Why is Slimefoot and Squee suddenly one of the most powerful and popular decks
After the rise of Aragorn a while back, there is yet another deck on the rise. Slimefoot and Squee and his toolbox of jund creatures suddenly became one of the most popular decks of the duel commander metagame. But why now after months have passed since their release? Will it become the next metagame tyrant or is it just another deck that will fall off? I will discuss this and more in today's article...
Jund goodness...
Slimefoot and Squee is probably the perfect example of what people want from a jund deck. The gameplay can be quite similar to Grist decks as they share a lot of the core cards. The deck is filled to the brim with powerful early game but late game creatures. How will find here the usual midrange threaths like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Thragtusk and even the iconic Tarmogoyf.
The game plan of the deck is pretty simple but requires a lot of thinking. Slimefoot and Squee as a commander is perfect for the deck as it gives you a solid creature to play in the early game but also allows you to get a lot of your creatures back from the graveyard if your opponent fails to deal with all of these saproling tokens you create. These little saprolings can also be problematic for creature decks as they give you a ton of blockers and they aren't able to damage you easily.
Why now?...
The March of the Machine set is around 6 months old but Slimefoot and Squee hasn't seen that much play just until now. The first reason is that the deck wasn't that popular because it wasn't good enough. First builds of the deck focused on a reanimator package which didn't end up being that great, especially in comparison to other similar decks.
Yet another reason why the deck has risen recently is the release of the LotR: Tales of Middle-Earth set a while back. It introduced a lot of great new cards but none of them benefited the deck more than the cycle of cycling creatures. Generous Ent, Oliphaunt and Troll of Kazad-dum each made the deck a lot better. Having the option to discard them in the early turns of the game to help fix your mana and being able to reanimate them later makes them really good inclusions.
Cards like Delighted Halfling and Orcish Bowmasters are both great creatures for any aggressive or midrange deck and this one is no exception. These cards also help the deck but aren't as synergistic as the before mentioned ones.
Tournament winners
People love playing jund so when a new powerful one arises a lot of poeple will hurry to try it out. The decklist was very soon optimized and you can now often see Slimefoot and Squee in top 8s of tournaments. It is doing quite great at smaller local tournaments but it actually seems to be doing much better at bigger tournaments. This playstyle seems to be doing great in duel commander and you will keep seeing this deck for months to come.
If you like the playstyle of Grist you will surely find this deck fun and it can help you win your next tournament, whether it is a smaller local tournament or a much larger one.
Author: Tomas Solovic
Date: October 16th, 2023