Introduction

This is an attempt to plug-up some of the gaps in interaction that my beloved Waste Not forces you to leave open. Waste Not interacts extremely well with enemy creatures, hand and graveyards, but it has trouble with noncreature permanents. This is my attempt to remedy that by injecting some green into the mix.

For the True Waste Not Experience, check this out: https://aetherhub.com/Decks/Writeups/Traditional-Historic/historic-waste-not

Why splash anything?

As stated, Waste Not is a wonderful but flawed Magic card. Rather than just being some stupid generically powerful thing, it's fun as hell because it's powerful in the scenario(s) we drag our opponent into. Once this beautiful 2-mana enchantment hits the board, although you don't get immediate value like most finishers nowadays, the good card design here lets both players be heads-up on what the game is going to look like in the coming turns and give us the opportunity to attack from an unusual axis unless answered. However, the card pool restraints that naturally arise from deckbuilding around Waste Not prevent us from attacking every axis of the game space.

Specifically, noncreature permanents and spellbased finishers.

Here's a not-even-close-to-exhaustive list of Historic cards that just ain't right: Muxus, Goblin Grandee, Emergent Ultimatum, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Karn, the Great Creator, Paradox Engine.

In lieu of WotC doing what they've never done and properly managing their formats, what is a poor Waste Not player to do? Splash a second color and hope it works out, of course~

Gameplan

Grind. Them. Down. 

Use the cheap interaction to disrupt the early turns, followed up by a Liliana of the Veil, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse or Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton to finish. Mosswood Dreadknight, Glissa Sunslayer and Reckoner Bankbuster provide the card advantage+threat potential to go the distance.

Card Choice Discussion

First, you might notice that I'm bring up Waste Not a whole bunch for a decklist that doesn't have a single copy. Clever of you to notice the obvious, chum. The process of coming up with this list started with the Waste Not list linked above and morphed into this now that I had access to green.

• -4x Waste Not: It should be unsurprising that this was the first card on the chopping block. It's great where's it's great, but again, you need to build your deck around it and the consequences of that are exactly what we're trying to fix here.
• +4x Mosswood Dreadknight: Pretty much the whole reason for splashing green. When looking around for something to replace the key 2-mana threat slot of the original deck, this stands out like a beacon. Tenacious Underdog is the primary competition, but the "upfront" nature of the card draw is more appealing because Historic is a powerful format where you need to find your, sometimes very specific, answers pronto. Bloodtithe Harvester is good too, but it's more filtering than raw advantage, it's not recursive and it's in Rakdos. Go elsewhere for stock Rakdos content please.
• +3x Glissa Sunslayer: This card is strong. Not broken like Shelly, but she fixes so many problems with the 3-drop slot it's silly. She makes combat a nightmare, she draws cards and is main deck enchantment hate. Overall, she's a removal magnet that can get out of control fast; exactly what we're looking for.
• Keeping 4x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse: I've seen lists run different numbers but anything less than 3x is madness to me. You always want to draw her and play her on curve... so she can die and let you play the second one, that often also dies... which is what the extra two copies are for.
• Keeping 4x Liliana of the Veil: The lower the curve in our deck, the more copies of her I want. She was designed to be a weapon and that's what she is. Again, seen lists run less but she gives so many headaches to the opposition no matter what they're playing that I lean hard towards the full playset.
• Graveyard Trespasser // Graveyard Glutton vs Scavenging Ooze vs Lord Skitter, Sewer King: These are what I consider the premier all-purpose threats that also serve as graveyard hate of the format. The graveyard gets used often enough in Historic that (for a midrange deck like this one) I personally don't feel comfortable without 4 or so cards that interact with that zone main deck, plus 3-4 more in the board. You could make an argument for powerful 3-drops like Phyrexian Fleshgorger but like I said, I want to be interacting and the decks in this format that leverage the graveyard win by miles rather than inches if you don't distrupt them.
  
  • Sc-ooze is instant speed and gains a touch of life, but is also the most mana intensive which takes it out of contention because we're surprisingly resource constricted thanks to all the buttons we want to be pushing each turn.
  • Skitter is an army in a can which is nice, but doesn't gain life, is less resistent to removal and only exiles one card a turn at most (by himself).
  • Trespasser wins out for me thanks to the Glutton side. The ETB makes interaction guaranteed and the ward is nice, though it rarely spares them.
• -3x Liliana, Waker of the Dead: Ugh. I really like Big Lily so it pains me to cut her. She kills more than you'd think with her minus and her plus is a continuous source of discard and pressure. The problem has always been that she's slow and without Waste Not providing succor when both players go hellbent, she's just not quite there.
• +2x Questing Beast: Replaces Big Lily. This thing has a lot of words on it so it must be good, right? Oh lordy, yes, it's good. It'll pretty much always trade 1:1 with some kill spell which can be annoying but that works out since it's further distraction away from Shelly. If they don't answer the Triheaded Beast Of Text, the game ends pretty quickly which exactly the problem we're trying to fix.
  • Might experiment with 3x vs 2x but, statistically speaking, this isn't something I'd want >1 of in my opening hand.
• Cling to Dust: See earlier discussion on main-deck graveyard interaction. 90% of the time this is a 1-mana draw spell. The other 9.999...% it's a 4-mana draw spell. The floor on this card is pretty high and the ceiling is outrageous. Barring a few exceptions, the cards in a deck like this even worth considering all become useless once they find themselves in the graveyard, Cling provides a vent for us to use our graveyard as another resource and that's why you'll see me play at least 1x of this card a lot.
• Assassin's Trophy: How I wish this was Abrupt Decay instead, I'd play 2x Decay in the main in a heartbeat. The cost of giving the opponent a land is very real but sometimes you just want something dead and this does that. It's not trivial that this can tag lands either. In practice though this really only buys you a bit of time since opposition decks rarely tend to play just one copy of Problematic Permanent #12.
  • Wouldn't want more than 1x in the main, 1x in the board.
• Reckoner Bankbuster: Flood insurance. If we flood out or the game goes super late, this is supposed to help dig us out. Unfortunately, the mana intensive nature of the rest of the deck means we don't want this at all in the early turns and has me strongly considering other options. I'll continue to noddle around with the numbers on this but don't be surprised if it gets cut.
• Go for the Throat, Power Word Kill, Heartless Act, Infernal Grasp: 2-mana targeted kill spells. You should have 3-4x of these, which ones will be determined by the meta. Here's a handy list of things each card DOESN'T kill and it should give you and idea why I went with the numbers I did:
  • PWK: Mayhem Devil, Resplendent Angel, Righteous Valkyrie, Mutavault/Changlings... That's about it.
  • Act: Half the cards in the Affinity deck. Half the cards in the Life Gain Combo-Synergy decks.
  • G4TT: Just about anything in Affinity. Anything Karn, the Great Creator, one of the top cards in the format, can fish up out of the board.
  • InGra: Kills everything, but the 2 life is quite the steep cost when combined with 4x Thoughtseize.
• 2-3x Sheoldred's Edict: Unless it's a control heavy meta and planeswalkers are in every other deck, 2x feels right. We need to be able to kill planeswalkers with a spell and so long as you're not killing a 1-drop the 1-for-1 is worth it.
• The Mana Base:
  • 0x Takenuma, Abandoned Mire: We don't need an overcosted Raise Dead because we're deliberately playing 4x of just about everything we'd want anyway so it might as well be a basic Swamp.
  • 2x Field of Ruin: Questionable if these shouldn't be Llanowar Wastes instead and being only a colorless mana producer crowds out some of the other options we might otherwise dabble in. Experimenting with them but vs Maze's End and opposing man-lands I'm extremely thankful to have access to this effect.
  • 0x Castle Locthwain: With how few Swamps we're running it's effectively be a tap land which is not acceptable. The draw effect isn't especially necessary with all the other draw effects we have and the life lose isn't trivial in a deck filled with so many other pay-life effects already.
    • I'm not unsympathetic though, so if you reeeeally want this cut Deathcap Glade and Field of Ruins for this and Llanowar Wastes.
  • 2x Hive of the Eye Tyrant: This thing is an all-star. 3x is probably too much for how many games it enters tapped already.
  • 2x Restless Cottage: Competes with Hive. Should probably be 1x, but having another green mana source is really important so 2x is fine. The bigger 4/4 body is rarely as relevant as Menace and the food just sits there, but it's a threat and those are always welcome.

Sideboarding

• 2x Invoke Despair: Vs anything with enchantments|planeswalkers, or where card advantage matters. 1x doesn't feel like enough, 3x feels like too much. Also, the 4 black mana sources requirement here does prove to be a real drawback at the most inopportune times so be mindful of that in your sequencing.
• 1-3x "Discard"
  • 2x Go Blank: Vs any graveyard shenningans, or control. Another straightforward 2-for-1 as a floor, but the ceiling is insane vs those decks that it's built to handle.
  • Duress is the chief competition, but I tend to find that it's not as impactful as other options. The story is never "T1|2|3, Duress, yay~ that broke up their hand!"
• 1-3x "Graveyard hate"
  • 1x Unlicenced Hearse: Vs dredge, Rogues, Greasefang. Doesn't come in too often, but is something you want on Turn 2 every time vs the decks it's there for.
• 1-2x Pithing Needle: Vs Maze's End, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Kethis, the Hidden Hand, Karn, the Great Creator, the list goes on. Meta dependent on whether you want 1|2x. Bring it in vs decks where this little extra speed bump buys you enough time to pressure them in some other way.
• 2-3x "Sweeper": Choice here depends on what you'd least like to die to.
  • Ritual of Soot is better vs Collected Company decks.
  • Extinction Event is better to have vs MonoGreen (It's eerie what naming Odd does vs them compared to us).
  • Shadows' Verdict cleans up pretty much everything in Dredge.
  • Bontu's Last Reckoning vs those decks that are all in on killing you with creature combat before Turn 4 (especially when we're on the draw).
  • Languish is at it's best vs RW Convoke.
• 1x Noxious Grasp: Vs UW Control, MonoGreen, Lifegain. Anywhere an instant speed Dreadbore would prove handy, which is quite often. Tags Kiora, Teferi, Wandering Emperor, Angels, Trolls, Cavaliers, and on and on.
• 1-2x Tear Asunder: Vs anything that plays mostly non-creature permanents. If we can't kill it otherwise, break glass on this card.

...

More coming soon.