Early thread about Spiteful Squad today because I'm going to be on a flight tonight to California. 1/x
ALSA of 7.33. Looking at the Card Evaluation Metagame graph, it seems that it's actually been going down since the start of the format. Maybe people are comparing it to Star Pupil, and moving it down as Pupil goes down? 2/x
Squad might look similar to Star Pupil, as it has the same modular-like ability. But they are fundamentally different cards. Pupil's is an aggressive 1-drop that needs extra +1/+1 counters to function, while Squad needs no extra counters and gums up the ground with value. 3/x
Squad's deathtouch lets it trade with any ground creatures, which is especially relevant against big Fractals. The ideal scenario is to threaten to trade it off with a big creature and put its counters on a flier; the threat of this will often prevent attacks altogether. 4/x
And even if you don't have fliers, the 2 counters helps with a lot with grinding on the ground. I've won several games with Squads and Pilgrims eventually trading off with all of my opponent's creatures. 5/x
Something I heard someone say near the start of the format is "the more Rise of Extus you have, the more Spiteful Squads you want." And I think that rings very true: Squad is very much a grindy card, not an aggressive one. You *can* attack with Squad, but you'd rather block. 6/x
The main problem with Squad is that there's a lot of 4s already in Silverquill. Basically all decks would rather have Combat Professor or Specter of the Fens. You can only have so many 4s, and Squad is much worse at playing offense. But sometimes you don't have that luxury. 7/x
Conclusion: while Squad isn't your first choice for 4s, it's still definitely playable as a powerful defensive and grindy card. It goes very well in grindy Silverquill or Mardu decks, along with cards like Pilgrim or Rise. 8/8
My most recent trophy deck was aggressive, but still liked the one Squad:
17lands.com/deck/99dbc0809…
My last Draft Challenge deck was very grindy, and Squad was even better there:
17lands.com/deck/addac566d…
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