Feasting Troll King is one of the best ways to cheat on mana in Standard. While it's still a pretty valuable creature to cast fairly at 6 mana, we have an exciting brew that seeks to cheat it into play using the graveyard.
Feasting Troll King Reanimator
How's that for an interesting list? Let's dive into the card discussions:
This deck is built entirely around being able to get 3 food tokens into play and Feasting Troll King into the graveyard. It should be obvious that a recurring 7/6 trampler entering the battlefield ahead of schedule is quite powerful, so let's take a look at our enablers.
This potential busted opening has already been talked about by plenty of writers and is certain to show up in many a Standard deck for the life of this format. Gilded Goose provides both ramp and fixing while also giving us the option to accumulate food if needed. Oko, Thief of Crowns is simply an amazing planeswalker due to its flexibility, cheap cost, and high loyalty even in a deck that doesn't have an awesome way to cash in on the food tokens.
If you read a lot of our articles, it may seem like we're including Witch's Oven and Cauldron Familiar in quite a few decks…but that's just because it's awesome! (Also because we're addicted to sweet Standard combos). Witch's Oven does great work in this deck on its own though, since we're already playing several 4-toughness creatures that can be converted into food if necessary.
OK, we've gone long enough without addressing the other awesome new card in this deck. The Great Henge is an incredibly powerful Legendary artifact that is sure to be a staple in Commander decks and will probably show up in some style of Stompy deck. But how perfect of a payoff is this for a deck whose main goal is to cheat a 7-power creature into play? It's even more perfect when you consider the interaction with the Cauldron Familiar combo. We're going to be drawing as many cards as we want!
These creatures help fill together the missing pieces. They contribute to the self-mill plan of getting Feasting Troll King into the graveyard. Wall of Lost Thoughts is a cheap 4-toughness creature that helps us block early and can create two food tokens with Witch's Oven. Vantress Gargoyle is another perfect fit from Throne of Eldraine for this deck. It's a 5-power creature that can help us cast The Great Henge fairly. It's a 4-toughness flying blocker for cheap. It's even an artifact for Emry.
We want fill our graveyard. We want to cast awesome artifacts like The Great Henge, Vantress Gargoyle, Witch's Oven, and Vivien's Arkbow. Emry is just an awesome Magic card.
Vivien's Arkbow is a speculative inclusion, but it seems like another perfect fit. Its primary function is to discard Feasting Troll King if we happen to draw a copy instead of milling one. But it also can help us turn draws such as Cauldron Familiar into looks for our real creatures, all while being a cheap artifact to pair with Emry. This seems especially good in a deck that is running quite a few Legendary cards that could end up being redundant in our hand.
There's a ton of sweet cards that we considered for this deck that didn't make the initial cut. As always with these wonky strategies, it's going to take some tuning to get it just right, but when there's this much synergy overlap, the potential is making us very excited to try it out! Be sure to check back after September 26 when Throne of Eldraine is released on Arena to see our video with this deck!
