shell gets taken from your yard (don't let them exile it from play, remember to sac it). Grisly salvage can be used at instant speed to empty your yard, either for more pump or to protect your eidolons (if not your poor shell). You lose the fresh mill, but hey what can you do.
The decision points are what to play versus what to discard (especially with infestation which can discard anything), waiting or not for regen up with troll, whether to dredge shell or not (if you want more mill and shell versus already having a gold card and preferring a draw step), which between troll and infestation given the option, whether or not to hardcast eidolons (typically bad, though if desperate and not under pressure... or they are at 1-2 life, here comes entropic eidolon!), whether to sac shell or not (watch for combat tricks, burn protection, blocking, not saccing for the extra attacker without summoning sickness, not needing to sac because you dredged another shell), plus the normal situational stuff. There's more to it than that (sideboards for example, how to play with and against- I don't have a ton of experience here but you don't have to autolose to hate), but the ideal game is straight forward. If everything goes perfectly you spend several turns doing the same thing, churning out zombies or fattening one up. Fortunately this is still fun! Huge resilient zombie trolls are neat, almost as neat as amassing a great hoard of zombies. Who doesn't love that?
Budget?
Very much so. I spent 3ish tix of my starting 5 putting this version together. I may use the rest in tweaking the sideboard, but that's still insanely cheap. In paper it's very cheap as well, as most cards are worth nothing. Squee is the only card worth anything iirc at about 1.50 each. If you want to keep it cheaper than a pack of sleeves, just play more eidolons. I don't think that's a sin. This is a huge selling point of the deck personally, but I really don't feel like I'm giving much up to budgetize it even. I'm going to be on the alert as far as mana issues and looking at budget options there, but it's playable as is. If nothing else it gives you some room to grow. If I make a paper version I may toss in lilianas (because they're laying around, not even sure if I want them mainboard though, at least side probably), my one abrupt (interaction, gold, instant, seems good...expensive :/), and whatever duals I have. So make sure you utilize your collection, there are things to consider adding.
4 Zombie Infestation
4 Lotleth Troll
Mill/Dig/Utility
4 Drown in Filth
4 Commune with the Gods
3 Grisly Salvage
Fuel
4 Entropic Eidolon
4 Verdant Eidolon
2 Enigma Eidolon
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Shambling Shell
Lands
10 Forest
11 Swamp
2 Evolving Wilds
3 Duress
4 Golgari Charm
2 Ranger's Guile
4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Putrefy
I drafted up a new version on a whim the other day and went out got mtgo and bought it. This is a very straight forward list:
A) lands are not great. It doesn't ruin you too often, but use whatever duals you have. You want both colors turn 2 often, and almost always by 3 (infestation is black, but you need to be casting gold spells). I think a couple evolvings is okay. Maybe even 3 or 4. One in the opening is good. It lets you fix, and the deck has NO main deck 1 drops. No life loss even, heh. Plus I'm running drown in filths, so bonus (compared to guildgates)
B) Numbers could be tweaked. I may alter mine over time. Like I said I've just been playing in the for fun duels (and winning basically every match..not sure that's really enough to change rooms though- a number of the players haven't seemed great so far (and I'm rusty)) Drown in filth hasn't been insane, but I haven't had much pressure on me (the one aggressive start I played against had 3 goblin guides, but infestation ate them up and he stalled out pretty bad).
C) The sideboard. I had duresses from the starter kit. I had guiles from the starter kit (I think that's where I got them.. in any case skjall initially had them in for path though I'm not sure he kept them or we need them, mostly I had spare slots so why not test it. I wanted golgari charms for rest in peace/leyline (regen can be decent vs pyroclasm/anger, -1 for decks with lots of little guys, and of course it's an instant speed gold card so there are tricks there). Crypts for other gy decks. Decays would be great, but are expensive. I think I may go back and add something that kills creatures at instant speed. Preferably gold... If not, just like doom blades or something. Twin could be hard (not that I'm playing against top tier decks atm). Charm could luck out on mites, plus duress, but I definitely could still see some instant speed reactive spell in the board at least.
So yeah, that's my deck right now. It does cool things and I haven't seen anyone else using this engine prior, so yeah there's some pride there (winning with it feels great no matter what the competition is :P). Will it win you anything? Outside of fairly casual games? I have no idea; I actually don't have that much experience with it. But I've won most if not all of the handful of games/matches I've played so far (and often quite easily), and skjall sounded like he was enjoying it. So hey, if you wanna play modern but only have a grimy 5 dollar bill, here you go!
I've looked at many other options for decks similar to this, but this one has some sweet things going on (aka I've dug through a *****load of cards (anything with graveyard, discard, every gold spell... but you can easily overlook things or just miss something with your search terms, so feel free to contribute). If you have your own take on it, have suggestions, or just wanna say something, welcome!
Edit- Well, another idea. I was thinking about discard against us, and while I think you can dig for a second win condition if needed, treasured find might be worth consideration from the side. It can get back win conditions, it can be used to get back another gold spell (even another milled treasured find), it could even grab a third land (milled or reuse a wilds). It may find it's way into the deck for a little test. Also added two putrefy to board for now. Could use some creeping corrosions. Hmm.
4 Dreg Mangler
4 Entropic Eidolon
4 Gravecrawler
4 Lotleth Troll
3 Shambling Shell
4 Verdant Eidolon
4 Duress
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Grisly Salvage
4x Victim of Night
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Swamp
2 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Woodland Cemetery
2 Gnaw to the Bone
2 Naturalize
3 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Zombie Infestation
Reprint Opt for Modern!!
FREE DIG THOROUGH TIME!
PLAY MORE ROUGE DECKS!
2 Forest
1 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Blood Crypt
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Llanowar Wastes
2 Woodland Cemetery
//Spells 19
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Faithless Looting
3 Duress
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Zombie Infestation
2 Commune with the Gods
4 Grizly Salvage
2 Stinkweed Imp
3 Shambling Shell
4 Gravecrawler
4 Entropic Eidolon
4 Verdant Eidolon
4 Lotleth Troll
1 Life from the Loam
2 Gnaw to the Bone
2 Golgari Charm
2 Rakdos Charm
2 Ranger's Guile
2 Pithing Needle
2 Dismember
2 Ancient Grudge
Hello, first post here.
Read this post a while back, took the brilliant Eidolon engine idea and made a semi budget deck out of it. It worked well for my casual playgroup. Graveyard hate can be played around by hording Eidolons, and can race or grind (Gnaw to the Bone) it out with RDW. Quite weak to exile but Ranger's Guile in there just in case.
Main Focus is making Lotleth a threat, keeping Eidolons in hand to play on opponents turn.
I decided to Turn this into a dredgevine deck, but that's the list i played with for a good while. Lands are expensive, but everything else is still relatively cheap.
I am running the original list, but I do have some cards at hand that I could use.
I have :
Would these be worth it in the main deck? If so, what could I cut? Thanks
-2 Commune with the Gods +1 Liliana of the Veil +1 Abrupt Decay
Grats on the Liliana, I would imagine she would be extremely useful with your dispensable eidolons.
I got by with only 8 Eidolons, -2 won't hurt. And commune isn't really needed.
Putrefy is sideboard material, which i would take Ancient Grudge over, considering
you will mill yourself out of removal cards. More Abrupt Decay would be better if you want the creature removal.