SHARK WEEK: Chrome Host Seedshark Is the Most Dangerous Animal

Faithless Brewing MTG: Modern and Pioneer for the Spike Rogue

Season 18, Episode 6: Brew Session (Chrome Host Seedshark)

Shark Typhoon is powerful. A resolved Shark Typhoon is lights out. A resolved Shark Typhoon wins games. Most Modern and Pioneer players know this, or think they know this.

They don’t know the half of it.

Shark Typhoon sees play, but no one truly builds around it. It’s far too expensive to craft your game plan around having a Typhoon in play. Instead we cycle, and move on with our lives.

Enter Chrome Host Seedshark. Putting a Shark Typhoon effect on a 3 mana creature changes EVERYTHING. Synergies that seemed like pie-in-the-sky win-more plays, notably pairing huge cost reduction spells with the Shark Typhoon effect, are suddenly available as early and often as we want them.

Want to cast Leyline Binding? Sure, have a 6/6. Protect the Seedshark with Force of Negation or Metallic Rebuke? No problem, have a 3/3. Delve spells are incredible here, from Treasure Cruise and Temporal Trespass in Pioneer to Logic Knot and Magmatic Sinkhole in Modern. And don’t forget the “Splinter Twin” potential of the Shining Shoal cycle: a turn 3 Seedshark, followed by end step Shoal pitching a huge card (X=15 anyone? Autochthon Wurm and Shadow of Mortality make it happen) means you are attacking potentially for lethal damage on turn 4.

There’s more going on that just a parade of creatures, of course. Incubator tokens are decidedly not creatures, until we invest additional resources. Animating the tokens directly with Tezzeret, Betrayer of Flesh or Jinnie Fae, Jetmir’s Second is downright nasty. For larger Incubators, paying 2 mana is still a great bargain. For smaller Incubators, we can take advantage of the fact that unflipped Incubators are quite hard to remove (unlike, say, the tokens from Third Path Iconoclast or Sai, Master Thopterist). If we want to build up a solid battlefield of wrath-proof game objects for Affinity, for Improvise, for Urza or for Galazeth Prismari, Chrome Host Seedshark is simply best in class. We can even play sweepers of our own, and Seedshark leaves behind a massive token as a going away present.

There’s so much to discover about Seedshark, and about the Incubate mechanic in general, that we couldn’t imagine starting our March of the Machine brewing season with any other card. We’ve got seven new decklists drawn up in Modern and Pioneer, and a half dozen more ideas to explore besides. It’s Shark Week here at Faithless Brewing, and we could not be more excited!

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Decklists for this episode can be viewed at FaithlessBrewing.com

Timestamps

[3:11] Housekeeping

[4:01] Brew Session: Chrome Host Seedshark

[7:59] Closest comparisons

[11:30] Key synergies: cost reduction

[20:08] Key synergies: Incubator tokens

[25:09] Sketch 1: Izzet Galazeth Turns (Pioneer)

[31:51] Sketch 2: Dimir Improvise (Pioneer)

[38:38] Sketch 3: Sultai Glistening Dawn (Pioneer)

[42:45] Sketch 4: 5c Galazeth Shark to Light (Modern)

[49:36] Sketch 5: UW Chrome Control (Modern)

[56:09] Sketch 6: WU White Pitch Please (Modern)

[1:05:44] Sketch 7: 4c Sickening Shoal (Modern)