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Down To Brew - Slippy Toad


With the Pro Tour on at the moment and all of the fancy Collected Company decks gone from Standard FNM, it’s easy to forget about the ‘fun’ decks.
I often find myself sleeving up some boring aggro deck so I can try to compete with the blitzing nature of some of the new vehicle decks that obliterate my janky budget builds that I love so dearly.
However, I occasionally build up the confidence to play those janky budget builds, and this one is currently my favourite…

It’s a Sultai (Blue/Black/Green) combo deck called ‘Slippy Toad’ (to be explained soon). I thought up this combo when looking at my favourite card from Eldritch Moon, Noose Constrictor. The idea is to get Noose Constrictor and The Gitrog Monster onto the battlefield and discard however many cards it takes to present lethal with Noose Constrictor.



Every time you discard a land, you get to draw a card from The Gitrog Monster, which will most likely be another land because the deck runs 34 of them. You then cast Slip Through Space on your Noose Constrictor and swing for lethal with a massive unblockable snake!



So, back to the name. You may have already figured out that ‘Slippy’ comes from Slip Through Space and ‘Toad’ from The Gitrog Monster. Yes, I know that The Gitrog Monster is a frog, not a toad, and that Noose Constrictor is the one that gets ‘Slippy’, but let’s just forget about that so that we can name it after the incredibly annoying Slippy Toad from Star Fox.

Ok, onto the deck

COMBO PIECES:

3x The Gitrog Monster - We play this card because it is part of the combo (duh). It’s a 3-of rather than a playset as we have many ways to find it and there is no purpose in having extras in our hand unless our opponents removes the first one, which means we don’t want to draw it once we’ve assembled our combo.

4x Noose Constrictor - This is also part of the combo and is therefore a must-have in the deck. We have a playset of this as it is more likely to die in combat, and we want to draw into it earlier than The Gitrog Monster since it has a lower mana cost.

3x Slip Through Space - When I first played this deck, Slip Through Space was a 1-of, but I quickly realised that with the amount of self-mill cards that I played, the chances were high for me to put this in my graveyard and be left with no good win condition. Playing 3 greatly decreases the chance of this happening, and allows you to spread the game-ending attacks throughout multiple turns if need be. Note that we do not need it when we start going off with the combo as it can be drawn into.

OTHER SPELLS:
 
4x Traverse the Ulvenwald - This helps us find Noose Constrictor and The Gitrog Monster, and can be traded along with one green mana for a land when we’re going off with our combo if we run out of lands. Delirium isn’t as difficult to enable as you may think, so we can usually cast this on turn 4 to find a copy of The Gitrog Monster to play on turn 5.
4x Vessel of Nascency - Helps us with delirium for Traverse and finds combo pieces if we need them. Even if we don’t end up hitting a combo piece, we can get a land to help us out later on. When we’re going off, we can crack this to find a land. If there are two or more lands, that means we get to put one in our hand and the rest in our graveyard so we get to draw a card from The Gitrog Monster. 
2x Contingency Plan - A functional reprint of ‘Taigam’s Scheming’, one of my favourite cards from Khans block. This allows us to filter through our next 5 draws to find whatever we need. This could be finding combo pieces when we’re assembling it early game, or helping with getting delirium for a traverse, or getting rid of any icky spells so that we’re just drawing lands while going off. 
3x Grapple with the Past - Finds combo pieces and gets them back from the graveyard if they get killed. Helps with delirium for Traverse. When we’re going off, it can mill a land, allowing us to draw a card, and put a land from the graveyard into our hand. 
3x Groundskeeper - This is mainly for helping us go off in the late game just in case we don’t draw enough lands to keep us going. It also gives us another card type for enabling delirium.

LANDS:
The lands in this deck aren’t so important since we have so many. If you want to, you can get all the appropriate multi-coloured lands like Sunken Hollow, but the only non-basic land I would say is necessary is Drownyard Temple. 
I would advise going heavier on green sources and a bit lighter on black and blue as there are fewer spells that we need them for. Evolving Wilds may seem like an essential to many people since we play The Gitrog Monster, but in testing it really hasn’t been that great. I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

I'd suggest something like;
4x Drownyard Temple
4x Blooming Marsh
4x Botanical Sanctum
2x Sunken Hollow
2x Aether Hub
2x Evolving Wilds
1x Blighted Fen
9x Forest
3x Swamp
3x Island
 
 
SIDEBOARD:

The sideboard is very meta dependent, but I’d say it should be filled with counterspells, removal and other ways to protect your combo. Turn Aside is a nice, cheap counterspell to use against control decks. If you know that your opponent plays counterspells, sideboard in Negate. 
Sinister Concoction is a fantastic removal card for the sideboard in this deck. It helps with delirium early on and when we have our combo it has insane value! Milling 1 card is absolutely fine; if it’s a land, great! You draw a card. If it’s a spell, great! You filtered out a spell so you can draw more lands! Discarding a card is also fine; you just discard a land and draw another card or get rid of a spell that you don’t need anymore.

TIPS AND TRICKS:

Grapple with the Past and Vessel of Nascency both say ‘may’ for putting a card into your hand. If there aren’t any great options for stuff to put into your hand and you don’t have a land in your graveyard, you may want to consider not taking anything so that you can achieve delirium. Really that depends on the board state, so just have a think about it if it comes up. 

Drownyard Temple is the best thing to sacrifice to The Gitrog Monster at the beginning of your upkeep as it doesn’t produce coloured mana and you can bring it back with its 3 mana ability. It’s also a good thing to put into your graveyard early on as you can return it to the battlefield on turn 3, then play a land into The Gitrog Monster on turn 4. 
If you don’t have a Drownyard Temple, you should sacrifice a mono-black source if The Gitrog Monster is already on the battlefield as you are unlikely to need it or a mono-blue source if you have more than one.
 
Green sources are the best to have many of on the battlefield as you have a lot of cheap green spells and abilities to cast/activate when going off, so in a situation where you have many different lands in hand and it doesn’t seem to matter which you play, play a green source if possible. Don’t forget that Slip Through Space draws you a card! Don’t be scared to play one to help you find combo pieces early on, you have extras in your deck that you can find later on. 
Cards other than lands can be discarded to Noose Constrictor. When I’ve gotten my friends to play the deck against me, I’ve often found that they attack for a few points off of lethal and forget that they can discard the spells in their hand too. 
It might make it easier to use a d20 to keep track of how big your Noose Constrictor is while you
combo off. 
Before starting the combo, ask your opponent if it is ok to assume that they have no responses, just
to speed things up a bit.


 
Slippy Toad is by no means a great deck. The chances of you winning FNM with it might be slim.
It is, however, a very fun and cheap deck and it does have the potential to do alright in a casual tournament. Feel free to make your own changes to the deck, I’m sure I haven’t made the most efficient version of it! This deck almost survives the Amonkhet rotation, losing only Slip Through Space (which will hopefully get a replacement card by then) which means you can play with it for the next 12 months straight!

 I hope you enjoyed this article, see you at FNM!



 

Joshua


 

 





Joshua is a high school student who started playing Magic during M15 at the age of 12 and has been in love with it ever since.

 

 

 

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