Against the Odds: F-ing Treefolk (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Lorwyn Eclipsed Standard to play one of my favorite but also one of the least supported tribes from the set in Treefolk! There were only a handful of Treefolk in Lorwyn Eclipsed, but that's fine because we only really need a single card to make a ton of Treefolk in Sapling Nursery. The primary goal of our deck today is to combine the enchantment with Fecund Greenshell (the "F" in F-ing Treefolk). Since the Treefolk that Sapling Nursery makes are 3/4s, having higher toughness than power, they'll trigger Fecund Greenshell's ability to let us put the top card of our deck onto the battlefield if its a land, which will trigger Sapling Nursery again, which will trigger Fecund Greenshell and hopefully make a massive board of Treefolk all in one turn! What are the odds of winning with Treefolk in Lorwyn Eclipsed Standard? Let's find out!
Against the Odds: F-ing Treefolk
The Deck
Our deck today is built around two cards: Sapling Nursery and Fecund Greenshell. While both cards are solid on their own, with Sapling Nursery coming down on the cheap thanks to our nearly all-Forest mana base and making a 3/4 whenever a land enters under our control, and Fecund Greenshell offering a big reach body and card advantage as creatures with higher toughness than power enter, they are especially absurd together. As I mentioned in the intro, since Sapling Nursery makes 3/4 Treefolk tokens, when both cards are on the battlefield, every land that enters makes a 3/4 Treefolk, which will trigger Fecund Greenshell's ability. We get to repeat the process if we hit a land, making a massive board of Treefolk all in one turn. If we ever get multiple Sapling Nursery on the battlefield with Fecund Greenshell, it's possible that we can chain together enough Fecund Greenshell triggers to put all the lands in our deck into play and make 20+ Treefolk all at once!
The rest of our deck is designed to support the F-ing Treefolk plan. Every creature in our deck has higher toughness than power, so they will trigger Fecund Greenshell when they enter, and all of them except a single copy of Iridescent Vinelasher (which I sort of regret playing; the idea was for it to be a backup finisher, but it didn't feel necessary in practice), ramp extra lands into play to reduce the cost of Sapling Nursery, and, once it is on the battlefield, make Treefolk. Insidious Fungus gives us a main-deck answer to artifacts and enchantments, and we can always use it to ramp. Bloomvine Regent gives us a Cultivate for Forests that can later give us a big-butted flying body. Finally, Icetill Explorer is the best support creature in our deck. Extra land drops mean even more Treefolk, which means even more Fecund Greenshell triggers. Things get even crazier if we happen to draw a Fabled Passage since Icetill Explorer will let us play it twice each turn from our graveyard, which is at least four Treefolk a turn, and potentially way more thanks to [[Fecund Greenshell].
As far as non-creatures, we have more ramp in Shared Roots and Earthbender Ascension, which doubles up as a finisher by growing our creatures and giving them trample as land enter once it builds up some counters.
We also get a bunch of good removal, with Requiting Hex for the early game, Bitter Triumph to kill any creature, and Urgent Necropsy as a catch-all, assuming we can get some evidence in our graveyard.
I also wanted to mention the mana base briefly because it's unique and important to the deck's functioning. Every land in our deck, outside of two copies of Ba Sing Se and one Swamp, either is a Forest or can get a Forest, in the case of Fabled Passage. In our perfect world, the first four lands we get on the battlefield will be Forests to reduce the cost of Sapling Nursery. If you decide to try the deck, focus on aggressively finding Forests until you get a Sapling Nursery; after that, you can fetch up the Swamp.
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, we went 8-5 with the deck, good for a solid 62% match-win percentage. The deck actually felt pretty competitive. It can ramp like crazy, and the Treefolk synergies with Fecund Greenshell were actually very powerful. Some decks just can't beat an endless stream of 3/4 reachers. More importantly, we had some crazy games with the deck. While we never managed to put every land in our deck into play in a single turn, we did make 10 or more Treefolk at once multiple times, which was pretty sweet. Plus, the ability to sacrifice Sapling Nursery to give our Treefolk indestructible was nice sweeper protection, to make sure our Treefolk could win the game. While this is perhaps not a traditional Treefolk tribal deck, I think this is the direction to go if you want to win with Treefolk in Standard!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
