In this experiment, we take a second to harvest all those swarming Saprolings in an eternal utopia.

So check this out:

Just a couple weeks ago, we used Eternal Witness to return Eerie Interlude (new in Shadows over Innistrad!) to our hand after using said Eerie Interlude to Flicker said Eternal Witness, allowing us to Flicker all our creatures every turn we were able to pay . With Cackling Counterpart, we basically have a spell we can cast with buyback for that gives us 2/1 creature tokens. That’s not new though. What is new is Second Harvest.

Once we have an Eternal Witness token, casting Second Harvest gives us another Eternal Witness and lets us return our Second Harvest to do it again. But while Cackling Counterpart is limited to giving us one creature at a time, making us pay each time, if we were to have tokens that produced at least that , we could repeat the process as many times as we want, gaining value in some other way I’m sure we could figure out.

But that means we’ll need tokens that can give us mana—and they need to do it immediately after entering the battlefield. One way to pull it off might be with a couple token copies of Burning-Tree Emissary. Or we could have a Concordant Crossroads with some Llanowar Elves tokens made by Llanowar Mentor—or similar, but unnamed, tokens made by Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury.

But I went down a different route.

Saprolings

As soon as Utopia Mycon surfaced in my searches, I knew what I needed to do. This guy is like a Phyrexian Altar for Saprolings, it only costs , and it even makes Saprolings of its own. To go infinite, we’ll need four Saprolings, Utopia Mycon, an Eternal Witness token (which probably involved a Cackling Counterpart), and Second Harvest. That’s kind of a lot, but we can hope our deck does some things along the way and doesn’t actually fold when not everything comes together—or at least that it might be able to hold out until it does have everything come together.

Thallid Shell-Dweller — This 0/5 will help stall out while making the Saprolings we need.

Sprout Swarm — A popularly powerful card, Sprout Swarm will be great for us here. It’s 1 more expensive than Sprout, but it has buyback and convoke, so we can cast it every turn, spending creatures as mana without sacrificing them and without going down a card. Later in the game, we may even be able to cast it multiple times a turn, perhaps without spending mana, and it can even be used as a bought-back Fog by creating a token to chump-block a dangerous attacker.

Vitaspore Thallid — We’ll want to win the game at some point, and I greatly prefer to do so the same turn I go infinite. Haste-granting creatures tend to allow that kind of thing, even if we have to sacrifice a 1/1 to give another 1/1 haste a hundred or so times.

Druid's Deliverance — Here’s another way to stall the game while making tokens. “I’ll prevent all that damage to me . . . and produce another Saproling.” If we already have an Eternal Witness token, this essentially has buyback. (Though remember those Witnesses aren’t Saprolings, so they can’t stand in and make mana with the Mycon.)

Psychotrope Thallid — This guy’s activated ability costs us Saprolings for cards. Cards are certainly valuable, and we don’t mind sacrificing chump-blockers, but we also need a critical mass of Saprolings to combo off. However, when we are comboing off, sacrificing excess infinite Saprolings to draw the cards we need to win (notably Vitaspore Thallid) will be totally worth it.

Rite of Replication — The two copies of this are copies five and six of Cackling Counterpart. It’s not an instant, it doesn’t have flashback, and it costs more mana, but we have more ways to make our Witness token, and that kicker cost is perhaps the most famous of kicker costs. We can use this in the late game to make all the Saprolings we need in one burst—or to return five cards to our hand with a bunch of 2/1 Humans.

Feral Incarnation — I just love this card. Maybe it’s the art, or maybe it’s the allure of three 3/3s for 0 mana. This doesn’t particularly play into the combo, but it does serve as a potential noncombo win condition.

Eternal Harvest ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Vitaspore Thallid
• 4 Eternal Witness
• 4 Psychotrope Thallid
• 4 Thallid Shell-Dweller
• 4 Utopia Mycon

• Spells (18)
• 3 Druid's Deliverance
• 3 Sprout Swarm
• 4 Cackling Counterpart
• 4 Second Harvest
• 2 Feral Incarnation
• 2 Rite of Replication

• Lands (24)
• 12 Forest
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 4 Hinterland Harbor
• 4 Yavimaya Coast

Buy This Deck

More Options

So I basically put together a Thallid deck with a combo in it—and I’m perfectly content with that. But here are some more options, both Thallid and non-Thallid.

Sporesower Thallid — This makes all our Thallids spit out Saprolings more quickly. It’s also a 4/4 for 4. We don’t really need the beef as much (if we’re going for the combo), but the efficiency for making Saprolings is nice.

Saproling Burst — This can give us a bunch of Saprolings at once. For 5, we can make seven Saprolings. If we have Utopia Mycon and an Eternal Witness token, we can sacrifice four of our new Saprolings to pay for Second Harvest, giving us three more Saprolings and another Eternal Witness token, returning the Second Harvest to our hand. We can then sacrifice four of those six to cast Second Harvest again and repeat, ending up with four Saprolings. We’ll end up with a few extra 2/1s, but ultimately, we won’t be pulling ahead with this plan. But if we had even one Saproling to start, we can go from eight to four and back to eight and so on. That lets us make as many 2/1s as we want, though we won’t have excess mana or Saprolings for things like drawing cards, or haste. But if we started with two Saprolings pre-Burst, or if we had 2 extra mana to help pay for the first Second Harvest, we’ll be good to go. In retrospect, I recommend running Saproling Burst for this plan. There’s just no more efficient way to make all the Saprolings we need. (Thelonite Hermit is cute, too.)

Tezzeret's Gambit and Steady Progress — We’re already playing blue for Cackling Counterpart (and Rite of Replication), so proliferating the spore counters on our Thallids comes at no cost but hard-to-come-by card slots.

So if doubling just once isn’t good enough for you, if you needed another reason to burst out your Thallid deck, or if you want a chance to try out Phyrexian Altar for , give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com