Flubs, the Fool

Overview

Flubs reads like a drawback and plays like two engines wearing one body:

You may play an additional land on each of your turns. Whenever you play a land or cast a spell, draw a card if you have no cards in hand. Otherwise, discard a card.

The second line is a switch with two settings, and you decide which one you're on. With cards in hand, every land drop and every spell mills you one card of your choosing — free, repeatable, at any speed. With an empty hand, every land drop and every spell draws you a card — a cantrip stapled to your extra land drop, forever.

Both settings are good here, which is why the deck isn't a value pile. The discard setting fuels Underworld Breach, Iroh, Six, Splendid Reclamation, Ancient Greenwarden, Icetill Explorer, and Conduit of Worlds — seven cards that read your graveyard as a second hand. The draw setting turns the doubled land drops into a card-per-land engine. The transition from one to the other is your turn-one-through-three job.

What you do with all of it is convert. This is a toolbox, not a linear deck: you assemble a landfall board, then a single turn's worth of land drops gets pushed through whichever converter you have. Prismatic Omen turns them into Valakut burn. Purphoros or Terror of the Peaks turns them into damage-per-token. Omnath turns them into 5/5s and then, under Blasphemous Act, into a table-wide firestorm. Sabotender and Tannuk turn them into drain. None of these is the plan — the plan is to see how far the turn goes and take whichever converter the game handed you.

Green carries the land engines and the mass-land effects, blue carries the flash enablers and the blink pieces, red carries the burn converters and the graveyard recursion. Green is the heaviest pip demand by a wide margin — it's the color you most want in an opener.

Mulligan Guide

The keep question is "can you be empty by turn three, and does emptying out actually do something?"

Keep a hand with all three:

1. Three or more lands, including a green source. You have 37 lands and two extra-land-drop effects before the ones you draw — flooding is not how this deck loses.
2. A way to spend the hand fast — cheap action that turns cards into board. The zero-drops (Lotus Petal, Mox Opal, Mox Amber, Mishra's Bauble) are perfect for this: they cost nothing and each one is a Flubs trigger.
3. Something that cares — either an extra-land-drop enabler (Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Oracle of Mul Daya, Icetill Explorer, Aesi) or a landfall payoff (Lotus Cobra, Tireless Provisioner, Sabotender, Tatyova, Scute Swarm). A hand that empties into nothing just draws one card per land.

Snap-keep openers with Leyline of Anticipation — it starts on the battlefield for free and it is the single card that most changes how you sequence, because it makes every spell in the deck castable on someone else's turn.

Mulligan hands that are all expensive spells (you'll discard most of them before you cast them), hands with no green, and hands whose only payoffs cost five or more — a converter you can't deploy until turn six is a converter Flubs will throw in the graveyard on turn four. Note that this is less punishing than it sounds: a discarded Splendid Reclamation target, a discarded land, a discarded Anger are all still assets. A discarded Cyclonic Rift is not.

Game Plan

Turns 1–3: get to zero

Your opening hand is a resource with a decay rate. Every land you play and every spell you cast while holding cards costs you one more card off the top of that hand. There is no version of this where you carefully husband a grip — you spend it, and you spend it in an order you chose.

• Lead with the free spells. Lotus Petal, Mox Opal, Mox Amber, Mishra's Bauble cost nothing and each one advances the counter toward empty. Mox Amber is live the moment Flubs is on the battlefield, and stays live off Aesi, Doc Aurlock, Iroh, Omnath, Six, Tannuk, Tatyova, Titania, or Gandalf.
• Use both land drops every turn. Flubs's first line is not a bonus, it's the clock. Two lands is two triggers.
• Sequence your discards deliberately. When the trigger resolves and you must pitch, ask what the card is worth from the yard:
  • Land → Ancient Greenwarden, Icetill Explorer and Conduit of Worlds play it from there; Splendid Reclamation returns it in a pile.
  • Anger → it does its whole job from the graveyard as long as you control a Mountain. You have Mountain, Taiga, Volcanic Island, Steam Vents, and Stomping Ground, and Prismatic Omen or Dryad makes everything a Mountain. This is the cheapest way to give the team haste, and pitching it is the intended way to get it there.
  • Instant or sorcery → Iroh gives it flashback on your turn, Underworld Breach gives it escape, Past in Flames and Mizzix's Mastery buy back the whole pile at once.
  • Nonland permanent → Six gives it retrace, Conduit of Worlds can cast it, Eternal Witness returns it.
  • Boseiju, Who Endures / Otawara, Soaring City → never. Channel is a discard paid as a cost, from hand only. In the graveyard they are dead cards.
• Once you're empty, stay empty. From that point Flubs is a strict upgrade on every action you take. A land is a land plus a card. A zero-drop is a card. This is the state you want to end every turn in.

The midgame: how far does the turn go?

Each turn now has the same shape. Count your land drops, count your converters, and push.

Your land count per turn is not two — it's two plus whatever you find. Aesi, Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Icetill Explorer, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Song of Creation each stack another drop on top of Flubs's. Augur of Autumn and Oracle let you play them off the top of your library so a "hellbent" hand still has lands to play; Ancient Greenwarden, Icetill Explorer and Conduit of Worlds let you play them out of the graveyard, which is exactly where Flubs has been putting them.

Then the mass-land effects turn one card into a whole turn of triggers at once:

• Scapeshift — sacrifice any number, fetch that many. Seven lands entering simultaneously.
• Splendid Reclamation — every land in your graveyard back at once, tapped. Flubs has been stocking this all game.
• Awaken the Woods — X Forest Dryad tokens; they're lands entering the battlefield, so every landfall trigger sees all of them.
• Gandalf, Shadow's Foe — his ETB exiles up to three of your own lands and returns them, which is three landfall triggers on a body that also draws a card per land.
• The three fetchlands each give you two triggers, not one.

Closing

Pick the converter that's on the battlefield. They are genuinely interchangeable — the right one is the one that showed up.

• Prismatic Omen or Dryad + Valakut — burn (worked in full below).
• Purphoros, God of the Forge — 2 damage to each opponent per creature entering. Off Avenger of Zendikar's plants or a Scute Swarm turn this is lethal on its own, and Purphoros isn't a creature at low devotion, so wraths miss him.
• Terror of the Peaks — damage equal to each entering creature's power. Omnath's 5/5s and Dragonback Assault's 4/4s are the good ones; Avenger's 0/1 Plants deal nothing until the counters land.
• Omnath, Locus of Rage — a 5/5 per land, then Blasphemous Act (usually costs with a board out) kills every Elemental at once and Omnath triggers on each of them including itself, for 3 damage a piece, aimed anywhere. Titania's 5/3s are Elementals too.
• Sabotender and Tannuk — 1 damage to each opponent per land, doubled by Ancient Greenwarden, and Tannuk's second trigger each turn draws.
• Molten Psyche — with three artifacts, it deals damage to each opponent equal to every card they've drawn that turn, so it's the follow-up to Wheel of Fortune or Windfall, never the opener.

How Flubs actually works

• The trigger resolves before the spell that caused it. A cast trigger goes on the stack above the spell, so when it resolves the spell is still on the stack — not in your hand. Cast the only card in your hand and Flubs sees an empty hand and draws you a new one. This is the whole engine, and it's why a one-card hand is never really a one-card hand.
• It also fires on lands, and a land you played is already gone from your hand. Same arithmetic: playing your last card as a land draws you a replacement.
• It's not optional and it's not a "may." You draw or you discard, and you choose the card. There is no way to decline the trigger to protect your grip.
• It fires on lands played from anywhere. Off the top with Oracle or Augur, out of the graveyard with Ancient Greenwarden, Icetill or Conduit — all of them are "playing a land," all of them trigger.
• It fires on spells cast from anywhere. Flashback off Iroh, escape off Underworld Breach, retrace off Six, and the cast off Conduit of Worlds are all casts. Your graveyard turns are also your draw turns.
• Activated abilities are not casts. Cycling Ketria Triome, channeling Boseiju or Otawara, cracking a fetchland, and Deadeye Navigator's blink do not trigger Flubs. (The fetch does trigger landfall twice, which is a different and better thing.)
• Library of Leng lets you loop your hand. Flubs discards you as an effect, so Leng's replacement applies: the card goes on top of your library instead of into the graveyard, and you look at it first. With exactly one card in hand you never lose anything — pitch it to the top, your hand is now empty, so the next land or spell draws it straight back. You keep the card and you got the trigger. It costs you nothing on the graveyard side, either: every nonpermanent you actually cast still ends up in the yard on resolution, so Underworld Breach, Iroh, Past in Flames and Mizzix's Mastery stay fully stocked. And Leng is a "may" on each individual card — when the thing Flubs wants to pitch is a land, or Anger, you simply decline and let it go to the graveyard where it does its job. The one real limit: it does not apply to discards paid as a cost, so Six's retrace and the channel lands are outside it.
• Alhammarret's Archive is a double-edged upgrade. It doubles Flubs's draw to two — which knocks you out of hellbent, so your next action discards. It's excellent behind Tatyova, Aesi, Gandalf and The One Ring; it's awkward as a pure Flubs enabler.

Key Loops & Interactions

The exemplar conversion: Prismatic Omen + Valakut + Scapeshift

The cheapest complete kill in the deck, and the most representative of what a converted turn looks like.

1. Prismatic Omen (or Dryad of the Ilysian Grove) makes every land you control every basic land type — so every land you control is a Mountain, including Valakut itself.
2. With Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle on the battlefield and at least six lands out, cast Scapeshift. Sacrifice seven lands, search up seven.
3. All seven enter simultaneously, and each one checks Valakut independently — "each ability takes into consideration the other Mountains that entered at the same time," so every one of them sees the other six plus everything you kept. Seven triggers, 3 damage each, 21 damage you can split across the table.
4. Ancient Greenwarden doubles all of it — 42. Thespian's Stage (or Vesuva) copying Valakut gives you a second copy triggering alongside the first; Valakut isn't legendary, so both stick.
5. Titania, Protector of Argoth turns the other half of Scapeshift into a board: the lands are sacrificed during resolution, so each one hitting the graveyard makes a 5/3 Elemental.

Splendid Reclamation and Awaken the Woods are the same conversion with different math — Reclamation replays the graveyard Flubs has been filling, Awaken makes X land tokens which Prismatic Omen also turns into Mountains. Cast the big one through Boseiju, Who Shelters All when the table has blue open; it makes the spell uncounterable.

The graveyard as a second hand

Everything Flubs discards is inventory, and this is the package that spends it.

• Iroh, Grand Lotus gives every non-Lesson instant and sorcery in your graveyard flashback for its mana cost, on your turn. His firebending 2 adds whenever he attacks, and that mana survives until you leave combat — so an Iroh attack pays for a flashback mid-combat. Redirect Lightning is a Lesson, so Iroh flashes it back for (you still pay its additional 5 life or ).
• Underworld Breach gives everything escape for its cost plus exiling three other cards. It sacrifices itself at the beginning of the end step, so it's a one-turn window — deploy it on a turn you intend to end the game or refill hugely, not speculatively.
• Doc Aurlock, Grizzled Genius makes all of that cost less — flashback, escape, retrace, and Conduit casts alike. With Doc out, Frantic Search escapes for and untaps three lands, which is net positive mana; it runs as long as your graveyard has cards to exile, drawing two and binning two each time.
• Past in Flames flashbacks your whole instant/sorcery yard at once; Mizzix's Mastery overloaded () copies every instant and sorcery in the graveyard and casts the copies free. With Scapeshift, Splendid Reclamation and a wheel or two in the bin, that's the game.
• Six gives nonland permanents in your graveyard retrace, and his attack trigger mills three and puts a land from among them into your hand — which is the retrace cost, so he feeds himself. Retrace's land discard is a cost, so Library of Leng can't save it and being fully hellbent turns it off.
• Conduit of Worlds plays lands from the graveyard freely, but its second ability is a hard sorcery-speed lock: it only works if you haven't cast a spell that turn (including Conduit itself the turn you deploy it) and casting off it prevents any other spell that turn. It's a first-action-of-the-turn card or nothing.
• Eternal Witness is the clean rebuy for the one card that mattered.

Wheels, and the hand you don't want

You want to be empty, so effects that refill everyone are strange here — read them as graveyard-fillers and damage setup, not as card draw.

• Wheel of Fortune and Windfall discard your hand (fuel) and hand you seven cards you will now shed one at a time. Follow with Molten Psyche to convert everyone's fresh draws into damage.
• Day's Undoing has two clauses that matter here. It shuffles your graveyard into your library — which undoes the entire discard plan, so treat it as a reset button, not an engine. And ending the turn skips your end step entirely: Song of Creation's discard and Underworld Breach's self-sacrifice never trigger. Cast on an opponent's turn through Vedalken Orrery or Leyline of Anticipation, it's a clean seven with no "end the turn" cost at all.
• Song of Creation is the deck in one card: an extra land drop, two cards per spell cast, and a hand-discard at your end step that resets you to hellbent while stocking the graveyard. Order matters when both it and Flubs trigger on the same cast — put Flubs first so it sees the empty hand and draws, then let Song draw two on top. Under Library of Leng, Song's end-step discard puts the whole hand on top of your library in an order you choose.
• The One Ring buys a turn of protection from everything and then draws in escalating chunks. Each of those cards is discard fodder for the graveyard plan; the burden counters are the real cost.

Flash, blink, and the rest

• Vedalken Orrery / Leyline of Anticipation are the exception to golden rule three. With one out, you can hold a card and cast it on someone else's turn — and when you're hellbent, casting on their turn draws you into more. They also let you respond to Song of Creation's end-step trigger by dumping everything first.
• Deadeye Navigator pairs and grants a self-blink. Blinking Gandalf, Shadow's Foe re-triggers his ETB for three more landfall triggers and three cards. Note that Gandalf returns those lands tapped — the blink produces no mana by itself, so on its own the loop is just an expensive draw engine that runs until you're out of mana. It becomes self-sustaining only with a landfall mana source: Lotus Cobra or Tireless Provisioner makes three off the returning lands against a two-mana blink, and at that point it goes as far as you want, with Sabotender, Tannuk, Omnath or Valakut converting it into damage. Blinking Titania returns another land from the graveyard each time. The pair breaks when the creature is exiled and re-forms via soulbond when it returns.
• Displacer Kitten blinks a nonland permanent whenever you cast a noncreature spell — Gandalf for three landfall triggers, Titania for a land, Eternal Witness for a rebuy, all off spells you were casting anyway.
• Ancient Greenwarden doubles every landfall trigger you control, not just one. It is the single biggest multiplier in the deck and worth playing around removal for.
• Scute Swarm past six lands copies itself on every landfall, and every copy does the same — two land drops a turn goes exponential fast. Under Purphoros or Terror of the Peaks that's the kill.
• Anger in the graveyard gives the whole board haste. Avenger's plants, Omnath's 5/5s, Dragonback Assault's dragons and Titania's Elementals all attack the turn they arrive.
• Interaction is cheap and cast-on-sight: Pongify, Rapid Hybridization, Beast Within, Chaos Warp, Ancient Grudge (flashback for — pitch it happily), Cyclonic Rift, Blasphemous Act. Heroic Intervention is the one card worth the awkwardness of holding. Deflecting Swat is free only while you actually control a commander — with Flubs on the battlefield, not in the command zone.
• Lightning Greaves grants shroud, which means you can't target the equipped creature either — don't equip Gandalf if you're planning to blink him with Displacer Kitten.
• Boseiju, Who Endures and Otawara, Soaring City get cheaper for each legendary creature you control, and this deck is full of them.
• Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth makes every land a Forest, opponents' included — which fixes your green-heavy pips and quietly turns on Exotic Orchard for green no matter what they're playing. It does not make anything a Mountain, so it is not a Valakut enabler; that job belongs to Prismatic Omen and Dryad.

Common Pitfalls

• Discarding a channel land. Boseiju and Otawara are answers only from your hand. When Flubs makes you pitch and they're in there, pitch something else.
• Treating the discard as a loss. The reflex to protect your hand is wrong here. The question is never "how do I keep this card," it's "which of these cards do I most want in the graveyard."
• Holding up interaction. A card you keep for someone else's turn gets discarded on your own next land drop. Without Orrery or Leyline, cast it or lose it.
• Casting Day's Undoing to draw cards. It shuffles your graveyard away — the graveyard is half your deck's resources. Use it to reset a dead hand or, better, at an opponent's end step through a flash enabler.
• Deploying Conduit of Worlds mid-turn and expecting to use it. It counts spells you already cast this turn, including itself. If you want its cast ability, it has to be the first thing you do.
• Going fully hellbent with Six as your plan. Retrace needs a land card in hand as an additional cost, and Library of Leng doesn't help with costs. Six's own attack trigger is how you refuel it.
• Drawing yourself out of the engine. Alhammarret's Archive doubles Flubs's draw to two, and The One Ring's activations hand you a pile — both flip you off the "draw" setting and onto the "discard" setting. That's fine if you meant it; it's a surprise if you didn't.
• Firing Valakut triggers without counting. Five other Mountains at trigger time and again at resolution — and Valakut only counts itself as a Mountain once Prismatic Omen or Dryad is on the battlefield.
• Miscounting your land drops. Flubs's extra drop stacks with Aesi, Dryad, Icetill Explorer, Oracle of Mul Daya, and Song of Creation. Cumulative, every one of them — and each unspent drop is a lost trigger.