Nemata, Grove Guardian
Saproling decks before this had a problem: they made bodies, but the tokens stayed small and the deck stalled into a board that couldn't punch through. This Treefolk solves both ends of that loop at once. The first ability is a repeatable token engine that turns surplus mana into pressure, and the second turns that same army into a finisher by cannibalizing it for a temporary anthem. Sacrifice one Saproling and the rest swell; the math scales with the board, so a wide enough position can convert a single throwaway token into a lethal swing. That sacrifice-as-pump conversion is the design tension worth dwelling on: every Saproling is both a blocker and a potential +1/+1 for its siblings, which means the same token has to be spent eventually for the engine to close, and you are constantly weighing chump value against the alpha-strike payoff. The body is built to survive the games it's grinding, sturdy enough to keep generating tokens turn after turn while the army accumulates. It anchors the Saproling lineage that ran through the Dominaria sets, a green go-wide identity that wanted a single card to be both the factory and the lord. Nemata is that card: a token generator that doubles as its own overrun, with the only restriction being that the army it builds is the same army it has to feed.


