As the last deck from Time Spiral, I left a real treat: “Fun with Fungus”, a Black-Green deck working with the Fungus/Saproling combo of tribals. Fungi is a tribal I am very familiar with since I played a Black-Green Fungus deck for years. I mean, I played it enough to earn the title of mushroom man, which was not because I consumed or smoked any, but rather because I played them as my go-to deck. I tried a lot of builds over the years, so it is kinda nice to get to talk about the deck that started it all.
Here is what “Fun with Fungus” has in store for us:
Creatures (21):
2x Thallid (G)
3x Deathspore Thallid (1B)
2x Pendelhaven Elder (1G)
3x Thallid Shell-Dweller (1G)
1x Thelon of Havenwood (GG)
3x Thallid Germinator (2G)
1x Wormwood Dryad (2G)
2x Herd Gnarr (3G)
2x Sporesower Thallid (2GG)
2x Savage Thallid (3GG)
Spells (15):
1x Claws of Gix (0)
1x Might of Old Krosa (G)
2x Sprout (G)
1x Feebleness (1B)
2x Strength in Numbers (1G)
1x Assassinate (2B)
2x Fallen Ideal (2B)
1x Krosan Grip (2G)
2x Sudden Death (1BB)
1x Dread Return (2BB)
1x Verdant Embrace (3GG)
Lands (24):
13x Forest
1x Pendelhaven
10x Swamp
And “Fun with Fungus” also comes with the usual WotC marketing blurb, which goes as follows:
“Fungus doesn’t think or sleep—it just spreads and devours. The Fun with Fungus deck lets you take the reins of a post-apocalyptic rampage of Thallids, and these freaky fungus fiends won’t take “Eeeeewww!” for an answer. In the early going, play as many Thallids as possible so they can start building up spore counters. Waiting three turns for enough spore counters to make a single Saproling might seem slow, but when you have three or four Thallids budding at once, you’ll soon have more creatures than you know what to do with. Don’t be too aggressive in combat with your early Thallids. Trade with an opponent’s creature only if you really need to get it off the table. The longer your Thallids stay in play, the more work they’ll do for you. You’ll be rewarded if they’re still around when Sporesower Thallid or Verdant Embrace turbo-charges your Saproling production, or when Thelon of Havenwood makes your Thallids enormous. To get the most from your Saprolings, you can attack with them or you can sacrifice them. Attacking is good if your opponent has few blockers, and it’s especially good if you have Pendelhaven Elder to pump them all up at once. If that’s your plan, it’s best to create Saprolings as early as possible. If you can’t attack, use your Saprolings as blockers and sacrifice fodder. In this case, don’t create them until you need them. Your opponent will have a harder time removing spore counters than destroying 1/1 creatures, and if Thelon shows up, you’ll be glad those spore counters are still there! The Fun with Fungus deck is packed with effects that take advantage of a sacrificed Saproling. Make a creature bigger with Thallid Germinator or smaller with Deathspore Thallid. Regenerate a Thallid with Savage Thallid. Gain life with Claws of Gix by sacrificing any permanent. Sacrifice three creatures to pay Dread Return’s flashback cost. And a creature enchanted with Fallen Ideal can devour all your Saprolings—and your other creatures—to become big enough for one gigantic, game-winning attack. After playing with the deck, customize it. More copies of Thelon of Havenwood or Sporesower Thallid will increase the deck’s power. Try the Time Spiral cards Sarpadian Empires, Vol. VII or Thelonite Hermit to generate more Saprolings. But the best (and most fun) option may be the Ravnica card Doubling Season, which doubles both the number of spore counters you get and the number of Saproling tokens you put into play!”
– Time Spiral “Fun with Fungus” THEME DECK PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The beauty of Thallids and Saprolings in Magic the Gathering is that you have near endless possibilities of what to do with them; and I will list a few of those ideas at the end of the analysis. The problem with “Fun with Fungus” is that it really took some of the most boring options the tribal has to offer and tried to walk with it; and you will soon see what I mean. “Thallid” is really just the spore counter effect on legs: Generate spore counters during the upkeep, remove three to create a 1/1 Saproling. It absolutely needs to make space for “Utopia Mycon“, which in fairness was not an omission of the deckmakers since the card was not available when “Fun with Fungus” came out. “Pendelhaven Elder” is supposed to give your small creatures that extra bit of oomph, but I rather just play the one copy of “Pendelhaven” the deck provides and use the slots for something that supports the strategy with more tokens. And “Thallid Shell-Dweller” has the same problem that “Thallid” has, only producing Saprolings but offering nothing to do with them. Granted, this one can actually block being a 0/5 creature but there are options that allow the deck to actually get stuff done by providing both the spore effects and something to do with the resulting tokens. A great example is the next creature in line: “Deathspore Thallid” might seem harmless with its 1/1, the usual Saproling production and a sacrifice effect that causes -1/-1, but I can tell you that this thing clears boards when you get things going; and it has at least one “Darksteel Colossus” on tally in my case, too.
Another very powerful option is the first Rare of the deck: “Thelon of Havenwood” not only causes your shrooms to become immense if you wish them to do so, but the card can also fuel faster Saproling production which comes handy occasionally. I would not play more than one due to using the spore counters to produce tokens, but the card does provide an alternate way of going for the win. Sadly, after this solid option we are back at the bland and hardly playable: “Thallid Germinator” provides token production with an effect just like I asked, but +1/+1 per Saproling sacrificed is just not good enough. “Wormwood Dryad” has nothing to do with anything here since you cannot regenerate the card when needed, do not really work with single unblockable attacks, and have nothing to make self-damaging a feature. And while “Herd Gnarr” could have its moment when a lot of Saprolings come into play, I rather stick with the tried and tested like “Scion of the Wild” and its many improvements that have come out over the years. There is also “Savage Thallid“, which brings Regeneration but only for Fungi and is too expensive anyway, but thankfully the deck also comes with two copies of “Sporesower Thallid” which are a brilliant way to speed up the token production and are even decent bodies in a pinch being 4/4 for four mana.
The non-creature part of a Fungus deck is equally important since you want to increase the overall speed of the strategy by providing Saprolings from other sources than the counter generation. Well, let’s see if “Fun with Fungus” delivers on that part: For zero mana, you have one “Claws of Gix” to work with, which might seem not that interesting but is a great way to trigger anything that asks for things hitting the graveyard which is not uncommon in Black-Green. One copy of “Might of Old Krosa” might seem random but the card is rather nice and therefore a plus in my book, if only to place it in something else. “Sprout” provides additional Saprolings and therefore allows you access to sacrifice effects of Fungi way faster than normal; even though there are way better options that getting one Saproling for one mana. After that things really become rather random: “Feebleness” can flash into play to make an opposing creature weaker, “Strength in Numbers” boosts your board according to how many attackers you declare, “Assassinate” is a rather limited removal since it only hits tapped creatures, and “Fallen Ideal” has no real good target while also eating up creatures you might want to sacrifice for the Fungi. “Krosan Grip” is nice as the “Naturalize” upgrade it is, while “Sudden Death” is going to take care of most problems on the opposing field. “Dread Return” revives a creature and can even be cast again from the graveyard if you have smaller creatures, aka Saprolings, to spare. And then there is the second Rare of the deck “Verdant Embrace“, which basically turns one creature into a “Verdant Force” but is too slow to really matter.
Now, I have played Fungi quite extensively and can tell you that pretty much any combination of colors works as long as you keep Green in the mix to access the best cards the tribal has to offer. White can make use of “Selesnya Evangel” and “Juniper Order Ranger” as budget options, Blue can cause the Fungus player to have multiple upkeeps via “Paradox Haze” and “Copy Enchantment” which speeds up the counter stacking, and Red can go for some nasty burns with “Dogpile” and/or “Soulblast“. But to make all of those options work, you really want to use a solid core: “Utopia Mycon” is probably the best Fungus available since it can turn Saprolings into mana. Speed up the Saproling creation by playing “Fist of Ironwood“, “Scatter the Seeds“, and “Sprout Swarm“, then combine that with “Fecundity” to have more card draw than is good for you. Now all you need to play are some solid combo tools and once the board is established you can go for all kinds of crazyness. “Essence Warden” is a superb card in Fungi, while options like “Savra, Queen of the Golgari” can really spiral out of control. I also normally played something to sacrifice stuff into to trigger all those effects, which was either something cheap like “Carrion Feeder“, or something control-minded like “Nezumi Bone-Reader” or “Sadistic Hypnotist“. I agree that this seems like a rather random selection of cards, but once the core stands you can really go in any direction with the tribal.
Needless to say, I like “Fun with Fungus”. It lacks some of the crucial cards that you need to really get the combo going, but it is a solid starting point that introduces its own ideas, both good like “Thelon of Havenwood” as a beatdown enabler as well as bad like “Verdant Embrace” producing too little for its mana cost. And interestingly enough, this would be the point where I tell you that buying this deck is a bad idea since the deck is too expensive, but with a starting point of 17€ you might get enough useful cards that you could not get that done cheaper by buying singles when you add the postage costs; and it seems like the deck is available for even lower prices when you get lucky since there were recent sales for around 6€. The other Fungi cards are also not really that expensive, unless you decide to go with “Doubling Season” or similar to engage in all sorts of infinite combos. “Fun with Fungus” is not the best Preconstructed Deck I have ever seen, but it feels like good value for the cards you are getting.
Cubic Creativity 