Deck Tech - The Pride of Hull Clade
Overrun by mana dorks!
Deck Techs
$100 decks that are cheap, fun, and competitive.
Total cost: $66.36
Oh Simic, you never change. You are constantly searching for more and more value. Drawing 4 cards per turn is not enough. How about 8? Still too few? Well, how about 15? And how about we staple our value engine to a goofy, dumb Crocodile Elk Turtle with a ginormous butt? This sounds like a recipe for fun!
The Pride of Hull Clade veers away from the typical Merfolk or lands matter builds Simic is known for, eschewing playing lands or sea creatures and instead focusing on just drawing a ton of cards. This turtle's whole purpose is to swing in and out value your opponents every time, while killing them by drawing cards.
This card is a good boy with a massive butt. He costs X less based on the total toughness on your board, meaning you will typically cast him for 1 green mana. His ability basically reads "when The Pride of Hull Clade damages a player, draw 15 cards." That is absolutely nuts.
There is a way to build this deck where you attempt to give this ability to multiple creatures, but chances are:
- None have as a big of a butt as The Pride of Hull Clade
- Activating this multiple times reduces the mana you have to cast all of the cards you draw.
Because of these reasons, we're going to focus on having our commander be the driving force behind our entire game plan.
Win conditions
Infinite combos in more budget friendly or casual circles are typically frowned upon. Drawing your entire deck in one fell sweep can be anticlimatic, which is why I am proposing you win by just drawing a overwhelming, but not infinite, number of cards over the course of the game. If you can draw your deck naturally without a combo, it will give you much more of an "Achievement Unlocked" feeling.
There are two ways to win. The first is while drawing our deck, we have a Psychosis Crawler in play to ping our opponents for every card we draw. If we do manage to draw our deck (and trust me, it can happen more reliably than you think), we can win with the classic Laboratory Maniac.
Ramp
Our ramp package has some similarities with standard Simic packages: Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, Growth Spiral, Rampant Growth, Sol Ring, and Nature's Lore are all staples.
What is different this time around is The Pride of Hull Clade has its own built in ramp. Its mana cost is reduced by the total toughness of creatures you control. And what kinds of creatures often have big butts? Walls (or things with the Defender keyword)!
Wall of Roots, Vine Trellis, Overgrown Battlement, and Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle all have a large toughness and can generate mana as though they were typical mana dorks. Talk about pulling double duty!
A lot of our other creatures in the deck have big butts but also provide value, so we can count them as ramp for our commander.
Wall of Blossoms replaces itself when it enters and reduces our commander's cost by 4.
Arboreal Grazer lets us play another land and reduces our commander's cost by 3.
Bedrock Tortoise gives our commander hexproof and reduces its cost by 6.
Charix, the Raging Isle is perhaps our MVP, as by himself he reduces our commander to just a single green mana.
If you already took a look at the deck list, you may have seen Managorger Hydra in here and wondered why. Well, this card gets insanely big extremely fast. In just one turn of the table, it is not unheard of to see it get 4-5 counters, thereby reducing our commander's cost.
As I mentioned at the start, we need to get our commander out as fast as possible to start drawing cards, so we should have a plethora of creatures that reduce its cost but also provide value.
Card draw
Our primary source of card draw is our commander. Even so, there are some support pieces in here, to get us closer to being able to cast him, in Mystic Remora and Windfall.
There are some situational draw spells in Compost, Insight, Viridian Revel, and Runic Armasaur, as their effectiveness depends upon what types of decks our opponents are playing. There is a good chance your opponents will be playing Black, Green, and sacrificing treasures, so for every time these cards are duds, there will be more times when they hit.
The two best single instance draw spells are Rush of Knowledge and Traverse Eternity, as they essentially read "draw 11 cards."
Now, let us get back to talking about The Pride of Hull Clade and his draw ability. We need to build in multiple ways of doing two things:
- Giving him evasion
- Activating his ability
Aqueous Form and Slip Through Space are single great 1 mana value spells that give him unblockable. Sword Coast Sailor is probably the MVP in this regard as it is not as threatening as other pieces on the board, making it more likely to stick around, but it gives our commander unblockable every turn.
When talking about The Pride of Hull Clade's ability, 4 mana is quite a bit, especially if we want to try to stack it multiple times. This is why we have Biomancer's Familiar and Training Grounds to reduce the cost of it.
To further emphasize the importance of these two classifications of cards, Long Term Plans is a cheaper tutor that allows us to fine one of these cards, depending upon where you are at in the game.
Interaction
Because our commander is the engine, we need to protect it at all costs. There are some cheap counter magic spells in An Offer You Can't Refuse, Counterspell, and Voidslime.
Tamiyo's Safekeeping, Tyvar's Stand, and Collective Resistance grant our commander hexproof and indestructible, saving it from board wipes and single target removal.
In case we need to interact with our opponents' boards, we have a pretty standard suite of cards. Beast Within can remove anything, even lands, and Collective Resistance is fantastic in its modality, being able remove an artifact and/or enchantment and protect our commander.
Now time for a small, hot take: Blue is just as good at creature removal as White. I said it! White has undoubtedly the two best spells in Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile, but blue also has two one mana spells in Rapid Hybridization and Pongify. While they do not exile, they are still fantastic and cheap interaction. And speaking of exiling, Reality Shift, Resculpt, and Suspend are here to do just that. What other white cards would you take over these? Maybe Get Lost or Generous Gift? Honestly, Blue has some amazing removal spells that should get some more love.
For board wipes, Flood of Tears and Evacuation are great mass bounce spells. Filter Out is an underrated card, as for just 3 mana you can bounce all treasures, enchantments and artifacts (well, other things too, but these are likely the most relevant).
I'll say it again, Blue has amazing interaction, and you should play them here.
Alternate win conditions
If we either mill ourselves out or get milled, that is a good thing! Hopefully, either with a giant hand or some recursion pieces like Eternal Witness, we'll be able to consistently secure our win condition with Laboratory Maniac. Even so, it is always good to include a backup, and in this case it is with good ol' combat damage, and lots of it.
Jolrael, Voice of Zhalfir is amazing in this deck because our entire goal is to draw a bunch of cards and have our hands stacked (note the importance of Reliquary Tower and Wizard Class!). We could easily swing in with a giant flying bird for 15-20 damage a turn.
Bedrock Tortoise along with The Pride of Hull Clade, or Charix the Raging Isle, and an unblockable spell means we'll be hitting for over 15 damage a turn, making commander damage a real possibility.
Don't get fooled
The main way I have seen people build The Pride of Hull Clade is doing wall tribal. This is actually the least effective way to build him for the following reasons:
- If The Pride of Hull Clade is on battlefield, he likely has the largest toughness, so why would you activate his ability to target any other creature?
- With how much of a target your commander becomes, you will need to save that extra mana, after you're done activating his ability, for counterspells and interaction pieces to give your commander hexproof.
- This is a voltron strategy of sorts, so keeping back some blockers on defense is wise.
Clean up
The look in your opponents' eyes when they see you pick up your deck to draw 15 cards is priceless. Combine that with Teferi's Ageless Insight and they will scowl in disgust. The thing is, you are just drawing cards naturally without comboing, so they cannot even complain. Soon enough, they'll be having nightmares about a giant Crocodile Elk Turtle coming to ruin their day.