Sustainable Saprolings (Standard)

An underestimated tribe, saprolings have a lot of potential after rotation and can even put up a fight in the current meta.

Llanowar Elves jumpstarts the mana curve and helps flood the board with tokens. Saproling Migration and Spore Swarm are great token producers. Saproling Migration is great in the opening hand or on the top deck. Spore Swarm can put bodies down at instant speed up under sweepers or as a pseudo removal spell in combat.

Ramp is important for racing the opponent and setting up an superior board state. Song of Freyalise is so impactful. Ramp, mana fixing, and wincon all in one; dropping this once you have a few creatures out allows you to to power out even more creatures to fill the board in preparation for the final trigger. Also worth noting: You can play an instant speed Spore Swarm after you untap lands but before Song of Freyalise triggers at the Main Phase. Moar +1/+1 counters? Yes Pls.

Access to several lords is what make Saprolings viable. Sporecrown Thallid gets lots of value pumping all the saprolings and any extras of itself. Slimefoot the Stowaway offers defense and recovery in the Mid to Late game. The drain ability is great if you are facing aggressive strategies forcing you to block. It'll also heavily discourage the deck's main weakness: Sweepers. Excess mana can be used to add board presence after you play out your hand. This is especially effective with a few lords in play or when taking advantage of Song of Freyalise. Tendershoot Dryad pulls double duty pumping up and pumping out tokens. It demands an answer or threatens to take over the board. This deck ascends by turn 3 or 4 so it will always impact the board.

The difference between Saprolings and other token strategies is access to premiere black removal. Until rotation, Fatal Push is cheap to cast and effective. Revolt is easy to trigger when we would have chump blocked anyway. Vicious Offering is like a 5th copy that kills indestructible.

Card advantage in the form of Fungal Plots and Arguel's Blood Fast keeps up Saproling production into the late game. Fungal Plots squeezes value out of saprolings targeted by removal or that would die in combat. it's also a great way to recover from sweepers. Arguel's Blood Fast is very abusable when we start gaining life from Slimefoot and Fungal Plot triggers. It also doubles as a way to comeback after aggressive decks bring us down to 5 and run out of gas.

In the Sideboard are extra copies of Arguel's Blood Fast for Control matchups and Fungal Plots if they're packing Sweepers. Duress is critical in the control matchup as it denies the opponent access to sweepers and counters. Fungal Infection hoses early creatures like Bomat Courier, Llanowar Elves, and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner to name a few; all while advancing our own board state. Crushing Canopy can deal with big flyers like Lyra Dawnbringer with the option to blow up a saga. Sorcerous Spyglass is versatile as it can deal with a wide range of troublesome abilities such as planeswalkers and vehicles. Finally, Thrashing Brontodon is a decent body that deals with artifacts and enchantments and provides a target for Fungal Plots making it a little more useful than naturalize.