{"ops":[{"insert":"The God of Crab Toughness!\n\nCrabs are tough, and Phenax cares about toughness. Crabs mill, and Phenax mills. Crabs are mostly in blue and black, and Phenax is blue and black. While most Phenax builds focus on walls and turbo mill, this deck is designed to be a reasonably budget-friendly, interaction-light build that can hang at the kitchen table with precons (sorry Bruvac and Minamo, you'd be too great here and cost too much.) While Phenax was designed with toughness mill in mind, most builds seem to favor walls or generic high toughness creatures. \n\nHere, we will explore a deck full of four-mana vanilla 1/6s.\n\nThe main feature of the deck are the Little Crabs, the Big Crabs, and the Copycrabs (cards that either copy crabs themselves or the crabs' abilities.) With a full crabby board, Phenax can reliably mill for 20ish per turn cycle, which feels good enough but not so powerful that we are pushing others out of the game. \n\nAs we are powering up, Riptide Chronologist is our fun, typal untap effect that is a Dramatic Reversal that can be copied with Peter Parker's Camera, Gogo, and Illusionist's Bracers. \n\nOur protection suite of Magic Damper, Octopus Form, Shore Up, and Fleeting Reflection all include an untap alongside hexproof to further our mill plan while protecting our board. \n\nTo find a win with the crabby team, we have a few options:\n\nFirst, we can hope the mill plan works with a Horseshoe Crab equipped with Cap's Shield or Slagwurm Armor, a big crab equipped with Pemmin's Aura or Freed from the Real, a little speed up help from Thousand-Year Elixir, or a slowly amassing team of Uchuulons.\n\nSecond, we can stack Duskmantle Guildmage triggers for damage bursts around the table as we mill or we can hope our opponents have enough creatures to make Syr Konrad a reliable source of damage.\n\nOr third, we can just make use of the undersea plunder horded by the crabs by using our opponents' graveyards as a resource with Espers to Magicite, Memory Plunder, and Rise of the Dark Realms. \n\nFor a little crabby bonus help for Phenax's devotion requirements, we have a Coral Reef to slooooowly boost toughness while providing devotion pips and a copy of Dance of Many to copy a crab. \n\nSo, while yes, the themes here work together as one would expect (toughness, crabs, mill), this deck uses creativity to build a version with categories that focus in on the core mechanical aspects (untap, mill) while providing the necessary deckbuilding elements (protection, removal) at an appropriate power-level and budget for the kitchen table.\n\nThanks for hosting the contest!\n"}]}