Thallids would probably be actually viable if they instead had “At the beginning of your upkeep, put a spore counter on each Fungus you control.”

They should make a thalid lord with "creatures have ward equal to the number of spore counters" would make them a bit more protected

Bizarre that they never considered simply making the Thallids faster in Time Spiral block. The 3-turn wait really is the death knell for the concept

Add a spore counter during each upkeep. Since they require 3 counters and there's an even amount of players, the gameplay will become unique each turn. This also scales well with Commander.

No mention of Slimefoot in Dominaria who gave old Thallids a home and solved the issue with boardwipes.

Thallids are my favorite tribe! I love mushrooms and idea of "growing" your resources. I rarely win with my thallids deck, but I always have a great time with the spore counters. Thanks for the video!

Atraxa and inexorable tide could send thallids into the stratosphere in terms of spore counters. any populate cards could, actually. also i like how he said "thallids don't have a great commander option" and then immediatly mentioned Ghave.

Maybe the Spore Counters could be places on the player instead of the creatures? Like Energy.

Now i wanna see homarid somehow get made decent and fun. Tide counters are like, actually neat. Proliferate helps thallids potentially...

While Thallids themselves weren't front and center in them, Ravnica: City of Guilds and the entire Alara block had a fair bit of support for them in the form of cards that produced saprolings at a good rate. Sprouting Thrinax and Mycoloth are especially notable.

Thallid tribal was my first deck. I really wish they were better.

From Fallen Empires, you forgot about the enchantment card "Night soil". It's almost exactly the same as "Fungal Plots".

“At the beginning of each upkeep” is the only real change needed.

Fungus is my favorite tribe. Thelon of Havenwood has been my main edh deck for eight years. The deck can be quite good if you throw enough money at the support cards. I could go on all day about the deck and card choices.

Proliferate in Abzan colors and auras like Polenbright Wings do really help the Thallid deck. Don't forget your Mycoloth and Verdant Force for more bodies each upkeep. You can go mono-green with the deck and have Menata just be a giant mana dump for more Saptolings

I think focusing more on saprolings as opposed to just Thallids would make for a great commander deck. Using the saprolings as sac outlets for not only the Thallids, but also fungus themed creatures like Mycoloth. Also supported with proliferate to increase the pace at which spore counters are generated

Fun with Fungus from Time Spiral was my introduction to Magic, so it's great to see a video on my old favorite tribe.

Thalids in pauper is a fun deck, with cards like: fungal infection, scatter the seeds and sprout swarm

Great video! It's nice to see the spotlight on Thallids. Some points: 1. You missed one Thallid that came between the old and new Thallid design: *Tukatongue Thallid* from Conflux (2009). So between the old (Fallen Empires (1994) and Time Spiral (2006)), and the new (Dominaria (2018)), we already had an attempt to revise Thallids or was even perhaps a future vision of them. On a side note, I was surprised and disappointed that Tukatongue Thallid wasn't reprinted in Dominaria (even with a different name to fit the plane). 2. As an old player (started playing in 1995 and even bought some Fallen Empires boosters as a kid) who bought the Time Spiral Thallid preconstructed deck and based a deck on it (fun and ran well), I say that losing the spore counter mechanic central to the identity of Thallids is *_NOT_* an issue. Times change and things have to keep up. If it was too weak then, it's going to have a really rough time now with all the power creep over the years. If focusing on just Saprolings- and making them efficiently- is what it takes for them to keep up, I'm all for it. And even if they brought it back with some changes to make it better... 3. One problem with the Thallid mechanic is that it was a _chore_ doing all that bookkeeping of the spore counters. This is something they shared with another Fallen Empires creature type- Homarids and their tide counters. Even if players today are used to having counters or dice as standard gear for our decks, it is still a hassle keeping track of all those counters during your upkeep, especially if you've got lots of them. The simplicity and straightforwardness of modern Thallids is much better for the game, where players can instead focus more on actual play rather than keeping track of small details.

I love the history of thallid/saproling tribal, especially considering how popular the theme is in commander and how golgari saproling was THE best archetype in Dominaria limited back in the day 😅

Taking a book from Yugioh, maybe having the spore counter move onto a card when the card that had the spore counter is destroyed. If we made a dedicated commander for it, it would be a unique commander ability that can be passive while in the commander zone. Also give the commander when on the field the ability to let other cards grab spore counters from it instead of itself.

The Spore counter theme did get "buffs" via counter-manipulation cards.

I am still playing a saproling deck with Rith, the Awakener as the commander. I get that he is a dragon in a deck otherwise almost completely composed of fungi, but if his ability resolves (which is admittedly not that easy to accomplish) you will be creating a fair amount of saprolings. My personal record is about 115 saprolings, which I managed to create with him, a doubling season and a saproling symbiosis. There are token decks out there that can spam a lot more tokens, but I am still proud of my record.

Even if Thallids are considered a failed tribe, i still love them. They were the first deck i built and they allowed me to win my first tournament in AIT.

Great video. Had a slimefoot commander deck for a while with most of these guys in it. Wasn’t good but one of my favorite thematically. Always loved mushroom men and the such and hope they revisit them again with a new abzan commander

I built a Thelon fungus deck last month. Really fun watching those fungi grow!

Can you do more of this series? Im totally into it!

I think one big reason for thallid's still being popular is there are a lot of creatures and effects that just make saprolings now, and the thallids that sac a saproling just becomes that much stronger. That being said, I loved playing mycoloth... it was a 4/4 for 5 with devour 2 (so when it enters, sac any number of creatures, it gets 2 +1/+1 counters for each) and the ability where every upkeep, you get a 1/1 saproling for each +1/+1 counter on it. even by sacrificing only 2 or 3 creatures, you made a threat that could end a game by itself very quickly if not removed.

One fix that I can think of would be thematic and work mechanically. The spores that are already on any Thallid get spread to any other creature when they die. Then when a different Thallid comes into play that one could pull spores from a different creature. Like you put spoke counters on any creature even if they aren’t your own and then Thallids pull those “stored” spores for growth. A linchpin to this would be some other place you could store counters. Either and Enchantment, a land or some indestructible Thallid. Also give them the ability to “eat cards” from the graveyard.

Thallids have a unique mechanic which is why I still have my Thallid deck :D I also threw in changelings, as they round out the deck and Sporoloth Ancient gives them the ability to generate counters OR using Thelon of Havenwood to create truly monstrous changelings. My favorite, however, is using Parallel Lives + Birthing Boughs/Maskwood Nexus + Sporesower + Thelon/Sporoloth. IF you could get setup, Parallel Lives duplicated the changeling tokens, Sporesower put counters on all changelings, and you had your choice of Thelon for super buff tokens or Sporoloth for even MORE tokens (doubled as well). It is the only deck I know of where tokens can generate tokens.

To fix this, I'd suggest "cumulative upkeep: Put a spore counter on this card" That's how they should have done it. And maybe balance it out where after 7 turns or something.

I enjoy some of the thallids. My first from-scratch commander deck was Ghave, Guru of Spores, and it made some pretty good use of utopia mycon as an alternative to phyrexian arena. another fun little interaction is having deathspore thallid and nemata, primeval warden. sac a saproling to give target creature -1/-1, but whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, you create a saproling. So you can kill all of your opponent's 1/1s for free. I'm also running Life and Limb for the infinite combo with Sporemound, but one time, another player had Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth in play, and the tergrid player made me discard a card, so i started laughing and gave him life and limb. suddenly boardwipes meant everyone losing all their land, and i didn't even have to pay for it xD my favorite value combo in the deck though, is sticking keen sense or snake umbra on my slimefoot, the stowaway to draw 3 every time a saproling dies. And it's *may draw*, so you don't have to deck yourself.

I really enjoyed the Fallen Empires Thallid deck.

Edit: "how to fix" in the end of this comment 7:45 do not forget the Paradox Haze, an enchantment from Time Spiral that increments the amount of upkeeps performed, and the combo with Doubling Season and Sprout Swarm. Also, those Fungus weren't either good attackers nor defenders. The "Soul Sisters" are good since you can recover life and gain tempo, but all of them are weak and depend on massive creature production, which could happen in later stages in the game only How to fix them: - more abilities to spread spore counters, maybe with tapping, gaining life, landfall - making all fungus as mana dork .. xd - give all of the above in a similar manner to Slivers - using saprolings for recursion / fog effects / lifegain / land ramp / tap creatures / destroying artifacts / tax effects/ clone other fungus / sac 3 to destroy lands

This breakdown is fantastic. Thank you! I wonder if we consider cards that have the Proliferate mechanic if that would help them. Though even as I type this, more cards supporting a multi-turn mechanic doesn't seem viable.

Slimefoot! Im suprised you didnt mention that for commander. Its v fun, and was quite decent

One potential solution that comes to mind would be to detach spore counters from individual Thallids. Change spore counters to a separate pool that each Thallid adds to (and can use its abilities to spend) every turn, but which isn't lost if an individual Thallid dies. That means that losing a Thallid with 2 spore counters isn't such a waste of time and resources - it still added those spores to your pool, and you can use them with another Thallid creature later. In fact, make Thallids and Saprolings add a spore counter to your pool when they die, as well as the start of your turn, to further reduce the impact of removal and encourage you to spend spore counters on Saprolings. They're all flooding the air with spores, which will linger for the rest of the game. e.g. Thallid's text would be: Sporespawn (At the beginning of your upkeep, and each time this Fungus creature or a Saproling you control dies, add a spore counter to your spore pool. Remove three spore counters from your spore pool: Put a 1/1 green Saproling Fungus creature token onto the battlefield)

I recently built a Thallid deck with Peregrin Took at the helm for Food tokens. A mechanic that the Fallen Empires Thallids LOVE is proliferate. There's also a fun interaction with Thorn Thallid and Overgrown Armasaur or Sporewed Spider where you can remove the spore counters to smack either of them and get a free Saproling. Throw in counter doublers like Doubling Season or Vorinclex and you got yourself quite the engine. Also if you can give Thorn Thallid deathtouch, you can pick creatures off

Heres an idea for an Abzan fungus commander: At the beginning of each upkeep put a spore counter on each fungus you control. Remove 3 spore counters: create a 1/1 saproling. Sacrifice a saproling choose 1: you gain 2 life, proliferate, target creature gets -1-1 until end of turn.

Imagine we got a legendary creature - thalid, and it was just ghave's text box but swap +1/+1 for spore counters and he had eminence - creatures get +1/+1 for each spore counter on them.

I spent £20 on thallid EDH about 10 years ago and its the gift that keeps on giving

My main commander deck is Saprolings. The commander is Slimefoot, The Stowaway. The deck wins most often by going wide with an army of saprolings, using Doubling Season, Second Harvest, and Saproling Symbiosis to get lots of Saps out, with Overrun or Vraska, Golgari Queen's emblem. Mycoloth is an absolute powerhouse, allowing you to dump a stack of Saps into it, and refill your board the next turn. The deck works best by sacrificing for value. Spells that make you sacrifice a creature for effect are always best. Slimefoot in play means that every time you sacrifice your saprolings for mana, -1/-1 from Deathspore, or to feed Mycoloth, you're draining the table. Slimefoot also adds lots of value to chump blocking, because you're all too happy to throw saprolings into the grinder. It is absolutely my most oppressive deck. It's a solid midrange aggro that is prone to surprise wins, and is often overlooked at the table until it's too late. Saprolings don't do well in 60 card formats, but Commander makes them savage.

Make a legendary thallid with [eminence: As long as (cardname) is on the battlefield or in the command zone, fungi you control have "at the beginning of each upkeep, place a spore counter on this card"]. And then (cardname) itself would have an effect on the field to remove spore counters from anywhere on the field to do a thing, maybe one of 3 different things or something. Would make every single one of the spore-counter-thallids instantly playable without relying on some card to stay on the battlefield to make them relevant, and would give you a counter-sink (once in play) to use the counters it placed on the fungi that don't have their own counter-sink.

One idea I had to potentially fix the Spore Counter mechanic was to give them more value beyond the tokens they summon. Kinda like how the Mecha Phantom Beast archetype summons tokens that grant protection to the monsters while they’re on the field, maybe the Thallids that placed counters on themselves couldn’t be destroyed while they had those counters, making getting to 3 counters a lot easier

Some brainstorms for Thallid mechanics: As mentioned in video, ones that give a spore counter every upkeep, not just your upkeep New Thallids with abilities that remove spore counters could remove them from among *any* creatures you control that have them, not just the individual, so having more spore-generating creatures in play gives you Saprolings at a faster rate Ghave seems more like a 'Spikes' mechanic commander than Thallids, though Thallids and Spikes get along together pretty well. The 'Spike' mechanic had its own difficulties, if memory serves.

A popular addition to thallid decks in the 90's was adding 4 copies of Skull Catapult. You could sac creatures at instant speed, which mitigated the pain of losing them to removal. The "Thallid Shooter" decks may have been terrible against the popular tournament decks of the day, like the first Necropotence decks, and TurboStasis, but they fun for casual games.

I feel like if each fungi placed a spore counter on each creature, it'd speed the deck up considerably, while also making sense on how fungi work in spreading spores.

Thallids need: Card advantage like Fungal Plots, but just more spins on it, and more tied in to other thallids. Have some variety with spore counters and let them draw Mana generation (tap or sac thallids for mana) Spore counter love (time spiral did that pretty decent tbf) Something like "Sac a thallid: target fungus gains indestructible till end of turn" I don't mind that thallids have trouble giving immediate value, the big issue is that they are vulnerable. Give them their own special graveyard interaction such as: "whenever a fungus or saproling you control dies, put a spore counter on this" "remove three spore counters: return target card from graveyard to hand" An ultimate such as: "Remove all spore counters from all creatures you control, then return any number of creatures from your graveyard to the battlefield under your control with total mana value less than or equal to the number of spore counters removed"

Counter doubling and token doubling benefit spore counters and your Saps. We could give them a support enchantment that gives all your fungus a spore counter whenever a creature dies(or spore counters equal to that creature's toughness?). things that let you use spore counters directly for protection. Things that make them come in with spore counters.

i loved them, i even had a block deck back then - black green thalids

A really interesting commander for a fungus commander deck would sound something like this in my opinion "at the beginning of your upkeep, put a spore counter on each fungus you control. Pay x and remove x spore counters from creatures you control, target creature gains -x/-x"

Amazing!!!!!❤

I would have liked if they took it into the "Thelon" method of having bonuses for stacking spore counters, something like "Each creature you control gets Ward {1} for each spore counter on it" or "Each creature you control with 3 or more spore coutners has first strike" while also having ways to midigate the downside of having to use spore counters to make tokens, either through making them cost less or putting spore counters on everything whenever you sac a sap

I played Thallids in Time Spiral + Ravnica standard at my FNM a lot. I played it pretty controlly with a play set of Doubling Season (which actually quadruples the rate you can produce tokens). It could hit infinite combos with 2x Doubling Season and Sprout Storm in hand, but usually didn’t need to to overwhelm the opponent.

You could probably make a keyword that gave the creature with it a spore counter on each upkeep, but make it so that you can remove three spore counters from ANY permanent to make a saproling. This would reduce the tempo swing of getting a creature with two counters on it destroyed (because you don't need to wait three upkeeps for each one, but to have three thalids on each upkeep), and would accelerate the process of making saproling in the first turns, giving a fighting chance against aggro with chumpblockers. It wouldn't solve the problem of board wipes, but maype some sort of thalid recursion or enchantment could help; or just giving synergistic protection pieces to the deck with proliferate or other more straightforward abilities

hey. i was a thalid main. Back in ravnica when i could have 3 doubling seasons out. they were great.

Thalids had their place in casual play. It took a long time but Time Spiral's Paradox Haze and Ravanica's Doubling Season. With Green being good with Ramp multicolor wasn't an issue. I had a fun Green/Black Thalid deck that focused on some early game ramp and discard to slow enemy plans and speed up into Thalid drops with Doubling Season in play. Black has a lot of removal options as well.

A friend of mine has an Atraxa Thallid commander deck. Its pretty potent. Lots of battlefield control

I play commander and I use Atraxa, Preator's Voice as a commander for a spore deck, the extra blue color can let me put card draw and counters in the deck while having the white, green, and black for spore synergies. The extra proliferating from Atraxa lets me get a saproling almost every turn from each fungus that generates spores

What if Thallids had a better early game? We combine both existing directions of having cards to spawn Saprolings, which can kick-start the cards that can sac Saprolings for an effect. However, if we gave them the ability to sac Saprolings for protection, this would allow them to survive longer to get the turns needed for enough spore counters for another Saproling. So the play pattern would be summoning Saprolings with cards that do mainly that, then placing down cards that can gain spore counters each turn with protective effects at the cost of sac-ing a Saproling. If your opponent tries to use removal, you Sac a Saproling to protect your Fungi. Your opponent runs out of Mana to cast removal, and 3 turns later your Fungi spawn more Saprolings, making you even more resistant to removal.

When I first played Thallids, I thought that the saprolings inherited enchantment abilities from the creature that spawned them. I remember playing Firebreathing on a Thallid, and paying red mana to boost the attack of a saproling it generated.

I want to love thallids so much. Mushrooms are my jam, fungi are always welcome, and I'm lichen the dark and dank atmosphere they bring. As noted in the video, the spore counter mechanic and support cards are the issue. The spore counter never made sense to me, that's just growing like plants. Fungi are decomposers, feeding off already dead things, or parasites, feeding off of a host. I think the spore mechanic should be something like "whenever a creature on your side of the field dies, get a counter" or "exile x creatures from your graveyard, get x counters." That way the saproling/sacrifice engine is still a bit slow to get rolling, but hopefully ramps up quickly enough to be competitive. Going down the parasite route, that could offer a lot of board control, like mind controlling opponent creatures, or infecting opponent lands, or turning opponent creatures into saproling generators which you can then somehow take advantage of that, like you can sacrifice their saprolings too or something.

I field a Thallid deck in commander with Thelon as the boss. This video is on the money. It wouldn't be hard to fix the spore problem honestly. All WotC would have to do is print some enchantments or artifacts that specifically do things like "Whenever you add a spore counter, add 2". Another option I've been considering is adding Atraxa (which I was lucky enough to get naturally) as the commander due to the Proliferate going off every turn. It would dillute the mana-base a little since the Blue and White are not really great thallid colors (although that white thallid is nice!) and my deck is G/B. Although that would also give me some great blue utility and more proliferate options like Tezzret's Gambit. I also have Doubling Season to get counters which is probably the least powerful way to utilize Doubling Season :P I feel like the deck could be pretty competitive and fun but would never be a powerhouse.

Ran this. Use 4x [[!Paradox Haze]] (and a few [[!Strionic Resonator]] if you wanted to twist the knife more) Also you forgot the spore counter card that "Fog"s :3 Love the video.

mixing thallids, devour helions, and mycoloth with blink artifacts is an amazing deck-

An interesting idea i had while watching this video (only even remotely viable in commander, even then, it's a bit of a set up): Sporesower Thallid in play, with Maskwood Nexus to make all your Saprolings also be Funguses so they get spore counters too. From here you can either use The Ozolith to collect all the extra spore counters from the Saps you sacrifice, or use Sporoloth Ancient so that your saps will be able to produce more saps themselves leading to potential exponential gains. Probably been tried before but it sounds fun.

Night soil was a fallen empires enabler that helped you recover post wipe by turning your and your opponents dead creatures into saprolings for one colorless

Did you forget about Verdant Force? It made saprolings and was first printed in Tempest, I used it along in my early Thallid decks.

I've actually mulled this one over a lot. I think that adding more cards like Sporoloth Ancient to the game could help a lot with how long it takes to build up a good fungus army. (For example, "remove a spore counter from a creature you control: target creature gains +1/+1 and trample until end of turn) It could help give players things to do in turns between token production.

Babe wake up ManaLogs uploaded a new vid

They should have had abilities like "remove three spore counters from permanents you control, create a sapro." Something that allowed you to remove counters from anywhere.

Im building a Thallid deck in simic colors utilizing the proliferate mechanic to boost spore counter production. Idk if thatll fix the issues but im excited to try it out

Each upkeep is interesting. I would have gone with "Remove two spore counters among permanents you control:". It encourages you to go wide and allows you to flood the board quite quickly if you have enough cheap thallids.

Maybe, being primarily green, have an enchantment that give spore counters for each thallid you control. It would start weak, but scale as you get more thallids on the field. That would improve thallids greatly.

If I were to, through some impossible means, be put in charge of designing Thalids from the ground up I'd personally design them to be a pure Golgari graveyard hate tribal. Each gets the "during your upkeep put a spore counter on this". Each also gets "exile target creature card from any graveyard, put spore counters on this equal to it's mana value". The differences from there are how they use those counters.

These did get better with the introduction of Nemata, Primeval Warden in commander as they make all kinds of saprolings just from killing your opponents creatures.

Maybe something that'd work could be a legendary fungus that spreads spore counters around and instead of removing the counters for saprolings, has a passive that whenever a creature with spore counters dies it spawns saprolings based on the amount of counters. From there you can use sac outlets for other gains saccing spore'd creatures and tokens, which would spawn more tokens.

Adding a spore counter every upkeep together with lowering the cost in general would have gone a great way to help the deck. Combined with the sacrifice effects and how well aristocrat strategies work in commander (which would eliminate the necessity of running white, though Ghave is still a decent Commander for the deck for providing fodder and interacting with the aristocrat components), plus token/counter doubling cards being kind of staples, and honestly a fungus precon would quite easily be a hit for providing a fun and fan-loved strategy. It doesn't hurt that the political aspect of the game can also work to help out lower-power decks. It is often said that having the weakest deck at the table means getting second place for a reason. So they wouldn't even need to be terribly powerful, just interesting.

Have never played or even gathered the card for it but did conceptualize a Modern Tribal fungus deck: 24 Forest 1 Swamp 2 Reclaim the Wastes 4 Thallid 4 Utopia Mycon 4 Sporecrown Thallid 4 Sylvan Anthem 4 Thelon of Havenwood 4 Cultivate 4 Sporesower Thallid 2 Mycoloth 3 Sporoloth Ancient Of course it'll still get shelled hard by removal.

You could just print more cards that put spore counters on each fungus, and other cards that give each fungus a spore counter ability and lastly fungi that do stuff on their own that. Or Enchantments that care about Thallids/Fungi. Would be a fitting for a Tribal Enchantment, which is actually the video that led me here and/or some kind of Fungus Tutor.

I actually have a copy of the original Thallid and I use it in my green-white commander deck just because I think it’s a super neat concept

And yet I will never stop trying to make Thallids work. For the record, Tayam, Luminous Enigma is probably the best Thallid commander to date. It lets you play every Thallid and gives you another use for the spore counters to find more Thallids and other support. Falco Spara is a similar deal, though he doesn't let you play Thelon or Deathsower Thallid, while Atraxa is a generic but possibly viable option as well Mind you, I've played all these builds in commander and none of them have been good, though Tayam was by far the best and most fun/synergistic.

As a Fungus tribal connoisseur, the only way to fix spore counters its either reduce the amount of spore counters, that they get them during each upkeep or they get them as a triggered/activated ability. Also, the tribe as a whole needs more support. Prolifarete was a blessing for it but its not enough if most Fungus are unplayable. They are still weak to wraths but that goes for most tribal decks, except zombies. The other direction Fungus could take its the Ghave route. Instead of spore counters they take advantage of +1/+1 counters which are more generic in the game as a whole... Yes, i know that they could have the potencial to become combo gods like Ghave is but at least the tribe would be more proactive on the idea of building a board over time instead of just not doing nothing until the engine has all its pieces ready to build a board.

I ran a Thelon of Havenwood EDH deck last year. After getting utterly pubstomped in most of my games, I eventually won a game by successfully hiding behind a Glacial Chasm for about 4 hours. Even taking steps to give Thelon and thallids a boost (Evolution Sage, Pitiless Plunderer, Winding Constrictor, Doubling Season, etc.), they'd still just get either killed or outpaced by pretty much any opponent.

Man i havent seen one of ur videos in so long, Its a trip hearing you talk about mtg instead of yugioh.

I'd like to raise: Atraxa, voice of the praetors as the commander for a saproiling tribal. Played this deck for years. Ghave, and slimefoot sit right there next to Mycoloth, deathspore thallid, Psycotrope, etc. that.. and the obv inclusion of token / counter doublers like doubling season, annointed procession, and parallel lives really make this mechanic worth it. even if you don't manage to grab any of the token doublers- Paradox Haze, and Atraxa's own proliferate abilities make it go. then there's populate effects. having Atraxa's access to blue gives you the ability to strategically counterspell. I'm honestly sad I've not played it more- just because i've not had anything interesting to add to it since Brother's War for Great Desert Prospector. that and Gala greeters from New Cappenna have been the only big mods on the last couple years. Is it competitive? fuck no. Is it optimized? fuck no. hell is it even consistent? not really. but is it fun to play? fuck yes it is. Oh that and running Myrkul and City of Shadows... treating Atraxa like a movie poster is hilarious sometimes. (sac Atraxa to city of shadows to get it's counter game kicked off, trigger Myrkul to turn her into a token enchantment that isn't a creature and you have access to 2x proliferate at your end step once you recast Atraxa. don't get me started on the weird multipliers you have to keep track of at the start and end of your turn. the deck is dumb, but I love it.

Live the shout out to phyrexian plaguelord. Used to use that with coffin queen and bone shredder back in the day. Made for a very nice removal engine.

I played thallids in a ramp deck. Everyone thought I had a thallid combo and would take them out before they get to 3 spore counters. The actual win condition was Thelonite Druid.

I could see a change for Spore Counters that can work. Basically, a Thallid gets a keyword ability, like Indestructible, if they have a Spore Counter, but the Spore Counter(s) are automatically removed and creates a Saproling every turn. If not, you put a Spore Counter on the card.

Also feel they should be able to expend spore counters from any creature you control. Also, ether some of them having an ETB "gains 1 spore counter" also may help kick-start some plays along with maybe having a creature that whenever a saproling enters the battlefield, add 1 spore counter to this creature. I feel some amount of ability to share resources should be done.

I know there are plenty of cards that have abilities where they are unaffected by targeted removal/disruption. Does the opposite exist? Where the card must be targeted to be affected by something, and immune to non-targeted effects? I would think that would shore up the big vulnerability to board wipes, and throw a bit of flavor onto Fungus cards.

Back in time spiral, I made a legacy version of thallid plus splash of blue for paradox haze. Most of my opponent doesn't know how it work so it's a fun deck. They realised paradox haze is very important so they always target it when it's in play

-Fungus and Saprolings you control get +1/+1. -Spore counters on permanents you control are put in each upkeep istead. -Remove 3 spore counters from a permanent you control and choose one: precon commander gets hexproof until end of turn,put 2 saps into play or add 2 mana of any one color to your pool.

They could make it playable I think, it just needs the right support. Imagine printing them in a set/meta with: A thallid that also acts like winding constrictor for fungi for 2-3 mana Thallids that let you sac saps for indestructible and hexproof (could be 2 cards) Primal vigor/doubling season Proliferate or a proliferate variant A cheaper sporesower with a weaker body. A couple instants/sorceries that make saprolings Dropping the thallid rule to 2 counters for a sap Convoke I think it could work out. Being able to at least partially dodge boardwipes would be super important though.

I used a mono-green thallid control deck in modern for a bit. Modern was slower and more control-heavy at the time so I did pretty well.

I made a Saproling / Thallid deck with Ghave, Guru of Spores as the Commander. It also included Slimefoot from Domanaria. Now, was it a winner every time? No. Did I also include some very powerful support cards beyond Saproling synergy? Well yes, I wanted to win occasionally. But in all honesty, it wasn't dreadful, it wasn't boring, and it had some very cool moments where things just lined up in a beautiful way. The board state becomes collosal after a while, and it's not the sort of deck I would recommend for an inexperienced Commander player, a fast and aggressive player, or someone who likes things to work one specific way without any toolboxing or problem solving. If you like long games that require thinking on your toes, moving tons of counters and building an incredible board state, you might consider giving this mess a shot. It was always fun and it was always a different game, but it wasn't always easy.

They could fix it with the power rate of the amount of spore counters to do things. Example for an uncommon fungus that has the ability of "remove one spore counter make a 0/1 saproling, remove two make a 1/1, etc." And ratchet up the abilities with the rarity rates.

Spore counters seems good with proliferating. Blue adds great cards for support, plus Paradox Haze for all those upkeep triggers. If adding white to keep options and availability to use all Thallids open…you want a Witch-maw commander that proliferates…goddamit.

I have a deck with Xavier Sal, Infested Captain that I have a bunch of Thallids for, and they are honestly one of my favorite parts of the deck. Also, no mention of Mycoloth?

One thing that might be worth considering for these kinds of analysis is that tribal strategies are usually designed with limited in mind. You did mention limited a little but but only in passing. This is usually intentional because a lot of players feel like tribal decks have a "paint by the numbers" feel to them so they're deliberately not pushed to be top tiers in constructed so players can feel smarter when figuring out the best decks. (There are exceptions of course, Goblins, Elves, and sometimes Merfolk are occasionally competitive in eternal formats because of the massive support they've gotten over the entire lifetime of the game.) Fallen Empires was a really weak set from a time where 1 drops were often very bad so Thalid being a 1 drop that produces more creatures over time could have been good enough in a slow format, though bear in mind I've never played fallen empires limited to know for sure. Time spiral, on the other hand, had a lot of really strong stuff from what I remember and I don't think Thalids were strong in limited there but I could be wrong also. My point is just that their place in their respective limited formats could be a fun topic to go into greater detail with, since they are usually primarily designed for that, and it's also a topic that is hard to find discussions about. I realize that that means making the video about it will be harder but it also means that you can produce interesting information that isn't widely known at all.