Treamayne wrote:
What are they using to get it back at instant speed?
Seems like a simple
Prodigal Sorcerer/
Pyrohemia killing it at the EOT before you untap solves that. Also, increase your GY removal - there's a whole resource thread about it
here. I'd imagine incentivizing more attacks would wear away the ability to consistently recur the frog and other fog effects. Then there is
Excruciator and all the other creatures whose damage can't be prevented - or just
Everlasting Torment.
Conversely, Spore Frog can't help against non-combat damage. So, things like the previously mentioned
Angel's Trumpet will still wear them down I they don't attack. And if they do attack, they use up there fog resources.
Part of the problem is Spore Frog is one of the person's favorite cards, so running enough removal to make something stick is too disruptive for the rest of the deck. They also have enough tutors to pull out whatever can help protect their board state, whether it's
Asceticism to prevent hitting Spore Frog when it's out,
Archfiend of Depravity to force defensive plays, or Mikaus to force expending more resources to take out one card until the commander (Meren) reanimates it. And it runs a lot of boogeymen cards like Sheoldred, Vorinclex, the previously mentioned Mikaus and Archfiend, and a few others I probably don't remember. Using up removal on Spore Frog makes it harder to deal with whatever they pull out after it gets hit by something.
It's just a difficult deck to deal with when it shows up, and the decks they've had for a while are all fairly well tuned, which has meant the rest of my play group has tuned their decks up to be closer to it then casual decks. I'm able to bring some of my decks up to par, but doing that with every deck would be....expensive. It's one of the reasons my Zedruu deck is one I like to use, because it doesn't need to run the best cards I have to keep up with the better tuned decks in my play group. The only other deck I have that can keep pace is my Nekusar deck, but that turns into an archenemy game very fast.
I'm starting to think half my problem is I'm trying to keep up with less casual decks without being able to afford the expensive upgrades that I would need for most of my decks to keep up. But I'm hoping that can be more of a deckbuilding challenge then....the alternative(s).