Plot Twist #38 - Spider-Ham, Peter Porker Goes Everything Kindred

How Does Spider-Ham, Peter Porker Work?

For a two-mana 2/2, Spider-Ham, Peter Porker has a lot going on for it. We're going to start with the second ability, which gives +1/+1 to a slew of creature types: Spiders, Boars, Bats, Bears, Birds, Cats, Dogs, Frogs, Jackals, Lizards, Mice, Otters, Rabbits, Raccoons, Rats, Squirrels, Turtles, and Wolves.

In looking at Spider-Ham's EDHREC page, we can see... a bit of a mess. Brewers are pulling in lots of these creature types with cards like Spore Frog and Spinner of Souls appearing in the Top Cards section, but the average deck appears to otherwise be a pile of goodstuff cards. We're certainly looking to do something more synergistic than that on Plot Twist.

Spider-Ham also makes a Food token when it enters the battlefield. This works well with cards like Gilded Goose and Thornvault Forager that both get buffed by Spider-Ham's ability and care about Food tokens. While there's definitely enough support for Food tokens to create a mono-green Food matters deck, that's not really the direction we want to go in this week.

Instead, we'll lean on the Food token and a handful of other artifacts sprinkled throughout our deck to use artifact tutors to find Maskwood Nexus. Maskwood Nexus makes all of our creatures every creature type, supercharging all the different kindred support cards that we can run in mono-green, like Hungry Lynx and Traveling Chocobo.

Overall, we're looking to build a deck that cares about having a bunch of different creature types and "Lords" that support us for having creatures of a specific type. There's also a robust amount of +1/+1 counter support cards amongst these various kindred types too, so we'll be able to bolster what we're doing with The Ozolith, Hardened Scales, and friends. It's a very twisty, strange mono-green deck. Let's dive in!

Oh, So Many Kindred Types

Of the 18 creature types that Spider-Ham calls out, we're running 13 of them. We aren't running any Bats, Jackals, Mice, Otters, and Rats mostly due to the lack of options available, but the remaining 13 creature types had at least one creature that worked well with our deck. Fortunately, many of these creature types care about +1/+1 counters, giving our deck a strong baseline of support.

Some notable creature-type matters support cards we're running include Ayula, Queen Among Bears, Feline Sovereign, Honored Dreyleader, Hungry Lynx, Thornvault Forager, Traveling Chocobo, and Qasali Slingers. Cats are definitely the creature type that has the most support here, so we're running 11 Cats in our current list, but there's a wide variety of creature type supporting effects spread throughout the deck.

While these can feel a little at odds with each other when we first start casting them, it's important to remember that all the creatures in our deck will be buffed by Spider-Ham, Peter Porker. We should be able to build up a relatively solid board of creatures while drawing towards one of our win conditions.

In general, a lot of the creature types our deck is running also care about +1/+1 counters too, so there will be some synergy with Hardened Scales, The Ozolith, Ozolith, the Shattered Spire, and friends as we build out a hodge podge board of creatures in the early game.

Changelings & Type-Hacking

Since we care about so many creature types, we've got five changelings to help us tie the whole thing together: Barkform Harvester, Bloodline Pretender, Chameleon Colossus, Three Tree Mascot, and Universal Automaton. The beauty of these changelings is that they'll trigger any of our "Lords" when we need them to.

They can work with Qasali Slingers or Feline Sovereign to destroy an opponent's Rhystic Study when we need them to, always buff Honored Dreyleader, and give us plenty of valid targets for Ayula, Queen Among Bears' triggered abilities. The Shapeshifters allow us to get immediate and consistent value from our creature-type matters support cards.

The real powerhouse/secret commander of our deck this week though is Maskwood Nexus. Since the Nexus makes all of our creatures, including the ones in our deck, every creature type it makes every creature trigger every creature-type matters effect in our deck. If you like Maskwood Nexus as much as I do, be sure to check out Plot Twist #11 and #18 for some more examples of the weird shenanigans you can get up to with it.

With Maskwood Nexus, we can use Thornvault Forager to find any creature in our deck, cast every creature off the top of our deck with Traveling Chocobo, or use Hungry Lynx to buff our entire team at once since all of our creatures are both Rats and Cats at the same time.

To help us find Maskwood Nexus, we're running a few artifact tutors, like Inventors' Fair, Kuldotha Forgemaster, and Transmutation Font. All of these tutors care about artifacts in one form or another, which is why we're running artifact lands and the four Changeling artifact creatures. Remember that our commander also makes a Food token when it enters, helping fuel our artifact count.

+1/+1 Counter Synergies

A lot of the cards we've mentioned so far like Bloodline Pretender, Honored Dreyleader, and Hungry Lynx all care about creature types and +1/+1 counters. There are actually a lot of creature types that Spider-Ham, Peter Porker cares about which overlap with +1/+1 counters, so it provides a nice sub-theme to help fill our deck out.

We're running some obvious includes in Hardened Scales, The Ozolith, and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire to help us both get more +1/+1 counters and shift them around to our other creatures when one of our Spiders/Boars/Squirrels/etc. dies.

Beyond the traditional options, recent sets have given us several new +1/+1 counters matters cards that help our strategy in Basking Broodscale, Sazh's Chocobo, Scythecat Cub, and Spider-Man, Miles Morales. While none of these cards are as backbreaking as something like Cathars' Crusade by themselves, there's a density of them in our deck that quickly starts to add up.

Winning the Game with Spider-Ham, Peter Porker

Our primary way to win the game is going to be finding Maskwood Nexus and letting our creature-type matters effects generate a ton of extra value. It's definitely a linchpin card that our opponents will target once they know what the shtick of our deck is, though, so we'll want to either protect the Nexus or have backup gameplans. Fortunately, we have two really interesting ones!

The first is Primal Surge. It's the only nonpermanent in our deck, so if we resolve Primal Surge we get to put every card in our deck immediately into play. Combine that with something like Concordant Crossroads or Surrak and Goreclaw and we should be able to win the game. Personally, I love Primal Surge decks, but if that's not your jam, you could easily swap it out for another effect.

Two last, more traditional, win conditions we're running are Decimator of the Provinces and End-Raze Forerunners. These two Boars give us a Overrun-type effect that gives our creatures trample. Notably neither of them give our other creatures haste, so we'll need to have a solid board of creatures before casting one of them and trying to go for a win.

A Few Additional Twists for Good Measure

As always, the Scryfall searches for this week's deck unveiled some really interesting cards that are worth calling out:

Bloodspore Thrinax is a Lizard and a great engine for giving all of our creatures +1/+1 counters, especially when we're able to add extra +1/+1 counters to the Thrinax after we cast it. Scurry of Squirrels also allows us to add a ton of +1/+1 counters every turn. I just added it to my personal Chatterfang deck, and it's been overperforming for me the handful of times I've cast it.

Sweet-Gum Recluse is a card I've always wanted to make work, but never quite found a home for. It seems absolutely insane with Primal Surge in particular, but I'd love to hear from you in the comments below if you've found another home for Sweet-Gum Recluse in particular.

Haze Frog ended up taking the spot I had originally reserved for Spore Frog in this deck. It's a lot more expensive, but since we can't really recur Spore Frog, the flash effect on Haze Frog feels particularly valuable as a Fog effect. Finally, Froghemoth feels like a great form of graveyard interaction that also provides +1/+1 counters and lifegain too.

Spider-Ham, Peter Porker Commander Decklist

Here's the full decklist for you to peruse:

Roll Credits

I hope you enjoyed reading the latest edition of Plot Twist featuring Spider-Ham, Peter Porker. Next time you sit down for a game of Commander, see what sort of plot twists you can add to take the game's narrative in a new direction.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's deck and what cards could find a home in it in the comments below or on Archidekt. The Maybeboards of my deck lists are always filled with cards I thought could work but didn't make the final decklist.

You can check out my other articles here or see what decks I'm currently playing here. I recently put together the deck from Plot Twist #21, and it's been an absolute blast to play in paper.

I've also started dabbling in cEDH with a relatively stock Tymna & Thrasios list, so let me know in the comments below if you'd like to see a Plot Twist deck that's designed for more competitive pods.

Stay tuned to see what other twists and turns are headed your way in the next edition of Plot Twist.