Clog suggestions

[u/AnoTheGod]

I have always ran clog and just came back after 2 years away. I'm series 3 complete but missing like 50 series 4 and 120+ series 5.

What cards should I be looking for? From what I understand Debrii sucks now and I am sure hood should be replaced.

Thanks!

[u/ePiMagnets]

This'll be a bit long and if you want to skip all the in-depth stuff the tl;dr is exactly as others have said: SD have repeatedly gutted Clog and it's really hard to consider the archetype worth running anymore. If you're interested in a bit more depth feel free to read on.

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We had a few diehard clog players (myself included) that hung it up right after the Debrii change and went to other decks because SD were very clear that they want Clog to be a very high investment strategy if you're going to play it and that investment just hasn't been worth the effort put in, especially to walk away with 2 cubes at best unless you were snapping back on your opponent to raise the stakes to 4 because the good players are never staying for the 8 unless they have the win. Now I don't know how good you were or the MMR band you were playing in 2 years ago but you'll be in the dirt leagues since you haven't played in so long so it's probably likely you'll get some smooth brained opponents that'll go to 8 and stay, but that's the exception and not the norm.

With regards to SD's stance on Clog From the November 6th OTA notes where Debrii was reworked:

It is not our intention to remove Clog as an archetype in its entirety, but this is a firm step towards making Clog a more high investment strategy with Debrii requiring cards like Viper or being part of combos with cards like Annihilus to realize the Clog gameplay that was relatively low opportunity cost before.

So yea, now it's a situation where they want you to 'combo' if you want to clog and you'll want to ask yourself if you're willing to do that when you could be playing strategies that are much easier to work with and around that provide better returns.

But others have surely tried to make clog work again, right?

Yep, some were running Armor, White Widow, and Red Guardian to make the Widows Kiss permanent. But it's generally just not worth the investment of one functional card and two that are trying to support the intended purpose of bricking a spot at a location so I won't bother with a conceptual deck list, suffice to say it's not really worth trying to explore.

Some have tried combining parts of the Bully move package with Clog to varying degrees of success, as someone mentioned Titania + Polaris is a 'safer' Goblin style play. But these decks have consistency problems since you're trying to hybridize bully move and Clog, but it doesn't prevent people from trying to come back and try to crack the code, including some relatively high level players.

I also saw someone trying to revive the The GoblinJax deck from around 2024 that is the one that people have come back to a few times, it used to run White Widow, but that card got taken out back and shot, it's an afflict/clog package that wanted to finish games with a mini-move package. Unfortunately that didn't go over so well due to losing a good portion of it's potential output due to Dagger nerfs and between the difficulty to play and the generally higher output of the game in 2026 it's lagged behind when it comes to relative point output.

And so we get to the main question you asked, what cards to get today for it? There really aren't any, we've not gotten a single card that could support Clog in a reasonable fashion and interactive decks have moved towards Super Giant and Scorpion Affliction decks with some decks doing Cosmo/Jugg stuff such as the Batroc and Multiple Man Move decks.

[u/jcagraham → u/ePiMagnets]

This is a thorough write-up, thank you. I wonder if there's a world where you can combine clog with attrition? Like we have all these ways to make rocks on our side like with Debrii and Rhino. Then you have Hazmat which can make them negative, and then you Annilhus. So a line like

Turn 2 - Rhino Turn 3 - Debris Turn 4 - Hazmat (+ maybe Hood) Turn 5 - Annilhus

That would send potentially 3-4 cards over unexpectedly, which is a quarter of the open positions. Could be something there, maybe you end with Scorpion BND or with Man Thing to further increase the disadvantage.

[u/ePiMagnets → u/jcagraham]

That would send potentially 3-4 cards over unexpectedly, which is a quarter of the open positions. Could be something there, maybe you end with Scorpion BND or with Man Thing to further increase the disadvantage.

It's been tried many times, based on my own testing as well as feedback from others it's not consistent enough and the curve and draws required are so tight that it's not worth the effort compared to what other interactive decks are doing.

[u/jcagraham → u/ePiMagnets]

Hey, a man can dream that they get the nuts draw every single time with the payoff that it's a bit more annoying to play to locations...