Much Abrew: Frogs (Standard)
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Much Abrew About Nothing! Today, we're heading to our new Bloomburrow Standard format to play what might be my new favorite deck: Frogs! Out of all the creature types in Bloomburrow, Frogs are by far the most unique. Their game plan is this weird self-bounce, value-heavy card-draw package, which is exactly how I like playing Magic the most: generating lots of value, drawing lots of cards, and figuring out a way to win the game somehow! How strong are Frogs in Standard? Let's hop into some games and find out!
Much Abrew: Frogs
Discussion
Frogs are a super-unique deck. While most of the new tribal decks from Bloomburrow are pretty aggressive, looking to curve out with creatures and bash for tons of damage, Frogs are looking to do almost exactly the opposite by bouncing their own creatures for value. While the deck isn't especially fast (although it can occasionally get aggro draws thanks to Valley Mightcaller), the value engine it offers can be almost unbeatable in the late game.
Clement, the Worrywort sort of exemplifies what our deck is trying to do. When a creature enters, we can bounce a cheaper creature back to our hand, which sounds like a pretty bad ability. But it's actually super powerful in the context of Frogs, which are overloaded with enters triggers and payoffs that trigger when our creatures leave the battlefield without dying. Plus, Clement turns all of our Frogs into mana dorks. Sure, the mana can only cast creatures, but this isn't much of a drawback considering our deck is 30 creatures and six spells. These abilities also work well together—we can play a Frog, bounce another one back to our hand, and then tap some Frogs to recast whatever we bounced!
Backing up Clement with our self-bounce plan are a few other options. Mistbreath Elder is one of the strangest one-drops I've ever played with. We almost never want to play it on Turn 1 since it forces us to bounce another creature back to our hand on our upkeep, which can sort of lock us out of the game (or at least from keeping other creatures on the battlefield). But it's a one-drop that's very powerful in the mid-game once we have a board since it lets us bounce one of our creatures each turn for free to reuse its enters trigger and trigger our payoffs. Lilysplash Mentor is just a one-of for blink value, but the real payoff here is Dour Port-Mage, which is the most important engine piece in our deck. The two-drop can bounce our own creatures for two mana. But more importantly, it draws us a card whenever one of our creatures leaves the battlefield without dying, which means we're drawing an extra card every time we pick up a creature with Mistbreath Elder, bounce it with Clement, the Worrywort, or blink it with Lilysplash Mentor. Considering that bouncing our own creatures is basically what Frogs do, it's one of the strongest cards in our deck, and the value becomes pretty absurd once we get multiples stacked up.
So, what are we bouncing? In reality, we can bounce anything to trigger cards like Dour Port-Mage and Three Tree Scribe, but our best self-bounce creature are our enters-the-battlefield Frogs. [[Sunshower Druid] is just a one-of in the main deck. It's great against aggro, as a 1/3 blocker that gains us life, and can also put its +1/+1 counter on another creature in the late game. Clifftop Lookout ramps us, and since Frogs draw so many cards, we need as much mana as possible to get them on the battlefield. Pond Prophet offers a ton of value thanks to its "draw a card" ETB trigger. Imagine playing Pond Prophet to draw a card, bouncing it back to our hand with something like Clement to trigger Dour Port-Mage and draw another card, and then recasting Pond Prophet to draw yet another card with its enters trigger!
But by far our best ETB Frog is Dreamdew Entrancer, which is one of my favorite Bloomburrow sleepers. The four-mana 3/4 reacher has an incredibly flexible enters trigger. It can tap down a creature and put three stun counters on it, and we get to draw two cards if we use it on one of our own creatures. This makes it sort of a hybrid Flametongue Kavu and Mulldrifter. Adding three stun counters to one of our opponent's creatures almost turns Dreamdew Entrancer into a hard removal spell since it will take so long for the creature to untap (plus, we can always bounce Dreamdew Entrancer and replay it to stun something else, or even add more stun counters to something that's already tapped down), making it our best removal Frog. But it's also one of our best card-advantage Frogs. While putting three stun counters on one of our creatures probably sounds bad, since our deck is so good at bouncing our own creatures back to our hand, odds are we'll use Dreamdew Entrancer to tap down something like Pond Prophet and then use Mistbreath Elder or Clement, the Worrywort to bounce it back to our hand anyway and get around the stunning. This flexibility makes Dreamdew Entrancer one of the most important cards in our deck, and it played even better than I expected, to the point where I think it could have a future in Standard even outside of Frogs!
Hilariously, our best finisher is actually a one-mana 1/1 in Valley Mightcaller, which is basically Champion of the Parish but for Frogs, and it also gets trample, which is a huge, huge upgrade. While we occasionally can get aggro wins by running out Valley Mightcaller on Turn 1, more often, it comes down in the late game once we have our self-bounce engine set up and quickly grows to be something like a 10/10 trample that can kill our opponent in just a couple of attacks! Backing up Valley Mightcaller is Three Tree Scribe, which is basically Dour Port-Mage except, rather than drawing us a card when a creature leaves the battlefield without dying, it puts a +1/+1 counter on one of our creatures, giving us another way to grow a massive, game-ending threat as we blink and bounce our board.
Finally, we have a couple of spells, both of which happen to feature Frogs. Polliwallop is our removal spell, and it's a good one, dealing damage equal to twice the power of a target creature we control to one of our opponent's creatures, typically for just one mana (thanks to its cost reduction) at instant speed. Meanwhile, Long River's Pull gives us an answer to sweepers like Sunfall and annoying creatures like Sheoldred, although I'm not 100% sure if we need a counter in the main deck or not. Sweepers are a problem for the deck, although so far in Bloomburrow Standard, I've played way more often against Mono-Red than against Sunfall Control.
And that's basically the deck. Text really doesn't do it justice because it has so many weird synergies and does such unique things, so make sure to check out the gameplay. Record-wise, I'm 5-4 with the deck so far, which is sold if unspectacular. The deck seems to do really well against aggro decks like Mono-Red and can fight through control after sideboarding. But it struggles against removal-heavy black midrange decks like Dimir since we really need to be able to keep two or three Frogs on the battlefield to get our value engine running, and the endless removal black has to offer is pretty good at keeping the board clean.
I'm still not 100% sure just how competitive Frogs are in Bloomburrow Standard, but really, that doesn't matter because they are incredibly fun to play with! If you like value-filled card-draw decks with tons of tricky synergies, give Frogs a shot. I can't promise that you'll win all your games, but I will promise that you'll have a ton of fun along the way!
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.
