MTG Salvation

Hey everybody!

Ever since I crossed paths with a really janky Populate Brew online, I couldn't quite shake the idea of what the deck could be. Last night I did some research to see what kind of tokens I could populate in Selesnya colours and came across some interesting ideas.

First off, we obviously have Call of the Conclave which can result in some pretty efficient beats.

Next up is Slime Molding which can act as a decent creature at most points in the curve and end up being a bomb finisher that you can populate.

My favourite find however is Giantbaiting. This card... It's possible to go turn 4 play Giantbaiting, tap for Conspire, then play Wake the Reflections, attack for 12 and then be left with a 4/4 permanently (that you can populate further). With an ideal setup, you could even do this turn 3.

Conspire and Slime Molding are both pretty synergistic with mana dorks, which streamlines the deck-building even further.

After a few drafts, the main issue I have is the deck still runs out of steam too quickly and doesn't mulligan well. I've tried building in the old Tilling Treefolk/Cycling Lands trick, but it slows the deck down a bit too much.

Here's where I'm at, more or less:



I stayed away from Brindle Shoat because it's a bit difficult to use in this deck without sac outlets.

What do you think of the deck? Still too janky? I haven't tested much, but the little testing I've done has been with wildly different decklists, figuring out what's good and what isn't, so my results have been poor but inconsistent.

As an interesting sidenote, almost the entire deck was reprinted in Modern Masters 2017. Someone at Wizards wanted to draft their pet Pauper deck!

Are you using Penumbra Spider mainly for the Reach?

If so then have you considered Renowned Weaver? It can give you another early creature drop to help Giantbaiting. It also has a built in sac to start making tokens with Reach, although they can't trade with a flipped Delver.

If you don't care about the Reach and want more power then maybe consider Elephant Ambush. It gives you a token to Flash in plus it gives you something to cast later in the game if you need more tokens.

The advantage of Penumbra Spider is that it is a good card by itself. It essentially generates 4/8 worth of stats for four mana. Renowned Weaver is essentially a 1 mana 1/1 or a 3 mana 1/3 reach, and Ambush is a 3/3 with flash and a flashback too expensive to ever be realistic.

As far as just reachers go, Hidden Spider is a sideboard candidate, although sadly it doesn't generate tokens.

I agree that Penumbra is a good card. It's just the deck doesn't have a sac outlet to create the token. You have to wait for it to be killed and if your opponent gets wise to the game plan then they can play around it a bit.

The Flashback on Elephant Ambush definitely isn't unrealistic. He runs mana dorks and if the game grinds out a bit it can easily be cast if needed.

Thanks for the comments!

Penumbra Spider is pretty much there for the reach, but mostly as an efficient creature that also synergises with Populate if ever it should die once. It will definitely be a great addition versus Izzet Delver decks, as they will usually have to 2-1 it just to kill it once, which means they probably have to sink in 4 cards just to get it off the table. Otherwise, it will happily eat up Delvers and faeries all days. The biggest downside is that the token is black, which means I can't use it for Conspire costs.

Elephant Ambush is a card I thought of, but in the end it just costs too much for what it gives. I find even 4 mana to be a lot for a 3/3, honestly. Being able to get another with flashback is nice, but the cost is overall too restrictive. I haven't tested it, though.

Otherwise, I'm liking the idea of the deck and still need to test it more thoroughly to find out what kind of a sideboard I need. I have a good feeling about this one, though!

Seems like a really fun deck! Looking at Giantbaiting really makes me wonder why I haven't seen it in Pauper before.

If you find yourself needing some kind of removal then consider some Fight cards like Prey Upon or Savage Punch. If you're going to lose the Giant tokens at the end of turn then you can get some extra use out of them. You can easily trigger Ferocious on Savage Punch, so you can take out some of the bigger Pauper threats with it.

With Ferocious in mind you can also use Feed the Clan for your sideboard.

What a great idea! I think Epic Confrontation will be really sweet as they give yet again more utility and flexibility with my mana dorks and can still take out 5-power creatures with a Giant. Seems sweet!

I just tested out 5 pre-board matches versus Stompy and came out of it 3-2, which is decent. Midrange should generally beat Stompy, but it's such a strong deck...