Hello and welcome to Daily Commander!

Today we are going to be talking about Thelon of Havenwood!

Thelon is a two mana 2/2 that gives each Fungus creature you control +1/+1 for each spore counter on it and for a black and a green and exiling a Fungus card from your graveyard, you put a spore counter on each Fungus you control.

Fungi typal is a nonconventional creature typal strategy, but the playstyle of this is a unique way to give your Fungi a boost, and in a way that allows for a counters strategy.

The plan is to get a number of Fungi onto the board and make sure that we can find ways to get a ton of spore counters on them. Incidentally we can also play a bit into a Saproling strategy since a lot of Fungi cards make or interact with Saprolings.

Looking at the number cards that give spore counters, a lot of them gain incidental spore counters at the beginning of your upkeep.

Something like Utopia Mycon is a great early creature to have in play because if you stick it early then you can start accumulating counters quickly of each of your upkeeps, using them to either attack, make tokens, or make Saprolings.

Most Thallids can make a Saproling by removing some number of spore counters while adding a spore counter at the beginning of your upkeep, like Thallid who is a one drop that can make Saprolings, but some also have additional abilities by sacrificing a Saproling, like Deathspore Thallid which can give a creature -1/-1 until end of turn, Vitaspore Thallid to give a creature haste, or Savage Thallid to regenerate a Fungus.

There are also some utility creatures that use spore counters and Saprolings like Spore Flower which prevents creatures from dealing combat damage, Elvish Farmer can sacrifice a Saproling to gain you 2 life, and Thorn Thallid to deal 1 damage to any target.

The most ideal creature in the mix of spore counter creatures is Sporesower Thallid, which adds a spore counter in each Fungus you control at the beginning of your upkeep while being able to make a Saproling token. This is an effective way to start snowballing spore counters on your Fungi.

The next thing we should focus on ways to get more spore counters on your creatures.

Winding Constrictor is one of the more affordable ways to get additional counters on your creature, of which Aetheric Amplifier is a way to double the counters on a target creature you control, which if a creature you control is banking spore counters can be made massive when Thelon comes into play.

The most ideal way we can speed up getting more counters on our creatures is using proliferate, which we have many more options like Drown in Ichor which gives a creature -4/-4 in addition to proliferating.

Thirsting Roots gets a land into our hand or proliferates, Smell Fear proliferates then has a creature you control and a creature you don’t control fight each other, Plaguemaw Beast can tap and sacrifice a creature to proliferate, and Recon Craft Theta makes an Alien token with a +1/+1 counter and whenever the Recon Craft attacks you proliferate.

As far as the late game is concerned there is Planewide Celebration which ideally you would cast to proliferate four times, or another option would be Contagion Engine which puts a -1/-1 counter on each creature a player controls, and for four mana and tap it you can proliferate twice.

Since we are going to be having a decent number of tokens and a number of creatures that are of decent size, an aggro win would be an ideal way to go about winning.

March of the World Ooze is a card that I think would be perfect for the deck because it makes all of our creatures 6/6’s, which when combined with Thelon can make our Fungi and Saprolings massive, while also making Elephants whenever our opponents cast a spell that isn’t on their turn.

If we also want to make our Saprloings even bigger there is Tendershoot Dryad which makes a Saproling at the beginning of each upkeep and once we hit the city’s blessing then our Saprolings get an additional +2/+2, which when combined with something like Verdant Force which also makes Saprolings at the beginning of each upkeep then we should ascend in no time.

Then if we want just a massive Fungus that we don’t mind sacrificing some Saprolings to, there is Mycoloth, which has Devour 2 which adds two +1/+1 counters for each creature we sacrifice as it enters and it makes a number of Saprolings equal to the number of +1/+1 counters it has, which means we can have a swarm of Saprolings and a huge Mycoloth.

Thelon is a build around Commander in that it has a straightforward strategy that leads you down a path that has few deviations. Thelon wants you to play Fungi with spore counters, which make your Fungi bigger, which means that they lend themselves towards an aggro strategy.

It’s nice to see that a mechanic that doesn’t have too many card associated with it can have a strategy that is focused and has a decent amount of support to sustain itself to make a fine typal deck.

Thank you for reading, see you tomorrow for the next Daily Commander!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual